Quite literally discovered nakey together.

Picture of Professor Strumpet at the link.

The most heartwarming part of this story is her job description.

Bowles,31,was employed at his school as a teacherÂ’s instructional coach. It was her job to trains [sic] teachers on how to maintain a professional distance from students.

Professional distance. Like, say, that provided by a thin film of lubricant.

Posted by: LauraW at 06:22 AM | Comments (279)
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This article caught my attention -- it states that only about 15% of the articles on Wikipedia are written by women. And it probably says something about me that my first thought was, "That many?"

Computer and software technology is a heavily male-dominated area, and always has been. There have been many arguments over the years as to why that is so, but the fact is unassailable. Every so often, feminists or journalists or sociologists will drag the dead horse out and beat it some more: Why aren't more girls into video games? Why don't women go into computer-programming in greater numbers? Why do girls seem to find the fact and detail oriented world of technology so much less interesting than males?

This sort of thing usually degenerates into stupid arguments as to whether men are "smarter" than women, which I think completely misses the basic point: I think that women can be as good at technology as men in general; I think they choose not to. In other words -- what we are seeing is a basic, cross-cultural gender difference. I think that men are simply more willing to devote the deep focus and single-minded intensity to master a given topic (which may not have any immediate practical application) than women are. And I think that there is a degree of natural selection at work here: men are high-achievers because they want to impress women.

I think that this is pretty much the same reason that men dominate the hard sciences and upper echelons of the arts. Women seem far less willing than men (not less able) to devote years and years of study and practice to the mastery of a given field. Women also seem to be more communal and less competitve than men in general, which may lead them to "give way" in the face of more competitive males.

I guess my point is that I don't think there's anything to be done about the "technology gap" because it's a facet of a deeper gender difference. Women can master technology when it's to their benefit to do so (they led the charge in the cellphone revolution, and are the main impetus behind social-networking sites like Facebook), but they seem to prioritize high-achievement less than men do. This isn't necessarily a bad thing to be "fixed". In fact, I think it would do lots of men good to be less focused on their jobs and careers and more involved in their family lives. (Some men become practically autistic in terms of narrow focus on a technology or gaming subculture. I have done this myself and know whereof I speak.)

Posted by: Monty at 05:58 AM | Comments (101)
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It lies awake waiting for foolish creatures, for such are food for its hunger.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:54 AM | Comments (277)
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Back in 2009 the cargo ship Arctic Sea mysteriously vanished and six men have been accused, and pleaded guilty, to hijacking it...but the story apparently isn't quite so simple.

...the circumstances surrounding their case are so murky, and the official version so implausible, that their relatives are convinced they were duped into covering up something the Russian government wants to remain secret...

...the alleged pirates claimed they had been hired to conduct temporary environmental work - gathering evidence of illegal pollution from ships - and were training on a rubber boat in the Baltic Sea when a storm blew them off course. They said they were rescued by the Arctic Sea...

...last year a handwritten letter allegedly penned by one of the jailed men - an unemployed roofer before the Arctic Sea incident - appealed to the international community to take concerns over pollution in the Baltic Sea seriously...

...Only a few crew members are taking part in the trial in Arkhangelsk. They've been barred from talking to reporters about the alleged hijacking...

...Mr Bartenev wonders why Russia is trying a case involving a ship registered in Malta, owned by a company in Finland, and alleged to have been intercepted in Swedish waters by residents of Estonia. He also wonders why the eight alleged hijackers and some of the crew - 16 people in all - were flown from Africa to Russia on two large Ilyushin-76 cargo planes capable of carrying 40 tons each, if not also to carry weapons or other illicit cargo...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 02:11 AM | Comments (33)
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Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
_{And part of Monday morning too.}

Music That Means The Opposite of What You Think

So here are six very familiar songs collected by Cracked that originally had the opposite meaning from what they have today. Among them are:

Wagner's "Bridal Chorus" AKA "Here Comes the Bride" - actually a murder anthem.

And "O Fortuna" AKA Damien's theme is a song about bad luck in gambling.

I was trying to think of other songs whose lyrics' real meaning is totally different from the mood of the song and off the top of my head came up with the Turtles "So Happy Together", Boomtown Rats' "I don't Like Mondays", CCR's "Bad Moon Rising", OMD's "If You Leave" plus a lot of ABBA songs. I'm sure you can come up with tons more than I can. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:15 PM | Comments (530)
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Not Feeling The News Today? Let's Trashtalk Some Younguns

Traditional 'taking-care-of-yourself' skills are being lost by the younger generation. They can't cook, they can't mend their own clothes, they can't do basic maintenance on much of anything they own. They pay people to do that.

BASIC "female" skills are becoming endangered with fewer young women able to iron a shirt, cook a roast chicken or hem a skirt.

Just as more modern men are unable to complete traditional male tasks, new research shows Generation Y women can't do the chores their mothers and grandmothers did daily, reported The Courier-Mail.

Only 51 per cent of women aged under 30 can cook a roast compared with 82 per cent of baby boomers.

Affluence obviates the need for domestic skills, as the article notes. Though I'd argue that even the more affluent among us a generation ago were not as helpless with their hands as nearly any 20-year old is today.

I'd postulate that with the wide availability of cheap and reasonably durable clothing (easily obtained even by the poorest in society), it has become counterproductive to spend time and effort mending. I guess you could call that affluence, again, but on a societal scale.

On the other hand, the young have grown up in a new world and have other, brand-new and marvelous skill sets.

Maybe some of you can fill us in on what they are, because I'm drawing a blank here.

Posted by: LauraW at 03:25 PM | Comments (448)
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We would be completely remiss if, on the birthday of our Dark Lord, we did not link to the most linked thread in AoSHQ history. Chuck Norris, John Bolton's mustache, Rosie O'Donnell's fat rolls... they all whimper and kneel in supplication to one of the finest vice-presidents to ever serve our country.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Vice President. May there be many more for you, and thank you for your service to our country.

Below the fold is Ace's contribution to get what may be the greatest thread in this blog's history... enjoy! more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 01:51 PM | Comments (143)
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Just because there's no football doesn't mean there shouldn't be a cheerleader.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 08:53 AM | Comments (428)
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That was easy, right? Decades of violence over just like that. Well, maybe not so much...

...The vote was promised in a 2005 peace deal which ended decades of north-south conflict, AfricaÂ’s longest civil war, which cost an estimated 2 million lives...

...Northern and southern leaders still have to agree on their shared border, how they will split oil revenues after secession and the ownership of the disputed Abyei region...

This whole "deal" and vote doesn't mean squat unless the Islamic Arabs in the north truly want peace and are willing to make genuine concessions to the heavily Christian south.

What do you suppose the real chance of that happening is - particularly with the Muslim Brotherhood feeling its oats in Egypt, which is right next door?

Slim? None? Vanishingly close to zero? Better than my chances of spotting Elvis in a 7-11 tonight?

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:35 AM | Comments (346)
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[EDIT: It was John the Baptist, not jmflynny, who wrote "Brave Men In Desperate Times". Sorry for the error.]

I've been jonesing for a good sci-fi read for quite some time, so I picked up Greg Bear's Hull Zero Three. Bear is a pretty reliable novelist (his Blood Music is a classic of the genre), but I found this book somewhat...pro-forma. It's a variant on the "outer space shipwreck" theme, and I found some interesting parallels with his novels Forge of God and Anvil of Stars novels. It's a short novel, though, and I wish Bear would have developed the story a bit more -- as it is, it seems more like a fleshed-out short story than a full novel.

It pleases me when I come across Morons who are also authors (of which there are a surprising number), and on this note I present John McKay's (jmflynny "John the Baptist" to you Morons) Brave Men In Desperate Times. I've mentioned that Civil War history is a hobby of mine, and this book concerns the rank-and-file soldiers who fought in that war. What brought these men, many of whom had never been more than twenty miles from the place where they were born, to battlefields hundreds or even thousands of miles away and in a cause many of them only dimly understood? Many military historians frame conflicts in terms of campaigns and individual battles, of political maneuverings, and neglect the men who actually have to bleed and die. I'm glad to find a book that might shed some light on the motivations and lives of these soldiers. (And it's cool to read a book written by a fellow Moron!)

I posted this link earlier, but it bears repeating: at Amazon, e-books have outsold paperbacks for the first time. Is this a tipping point where the printed-book market goes into permanent decline? I hope not, but I've contributed to the decline (ten of my last fifteen book purchases have been e-books for the Kindle), so it seems hypocritical to be concerned about it.

Posted by: Monty at 04:54 AM | Comments (87)
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