Friday, September 08, 2006

Three One-Sentence Links

"The day I decide to start fucking my clock radio is the day I show up at an ER with a sparks-spraying, Eurythmics-playing robot wrapped around my dick, a can opener in one hand and an incredibly surprised look on my face."

"The whole idea is that we’re a free society, and freedom is messy in that not everyone is going to do something you agree with."

And lastly, that dig at mathematicians was completely unnecessary.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That last one was for me, yes? Cuz personally, I can't wait until we're completed the transition from a world in which men tell me I can't do math, to one in which women tell me I shouldn't. Someone explain this liberation stuff to me again?

By the way, there's some really interesting research going on in statistics, right now, that allows us to test analyze claims of discrimination and suchlike in ways that would have been unthinkable a mere decade ago. Seems counterproductive for feminists to mock women who decide to put in the years of mathematical study required to understand this highly relevant subject, you know? To say nothing of all the recent advances in medicine and technology that couldn't have been done without, like, numbers and shit. Dull as dirt, though!

belledame222 said...

Oh goodie, are we getting that, now, TOO? No sports corsets. No blowjobs. No, well, here's the list (twelve pages later) wrt all things sexual and personal adornment. Oh yeah, and: Math is HARD.

dayumn, with allies/sisters like some people, who needs enemas?

ilyka said...

Cuz personally, I can't wait until we're completed the transition from a world in which men tell me I can't do math, to one in which women tell me I shouldn't. Someone explain this liberation stuff to me again?

Exactly. Plus, I mean, define dull. I personally think vast swaths of the humanities are dull, or maybe it's only the people who teach them who are dull, but I'm not going to sigh with exasperation when some woman gets a degree in Literature because I have this thing I do where I try to avoid pissing on other people's accomplishments. It is closely related to recognizing that it takes all kinds to make a world. And it's very tied into the (admittedly anecdotal) data I've got that says math and science people can learn to write well, but very few poets can do calculus. Which leads me to wonder if maybe some folks are calling math "dull" merely as a pitiful defense mechanism against the insecurity they feel about not understanding something other people not only understand, but make beautiful use of. Like, say, designing the very instruments the math-is-dull crowd use to write on their blogs.

Don't get me started. Oh, too late.

ilyka said...

Ha!

The Olsen twins sing
About logic. Feminists
Must not do likewise.

Anonymous said...

And it's very tied into the (admittedly anecdotal) data I've got that says math and science people can learn to write well, but very few poets can do calculus.

Yup. I was going to say in my last comment (but it was a bit off topic) that last month, I spent a week at the math camp where I used to work summers, and caught the talent show that has become a ritual. Among the acts performed by our dull math nerds: a contradance routine; some piano compositions; a recorder/flute/guitar/fiddle performance; some stand-up comedy; TWO acapella choirs; some magic tricks...I'm sure I'm leaving some out. Oh, the camp was held at a campus shared by a number of other summer programs, including a football camp. One day, one of our math nerds worked up the chutzpah to challenge the football campers to a game of soccer. The mathcampers won. Then, they challenged them to a game of football...AND TIED.

Most of my friends are math nerds, and while our sense of humour leans heavily toward the geeky, it's also the case that there isn't a single one of us who doesn't have some unrelated outside hobby that we take seriously and excel at. Which is no coincidence: a few months ago I wrote about how my physics background has really helped me hone my pottery skills. (My lack of a chemistry background has impeded my glazing progress, too, for that matter.) Seriously, watching a novice potter who doesn't understand centripetal motion can be painful.