Opportunities squandered
JOHN Howard squandered the benefits of the $80 billion-a-year resources boom and wanted to be re-elected so he could retire, Labor leader Kevin Rudd said yesterday. Defining the choice facing voters in one of his last major speeches of the election campaign, Mr Rudd said that on Saturday voters would choose either the future under [...]
“Oh! My! Look out! you can get HIV/AIDS”
A condom PSA from India. I’m torn between thinking “Now that’s how you do PSAs!”, and convulsing at the gleeful gyrating men and the clown-condoms. Enjoy. About this video: This is an entertaining and educational video in Telugu on Condom usage, to prevent from sexually transmitted infections and HIV, from Nrityanjali Academy, Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, [...]
Debunking differences
Get your Gender Essentialist bingo cards ready, but this time so that we can cross off various myths being vigorously debunked. First the headline and teaser: The difference myth We shouldn’t believe the increasingly popular claims that boys and girls think differently, learn differently, and need to be treated differently. Image Source: Getty Images via [...]
Request: epistemology for newbies?
I feel there’s a hole in my book-larnin’. I’ve never really read any formal epistemology, just picked bits and pieces up as I go along. Can anyone recommend any web- (or uni website-) available, chapter/article-length introduction to general principles and issues in epistemology, preferably not written from a pompous-wingnut-git point of view? Cheers. Related posts: [...]
So that’s why it’s annoyed me so much
I’m not the only person to be annoyed over the years by the egregious overuse of the term “paradigm shift”. I knew people were misusing the term, but not having actually read Kuhn’s seminal work wherein he coined the term, I never had the properly grounded basis to articulate why. So. today I’m reading an [...]
Watson is no Galileo
I’ve used this quote before, but it bears repeating. “Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment, you must also be right.” ““ Robert Park James Watson, famous for being one of the scientists to describe the structure of DNA, is a cranky old [...]
Weekend Fun: Family Drabbles
The lad, who has just turned five, has taken to asking for story challenges. We had a ball over dinner last night thinking of three things for a story to feature, and then listening to the result. My challenge to him: a skeleton, a cave, and a clock. Favourite quote from the resulting story: “So [...]
Lunch is just not that complicated: Sesame Street on breastfeeding
A while back and elsewhere, there was a conversation about this magazine cover. Part of the backlash – among breastfeeding mothers of all people! – was around “explanations”. “I don’t want to come across that magazine cover in the supermarket checkout”, they said, “with my child there.” “I don’t have time while I’m shopping to [...]
Schools, competition, drive for perfection and anorexia
School culture may promote anorexia The study shows that schools play a critical role in the development of girls’ self image, confidence and self-esteem, with many of the girls citing particular high school experiences as defining moments in their anorexia. “In school environments where high achievers win awards and enjoy the esteem of their peers [...]
A-d-a-p-t-e-d.
MEMO To: All writers/editors/narrators of nature programs From: Science Fangs/claws/cool-animal-feature-of-the-day etc. are not “designed”. Or “engineered”. They are adaptations. Pillocks. Related posts: A misunderstanding of IFLS? Quickhit: new discoveries on the genetics of autism “The yearly feminist discussion” in SF publishing, by Guest Hoyden girliejones Contagious yawning and canine empathy Just my Quasimodo costume
Yup, peanut butter convinces me!
This argument is so bizarre it’s not even wrong: it’s wrong’s cousin who’s never been the same since that nasty accident with the Klein bottle. Related posts: Quick Hit: Ms Klein, bullying and Indiegogo Watson is no Galileo Butbutbutbut the US is the world, isn’t it? New Yorkers always tell us not to bother with [...]
Youtubular: Puking on air, and performing babies
Some Youtube ponderings. (With a tip of the hat to Neatorama.) Puking on TV Here is a clip from a Swedish game show. The host suddenly vomits in a middle of a sentence, then jumps back up with a smile and explains to the audience the fact that she has severe menstrual pain, which makes [...]
“Let us remember that we are not our own.”
And now, the last of the “Dress and Its Relation to Health” chapter from the Ladies’ Handbook of Home Treatment, 1905. The previous parts of this chapter are here, here, and here. In which we consider women’s pro-corset angst and the appropriate rebuttals thereof, why women put up with clothing pain that men would never [...]
More “chemtrails” conspiracy theory
Remember my post from last week about CT Busters? I have sadly discovered that there are way too many videos on YouTube showing their “evidence” that jets are spraying poison chemicals all over our skies. Of course, these people would call me the gullible one. Related posts: Meme of the week: Casually Pepper Spray Everything [...]
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