We privileged men have to accept our culpability

Helen Lewis has a few words for the men of journalism (which also apply to every other area). It’s easy to deplore acts you haven’t done, but that by your behavior you may have enabled.

The response to the Weinstein coverage has borne this out. Over the last week, my phone has lit up with female journalists silently screaming: have you seen him decrying Weinstein? The hypocrite!

In private, there has been a cathartic outpouring of Bastards We Have Known. The colleague who texted a friend of mine, Ros Urwin of the Standard, promising that “before I die, I will kiss every freckle on your lips”. The man who told my colleague Amelia Tait that she’d have to have sex to get ahead. The sub-editor who stalked a junior member of his team, turning up outside restaurants she was at with her boyfriend. The magazine journalist who developed an obsession with a female colleague and put her on late shifts to ruin her social life. The arts journalist who would take out new colleagues for a “welcome drink” at his London club – where they’d discover he had a room booked upstairs. The guy who put his hands down a colleague’s trousers at the Christmas party. More than one man in journalism, feeling spurned, has taken to ringing his love interest’s doorbell late at night.

Those are just the overt acts of egregious harassment. She also points out that a casual boy’s club atmosphere of little crappy jokes and disparagement in bad taste fuels the confidence of the worst offenders, and that we men all contribute in various ways to a culture of entitled oppression. Have I ever actively harassed anyone? No. But have I ever trivialized the atmosphere of sexual exploitation with a lazy joke or blithe acceptance of the status quo? Yes. Should I change? Yes. Will I change? I’ll try my hardest. You have permission to slap me when I screw up.

Just Asking Questions

Readers here are familiar with a deflection technique used by people with ugly views: they claim they aren’t promoting bad ideas, they’re Just Asking Questions. Asking questions is a good idea, right? We wouldn’t want to discourage people from questioning! Unfortunately, they always use the question as a framework for setting up alternatives that allow them to discuss their real agenda. Are women and black people fully human, or are they inferior subhuman knock-offs of the white man? Hey, don’t criticize me, I’m just asking a question here!

Now look at the kind of person Donald Trump tried to appoint to high office (we could also look at the people he successfully recruited). Anthony Scaramucci has been saying some interesting things on Twitter.

Hey, man, don’t give him no grief. He’s just askin’ questions here. He isn’t denying that the Nazis killed some Jews, he’s just thinkin’ we ought to be quantitative about it.

He’s not sayin’ we should murder 25 million people by setting them on fire and poisoning them with radiation. See, you can choose “no” (and most people did)! He’s just proposing some reasonable alternatives for discussion.

JAQing off isn’t the only tool in the deplorable’s toolbox. There’s also the “Just Joking” defense.

President Trump once joked that Vice President Mike Pence “wants to hang” all gay people, The New Yorker reported Monday.

The publication also reports that Trump has mocked Pence for his views opposing abortion and LGBTQ rights.

Trump jabbed at Pence after a legal scholar told the pair that if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, many states would probably legalize abortion.

“You see?” Trump reportedly said to Pence. “You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway.”

And when the meeting began to focus on gay rights, Trump reportedly pointed to Pence, joking, “Don’t ask that guy — he wants to hang them all!”

I’m also kind of despising the “Devil’s Advocate” gambit. The people who deploy that one sure seem to spend a lot of time role-playing as Satan.

This chart is a lie

Serial cables are neutral? No way. Chaotic evil. I had to make too many of them. DB9 or DB25, or some ghastly custom pinout some manufacturer saw fit to stick on their device? I’ve encountered lots where all you need is 3 pins — ground, transmit, and receive — but even then you have to worry about whether this is a straight pass-through cable or a null modem cable. Some devices require one or several of the handshaking lines to be enabled — but different machines require different handshakes. Do you need DTR or DCD? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Then some of those handshake lines are completely redundant, and you can make it work just fine by shorting out the line to one of the other pins.

I remember the bad old days when you’d buy laboratory devices and they’d have some odd connector hanging off the back and there’d be a cryptic pinout diagram in the specs, and you’d have to solder up your own cable for it. It was not a happy time.

Lovely green landscape, charming people, and…a hurricane?

I’m keeping up with the news from Ireland, where Ophelia is rushing up the west coast. Hurricanes and fierce winds and massive storm surges just aren’t what I picture when I envision Ireland.

I hear our national stockpile of thoughts and prayers were seriously depleted by hurricane Maria. Maybe that means we’ll actually have to give appropriate aid where needed.

Just like we’ve been doing in Puerto Rico.

A science video about gonad development

A bit about the early development of human gonads.

A few useful sources:
Sadler TW. 2014. Langman’s Medical Embryology. LWW. ISBN: 1451191642.

Everyone needs to have a copy of Langman’s around. Diagrams in the video were taken from this text.

Sajjad Y. 2010. Development of the genital ducts and external genitalia in the early human embryo. J Obstet Gynaecol Res. 36(5):929-37. doi: 10.1111/j.1447-0756.2010.01272.x.

A good review of the embryonic plumbing.

Zhao F, Franco HL, Rodriguez KF, Brown PR, Tsai MJ, Tsai SY, Yao HH. 2017. Elimination of the male reproductive tract in the female embryo is promoted by COUP-TFII in mice. Science 357(6352):717-720. doi: 10.1126/science.aai9136.

New stuff: a nice example of a female gene product that actively suppresses a male developmental feature.

PZ’s simple curry recipe

I made a curry tonight, and was asked to share my recipe. I was a little reluctant, because this is a really easy recipe, and explaining it will erase my mystique as a cook. But I’m a scientist, not a chef, and we believe in exposing all the mysteries, dammit. So here it is. Bonus: it’s vegan!

Take some extra firm tofu and let it rest under a weight for a while, until it’s extra firmerer.

You’re going to need a small pot. Put a cup of coconut milk in it, and then a couple of healthy dollops of peanut butter, and a variable amount of red curry paste. You get to control the final heat here: add a spoonful or two if you you like it mild, throw in half a tub of the stuff if you want to set the world on fire. Let it simmer until all the chunky stuff melts and you’ve got a nice brownish sauce with rivers of red like blood threading through it.

Now rescue your tofu from the crushing weight and cube it. Slice it into small bits, about the diameter of the tip of your little finger. Use a sharp knife, and maybe you’ll get a finger tip as a standard — you’ll only get to do that twice, so learn fast. Heat up some olive oil in a pan, and fry the tofu cubes up for a while, until they’re getting a toasty brown around the edges. This gives ’em a little more texture. Tofu needs it.

Sad confession. I’d like to add some of those tasty little red dried chilis at this point, and simmer them in the oil with the tofu, but I haven’t yet found any in Morris, so I usually don’t. I should check the Mexican grocery next time.

When the tofu looks good, throw them into the peanut butter/coconut milk/curry paste sauce. Simmer a while. They’ll absorb the flavor and get nutty-spicy.

Get a big white onion and chop it fine. Go ahead and let your tears spatter into it to add a personal touch. Saute in your cooking pot in some olive oil for 5 minutes or so, and then add a healthy dose of grated garlic, like a couple of cloves worth. Add some grated ginger, a bit more than the amount of garlic you added, and swirl it around in the hot oil and onions. Add peanuts. How many peanuts do you like? I throw in a couple of handfuls. Saute some more.

Time to add some spices. If you’re as lazy as I am, just get that yellow curry powder and toss in a couple of big spoonfuls. OK, add another spoonful. Maybe more. To taste. If you don’t have the curry powder, add turmeric and cumin and a bit of ground coriander. Swirl it around until everything is coated and hot, and dump in your coconut milk plus pepper plus peanut butter and tofu. You should get a nice blast of delicious steam in your face.

Really, that might be the best part of cooking this stuff, that moment when you get to breathe in the spices. Sinuses now all clear.

OK, now add a splash of soy sauce, and a couple of splashes of rice vinegar. If you think it’s not robust enough, spritz in some sriracha sauce to invigorate it.

Now we might diverge a bit: I use an instant pot pressure cooker. I just need to zap it at high pressure for 3 minutes or so to turn it into liquid gold. If you’re using a slow cooker, you might need to let it cook for an hour or more. Do the experiment! Do frequent tastings to see how it’s coming along!

Somewhere in here get your rice cooking. I like jasmine rice with this curry.

Final step: add pineapple chunks and simmer for a few minutes. I just use a whole large can of the stuff, but if you want more sweetness, add more (I think Mary wants me to add a couple of pineapples worth). Put it on rice and consume.

Curries are surprisingly easy to make — it’s all in the spices, and they’re easy to come by. I also have a red curry I make with lentils and potatoes, but I’m not telling because I have to keep some secrets.