Reheated (99)
For newcomers, some items from the archives:
Romantic complications of a very modern kind.
To which, Mags adds, “He she didn’t use her his pronouns.” Indeed. A notable omission. One that results in finger-wagging from fellow Reddit forum regulars: “You do have to respect that SHE is the expert on her own gender, not you.”
It’s a bold claim. Despite which, the person being scolded – a woman who expects to be taken seriously as a man – can’t bring herself to take seriously as a woman her own male partner. There’s no she or her, just a grudging them. Which does rather cast some doubt on the broader enterprise.
It’s Trivial When The Victim Is Someone Who Isn’t Me.
Habitual car theft is a “victimless” crime, says Nora the socialist.
Assistant professor wants to censor the “violent” language of astronomy.
It’s all terribly oppressive – for the implausibly faint of heart, I mean. And should a colleague carelessly refer to a planet being stripped of its ozone layer by a catastrophic gamma-ray burst, this is obviously “misogynistic language” and a basis for the sternest of hands-on-hips chiding.
At which point, readers may wish to ponder whether the best people to be doing astronomy, or teaching astronomy, or to be making workplace rules for astronomers, are the kinds of people who mouth dogmatic assertions without any trace of supporting logic, and who are distracted, even distressed, by hearing the word collision being used to describe a collision.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
‘Modern’ as in ‘totally cuckoo’?
Well, simply holding up a mirror, literally and figuratively, does seem to cause an awful lot of bother. And if initiates, those on the inside, can’t follow the rules, what chance do the rest of us have?
Still chuckling at the claim that “drag queen is a look,” a valid ambition, and viable romantic bait.
Can’t say I’m getting a tingle.
Boss title.
Thank you. It does, I think, tickle the nub of it.
I think someone should check his hard drive.
Dr Madrid does seem oddly animated by these things, breathlessly so. To a degree one might find eyebrow-raising. And then there’s his urge to exert control over people and what they may say, to infantilise grown adults and make them submit to his own weird preoccupations. There is, I think, some unhappy psychology in play.
As I said in the original thread, I’ve seen umpteen astronomy documentaries in which a white dwarf star cannibalises its neighbour, or in which reference is made to a gamma-ray burst stripping away the ozone layers of any habitable planets in its path; but any lurid sexual connotations – and thus somehow a pretext for the word “misogynistic” – have not been foremost in my mind.
But hey, maybe that’s just me.
You may have found a bouncer for this place.
If anyone’s getting aroused by this thread, I’m upping the price of the drinks.
[ Starts compiling Friday’s Ephemera. ]
Speaking of Ms. “Go ahead and steal cars,” she’d like to see the manager:
I would guess Dear Nora is annoyed by many unremarkable things. As opposed to habitual thieving, of course, which she merrily dismisses as of no importance.
Because, again, it’s being done to someone else.
Not going spelunking back down that thread but unless car insurance is significantly different in Canada, and thus Canadians pay a hell of a lot more for car insurance, the victims do not “get new cars”. Even if their car that was stolen was brand new, they aren’t getting anywhere near the same quality vehicle, let alone a “new” car.
I think he’s anticipating his charge sheet.
Matthew 23:24 comes to mind.
I’m still pondering Dr Madrid’s claim that,
Again, given the unequal distribution of interest, aptitude, and cognitive wherewithal, one might wonder why. No answer is offered, of course. The question is simply begged, along with so much else.
But I very much doubt that mathematics departments or fine art courses, or drama schools, or hairdressing courses, “reflect the composition of our society,” and I see no reason why they should. So why should astronomy departments? Why is it something astronomers should strive for, seemingly at the expense of other, more obvious duties?
How else is Madrid to advance in his career? Surely you don’t expect him to demonstrate any aptitude or merit.
Dr Madrid’s implication that female astronomy students, and especially female astronomy students who happen to be brown, will somehow be emotionally devastated by hearing the words collision or stripped uttered with regard to astronomical phenomena is, to say the least, a tad fanciful.
And not unlike the claim, aired here by Ricardo Rocha, that would-be botanists and biologists are in some way being psychologically injured by the fact that much of the “flora of New Caledonia” is “named after a man.”
These people should be chased away with brooms and chair legs.