from The Last Election, Andrew Yang and Stephen Marche

“It is a successful fifteen seconds of television, the result of months of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultancy fees.” p24

Yeah. Politicians are as bad as business owners. If they spent their marketing budget on making a better product, providing better service … There ought to be a low ceiling in both cases for such expenditures. At the very least, it would go toward leveling the playing field.

“… Americans don’t want reliable information anymore. they want confirmation of teir biases and rage.” p97

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funny bit from John Scalzi

I’m reading through his “Whatever” archive …

“See, now, this is a dog: [picture of Kodi …] as opposed to a Shih Tzu, at which you look and say to yourself ‘This is what happens when you put a mop and a stuffed animal in a room with a Barry White CD.'”

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An idea for profs

Here’s an idea I’d implement if I were still teaching:

Have your students grade each other’s papers, anonymously.

First, they have to establish critieria and justify them, then they have to grade the paper they’re randomly assigned accordingly.

You
grade them according to how well they graded the other’s paper.

Hopefully, this will counteract the ‘likes’ and casual ‘thumbs up’ tendency and develop true critical thinking about what they read — critical reading.

It should also improve their own papers. (Suggest, to the clueless, that they use their own justified criteria while writing, and before submitting, their future papers.)

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Research into male/female differences–is a redo required?

Does any research into the differences between male and female distinguish between females who have experienced pregnancy and childbirth and those who have not? It’s doubtful, since most research is conducted by men, to whom making such a distinction would not even occur.

But there are permanent changes to the brain as a result of pregnancy and childbirth. “Gray matter becomes more concentrated” and “Activity increases in regions that control empathy, anxiety, and social interaction.” There are also changes in the amygdala, “which helps process memory and drives emotional reactions like fear, anxiety, and aggression” (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/what-happens-to-a-womans-brain-when-she-becomes-a-mother/384179/)

So are the much touted differences between male and female differences between male and only mothering females? If so, that entire area of research needs to be redone.

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Unpregnant (the movie)

The movie titled Unpregnant has been on my list for a while, but I’ve just subscribed to CRAVE.

One, I was appalled to see that the movie is categorized as a comedy.

I suspect the categorizing is done not by CRAVE staff, but according to the movie’s submitted metadata, which means it’s the writer, director and/or producer who are calling it a comedy. And I suspect that whoever is responsible for the category identification is a man.

Because only a man would find it funny that
– a teenager finds herself pregnant because the condom broke, finds her whole life about to change direction in what she may well consider to be a horrible way—all her plans, her aspirations, her goals, no longer possible
– she discovers that the nearest place at which an abortion without parental consent is available is almost a thousand miles away; she doesn’t have the money to get there
– she discovers that the teenage boy knew the morning after that the condom had broken, but did not tell the young woman; if he had, she could’ve obtained the morning after pill—problem solved
Have I gotten to the funny part yet? Where are the giggles?

As I watch the movie, I see that yes, there are comedic moments. The movie becomes a road trip between previously estranged friends. But who would decide to write a comedy based on such traumatic premises. Again, only a man.

So I was surprised that two of the three writers are women. What the hell?

Shame on the three of you for perpetuating the clueless view that pregnancy and abortion are no big deal.

So when abortion is prohibited altogether in ALL fifty states, oh well. No big deal. Right?

(And to think people have DIED to secure your right to decide for yourself whether or not to reproduce.)

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from Slow Motion: changing masculinities, changing men, Lynne Segal

“The question of why it is men, and most often fathers or step-fathers, who sexually abuse children is not addressed [in recent books on fathering].” p55

“And far from criticizing women for failing to satisfy men’s needs, feminists … question whence these ‘needs’ derive, and whether these needs themselves should not be seen as the problem—the problem of men.” p55

“As Andrew Hacker suggests, wives who work ‘are not the cause of divorce so much as their husbands who still expect to hold center stage.'” p99

“Retrospectively, it is startling to realize that rape and men’s violence towards women became a serious social and political issue only through feminist attention to them.” p234

“According to Phillips and Taylor, the work which women do tends to be low in status and reward simply because it is women and not men who do it. Ben Birnbaum has illustrated this from his study of the clothing industry: the same type of machine work was classified as skilled when performed by men, and semi-skilled when performed by women.” p299

“Women [can] not share equally with men at work until men share equally with them in the home.” p304

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The obsession with Mars

The obsession with any sort of off-planet future is completely irrational.

Look: Mars, for example, is uninhabitable as is. So you’re going to have to build bubbles or bunkers to live in. So why not just build them here? Save the travel expenses.

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a few of the many insights in Holly Bourne’s When We Were Friends

“That song [“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” by Carole King) is the most true song that’s ever been written.” p175

“Speaking so loudly [about football] and with such arrogant authority that everyone else sort of had to listen.” p219

“Is it just me or is it crazy that football chat is taken seriously when it’s basically astrology for men? … They never have mercury going into retrograde as a news segment, do they?” p220

“I wanted him to want me to stay. I would’ve stayed all night happily, if only he’d asked me one question about myself and listened to the answer.” p240

And p401-2. All of it, every line.

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Truth

Only someone who doesn’t know very much thinks the truth is simple.

(just finished Crichton’s Airframe,which illustrates that very claim through, notably, a reporter)

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Bill Maher – yes! what he said!

Watch it at least until the June 31 bit.

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