Burns My Shorts
thusspakezuska | July 9, 2010"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 industry, environmental concerns, chemistry, education & democracy. It does not have a section on what to do when you are running a media empire and your advertisers want you to censor your writers because they are still feeling a bit touchy over that whole messy Bhopal business, but you can't…
thusspakezuska | June 17, 2010Work-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 following this, please do give Doc Free-Ride's post a read.
Where to begin?
Science Careers says all you married ladies with kids should hire housekeepers. And get over it already, will you?
Last year, when Carol Greider, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,…
thusspakezuska | June 9, 2010Ladeez! 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 clothes that fit you. For alas, Citibank will have to fire you. Your tailored clothing is "too distracting". You distracting ladee, with your distracting turtlenecks!!! Begone from our stolid gentlemanly banking establishment!!!!
Too thin, too thick, too sexy, not sexy enough - clearly, there…
thusspakezuska | June 9, 2010HuffPo 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 don't you go down to the Gulf, and take a dive. Swim around a good long time through that area where "no massive underwater oil plumes in 'large concentrations' have been detected". Then come up, and try diving repeatedly through the oil pooled on the surface. After all that, you just climb…
thusspakezuska | June 2, 2010Jeebus, people, you have GOT to get some new whiney whines, you Whiney McWhinersons.
I'm talking about you, you whiney whiners. Those of you who get all whiney and defensive whenever anyone dares to point out that you have stepped in the dogshit. Stepping in dogshit is an accident and it is something that all of us do upon occasion. Now, when you step in dogshit, do you want to just go blithely prancing about the place, spreading the dogshit hither and yon, stinking up the place to high heaven? Or do you want someone to point out that, jesus h. christ, there's a great big steaming heap…
thusspakezuska | May 14, 2010As you know, it was just over a thousand years ago this past March that I defended my dissertation. As I recall, I picked up a dozen bagels and some cream cheese on the way to the defense, and the department secretaries administrative assistants brought in an urn of coffee. It was me and my committee. My advisor made some exceedingly brief introductory remarks and then the semi-bored, semi-hostile committee allowed me to launch into the show-and-tell of What Did You Do These Last Five Years. A few hours later it was all over but the revisions and shouting. Literally. Revisions completed…
thusspakezuska | May 4, 2010A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of yet another of the "death by a thousand paper cuts**" craptastic things I used to hate dealing with in my days in the scientific workforce. You know what I'm talking about. Could be a retreat, a workshop, a seminar, a meeting, a program, maybe even just a discussion, but whatever it is, diversity is the subject, explicit or implicit. On one occasion it was a discussion about whether a tiny little space should be set aside for students of a certain group. On another it was a pizza party for women students. But ever and anon, at such…
thusspakezuska | April 26, 2010I was making a quick jog through the local supermarket the other night, seeking out cough drops and a few other things for a sad soul at home with the croup, when I rounded a corner and came upon this fresh new vision from hell:
And here I am wasting my extra cash on donations to food pantries for hungry humans in the greater Delaware Valley area. You, poor sap, may be throwing away cash on stupid causes like earthquake relief in Haiti, or trying to save birds from extinction. Let's just all live it up and make sure Fido has a nice Fresh Meal. Maybe we could give the leftovers to the…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2010I was catching up on reading at Female Science Professor's place and came across her post: Women Girls.
FSP, as far as I can tell, seems to be saying that the young ones these days are all hip with the term "girl" for women even into their 30's because...I don't know why, it's a peer thing, and we old biddies wouldn't understand. We must accept that the times they are a-changing. Girls just wanna have fun?
Perusing the comments, I gather that "woman" is stodgy, or P.C. (!), and too mature and "girls" these days are putting off adulthood, and can't think of themselves as women.
To this…
thusspakezuska | February 5, 2010Lindsey Vonn is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Womentalksports.com notes
Vonn is first a GREAT athlete, but she also represents norm of feminine attractiveness. The combination of athleticism and attractiveness make Vonn the likely poster girl of the US Olympic Team, and the media hasn't disappointed in constructed her as such.
Not to be left out, Sports Illustrated is featuring Vonn on their February 8,2010 cover (pictured here). For those of you who follow SI Covers, know that female athletes are RARELY featured on the cover.
Over the last 60 years researchers have shown that about 4…
thusspakezuska | February 1, 2010You, my dear friend, have been EXCEEDINGLY ill for weeks, but still making sure everything at work gets covered, via arrangements with colleagues and telecommuting despite being on strict bed rest orders from your doctor. You're getting slowly better and we, your friends, rejoice at this news. Your douchey boss, however, is hacked off about your "poor planning".
Hmm. I would like to help my husband plan for a bout of a devastating pulmonary illness that leaves him wracked with coughing, weak, housebound, etc. Or some other illness, parameters to be specified in the future (e.g., time of…
thusspakezuska | January 21, 2010Okay, the actual story is this:
if you are an overweight woman you:
⢠May have a harder time getting health insurance or have to pay higher premiums
⢠Are at higher risk of being misdiagnosed or receiving inaccurate dosages of drugs
⢠Are less likely to find a fertility doctor who will help you get pregnant
⢠Are less likely to have cancer detected early and get effective treatment for it
And the story goes on to outline a whole host of reasons, some discriminatory, some actual problems caused by physical realities, why the above might be so. But before you get to any of that, you are…
thusspakezuska | January 12, 2010I'm speaking from experience, people, having had most of these lobbed at me one time or another. Please feel free to add to the list in the comments section.
1. "When is the baby due?"
I'm not pregnant, you douchebag. I'm fat. If I were pregnant, I'd probably be prancing around telling everyone and her goddamn sister about it because that's what we do in our society. Or, if I were pregnant, and afraid I might lose the baby, maybe I wouldn't want to talk about it. In any case, if I were pregnant, and you haven't heard about it yet, wait for me to talk to you about it. Otherwise, STFU…
thusspakezuska | December 29, 2009Last time I checked, Erma Bombeck, when she was alive, was a hugely popular American humorist who wrote a newspaper column and published 15 books, most of which were best sellers. She came from the working class, and made quite a successful career for herself in publishing, at a time when women normally did not have careers.
But apparently, since she wrote about housewives and domestic issues, there's nothing to admire about what she did. And if you want to mock a woman writer these days, why, you just link her to Erma Bombeck and call it at day. See: "Erma-Bombeckian" (Steven Pinker…
thusspakezuska | November 23, 2009It's that time of year again - the time when I begin to contemplate swimsuits, and curse under my breath.
You see, the last several years, Mr. Z and I have sworn off birthday, anniversary, and Christmas gifts for each other in lieu of saving our cash for a week-long escape to a sunny, sandy locale sometime in December.
It's the perfect time to go. The leaves have been wind-torn off the trees and dutifully raked up into a pile for composting. Nothing's left of November but bare branches, gray skies, and the grim march of five weeks of holiday-themed commercials on t.v. and radio. Some…
thusspakezuska | October 5, 2009Last night I was watching tv with Mr. Zuska and the loathsome Kohler's "Jo's Plumbing" commercial came on yet again.
Plumbing is one of those trades that have been traditionally dominated by men. Women have struggled to gain access to these well-paying jobs. It is a job that takes a women out, often on her own, into the houses of strangers, where she might be vulnerable to sexual assault, not to mention the harassment and discrimination she might have to put up with on the job from colleagues.
In this commercial the young plumber is, of course, hot and sexy, dressed in tight clothing to…
thusspakezuska | August 14, 2009Via Female Science Professor, 'Study: Women create 'their own glass ceiling':
A new study shows female managers are more than three times as likely as their male counterparts to underrate their bosses' opinions of their job performance.
The discrepancy increases with women older than 50, the study states.
"Women have imposed their own glass ceiling, and the question is why," said Scott Taylor, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico Anderson School of Management who conducted the study.
No, no, no, it should read this way:
A new study shows male managers are more likely than…
thusspakezuska | August 4, 2009You are a male physics professor, and you want to improve science education. What could possibly be a better idea than to team up with a bunch of professional cheerleaders and make a video of them shouting out science tidbits while they shake their pompoms? Science cheerleaders!
I know, right? You wish you'd thought of it first, don't you?
The only thing worse than this loathsome idea is the Chronicle of Higher Education reporting on it with the headline "Blonded By Science". Seriously.
I am not sure whether James Trefil, of George Mason University, seriously thinks that women…
thusspakezuska | July 2, 2009While I've been away from the blogiverse, it appears that you've had the misfortune to be treated to all manner of disgusting ads popping up here at ScienceBlogs. Mail Order Brides, Naughty Singles, and I don't know what all else. Isis has some details here. She says:
...if you've been visiting me for any length of time then you know how I feel about the exploitation of women, especially racial minorities and women from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. That's the entire point of the Letters to Our Daughters Project and the Silence is the Enemy Project, right?
That said, I cannot in…
thusspakezuska | June 4, 2009I'm visiting with mom this week, taking her to a number of doctor appointments and dealing with some minor medical issues. No time for stuff I promised you like the second post on Chapter 1 of The Gender Knot.
So what I want you to do, to pass the time while you wait for me to show up again, especially those of you who consider yourselves to be white, is go and read this: Shinin' the Lite on White Privilege. I promise it will shake up your thinking. It sure made me look differently on my experience as a beneficiary of the land-grant university system. See if you can figure out why,…