Oceanographer Dr. Edith Widder talks about how she invented the camera rig designed to attract and film the giant squid recently filmed and shown in the Discover documentary.
Dr. Widder is the president, senior scientist and CEO of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association. And she is a total bad ass. A really cool example of women doing important and fun stuff.
I’ve been meaning to make these shirts since the first Twilight movie came out, because I never cared much for Edward or Jacob, but I do care a lot about dessert. I also have a vague recollection of having a (semi-sober) discussion (argument) with someone about whether cake or pie was better, which was quite a silly thing to have a disagreement about because everyone knows that pie is better than cake. Thankfully, I don’t remember with whom I was having this discussion, so I can’t hold their wrong opinion against them. (Notice I was nice enough to make a shirt for the misguided cake-espousers. Because I’ll take their money, even though they’re wrong.)
I know it’s fashionable to hate on Smash recently, but you gotta at least admit that Jennifer Hudson KILLS this song. I’ve been playing this on repeat all week. Favorite line – “And when heartache comes a’calling, / I won’t even try to run / Cause it’s all that makes me know that I’m alive.” (Not exactly applicable in my life right now given that I’m happily married, but it still resonates.)
She actually fights Nazis in this video, which is supposed to be her thing, unlike today where she’s just fighting greek mythology or some such. And her boots are really cool.
This is an Indiana Senate Bill targeted at Indianapolis and designed to take away a great deal of political voting power of Indianapolis residents. If you are a resident of Indianapolis proper, READ THE TEXT of this bill and see the direct impact this bill has on you. Hell, even if you’re not an Indianapolis resident (Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville) you should be opposing this bill. The bill has passed the Indiana Senate and is poised to go through the Indiana House of Representatives, so contact your Representative. Contact info for your legislators is at the bottom of this post.
I’ve mentioned this bill before in another post, but let me break it down more completely.
It does several really heinous things:
1) removes “at large” city county council seats
The goal of this is clear – to reduce Democratic representation on the city-county council. Indianapolis’ city council districts are gerrrymandered like CRAZY. There are far more Democrats than Republicans in Indianapolis, but Republicans have rigged the districts so well (?) that they keep council seats election season after election season. The only way that Democrats get on the city-county council is through “at large” seats where voters can finally put the people they actually want to represent them in office. Eliminating these “at large” seats is terrible for both parties and serves no justifiable purpose from a pure government point of view, but it definitely helps the Republicans continue to have unfair respresentation in Indianapolis city government. (And a side note – there’s also some serious homophobia driving this. Zach Adamson getting elected to an At-Large City Council seat in Indianapolis really terrifies Republicans, so much so that they are trying to eliminate his seat altogether.)
2) makes changes to the Indianapolis goverment roles
The paragraphs about county treasurer, county auditor, and county assessor and controllers are hard to parse – essentially it gives the mayor a lot more power and removes power from other officials and from the city-county council, which means you have less representation.
3) reduces the amount of time someone must reside in Indianapolis before running for elected office.
There’s never good justification for reducing the amount of time someone should live somewhere before running for political office there. In Indianapolis we have a carpetbagger problem with Republicans who don’t live in Indianapolis moving into the city (sometimes from Hamilton County and other surrounding wealthier counties, but also from outside central Indiana) specificallly to try to get elected office in Indianapolis, where they can try to influence politics for Democrats who have been living in Indianapolis all of their lives. It’s a “have your cake and eat it too” win for Republicans, who don’t want to actually live in Indianapolis, but who want to control the politics here.
4) makes counting absentee ballots more difficult in key counties and eliminates ballots from being counted after polls are closed.
Those three counties in the last paragraph are listed for a reason – they’re heavily Democratic. Forcing absentee ballots to be counted in a central location makes it more likely that ballots will be eliminated, and helps the Republican party.
Indiana Senate Bill 621 (SB 621)
Here is the full text of the bill:
Local government issues.
Provides that the consolidated law enforcement department of a county having a consolidated city is a division of the department of public safety under the direction and control of the director of public safety.
Eliminates the requirement that the city-county council approve the director and deputy appointments of the mayor of the consolidated city.
Eliminates provisions that allow the city-county council to require the capital improvement board of managers to make payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTS) for deposit in the consolidated county fund.
Allows the mayor of a consolidated city to appoint two additional members to the metropolitan development commission, and eliminates the appointments of the county board of commissioners (consisting of the county treasurer, county auditor, and county assessor).
Allows the controller of the consolidated city and county to allot amounts appropriated to an office, department, or agency of the consolidated city or county.
Effective January 1, 2016, reduces the membership of the city-county council from 29 to 25 members by eliminating the members elected at large.
Requires a candidate for mayor of the consolidated city to reside in the city for at least one year (instead of five years) before taking office.
Requires a candidate for member of the city-county council to reside within the council district for at least one year (instead of two years) before taking office.
Provides that if the division of the county into city-county council districts is reviewed by a panel of judges, the clerk of the court must keep a record of the method and process of selecting the panel and make the record available for public inspection and copying.
Provides that in Marion County, a township board consists of five (instead of seven) members. Provides that members of the initial five member township board are elected at the November 2016 general election.
Requires absentee ballots in Marion, Lake, and Allen counties to be counted at a central location unless the county election board unanimously adopts a resolution that: (1) requires absentee ballots to be counted at individual precincts; and (2) states the county election board’s basis for adopting the requirement.
1) To figure out your district and state legislators visit this link: District Look Up and enter your address. Contact information – usually a phone number and the legislator’s website – is listed. Call their 1-800 number, or visit their website and find contact information for an email.
2013 Update: This bill was passed by the Indiana State Legislature and signed into law by Governor Mike Pence.
A shirt design I put together, inspired by this photo:
The Marching Delinquents. Now that’s a school band I imagine I could fit into.
I almost forgot to post this very important video.
Maybe that’s not your cup of tea, though. (Tea, get it?) Maybe try this instead.
Or, it could be that you like drag queens. That’s your choice. You’ll probably love Dina Martina.
Very cool news from comic writer Mark Waid:
For the last few months, a talented university teacher named Christy Blanch has been putting together a college-level course called “Gender Through Comic Books”–but it’s not limited to college students. It’s the world’s first comics-related Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)–meaning that it will be FREELY AVAILABLE to ANYONE across the world who has web access and who’s interested in comics and in the creative process. There’s no obligation, NO COST, and all you have to do is take thirty seconds to enroll at the following site:
This course is presented by (my alma mater) Ball State University on this very interesting Canvas Open Online Course platform that I’ve heard of several times before.
It’s about comic books, gender and women’s issues, writing. Boy is this up my alley. I signed up for it. If you’re interested in similar topics, you should too.
Almost 6 years ago, in March of 2007, technologist and public speaker Kathy Sierra shuttered her online site and declined her speaking engagement at O’Reilly ETech because she had been threatened and harassed online and feared personal attacks in real life. [Geek Feminism Wiki: Kathy Sierra Incident] At the time, it generated an outpouring of discussion about the abuse that women who speak in public, especially women in the technology field, face on the basis of their sex. I had attended her keynote address at SXSW that year, and was shocked that such a competent and engaging speaker was being terrorized online, and felt she needed to step out of the limelight for her own safety.
There’s been an ongoing discussion about the lack of women speakers at Tech conferences in the intervening years, with some of the best and the brightest tech conferences making an engaged and active commitment to gender diversity.
But as designer and tech speaker Sarah Parmenter discovered after speaking publicly at several public events this past year, female tech speakers are still the targets of harassment from men in the tech field. [Speaking Up] After Sarah spoke out about her experience, others have come forward: Relly Annett-Baker [Also Speaking Up].
If your wondering why there is such a climate of hostility towards women in the tech field, Milo Yiannopoulos’s incredibly sexist post on Kernel [Put A Sock In It, You Dickless Wonders] will go a long way towards shining a light on it:
For this is the technology industry: there are more men in it because the male mind is, in general, better primed with the sorts of skills the industry values; men are simply better suited to most technology jobs.
Women therefore tend to work in roles that require finesse and communicative skills, where they pop up in this world at all. What is hard to understand about this, or offensive about pointing it out? The sexes are wired differently, and that’s perfectly fine.
There will be exceptions. Women who succeed should be celebrated – though on their merits, not because they have a vagina (hello, Evening Standard). But there will always be more men. It’s a biological inevitability.
It’s certainly nothing to feel crippling guilt about.
Obviously a load of pure hogwash; there’s no evidence that men and women are wired differently or that such sweeping generalizations are even remotely true. [Susan Fisk, Is the female brain innately inferior? subject: Josef Parvizi, Clayman Institute fellow and assistant professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University]
But that this attitude is published on a tech blog is very telling about what men in the tech industry think as they listen to women speak. It’s not surprising that women would be reluctant to step up to a podium, given this sort of a climate. The experiences that Kathy Sierra, Sarah Parmenter, Relly Annett-Baker faced were not meant merely to silence them, but also to silence women in general in the tech industry.
Fortunately, there are some organizations like the The Ada Initiative working actively to change things for women in technology, by providing guidelines for tech conferences on how to handle harassment of women speakers and attendees, conducting research and surveys about women in the industry, holding their own conferences and a half dozen other great programs design to make things better. Support them if you can, and promote their work.
Instead of assuming that people are dumb, ignorant, and making mistakes, assume they are smart, doing their best, and that you lack context.
— Nicholas C. Zakas (@slicknet) February 10, 2013
This particular tweet has stuck in my head all week long because I need to remember it when I’m considering other folks and things they do that I don’t understand.