Month: December 2011

The Guide to the Grudging Gift

Stephanie Zvan8 Comments

Ah, the signs of the season: full parking lots, disappearing gift receipts, annoying bell ringers (who are frequently nice people getting paid too little to support the crappy organization that will use your money to further discrimination), and–joy of joys–that one person for whom you’re buying a gift only as a gift to the people who have to deal with you both. Luckily for you, my friend Naomi has updated her guide to finding that perfect gift to convey your seasonal message.

4. If you’re shopping for an ex, because the kids want to give him a present, focus on setting. If you take your kids to A Store, they will probably choose something from That Store. You might say to yourself, “I’ll just take them to Target; I can get some other shopping done while I’m there,” but recognize that you are wasting an opportunity. There are entire stores full of nothing but horrifying items: you probably don’t want to go to the Thomas Kinkaide Store at the Mall of America (because if you’re sensible, you don’t want to go ANYWHERE NEAR the Mall of America in December) but take a careful look at the stores convenient to you. Is there a place that specializes in collectible plates with pictures of animals on them? Or a store that sells nothing but novelty socks? Or a Spencer Gifts? (NOTE: This is only a good strategy if your ex at least has the redeeming quality of being willing to pretend s/he just LOVES whatever the kids wound up picking out. If you have an ex that would hurt your kid’s feelings over a Christmas gift, my suggestion for what this person should get for Christmas would potentially expose me to legal liability so I deleted it after typing it out. I’m sure you know a guy who knows a guy who could suggest the perfect method thing.)

Now, as Naomi points out, not everyone is obliged to give gift to people they despise. For instance, I just don’t feel that bound by social constraints. But I do have to say that her guide makes it very tempting to just find someone who needs one of these gifts.

The Guide to the Grudging Gift
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Where We Draw the Line

Stephanie Zvan6 Comments

The Borrowitz Report has a post up in the form of a satirical goodbye letter from Herman Cain:

But before I go, let me share with you my final thoughts on my campaign.  After months of crisscrossing this great land of ours and participating in over three hundred televised debates, I am being disqualified because of an extramarital affair.  And that raises the following question: are you fucking kidding me?

I mean, let’s get real.  I never heard of Libya.  I didn’t know whether that CNN dude’s name was Wolf or Blitz.  And my only training for running the #1 nation in the world was running its #8 pizza chain.  Yet none of that, I repeat, none of that disqualified me.  In fact, I was the front-fucking-runner, as long as I kept my 9-9-9 in my pants.  (I have no idea what I meant by that — I just like saying 9-9-9.)

It’s funny (though strangely less funny than what Cain actually said). That’s what Borowitz does–goes after the pain to make you laugh. But he missed out on one important feature of the pain that has been Cain’s campaign.

I was not backing him, but was defending him on the sexual harassment charges 🙁 Now, I am not so sure he is not a cad!

Continue reading “Where We Draw the Line” →

Where We Draw the Line

Atheists Talk: Baba Brinkman on “The Rap Guide to Evolution”

Stephanie Zvan

Baba Brinkman is a Canadian rap artist, writer, actor, and tree planter. He is well known for blending rap music and literature and science. He coined the term “lit hop” to describe his literature-based rap music.

Baba Brinkman earned a Master of Arts in Medieval and Renaissance English Literature and he studied human evolution and primatology with the orangutan researcher Biruté Galdikas. His thesis compared modern Hip hop freestyle battling with The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

From Baba Brinkman’s website.

To date Baba has written or co-written five hip-hop theatre shows, including The Rap Canterbury Tales, The Rap Guide to Evolution, and The Rebel Cell, with MC Dizraeli. He won three awards and entertained thousands while performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for six of the past seven years. Baba is also the founder of Lit Fuse Records, which represents Aaron Nazrul and the Boom Booms, Smoky Tiger, and Mud Sun, as well as his own music. Besides executive producing and developing new talent through his label, Baba has recorded and released seven solo albums since 2004.

The Rap Guide to Evolution won the prestigious Scotsman Fringe First Award in Edinburgh in 2009, and went on to tour the USA, Australia, and the UK, including three appearances at regional TED conferences, an off-Broadway showcase, and an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show on US national television. The Rap Guide to Evolution is currently enjoying an extended off-Broadway run in New York, produced by Dovetail Productions.

Baba Brinkman will join Atheists Talk to discuss The Rap Guide to Evolution this Sunday. Make sure to tune in!

Related Links: 

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

Atheists Talk: Baba Brinkman on “The Rap Guide to Evolution”

Saturday Storytime: As Above, So Below

Stephanie Zvan

John M. Ford was called “Mike” by his friends. To con-goers, he was known as that guy you could spend hours talking to, not know what it was you ended up talking about, and not care. To his fans, he was frequently known as the guy who not only wrote the best Star Trek novel ever, but also made that mean something. This, like any other piece of his work, is nothing like that, except that it’s pure Mike.

“What, Sherez, must you polish your own teeth now? I’ve given Emael orders that you’re not to go three days without a filing.”

“Your sson fears me,” said the dragon. “He thinkss I sshall ssnap him up.”

“So did I, when I was no bigger than your fang. Emael wears a sword now. He can wield a rasp.”

“But you will not chain your sson to the sstair, as your father did you, will you, Owen? He iss no coward, your sson. Only young, and uncertain.”

“He will be Count one day, Sherez, and he must know you.”

“No.”

Owen stared. “What do you mean by that? What is going to happen to my son?”

“I do not know, Owen.”

“Not . . . know?” The Count looked at the dragon’s head, twice Owen’s own height, and behind it the hunched scaly back and thick hind legs. The vestigial wings were folded flat, fanning open and shut slightly as Sherez breathed. What a creature is dragon, the poets sang, though for his wisdom he resigned the air to crawl . . . Years ago, a traveling artificer had displayed a whole dragon brain, preserved in smelly liquid. The arms of three men could not span it round. How could that brain–

As the mazes of the dragonium wound above and below, that brain coiled through time; time past, time future. All moments were one to a dragon, tomorrow as real as yesterday, this very instant the same to it as last year or next generation. Sherez could tell Owen the hour of the Count’s death, had he only the courage to ask.

How could that brain not know?

Keep reading.

Saturday Storytime: As Above, So Below

More on Diversity and Merit in the Workplace

Stephanie Zvan4 Comments

A couple of days ago, I posted about the practical discrimination in a hiring/raise/promotion system that requires people to ask/beg/demand to get ahead in their work. A number of people commented in response that this “is just the way business works.” There are a couple of problems with this.

The first problem is that, no, this isn’t just the way this works. Continue reading “More on Diversity and Merit in the Workplace” →

More on Diversity and Merit in the Workplace

Science, Sperm, and a Survey About Your Junk

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

If you don’t already read Scicurious’s Friday Weird Science (and why not, may I ask?), today is the day to start. Today’s post is titled, “Laptops and WIFI are coming for your SPERM. Again.”

Sci loves her some science of sex, especially after a long week in the lab. She also loves pulling apart the methodology of a study. Sometimes it’s to point out where the authors made some hilariously strange decisions. Sometimes it’s to highlight clever mechanisms for getting at a research question, particularly where testing in vivo would be ethically problematic. Sometimes it’s just to caution against getting too excited about what are really preliminary results.

That’s the case with the study Sci highlights today:

So the conclusions of this study: Do not place your sperm cells in a dish under your laptop for four hours. It might stop some of them from swimming.

That’s it. No nuked sperm here. From the press releases I was expecting to see those poor little buggers dying by the millions. Heck there wasn’t an increased rate of death at all. I’m not sure I buy the increased DNA fragmentation. But it doesn’t show decreased fertility, it doesn’t show nuked sperm, and though they got much higher electromagnetic frequencies, it doesn’t necessarily show that the Wi Fi is coming for your balls.

Here’s why this doesn’t necessarily mean the Wi Fi hates your nuts:

Go find out why. While you’re there, take Sci’s survey about how likely you are to put your genitals in danger. I think we all want to know how much of a problem this may be and how much attention we need to pay to future studies like this. (Yes, they do just keep…er…coming.)

It’s for science.

Science, Sperm, and a Survey About Your Junk

Examining MRA’s Prison-Rape Factoid

Stephanie Zvan46 Comments

Discuss rape anywhere within the Google Alert of most self-proclaimed men’s rights activists, and you’re likely to hear something like, “All they talk about is rape of women, but the rate of prison rape means more men are raped than women every year!” What you will not see is numbers or a link to comparative statistics.

The original claim (seen here in an old Wikipedia edit) comes from a 2001 report from Human Rights Watch that took rates found in two localized studies and extrapolated them to the U.S. as a whole. Although much more representative surveys have become available since then, you won’t see those quoted. There’s a reason for that.

Continue reading “Examining MRA’s Prison-Rape Factoid” →

Examining MRA’s Prison-Rape Factoid