Sins of Set Design

Everybody should look at this piece that analyzes the heinous set decorating employed by the most powerful man in the world. His sets are worse than Trump's toupee. They look like FOX News took a dump on the stage, having just consumed the most tasteless Presbyterian Church decoration from the late 70s and washed it down with a Big Gulp full of 90s Outlet Mall. Makes the set of the Daily Show look understated.

Why the ugly colors? Why the clunky, regressive, graceless font? Why the overwhelming, ugly shapes? It's not a new thing for me to be offended by the way your people position you vis-a-vis the camera, how they use and abuse space, scale, color, shape, imagery, and symmetry to hammer home (reinforce? establish?) your authority. Still, every iteration just gets progressively worse. What, does a shred of subtlety not work? Aren't you out to impress? Paging Albert Speer...

Why does this matter? Because our brains are being exposed to this toxic, neuron-murdering garbage every day, that's why! Because fonts do speak - presentation is like the soundtrack under the dialogue. These sets grab you by the lapels and scream really juvenile, ugly, faux-patriotic slogans into your face. But Brand can probably say this better than I am.

Science is a Mug's Game

Hooray!!!

Something I did this week was not a complete failure! It's not a huge thing - the bacteria took up some plasmid that I wasn't sure if I had or not and grew on selective agar plates. This means that the bacteria are expressing a protein that allows them to grow in the presence of an antibiotic, which means that they carry the plasmid I am trying to amplify. One small step for Joolya; one extremely small step for science. Possibly a nano-step. Possibly a Planck step. (Email me if you got that joke.)

In other news, it is raining and the coffee cart in the lobby of my building is not yet operational.

Letter to Brian

Dear Brian,
I am really concerned that you are letting a few bad experiences with women colour your relationships with all women. This is like if my friend who was recently mugged on the subway by a black guy would now fear and distrust all black guys on the subway. In fact, she says that this aspect of being mugged was the most traumatizing to her - she doesn't want to become a suspicious, prejudiced person who clutches her bag whenever she sees a black guy on the T, since most black guys on the T are not out to mug her. It's not fair to you, yourself, let alone other people, to let some nasty person ruin all relationships with women for you. It makes me so sad that this is the case.

Just like not all men are rapists (e.g. Springy is not a rapist and he is a man), not all women hate or are out to get men. Even feminists, I swear. I, for example, am both a feminist and a lover of men. Not all men (not Vox) but men who are loveable; men who genuinely respect me as a person. Ditto women, for that matter. I love women who are caring, kind people who respect me as a person.

Imagine a woman who was raped by an acquaintance, for example, someone she thought was a decent guy who maybe got drunk and turned out to be a horrible person. (True story.) After that she's afraid to go to parties, afraid of men in general, and every time she starts to get involved with a new guy she suspects that he is secretly a rapist asshole like the former friend who raped her in the bathroom at this party. She becomes bitter and unable to trust all men. (Maybe be doesn't want doors held open for her by well-meaning men, either, because she thinks they are insulting her abilities.) Now, her attitude is lamentable because she can't take a chance on even a nice guy, like Springy, who would respect her and never take advantage of her. Her attitude towards individual men is now shaped by her prejudice against all men based on the rapist who hurt her.

In essence, she (and you) have put a whole class of people in a box labeled "Other" - which is a prejudice that denies respect and humanity of individuals who fall into that category. (For her, men; for you, women.) And so the Mortal Kombat variety of heterosexual relationships is propagated!

Tell me why this woman and you are in any way different. Seriously. I am concerned that you are so scarred and unhappy. I just want there to be one less miserable person in the world.

I think it might help to really try putting yourself in other people's skins. Once you have empathized with someone you may not agree with them, you make not like what they do, but it becomes hard not to understand them and by extension to love them. You love your neighbor as yourself because you have identified your neighbor with yourself. And once you have done that, once you have empathy, it becomes nearly impossible to act hurtfully towards someone - because you feel their pain. You have recognized their humanity, have viscerally indentified with their feelings; hurting them would cause you pain. You would be elevating their needs to the level of your own.

Whenever we deal with other people we have to ask ourselves, "Is my response kind?" This is the Christian (in the Jesus sense, not the twisted Vox sense) thing to do. The Buddhist thing, too, for that matter.

If you practiced empathy you could not commit rape, because you would be so concerned for the feelings and humanity of the person you were with that it would inconcievable to do anything that would violate her.

So, if you were with a woman and she - for whatever reason - became uncomfortable about having sex with you, your sense of her feelings would prevent you from carrying on against her wishes. If you did, yes, you would be committing a crime. You would be committing the crime of dehumanizing another holy human being. And that, my friend, is the root of all crimes that we commit against other people, prosecutable or not.

If you realy make an effort to understand not women but each individual woman (and man for that matter), fear and distrust will diminish. (And you will be better at spotting those men and women who are not trustworthy so you can steer clear of them!) Eventually you will be able to forgive and move on; not to get all Dr. Phil on you, but forgiveness of others who have wronged us is something we need to do for our own peace of mind.

Women, men; we're all the same, more or less. We're all motivated by the same fears and desires: love, safety, food, sex, success, respect . . .

The basic problem the posters on Vox's sociopathic blog have, in my opinion, is a lack of empathy for women, people who they do not consider to have essentially the same humanity as themselves. The same can be said for white/black, rich/poor, young/old, compatriot/alien, Christian/Jew. This hurts all of us, Brian, this divisiveness.

Need Coffee

Okay - I have de-linked horrible misogynist blog from my blog and am going to try not to look at it and make myself mad anymore. There's really no talking to some people. Besides, there's an abortion rights case up before the Supreme Court which is a different thing to be upset about.

Although really what I am (and should be more) concerned with are my bacterial transformations of the new gene I want to GFP-tag, the calcium-inhibition experiment that my PI wants me to do, and my own skazillion experiments in progress, quantitation, statistical analysis, etc.

Watching "House" and looking at my new shelves is so much more relaxing than any of the aforementioned, though. Especially from my new chair.

I would like to give a big shout-out to Boomy, Springy, and Norah, as well as Twisty.

I Feel Dirty (In A Bad Way)

So, I made the mistake of becoming involved with a ridiculous blog thread about whether date rape is a myth. (It's not.) Again, I don't want to promote these people, so I won't.

Instead of reiterating the million posts I was foolish and angry enough to post, I will instead log an IM conversation I had with Boomy on this topic.

Boomy: hey dangerous utopian dreamer...what on earth have you gotten yourself into?
Joolya: oy, i have fallen into a quicksand trap of commentating with morons
Joolya: help me!!!
Boomy: oh oy voy voy
Boomy: [Quotes from evil blog] Joolya - That word 'misogynist' you keep using, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Misogyny implies that I actively harbor feelings of ill-will towards women. I do not. I adore women. What I harbor is a deep distrust for women. While I am willing to have women as friends, I am not able to trust them to be any closer than that. I have had entirely too many women do things with the sole intent of hurting me personally or professionally to trust them in any intimate matter.
Boomy: oh my dear lord
Joolya: i know, dude. i am about to quit this town.
Joolya: seeing as i actually do have work to do
Boomy: okay so i think that might actually be your best idea. it's like you're in one flew over the cuckoos nest here.
Joolya: i know, yo
Boomy: i still have to read the original post
Joolya: this vox guy is a nutjob
Boomy: you have become some kind of straw man to a bunch of pathetic assholes.
Boomy: more in a second, don't sign off yet...
Joolya: eek! i will retire as straw person. although, really, they've gone easy on me compared to others in the threads.
Joolya: i feel dirty that i have participated in this
Boomy: all other ridiculousness aside, there are some basic facts about rape that are being totally ignored here. this is *such* a classic case of men interpreting facts in a manner that shows they believe that women should be second or third class citizens. or as peggy orenstein wrote, men interpret equality as a loss. on the one hand, i wonder if you could fight them with statistics. (ie, all the one-in-ten rapes brought to trial en in acquittal, etc)
Joolya: i know, dude, and they won't admit it.
Joolya: they start to admit their basic problem and then back away and be like, that's not what i meant! like brian posts one comment that is totally rational, and then the next comment is all "gender feminists are out to get me"
Joolya: whatever. i totally win. have extricated self.
Joolya: it's just - all this "men are this" "women are that" thing is so fucking depressing. i blame the patriarchy.
Joolya: it's so divisive! it's not cool at all.
Boomy: on the other hand, you could send an email to twisty or bitchphd and ask for help...
Boomy: still though. i think this is a dumb circlejerk of a group and you would be sullying yourself by dealing with them more and more
Joolya: i agree
Boomy: no contact? no more checking what they are saying or trying to engage with them? imagine them all as totally unfuckable comic store simpsons guys and ignore them?
Joolya: well, i am reading final thoughts. they totally are comic book store guys. although it is slightly mean of us to so categorize, we are probably correct in our assessment.
Boomy: there is a whole group of men like this who have crazy misogynist support groups for divorce settlements and child support.
Joolya: (grr i keep wanting to respond but it totally won't do any good.)
Joolya: yeah, there is a whole demographic of men who feel very hard done by. probably some of them are. but yeah. it's like the anti-affirmative action crowd who are fishes that don't notice the water of privilege in which they swim. (I am quoting someone, but i forget who.)
Boomy: same arguments as date rape people, with the whole if one-woman-could-use-it-to-get-back-at-some-guy then all agreements must be fundamentally anti-man, screwing up men's lives, stealing from them, etc
Joolya: right, but then they're like, "that's not what i said!"
Boomy: right. because they are assholes, who are not going to give up any of their cyber ground to some cyber girl who speaks up
Joolya: and then - at the same time - like my boy Bri - they're like, how come those feminazis are so anti-man? just because someone got raped once?
Boomy: it's funny that he said springy had never heard of marx. i laughed out loud
Joolya: i felt like i was getting into the cracks for a second there
Joolya: hahahaha. that was funny
Joolya: [Quotes from evil blog thread] The partial responsibility point is simply an observation that stupid behavior often results in one getting hurt. A girl who never goes to frat parties, will never be raped at a frat party. I can piss in the wind all day long about how I (A white male) should be able to strut around the projects with a white hood on, and not be attacked... but it doesn't change the fact that I would be attacked. Everyone would say that it was partially my fault for being stupid, and plenty would def end the attackers. Claiming that rape is different from this is simply incorrect.
Joolya: that was my friend "nate"
Joolya: reiterating
Joolya: just for a change
Joolya: this is also funny:
Joolya: [Quotes from evil blog thread] "Ah. Different *contexts* of the word no. Well, Scintan, we have many ways of using intonation and body language to make points, this is true. If at some point someone says a version of "no" that is ambiguous, then the other person ought to ask them to clear it up for them ("No you don't want me to stick my penis in your vagina _yet_ or _at all_?").
Joolya 11.29.05 - 1:56 pm #"
Ok, you're either a virgin or you don't have a solid grasp on human interaction, possibly both. If you think that normal people stopping to ask that question doesn't kill the mood of the situation and lead to problems, you've got no business of even discussing this topic. Furhermore, the push and pull is part of the courtship ritual. This is a problem with the feminists. They wish to rebel against the very nature of our beings and can't understand why people would oppose them.
Joolya: i like, also, how VD was all, the nature of men is to rape. except - but - uh - wait
Boomy: have you seen the new twisty post?
Boomy: "Some women" quoth a sympathetic Mexican government official for "women's issues," "believe violence is their destiny."It thoroughly chaps the Twisty hide that, although it's men who are, you know, perpetrating it, violence is still seen as a women's issue, as the responsibility of women . . .
Joolya: fucking fucker fucks. and they WONDER why women get cross about the door thing
Boomy:ha! he called you a virgin!
Joolya: that is super funny
Boomy: he was all "virgin! bviirgin! if you're a feminist than it must be that no one will have sex with you!"
Joolya: that is why i only fuck other feminists
Joolya: VD (who seems not to have noticed that his initials stand for venereal disease) non-sequits the following:
Joolya: [Quotes from evil blog thread] Joolya wrote: “You are a sick, sick man, VD. This is not a case of breach of contract. It's really disturbing that you seem to view sex and relationships in this manner. If you consented to, I don't know, drive someone home but on the way to their house they started vandalizing your car or pissing you off, would you then say that you had no right to kick them our of your car?”
Yawn. Again with the inability to distinguish between legality and morality. No wonder you can't distinguish between rape and sex. Your analogy is a poor one. If I consented to drive you home, but I then stop in the middle of nowhere and tell you to get out simply because I don't feel like driving you anymore, I would certainly think that I have done you wrong. I haven't broken any laws, and certainly the right thing to do would be to get out of the car and go, but there is no shortage of individuals who would simply refuse to get out of the car, without the aforementioned shrieking and defecating.
Joolya: My point was that the rapist is the guy who won't leave the car which is then trespassing and therefor a crime - I can't actually tell what his point is in response. Can you?
Boomy: yeah. so he would kind of be being a bad host for kicking his passenger out of the car midway through, but still within his legal rights, and well, the passenger would then have to leave
Boomy: yeah i read that whole exchange
Boomy: i liked the pooping in your car while you sit there and watch analogy
Joolya: but then he seems to agree with me?
Boomy: and the rider would be understood for just staying in the car until he was home
Joolya: sure, which is the weakness of my analogy.
Boomy: no it's not. it was a fine analogy
Joolya: i didn't mean to imply that the woman who kicks the dick out is in the wrong
Boomy: it's just his trying to say that the kicker-outer from cars and vaginas is to blame for the actions of the kicked
Joolya: legally, the rider has no right to the ride.
Joolya: right. but he was like, the dick has the legal right (not the moral right) to remain in the vagina, whereas the rider has the moral (not the legal) right to stay in the car. so he is wrong and agrees with me about the car but not the vagina. because he is an asshole.
Boomy: yeah these people are assholes
Boomy: totally
Boomy: how scary is "scintan"?
Boomy: he is definitely mixing metaphors.
Boomy: if you are going to say: "occasionally there are cases where women are responsible for the hurt feelings of men whom they have asked to refrain from or cease fucking them" then fine.
Boomy: if you are going to say that they are legally responsible for the crime that results from the man's actions...
Boomy: another story
Boomy: i wonder how they feel about man-on-man rape
Boomy: hey you know what you should do?
Joolya: what?
Boomy: you totally need to write a rebuttal on YOUR blog
Joolya: yeah.
Joolya: so there, venereal disease
Boomy: a well reasoned chat about how you got pulled in to this ridiculous rabbit warren
Boomy: and what you found there
Boomy: and what right-minded people should do in response
Joolya: good idea. and how to avoid being trapped like that again. e.g. don't walk home alone after dark or wear tight clothes.
Boomy: guys in the divorced mens support groups though
Boomy: makes vox look progressive
Joolya: wow. maybe i don't want to!!!
Boomy: my friends who are divorce laywers get contacts from them a lot. they are kind of like the male-bonding wilderness crazies
Boomy: and the overwhelming message is that women are worthless liars
Joolya: well, shit, aren't they?
Joolya: according to vox, brian, scintan, and possibly nate we are!
Joolya: what do your friends think of them?
Boomy: they HATE them
Boomy: because they do have a teeny tiny kernal of truth to them
Joolya: i'm sure some of them do. there's a lot of nasty people in the world and some of them are women
Boomy: (ie, protective laws on the books in PA and in many states do not treat men and women equally)
Boomy: on the other hand, MEN AND WOMEN are NOT in EQUAL economic situations. EVER
Boomy: so this relatively tiny, bound issue in some laws rarely departs from the path the judges and lawyers would follow anyway
Joolya: talk about culture of victimhood, though, seriously.
Joolya: here is the ironic thing:
Joolya: these guys on this blog are all, Victimhood! Victimhood! WE MEN are the actual victims of your victimhood! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! GOTCHA VOX ET AL!
Joolya: and it's so only recently that women are being given equal treatment under the law anyway. they forget this
Joolya: it's so fucked up. let's play the game where we find-and-replace "men" with "chinese" and "women" with "korean"
Joolya: or whatever
Boomy: and there is nothing more dangerous than when those in power can claim minority, or victim, status
Joolya: LIKE THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT!!!!!!!
Boomy: exactly.
Joolya: dude, we have figured it all out
Boomy: or "christian libertarians"
Joolya: the ickiest
Boomy: or whatever vox claims to be
Joolya: gun totin Xtreme Xtians
Joolya: couldn't resist one last comment:
Joolya: VD:Let me paraphrase your arguments here.
The dick has the legal right (but not the moral right) to remain in the vagina, whereas the rider has the moral (but not the legal right) right to stay in the car. Whereas I maintain that both dick and passenger are legally obliged to exit car and vagina when requested to do so by the car or vagina owner or else they are (legally) trespassing.I
n no way did I mean to imply by my analogy that the dick who was asked to leave was hard done by.
You are such a doofus.
Joolya: i'm seriously done now. done done done
Joolya: seriously
Boomy: cut it off.
Joolya: "and there is nothing more dangerous than when those in power can claim minority, or victim, status" that was very succinctly put.
Boomy: thanks :)
Boomy: be like the indian guy with the pillow at the end of cuckoos nest
Joolya: i have, i have
Joolya: can i throw a sink out the window? please?
Boomy: by all means

I Heart Feminist Boys

Here is a very interesting post and thread about what rape is and what it means. Much better than the poo-magnet Matt at Pooflingers blogged about, although that one is good for some cathartic ranting.

My two cents: Crimes are the fault of criminals, not victims, and rape is a particularly greivous crime that carries far more psychological baggage than, for example, mugging. (Which is not the downplay the seriousness of non-sexual assault!) Rape is historically a tool of oppression and dominance and a source of shame and degradation for the victims. Attention needs to be refocused away from "how women can avoid being raped" to "how to stop men from raping" - simple as that.

So all this has been occupying my time since my DNA digest didn't yield any DNA on the gel. Wah!!! I was all freshly motivated to acheive small goals, scientifically speaking, and then it didn't even work. Maybe it didn't work because I was provocatively (not) naked under my lab coat.

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Addendum to rape issue. Last night on the bus home I thought of a story that might be an antidote to the bile and spew of Vox's blog and comment page.

Here's the scenario: Girl and guy are friends. Girl is recently single, guy has been single for a little longer. They go out on a date, have a few beers. Girl invites guy to her place where they have another drink, watch tv, and make out. After making out for a while, they fall asleep and girl says it's fine for guy to crash. They wake up in the morning and start making out again. Things progress and a condom is produced from girl's dresser drawer. Condom is put on and the two begin to have sex, at which point girl realizes that she's not actually wanting to go that far with the guy. So, she stops what she is doing and says, "I'm sorry, I just don't want to be doing this."

At this point, the guy feels slighted and frustrated. What does he do? Does he continue to pump away, seeing as the girl knew what she was doing and it's too late for her to have second thoughts? Because that is what a lot of the posters on the blogs linked above would have said, following logically from their arguments. Is the guy - whose feelings are no doubt hurt - justified in ignoring the girl's wishes and carrying on? Of course not, because that would be R-A-P-E! Is the girl somehow obligated to "stay the course" having gone that far? Of course not, because as a human being she has agency over her body and what she does with it.

This true story has a happy ending, as the guy was a nice, understanding person who was considerate of his friend's feelings even though he wsa disappointed and was not a rapist. So I want to give a big hand to all Feminist Boys out there (you know who you are!) who don't define themselves by gender roles or animal instincts, but are compassionate and mature individuals.

Yay feminist boys! I heart you.

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Addendum to addendum: Icky "Christian Libertarian" guy inadvertently gives props to my favourite feminist boy by trying to take him on. Ha!

Ikea/Suburban Brain Hemorrhage

Yesterday afternoon I climbed into my Zipcar (Matrix Morelia) and took the scenic route to the Brand New Ikea in Stoughton, Mass. The scenic route through Watertown and Newton and the Mass Pike - which, for those unfamiliar with the experience of driving in folded Calabi-Yao shaped Boston space-time, is totally not the way from my house to Ikea.

We haven't had an Ikea here in Massachusetts before - the closest one was in Connecticut, which compounded insult upon injury - so the natives were really excited to gorge on cheap home furnishings holiday weekend style. After the getting lost for an hour on scary fast roads with lots of left-hand exit lanes and finding Stoughton (no signs) it then took another forty minutes to get from the off-ramp to the parking lot. The radio was cutting out by then, being so far out in the 'burbs, but I found a mix CD in the glove compartment that contained pretty much what music you'd expect to find in the glove compartment of a Zipcar from Cambridgeport. (That song from 'Garden State', some Coldplay, a little Norah Jones, 'Living on a Prayer', etc.)

Needless to say, Ikea was mobbed. I put my iPod on and wended my way slowly through the upstairs showroom, past Living Rooms and Kitchens, through Work Spaces and Bedrooms. I realized at some point that what I was in search of, essentially, was Stuff To Put Stuff In. Shelves for the effective piling of stuff; a dresser for the compartmentalization and containment of stuff; boxes for the storing of stuff; racks for the hanging of stuff . . . even a chair is just something to stuff my self in to keep my tush off the floor.

Slight tangent - a useful (or at least fun) way of thinking about a eukaryotic cell is of a room with lots and lots of shelving (folded membranes) that compartmentalizes reactions and maximizes internal storage space.

It made me a little sick to my stomach to consider the sheer volume of stuff that I had which made necessary the acquisition of yet more stuff in order to pack it all into my tiny apartment. As this realization was percolating through my consciousness I noticed a trickle of viscous, glistening ooze dripping down the earphone cord onto my right shoulder. This was my brain hemorrhaging and leaking out of my ear.

Finally, having negotiated my wonky cart through the eighty foot tall shelves of flat-packed boxes, I made it to the checkout line. There was a little boy next to me having a meltdown. "Me too, dude," I said to him. If there had been anyone else with me I would definitely have been having a similar overstimulated, glucose-bereft weeping fit. But I still had to pilot Matrix Morelia home in the dark via routes 24 and 93 and the new Big Dig tunnels, an experience similar to playing Mario Cart when stoned. Swearing ensued. Triceratops sized SUVs doing ninety passed me on the right before ducking into indistinguishable shopping centers. Orange cones marked out slalom courses that merged and split lanes seemingly at random. Poorly lit signs with letters in 12 point font suggested that driving through large clumps of trees would be the best way to get to Brighton.

"I fucking hate the suburbs!" I screamed. As the brightly lit skyscrapers of the Boston skyline loomed into view through the darkness I felt a flush of immense relief - back to the city where things are solid, made of real dirt, real metal, real concrete. In the suburbs I feel asphyxiated. The city's granular grit and the country's earthy mulch are divided by these mushy, oxygen-starved, aesthetic travesties of stucco facades, uncrossable highways, big box stores whose flickering fluorescence could swallow whole hamlets, alien sprawling parking lots and pathetic stands of shrubbery - a nightmare of cars and kitsch, these squashy middle zones.

Whew. When I finally unloaded the car, after another stop at the Economy Hardware, I parked it and went to my local lovely pub for a beer and cheeseburger. Dim light, organic cheese, scruffy patrons, and Bass on tap. It was heavenly.

I do like my new Poang chair, though, I have to say.

Please, God, hire new writers.

They're really scraping the bottom for writing staff on the 21st Century Show. First we had 9/11 as scripted by Jerry Bruckhiemer, the whole Bush Admin a la reality show featuring flesh eating tarantulas, 70s disaster movie style hurricanes, and now this. I'm not going to tell you what it says, but it's funny. Funny like the fall of Rome was funny. Or, if not funny, at least proves my point.

Chinese Thanksgiving

As I just got back from a jaunt abroad, I couldn't really justify going home for Thanksgiving again this year. Not a huge loss; it's just a day of eating too much and football on TV and stores not open and frustrated expectations of warm fuzzy family fun and unpleasant associations.

Instead, I went through my closet and made a big pile of clothing rejects. Then I ventured out into the cold up to the Somerville/Medford line to my friend China's apartment, where I had a Fun Old-Fashioned Chinese Thanksgiving with China, his (also Chinese) roommate, roommate's not-so-much-with-the-English-speaking parents, and Anglo-Chinese girl visiting from London. China is an odd duck but good-hearted - he gave me all the scoop about my capoeira group (which I haven't been to in six months). English girl and I agreed, upon hearing about a certain capoeirista who was drummed out of the roda for smacking a girlfriend around, that we'd almost relish being hit by a man just so that we could have the opportunity of mauling someone who really deserved it. China doubted we would be able to do much mauling (as we're both under 5 and a half feet and added together probably only just above 200 lbs) but I said that I would wait till he was sleeping or else I would twist his balls and glass him in the face. English girl offered to maul China as a demonstration but he declined.

I was a little trepidatious about a) leaving my apartment on Thanksgiving and b) imposing on Chinese Thanksgiving, but it was a nice evening.

The food was copious and pretty tasty. Dinner was all your basic Thanksgiving foods - turkey, stuffing, potatos, corn - but dessert was a mix of store-bought pies and home-made Chinese tofu custards. Chinese mom cracked me up and China kept pretending that he couldn't understand what the English girl was saying. After the parents went home we watched a Korean film which I kept falling asleep during, but didn't really miss much. When I went to the bathroom before going back out into the frosty wind I saw myself in the mirror and my pointy nose and wavy brown hair looked strange and surprising.

Two more days of Holiday Weekend of Blah to get through. I think I'm coming down with something. Deceptively sunny today but all the puddles are frozen. Lab is at about 25% capacity.

HPV Is The New HIV! For Girls!

Because clearly cervical cancer is God's way of smiting you for your wicked ways.

Debate intensifies over HPV vaccine

Reuters reported yesterday that conservative groups appear to be divided -- or on the fence -- about a vaccine that could prevent the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV). Certain subspecies of HPV are the leading cause of cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is thought to kill nearly 4,000 women a year.

The Christian Medical and Dental Association -- which opposes over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception -- has, remarkably, spoken in favor of the vaccine. What's so "remarkable" about wanting to prevent cancer? Nothing, unless you recall that -- especially considering that the drug's manufacturers plan to recommend routine vaccines for children as young as 10 -- such a message doesn't exactly jibe with conservatives' preferred anti-reality inoculation: abstinence-only education.

As Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council recently told New Scientist, "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV. Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."

Dude. I had to have a cervical biopsy several years ago and when the Orthodox Jewish OB/GYN asked me how many sexual partners I had I hesitated and then LIED to her because I got embarassed about having ever had sex and therefor bringing down the wrath of papilloma virus - how messed up is that? She wrote down the number I told her and then added a discreet but pointed "+" next to it. And this happened at the same time as I was acting in The Vagina Monologs . . .

Also - fucking Concerned Women for America. They are not cool, not cool at all.

Yesterday we had a guest speaker for lab meeting. Three words: Lamb To Slaughter. Poor guy. My PI - I'm pretty sure he means well - but not so much with the tact. It was pretty intense.

Thoughts?

I'm still too jet-lagged and in holiday-induced funk to blog amusingly.

Gender Roles

My second grade teacher: "Joolya has a difficult time staying on task; her handwriting is messy; she has trouble staying in her seat and talking out of turn. Of course, if she were a little boy, we wouldn't even be having this discussion . . ."

My mother: [Sigh] "So how about I put her in overalls and strap a dildo on her and we can stop having this conversation?"

(First posted here.)

Nittany Nincompoopery

This sort of links up to the Worst Song Ever post below.

I used to go to Penn State and every year there would be a William Paley-esque anti-evolution column published in the Daily Collegian to which I would compose a 3 page polemic that would never be published.

This kind of tired and intellectually devoid column would also pop up occasionally when I went there, back in the halcyon Clinton Era.

Basically, this random dude is saying that if the goals of Feminism were acheived and a truly gender-equal society were to exist, it would suck for the ladies because men wouldn't buy us drinks in bars anymore or pay for dinner on dates. As empowering as it is to have drinks thrust upon me in bars in an attempt to diable my judgement to the extent that I might be tempted to shag the drink profferer, I feel like that is maybe not such an enormous loss. It's also kind of rude for one half of a party of two never to foot the bill. Especially if both parties are grad students.

Also, in a distopian feminist society, men would not open doors. I guess when a man comes up to a door in crazy feminist land he just stands there, or else goes through and lets it swing back and hit his date in the face. In this world, would men still hold doors for other men? Or would this trait be selected against entirely? Would we have to install curtains so that people weren't getting black eyes all the time?

Would women hold doors open? Is this an X-linked allele?

I kind of don't get this fixation on the door opening. But at Penn State it was a huge deal. People wouldn't smile or nod at anyone on the street or in the hall, but if you failed to hold the dorr open from someone you totally got tutted at. Male or female.

Shouldn't whomever gets to the door first just politely open it for the next person? I mean, it's not like most doors are made of lead or granite.

Finally, Mister Random Clever Dude (irony alert) says that:

... in a world where feminism holds the reigns of society, we overhaul the design of the family unit, weaken the effect of feminine sexuality and introduce the possibility of having our daughters, sisters and mothers fight on the front lines and work grueling jobs.

I assume he means the "power of feminine sexuality" to finagle free meals.

I also assume that he doesn't know that a lot of women already work gruelling jobs - usually for lower pay than their male counterparts - and serve in the armed forces.

I am pleased to note, though, that there seem to be more ID/creationism aren't science letters to the editor than anti-evolution letters. Perhaps Pennsyltucky ain't so backwards after all?

Liberalism Is Inherently Offensive

Just saw this today - always interested in the Burgh news (also my 'dres' Alma Mater). I'm reading Zadie Smith's new book right now (courtesy of E.C.) and she's got her finger on the pulse about the weird anti-liberal ("liberal"?) movements at universities.

It amuses and horrifies me when conservative types go on about the liberal indoctrination at our elite seats of learning . . . Because thinking critically and broadly about various topics is a bad idea? Is there not maybe a pretty good reason why most academics/intellectuals tend to be more liberal? Maybe this is not because of some creepy system of indoctrination, but because the natural outcomes of critical thinking are a more nuanced understanding of the interconnections in society and in the world; the realization that unadulterated free market economics is a joke; the ideal that the state profits when its citizens are provided for; the reasons why gigantic SUVs are a travesty and planned communities are tacky.

Could it be possible that these stances are not anti-American, but just anti-ignorance?

Hearing on campus bias met with jeers
Panel investigating 'indoctrination' at state colleges
Thursday, November 10, 2005
By Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

High on buzzwords but low on data, a controversial legislative panel created to investigate political "indoctrination" at state colleges held its first hearing yesterday at Pitt's student union.
By the end of hour one, student protesters had interrupted the hearing, strutting through the ballroom and chanting "HUAC, go away," a reference to the McCarthy-era House Un-American Activities Committee.
By hour two, the "select committee on academic freedom in higher education" heard its first overt mention of communism.
And by afternoon's end, the panel and its invited speakers had walked through a minefield of evolutionary theory, creationism and Holocaust deniers, issues that had varying degrees of relevancy to the subject at hand.
The inquiry is controversial because Democrats and college professors view it as a thinly veiled attempt by majority Republicans to stamp the autonomy, not to mention the liberal political ideology, out of academia. Republicans in the House say the inquiry is necessary because conservative students have reported being intimidated, or graded unfairly, by liberal professors.
State Rep. Gibson Armstrong, a Lancaster County Republican who spearheaded the creation of the panel, said that he's collected 50 complaints from students who say they feel intimidated, or "indoctrinated." Democratic lawmakers wonder about Mr. Armstrong's accounting methods, given that none of them has received a single complaint.
"I don't think we're brainwashing anybody, [which] is what you're implying," said state Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill.
The vote to create the panel -- which doesn't have any legislative authority and doesn't require the governor's signature -- was a party-line tally, 108-90. Democrats voted against it, GOP for it.
But it didn't take long for the first speaker, Stephen Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, to note that college professors at state schools tend to be more often liberal than conservative. Though there's no comparable study of Pennsylvania's state-owned and state-related universities, Mr. Balch examined the political donations from Pennsylvania professors, concluding that humanities and social sciences professors were more likely to donate to a Democratic candidate than to a Republican one, by a 30-1 margin.
As for Mr. Balch, a registered Republican, he's donated money to a group called "The Freedom Project," which is dedicated to advancing the Republican agenda and keeping Congress out of the hands of "union bosses, trial lawyers and campus radicals."
...
Third, the exclusion of alternative political viewpoints leads to unchecked advocacy and activism, which, in Mr. Balch's eyes, ought not be the mission of a professor, or a state university.
If colleges go out of their way to promote ethnic and racial diversity among the faculty and the student body -- a concept that Dr. Balch's group disagrees with -- then it should at least go to the same lengths to promote diverse political viewpoints, he said.
...
The "academic bill of rights" is redundant in the places where it calls for a grievance procedure for students who feel they've been graded unfairly or capriciously, because all universities have such grievance procedures in place, said the two professors. Where the "bill of rights" is not redundant, it is either unnecessary or downright dangerous.
Mr. Moore said he is skeptical of the claims of rampant political intimidation or unfair grading that are collected mostly online, without any fact-checking.

Oy. For more commentary on this, see the PA ACLU website.

The Worst Song EVER

I am not very in touch with the "pop culture" these days, so it was only recently that I heard the Worst Song EVER which is "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas. It is the unholy combination of no discernable melody plus mysoginistic, disgusting, and ridiculous lyrics that makes this the worst song ever. The video does not help. Lyrics aqui.

Whatcha gonna do with all that junk all that junk inside that trunk.. [Fergie] I'ma get get get get you drunk get you love drunk off my hump

Is she a camel? What the hell?

They say they love mah ass in/Seven Jeans/True religion/I say no but they keep givin/So I keep on takin/And no I aint fakin/We can keep on datin'/Now keep on demonstratin'

(I am so embarassed that I have got one of those brand of jeans on, but I totally had no idea it was, like, a Thing . . . and no one bought them for me. Not even anyone who loves my ass. I am seriously going about this the wrong way. They were damn expensive jeans.)

My love my love my love my love you love my lady lumps my hump my hump my hump my humps they got you..

"Lady lumps"?! That is the grossest fucking thing I have ever heard.

And mix your milk with my cocoa puff milky milky cocoa mix your milk with my cocoa puff Milky milky Riiiiight...

Take it back. That might be the grossest fucking thing I've ever heard . . .

Hm, no, lady lumps is still grosser. Up there with "polyps" and "moist".

Quaint Quaintness, With Extreme Quaintitude

So the other day my esteemed colleague and I went to the Cotswolds, which is like a really big soundstage backdrop for a period piece involving apple-cheeked girls in full skirts, ardent noble equestrians, and amusing rustics. However in real life it also includes cell phone towers and posh cars and Tory taxi drivers.

We went and stayed in the most Olde Englishe Pub/Inne ever called the Falkland Arms in a hamlet (seriously) called Great Tew. Great Tew and environs ranged from the quaint to the super-quaint to the uber-quaint and even - I exaggerate not - delving into the Meta-Quaint, which is like the sublime essence of all that is rolling green fields and sun-kissed golden sandstone.

The Falkland Arms took it's quaintness seriously and had the requisite enormous fireplace and mugs hanging from low beams. The food was delicious (especially the duck), as was the selection of beers, but the most wonderful part of the inn was the four-poster bed with bed curtains in room #4. It was like a fort! A fort with big tapestry pillows! And a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, framed by the beautiful wooden posts. My esteemed colleague and I were most delighted with this fort-bed (which could easily have doubled as a space-ship).

The next morning, after a gigantic breakfast with many fried components, we decided to take a long ramble through the fields and farms to see the Rollright Stones, which apparently are the third coolest standing stones and stone circle in England, after Stonehenge and Avebury. (Kip: Napoleon, like anyone can even know that.)

I had thought of taking a taxi to Chipping Norton, the largish village where we'd gotten off the bus from Fodrox, but since we had an Ordinance Survey map (the second coolest thing in the world, after the fort bed), and the sun was shining in the azure sky, my esteemed colleague proposed that we walk the whole way there. We estimated it to be about 6 or 7 miles. However, when we mentioned that we were thinking of walking to the Stones to any of the locals they looked at us as though we were mad. "That's a really long way away . . . " they said. Even the taxi driver from Chipping Norton admonished us from attempting the long trek to the Stones on foot - even though they're only about 2 miles away on well-marked foot- and bridle-paths. I guess no one walks for fun out in the country. I routinely walk three miles a day in the city (largely to delay getting to lab).

It took us only a few hours to get from Great Tew to the stones, even with the meandering country lanes and the crossing of fields and the occasional hacking way through hedgerow. In England, ramblers have the right to roam, which means that random people can just tromp carefree across other people's yards . . . I explained to my more pacific companion that in America, the farmers would probably shoot us. I felt kind of strange galumphing across peoples' fields like that (me in my leather jacket and he with a laptop bag slung over his shoulder). I then sang a rousing chorus of "This land is my land" as I learned it in second grade: "This land is my land/It isn't your land/If you step on it/I'll shoot your head off/I have a shotgun/And you don't have one/This land is private property". My esteemed colleague countered with a brilliantly macabre kids' song about the sinking of the Titanic, which has been in my head all morning.

The walking was remarkably simple, and the map included the names of farms and the outlines of buildings as well as roads, paths, copses, and hedgerows. We walked along a very straight Roman road for a while (there was a ruined Roman villa nearby) and discussed the Roman occupation and nationalism. There were many pheasants, some of whom were being shot at. Pheasants waddle around and flap noisily when you go near them, like particularly dim and sun-addled tourists on a coach trip. In addition to pheasants there were many sheep who stared at us baa-ing interlopers, slightly puzzled, for a moment before returning to the business of grass chomping.

Anyway, it was all tremendously quaint and pastoral, with many black Labs bounding around, and I'd love to have a country house like that, with the golden sandstone and the sheep and the silage pits - so long as I could return to the city. Some of those wee towns haven't even got a pub. Great Rollright, for example, has got a Post Office shop and a Farm Shop, whose tea room attracts all the old grannies of the area at lunch time, but we did not see a single beer dispensary! Which is just dangerous, quite frankly, as it encourages drunk driving.

Have I mentioned that Fodrox is full - full - of Americans? There is nothing more cringe-inducing than the mutated accents of (other) Americans in England. I must sound like such a twat . . . but I swear, I am not doing it on purpose. Everyone else is just being affected but not me!

Have been blissfully not following current events, except as mentioned by my esteemed colleague (Pakistan beat England at cricket) and have completely neglected my work. Guilty? I am not. Sometimes there are more important things to attend to than politics and career, such as very long walks and healing conversations.

P.S. Fun fact: "Chipping" means "cheapening", as in bartering at a market. So Chipping Norton, Chipping Clapham, etc, are market towns.

Quaint As Fuck

I am in a place I shall call Fodrox, so as to protect its identity, and let me just say it is quaint as fuck. In a nice way . . . but rather full of derradsnugs with floppy hair and stripey scarves. (Derradsnugs is code for what Fodrox is full of.)

Went up a lovely tower, which was not quite a spire although it was rather dreamy. There was a very narrow spiral stairway full of scary spider webs but a rewardingly panoramic view of quaintness at the top.

It's very beautiful but I think the age and qaintness might start to affect my brain if I were here for a long time.

Strange and strangely not strange to be back in this country. Things I'd forgotten to miss include MullerRice and Fruit Corners, steak pie, Weetabix, sheep everywhere, and kids with accents. Only slight jet lag so far and only a little bit of rain.

Travel Tips

Guideline for international air travel:

• Bring comfy yoga pants to change into at night.
• Also bring your favorite prescription or nonprescription sleep aid.
• Have a glass of wine in the airport to enhance effects of sleep aid.
• You still won't sleep, because the fat woman behind you will amuse herself for six hours by pushing your seat forward whenever you lean back.
• If you see someone you went to high school with in the airport, hopefully you have had your glass of wine already.
• iPods are a wonderful travel accessory, and prevent unnecessary conversation with neighbors.
• Don't fly USAirways unless you have to because their planes are ghetto.
• Virgin has cool stuff but even less leg room than USAirways.
• Always bring a full overnight bag so you can change in the morning - passport control is bad enough without stinky pits and skanky drawers.
• Also, if flying through Newark, bring clothes for up to three days because Newark is a black hole of flight delays.
• Bring food - they don't feed you anymore.
• Identify common carryon items that could be used to disarm terrorists, e.g. perfume = pepper spray. Look like you are thinking about this so any suspicious characters will know you are crazier than they are.

Kennywood's Open

Having my hair cut and blown dry and straightened makes me feel like a new woman. Lucette at Gino's is terrific. Hair is disproportionately important.

Two men at pizza place next to me talked about football (and possibly other sports) the whole time they were eating, which was more than half an hour.

In the hair salon this morning this man's fly was unzipped. When I was little kids would refer to this unfortunate phenomenon as Kennywood being open, as in, "Hey! Kennywood's open!" Kennywood is the local amusement park. I leave you to ruminate on the wherefores of this particular turn of phrase.

Who's out there?

Raise your hand if you are reading this from a place that most Americans can't point to on a map . . .

100th Post

Last night we took our Evolution talk to another venue, a community center in a . . . not exactly a suburb - an exurb? what does that mean? - neighborhood? town on the outer edge of? . . . anyway, a place on the other side of Boston from where I live which has more "diversity", by which I mean black and non-English speaking residents. We're trying to take our lecture series into "the community" and get a wider audience. This is the first year we're doing talks at this venue, and we only had about ten people, but those ten were very inetrested so with luck it will continue to grow exponentially.

The lecture series is, I think (and Boomy thinks), a wonderful opportunity for us lab rats to poke out noses out of our gilded cages and mingle with the regular people. Scientists need to practice putting into words what the hell it is we're actually spending taxpayer money on and why. My talk was not as polished last night as it was on Thursday (though the other Pittsburgher's was better) but I think I made some good analogies in the Q and A. There was a picturesque editor guy with wild curly hair who had brought his tiny old mother from Maine; a dad and adolescent boy; a young guy in a food service type uniform; a middle-aged Hispanic woman; as well as assorted retirees of the Balb-C, Agouti, and BL-6 varieties . . . (this is me classifying humans using strains of lab mice, which I understand might not be amusing to anyone who is not typing this). There were good chats about GM foods, the meaning of "exerting selective pressure", and the cultural-historical significance of creationism. (Thanks to Boomy for her info about the emergence of anti-evolutionism in fundamentalist Islam!)

A very adorable older gentleman, a black guy with a terrific bushy moustache, told me afterwards that I ought to be testifying in Dover which pleased me to no end. I had used him as an example of a trait that could come under selective pressure. ("Say that . . . you . . . you could breathe underwater. Now, that would be really cool, and you'd probably be a great swimmer, but since all of our houses and shops and things are up here in the air, there's not a real advantage to having that ability. But, if global warming continues and Boston is flooded, we're all going to have to run away or drown while you and your descendents will be able to swim around and stay here. That would be a tremendous selective pressure that would favor that trait.)

There were no real dissenters, but then this type of seminar in this city probably selects for the kind of people who are not anti-evolutionists. Or Republicans, even. Still, I think it was informative (we got good responses back) and we illuminated some of the more subtle issues around ID - specifically that it's religiously motivated, it's not asking a scientific question, and there's really no controversy in the realm of science over whether or not the major tenets of evolutionary theory are more or less correct. (Sorry, Ben.)

The community center smelled just like the JCC where I went after school - the same mix of industrial cleaning solution, graham crackers, and basketballs.

I've been loading up my fun new toy, Mister iPod. Listening to music on the bus this morning was emotionally overwhelming, though. One of my favorite Spoon songs was going right from my ears into my nerves like an electrode and the ecstacy of it had me wanting to kiss everyone on the bus, burst into sobs, call all of my old lovers, run around wild . . . Every song that came on kept zapping my amygdala and dislodging memories so that the street was overlaid with image upon image, place upon place, time upon time upon time.

Which is good, because that means I am generally in a good mood. Six months ago I would have been wanting to tear my eyes out and fall into the river from the same songs.

I have no idea how normal or abnormal this is. But music just does that. Smells tap into the lizard brain - music zings right into the lining of the white matter.

I remember my mom saying that after her divorce it was ten years before she could listen to music again regularly. There were just too many emotions that had to stay buried for her to function then.

I've mentioned how I have a little crush on Salon.com Rebecca Traister elsewhere on this blog and in real life. RT offers this to induce groans and amused-but-disgusted chuckles:

How to snag a man this holiday season
Today, the New York Post's Cindy Adams reminds readers that the holidays are approaching. Since "everybody needs somebody to love," Adams interviews matchmaker Lisa Ronis about how lonely women can best "find a warm body."
The first of Ronis' bright ideas, according to Adams, is "look pretty. Package the femininity. Hair done, makeup done, lose the weight, manicure a must. Never walk the dog without lip gloss."
Second? "Feel good about yourself." Which should be no problem, assuming you already wear lip gloss to walk the dog.
Ronis and Adams encourage women to hit on everything with a pulse, from pharmacist to decorator.
"You can find 'product' (read: guys) anywhere," Ronis tells Adams. "Charity events, dog runs, sports places, tennis games, gyms, bicycle clubs. In airplanes."
If you're anxious to have someone make you feel unfeminine and refer to men as "product" in the flesh, Ronis does personal consultations.
-- Rebecca Traister

In other RT-highlighted news, Abercrombie caves over stupid T shirts. Larry Summers breaths sigh of relief. He sent me an email today, by the way. I'll tell you what he said tomorrow, if it's not too trivial.

New Blog Title?

I wonder if I ought to change my blog title. I keep seeing that people have clicked to my blog after doing google searches for "naked girls under" plus various disgusting numbers. Sorry, perverts - no horrible illegal pictures here, so fuck off.

Ramble, ramble

Hello!

I've been busy and away from the laptop - parents were in town for belated-birthday visit - so I hope my loyal readers are not too dejected at not having had a fresh post in forever. So, where to begin?

My talk on Thursday went very well. Every year a student-run group does a nine-week lecture series here on campus, aimed at the general public, on current topics in medicine and biology. Each lecture runs about two hours and consists of three sections, each given by a different student. Last week we did "Evolution- Just a Theory?" (Short answer: no.) I did the first section, which went like this.

1) Brief intro to Darwinism and its controversy
2) The Scientific Method
3) A Very Brief history of the natural sciences from 1700 to 1900, from Linnaeus to Lamarck
4) Darwin and how he came up with the Theory of Natural Selection

The talk was very well attended (75 people at least). They tend to be retirees, but there were a fair number of younger people there, too, including Boomy and Brand. I was a bit worried that Boomy was going to be appalled by my gross historical simplifications and decidedly non-pomo definition of What Science Is, but she was not. I got lots of positive feedback, actually, and not just from the 'dres. The second part of the lecture was the nuts and bolts of evolution - not just natural selection but genetic drift and speciation as well. The woman who did it was very clear and concise, but she was nervous - it was her first time doing one of these. The last lecturer addressed moral and ethical concerns. He made some good points but but rambled on quite a bit, which was too bad, and contradicted himself occasionally. I led a Lab Tour afterwards for a handful of people; I showed them some cells and mimed being a motor protein with my mom as a microtubule.

I find that I really like talking to groups. On Saturday I came into the lab for an hour because my lab-mate had begged me to come help him give a tour to a group of female college seniors from Princeton who were looking at grad schools - I think it was some kind of Women in Science thing. He was like, "I don't know what to say to a bunch of girls!" It's odd, because usually this lab-mate of mine is very enthusiastic and gregarious, but confronted with a half dozen young ladies in pointy shoes - even really nerdy ones - he totally clammed up. I rambled on and rambles on and showed them the cool laser scanning confocal and opined about the Future of Science being the fusion of math and biology, blah blah blah. I really believe this, and I found myself getting so enthusiactic when I was talking to these girls, but then I ride the bus to lab in the morning and get the sinking feeling of dread and doom and don't even want to split cells. I take this to be a major character flaw on my part - perhaps that's too harsh - but there you go.

So, anyway, the parents' visit was nice. Mummy and I only had one little scrap the first morning (had to get it out of the way). I think I am finally - finally! - at the point where I can be chill about the parents being around (a mere nine years after leaving for college). This is not to say that I don't whine at my mom a lot or get cranky like I'm a little kid, but I hardly at all had that nails on the blackboard of my soul feeling that I had for most of my adolescence and early adulthood whenever my mom said anything or did anything . . . the little spat was to do with me leaving piles of clothes places, which I took to be a slight on my competence as a grown-up and got defensive about causing my mother to be hurt, etc. One small incident in an otherwise extremely chill weekend.

I have done some serious eating this weekend. We went out on Friday to the most wonderful delicious restaurant ever, with Boomy and Brand who must be thoroughly sick of me and the 'dres by now. It's this Morroccan restaurant in Charlestown called Tangierino. Two words: Sultan's Kadra. We has seafood lunch in Gloucester on Sunday and talked politics for a while and rode the train, to everyone's delight except for my stomach's. Then last night Boomy and Brand made a delicious dinner and I ate tons of cake with a secret ingredient you will never in a million years guess. I'm not going to tell you what it is.

Saturday was the most perfect autumn day - fog in the morning followed by buttery sunshine and a sea breeze. We trekked down to the mall and purchased my new favorite toy: a 60 G iPod! So exciting. We walked around Beacon Hill for a while, came over to the lab, and were going to go to the MFA but were too tired and it was packed. That night I took the 'dres down to a lovely bar called the Middlesex where I was supposed to meet some people. We went down about 8:30 because the Dondre refused to pay a cover ($5 after 9 pm) and had some drinks and waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . . with me getting more and more nervous that no one would show up. Just as I was choking back sobs of humiliation, some of my peeps showed up and proved to me and to my parents that, whew, I actually do have friends. I'd gotten emails from everyone who said they weren't going to make it but only maybe two from people who did show up. How nerve-wracking. The Madre was very cute dancing to the reggaeton and the Dondre amused all with his curled moustache and fanny pack. My mom can be extremely witty company but like me she is more reserved at first in groups; my step-dad easily makes himself at home with anyone, anywhere. He's the most . . . democratic and un-selfconscious person I know. They left around 10, by which time there was a huge line outside. The music got progressively older and older until by the time I left it was reminding me of a middle school dance - but in a fun retro way. The mojitos were bloody strong, though, and without meaning to I got a bit plastered.

So- good, busy weekend. Must dash now, though.

Today is my Evolution talk and my parents are coming . . . lots to do, and very little of it actually lab related. Oh well.

Townhall.com

Alright. If you've ever read anything on Townhall.com you'll already know that it's a semi-literate flag-wrapped poo-flavored neo-condiment to the sloppy joe that is the Bush Regime. So why do I even look at this tripe? I guess it's because it's lunch time and I am tired of writing about the history of Darwin.

And then this guy Mike S. Adams caught my eye. I heard of Mike S. Adams only yesterday, as the guy who wrote one reason he's a Republican is because there are so many Hott Rite-Wing Chixx:

If the Republican Party simply purchases and distributes a few million of these calendars, there is little chance that the Democrats will remain a viable party in this country for very long. Certainly, every man who is currently “independent” will change his voter registration after seeing what our party has to offer.

Like how after Joe Schmoe sees that commercial where the Swedish Bikini Team abseils down the beer bottle, he'll buy whatever the hell kind of beer that was? Or are these women prostitutes? Apprently the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute has put out a calendar of conservative hotties, including Anne Coulter and Michelle Malkin. Not naked, though. Thank God.

So, obviously he's kind of kidding. But he's also kind of not kidding. He also looks like a sperm, but that is not why I detest him. If he weren't such a nauseating little worm, I would forgive his sperminess. I would like to be above such petty name-calling and lookism, but the dude really does resemble a bespectacled spermatozoa. I'm just saying. If I had a head like a gamete, I would be a lot nicer to the opposite sex.

Wait, I don't look like a sperm and I am a lot nicer to the opposite sex. Unless they are Mike S. Adams. Him I am less nice to. Here are more reasons why I will not be nice to Mike S. Adams if I ever have the misfortune to make his acquaintance, which do not have to do with his spermitude.

1) Townhall column dated 10-28-05. Mike takes on the UNC "Orgasm Awareness Festival". Okay, so possibly the OAF is a little . . . silly. But the point of it is maybe to, I dunno, demystify female sexuality? This does not sit well with Mister Adams:

Jessica Polka, an executive board member for the co-sponsor of the event, was recently quoted as saying that “We also have the goal of trying to work toward fighting the social stigma against female sexuality.” In other words, she wants college women to become whores without being ostracized.
While the UNC administration is undoubtedly thrilled that these coeds are turning out to be nymphomaniacs rather than intellectuals, not all of the blame can be placed on UNC. Indeed, FSU may have gotten the idea for their “orgasm festival” from the University of California, San Diego.

[Emphasis added.]

Poor hot rightie Mrs. Adams! Maybe the UNC Feminists should send her a Rabbit.

Then someone from UNC complained that Mike's column consituted sexual harassment. So - whew - then Mike issued a formal apology! Oh, wait. No, he didn't. He says "apology" but he is not really apologizing! Hey, that is the definition of irony!

2) Townhall column dated 10-31-05:

In the opening lines of your sexual harassment complaint, you stated that you “feel very strongly” that my “sexist, discriminatory language toward the female students at UNC constitutes sexual harassment and violates the existing anti-discrimination policy.” That is an extremely important point, Liza. In order to file a complaint in the UNC system, the plaintiff must have very strong feelings. Feelings are the basis of every decision in our system. Logic and objectivity are irrelevant and probably sexist, too.

I actually don't think the first column constitutes sexual harassment, which is the only time in my life I will probably ever agree with Mike the Sperm. It's crude and misogynistic, just like the fauxpology column, but probably not harassment as such. (He did publish the organizer's email address, which seems like some kind of violation, however.)

How does Mike defend himself from the accusations leveled against him? By genius logic. Genius! Read on:

Your complaint also says that I called UNC female students “nymphomaniacs.” Not true, Liza. Here is the relevant quote:
“While the UNC administration is undoubtedly thrilled that these coeds are turning out to be nymphomaniacs rather than intellectuals…”
Based upon a closer examination of my quote, you can see that I have expressed the opinion that when female students a) organize an Orgasm Awareness Festival, b) erect (note: this is not intended to be sexist language in violation of the UNC anti-discrimination policy) a vibrator museum, and c) begin to collect antique vibrators from 1924, this suggests that they are “turning out to be nymphomaniacs.”
That doesn't mean they are there yet, Liza. It just means that there is a clear trend in the direction of nymphomania. Had they erected two vibrator museums - instead of just one - I might have taken the plunge and suggested that they are already “nymphomaniacs.” But, cautious as always, I held my tongue.

Oh! I see! A slippery slope to nymphomania! But not actually nymphomania, yet! Because female masturbation is clearly a sign of a deep psychological disorder that doesn't really exist.

In your letter, you also accuse me of “calling students such derogatory names as ‘whores’” which is “simply disgusting and inexcusable.” You also repeat (for good measure) the assertion that my speech “seems to go beyond the bounds of free speech and into the territory of "[Harassment] based on... sex," which is specifically mentioned in the Harassment Prevention Policy of the UNC system.
Actually, you really blew it, here, Liza. Recently, at “The Vagina Monologues” our campus feminists suggested that it is acceptable to call women “c**ts.” So, of course, had I really called them “whores” that would have been much better than calling them “c**ts” as the feminists would prefer. But, of course, I did not call them “whores.” ... [see above]
The only question, Liza, is whether you are, a) actually illiterate, or b) pretending to be illiterate in order to levy a false allegation of sexual harassment against me. Either way, things aren’t looking very good for you.

Okay. I did the Vagina Monologues. Nowhere does anyone in that play advocate calling women cunts. The word "cunt" is used in reference to the actual coochie, not the coochie-bearer, in an attempt to "reclaim" a word for a perfectly nice part of the body from the realm of the insulting and obscene.

And while he "did not call thes 'whores'" what he very clearly implied was that women who "fight the social stigma against female sexuality" are whores. Whores who should be ostracized. It doesn't take a very high level of literacy to figure that out.

Ick. I don't know why I am even wasting my time being annoyed with Mike "S is for Sperm" Adams. I'm just really glad that us Democrats are spared his attentions.