links for 2010-01-31
-
Sadly, I do this far too often myself. I should really be ashamed. Ha!
Financial Times Columnist fails at life
This lovely article on The Financial Times: Lunch with the FT: Gloria Steinem, says By Chrystia Freeland:
For most of this decade, the conventional wisdom has had it that feminism in America is dead – or, at least, irrelevant. The New York Times talked to female students at Yale and found them to be mostly interested in becoming housewives. Sex and the City told us that even the ones who became career girls were more interested in men and Manolos than in their actual careers.
What? That’s what you got out of Sex and the City? FAIL. Please try again.
And more that makes me sigh with irritation:
While I’m a feminist and Steinem is one of my heroes, I didn’t share her enthusiasm for Clinton’s candidacy, partly because getting to the White House by having been married to a president seemed rather more an affirmation of traditional women’s roles than a shattering of the glass ceiling.
So, all the political work she’s done her entire life, and the work she’s done in the Senate mean nothing, compared to “been married to a president”? Jesus – FAIL again. WTF? Read something about Clinton before you say stupid shit, please.
I’m afraid to keep reading the whole thing. I did scroll down to the bottom to note that “Chrystia Freeland is managing editor of the FT’s US edition.”
Holy Maude. That’s really bad.
Smiling is a Sign of Subservience
This is interesting — a new study shows that people smile more when they have a lesser status, as a form of appeasement.
Which frames this fierce discussion on Shakespeare’s Sister in a new light.
30 year-old virgins
Shakespeare’s Sister has a great post (Who’s Afraid of Virgins?) critiquing this wholly lame Salon article on the “tragedy” of virgins in their 30’s.
I don’t have a huge amount to add to the subject, other than “what she said” but I wanted to link to it because I know several people who would find the subject matter interesting. And I’d point out that the fact that I know several people who would find the subject interesting sort of reinforces the point that Salon’s take is pretty damn lame. And I’d also point out that the idea that someone would run screaming if they found out their date was a virgin is pretty simplistic and shallow, too. The cite some examples of guys who “backed off” — they were jerks, and probably not worth wasting time on anyway.
World Heritage List of Natural and Man-Made Wonders
World Heritage’s list of the most important wonders of our world, both natural, and man-made. 34 of the sites on the list are endangered — some because of the increased tourism due to being on this list.
Wish I Could Do That
According to the New York Times, thousands of Japanese kids, mostly boys, are shutting themselves in their rooms and refusing to come out for years at a time. They hang out on the internet, watch television, play video games, and refused to come out for school, work or even meals. Because of the downturn in the Japanese economy, more young people are unemployed and live at home with their parents well into their twenties, and Japan’s unique cultural style of nurturing creates an atmosphere where young people don’t become independent.
Huh. If I had tried that as a teenager, my parents would have dragged me out of my room by my feet and kicked me down to the school bus stop in my pajamas.
The Golden Days of Usenet: Godwin’s Law
Godwin’s Law: prov. [Usenet] “As a Usenet argument grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin’s Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin’s Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.