Mary took this photo, and showed it to me. Apparently, her sister had problems seeing the prominent figure in it, so she put her phone in my face and asked if I could see it. I instantly focused on the strand of spider silk in the lower right, and was looking for the spider (what else would you take a picture of?) but couldn’t find it. Then she told me it wasn’t a spider at all.
I was so confused. No spider? What? Why?
Mary and I saw Barbie last night. Ben Shapiro is partly right — it is the most woke movie I’ve ever seen. Although…we watched the whole thing, eagerly awaiting the gay orgy scene and the raging trans character stealing all the scenes, and were so disappointed. The closest we got to an orgy was two Kens kissing Ken on the cheek, and I guess we have to trust that there was a trans person there, but she was just playing Barbie like all the other Barbies.
It was loaded full of the Feminizms, though. And the Kens were patriarchal assholes, kinda incel-like, but the movie was also sympathetic to them and tried provide solutions to their problems. There was all this talk of autonomy and independence and freedom and positivity and kindness, though, and I can see why Shapiro would think it was garbage — he doesn’t like any of that stuff. There’s even a Shapiro joke, with one Barbie saying that she’s comfortable with both logic and emotion at the same time.
There were also some good jokes about the Snyderverse, and the last line of the movie is a killer. I felt sorry for Alan, Ken’s Buddy, and poor permanently pregnant Midge.
Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie were perfectly cast. (You should google their names right now: Google will give you a pink fireworks show.) Both were energetic and entertaining.
Recommended.
I know everyone is talking about the contrast between Barbie and Oppenheimer, but unfortunately the latter movie isn’t scheduled for a showing at my local theater. Once they get done showing that lying waste of time, Sound of Freedom, next week, maybe I’ll get to see it.
Oh, and here’s a more thorough review, if you want that.
New movie marketers decided to use the Greek alphabet in their poster, and caused my brain to stutter.
There is no “C” in the Greek alphabet; they should have substituted a Κ, kappa. No “L”, but there is a lambda, Λ. We get a sigma instead of an “e”, which is pronounced like an “s”. Then an omicron, so that part is OK. P is rho, it is pronounced like an “r”. Greek has a perfectly good, familiar letter A, alpha, but they put a delta, Δ, in there. That’s a “d”. Then a tau, Τ, which is a fine “T”, and an “R” character which doesn’t exist and should be a Ρ. Then it ends with another “d”.
I think that whole gemisch is pronounced “??sordt?d,” somehow, and I now have no confidence in the historicity of whatever this movie is.
I wonder if they plan to distribute this movie in Greece with that poster?
It wasn’t quite as thrilling/perilous as a D&D dungeon crawl, but we did walk through the steam tunnels beneath campus, and survived. I think we saw two living spiders, a moth, a few mud dauber nests, and some ghastly slime, but that’s about it.
It is impressive how extensive the tunnels are…and we never really notice them. Apparently we can get to every building on campus without stepping outside, except that most of the access doors are locked for safety reasons: there are asbestos covered pipes everywhere, cables snaking around the ceiling, and hot metal supports that it would be unwise to touch.
But now I know how to get into them whenever I want!
As you must know, it’s legendary that universities are built on top of a network of tunnels full of steam pipes and cables and mysterious lost undergrads. My university is no different. We have one functional, accessible tunnel between the science building and the student union, but nothing else is easy to get to. We occasionally get a glimpse of more when the physical plant crew opens up a door to work on arcane things back in the mines.
Today, though, I made arrangements to get an official tour of the maze under our feet. The students and I are going to equip ourselves and enter the university’s very own dungeon. I don’t expect to find trolls or CHUDs or ancient artifacts or cunning, centuries-old traps that still work — ostensibly, we’re looking for the invertebrate inhabitants of the underworld. I know there are cockroaches down there, at least, but maybe spiders? Giant albino spiders lurking in the darkness?
One can always hope.
If I don’t make it back, all I know right now is that the access portal is somewhere on the east side of the humanities & fine arts building. I’ll expect you to organize a rescue party.
In case you’ve been keeping score…
I had my money on the right demi-god.
I sure hear a lot about science education in New Zealand, and I don’t know why. The latest is some upset about the New Zealand science curriculum. I also don’t understand why.
Science teachers are shocked that an advance version of the draft school science curriculum contains no mention of physics, chemistry or biology.
The so-called “fast draft” said science would be taught through five contexts – the Earth system, biodiversity, food, energy and water, infectious diseases and “at the cutting edge”.
It was sent to just a few teachers for their feedback ahead of its release for consultation next month, but some were so worried by the content they leaked it to their peers.
Teachers who had seen the document told RNZ they had grave concerns about it. It was embarrassing, and would lead to “appalling” declines in student achievement, they said.
One said the focus on four specific topics was likely to leave pupils bored with science by the time they reached secondary school.
But another teacher told RNZ the document presented a “massive challenge” to teachers and the critics were over-reacting.
“It’s the difference from what’s existed before and the lack of content is what’s scaring people. It’s fear of the unknown,” he said.
Okay. I contrast that with the Minnesota public school curriculum, which delineates the big three science subjects of physics, chemistry, and biology — there’s a year dedicated to each of those, a very traditional approach. But obviously, that’s too broad to be practical, and we also have a more detailed breakdown of what specifically needs to be taught within each.
The NZ schools would provide a different framework. Instead of the traditional topical breakdown, it’s centered around broader themes and questions. Is that bad? The real test is in the details of implementation. They could also have science standards that are identical to Minnesotas, for instance, but placed within an interdisciplinary program (that’s what I see in those five contexts, which are all interrelated and overlapping with physics, chemistry, and biology). It sounds like it would be hard to do well, especially in comparison to well-established curricula, but the devil is in the details, and I’m not seeing any details anywhere, as is unsurprising if this is just a leaked draft.
I guess I’m interested in the fact that three of their five categories (biodiversity, food, energy and water, and infectious diseases) are so solidly built around biology, but at the same time they’re going to have to introduce a strong background in chemistry and physics to do them well. I also feel like you can’t teach those biological aspects without any general biochemistry, and there’s no biochem explicitly spelled out in the overview. It’s got to be there somewhere in the implementation details.
Also, I would object to “at the cutting edge” as far too vague. How do you teach that? What’s the point of discussing deep details if you don’t have the basic foundation?
Here’s a good message from Rebecca Watson: you should get out and do something other than work.
I suspect it’s a little too obvious what my passion has been for the last few years, and I won’t even ask you to guess. Instead, tell me what you’ve been doing for fun!
I tried this PhD simulator game. It wasn’t fun at all, and I washed out in the first year…that is, it was quick and painful. Everyone knows grad programs are anything but quick!
