Very Scary - Please Read Link

Wow. I just read the scariest blog entry, via Broadsheet.

Please, please, please, dear readers - read this immediately. Be prepared to shudder and possibly vomit in your mouth.

Just a note... EC does not work by preventing implantation, but by preventing ovulation. If you've already ovulated, you're screwed (thus the ~80% effectiveness rate).

The above is from a comment on this blog, and a little teaser as to what the story is about. But I want to underscore how vitally important it is, if you ever have to use EC, to get it AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Yes, it can work for 72 hours - because that's how long the hormones are floating around in your body, as well as the maximum lifetime of sperm swimming around the female reproductive system. But if the sperm get in at hour 0, and you ovulate at hour 18, and you get your Plan B at hour 36, the damage might already be done.

This has happened to more than one person I know.

I've had the occasion to take Plan B. Fortunately, I didn't get pregnant. In Scotland, no one made a fuss. At my university, it was simple and cheap. But clearly, my positive experiences - and maybe your positive experiences - aren't to be taken for granted.

Here's my other favorite quote from the comments section:

Men-Who-Refuse-to-Get-It, let me explain very carefully: this is not a hypothetical situation. These fuckers think they have a right to tell a competent adult how to live her life. Jesus of Nazareth called these kinds of folks "whited sepulchres." Ya got that, American Taliban? Jesus had your number two thousand years ago.

On Dresses And Breasts And Authoritativeness

The whole thing of boobs+ruffly top = not serious because that = feminine and feminine = trivial whereas male = authoritative (ergo for a female to seem authoritative there is a pressure on her to be masculine) is stupid and outdated . We know it's stupid and outdated. But still, there you have it.

You know what I think will change it? More women, who look however they look, doing authoritative things in public... Until some day authority does not by default = white man in suit.

Which is not to say that presentation counts for nothing, or even that women don't judge both women and men by the same or similar standards. Looking "nice" and "respectable" carries more weight than looking slovenly or (dare I say it?) poor. Or rather, fitting into the cool/rich stratum yields a social advantage to those who conform and/or are able to confrom. I doubt that will ever change.

But still, the most effective, and maybe only way to change this is by having a diversity of authority figures who look like themselves.

Authority looks like whatever the people in charge look like.

Where most of the busboys are Mexican, Mexicans all look like busboys. Where most of the rules are made by old white guys in suits, old white guys in suits have the advantage of looking powerful. (While the poor Mexican guys are always having to explain that they're not busing tables.)

An awful, recent example of this, racial rather than gender: at the hotel where our program retreat was held, all but a few of the participants were European, Indian, or Asian. The staff were almost all Afro-Hatians. To the point where I caught myself noticing that the one new black student was not wearing a waitress uniform. To the point where I wondered if the one or two black students felt uncomfortable. I would have. I bet they noticed, if even I - the middle-class white poster girl - noticed.

These things can make me feel very squeamish but I think they are important to always be thinking about.

Men In Skirts

From a comment on BitchPhD about the shocking report on women in science recently discussed in the Times:

That therefore on the social side of things feminism has succeeded to a large degree in opening up the prestiguous options in the "male valued system" for women, yet has failed to open up the "female valued system" for men? (women can wear trousers but men can't wear skirts...) And that it also has comparatively failed to raise the relative public esteem of the "female valued system" vs the "male valued system"?

Clearly the answer is for men to wear skirts. As there are many wonderful reasons why trousers are convenient for women, there are also a number of advantages for men in skirts.

1. Hot, sticky summer weather - jeans are too hot, shorts are too binding. Skirts let a nice breeze circulate around the moist regions.

2. More man leg! This one's selfish. Shorts are generally too tight or too baggy - they are unflattering, but skirts skim the body while at the same time offering a good glimpse of delightful man legs.

3. One more option for evening wear.

4. Can easily change into your bathing suit on the beach when there is no changing room if you are wearing a skirt.

5. Dudes don't shave their legs anyway.

6. Why the hell not? If it's good enough for the Scots, it can't be bad.

Ah, but wait ... despite the manifold practical advantages, a bloke in a skirt would look like a girl!!! And who can think of a more cutting insult than that?

In other news, I am giving a lecture this evening with two other women. Getting dressed this morning, what with the fracas over boob-gate fresh in my mind, gave me pause. Does this shirt accentuate my breastesses to a distracting degree? Turns out I don't really care, so long as I don't look frumpy.

But it got me thinking about sexual objectification. Fact of BOOBS overriding all other information about the speaker, at least for a minute, in the minds of some male listeners? Sometimes I see talks given by attractive speakers (okay, rarely, but it does happen) but generally this is in its own little box while the talk itself is in another little box in my brain. Hot guy giving talk = hot guy giving talk = pleasant surprise. But hot girl giving talk = BOOBIES!!!

I wonder if men are less good at compartmentalizing in these situations. Was considering how I would handle a classroom situation if I thought there was too much attention on me as a boob-vehicle at the expense of as a vehicle for information distribution. I mean, what do you do when people refuse to take you seriously because of something you can't help or hide, should you want to?

(I don't want to hide mine, by the way. They're quite nice. You can totally look at them, but just don't make a Thing out of it, this is all I ask.)

Now I am rambling. I have too much work to do to sit here and ramble about boobs.

Shout Out

Hooray for Deval Patrick!

Am I Just Bitter?

Do you have one of those friends about whom you think: god, i'm glad she is my friend or else i would really hate her?

I have this friend, we shall call her Q, who is fit, pretty, has a nice boyfriend, and on top of this works very hard in the lab and is having a stellar graduate career. Q was complaining about how she's just got too much data, and too many experiments going. Sadly, there are a number of people (like moi) who would give a kidney to have such "problems". I know she doesn't mean to be cruel or tactless - this took a couple of years to be sure about; for a while I wondered if she might be a huge bitch, but no, she just says whatever she is thinking. She's actually a very kind and good-natured person, and she works very diligently, which is why I don't begrudge her success. Really I don't!

But there's just so much, "It's so hard, I have enough data for three papers, at least one top-tier journal paper, but my advisor doesn't want to publish yet because the patent we wrote for this drug target has only just been submitted!"

All this she says while she dries her perfect hair in her perfect cute top with her perfect data ....

I think I get extra super friend-points for not clubbing her to death with the hair dryer right then and there.

I can't even comment on last night's Bush speech, which I only heard bits of on the radio this morning. It's far too dire, and I have a million other things to worry about.

Are these the end times? Or just the bowel-wracking diarrhea that has to happen before you can feel better?

You'll never believe this - the coolest thing today - I was just in the dark room with the red light on, and had used some brand new Super Signal West Femto chemilumescent substrate and the signal on the blot was so strong I could see it glowing! Right on the blot, an eerie blue glow at 55 and 62 kiloDaltons.

I have never seen this before. Amazing. Exposed the film for 2 seconds, but I think even that will be too much. It was rather magical and mystical.

Dork Happiness

Hello from Amazon.com.
We are pleased to report that the following item will ship sooner than expected:
Terry Pratchett "Wintersmith" [Hardcover]

Hellz yeah!

Yay, Autumn

I have been a neglectful blogger lately - what with my advisor coming back, all visiting Britons going home, grants due, meetings to schedule and attend ... The upside of this feverish activity is that it is offically Free Food Season once again; I reckon I can scrounge at least four meals a week if I'm on my toes.

Yhis is my favorite time of year, and not just for the foraging opportunites it affords. All winter long I look forward to summer (we don't really have spring here, as such; it's just damp and cold; a period of waiting, waiting, waiting and then, bam!, extremely hot all of a sudden) - but the summer makes it hard to work. You feel like you should be outside, slurping up every last orangey drop of sunshine, basting yourself until lethargic and torpid. Then you go into the cold air-conditioned buildings and shiver because you are not wearing enough clothes, all the while haunted by the knowledge that other people, evereywhere, are on beaches without you.

But in the autumn my head feels clearer, the air is crisp and bright, and the sun is not so brassy. There is a hum of anticipation from the start of the school year beginning all around, redolent of fresh, unsharpened pencils and pristine sheets of notebook paper eager to be filled. All possibilities still, and no heavy coats to weigh you down. Not to mention the brightness of the moon as it rises over the Boston skyline, more golden than the golden dome of City Hall.

Listen! the wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!
—Humbert Wolfe