If Kristen can’t win, I wouldn’t mind Stefan winning. He is an asshole, but at least he has an identity in place. That’s much better than the “no-personality Sheldon” (who is so vapid that I had to look up bis name after watching almost the entire season) or the mumbly Brooke who can’t utter a sentence without mentioning her husband. Or the “country boy Josh”. There is always the “funny accent Lizzie” but she is both female and foreign, and I don’t see that happening.

Let’s make bets! Who do you think will win?

“What does “pompous ” mean?” students ask (in Spanish.)

“It’s like. . . me!” I blurt out.

I’m glad I didn’t marry one of these immature suckers:

Jennifer Lundquist and Joya Misra of UMass, along with KerryAnn O’Meara of Maryland, found that relatively few male faculty members with children took paid parental leave (72 percent of reported leave-takers were women, while 82 percent of all non-leave-takers were men). Those who did take it said they needed to because their spouses were not full-time homemakers. Some fathers whose partners were back at work full time did still not take leave, fearing negative professional repercussions, such as delayed promotions.

I have a man right here who would slaughter for a chance to take care of his newborn baby, even if the leave were unpaid, but who simply isn’t given that opportunity, and these fuckers squander a chance of a lifetime, a chance so many people are dying to have.

I especially liked the following phrase:

Those who did take it said they needed to because their spouses were not full-time homemakers.

If you see your own child as an uinwelcome chore that has to be done when nobody else can do it for you, then why have children at all? The planet is overpopulated as it is. If you don’t like being with a child, feeding, playing, putting the kid to sleep, reading stories and singing songs, etc., then why, on God’s green Earth,  do you not just put on a frakking condom and spare us all the aggravation of having among us yet another functionally fatherless kid? There are enough of those running around as it is.

Women who decide to give birth to children of such low-quality males puzzle me. We all know how often I insist on the importance of a father in a child’s life but, still, it’s a lot preferable just to use a sperm bank than to keep around a loser who cares less about his own baby than about a promotion not being delayed for a semester. It is much better for a kid to experience one instance of rejection by a father than to witness daily rejections from an absent and disinterested one.

The rest of the article is utter crap because it places the fault for this egregious immaturity and utter idiocy not on the actual immature idiots but on society, stigma, and STEM fields.

P.S. Every male academic I happen to know is a phenomenal father, by the way, so there is a chance this study is a fake. I don’t even think I know any men who somehow manage not to see their own children as the priority in their lives.

 With unanimous support from the Joint Chiefs, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will announce at a press conference Thursday at the Pentagon that he is ordering the ban lifted against women serving in combat positions.

And there are many many more victories in store for us that we will see in the coming years. Do you want to know what makes me think that?

It is remarkable how little pushback there appears to be. Panetta conferred over a period of months with the Joint Chiefs of Staff both in his office and in the Tank, the secure room at the Pentagon where the Joint Chiefs meet, where it became increasingly obvious that lifting the ban was not only the right thing to do, but would likely encounter little resistance.

The most difficult thing to change on the road to gender equality is not the laws. It’s the mindset. The gendered way of thinking. But once you begin going in the direction of seeing people and not their genitals, the progress will be unstoppable.

Some people have all the luck. N. just called to say he is going to a conference in Florida next month. His last conference was in San Francisco.

My last conference was a choice between Grand Rapids, MI and some place in Kentucky.

Just like the excessively hot summers in the past three years are not evidence of global warning, the fact that it’s -39C in Montreal right now isn’t evidence that global warming has ended.

If you get tempted to make the following comments about other people’s clothes, you need to start working on your repressed aggression now:

 

I’m not kidding. Having an intense emotional reaction – any emotional reaction whatsoever, actually – to whether another person who is not your own infant child – will feel cold is a sign of psychological problems. Your problems.

Repressed anger is very likely to lead to high blood pressure and a variety of other health issues. I suggest that you find out what it is that you are really so angry about (hint: it isn’t this stranger’s clothing choices) and discover a way to release that anger.

Please take this seriously. You know those folks who keep grumbling about how much everybody irritates them? They are grumbling themselves right into a stroke and victimizing everybody who has the misfortune of knowing them in the process.

I found this exchange here.

What is this, an Idiotfest on the blog? A third idiot in a row has graced us with his presence. And that’s just in a single day.

The issue of gun control is bringing out extreme childishness in many people. See, for instance, the following comment:

Also – we treat guns as if they are somehow mystically imbued, instead of inanimate objects. Sorry, but no. Given the ready availability of gasoline and and other accelerants that can be combined to form explosives, or simply burn down buildings wholesale for a few dollars, they are, dollar for dollar, NOT the worst people can come up with for wholesale slaughter.

It is both sad and scary that people who have zero understanding of how the human psyche works would experience the need to pontificate on serious subjects. The above-quoted comment is so ignorant and immature that I feel vicarious shame for the poor individual who made it.

Arsonists and shooters are completely different people, motivated by completely different things. This is why shooting and arson are not interchangeable activities. An arsonist does not turn into shooter and vice versa out of convenience. A person who sets a residential building on fire and a person who shoots into a crowd both have extreme psycho-sexual issues. These are, however, different issues that do not overlap. For a perpetrator, these are not interchangeable activities.

Jeez, folks, let’s grow up already and start educating ourselves.

Colleague: How are you keeping it together in the face of the horrible and disturbing events at the department?

Clarissa: By not knowing about their existence.

Colleague: Let me tell you what’s going on!

Clarissa: Nah. . . I’m fine the way I am, really.

I’m not even curious. I just want to keep as far away from the drama as possible.