Quotulatiousness

May 3, 2013

Wikipedia forced to re-examine categorization

Filed under: Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

In the New York Review of Books, James Gleick recounts the tale of Wikipedia’s “American women novelists” category:

There is consternation at Wikipedia over the discovery that hundreds of novelists who happen to be female were being systematically removed from the category “American novelists” and assigned to the category “American women novelists.” Amanda Filipacchi, whom I will call an American novelist despite her having been born in Paris, set off a furor with an opinion piece on the New York Times website last week. Browsing on Wikipedia, she had suddenly noticed that women were vanishing from “American novelists” — starting, it seemed, in alphabetical order.

[. . .]

At Wikipedia, all hell broke loose. (Let’s pause here to flag the phrase, “at Wikipedia.” Wikipedia is a notional place only. It is not situated in a sleek California corporate campus, like Google in Mountain View or Apple in Cupertino, but instead distributed across cyberspace.)

These kinds of debates are usually bruited and argued on Wikipedia’s “Talk” pages, which are set aside for discussion by editors. After the Filipacchi article, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s cofounder, created a new entry on his personal Talk page under the bold-face heading, “WTF?” Wales does not give orders or directly cause things to happen. He is more of a noninterventionist god. He is often referred to simply as Founder (capital F) or Jimbo. Anyway, he wrote:

    My first instinct is that surely these stories are wrong in some important way. Can someone update me on where I can read the community conversation about this? Did it happen? How did it happen?

Heated argument broke out on a page set aside for discussion of changes to Wikipedia categories. Categories are a big deal. They are an important way to group articles; some people use them to navigate or browse. Categories provide structure for a web of knowledge — not a tree, because a category can have multiple parents, as well as multiple children. Wikipedia lists 4,325 Container categories, from “Accordionists by nationality” to “Zoos in the United States.” There are Disambiguation categories, Eponymous categories — named, for example, after railway lines like Norway’s Flåm Line, or after robots (there are two: Optimus Prime and R2-D2) — and at least 11,000 Hidden categories, meant for administration and therefore invisible to readers. A typical hidden category is “Wikipedia:Categories for discussion,” containing thousands of pages of logged discussions about the suitabilities of various categories. Meta enough for you?

April 3, 2013

A “Bechdel Test” for writing about women in science

Filed under: Media, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:52

If you haven’t heard of the original “Bechdel Test“, here’s the gist:

The Bechdel test is used to identify gender bias in fiction. A work passes the test if it features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Commentators have noted that a great proportion of contemporary works fail to pass this threshold of representing women. The test was originally conceived for evaluating films, but has since been applied to other media.

Have you ever noticed that articles in the media about female scientists always include details they would never have if the article was about a man? In too many cases, these details predominate over the actual scientific work of the person being profiled. Christie Aschwanden suggests that we adopt a variant of the Bechdel test for science writing:

It’s time to stop this nonsense. We don’t write “Redheads in Science” articles, so why do we keep writing about scientists in the context of their gonads? Sexism exists, and we should call it out when we see it. But treating female scientists as special cases only perpetuates the idea that there’s something extraordinary about a woman doing science.

So Finkbeiner has adopted a new approach. “I’m going to cut to the chase, close my eyes, and pretend the problem is solved; we’ve made a great cultural leap forward and the whole issue is over with,” she says. “And I’m going to write the profile of an impressive astronomer and not once mention that she’s a woman.” In other words, “I’m going to pretend she’s just an astronomer.”

It’s a fine idea. In the spirit of the Bechdel test, a metric that cartoonist and author Alison Bechdel created to measure gender bias in film, I’d like to propose a Finkebeiner test for stories about women in science. The test could apply to profiles of women in other fields, too.

To pass the Finkbeiner test, the story cannot mention

  • The fact that she’s a woman
  • Her husband’s job
  • Her child care arrangements
  • How she nurtures her underlings
  • How she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field
  • How she’s such a role model for other women
  • How she’s the “first woman to…”

Here’s another trick. Take the things that are said about a female subject and flip them around as if they were said about a male. If they sound ridiculous, then chances are good they have no business in the story. For instance, in his Guardian profile of preeminent physicist Lisa Randall, John Crace writes, “No matter how much she bends time, there’s no escaping the fact that she’s just turned 43 and that if she wants to have kids she’s going to have to get on with it soon.” No one would possibly write such a thing about a man of her age and status.

March 13, 2013

North Korea welcomes the new President of South Korea with the usual polite and restrained rhetoric

Filed under: Asia — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:05

…that is, they insulted her from the get-go:

A lengthy statement attributed to a spokesman of the Armed Forces Ministry said South Korean officials were engaging in a round of “warmongering” orchestrated by the “poisonous swish” of the president’s skirt.

The statement did not actually use Park’s name or title, referring to her only as the current “owner” of the presidential Blue House in Seoul.

“Swish of the skirt” (or “chima baram“) is a common, derogatory Korean term used to criticise women seen as overly bossy or domineering.

North Korea’s propaganda machine had slammed Park repeatedly during the presidential campaign, warning that she would adopt the dictatorial methods of her father, the late military strongman Park Chung-Hee.

March 12, 2013

A stunning technical achievement

Filed under: Business, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:22

No, not the tablet — the stunning ability to condescend to half of the human race:

The ePad Femme: for women everywhere who have no interests except their own bodies and having babies, which is apparently all of them.

The ePad Femme: for women everywhere who have no interests except their own bodies and having babies, which is apparently all of them.

At long last, a company has designed a tablet fit for the use of an entire gender that has, thus far, apparently gone unserved. The ePad Femme, designed and distributed by the Eurostar Group, is an eight-inch tablet that comes pre-loaded with apps concerning yoga, grocery shopping, and cooking. Thank the heavens, ladies may never trouble their pretty heads with such difficulties as finding and downloading their own apps ever again.

The tablet was first announced back in October but received a marketing push in February as “the perfect Valentine’s Day gift,” noted one site. The tablet runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, or as a woman might call it, “the Android screensaver.” Eurostar calls the ePad Femme “the first tablet specifically for ladies.”

Several sites highlight that the tablet “comes in light pink.” Despite our best efforts, we’ve failed to find an image verifying that the actual body of the tablet is pink, so we assume this is in reference to the home screen wallpaper. Just as well, since what woman is going to figure out how to configure that, am I right? Settings, right? What even are they?

Speaking to the Jerusalem Post, Eurostar associate vice president of marketing Mani Nair said that the tablet comes with the preloaded womanly applications so the user can “just turn it on and log in to cooking recipes or yoga.” He went on to state that the ePad Femme “makes a perfect gadget for a woman who might find difficulties in terms of downloading these applications and it is a quick reference.”

January 25, 2013

Cartman Shrugged

Filed under: Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:34

The not-so-hidden libertarian streak in South Park:

The genius of Parker and Stone was to see that in our day a new frontier of comic transgression has opened up because of the phenomenon known as political correctness. Our age may have tried to dispense with the conventional pieties of earlier generations, but it has developed new pieties of its own. They may not look like the traditional pieties, but they are enforced in the same old way, with social pressure and sometimes even legal sanctions punishing people who dare to violate the new taboos. Many of our colleges and universities today have speech codes, which seek to define what can and cannot be said on campus and in particular to prohibit anything that might be interpreted as demeaning someone because of his or her race, religion, gender, disability, and a whole series of other protected categories. Sex may no longer be taboo in our society, but sexism now is. Seinfeld (1989–1998) was perhaps the first mainstream television comedy that systematically violated the new taboos of political correctness. The show repeatedly made fun of contemporary sensitivities about such issues as sexual orientation, ethnic identity, feminism, and disabled people. Seinfeld proved that being politically incorrect can be hilariously funny in today’s moral and intellectual climate, and South Park followed its lead.

[. . .]

This is where libertarianism enters the picture in South Park. The show criticizes political correctness in the name of freedom. That is why Parker and Stone can proclaim themselves equal opportunity satirists: they make fun of the old pieties as well as the new, ridiculing both the right and the left insofar as both seek to restrict freedom. “Cripple Fight” is an excellent example of the balance and evenhandedness of South Park and the way it can offend both ends of the political spectrum. The episode deals in typical South Park fashion with a contemporary controversy, one that has even made it into the courts: whether homosexuals should be allowed to lead Boy Scout troops. The episode makes fun of the old-fashioned types in the town who insist on denying a troop leadership to Big Gay Al (a recurrent character whose name says it all). As it frequently does with the groups it satirizes, South Park, even as it stereotypes homosexuals, displays sympathy for them and their right to live their lives as they see fit. But just as the episode seems to be simply taking the side of those who condemn the Boy Scouts for homophobia, it swerves in an unexpected direction. Standing up for the principle of freedom of association, Big Gay Al himself defends the right of the Boy Scouts to exclude homosexuals. An organization should be able to set up its own rules, and the law should not impose society’s notions of political correctness on a private group. This episode represents South Park at its best — looking at a complicated issue from both sides and coming up with a judicious resolution of the issue. And the principle on which the issue is resolved is freedom. As the episode shows, Big Gay Al should be free to be homosexual, but the Boy Scouts should also be free as an organization to make their own rules and exclude him from a leadership post if they so desire.

This libertarianism makes South Park offensive to the politically correct, for, if applied consistently, it would dismantle the whole apparatus of speech control and thought manipulation that do-gooders have tried to construct to protect their favored minorities. With its support for freedom in all areas of life, libertarianism defies categorization in terms of the standard one-dimensional political spectrum of right and left. In opposition to the collectivist and anticapitalist vision of the left, libertarians reject central planning and want people to be free to pursue their self-interest as they see fit. But in contrast to conservatives, libertarians also oppose social legislation; they generally favor the legalization of drugs and the abolition of all censorship and antipornography laws. Because of the tendency in American political discourse to lump libertarians with conservatives, many commentators on South Park fail to see that it does not criticize all political positions indiscriminately, but actually stakes out a consistent alternative to both liberalism and conservatism with its libertarian philosophy.

January 7, 2012

Booth babes = company with shitty products or zero new ideas

Filed under: Humour, Media, Randomness, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

A useful rant about the companies who depend on “booth babes” to draw attention at trade shows:

CES, like many industry conventions, will be thick with “booth babes” — women paid to stand around in revealing clothing in order to draw men to the booths and see terrible products. That’s regrettable. Not only because it is sexist, but also because it just makes your company look like a bunch of undersexed nimrods.

If the only way you can get people interested in your product is to have a scantily clad woman appear next to it for no apparent reason, your products are probably awful. And besides, it’s boring. It’s just boring. It’s been done so many times, for so many years, that my only reaction to seeing a booth bunny is to think, “Here is a company that is completely out of ideas.”

Look, technology industry CEOs, if you want to stick a butt in my face, I’d be way more impressed if you made it your own fat ass. Butter up that big white rump of yours and squeeze it into a little red thong. Strap those mantits into a cheetah bra that lets your pale hairy cleavage see the light of day. Do that, and I promise you that I’ll listen to your pitch. (Even if it’s a little awkward for both of us!) Better yet, get the whole pasty, overpaid, C-level crew into some sexy swimwear. People will talk. You’ll be the buzz.

Full disclosure: I’ve worked (on the technology side) at companies who spent nearly as much time and effort hiring and “costuming” their booth babes as they did on the actual marketing campaign for their products. I don’t currently work with firms who do this, thank goodness.

October 21, 2011

Neuroscientists and neurononsense

Filed under: Books, Media, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:11

Stuart Derbyshire and Nina Powell review Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender:

Given that objective measures show gender differences are in decline, it is surprising that there has been such an increase in books and reports describing hard-wired differences in male and female brains and that so many people are using them to explain why men and women live different lives. The most famous British example is Simon Baron-Cohen who has extrapolated from his research on autism (a predominantly male disorder) the more general conclusion that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy while the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.

Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender brilliantly demolishes these overly simplistic and, essentially, wrong conclusions about male and female brains. She does this in two different ways. First, she points out that supposedly fixed differences between men and women are quite plastic. For example, merely asking men to consider the social value and benefits of empathising will lead them to be more empathic. And when men are paid to detect and correctly identify emotional states they perform as well as women. Similarly, when women are told that women perform better on a spatial rotation task their performance matches those of men. It appears that male and female differences in task performance can be fairly easily overcome by changing the motivation to do well or by changing the way the task is framed. That doesn’t sound like something hard-wired or fixed in the brain.

[. . .]

Fine also points to a problem that is, perhaps, more important. The brain is a complicated organ that we barely understand in anything but the most basic detail. Furthermore, brain imaging is a technology that is in its infancy and the data generated by imaging is also highly complicated. A typical brain imaging study will generate a matrix involving hundreds of thousands of numbers replicated across time and people. Analysis of these kinds of data sets is difficult, tedious and complicated, often requiring many years of experience and containing a surprising element of subjectivity and argument about what is the right and wrong thing to do. It is perhaps understandable that brain imaging throws up contradictory results and that brain researchers reach contradictory conclusions. Fine notes that this can lead to theories about brain function being untouched by the collection of brain activation data:

‘As the contradictory data come in, researchers can draw on both the hypothesis that men are better at mental rotation because they use just one hemisphere, as well as the completely contrary hypothesis that men are better at mental rotation because they use both hemispheres. So flexible is the theoretical arrangement that researchers can even present these opposing hypotheses, quite without embarrassment, within the very same article.’

It is a strange science where exactly opposite data support the same interpretation. Fine’s conclusion is scathing. She suggests that neuroscientists are merely projecting cultural assumptions about the sexes on to the vast unknown that is the brain. This process she dismisses as ‘neurosexism’, which is part of a larger discipline called ‘neurononsense’. It is hard to argue.

August 30, 2011

Trivializing rape

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:23

Wendy McElroy points out how the underlying messages of the SlutWalkers have overwhelmed the original intent:

One message: It is fabulous for women to publicly flaunt their sexuality but an intolerable offense if men respond nonviolently. Wolf-whistles are taken as an attack. Disapproving or overly approving comments from men are an assault. But isn’t provoking a response the entire purpose of wearing fishnet stockings topped by a leather bustier?

Another message, as pointed out by Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail: “Slutwalks are what you get when graduate students in feminist studies run out of things to do.” In other words, SlutWalks are an expression of privileged women who mistake a costume party for a political cause. While Iranian women fight for the right to pursue an education, North American feminists fight to reclaim pride in the word “slut.” SlutWalk is an extreme expression of mainstream feminism’s political impoverishment.

Yet SlutWalkers proclaim they are performing a political service by protesting the trivialization of rape. Nonsense. They are using the ill-considered words of one ignorant policeman as a reason to throw a street party.

I do not begrudge anyone having a good time but as a woman who has experienced rape, I object to the political agenda being attached to a costume party. I object to the posters and attitudes that vilify men as predators. I do so because I was attacked by one man, not by mankind, and when I was helped, it was by men. I object to the notion that women do not bear any responsibility for controlling their circumstances, such as attire. I object to rape being trivialized by associating it with sluttiness and making it part of a celebration.

April 7, 2011

Australian Defence Force in the news . . . not in a good way

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Military, Pacific — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

Australia’s military have a reputation for brashness, but competence in combat. The bureaucratic side of the ADF has problems:

The Australian Defence Force found itself in the headlines for the wrong reasons when a young female member of the ADF Academy went public after having sex with a fellow cadet, only to find out later that he used a webcam and Skype to broadcast the assignation to his mates.

Okay, slimy action on the part of the other cadet. Action by the military braintrust should be some form of discipline against the cadet who violated trust, yes? No:

The ADF first tried to equivocate, saying that there was nothing it could use to charge the unconscionable bastard who thought the broadcast was a good idea, only to backpedal when Defence Minister Stephen Smith (who is an impressive sight when in full flight and fury) hit the roof.

Next, the ADF brasshats, in an outbreak of unbelievably insular stupidity, decided to go ahead with a separate charge against the traumatised female, to do with AWOL and drinking. Moreover, these same defence bosses also asked the woman to apologise for going public with her story.

Adding military insult to personal injury, check. The Defence Minister was even more displeased, of course. Richard Chirgwin points out that these actions are merely symptoms of a deeper institutional problem:

Now, I could write a serious and reasoned column about the chronic social problems of the ADF, which has, for as long as I can remember, acted as if it has institutional autism.

Or I could observe that the ADF seems entirely unable to instill even the remotest hint of good sense in how its members behave in the presence of computers. It’s less than a fortnight since we found out that Australian soldiers were posting racist messages about Afghanistan nationals on Facebook.

But I have a different question to ask: why the hell was the ADF permitting unrestricted use of Skype in the Academy?

January 26, 2011

QotD: The elephant in the living world

Filed under: Economics, Japan, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

Here in peaceful and progressive Canada, it is so easy to feel smug towards larger countries that get their hands dirty in the world arena. Especially that one country built on the conquest and near eradication of its peaceful natives who have received hardly any compensation or even an apology. You know, the one founded on belligerent exceptionalism and manifest superiority over other cultures that was turned into a national religion that has historically led to imperialist conquest and mass slaughter. This country still has an actual federal law that requires all foreigners to carry their papers with them at all times, or risk being deported by any policeman who can, simply on a whim, question and detain them. The country so primitive and barbaric that it actively uses the death penalty, shrugging off international protests about it just as coldly as it does in important environmental issues. Its provincial masses bitterly cling to their traditional values while their media feeds them a constant diet of mindless pap and actively hushes up embarrassing facts. They rarely travel abroad, being not just obsessed with ethnic purity and deeply suspicious, even afraid, of anything foreign, but also unapologetically sexist and classist, especially towards this one minority they consider dirty, criminal and less evolved. We can only sigh in relief that sun is finally setting on the once so unstoppable economic juggernaut… of Japan.

Ilkka, “The elephant in the living world”, The Fourth Checkraise, 2011-01-20

August 23, 2010

Sex sells, even especially in MMOs

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Justin Olivetti acknowledges the obvious:

The other day, a group of us in the Massively office watched the latest TERA demo video in a sort of horrified awe as the skimpily clad character ran with her fanny flying in the wind and gyrated her hips to cast a spell. It sparked an intense discussion among us as to the fine line between sexing a game up and over-sexing it just to draw in stereotypical drooling male gamers.

It’s a well-known adage that sex sells, and like it or hate it, attractive characters and skimpy outfits have been a part of MMORPGs for quite some time now. From World of Warcraft‘s seductive succubus to Age of Conan‘s topless extravaganza to Star Trek Online‘s character creation “breast slider,” game studios tend to play the sex card first and frequently to pull in customers. This is why, for example, male armor tends to always be practical (if oddly flamboyant) while female armor isn’t even big enough to protect one’s dignity, never mind one’s internal organs.

August 16, 2010

Cory Doctorow on the new Robert Heinlein biography

Filed under: History, Media, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

RAH by PattersonI finished reading the first volume last night, and I can’t wait for volume two. Cory Doctorow summarizes John Clute’s review with his own observations (Clute compared Heinlein’s work to Doctorow’s):

Heinlein was notoriously recalcitrant about his early life and the two wives he was married to before his epic marriage to Virginia Heinlein. He repeatedly burned correspondence and other writings that related to that period. Clute suggests that this is partly driven by Heinlein’s desire to be Robert A Heinlein, titan of the field, without having to cope with his youthful embarrassments. It’s a good bet — lots of the stuff that drives young people to write science fiction also makes them a pain in the ass to be around until they work some of the kinks out of their system (I wholeheartedly include myself in this generalization).

It’s interesting to see his own growth, from his early priggishness (he was nicknamed “the boy general” as a plebe at the Naval Academy) which undoubtedly was not helped by his health issues and tendency to stammer. He was in the shadow of his older brother Rex Ivar for most of his youth, even following him to the Academy three two years later. Rex Ivar was the favourite child in the family and Robert never seemed to be able to do as well in his parents’ eyes as the older boy.

Robert Heinlein was probably a pretty toxic individual as a teenager, based on the evidence Patterson presents — it’s pretty clear even after most of the information was sanitized by Heinlein’s third wife Virginia. Patterson never met Heinlein, and by the time he took on the biography, most of the people who knew Heinlein were fading from the scene. I think he did a very good job with the information available to him, but the biography definitely improves after the Academy years.

Patterson also puts forward a pretty comprehensive case for the idea that Heinlein’s fiction generally conveys Heinlein’s own political beliefs. This is widely acknowledged among Heinlein fans, save for a few who seem distressed by the idea that the blatant racism and sexism (especially in the earlier works) are the true beliefs of the writer at the time of writing and would prefer to believe that Heinlein didn’t write himself into his works. I got into a pretty heated debate with one such person at the Heinlein panel at the 2007 Comicon, who maintained the absurd position that Heinlein’s views could never be divined by reading his fiction — after all, his characters espouse all manner of contradictory beliefs! (To which I replied: “Yes, but the convincing arguments are always for the same set of beliefs, and the characters who challenge those beliefs are beaten in the argument.”) Not that I fault Heinlein for this — it’s an honorable tradition in SF and the mainstream of literature, and I find Heinlein’s beliefs to be nuanced and complex, anything but the reactionary caricature with which he is often dismissed.

It should be no surprise to anyone over 30 that Robert Heinlein’s political and philosophical views changed over his lifetime. This is discussed in some depth in the book, frequently from Heinlein’s own letters to friends at various points. He lost his religious views very early on (if he ever really had them, other than for conforming to familial expectations), and after leaving the Navy he was deeply involved in Upton Sinclair’s EPIC movement.

His belief in world government must have been hard to sustain, given that he had a great deal of experience of the political process, both in Kansas City during the Pendergast years, and in California with EPIC. Corruption, dirty dealing, and backroom bargaining were the way things got done, and it would be hard to believe that things would be better with a single world-wide government.

What seems to have gotten him involved in EPIC was his first-hand experience of poverty and seeing the plight of the “Okies” who’d come to California after the dust bowl wiped out so many farms in the central states. There were not enough jobs for them, even displacing the Mexican migrant labourers, and they were ineligible for state assistance until after they’d been in California for a year. Sinclair appeared to be the only politician with any plan other than oppressing the Okies enough to force them to move on.

July 16, 2010

Addressing the science and technology gender gap

Filed under: Economics, Education, Liberty, Science, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:32

It must be the start of the silly season, as lots of words are being flung around about the low number of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The numbers are well short of gender parity, which some are latching on to as prima facie proof of misogyny, prejudice, and deliberate stunting of women’s career choices. Legislative and regulatory “fixes” are being suggested. Not so fast, says Eric S. Raymond:

Let’s get one shibboleth out of the way first: Larry Summers was right to be skeptical about the prospects for “equality” in STEM (science, technology, math, engineering) fields in general. Just the difference in dispersion of the IQ curves for males and females guarantees that, let alone the significant differences in mean at spatial visualization and mathematical ability. Removing all the institutional, social and psychological barriers will not achieve a 1:1 sex ratio in these fields; the best we can hope for is a large, happy female minority — that is, as opposed to a small and unhappy one.

[. . .]

I don’t mean to deny that there is still prejudice against women lurking in dark corners of the field. But I’ve known dozens of women in computing who wouldn’t have been shy about telling me if they were running into it, and not one has ever reported it to me as a primary problem. The problems they did report were much worse. They centered on one thing: women, in general, are not willing to eat the kind of shit that men will swallow to work in this field.

Now let’s talk about death marches, mandatory uncompensated overtime, the beeper on the belt, and having no life. Men accept these conditions because they’re easily hooked into a monomaniacal, warrior-ethic way of thinking in which achievement of the mission is everything. Women, not so much. Much sooner than a man would, a woman will ask: “Why, exactly, am I putting up with this?”

Correspondingly, young women in computing-related majors show a tendency to tend to bail out that rises directly with their comprehension of what their working life is actually going to be like. Biology is directly implicated here. Women have short fertile periods, and even if they don’t consciously intend to have children their instincts tell them they don’t have the option young men do to piss away years hunting mammoths that aren’t there.

Eric feels that the big problem (at least in computing) is that the field has become the modern sweatshop: better paid by far than sweatshops of the non-digital nature, but still the kind of work that only appeals to the obsessives, the ones who like to focus monomaniacally on goals. As a general rule, men are much more likely to accept this kind of work, as men tend to have a bias towards monomania that most women don’t.

There’s also the social aspect: geeks don’t talk to one another in the same way or for the same lengths of time as non-geeks do. They may communicate by email or instant messaging or other non face-to-face media, but conversation — unless it’s focused on the task at hand — isn’t a preferred activity during work hours (which, for a true geek, may be all the hours not spent sleeping or eating). Looking at that kind of environment doesn’t attract people who are well socialized and who are used to more interaction with co-workers.

As a comment on Eric’s post put it: “You’re saying the real “problem” with the gender ratios is not sexism, its that most women have more sense than we males do!”

September 29, 2009

QotD: Confessions

Filed under: Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

Whew, I’m pooped. Jimmy Carter has got me run ragged with all the hating I’m supposed to do. Jimmy says I’m a racist because I oppose President Obama’s health care reform program. Even Jimmy Carter can’t be wrong all the time. And since Jimmy Carter has been wrong about every single thing for the past 44 years, maybe — just as a matter of statistical probability — he’s right this time.

I hadn’t noticed I was a racist, but that was no doubt because I was too busy being a homophobe. Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot. Since I do not want America to suffer another Sean Penn movie, I will accept that I’m a homophobe, too. And I’m a male chauvinist due to the fact that I think Nancy Pelosi is blowing smoke — excuse me, carbon neutral, biodegradable airborne particulate matter — out her pantsuit.

Also, I’m pretty sure Rahm Emanuel is Jewish, and you can’t be against (or even for) President Obama without the involvement of Rahm Emanuel, so I’m an anti-Semite. Furthermore, although I personally happen to be a libertarian on immigration issues, I do agree with Joe Wilson that you can’t say you’re expanding health care to the poor and then pretend you’re going to turn those poor away if their driver’s licenses look a little Xeroxy and what’s on their Social Security cards turns out to be a toll-free number for a La Raza hotline. Thus I’m prejudiced against Hispanics as well.

P.J. O’Rourke, “Outsourcing Hate: The burdens of conservatism in the Obama age”, The Weekly Standard, 2009-10-05

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