Getting married, that is. It’s a good thing.

It’s a good ol’ American tradition: the telling of tall tales in a perfectly dead-pan style. There’s enough weird stuff in Kansas, though, that maybe the story is actually true.

We have more internecine warfare going on at scienceblogs: in this case it’s a matter of casual sexism. Should someone be surprised at pretty girls reading science fiction, or even being nerdy?

As someone who has been immersed in the nerd culture of the university since the mid-1970s and has also hung out in the science-fiction culture even longer (anyone remember Escape Books in Seattle? Been to Uncle Hugo’s or Dreamhaven in Minneapolis?), and is a heterosexual male who usually notices the hot girls, I will say with great emphasis, NO! In my generation, women in biology were a minority, but really, they looked fine. The students in my classes now are mostly women, and they are lovely, although I tend to see them with a more fatherly (or grandfatherly, sad to say) eye nowadays. Science does not attract the unattractive, so could we please end that stereotype?

We also shouldn’t judge the attractiveness of individuals on the basis of such shallow parameters. True male nerds all know that intelligence is a +2 bonus to charisma, and SF fannishness is an additional +1. Heck, if I were on the market right now (oh, but I’m so glad I’m not), the first places I’d choose to hang out in to meet attractive ladies would be the bookstores, and the SF and fantasy section in particular, but not exclusively.

Not that SF is a prerequisite—my wife is both a hottie and not particularly interested in genre fiction; I’d probably find her in the science section, or math/statistics, or social sciences. And that’s OK, and defies the stereotype, too.

One last datum: my daughter‘s bookshelf looks like a subset of what you’d find at Dreamhaven. If you want to argue that she ought to be homely, you’ll find me looking pissed off at you.

Finally and in general, these expectations about how women should be expected to look, and what set of irrelevant traits ought to be correlated with desirability, and how we guys ought to tie the preferences of women’s minds with our definitions of the sexual properties of their bodies, is more than a little annoying, and something women ought to be rightly irritated about. These unwarranted assignments of roles on the basis of irrelevant characteristics can hurt people.

If you’ve been following our little high school drama here in homophobic Morris, Skatje has posted a summary.

The denizens of the local chimpanzee refuge have begun to document their strategies in the War on Christmas. I have my own grand scheme, and all I’ll say now is that it is subtle and eeeeevil.

Everyone should give birthday greetings to Olduvai George today.

There is this woman in Colorado who’s being sued for displaying a peace symbol on her home—it’s very weird.

A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

Well, it is a peace symbol, you know, so it is rather abstractly against the Iraq war. There was also this long-dead Jewish rabbi that some people call the “Prince of Peace”, and I understand he’s having a holiday sometime soon…I wonder if the homeowner’s association will be policing the housing development for Christian symbols, too? Probably. These guys do sound hardcore.

I’ve never heard of the peace symbol being associated with Satan. I think someone’s making stuff up. Couldn’t they have just said it was a symbol for those damned dirty long-haired hippies, and left it at that?

Also, look at this: it’s pathetic.

Here, let me show you how it’s done. I think she needs to escalate.

This is a house down the street from me, here in the red state wilderness of western Minnesota. This display has been up every year that I’ve been here—that peace symbol must be about 12 feet in diameter.

See? That’s how you flaunt a peace symbol. It makes me feel a little better every time I walk by it.

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Ah, the power of the news and internet. The tinpot dictators realized that they were looking like pathetic, petty wankers to the entire world, and they’ve withdrawn their demands. I think Mr Kearns, the Homeowners Association GOD, has received a spanking.

None of the three members of the board in the scenic town 270 miles southwest of Denver was available for comment late Monday. Kearns and colleague Jeff Heitz both had their phone numbers changed to unlisted numbers Monday. Tammy Spezze, the third board member, did not return a call seeking comment.

Awww, it’s a romance made in the blogosphere: Sean Carroll and Jennifer Ouellette, my two very favoritest physics bloggers, are getting married. And it involves APS meetings and Fourier transforms, all intensely romantic.

This calls for some romantic imagery.

Happy birthday, Syaffolee!

I can guess what that all means—it’s from a description of the Panda’s Thumb and Pharyngula in a Polish newspaper. The rest of the article…eh, I don’t have a clue.