Strong female role models do little girls no favor

Hey, you — you look really stupid with your jaw gaping open like that.

That was a little preemptive scorn to get you to prep yourself for this link: it’s a fellow complaining about women working as astronauts (and even commanders of the space shuttle!) inspiring little girls to emulate them and ending up throwing pampers and pepper (?) at each other. This part is really disturbing:

Whatever happened to young men looking for a good Christian wife and finding a young woman still clinging to her doll?

It’s about finding masculinity in infantilizing women. It’s the flip side of the posturing macho faux-masculinity of Kim du Toit (warning: that link will make real men, those who don’t think a strut and a gun defines male identity, gag).

The comments on the article are interesting, too. There are a lot of smart women chewing him to bits, but then…well, read it for yourself.

Its ok. Christ did command us to subjigate our will, and that is what is so hard for people to do in this day and age. It’s all about “ME” in this day and age. Christ taught us humility and charity. As Christians, we are not our own, we are bought with a price. Christ paid it. If God tells me to submit my will to my husband, who is also in Christ, who am I to defy God’s will?

(via John Lynch)

Behe gets reamed again

The middle-aged man named Ian Musgrave has replied to the grey-haired man Michael Behe in response to his recent condescending dismissal of the young woman Abbie Smith (don’t these irrelevant signifiers of age, sex, and status add so much to our understanding of the discussion?) It’s really all about fun with viral proteins, and Behe’s failure to understand the basics of the evolution of the same. I think I’d be reluctant to refer to him as “the middle-aged biochemist Michael Behe” anymore — a biochemist should know this stuff.

Behe replies. He seems to be in a bit of a snit.

Rapture of the Deep

In preparation for my trip to the Caribbean next semester, I spent this weekend taking a class to learn how to SCUBA dive. My class and I learned all about the necessary equipment, what to do in emergency situations, and how to stay safe while SCUBA diving. We also learned about the physics of pressure, volume and density, so that we could better understand what happens when you descend into the deep. This inevitably led to a conversation about Nitrogen narcosis.

Nitrogen narcosis, or “rapture of the deep”, is a condition in which the symptoms resemble those due to intoxication by alcohol. Divers experiencing nitrogen narcosis lose their decision making abilities, their focus, and their judgment, coordination and multitasking skills become impaired. What could this potentially mean for the diver? They could ignore safe diving practices because they feel invulnerable to the dangers of their surrounding environment (sounds a bit like the actions of those individuals who are intoxicated by alcohol).

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Telomerase

Since I took Cell Biology last year, the Telomerase Gene has been an object of curiosity to me. Manipulating this pathway could slow down aging. On the other hand, it could be used in the opposite way to fight cancer. I do understand that this raises the ethical issue of how much we are supposed to tamper with. Then again, tampering is what we do as scientists, climbing mountains because they’re there.

I’ve been looking at this article for a paper I still haven’t started for Biochemistry.

Is any one here doing work with telomere regulation? If so, I’d like to here about it.

Happy Birthday, I think

Rumor has it that it is John Wilkins’ eleventeenth birthday. He’s on the other side of the planet, though, where it’s tomorrow already, so I’m not sure if his birthday was yesterday which is today or tomorrow which might be today or what. Go wish him a happy celebration anyway and tell him to explain the date to us.

A celestial omen!

Here I am, rooming with that space case, Phil Plait, and what should appear on the astronomy photo of the day but a cosmic cephalopod, a picture of Comet Holmes that has a resemblance to a cartoon octopus.

i-25000e197330296c3808cde2d9e5bf05-comet_octopus.jpg

Perhaps this is a sign of reconciliation? That the savage enmity between two science blogs shall be soothed? That the ferocious competition between the best science blog on the web and the blog that tied with a junk science site shall be at an end? That disparate disciplines can find common ground in the beauty of the natural universe?

Naaah, I hope not. The rivalry is too much fun.

Kentucky does good

One of the most vocal pro-creationist governors in the country, Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky (home of Ken Ham’s infamous creationist “museum”) has had his re-election bid go down in flames. This is fabulous news. Revere sees it as one more sign of the impending demise of the religious right — I can’t be quite so optimistic, since they always seem to resurrect themselves. Greg Laden is also pleased with the result. He also takes exception to the claim that creationism is properly taught in social studies and comparative religion classes — and to that, I’d add the frequent suggestion that it belongs in philosophy classes. It does a disservice to all of those disciplines. At best, it ought t be mentioned in abnormal psychology classes, as an example of the madness of crowds or of religious hysteria.

And a pleasant evening was had by all

This is going to be a big problem. I’m at this gathering of bloggers, which means they’re all going to be posting stuff about our meeting here at Americans United, and I’m outnumbered — I can’t keep up. I had dinner with Blue Gal, BAC, DCup, and One Pissed Off Veteran, and some of them already have pictures up.

And after dinner we had the combined Pharyngula/Bad Astronomy gathering, which seemed to have a majority of BA fans, to my chagrin. I think more failed to show up because they know I shoot laser beams out of my eyes. We also got a surprise visit from Tara and an Evil Monkey. The ScienceBorg Collective was out in force, trying to collect souls for the Empire — we leaned on Phil a bit, but he is stubborn. Clearly, it’s time to deploy the fully operational…but wait, I’ve said too much.

Anyway, anyone who was there should speak up in the comments, and feel free to leave a link — it will simplify my efforts to keep track of everyone.

Oh, one guy it’ll be easy to keep up with is Phil, who is still unconscious up in the room. I guess he needs his beauty sleep.