thusspakezuska

This blog has moved to http://scientopia.org/blogs/thusspakezuska This announcement supersedes the announcement in the previous blog entry. Thanks for reading TSZ here at ScienceBlogs, and I hope you will continue to enjoy reading TSZ at the new digs over at Scientopia.org.

New blog address is:http://thusspakezuska.wordpress.com

...the party's over. They say that all good things must end. I've been mentally inching towards the coat closet myself for the past week (read Bora's post for the reference), but as you know, I've been off spending time with my mom. Now is as good a time as any to say goodbye to ScienceBlogs.…

"The Same and Not the Same" is the title of a fantastic book by Nobel Prize winning chemist Roald Hoffman. It's a great place to get a hearty dose of science + culture. Part Eight of the book is titled "Value, Harm, and Democracy" and has all sorts of interesting stuff in it on chemistry and…

By now, perhaps, you are aware of the uproar about the ScienceBlogs corner of the bloggysphere. PepsiCo has bought started a blog here, called Food Frontiers. Many are unhappy, bloggers and commenters alike. Read PalMD's take, and commenters there, for one perspective. One of the potential…

BREAK THE CHAINS!!! UNLEASH THE FURY OF ZOMBIE WOMEN AS A MIGHTY FORCE FOR REVOLUTION!!!!! Zombie women of the world, I ask you: why are we content to shamble aimlessly along behind our brethren, following them willy-nilly, eating the leftover brains, and cleaning up after they senselessly…

Why should any woman get any degree in a STEM discipline? Especially if she has to wade through tons of bullshit courses to get there, and part of the learning, it appears, has to do with learning how to be someone you aren't? Some other gender, some other race - or some other social class?…

Jun. 28, 2010 10:45 PM ET SB COMMUNITY DEEMS PSEUDONYMOUS SOCKPUPPETERS ACCEPTABLE TARGETS FOR MOCKERY, DERISION Douchey McDoucherson, ScienceBlogs WritersANYWHERE (SB) Scientists have recently discovered that popular bloggers can taunt and gloat over the downfall of unpopular bloggers, and bask in…

So Mr. Z and I went to that Phish show last Friday night. We bought our tix for that show from a ticket liquidator online. Had to call them to confirm and all because it was last minute. They were all set to walk us through the VERY COMPLICATED PROCESS of opening the email, downloading the emailed…

Every once in awhile I do manage to get out to a social sort of event. Recently I was at one such thing. And overhead the following: Female, mid-40s: When I was in high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. And I had great SAT scores, high 1400's [out of a then total 1600]. But my high school…

Female Science Professor has posted a checklist - "Kind of like Sexism Bingo, but in list form." - and asked for additions. I was going to offer a few additions, but I thought "all that crap happened a thousand years ago, when I was an undergrad/grad student. I'll just read this list of new…

Phish, you were fabulously jamtastic, and I dearly loved that sweet cover of Joni Mitchell's "Free Man In Paris", but I swear there were times when your light show made me feel like I was strapped in a chair next to Karl in Room 23. What can I say? I freely bought my own ticket. Also: I…

Jun. 17, 2010 3:34 AM ET SB COMMUNITY DEEMS FEMINISTS IRRELEVANT NOBODY MEAN GIRLS, OMNIPOTENT PRIVILEGED HELLIONS Douchey McDoucherson, ScienceBlogs WritersANYWHERE (SB) Just days after a remarkable dustup in the science blogosphere, ScienceBlogs community members gathered to render judgment on…

While I was at work on this whole work-life balance stuff, a raging conversation sprung up on the WMST-L listserv about domestic workers and whether feminist women should or should not hire someone to clean their houses and help take care of their kids. (The discussion is still going on.) Some of…

First post in this series can be found here. Second post in this series can be found here. In my second post in this series, I gave the men a cookie, and commenter rpf accused me of...gasp!...being too nice! I believe this is the first time this has ever happened. rpf quoted me and commented…

I know I'm supposed to be posting installment three in the work-life balance series - and it's coming tomorrow, I promise - but I was distracted by this post by Isis's new co-blogger. I think there's a relatively strong consensus that this invention is clearly a bit of Technology Gone Bad. In a…

First post in this series can be found here. The third and final post in this series can be found here. ScientistMother really wants DrugMonkey to step up to the plate already. She says that DM laid out his own responsibility to deal, on-blog, with work-life balance issues and to share the…

Work-life balance: people have been talking about it. Wait, that's not right. Women have been talking about it. And have been talked at about it, by some people. Doc Free-Ride has a good round-up of a most recent skirmish of opinions on the topic in the sciencey blogosphere. If you have not been…

Just because I need a change of pace once in awhile. Once when I was home visiting mom, I took her to a church spaghetti supper where we met up with her sister, my beloved Aunt Betty. This was at a time when I still couldn't really eat anything with onion in it, without immediately getting a…

Over at Boing Boing, Maggie Koerth-Baker says "I wanted to know what actual female scientists thought" about the boring blah blah John Tierney barfed up this week in the NYT. And then gives links to four different responses, included the fabulous Isis's awesome take on why she is bored to tears…

A friend of mine (maybe YOU are that friend?) will be soon be leaving a job at Wackaloon Scientific Enterprises where said friend is supervised by sadistic micromanaging douchebags from hell with poor reading comprehension skills. How best to spend the remaining time my friend must clock at WSE…

Ladeez! Please remember not to be too fat, because James Watson doesn't want to hire your ugly ass. Everybody knows fat people can't do science. But they don't care if we say so, because they are so jolly, and lack ambition! Likewise, it is also not good to be beautiful and curvaceous, and wear…

HuffPo summary and link to NBC Today Show lying liar doing his lying here. It "may be down to how you define what a plume is here." Really? Yeah, who can believe those stupid scientists and their stupid librul observations and data. Well, here's an idea, lying oilbag BP CEO Doug Suttles. Why…

oh. my. fucking. god. I sooooooo wish I had thought of inventing FEMINIST HULK!!!!!!!!!!!! I am in love with Feminist Hulk. In love. LOVE! Love, I say! Hat tip Rebecca of Adventures in Applied Math. UPDATE: Ms. Magazine interview with my new love!

Whiney McWhinerson barfed up something in the NYT. Doc Free-Ride has a good take on it here. I applaud her analytical skills. I read Tierney's whinefest and it was difficult for me to come up with anything substantive in response because all it sounded like to me was this: wah wah gender police…

I made myself a nice lunch. Diced two small yellow squash, sauteed them in butter till just tender, plated and topped with some minced parsley from my herb garden...mmmm. Sliced up a kohlrabi and ate that too. Iced decaf coffee. Ate outside on the back patio, cats lolling about with Papa Cardinal…

Because sometimes I need to take a breather, here's this post about fun stuff.(with apologies to Carl Sandburg...) Delfest jams on little mud feet. It dances looking over mountain and meadow on singing multitudes and then moves on. I can't believe I have to wait a whole nother year for Delfest…

Just how dumb can scientists be when they skientifikally talk about "consuming" porn? This dumb. Pal MD points out that the wrong questions are being asked. Fortunately, Skeptifem has a clarifying take on the whole stoopid science FAIL. Uh yeah, I just want to point out that the consent of the…

I have put in (literally) decades of work acting on the assumption that folks are reasonable and well-intentioned, and trying to be effective and get messages across. Part of that time I was even paid to do so. IRL, for the most part, I try to interact with people like that. However, I'm sick to…

Prodigal Academic comments over at Isis's place: Everyone speaking English is no guarantee of safety. That is true, but since the lab was in the US, everyone in it is supposed to have a minimal proficiency in English. In practice, the net result was that the standard procedure was to use English…