You’re all going to die!

And we can estimate statistically how it’s going to happen!

causeofdeath

It’s odd, but all the human experiences that are genuinely universal are also things that we have difficulty discussing. Birth is something you do when you’re an illiterate ignoramus of a baby, and you can’t talk; and death is something nobody can discuss after they’ve experienced it, so we’ve got this little industry of people who make up stories about an afterlife. We need more people who are willing to talk honestly about the facts of death — so here’s an interview with Sarah Troop, one of those people willing to do just that.

Sarah Troop is a museum curator and historian who writes and recreates historical and cultural recipes for her blog, Nourishing Death, which examines the relationship between food and death in rituals, culture, religion, and society. She is also co-founder of Death & the Maiden, which explores the relationship between women and death by sharing ideas and creating a platform for discussion and feminist narratives. She is the executive director of The Order of the Good Death and serves as the Social Media Editor for Death Salon. Sarah is also an author and advocate for improved care and support of families experiencing infant and child death and was a contributing author to the companion book for the Emmy nominated film, Return to Zero.

It’s exactly the kind of thing you need to read first thing in the morning. It woke me up, anyway!

Yes, Mr. A, there is a significant pay gap

Every time the fact that there is a pay gap between men and women is mentioned, there’s always someone who comes charging in with denials and excuses: men work longer (because women do more work for free at home), men are wisely choosing higher-paying jobs (never noticing that we devalue women’s work), men do more dangerous work, so they deserve more compensation (wait, so there is a pay gap? And maybe we should do more safety improvements and actually compensate more for risky jobs — because they are dangerous, not because men are doing them), etc., etc., etc. It’s always a matter of finagling the numbers using implicit biases to make the glaring gaps go away.

Now Jenny Stevens goes through the rationalizations one by one, and neatly rebuts the games the apologists play for paying women less.

Good news and bad news from the University of Missouri

The bad news: horribly racist incidents.

…at issue is the school administration’s handling of several racist incidents that occurred this fall. In September, Peyton Head, a senior and the president of Missouri Students Association, said he was called racial slurs as he walked near campus.

“I really just want to know why my simple existence is such a threat to society,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

That incident was followed by one on October 5 when members of the Legion of Black Collegians were called the N-word while rehearsing for homecoming festivities. Three weeks later, on October 24, a swastika was drawn with human feces at a university residence hall.

The good news: students and faculty reacted vigorously. Boy, did they react. Students protested; one went on a hunger strike. The student athletes refused to perform until action was taken, and the coach actually supported them, and said they were excused from practice. Faculty supported a strike and student walkout.

Somebody is finally taking the issue seriously.

And the really amazing news: it all worked, and university president Tim Wolfe has resigned. So it only takes a couple of months of strong protests and a threat to the football season to achieve victory.

The University of Iowa has some serious dissatisfaction with their recently appointed president. Maybe they need to get the support of the football team to get rid of the rascal.

Online Gender Workshop: Social Construction Workers Rivet Sex to Gender

Online Gender Workshop, as ever, is brought to you by your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke.

Hopefully, in our last workshop entry, we got an understanding of what social construction is, and what it isn’t. I’m a firm believer, as I said in that post, of people being better educated about social construction theory so that they can understand what is and isn’t being said when someone asserts, “Donkey is a social construct”.

[Read more…]

Lord, please never let Louise Mensch decide to “help” me

It’s time for a retrospective on the Tim Hunt case. Dan Waddell and Paula Higgins look over Louise Mensch’s “contributions” to the story, and unsurprisingly, discovers dishonesty, distortions, and omissions: many of the people she claimed were contradicting the story of Hunt making a poorly done sexist joke were actually confirming it, but simply saying that it was a sad attempt at humor that backfired.

In the end, the parable of Tim Hunt is indeed a simple one. He said something casually sexist, stupid and inappropriate which offended many of his audience. He then confirmed he said what he was reported to have said and apologised twice. The matter should have stopped there. Instead a concerted effort to save his name — which was not disgraced, nor his reputation as a scientist jeopardized — has rewritten history. Science is about truth. As this article has shown, we have seen very little of it from Hunt’s apologists — merely evasions, half-truths, distortions, errors and outright falsehoods.

As he points out, the story would have been a brief flare-up that could have ended with an apology, Tim Hunt’s career would have continued on, maybe a little more wisely. Instead, Mensch and others turned it into a protracted mess in which they attempted to refute the facts, and now the label of sexism is attached even more firmly to Hunt than cyclins are.

Every social expansion is first seen as a disruption

He missed at least one: the telephone! People had mixed feelings about this strangely intrusive object in their homes.

“… Most people saw telephoning as accelerating social life, which is another way of saying that telephoning broke isolation and augmented social contacts. A minority felt that telephones served this function too well. These people complained about too much gossip, about unwanted calls, or, as did some family patriarchs, about wives and children chatting too much. Most probably sensed that the telephone bell, besides disrupting their activities, could also bring bad news or bothersome requests. Yet only a few seemed to live in a heightened state of alertness, ears cocked for the telephone’s ring – no more, perhaps, than sat anxiously alert for a knock on the door. Some Americans not only disliked talking on the telephone but also found having it around disturbing, but they were apparently a small minority. Perhaps a few of the oldest felt anxious around the telephone, but most people … seemed to feel comfortable or even joyful around it. … Sociologist Sidney Aronson may have captured the feelings of most Americans when he suggested that having the telephone led, in net, to a ‘reduction of loneliness and anxiety, and increased feeling of psychological and even physical security’.” (Fischer, 1992, p. 247)

My own kids were coming of age as the cell phone was becoming popular, and we had reservations, too: “what do you even need a cell phone for?” and “watch out, bad people will get your phone number and say terrible things”. Nothing bad happened after all.

So I’ve learned my lesson. When the direct brain implants become available, and my grandkids (if I have any) start whining for the gadgets, I’m not going to lecture them on the dangers of imbedding electrodes in your skull. No, sir, I’ll just whisper “Don’t tell your mom” and whisk them off to the local clinic for the top-of-the-line Apple NeuroMesh with the MicroRetinal Interface.

We are ruled by idiots

Case in point: Representative Brad Sherman, a Jewish Democrat from California. He had some advice for Jane Yellen on the timing of interest rate changes.

God’s plan is not for things to rise in the autumn. As a matter of a fact, that’s why we call it fall. Nor is it God’s plan for things to rise in the winter through the snow. God’s plan is that things rise in the spring. So, if you want to be good with the Almighty, you might want to delay until May.

He proudly tweeted a summary.

So don’t make souffles in the fall. Guys, if you have a disappointing performance in the bedroom, just tell your partner that it was God’s plan. All flags must be at half-mast during the fall. I’m going to start sleeping in — it’s fall, we’re not supposed to rise.

Sherman, despite having a liberal view on many things, is a fool. And his foolishness is derived from his religiosity.

No more Howard

The winners of the World Fantasy Award for 2015 have just been announced, so if you’re looking for interesting reading, there you go.

wfaaward

The winners are given that hideous statuette to the right, a bust of HP Lovecraft. Now we’re all winners, because it has just been announced that the caricature of the goggle-eyed racist will not be handed out in the future — winners in 2016 will get something that they won’t tuck out of sight and turn towards the wall (and here’s another take on the controversy over HP).

I’ve been a big fan of the Cthulhu mythos, but I agree with this change — if it were a statuette of Cthulhu, I would approve, but a statuette of HP Lovecraft the man is honoring the wrong thing, not the creation, but the horrible complicated twisted creator.

How can you question the virtue of the police?

Look at the wonderful example the chief of police of Austin has set, in the case of a jaywalker manhandled by the police.

She was lucky. So, so lucky. If they hadn’t been such good police officers, they would have raped her. For jaywalking.

I am so filled with confidence in the Austin police. They won’t rape jaywalkers! Does anyone have any cookies we can send to them?