Friday Ephemera
About bloody time, giant robot slippers with giant robot sound. // Yes, someone ate this. From green eggs and ham to the great beige unknown. // Quantified toilets, because someone needs to know. // The Kentucky meat shower of 1876. // How to survive a lightning strike. // How to see without glasses. // Self-cleaning car, but only on the outside. // Thumbles. // Relics. // Feminist biology. // Christopher Walken has all the moves. // Marshmallow kitties. // Manual action scent diffuser. // The urge to squeeze. // Turn it 90 degrees. // Colosses. // How to bag your comics properly. // Ventilators and packing chips. // Calculating pi with a pump-action shotgun. // And finally, doodle in the air with a 3D printing pen.
Good morning David
“Christopher Walken has all the moves”
He should be called Christopher Dancen.
Chris Walken is a bit scary in HD, but my God, the man can dance if he wants to. He can leave your friends behind. And he can act like he comes from out of this world, leave the real one far behind.
“Feminist biology”
I’m looking forward to the exciting discoveries these brave new feminist biologists (biologesses?) make. There’s some encouraging news on the blog of the young lady who is their first post-doctorate research fellow, Caroline Van Popsickle:
http://vansickle.blog.com/
“Science is like a river: scientists conduct research in a general direction, but due to surprising results and innovative applications of new discoveries, their research often branches off in unexpected directions, much like the tributaries.”
Well, I’m pretty sure that’s the exact opposite of how rivers work, but let’s assume basic primary school geography and precision in the use of similes isn’t her thing and move on…
“Tributaries have the potential to lead to amazing discoveries that could not have been predicted in a proposal. For example, the pacemaker was discovered by accident by a scientist researching hypothermia. Chemotherapy was developed using a synthetic dye that was discovered accidentally during research on malaria (making it a tributary of a tributary). Many other products we depend on today have been discovered by researchers who were studying something else.”
A valid point. Unfortunately young Caroline is not a scientist. She’s an anthropologist, a field of study which is to science what being able to approximate the national anthem via the medium of armpit squelching is to classical music. It’s cargo cult science, at best. The academic equivalent of those toy steering wheels you can put in the back of your car to let your toddler pretend he’s driving.
But let’s not be snobbish, perhaps her research into feminist biology will yield some startling new inventions like the pacemaker or chemotherapy. Possibly a new seismometer that is calibrated to measure microaggressions. Or an improved version of the Church of Scientology’s E-meter that checks your privilege, so you don’t have to. Or a rape alarm that automatically goes off whenever anyone with a Y-chromosome is in the vicinity. The possibilities really are limited.
However, I trust that the lack of compelling real-world applications for the new feminist biology won’t deter its brave pioneers from expanding their grant applications into other areas of scientific study.
Imagine if Marie Curie hadn’t been oppressed by the masculine scientific method (more like scientific MANthod, am I right? No? OK then), and was free to conduct her research in a feminist manner. Instead of discovering harmful, cancer-causing radioactive isotopes, she could have cured all that ails womynkind by following this intriguing line of research suggested by noted online RadFem Witchy Wind:
“I know as a matter of fact that some women do have the capacity to communicate with plants and trees and living beings in different ways, they ask the plant what kind of healing powers she has and the plant may reply, if she wants to.”
Imagine if Jocelyn Bell hadn’t wasted her time on male-dominated radio astronomy and discovering boring pulsars. She could have harnessed the power of feminist ideology to explore “the Realm of Wild Reality; the Homeland of Women’s Selves and of all other Others; the Time/Space where auras of plants, planets, stars, animals and all Other animate beings connect.” as described by this chap: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/27/mary-daly-obituary
Can you imagine? We’d all be living on a kind of Sapphic Avatar planet by now.
Except for the men, they’d be exiled to space in a sort of spinny, two-dimensional prison like the Phantom Zone the baddies were trapped in at the start of Superman 2: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xY_0wP2Xa0Q/UpaoIqxBcYI/AAAAAAAAETY/no6i8AUh35g/s1600/supermanii-space2.png
From green eggs and ham to the great beige unknown.
There’s a lot of scary beige food out there.
I like this one. Cheese will make it better.
Cheese will make it better.
Adding cheese has rescued many a lacklustre meal, and as a general principle there’s something to it. Though I fear the chap above has gone a tad too far. It’s more an inch-deep layer of insulating fat. It’s a bit like mayonnaise, which can enliven the humdrum and bind disparate leftovers into a plausible sandwich, like edible cement. But you don’t want the stuff running freely down your chin.
Cat crap dog treats.
the men, they’d be exiled to space in a sort of spinny, two-dimensional prison like the Phantom Zone
As a child I was very impressed by the Donner-era Phantom Zone. It seems a little more elegant than the rigmarole with the Kryptonian sex toys.
Chris Walken has FLOW
Van Sickle has a point, though. I mean it’s not like Margaret Mead was ever a household name. And I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Hollywood to cast, say, Sigourney Weaver in a movie about a primate researcher.
The 10 minute lecture on Mylar versus polypropylene comic bags nearly killed me.
The 10 minute lecture on Mylar versus polypropylene comic bags nearly killed me.
I think the hobby attracts a certain, um, thoroughness. And it’s good to know that a Mylar comic bag has “one-third the strength of steel.”
David – 🙂
Yes, being trapped in double glazing is definitely more dignified than space penises.
Although Terence Stamp’s General Zod had a thing about getting men to kneel before him. Which is so cliched anyway. I’d have made them dance before Zod.
James – Yes!
Slightly unrelated but you reminded me of something I’ve seen a lot of in the geekier corners of the internet lately: complaints that there aren’t more female superhero films.
Apparently Hollywood is sexist and hates money, which is why they’ve not made a Wonder Woman or Black Widow movie even though half their audience is female.
It’s not because Catwoman and Elektra were flops, indicating maybe there isn’t a big audience for female-led comic book adaptions.
I, for one, would pay good money to see a Power Girl film.
Although Terence Stamp’s General Zod had a thing about getting men to kneel before him. Which is so cliched anyway.
You have to admit that things have indeed changed. From the Superman movies to the remake of Cosmos, these days it’s Neil after Zod . . .
I, for one, would pay good money to see a Power Girl film.
Which is as good an excuse as any to use the term “boob window.”
I can’t identify this one!
Which is lame, because some of those other items are still in use at chez dicentra.
Also, the economics of political correctness. Word of the day: “positional good,” “a good that people acquire to signalise where they stand in a social hierarchy; it is acquired in order to set oneself apart from others.” Conclusion: “Political Correctness is really just a special form of conspicuous consumption, leading to a zero-sum status race.”
Welcome to the club, pal.
I can’t identify this one!
No idea. Maybe they contained some kind of tape or printing ribbon?
Welcome to the club, pal.
Heh. As Franklin puts it, “we have something approaching a unified field theory of cultural failure.”
But let’s not be snobbish, perhaps her research into feminist biology will yield some startling new inventions like the pacemaker or chemotherapy.
Like the Ursula le Guin short story about Eve “unnaming” the animals, feminist science will “uninvent.”
I think we can all agree that they’ve made considerable headway thus far.
I can’t identify this one!
No idea. Maybe they contained some kind of tape or printing ribbon?
Bingo: Dot matrix ink ribbons, changed . . . just enough of ’em at one point or another to still recognize at first sight.
Heh. As Franklin puts it, . . .
. . with one comment being;
. . . The other is the trend in identity politics of expressing ever greater outrage over ever lesser transgressions . ..
Sayre’s law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.” By way of corollary, it adds: “That is why academic politics are so bitter.”
Franklin’s post leads to this gem from a self-described militant feminist:
I think I littered #INeedFeminismBecause with similar statements just last month.
Whoopsie! Here’s the link: http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9141292/dont-you-dare-tell-me-to-check-my-privilege/
So the score stands as follows:
OUT — Intersectionality
IN — Strange Bedfellows
I think that women should only use computers that are designed according to the principles of feminist logic.
Cheese will make it better
Point of Order: That’s Velveeta or I didn’t grow up in 1960s Middle America, dammit.
The comments at the ‘Pi and shotgun’ link are great.
Poor hoplophobes.
My favorite Christopher Walken dance video is the Weapon of Choice video.
The spam filter is being temperamental again. If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll shake them free.
The feminist biology: it’s laughable, but such is the political will behind it that it could catch on.
One of the many idiotic assumptions you see in in many newspapers and television news and current affairs shows is that men and women are by nature interested in the same things, and if they choose different professions it must be some malign social influence.
The history of this idea is interesting. Feminists once claimed that men and women were the same psychologically speaking, that there was no evidence to think otherwise. In the 70s and onward the trickle of evidence showing the differences began to turn into a deluge.
Did the feminists admit defeat? NEVER! The ones who realised they’d lost that argument switched to talking about “the infinite adaptability & plasticity of human nature” – trying to pretend that all the brain chemistry didn’t really matter, that we could break free of our biology.
There needs to be a new word to describe feminist denial – but their ideas still take hold.