Month: January 2014

Today in Tangential Learning: the smell of chloroform

As part of following PZ Myer’s account of a campaign against him on campus from the editor(s) of a right-wing student newspaper, I have learnt what chloroform smells like, and it smells like something present in every office and classroom and most private homes.

Then I searched online for a bit more information about chloroform…

Vale Pete Seeger 1919-2014

Some of the first songs I learnt to sing beyond nursery songs & school singalongs were Pete Seeger songs. I have no doubt that my politics today have largely grown from learning and loving these protest songs from an early age.

Reimagining the C.W.A.

Guest Post by Alex Skud Bayley


…mutual support, community service, skill-building, learning about issues facing women both locally and overseas, and advocacy on behalf of women. So far so good! So why is it that, on the whole, the Country Women’s Association is so ossified?

Otterday! And Open Thread

Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?

Friday Hoyden: Héloïse d’Argenteuil

The second in my set of Three Wise H’s. Poor, tragic Heloise was one of the great minds of the twelfth century. Eventually Abbess of the Oratory of the Paraclete, she was not a nun by vocation, but through the medieval systems of sexual repression and ultra-strict gender role enforcement, along with a good sized dollop of bad luck.