Morning Ed: Society {2016.11.16.W}
Well, they’re not as smart as smart glasses, but they look smarter.
There are things we should look at doing to avoid scaring women away from STEM, but ditching Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons is a bad idea on multiple levels.
Speaking of Dungeons and Dragons, Ethan Gilsdorf says it needs to be kept in the basement. And here’s a song that makes me wish D&D had been my thing.
A look at the world’s youngest Formula One driver.
I think we’ve talked about this before, but William Newton’s piece on museum hoarding is pretty good.
A friend from high school that I never liked very much has become more interesting over the years, doing some pretty amazing things with Legos. I was reminded of him when I read this story about a bloke who does even more amazing things with Legos.
Meredith Gray (err, not that Meredith Gray) comes up with some helpful tips on how to let your beloved know that you’re currently crushed under a bookcase.
I plan to write my own, but this guide to listening to audiobooks on your smartphone is a good start.
Women, STEM, and Geek Culture: This is going to be a very pleasant conversation. (Sarcasm). There are many women into geek culture to but let us, for the sake of argument, assume that the main thesis is right and women stay away from STEM majors because of geek culture. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this particular argument, which seems to believe that most women aren’t into geek culture and do not want to be associated with it. Apparently if men in STEM were more the clean-cut bland Ken doll type than more women would be into STEM. There is no evidence for this. STEM and geek culture are closely related and there shouldn’t be a divorce.
Gilsdorf: They play D&D twice and only for a few minutes in Stranger Things. Having the kid leads play D&D was a good way to establish background for the show.
Museum hoarding: It makes some sense but private art collectors horde to. My solution is that a lot of art should be distributed from major metropolitan museums to smaller regional ones.
Lego guy was amazing.Report
ST/D&D: I’m curious about what school allows teachers or students to decorate classrooms like that? Office space, sure. But shared environments like classrooms and computer labs?Report
My wife (an elementary school teacher) knows of a teacher that made her classroom completely Star Wars themed, all with handmade stuff.
There’s also stuff like this http://starwarsintheclassroom.com/
The weird thing to me about the original thesis, that Sci Fi and Fantasy stuff in the classroom alienates women? I don’t know about Star Trek and D&D (their marketing machines are no match for The Mouse) but anecdotally, Star Wars has been super aggressive (and highly sucessful) at building out its fanbase among females born during the second Bush administration – and that was even well before Rey took the screen. And has done it not at all by making everything pink or whatever.Report
Let me be more specific – College classrooms.Report
GRIMM too managed a decent female audience (until the last season I watched, where they went Lifetime, which was quite frankly, errrgh).Report
@leeesq
There are plenty of women who like geek culture but I do think that a lot of STEM has a “treehouse” problem like a lot of geek culture has a treehouse problem. There are a lot of guys who want geek culture to be their sanctuary and are pissed as hell that it is becoming mainstream and in certain sections, women and minorities are becoming market voices.
This means the companies that make the stuff are working to meet that consumer demand. So less scantily clad women, more minority superheros, etc. This drives a lot of geek guys off the deep end.
My own experience with STEM types is that they can also be highly dismissive of any academic interest that is not STEM. One of the things that drove me out of fandom was hearing one too many geeks insisting that liberal arts people are not intelligent.Report
And many people on the other side want complete capitulation and everybody to go all the way to them. Geeks replaced by Ken dolls, much more aesthetically pleading.Report
One of the things that drove me out of fandom was hearing one too many geeks insisting that liberal arts people are not intelligent.
That’s kind of funny in a sad head-shaking way. Who do these fans think made the arts products they obviously consider important accomplishments?Report
df,
Math and science geeks, obviously.
Who do you think wrote the Simpsons?
Who do you think decided that using an actual “solvable” puzzle in Torchwood would be a good idea? (liberal arts people don’t know how to stop poisons by using ingredients found on an aeroplane).Report
The Heatst piece quoted the professor on Star Trek:
““To draw more girls into STEM fields, it’s not enough to provide more learning opportunities,” Cheryan claims. “This geeky image is at odds with the way that many girls see themselves. Work from our lab shows that when high-school girls see Star Trek posters and video games in a computer-science classroom, they are less interested than boys in taking the course.”
I get that any field wants to pull from as large a group as possible to get the best talent, but this smacks of the kind of thing that fuels lots of alt-Righter types (and in this case, am sympathetic to). Why should the people drawn to STEM and tech abandon the things they enjoy for some hypothetical gain in diversity? I embrace the idea of not having sexual pinups and the like in any type of office environment, but this seems to be saying “women don’t like these nerds and so they need to go.”
And as other folks have mentioned here, just from my own anecdotal evidence, I know plenty of women who love Star Trek and other elements of geek culture.
Where would we draw the line with this type of thing? The military attracts a certain type of person; those people turn off other segments of our society. Does this necessitate an undermining of their interests and attitudes so that some other group can better approach the field?Report
I want to also ask the same question of professions that have generally drawn more women (literature, social work, education). Surely there are ideas/images/cultural norms present in those fields that men find less appealing. Should they necessarily change those to possibly pull a few more men towards the profession?Report
This post on another site is about the geek culture in engineering subject. The writer is a STEM guy. As he points out, many of the geeky STEM types were excluded throughout their school experiences. Their geek culture is what makes them feel included with other STEM types. Attempts to force them to change to be inclusive effectively works to make them feel excluded from the only place where they feel include.Report
” many of the geeky STEM types were excluded throughout their school experiences. Their geek culture is what makes them feel included with other STEM types.”
There does seem to be this weird idea, recently, that geek-stuff is actually just another expression of Toxic Masculinity.
Although I guess it’s what you’d expect when pushback against criticism of men is seen as inherently resulting from Challenge To The Patriarchy. “We’re telling all these nerdy sperglords that they’re jerks who like horrible things, and they’re complaining! Must be Threatened Male Privilege.”Report
And generally, I bristle at any suggestions that people homogenize themselves for the “comfort” or “ease” or whatever you might say of others. I mean, yes, there are some things that need to be agreed upon as “this is not a good idea” (the example of pin-up calendars, though I admit I’d be less put off by those than some might).
But an example: I knit, and I tend to bring knitting with me when I invigilate exams. It keeps me from being bored and fidgety and feeling resentful towards that one student who wants to use every single second of the allotted exam time. But I also sometimes worry, when I have a class full of somewhat-rowdy guys (we have students who take my class as a cognate, who are majors in another department that leans very male, and very good-ol’-boy male) that it’s just going to lead to me being taken less seriously.
So I always ask myself: do I leave it at home and feel somewhat resentful that I’ve had to do that, or do I take it and just deal with the fact that some of these guys seem not to want to show a little respect for whatever reason? I usually come down on the side of bringing it, because why should I have to edit who I am because of some trolls? And yes, I’m willing to deal with whatever fallout but if they’re already borderline rude to me, I’m not going to edit who I am – I’m even less likely to.
And I will say: I was excluded throughout much of my schooling-years (though for other reasons than being a hardcore geek) and I admit one of the things that baffles me a little in gamer and other bad-behavior: these folks KNOW what it’s like to be excluded, yet they are doing it to other people (the “fake geek girl” taunts and the like). Humans are tribal beasts and while that probably has adaptive value for the species as a whole, I admit I don’t like it.
(Also: girl bullying, at least until recently, relied very heavily upon shunning and exclusion of the non-conformers. And sometimes that includes girls interested in STEM. So it’s not just “geeks” that can make it hard)Report
I’ve read an essay about how it’s similar to complaints of “gentrification”.
People were excluded and they themselves made an enclave for themselves. A “safe space”, if you will.
Someone who could go anywhere, literally anywhere else, decides to show up in their little enclave and starts pushing these formerly excluded people out of their own space? Where else are they going to go?Report
(And if you want to read that essay, God only knows why you might, but you might, it’s here.)Report
Except I doubt most people could go “literally anywhere” and be accepted there. As I said: humans are tribal critters (and some days I would add: and to Hell with ’em)
I mean, I’m a cis-het-white-nativeborn-“abled”-Christian woman. I am like the MAJORITY majority here, and there are still plenty places I feel unwelcome. I tend to avoid those places.Report
“Hey, I got problems too! You can’t say that I’m benefiting from unconscious privilege, look at all the stuff I have to deal with!”Report
I gotta say, I had to look up “invigilate.” Learn something everyday.Report
Geek culture provided a big foundation for STEM for a long time that I really can’t see how you could untangle it. The entire argument that STEM should become less geeky to attract more women seems to be calling for all accommodation to come from one side, in this case nerd men. I think that there are diversity advocates who do think that “women don’t like these nerds and so they need to go” is a good argument though.
There are some differences between male and female geeks. I think women into geek culture have an easier time going back and forth between the geek and non-geek worlds. Most of this is because of sexism. Parents of daughters aren’t going to let them flounder around with bad social skills the way that will allow sons if the son is good at math or science or something. The stricter social education that girls are given takes away a lot of the outcast edge of geek culture. Physical attractiveness can help geeky women more than it helps geeky men when dealing with non-geeks.Report
I’m more generally curious about the idea of hanging up any sort of decorations such as those being discussed.
Maybe schools are weird but it seems strange to me that you’d hang up or otherwise “theme” a professional space with pop culture artifacts. I mean, a little Yoda figurine on your desk is one thing. But Star Trek posters in the break room is just weird… or is it?Report
@kazzy
That struck me as well. In college, I spent a lot of time in both the engineering and the CS departments, and while our classrooms & labs were not unadorned, any decoration was topical, not cultural (think pictures of mechanisms, a construction, molecules, or the results of a simulation).
I’ve never been to a STEM college that allowed pop-culture decorations anywhere except grad student office space.Report
I find it especially weird in shared spaces. I can very quickly see a “war” brewing, where one poster yields another yields another and soon you are wall papered with “competing” posters trying to define the space.
But these conversations always have some irony that goes unaddressed.
“Why do you care if there is a Star Trek poster on the wall?”
“Why do you care if there isn’t?”
If a Star Trek poster — or any particular cultural item — is very important to you to have there, you can’t then turn around and say it’s presence is meaningless and doesn’t impact anyone.
It was like the woman last year who I listened to rant and rave about the Starbucks cup design. She finished her rant with, “WHO THE HELL GETS ANGRY ABOUT CUPS?!?!” with absolutely no sense of irony.Report
Yep.
I’m curious now if any of the other STEM folks here have been in classrooms or lab spaces adorned with pop-culture artifacts and images. The very idea just strikes me as so very foreign. But I went to a large public Ivy, so perhaps my experience is abnormal.Report
The cube farms always had every third cube be some kind of shrine.
Oh. This person is a Broncos fan.
Oh. This person really, really likes angels and other religious imagery.
Oh. This person apparently has 14 children/nieces/nephews/grandchildren.
Oh. This person enjoys the music of a popular artist.
So on, so forth.Report
Were those cubes “owned” by the individual?Report
Cubicles is mostly what I think of. I’ve been in two cubicle environments (two open labs, one office) and both were definitely “Design it how you like it” sort of places. Whether they were “owned” or not is subject to interpretation. Neither were particularly private. One was a shared space that I got half of, the other was a really tiny little space (“Got in trouble for OSHA until they put slide-out keyboards” tiny) and pretty visible.
Neither place put any significant restrictions on what we could put out there. I would have responded negatively if they had. (Though if my cube-mate had said something, I’d have responded very flexibly.)Report
Yes, but the “hallway” was a shared space, of sorts. The cube walls were things that you pretty much had to walk past if you were coming or going.
People plastered everything from Dilbert cartoons to recently acquired certifications to daughter’s friend’s wedding pictures to, yes, Star Trek movie posters on them.
Some of the sports people sat close enough to each other to have rivalries. The Broncos guy vs. the Cowboys guy. The Red Wings guy vs. the Avalanche guy.Report
@will-truman @jaybird
That seems reasonable to me. I’ve never worked in a cube but it strikes me as analogous to an office, albeit with less privacy. I wouldn’t say you should have carte blanche (e.g., no nudie posters, no swastikas) but otherwise nothing you said seems a problem.
A cube is “your” space. Treat it as such. The problems seem to arise when you treat a shared space — like the break room — into your space.Report
But cube farms (which are offices) are not class rooms or lab spaces. How likely would a prospective new student be walking through a grad student office space? Once they start classes, they might be doing office hours in such a place, but I go back to my original point:
If their interest in the subject matter is so tenuous that open, non-sexual/non-misogynistic displays of geek culture will discourage them, then I posit the work itself will drive them out in short order.
I mean, what is more likely to cause someone to stop studying poetry, the subject matter, or Yeats fandom?Report
Everywhere I’ve worked with labs, the lab spaces were off limits for anything except “inside” jokes, eg, most of the laser labs had some variation of this poster in addition to all of the real mandatory warning signs.Report
“If their interest in the subject matter is so tenuous that open, non-sexual/non-misogynistic displays of geek culture will discourage them, then I posit the work itself will drive them out in short order.”
Yes. I could see it being why they choose one workplace over another. But an entire field? Very unlikely. Broader cultural issues can be a factor but this don’t seem like that. The real factors that discourage many women from STEM fields happen long before they reach that level.Report
“Broader cultural issues can be a factor but this don’t seem like that. ”
actually from this looks of things this is all about broad cultural issues. (bah-DOOMP)Report
I can’t think of an analogue from my experience. I can’t think of a classroom I was in for either undergrad or grad that wasn’t a shared space and often with classes of a very different nature (in undergrad, we share classroom space with foreign language and in grad school, many of our classes were in actual elementary school classrooms… and the few that weren’t were all multi-purpose shared spaces). But we didn’t really have a lab or anything like that… something that was simultaneously shared but also dedicated to the field. The closest was the Educational Resource Center in undergrad, which really amounted to a children’s library complete with books and classroom materials. I guess that was decorated as you’d expect… framed pictures of book characters and crap like that.Report
My lab is decorated with free posters from various ag departments – “Common lawn weeds” and the like, and “The Dirty Dozen” (invasive species).
I have a poster of a Carl Larsson painting up in my office and a couple of My Little Pony tiny toys hidden away on my desk where only I see them.
I have biostats comic strips (there are more than you’d think) up on my office door but even that’s a bit sketchy, I know in some departments faculty were asked to denude their doors because of the rather pointed political things on them and fear it might offend potential donors.
So far, no one has complained about my xkcd “correlation vs. causation” strip.
I wonder where t-shirts fit in with this? Certainly seeing someone in a t-shirt is a shared-space thing. (And I might note how glad I am for the death of the “Big Johnson” themed t-shirts fad. I don’t squick out easily but those kinda squicked me out. Not that I ever said anything)Report
Exactly this.
I mean, one of the things about many STEM fields is that interest in such things is not typically something that one just decides upon during their freshman year of college. It’s roots run much deeper, and further back into development, because the work is incredibly hard, and if you don’t have a deep seated interest, you’ll burn out.
Most of the attrition you see from STEM fields are from people who found it a bit interesting, or thought it would be a good career path, but found the work either daunting or boring.
Sure there are always exceptions that prove the rule, but most of the folks I know who were successful engineers and computer scientists (not just code monkeys) were heavy into the topics long before starting college. And those that didn’t have that long term interest either changed majors or did something very smart like doing a double major in business, or going to law school.
tl;dr – interest in a STEM field that can be dissuaded so easily by (non-sexual) geek paraphernalia is interest that probably won’t survive the first year of STEM classes.Report
As a counterpoint to this finding, I cite Nichelle Nichols
I don’t understand at all how Star Trek could go from the cutting edge of getting women and minorities in STEM to being an obstacle.Report
“I don’t understand at all how Star Trek could go from the cutting edge of getting women and minorities in STEM to being an obstacle.”
It’s the contagion of hate.
Gamergate likes Star Trek. Gamergate is bad. Therefore, Star Trek is bad.Report
At my office there is no shortage of “nerd culture” stuff, but there are other things also. The point is, you can find people playing CCGs at lunch, or in the video game room, but you also find people in the fitness center or in our weekly knitting group. There is an onsite manicurist. But then, we have a hobbiest machine shop. But then, we have a music room. Etc.
I just finished working with local management to ensure our team branded apparel has some decent feminine choices. They had never thought about the topic much.
The physical space looks like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+cambridge&tbm=isch (Some of those are other offices, but still.)
The point is, this isn’t all-or-nothing. It’s not about the complete absence of geek-coded things. It’s about actual diversity.Report
You see this a lot with business types. “doh, we didn’t think about that”
Be it “feminine” clothing, or “hey, these leaks are actually contributing to global warming. Why don’t we be responsible and think about fixing the ones that don’t cause explosions?”
It’s not that they don’t have budget to do decent things (good PR if nothing else). It’s that they truly don’t think sometimes.Report
Smart glasses: Bout time. They also go well paired with cute girls. HOT
Star Trek / D&D: Quality comment from the ST article: “This is nonsense by someone who didn’t have the smarts or drive to get to class and get As.” D&D: The funny thing is that my jujitsu istructor is a D&D fan. He has a group of adults that get together and play once or twice a month. Got all the sets and such too. NERRRRRRD 🙂
Lego: Damn it, now make me a model of the Defiant! I will buy.
Bookcase: Crying “I’ve been crushed by a bookcase and can’t get out” plaintively like an old lady doesn’t work?Report
Re the bookcase; Reductress is pretty much the one joke. There are endless permutations, but just the one joke.Report
not that funny a joke, either, IMHO.Report
I don’t get the joke… who doesn’t like mini-cupcakes?Report
I dunno. I’m a woman and I guess I could say my career is STEM-adjacent (professor of biology at a teaching-heavy university) and also some people would say I’m “STEM-lite” because I’m a botanist, but – Star Trek fandom and Dungeons and Dragons were not the things I found challenging about being a woman in science. And they aren’t now, even though I doubt any of my colleagues play D&D. (One might be a Trek fan, not sure).
I’ve made Star Wars jokes in class (I prefer the “classic” Star Wars movies to Trek). Had no idea I might be specifically “alienating” women. Oh well. I suppose the thing is to never make jokes, and to never let anyone know you have a side to you outside of your narrow field, then. THAT’S appealing to students. (not)
There are other things that make a career in the sciences unappealing. I really really loved my subject but some of the politics and crap surrounding the whole research arena is what drove me into a more teaching-oriented career. Also, I didn’t want a job where my continued employment was dependent upon how many federal grants I could get, because even back in the Clinton administration I suspected that “gravy train” was slowing down fast.
Also, at least when I was in grad school, the fact that I preferred not to drink alcohol (so, didn’t generally go to the bar with the rest of the folks after weekly seminar) was probably more “distancing” for me than the fact that many of my colleagues were guys, some of whom, yes, liked Star Trek or played Dungeons and Dragons.Report
The lovely Natasha Likko works with a cadre of over a hundred STEM geeks. Yes, many of them played Dungeons & Dragons and I suspect some still do. Yes, many of them are utterly fascinated with Star Trek and Star Wars and debate about the relative merits of each. And about 10% are women, and they’re quite comfortable with the aesthetic incidents of geekdom.Report
@fillyjonk
Botany Huh? My dad was a prof. of Pomology at a teaching oriented college. Which he preferred also.Report
I wish someone had pushed me more to specialize in something like Pomology. I’m just kind of the Utility Infielder of botanists….(most of my research has been on either remnant prairie or restoring prairie. Though I have done some entomological stuff of late, and if I were going to do it all over again, I think I would go the Entomology route – more possibilities for alt-ac careers if the teaching thing palls.)Report
Well, he was actually a geneticist by PhD, though the Pom part did work very well with the lower degrees (Crop Sci.) He did talk about going back and getting a Metallurgy doc. after he retired though.Report
Unless I’m mistaken, today is Wednesday, not Thursday (per the post title).Report
I saw that on the front page and was presumptuous enough to fix it without so much as asking @will-truman for permission to do so.Report
So when a room is filled with objects strongly indicative of identification with a particular culture, persons who do not consider themselves members of that culture feel uncomfortable and excluded. This is yet another example of the strong group-defense response common to white males, who find the open celebration of other cultures a threat to their patriarchal hegemony.
…wait, what was that article about again?Report
Somebody who writes at Status 451 (Clarkhat’s site), recently had an essay about the whole Star Trek thing. (Note: this is a different essay than the Gentrification one.)
“Exclusive Inclusivity” is the term he gave it.
His argument is that Star Trek is a schelling point.
Whenever there is a new group of people coming into a culture and this new group picks different shelling points, it’s going to create static.
Now we can discuss the extent to which cultures can be evil and need correction. And then we can talk about whether picking this culture instead of that culture is indicative of evil that needs correction. And then we can talk about how I’m not the freaking problem here, people like you are. And then we can talk about how it’s completely different when I do it. And then we can talk about…Report
Reformed Republican,
Beat you to the punch.Report
Damn, dude. I am rebuked.
My apologies.Report
I’m thinking now about childhood, and making friends, and how easy it was:
“Oh! You have a Hello Kitty t-shirt! I LOVE Hello Kitty! Do you want to play together at recess?”
It’s kind of sad the adulthood equivalent (being a Star Trek fan, or liking a particular team, or whatever) seems to have been made into a problem, because I find it terribly hard as an adult to make new friends as it is.Report
Hello Kitty t-shirts and, indeed, *ALL* printed t-shirts are banned.
We should all be friends with each other.Report
I may have a more restrictive definition of “friendship.” I tend to follow Ben Franklin: “Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.”
There are lots of people I’m civil to that I doubt I would want to eat dinner with on a regular basis, or share a hotel room with.Report
Dude. Twins!
I wonder if the people who succeed at getting the picture of Spock saying “It’s all Timey-Wimey” off of the corkboard in the coffee room will be wondering why, still, people are merely civil to them rather than sociable despite their efforts to make the environment inclusive to everybody.Report
Because this is a bit thought provoking…
Report
Turn it into a moral issue, it becomes a culture war.
Turn it into an engineering issue, we suddenly start wondering if the reason there aren’t more women team leads is because of all of the Star Trek posters in the lab.Report
The issue of where we stop dividing people into groups is what has me wary of parity.
Do we really need as many female legislators as male legislators?
Is it preferable that black police officers kill more people?
I’m not sure the left-handed population is fairly represented.
Also, people who are significantly taller than average suffer immensely from a society which rejects their height, while short people can walk through doorways without stooping. It’s inherently unfair.
I’m not so sure that people missing a toe are well-represented in Congress, while that would be easy enough to fix, given a hatchet, if they really cared.Report
The idea for more diversity is that you get more viewpoints and ultimately a better result. Many people of color that I know believe that the media underreported
Trump’s racism and sexism because most people involved are white and men rather than people of color or women. This may or may not be true. The idea for more female legislators is that policy and law that effects women directly will get treated more seriously by female legislators than male ones.Report
I love this new idea that the media underreported Trump’s racism and sexism and that’s why he didn’t lose.
It’s very funny to think about this while recalling how CNN turned into a 24-7 loop of “grab ’em by the pussy” for about a week back in October.Report
@leeesq :
I understand what the arguments are for diversity.
The argument presented is against parity, specifically; e.g., there is no reason to believe that, were 50 Senators female, the nation as a whole would be better represented.
Further, there is something of a slippery slope argument which is really directed against divisiveness generally; e.g., I had cottage cheese (large curd) with fruit (peaches) this morning for breakfast– how then could I be fairly represented by someone who has clearly not eaten cottage cheese (large curd) for breakfast?
In addition, there is the element of a view toward matters of consequence, whereas physical resemblance, whatever aspect, is fairly shallow; e.g., if having a woman for president is a laudable goal, then why not Squeaky Fromme?
(After an assassination attempt against a Republican president, I assume she would be running as a Democrat.)
I regret (truly!, and without reservation) being unclear as to the argument previously.Report
As the Son, Brother and Father of the Left Handled, I shall start wearing my watch on my off-handed wrist in support!Report
Well, that’s making it a choice between X (sub a) versus X (sub b) decision, your favorite kind:
Will we make a special effort to recruit women to design the next generation of lower-carbon devices, or do we care at all about the gender of who’s designing them?Report
The assumption, on the part of the people who feel very strongly that gender imbalances are bad, is that the only reason gender imbalances exist is that there are people who do care about the gender of the designers–even though we shouldn’t–and that those people feel very strongly that the gender of designers should not be female.Report
95% of the time, the science or engineering is utterly divorced from the gender of the practitioner. The reason we should encourage more diversity into STEM fields is less about the end product, or more about the fact that there is no good reason not to have more diversity in the fields. Race & gender don’t impact the work, so we should remove structural and cultural impediments to participation in those fields.
Geek culture geegaws do not represent a cultural impediment the way that, say, professional sidelining of women who have children can be.
Now, if the researcher whose work started all this was to rerun her experiment using a selection of students who had shown more than a passing interest in STEM in high school, and visible geek culture was still a strong turn off, then she might have a point. My claim is that an interest in STEM fields is something that is typically cultivated long before college, and the place you focus efforts* on getting more women into STEM is middle school, or possibly earlier.
*A good start is to find any adult in the education system who has a preconceived notion that girls just aren’t good at math or science, and you make sure they never have contact with developing youth ever again.Report
95% of the time, the science or engineering is utterly divorced from the gender of the practitioner.
I have a friend at Intel Research who falls into the other 5%. She’s in their user experience group, looking at how and for what purposes people use high-end processors. Some years back Intel finally figured out that they were ignoring potentially large markets if they excluded women and minorities from that effort.Report
That’s exactly why I left that 5% (it might be bigger than that, actually). There are design concerns where gender/race/etc do factor in, primarily with user interaction/interface.Report
I suspect it’s considerably more than 5%. When you consider “user interface” broadly to be any interaction between the thing built, and human (or animal) bodies, eyes, thoughts, probably much more.
At that point, basically any civil engineering project with an above-ground component is full of user interface work, for example.
“Is this a good intersection design” has considerable demographic considerations. Women will be affected differently from men, minorities from whites, children from younger adults from the elderly, residents of the area from those just passing through, those on foot from those in cars, by every design decision.
Considering the intersection design “utterly divorced from the gender of the practitioner” probably just means that the practitioner’s assumptions about who they’re designing for, and what those people’s needs are, are going unexamined.Report
It depends on the design. Most things would have an interface that can be informed by the specifics of the user, but the bulk of the design doesn’t care. For instance, the bulk of a cars engineering doesn’t care who is at the controls, but the cabin & controls certainly do.
The trick (& one of the reasons diversity in STEM is a positive as opposed to a neutral) is figuring out when the design has to take such things into consideration.Report
My favorite user experience anecdote (involving multiculturalism) came from some researchers at Stanford. It was in the early days of video-over-IP, and I was working with them on a project where you got a little window with someone offering advice on fixing your problem (my video was ugly, but ran on the hardware of the day without crushing the CPU). At some point, a student from somewhere in Eastern Europe advised them that this was going to be an absolute disaster for many of the people where he came from. There, he said, lots of people still believed at least a bit in “little folks”, and in the local mythology they were mischievous and absolutely not to be trusted. The Stanford folks got a grant to go investigate, and sure enough, people there were surprising nervous about little faces/voices in their computer offering advice. The Stanford people advised their client to include a text-only help option.
Presumably things are somewhat different now.Report
Well, at that point, we really need to find out why there aren’t more guys who end up in the Dow Climate Change Division.
I’m guessing that it has more to do with the want ad in the paper that says “Help Wanted: Intersectional Feminist desired to work in Climate Change lab. Must have Masters Degree in Environmental Engineering and Doctorate in Climate Engineering Science (ABD okay)”
(Or whatever the ad would say. You get the gist.)
If the problem is the specific STEM degree requirements, the problem *AIN’T* the fact that the Dow Climate Change Division has a picture of Odo over the coffee machine with a little word bubble saying “Only Ferengi think they don’t have to pay their coffee dues.”Report
Polluting is popular because it’s cheap — Socialized impact / privatized profit. Hooray for capitalism!
Were the Clean Air Act / Clean Water Act / Superfund all passed into law because of engineers or because of moral outrage? So, just how are we doing on lead abatement, groundwater restoration, airborne NOx / SOx / VOCs, closure of the ozone hole? Were those always just engineering issues, or did they start as moral ones?
As to Mr. McDonough, the topic of the SciAm piece, none of the pollution control engineers I’ve met in my life have been stupid. They’re not sending hot dirty gases produced by coal burning into the atmosphere due to a failure of imagination; they’re doing so because converting that waste stream into an asset stream is really hard. So hard, in fact, that it only makes sense to do so when the government imposes such a high cost on that release that capturing it makes economic sense.
Technocracies work great when there is an agreement that a problem exists. When leading Republicans deny the existence of the problem and accuse scientists of corruption and malfeasance, it’s pretty challenging to be talking about reasonable regulatory solutions.Report
People, generally, male and female, who are turned off to a subject, whether science, music, or meditation, due to perceptions of awkwardness or gauche associated with that subject (whether rightly or wrongly), instead holding out for the “right fit,” tend to lack the dedication and enthusiasm to excel in the subject at issue.
For a woman to abstain from pursuit of a career in STEM due to Star Trek gabble is as (in)sensible as me holding out for a profession filled with Bullwinkle fans.
I’ll just have to talk Bullwinkle with whoever I can find, and when someone tries to get all Star Trek with me, I can opt to gain the initiative (note the AD&D reference) and go full-bore Bullwinkle on them before they get the chance to get really Treked out.
I don’t even have crocodile tears for this one.Report
“I know how much, just not what of.”Report
In something that is sure to get @jaybird talking about matters of taste v. matters of morality, Slate has an article on older men dating younger women and why it is a problem. Specifically the author says it is a sign of fragile masculinity.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/11/16/why_older_men_who_date_younger_women_are_so_infuriating.html
I gotta say that I largely agree with the article. I do know people whose dads were much younger than their moms. I also saw some older guys around my college dating college-aged women and I generally found it very hard to hang out with these guys especially if they were in their 40s and 50s and still trying to dress like rock stars with long hair, tight jeans, and leather jackets. I always thought what is wrong with these guys for wanting to hang around college students. My girlfriend works at a company where the average age of an employee is 29 and I sometimes find it hard to be in that environment. Her co-workers are cool but I’m not up for staying out until 1 a.m. on a weeknight when there is work the next day. I couldn’t even compete like that in law school when I was 28.Report
We should set up some rules for women, telling them who they were allowed and weren’t allowed to date.
We shouldn’t be letting those men be dating our women.Report
In the opposite true? Are older women who date younger men just showing their fragile femininity?Report
No, that’s an example of fragile masculinity needing to be propped up by leeching off the money and success of older women.Report
Oh, well done!Report
@oscar-gordon
I know the whole cougar thing is supposed to be more common now but I know so few couples where the woman is older than her boyfriend or husband by more than a year or two. The only example I can think of off the top of my head is Megan McArdle and her husband. IIRC (from their Times wedding announcement!) she has 9 years on her husband.
There is a hotel in Palo Alto that has a weekly cougar night where older women try and meet up with young techies. Never been though. I’ve just driven by the hotel.
I used to belong to another internet community with a wider demographic base than OT. There were teenagers and middle-aged people in this internet community. I was in my 20s. Every now and then, one of the middle-aged guys would start talking about how one of the teenage girls (quite possibly aged 16-17) was “so wise and mature beyond her years.”
I found this creepy and transparent. Most of it probably did not come to any fruition but it was still wrong.
I generally don’t like being at restaurants with old guys flirting with waitresses who are young enough to be their daughters either. Just let her do her job and leave her alone.Report
Flirting between patrons and waitstaff of the same age is just as unprofessional, though there are of course establishments where that’s the business model.Report
King Henry II of England was eleven years younger than Eleanor of Aquitaine. Catherine of Aragon was nine years older than Henry VIII but that might not be the best example.
Women into the entire Cougar/MILF in real life thing don’t seem to be the type that would be attracted to young techies in hoodies. Its usually flashier young men just like its flashier young women with older men but there might be exceptions.
The Slate article struck me as both true and wrong at the same time. The ability to have a much younger wife was a big part of power displays in a more sexist times. Old men going after young women can also come across as ridiculous at best and really creepy in bad case scenarios. Sometimes these relationships develop quite naturally though.Report
I personally know exactly one case of older man, younger woman, and in that case, he should have gone to jail, since she was 17 and he was 39 when he knocked her up (he is my age). The only reason he isn’t in jail is the family was very poor, and had him over enough of a barrel to make sure he stuck around to support the kid and infant.Report
My lady friend is 7 years my senior.Report
A guy who marries his high school teacher is just plain creepy. Generalizing from one example, anyway.Report
Oh, but he is creepy in so many other ways…Report
Are we really going to pretend that this is anything other than cattiness?Report
You know what women are like.Report
Craster’s Keep was a…different thing than violating the half plus seven rule, but the piece is all about having no sense of perspective.Report
Guys date appearance
Gals date status.
But I doubt the Tony Bennett is even capable of much “frolic-ing”, so WTF cares? Hell, I’d date hotter younger women if given the option, but like Saul says, I can’t keep up. I do not, however, go over 15 years. Few women in their 20s have the financial resources or experience that I prefer–and say “like” waaaay to much. Too much like dating my niece. EwwwReport
What’s Organic? A Debate Over Dirt May Boil Down to Turf
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/organic-certification-hydroponic-aquaponic-produce.html
It never occurred to me that this would be an issue. However, it seems to come down to money as usual.Report
No big surprise a label that’s viewed as “I’m worth more” is going to be fought over.Report
On the STEM argument – let’s say you were interested in French class and somehow, also, knowing French opened up new jobs that allowed you to make a good income.
Now, imagine that when you go to your 1st French class, there’s a bunch of posters with weird French in jokes you don’t know, almost everybody in the class already knows a lot of French and is wearing French t-shirts that go beyond your surface level understanding, classes are regularly sent off the rails by esoteric discussions between the teacher and students about odd French stuff that seems out of bounds of the class, and you’re regularly asked by both teachers and students why you’re even in this class.
Obviously, you might just be a tough person, but that would turn off a lot of folks. And among my female friends in STEM, all of the above has happened, but in engineering, computer science, and other STEM courses.Report
Now, imagine that when you go to your 1st French class, there’s a bunch of posters with weird French in jokes you don’t know, almost everybody in the class already knows a lot of French and is wearing French t-shirts that go beyond your surface level understanding,
Like French 1A in college being full of people who took four years of French in high school? Yeah, that never happens.Report
Again, what school did you go to, because none of that happened in my classes? Maybe in study groups outside of class, you might get some in-joking, but no one had time for that crap in class.
Also, about the closest parallel I can think of for a French language track in the STEM fields is working through the basic programming classes, or core science & math – all of which attract students from all programs. No one is going to take kinematics or electrodynamics or analytical chemistry on a whim because it’ll beef up the resume, the pre-reqs are too deep.Report
Hey, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard from my female friends who went to a variety of schools across the country.
And for them, it happened all the way from Intro classes to really deep classes. Now, obviously, they stuck it out, but somebody shouldn’t have to stick it out to simply receive a degree.Report
somebody shouldn’t have to stick it out to simply receive a degree.
We should also make college free for everybody!Report
Part of getting a degree is sticking it out, especially in the STEM fields. Professions have cultures. Most are benign, although some have negative elements we could socially do without (i.e. lawyers being expected to work 80 hours a week, doctors being on call for 72 hours straight, etc.). STEM attracts a lot of geeks for a variety of reasons, so geek culture is going to be prevalent. No one is required to be part of that culture in order to acquire the training (and if that was the case, I would be strongly against such), but if a person wishes to be social active in that space it helps to be conversant in some aspect of it.
In short, that is geek safe space.Report
It would be intimidating but you still have to determine how much of an accommodation must be made. What if the determination was that the best way to get more women into STEM culture was a complete elimination of everything geeky in the classroom or workplace because women generally don’t want to see themselves as geeks but prefer a more mainstream view of themselves. What if the presence of geeky guys themselves is off-putting even though they keep shut on the geek culture. They would prefer more mainstream men. There doesn’t seem to be any give or take but go all the way to me on both sides.Report
“I visited a lawyer’s office and everybody was wearing really staid clothing like suits and stuff, even if they weren’t customer-facing! My colleagues and I in the intern department have put together a powerpoint where we discuss how we want to be able to wear more casual clothing…”Report
I mean, here’s the difference.
There were plenty of football fans in every class I took, and sometimes even a lot of actual football players, but I can’t remember a time when a significant portion of the class was taken up going over the past weekends action.
On the other hand, there were more than a few times when as somebody interested in nerd shit, a relatively small chunk of the class dominates the class talking about non-class things while the rest of the class sits around uncomfortable.
I’m not even getting into your weird belief that women want STEM classes full of Chris Hemsworth types.Report
Again, I ask where you went to school? I spent almost 5 years in such classes, and the only time a class discussion got derailed by a geek out was when my Satellite Dynamics prof would go on a rant about how bad Hollywood was with presenting science on screen, which took all of 5 minutes of class and usually led to some interesting homework problems.
Now my ethics & diversity class, on the other hand…Report
And if a class is being dominated by off-topic chatter, I would say that reflects on the person leading the class more than anything else.Report
Yes, this. If class is getting derailed by geek outs, the problem isn’t geek culture, it’s the professors who permit it.Report
The only Comp Sci classes I remember getting significantly derailed were taught by a prof who really cultivated a redneck image (which was somewhat legitimate, as he farmed, hunted, was missing a finger from a farming accident, etc.). He went off on hunting stories, shaggy-dog stories about farming and drinking beer and whatnot.
It was mildly amusing, and generally didn’t take up all that much class time.Report
I had an engineering design prof who would bring his rag mop dog to class. It would walk on the desks, eat the chalk off the floor, and puke on our stuff.
I think that is probably a bit more annoying than Star Trek in jokes.Report
Jesse,
Um. Bullshit.
Nope. I did physics. About as pure STEM as you gonna get.
About the only remotely awkward thing that happened was when we were looking to see if toilets would have the Coriolis effect, and we went into the boys bathroom.
… seriously.
And I HAD teachers who claimed their classes were for sleeping! (and meant it too. homework was a bitch).Report
Also, I’d add the article shows relatively simple non-triggering to nerd things that can be done to help out.
“Culture change isn’t always easy, but it is always possible. The University of Washington’s computer science department has been working hard for the past decade to create a more inclusive culture for women. The department added art and nature posters throughout their building to make it more inviting. Women were appointed as teaching assistants in many courses. Professors sent personalized emails recognizing women who received high grades in introductory courses. These emails defined success as getting good grades, rather than whether one plays video games or knows science fiction references.
The efforts have paid off. Last year, the proportion of undergraduate computer science degrees going to women at the University of Washington, 32%, was higher than any other public flagship university in the country. The gender gap began to close once women could learn computer science in a culture that signaled they belonged.”
Also, here’s an article from the SJW dominated Wall Street Journal about how Harvey Mudd changed things and quadrupled its women graduates in 6 years – on.wsj.com/NUj5kYReport
So here’s the thing about UW’s CS department: It’s closed-admission. Once you’re admitted to the university, you have to make a separate application to the CS department, and not everybody who applies is accepted. I suspect that the sex ratio of CS graduates is largely a product of whom the department chooses to admit.
Also, UW’s student body is 25% Asian-American, 14% international (mostly Asian), and 7% biracial (again, probably Asian-heavy). Asian (particularly South and East Asian) women are much more likely to go into STEM fields than white women.Report
I went to CMU, where SCS is not only closed admission, it is harder than hell to get into.
Lotta math majors that “dual majored” in computer scienceReport
Cop Charged in Philando Castile’s Death
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/11/16/cop-charged-in-philando-castile-s-death.html
I think he will be found guilty.Report
“Nerd Culture” – I don’t quite know what to make of this article: this article . I WANT to say “that’s total BS” but I don’t know.
I always felt growing up that the nerdy kids had my back, because I was similarly excluded, and a couple of friends of mine were stereotypical nerds. So this guy is saying they were actually closet Brownshirts?
Again: humans are tribal critters, to Hell with ’em, why not let God or evolution start over again with sentient platypodes or fence lizards and see if it can keep from going wrong THIS time. (Though I’m wondering if it’s “sentience” and not “human” that’s the root of the problem here)Report
Well after reading most of that I’ll take off the qualifier. That was BS.
Also, his other works include “In Defense of Looting.”Report
I’m with Lee about regional museums. I don’t understand why that isn’t the default model for the industry. How much would it cost a major museum to adopt a dozen partners and loan them some rotating exhibits? And how much would it bring in?
Does anyone know why it doesn’t happen all the time? I understand that there are some costs, and not every museum has the facilities and expertise, but I can’t imagine that it’s an insurmountable problem.Report
@pinky
I imagine most of the money on loaning artworks goes to insurance and transportation and every now and then, restoration.
I don’t know enough about the art world to determine the costs of transporting and insuring invaluable works of art but it is done from one major museum to the next and it can’t be cheap.
The last major transfer happened when the National received the Vogel collection. The Vogels were a couple of civil servants in NYC (He worked for the post office. She was a librarian) that managed to collect a lot of smaller pieces by the big names in mid-20th century art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_and_Dorothy_Vogel
By a lot, I mean they imagined to collect nearly 4800 pieces of art. At the end, they donated it to the National in DC who ended up dispersing it to museums across the United States because the National did not have enough space.Report
Aren’t many museum exhibits already traveling? My wife and I saw an exhibit at the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, which then travelled to the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and then to the Smithsonian in DC (which curated the show). From what I gathered this depends a lot on the artist, who lives in Maine and NYC.Report
Ah, I see you’re talking about having a sort of inter-library loan for art in storage. I believe this is also common as I see “on loan from Museum X” pretty frequently at single-theme or retrospective shows. What the article seems to be suggesting is that museums should refuse donated work (and/or release old work) if they can’t regularly show it. That is, the work should just stay on the market. I think this misses the point that museums are constantly scrounging for money; that their collection is essentially the only permanent asset they have; and that the value of a work is never settled and can always go up.Report
trizz,
You can’t have my Art Lending Library! (This is in Braddock, and you can actually check out works of art to hang in your house.)Report
this is really cool, had no idea people did this kind of thing!Report
Good news, everyone.
There’s finally an app that will allow you to split the bill at a lunch table so that White Men pay more than Latina Women.Report
I like that, it’s quite clever!
Also likely to make white dudes who are bound and determined not to get the point good and indignant, which is also a nice feature.Report
It’s a moral victory, I guess.Report
The circumstances under which I can imagine the app being used appropriately (as in: in such a way that will result in people getting the point) strike me as being rare.
Far more likely to result in “nah, I brought my lunch today” or “the lunch group that uses this app goes to different lunch places than the lunch group that no longer does”.
I kinda think that “getting together and sharing a meal” is, at this point, a lot more important than the point hitting home about how much less your chicken fingers cost you than her fried scrod cost her.
But I’m a cis-het white male.Report
More relevant than your being a cis-het white male – you’re totally missing the point of the app.
The point is not to split restaurant bills, unless a group of people really wants to try it once. The point is to illustrate wage gap data from a different angle than usual – to inform conversations, hopefully in an amusing way.
I mean, come on, the app won the prize at something called a “Comedy Hack Day”. I think that spells it out right there, but in case you missed it, FTA: For Malbroux and her team, the app is a tongue-in-cheek way to start a discussion about the very serious issue of wage inequality.Report
I imagine it’s funnier in some circles than others.Report
The College Republicans will upload their version soon enough.Report
They wouldn’t even have to change the code.
“No, no! You don’t understand! You’re a white male and you have to pay $5 for the Mozzarella Sticks, but the Latina female only has to pay $4!”Report
Don’t Republicans ask for separate bills?Report
Republicans just put it all on a credit card which they never pay off.Report
Nah, they expense it and charge it back to the cust.Report
Yeah. They started doing that when they first got the college Republican app that explained that they have to pay $5 for Mozzies while their tenured Beyonce Studies Prof only has to pay $4.Report
Republicans treat their friends. Republican men pay on dates.Report
The College Republicans have been doing this for at least 10-15 years. They call them Affirmative Action Bake Sales, and the same people who are gushing over this rail about how horrible those bake sales are.Report
So my boss, a woman, who makes more than me, would have to pay less than me because women make less than men. Except for, um, this specific woman and this specific man, but, y’know, in general.Report
Yes, exactly. Because as is made abundantly clear in the article, the point of the app is not that people would realistically use it to pay their restaurant bill. It is to encourage conversation, based on the existence of the app. It is a piece of art that happens to use publication through the iOS app store as its medium.
Complaining about how your boss makes more than you but the app would have her pay more is like complaining about how a runway fashion collection wouldn’t make very practical workwear.
All we’re proving is that if you try really hard not to get the point, you will succeed.Report
“the point of the app is not that people would realistically use it to pay their restaurant bill. It is to encourage conversation, based on the existence of the app. ”
Oh. So it’s just trolling! I get it now. (And here’s me, feeding the troll.)Report
“the app is a tongue-in-cheek way to start a discussion about the very serious issue of wage inequality.”
Yeah…..THAT’S what I want to do when going out to lunch with co-workers….Report
Well, if you don’t want to have that conversation, at lunch or at any other time, you might try not having it, and let those who do want to have it, have it.Report
Iterate this game for 15 or 16 iterations. “How come those people who we told to not have this conversation are cloistered in their own corner of the building and do the posters in their break room have anything to do with that?”Report
So you propose – what? That we twist Damon’s arm and force him to discuss it? That we bring it up it but only if everyone promise not to smile or joke?
I thought this app was sufficiently clearly a chindogu, even before reading the article and having my impression confirmed. Apparently I was wrong.Report
It’s the same joke as the College Republican Affirmative Action Bake Sale.
It doesn’t suddenly become insightful when the right person tells the joke.Report
Sounds like you’re telling people not to have the conversation!Report
What’s the difference between “let’s have a conversation” and “shut up and let me tell this joke”?Report
A Katie Couric documentary?Report
The first one is 4 words, the second one is 8Report
Kind of I guess.
Except that, if I understand it, the Republican one is closer to “this is the outrageous state of the world, the unfair advantage minorities are receiving, and this bake sale is the red pill to help you see it. Aren’t attempts at righting inequality frightfully unjust?” while the app here is more like “this is something like how it would look if we paid in proportion to our income. That would be weird, huh? When you think about it, it’s also weird that income is that demographically unequal.”
Which, I might be unfamiliar with “affirmative action bake sales” and how they are framed, as Canadian university campuses are largely devoid of Young Republicans’ clubs.Report
The point is to illustrate wage gap data from a different angle than usual – to inform conversations, hopefully in an amusing way.
Well, no. The point is to misinform conversations. The raw numbers of the wage gap are the most simplistic and least accurate way to look at the issue. And that’s exactly how the left likes it, because the better your analysis gets, the farther it pushes you away from the preferred narrative of evil employers discriminating against women and (some) minorities.Report
Jaybird is tight. Calling out people rarely works as advocacy because that is not how human psychology works.Report
To be honest I didn’t think I was calling Jaybird out, as I didn’t catch his indignation (assuming he was at any point actually indignant about it, which I still don’t know to be the case).
I do get the impression though that he had missed this point – that the main purpose of the app is mainly the conversations that happen about its existence and nature, rather than that it should in practice be used to divvy up a bill.Report
I meant that the app was for the purposes of calling people out. The Social Justice/Identity Politics movement places a lot of stock in having conversations in the hope that a great understanding will take place. Then they get angry when people bring up points against them and don’t automatically agree.Report
Well, I kind of thought it was clever and gentle, since it’s so obviously a silly toy.
This conversation seems to be proving that you are right and I am wrong, and it’s really difficult to discuss stuff like this without a lot of people feeling personally called out and getting uncharacteristically mirthless.Report
Thats exactly the problem. With whom is this supposed to stimulate conversations? People that are just going to miss the point? Or people that are already in agreement with point anyway?
How does it succeed by strategic communications standards if the target audience either doesn’t get the message and/or is actively hostile to it, due to the manner in which the message is presented?Report
How are you supposed to get people woke if the alarm isn’t loud and abrasive?Report
“With whom is this supposed to stimulate conversations?”
With people who think that you might not be sufficiently privilege-conscious.Report
This is very progressive and enlightened, unlike affirmative action bake sales, which are horribly racist and sexist.Report
In all honesty, I’d like an app that splits the bill based on your (hidden) income so you can go to nice restaurants and not worry that someone is being put out.Report
That’s an interesting idea too.
To maintain the privacy aspect, I’d think it would have to incorporate payment through the app itself, so the amount paid by each diner is concealed – otherwise the output would probably be pretty easy to reverse to the inputs.
I can see it working well with buffet restaurants where the restaurant receives the same amount per diner. A la carte ordering would be trickier – how you weight each person’s incomes, vs. the cost of the menu items they chose to order, vs. the degree to which they were constrained by allergies or religious dietary restrictions from ordering the cheap items – those would all require additional value judgements…Report
Yes, that’s what I was thinking. The app would essentially be a black box meta credit card that takes in all the individual payments secretly and pays the bill in full, so each person only knows what they paid. Agree that it’s tougher when you’re not splitting evenly, but I think you could solve a system of equations that finds some middle ground between the % you owe and the % you make.Report
White guilt got you down? There’s an app for that! You don’t even need to actually talk to anyone, now, to deal with your woke worriedness about privilege; just pay what the app tells you to pay and bam, done, you’re an ally and you’ve got the receipt to prove it.
Please tell me that this app is named “Indulgr”.Report
I remember when I was working one summer on the campus where my dad worked, he invited me to come out to lunch with several other profs in his department.
I wound up being the designated money-collector to take the cash up to the check-out to pay the bill. When I got up there, I found out someone had shorted me $5 – which, out of embarrassment, I paid out of my own pocket. (Had this happened now, I would have gone back to the table and said, “Very funny, who stiffed the college intern by $5?”).
Later, I told my dad, thinking he’d make it good. Nope. He just looked at me and said, “You learned something today.”
Since then, I have never collected the money for ANY split check on anything. (And I also learned that geologists are cheapskates)Report
Nope. He just looked at me and said, “You learned something today.”
Damn, Dad. Good for you.
That is a wonderful story.Report
Now here’s an interesting contrast.
Please read this TPM article that discusses a Rutgers Professor being taken to a Mental Hospital after allegedly threatening to kill people.
Then please read this Popehat post that discusses True Treats vs. Protected Speech and also discusses this very Rutgers Professor.
Which brings me to the topic of whether the Legacy Media has lost some degree of credibility in the last decade or so and whether it has earned that lost credibility.Report
TPM is legacy media????
Popehat is analysis. TPM used an AP release therefore….
Compare and contrast: How much coverage is the announcement by the head of the NSA saying the thinks a foreign power hacked D’s to try to manipulate the election. I didn’t see it in my local paper which does plenty of national stories. Did it get screaming headlines across the nation?Report
Wait, are you BSDIing?Report
We can highlight the NSA chief’s remarks, and then we can ask why the current President, who has taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, hasn’t really done his job all that well.Report
Obama has suspended diplomatic relations with Russia and is currently discussing sanctions in Europe.
What would you have him do? A military strike on his way out the door?Report
We spend half our federal budget so that other countries don’t eff with us. If other countries can eff with us anyway, why are we spending all that money?Report
Which is yet another incoherence in Trump’s policy positions: he wants to reduce the US military’s role in world affairs while increasing military spending.Report
Not really. You can reduce the number of forces and improve their quality. Buy new equipment or spending more on training, etc.Report
And do what with it????????
{{Just, like, have it?}}Report
@stillwater
The military is for status enhancement, not for actually doing things with.Report
Accolades. “Wow, DJ, your military is SO big.”
Yeah, I can see that.Report
This country has national security interests and there are those oppose us. If you want peace, prepare for war.Report
Resource War?
(No, I don’t actually expect notme to respond to this, as he/she would if he actually knew anything about the military’s plans.)Report
SO you’re saying our forces suck?Report
notme,
you suggesting we go Japanese now?
All prototypes?Report
“we can ask why the current President … hasn’t really done his job all that well.”
and we can answer that we think that he has done a very solid job: the Iran deal being the most important. Iraqis are on the march again with US support. Libya and Syria are both a total mess, but there’s plenty of blame to go around especially on the domestic actors.Report
I prefer Presidents that don’t allow the country to get taken over by possible agents of a foreign power.Report
So you didn’t vote for HRC or Trump then?Report
I voted for HRC in my state which went for HRC. I did my part.Report
So you did vote for a candidate that was a possible agent of a foreign power.
Appreciate the clarification.
:pReport
Oh, so you didn’t vote for Clinton?
She had verified spies in top level positions.Report
And, in case you missed it, it’s the blogger who told you who, what, when, where, why, and how and gave you the take on the extent to which the police were justified.
It’s the legacy media guy who failed to explain anything but a professor was taken in for a psych evaluation after making some tweets that other people complained about.
It’s the blogger who showed you the tweets.
It’s the legacy media guy who used an AP release.Report
Popehat is doing gods work, but I don’t know if this really says anything about the legacy media. After a person is taken for a psych evaluation based on some angry/threatening tweets I think their job is to describe what happened and give both sides a chance to comment. Delving into the intricacies of the First Amendment is beyond the scope of the reporting, and, more importantly, something they would likely f up (especially considering that even Ken calls this a close call).Report
REQUEST FOR GUEST POST
I’m going to need advice on how to talk to my relatives about politics this Thanksgiving.Report
Can’t help you bud. I still haven’t spoken to my Mum, though I suspect you and I have opposite problems re: talking politics.Report
“Don’t”.Report
I’ve decided I’m going to listen but not engage.
And offer to do a lot of kitchen labor and walk the dog to get myself out of the fray.
Avoidant behaviors, I has them.Report