Shall Mr Vacula Make a Misstep in the Capital of Eire?

[Lsuoma]

Incoming Mabus alert.

[ERV]

And she gave Royal Assent, not royal approval.

My parents didnt push any kind of religion on me, but in retrospect, I grew up in an extremely anglophilic environment.

[Lsuoma]

Incoming Mabus alert.

Outgoing Mabus alert.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

The Pit is best when it's talking about the telly.

Has anyone seen the new sitcom, "George and Trayvon"?

No, but I'd watch a reality show starring Rachel Jeantel

[welch]

Technically, it's all Caffeine. I'm perpetually sleep-deprived, so I drink coffee on a scale that would make most people's kidney's implode. That, and in those quantities, it's rather handy for the ADD. Makes melissa crazy, since she loves coffee, but after about 6pm, if she drinks it, she's up all night. Me, I drink it to wind down, i find it relaxing.

Have you been tested for sleep apnea?

Yep, it's not that. It's that my normal sleep cycle is 12 hours long, and it's effectively impossible to get that more than one or two days a week. Pain in the ass is what it is.

[sacha]

Renee -
http://www.lifewithdogs.tv/2013/07/clef ... late-kids/

[Matt Cavanaugh]

Ignorant little girl.

http://i.imgur.com/80I5Ffy.png

I love Jen McCreight.

[Badger3k]

Thimbledick posted his "mission creep" video and text. Skimmed a bit until I got to this - the triumph of ideology over critical thinking (and reality, to be honest):

Skepticism as a method of thinking leads in generally one direction and not its opposite, whenever you apply it in determining the most appropriate position on any sliding-scale or binary choice. In the tug-of-war between religion and atheism, scientifically minded skepticism is the steadfast ally of us heathens. When you take that very same skepticism and apply it to a number of other societal constructs like prejudice and bigotry, or like political ideologies borne of wishful thinking and the multitudes of cognitive biases to which we humans are vulnerable, you will find that skepticism is the steadfast ally of one side over the other in those fights as well. If you form your moral and political ideologies based on the best available evidence, you pretty much always land on one side of the scale. Part of the problem here is that we may not always have all the data to make the best, most rational, most skeptical conclusions. And when people fail to come to the same conclusions over topics unrelated to the “core mission”, new rifts are borne, where both sides believe the other to have done skepticism wrong, and our movements fracture and splinter and fight with one another interminably.

It's amazing, but I have this feeling that the side of the scale that skepticism (ooh, don't tell PZ that - he abandoned that a while back, I hear) leads to is the one that Jason worships. Somehow, I think that will be found to be true. I also like that when you have a sliding scale, you'll always land on one side of it - ???? - on a sliding scale, where do the sides lie? Even, split halfway? Thirds? Quarters? I thought you used a sliding scale to illustrate gradations between two extremes. But Jason thinks that sliding scales are more like binary choices. I think. I know it's a bit of bafflegab, but I think that's what he's saying. It sure is what he is showing through his words elsewhere and his actions. This is basically Carrier's "With Us or a CHUD" speech.

Really, I doubt anybody here expected anything different, but...they really don't learn, do they? :naughty:

The paragraph before showed a bit of awareness:

I’ve come to realize over the past few years that our skeptical and atheist communities have a problem with change. Not that individuals don’t agitate for change, or that we are unwilling to adopt new strategies or incorporate new ideas — on the contrary. The problem our communities face is that there are several fragmented factions at play, each wanting to effect different sorts of change within our movements. One side wants to pull in a particular direction, fighting for or against a political ideology, while the other wants to pull the community in the polar opposite direction. And these directions are always political, even when not identified as such. Our problem with change is that the people agitating for it are pulling in different directions; we are politicking with one another. We are locked in a perpetual tug-of-war for the heart of the movement itself.

Then he completely ties his shoes together and falls flat on his face. :doh:

[Badger3k]

Ignorant little girl.

http://i.imgur.com/80I5Ffy.png

I love Jen McCreight.

[youtube]KHD2VRJvPUU[/youtube]

[Badger3k]

Hmm ... will it be three in a row or will someone else have commented while I typed this?

Well, I may as well post this as another in the series of "what else do you expect". but in Thimbles' post, he points out that at the video page, comments are disabled, but he will allow comments on his blog. Maybe I am wrong, but at the video, is it all or nothing? Either allow all or block all? Maybe it's not that way, but I gather that is why PZ refuses to allow comments on his videos - he doesn't exercise the ban as he does as his site. Thimble is the same way. Can comments or commenters be banned from YouTube? (seriously, I don't know. I am not even sure if I have any comments on my channel - it doesn't look like it though, and I have no idea what I can or cannot do)

[welch]

Ignorant little girl.

http://i.imgur.com/80I5Ffy.png

I love Jen McCreight.

But do you love her like a masturbating hobo?

[bovarchist]

The Pit is best when it's talking about the telly.

Has anyone seen the new sitcom, "George and Trayvon"?

No, but I'd watch a reality show starring Rachel Jeantel

Here Comes Ebony Boo Boo?

[sacha]

If a physics department has no women, does that mean there is hiring discrimination?

Only if your job in sociology is to find discrimination. Simple statistics shows that is not true or there would be claims of discrimination in psychology, where lots of departments have no men. Yet when it comes to gender equality advocates, physics is always mentioned and psychology never is.

A new analysis by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Statistical Research Center debunks the claim that the existence of all-male departments is evidence of hiring bias. Labor statistics have backed that up; not only are women hired equally for faculty and tenure jobs in science academia, they are over-hired based on their representation...

[bovarchist]

If a physics department has no women, does that mean there is hiring discrimination?

Only if your job in sociology is to find discrimination. Simple statistics shows that is not true or there would be claims of discrimination in psychology, where lots of departments have no men. Yet when it comes to gender equality advocates, physics is always mentioned and psychology never is.

A new analysis by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Statistical Research Center debunks the claim that the existence of all-male departments is evidence of hiring bias. Labor statistics have backed that up; not only are women hired equally for faculty and tenure jobs in science academia, they are over-hired based on their representation...

Well you don't know for sure what really happens in those hiring offices. All you really know for sure is that physics departments stalked and gunned down an unarmed black teen.

[sacha]

If a physics department has no women, does that mean there is hiring discrimination?

Only if your job in sociology is to find discrimination. Simple statistics shows that is not true or there would be claims of discrimination in psychology, where lots of departments have no men. Yet when it comes to gender equality advocates, physics is always mentioned and psychology never is.

A new analysis by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Statistical Research Center debunks the claim that the existence of all-male departments is evidence of hiring bias. Labor statistics have backed that up; not only are women hired equally for faculty and tenure jobs in science academia, they are over-hired based on their representation...

Well you don't know for sure what really happens in those hiring offices. All you really know for sure is that physics departments stalked and gunned down an unarmed black teen.

meh, one black kid, instead of:

There is zero data showing women are discriminated against in science, math or engineering - none. But because there used to be far more men and those men were not lined up against the wall and shot to make room for women in faculty, the claim is that science academia is still prejudiced against women.

[Gefan]

Since I tend to, literally, only get the cable TV hooked up for specific sporting events I can't add much to the TV recommendations, but Rome was amazing.
The idea of putting a couple of regular soldiers together and then using their lives as a thread to link together a series of dramatic major historical events was brilliant.
It looked gorgeous (which helped eventually doom it as too expensive), had great characters, great writing and the battle sequences were unusually well-researched and authentic.

Plus, I had a serious man-crush on both Kevin Mckidd and Ray Stevenson.

http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg ... 10x405.jpg

[sacha]

Dawkins, Gervais, and Pat Condell all tweet a link to Dillhunty's blog post on how to be an atheist without being a dick...

[rayshul]

Obviously they should have fired all the men and only hired women because patriarchy.

[Dick Strawkins]

For shits and giggles, Ophelia has a post up where she introduces Josh the "spokesgay" as a blogger (his blog is =http://www.morethanmen.org/2013/07/19/ ... -that/here

If the url doesn't show up, he's at "morethanmen.org" and he quoted by ophie, he writes to the "white gay doodz".

She even calls him a good writer! I think I threw up in my mouth a little.

Ophie's post is:http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterflies ... t-you-are/

Josh manages to demonstrate such a perfect example of hypocritical pontificating that I'm surprised he didn't get offered a blog at FTB.

BTW, has anyone else noticed what's happened to Ophelia now that Vacula has stopped tweeting @ her?
She doesn't have her excuse for writing her standard "Help! Help! I'm being harrassed!, posts - and now her comment section is like tumbleweed gulch.
She seems to have realized that she needs more drama/donations and on her latest post she tries to rekindle the "Michael Shermer is a sexist!" squib. Even her drama addicted comment herd must be face-palming at such blatant desperation.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

[Scrubs], has anybody mentioned [Scrubs] yet? This show (until season 6 at least) helped me go through a period of great depression where I was considering ending my life. I still re-watch it all regularily. The Janitor is probably my favorite character, closely followed by Perry Cox.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

I stopped watching Dexter the season before he had a son, I thought that would ruin it, but no?

The contrary, it raises the stakes. Season 2 is a weaker, but season 4 is stellar. Some seasons aren't as good as others, but overall a very solid and interesting show. It does introduce very interesting variations, but overall Dexter is more subtle in these changes. It has some major plot twists, but it is dominated by gradual shifts of relationships, slightly different issues etc. But its this “development” that makes it interesting in its own right (though not everyone will like it).

Which reminds me: if you ever feel like reading the book series by Lindsay, AVOID "DEXTER IN THE DARK" AT ALL COST!!! One hell of a piece of crap, that one, where Lindsay introduces actual demonic possession to explain Dexter's affinity with serial killers. He scrapped the whole idea and resumed the normal (and excellent) Dexter books afterward. Last I read was Double Dexter, which is very good.

[VAXherd]

If a physics department has no women, does that mean there is hiring discrimination?

Only if your job in sociology is to find discrimination. [...]

Oh, dear, more conservative blowhards who hate science when it disagrees with them.

It's both true and important that the existence of all-male Physics departments does not automatically prove discrimination. As noted in the study, if you have many small departments, random variation will produce some single-sex instances. And if the applicant pool is mostly male, the single-sex departments will be too.

From my quick look, however, Science 2.0 looks like an FTB grade cesspool. Everything seems to be judged politically first; if it doesn't fit then it's known to be be wrong, no need to understand it.

Why do so few women want to be physicists (or skeptics or atheists)? "I don't care," is an acceptable answer for a physicist, but not for a social scientist. Studying that sort of thing is what we do. And studying things seriously is not a pleasant experience for an ideologue, because you're always at least partly wrong.

If you want to look at gender issues, there are at least three nasties waiting for you:

1. There are genuine differences in biology between men and women.
2. There are genuine differences in the social pressures faced by men and women.
3. There is variation in both of those within men and women.

It might be true that (on average) women are inherently more uncomfortable than men in environments where feelings don't matter. It might also be true that (on average) girls are steered away from such environments, even of they personally like them. But it will be true that many women's choices in life have nothing to do with either of those averages.

This can all be picked apart and understood. But not if you're sure you already have The Answer.

[DownThunder]

It might be true that (on average) women are inherently more uncomfortable than men in environments where feelings don't matter. It might also be true that (on average) girls are steered away from such environments, even of they personally like them. But it will be true that many women's choices in life have nothing to do with either of those averages.

Never quite bought the "theyre steered away from X" line. Take any great achiever and you will find achievement in spite of opposition. From my own life as a male I can think of many areas of my life where I stuck with an activity over constant opposition. Unless there is some objective barrier stopping someone from participating in an activity, the argument that a woman's internal appraisal of her capability is the responsibility of others doesn't cut it. From what I gather, women get the treatment Paula Kirby spoke of, ie, enthusiastically encouraging women only to have them disinterested.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Since I tend to, literally, only get the cable TV hooked up for specific sporting events I can't add much to the TV recommendations, but Rome was amazing.
The idea of putting a couple of regular soldiers together and then using their lives as a thread to link together a series of dramatic major historical events was brilliant.
It looked gorgeous (which helped eventually doom it as too expensive), had great characters, great writing and the battle sequences were unusually well-researched and authentic.

Plus, I had a serious man-crush on both Kevin Mckidd and Ray Stevenson.

http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg ... 10x405.jpg

Eh! Vorenus and Pullo rescued by Pompey Magnus' (going under the nym Aneas Mella) Greek guide after their shipwreck. Direct aftermath of the battle of Pharsalus.

Damn, I love this show!

[VAXherd]

It might be true that (on average) women are inherently more uncomfortable than men in environments where feelings don't matter. It might also be true that (on average) girls are steered away from such environments, even of they personally like them. But it will be true that many women's choices in life have nothing to do with either of those averages.

Never quite bought the "theyre steered away from X" line. Take any great achiever and you will find achievement in spite of opposition. From my own life as a male I can think of many areas of my life where I stuck with an activity over constant opposition. Unless there is some objective barrier stopping someone from participating in an activity, the argument that a woman's internal appraisal of her capability is the responsibility of others doesn't cut it. From what I gather, women get the treatment Paula Kirby spoke of, ie, enthusiastically encouraging women only to have them disinterested.

Why are they "disinterested"? Or, more specifically, more disinterested than men?

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

I'd say different areas of interest/thought patterns/Godess Mother inspiration...

Or just different areas of interest.

[Tfoot]

The EPIC launch of FTBConscience!

Well PZ has launched FTBCon. Dave Silverman was going to give the introduction, but it turns out he was double booked, and guess which one he chose to ditch :lol:
So Dave sent em a video instead. However he decides to uses almost all of his intro (~80%) to promote his own book :roll:

Is a book promo really the sort of thing you want to set the theme for your online google hangout... sorry, online conference.
not that it really matters in any case because the video, having been up for ~10hrs, the video has an amazing 126 views.

They could reach more people by strapping on sandwich boards and walking around a city center yelling 'the end is nigh'

If they werent such a bunch of self righteous jerks who insist on throwing feces at everyone they think falls short of their pious standards, i would actually feel sorry for them and encourage them for trying. However they are the poisonous, antisocial feces flinging monkeys and even though I know it makes me a bad man, there's part of me thats enjoying this faceplant.

[Tfoot]

Okay, I watched the myers intro too. So many :lol:

In the beginning Ed Brayton explains:
"as far as I know this is the first conference ever to be done for the atheist community to be held entirely online'



Later Lousy Cannuck explains, that as all the talks will be put on youtube, you can 'time shift the entire conference'. Wow I always thought I was just posting videos, rather than speaking at online conferences which people could timeshift through the amazing online conference site of youtube!


BTW, Brayton is almost starting to sound like the posts that got me kicked off FTB. Yknow the one about the conference scene being very second tier when compared to the people that can be reached through online viral media.

[rpguest]

"as far as I know this is the first conference ever to be done for the atheist community to be held entirely online'

because we both cant be arsed and are entirely incapable of organizing a normal con and streaming the sessions so we have to take slacktivism to its highest conceivable summit

[Karmakin]

It might be true that (on average) women are inherently more uncomfortable than men in environments where feelings don't matter. It might also be true that (on average) girls are steered away from such environments, even of they personally like them. But it will be true that many women's choices in life have nothing to do with either of those averages.

Never quite bought the "theyre steered away from X" line. Take any great achiever and you will find achievement in spite of opposition. From my own life as a male I can think of many areas of my life where I stuck with an activity over constant opposition. Unless there is some objective barrier stopping someone from participating in an activity, the argument that a woman's internal appraisal of her capability is the responsibility of others doesn't cut it. From what I gather, women get the treatment Paula Kirby spoke of, ie, enthusiastically encouraging women only to have them disinterested.

Why are they "disinterested"? Or, more specifically, more disinterested than men?

I can think of three options, myself.

#1. Biological. Personally, for stuff like this I don't think there's enough variance between the genders for biology to apply.

#2. It being a hostile environment towards women in particular. There's a catch here, however. For this, you need to look at attrition rates, I think. How many women enter the field and then leave it? That's a good indicator of there being some sort of a hostile environment. There's also the notion of the threat narrative, which regardless of the actual situation can result in people changing their behavior in response to the narrative alone. This is one of the big factors of why neofeminism is actually very harmful, with its constant build-up of threat narratives. They're actually aiding the inequalities they claim to be fighting.

#3. External social pressure. That it's not socially acceptable for a woman to go into physics. The common assumption among neofeminists is that this is because men refuse to date women who are in that field...which of course is mostly bullshit. What's ignored is that there really is a strong anti-geek/nerd vibe among women, and that's the primary vector here.

So my take is that it's probably a combination of the threat narrative and the social pressure that's placed upon women, mostly by other women.

[cunt]

I think you should join Rationalia with me and we can be friends on there.

I think we'd be best off making a new forum with no topic or mission plan at all. We could call it Chat-Wank.

This is a good idea, but i'm lazy.

[rpguest]

no doubt attacks on gaiman for promulgating misogyny are coming soon

[youtube]GqcqapoFy-w[/youtube]

[16bitheretic]

Okay, I watched the myers intro too. So many :lol:

In the beginning Ed Brayton explains:
"as far as I know this is the first conference ever to be done for the atheist community to be held entirely online'

Depending on how one defines things, would DPRJones's 24 hour BlogTV events for MSF the last few years not beat FTB to the punch in presenting an online gathering designed specifically around the atheist/freethinker audience?

[Scented Nectar]

Canadian shows I've enjoyed include the previously mentioned davinci's inquest, regenesis, andromeda (yeah, i know... guilty) and corner gas.

"Intelligence" (2006) and "The Newsroom" (1996) are two Canadian shows that I greatly enjoyed. Unfortunately Intelligence was cancelled after season 2, which really left the audience hanging.

Being born yesterday, I only discovered Kids in The Hall a couple of years ago (Canadian). Saw a video on YouTube about men who fuck cars. I thought, "they sound American, but that's not American humor." Then I went and rented the first couple of series on Netflix.

I have the full all seasons set on dvd. I rewatched them all in a marathon that lasted at least a few days. There were sometimes Toronto based 'in jokes', like "the steps", which were simply the well known steps people sat around on outside of a Church Street coffee shop in the gay section of town. Seeing it on Kids in the Hall years later, cracked me up.

[youtube]rgF5SxGaCzc[/youtube]

[Hunt]

The only session I'm going to tune in for is the one nominally with Yudkowsky and Myers, if Myers actually shows up for it. It's on Sunday. Maybe I'm chasing a red herring here, but they seem like such diametrically opposing personalities that I'm hoping for some fireworks. Dog am I hoping for some fireworks. Anything other than "stigmatizing people with mental illness is bad, ya-know?"

[DW Adams]

Hmm ... will it be three in a row or will someone else have commented while I typed this?

Well, I may as well post this as another in the series of "what else do you expect". but in Thimbles' post, he points out that at the video page, comments are disabled, but he will allow comments on his blog. Maybe I am wrong, but at the video, is it all or nothing? Either allow all or block all? Maybe it's not that way, but I gather that is why PZ refuses to allow comments on his videos - he doesn't exercise the ban as he does as his site. Thimble is the same way. Can comments or commenters be banned from YouTube? (seriously, I don't know. I am not even sure if I have any comments on my channel - it doesn't look like it though, and I have no idea what I can or cannot do)

Comments can be set to "All" or "Approved", or uncheck for none.

[DW Adams]

Was just looking over the FTBullies online thingy.

Jason Thibeault

Skeptic, gamer, computer geek, feminist, atheist, asshole, Freethought Blogger, and damn good looking to boot. Now living in the US. How weird is THAT?

Who wrote this shit?

[katamari Damassi]

It's not just us that are growing bored of FTB/A+ and their ilk. I remember not too long ago mockery and ridicule of things like A+ was common in atheist and skeptic circles on sites like YouTube and now it seems like a distant memory and nobody gives a rats ass.

I doubt if you mentioned anyone outside of PZ and maybe Matt Dillahunty that r/atheism or any general discussion site with a good number of atheists and skeptics few would even know who people like Watson and Carrier are. It appears that amongst "freethinkers" that most associate atheism with Dawkins, Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher, Penn Jilette and George Carlin, and I would venture a guess that The Amazing Atheist's YouTube channel probably gets enough hits to make most of the crazies from the SJW fanatic base jealous.

Please. The Amazing Atheist's video was bad enough, but I do not want to see Peezus and Twatson trying to top shoving a banana up one's ass.

[katamari Damassi]

[Scrubs], has anybody mentioned [Scrubs] yet? This show (until season 6 at least) helped me go through a period of great depression where I was considering ending my life. I still re-watch it all regularily. The Janitor is probably my favorite character, closely followed by Perry Cox.

Scrubs was terrific until it changed networks. Some other good sitcoms; do you get Modern Family over there, or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

[katamari Damassi]

Shit! Forgot Big Bang Theory.

[justinvacula]

Live episode with Susan Jacoby begins at 11AM Eastern! Join the live show, chat, call in!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bravehero/ ... san-jacoby

and Karla is back from vacation :)

[katamari Damassi]

re tv recommendations

I get too interested in unworthy shows and get burned out on them then hate them, so I don't generally recommend....but

In the past i've gotten too interested in watching law and order and ali mcbeal for instance. Couldn't watch them now. I don't tend to let my life revolve around tv... now i watch highlights on youtube or something. I don't generally buy dvds of tv and don't do netflicks.

Canadian shows I've enjoyed include the previously mentioned davinci's inquest, regenesis, andromeda (yeah, i know... guilty) and corner gas.

For a really good oldie american tv show (yes they exist) try Wiseguy. I also enjoyed dead like me.

For a unique movie experience rent or buy Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
It's in inuktitut and on the dvd you can turn on not just english subtitles, but anthropological notes as well. It has a slow pace but I enjoyed it .

Good movie but the scene of the naked guy running with the sounds of a jew's harp cracked me up.

[debaser71]

Live episode with Susan Jacoby begins at 11AM Eastern! Join the live show, chat, call in!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bravehero/ ... san-jacoby

and Karla is back from vacation :)

Despite all this talk about male atheists being thew leaders (from the FTB crowd) Susan Jacoby was one of the first atheists I knew about in the media. She'd have articles and such in the NYTimes. Her plus Ellen Johnson (of AA) and Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)...it was almost an all woman show...at least who was going on tv and talking about atheism. So when the FTB crowd talks about male atheist leaders only...it sound very stupid...as if where were they 10-15 years ago? In grade school? Too young to notice atheism in the media?

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Other good show (although it takes the pilot + few episodes to get hooked) is the defunct Space: Above And Beyond. I can't recommend it enough to sci-fy fans.

[debaser71]

Justin and Karla, regarding your podcast...and town hall...christians pray and put up "god bless american banners" etc in/on the public square to mark their territory. This is why they fight tooth and nail to not include others, to not end their constitutional violations. I call it territorial pissings.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Can't join the talk at Justin's. Maybe it's all for the best...

[Slither]

Never quite bought the "theyre steered away from X" line. Take any great achiever and you will find achievement in spite of opposition. From my own life as a male I can think of many areas of my life where I stuck with an activity over constant opposition. Unless there is some objective barrier stopping someone from participating in an activity, the argument that a woman's internal appraisal of her capability is the responsibility of others doesn't cut it. From what I gather, women get the treatment Paula Kirby spoke of, ie, enthusiastically encouraging women only to have them disinterested.

Why are they "disinterested"? Or, more specifically, more disinterested than men?

I can think of three options, myself.
...

There's a fourth option:

4. There's actually no more disinterest amongst women than would be expected. Instead, men are more discouraged from going into other fields (like English, art, social work, psychology, etc) and so end up in the hard sciences.

[BarnOwl]

The EPIC launch of FTBConscience!

Well PZ has launched FTBCon. Dave Silverman was going to give the introduction, but it turns out he was double booked, and guess which one he chose to ditch :lol:
So Dave sent em a video instead. However he decides to uses almost all of his intro (~80%) to promote his own book :roll:

Is a book promo really the sort of thing you want to set the theme for your online google hangout... sorry, online conference.
not that it really matters in any case because the video, having been up for ~10hrs, the video has an amazing 126 views.

They could reach more people by strapping on sandwich boards and walking around a city center yelling 'the end is nigh'

If they werent such a bunch of self righteous jerks who insist on throwing feces at everyone they think falls short of their pious standards, i would actually feel sorry for them and encourage them for trying. However they are the poisonous, antisocial feces flinging monkeys and even though I know it makes me a bad man, there's part of me thats enjoying this faceplant.

So I started watching the Climate Change panel on Google+, and Laden and some other guy whose name I can't be arsed to remember were talking about basic basic basic principles of physics, as applied to climate change. "Well," I thought, after about 41.25s, "I don't need a lecture on physics or climate change from either of these individuals, so I'll go do something else."

Then I decided to watch the next panel, which seemed to be more of the same yammering about social justice activism (which none of them really seem engaged with, in any practical sense that I can discern). FFS my running club did more "social justice activism" this morning, by collecting donations from all of us for the city food bank, before we headed out for our monthly urban distance run. Yemmy appears to be in imminent danger of providing the audience with a boob shot on her webcam - I inadvertently did this when practicing Skype with a friend in the lecture hall, in advance of a presentation with the students. Yemmy's boob shot threat is quite a bit greater than mine, too. If you put the webcam at a level below your chin and chest, you're going to provide your audience with a boob shot. Maybe she wants to do that, I dunno.

[Skep tickle]

After posting about two dozen comments about TV shows I should mention that I don't actually own a telly.

what does one need a telly for? I haven't had one in years

I never owned one until I was married. No phone either. Never missed either, ever.

I have one now, but rarely watch it, but the wife like shows like some mentioned earlier - Dalton Abbey I think? Sounded familiar anyway.

I'd rather read or, more likely, study art and work on my own photography. 'The great wasteland' was a very appropriate description of the old boob tube.

My family had a TV until I was 5. Apparently my dad put it away then when, during a show, he asked if I wanted to be a doctor and I said, "Don't be silly, daddy, girls can't be doctors, girls can only be nurses." I thought for years that the TV went away because it had broken.

Since then, the only stretch of time I've had a TV was from age 11-17 (after I found the old TV in the attic & discovered that it worked). I watched lots of reruns of Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, Flintstones, maybe a little Brady Bunch.

Went to college at age 17 and haven't lived in a place with a TV since. Watch it sometimes at the in-laws' or when staying in a hotel, but the desperate bid for viewers' attention (esp noticeable in ads & in news shows) is a turn-off. Also, there mostly seems to be lots of channels with nothing good on. IMO seems like a huge time sink w/ little return.

When enough people recommend a show, we've watched it online or gotten it on DVD. Watched past seasons of Big Bang Theory that way, and have indoctrinated shown our kid with all of Futurama, Battlestar Galactica, ST:TNG, and DS9. But, yay, without commercials and in our own time frame. So what if we're a few years, or even a decade, past its popular years - if it's a good show, it'll have staying power.

Oh, and, also, get off my lawn! :D

[Skep tickle]

Never quite bought the "theyre steered away from X" line. Take any great achiever and you will find achievement in spite of opposition. From my own life as a male I can think of many areas of my life where I stuck with an activity over constant opposition. Unless there is some objective barrier stopping someone from participating in an activity, the argument that a woman's internal appraisal of her capability is the responsibility of others doesn't cut it. From what I gather, women get the treatment Paula Kirby spoke of, ie, enthusiastically encouraging women only to have them disinterested.

Why are they "disinterested"? Or, more specifically, more disinterested than men?

I can think of three options, myself.

#1. Biological. Personally, for stuff like this I don't think there's enough variance between the genders for biology to apply.

#2. It being a hostile environment towards women in particular. There's a catch here, however. For this, you need to look at attrition rates, I think. How many women enter the field and then leave it? That's a good indicator of there being some sort of a hostile environment. There's also the notion of the threat narrative, which regardless of the actual situation can result in people changing their behavior in response to the narrative alone. This is one of the big factors of why neofeminism is actually very harmful, with its constant build-up of threat narratives. They're actually aiding the inequalities they claim to be fighting.

#3. External social pressure. That it's not socially acceptable for a woman to go into physics. The common assumption among neofeminists is that this is because men refuse to date women who are in that field...which of course is mostly bullshit. What's ignored is that there really is a strong anti-geek/nerd vibe among women, and that's the primary vector here.

So my take is that it's probably a combination of the threat narrative and the social pressure that's placed upon women, mostly by other women.

Bolded line #1: You said "personally", but why did you say this? I'm aware of research that shows boys being stronger in math & spatial reasoning, important in physics, and also some research showing that may be cultural (or might be overcome culturally, unclear to me which) and/or that females develop in those areas later than males.

Bolded line #2: "that's the primary vector here"? As Missourians might say, "show me".

I haven't seen a "strong anti-geek/nerd vibe" among women who are interested in, and good at, physics/math, nor that such women would drop physics/math because other girls might look down on it/them. (My experience obviously isn't universal, but I was one of those girls who did well in math & the sciences, had friends who didn't share those interests, attended [state name] Institute of Technology as an undergrad, then got a graduate degree in a geeky/nerdy field before leaving that field for one that's much more people-oriented.)

[bhoytony]

What happened there? The pic was showing then it disappeared.

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/3985/xv83.png

yeah, I'd do that. Merkins and hoodies are rare though, and I do like a hoodie

Merkins?

[BarnOwl]

http://forgifs.com/gallery/d/199584-2/S ... opkick.gif

[bhoytony]

http://forgifs.com/gallery/d/199584-2/S ... opkick.gif

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m39vv ... o1_400.gif

[Badger3k]

What happened there? The pic was showing then it disappeared.

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/3985/xv83.png

yeah, I'd do that. Merkins and hoodies are rare though, and I do like a hoodie

Merkins?

Merkins

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... nlight.jpg

[debaser71]

Many times when a woman who does well in school she does well across the board. Therefore when she takes STEM classes and sees how hard they are, she can still opt out and do something easier, more flexible, with "cooler" students, and more sociability. There's IMO nothing wrong with that. I started college all gung-ho, dual majoring in astronomy and physics. By the time I was done with school I had switched to geology and natural science....much easier, less studying, etc. I never did anything with my science education. I went into IT/MIS...even easier than geo and natural science.

This is in addition to what others have said.

[sacha]

What happened there? The pic was showing then it disappeared.

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/3985/xv83.png

yeah, I'd do that. Merkins and hoodies are rare though, and I do like a hoodie

Merkins?

Isn't the Sons of Anarchy a teevee show made in the US with Merkin actors?

[sacha]

http://forgifs.com/gallery/d/199584-2/S ... opkick.gif

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m39vv ... o1_400.gif

I realise I'm evil, but I fucking love these. Fuck that violent child, I hope the cat got him good

[Tigzy]

Merkins

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... nlight.jpg

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/phgXkSbGlQo/hqdefault.jpg

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

I realise I'm evil, but I fucking love these. Fuck that violent child, I hope the cat got him good

I agree 100% First kid maybe didn't deserve much, but I hope the second one will remember that shit for years. I think, put that gif as his screensaver until he's not such a dumb fuck anymore!

[debaser71]

The lesson that some things might strike back...is important to learn. Or is that kid gonna be a bully anyway?