Thus Spake Zuska

Upcycled Purse Honors Howard U. Grad - it could be YOURS!

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:08:39 -0500

Penny Richards has created a new purse, available on her Etsy site. Here's some info about it she shared with me (details about the purse construction available on the site):

[the purse honors] Melba Roy, a Howard University graduate (undergrad and masters) who was a mathematician at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in the 1960s. She led a team (four women, seven men) who did computations to track the movements of satellites. I wish I could find more about her, but there's nothing much online--can't even find a birth year (or death date, but she might still be alive).

Get it while it's hot, ladies. This is one of a kind.

Penny's creations are amazing. Why buy some new bag when you could be totin' one of Penny's? Seriously. Check out the Janet Scudder and Jazz Age bags, too.

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Let Me Mansplain That Sports Illustrated Cover For You, Little Lady!

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:37:11 -0500

Lindsey Vonn is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Womentalksports.com notes

Vonn is first a GREAT athlete, but she also represents norm of feminine attractiveness. The combination of athleticism and attractiveness make Vonn the likely poster girl of the US Olympic Team, and the media hasn't disappointed in constructed her as such.
Not to be left out, Sports Illustrated is featuring Vonn on their February 8,2010 cover (pictured here). For those of you who follow SI Covers, know that female athletes are RARELY featured on the cover.

Over the last 60 years researchers have shown that about 4% of all SI covers have portrayed women.

When females are featured on the cover of SI, they are more likely than not to be in sexualized poses and not in action-and the most recent Vonn cover is no exception.

Silly ladeez! Chris Chase mansplains why you are WRONG!!!! (Though I note, alas, poor Chris is unable to actually directly link to the womentalksports.com post he is mansplaining.)

Because the ladybranes are tiny, I am here to help. I am going to translate Chris's mansplaining post into a more direct communication that really gets the message across, so that even the teeniest tiniest ladybraned ladeez out there will understand what is meant. Chase's original text is in boldface. Here we go!

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Musings on Listening to Skloot Talk About "Immortal Life" on Fresh Air

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:52:03 -0500

Just finished listening to Rebecca Skloot talking about her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, on Fresh Air this afternoon. You can now listen on the web (transcript not yet available).

Around 25:10, Skloot tells Terry Gross about an experience she had with a faith-healing ceremony with members of Henrietta Lacks's family. Among other things, that was the point when Skloot realized that she had to write herself into her own book. It was also the turning point when Lacks's daughter became more trusting of Skloot the journalist. I recommend that you listen to the whole interview, but especially that portion.

It raises some seriously interesting questions about the value of religious traditions and their meaning in a scientific community. The answer is far more complex than whether or not Skloot's personal religious beliefs were changed by the experience (they weren't - she was and remains non-religious). It's that the experience happened at all - clearly it provided some sort of healing for Lacks's daughter, and it did have a serious impact on Skloot. I would argue that the faith healing ceremony facilitated something that "science" wasn't capable of doing, whether or not the participants - all or any of them - believe in God or a god.

And I'm speaking as someone who doesn't believe in god.

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Skloot, "Immortal Life" Featured on "Fresh Air" Today

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:43:45 -0500

Be sure to catch Fresh Air whenever it airs in your local market to day, or catch the podcast. Rebecca Skloot is on today, talking about her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which, as I hope you know, is released today. And I hope you pre-ordered your copy already. Fresh Air is on at 3 pm and again at 7 pm in Philly - can't wait!

UPDATE: Terry Gross may just be the perfect person to interview Rebecca Skloot, who is wonderfully telling the story of Henrietta Lacks, and of how she came to tell the story of Henrietta Lacks. If you don't get to listen to Fresh Air on the radio, listen to it on the web. And then go donate some money to your local public radio station. And then go buy Rebecca's book, if you haven't already.

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Eat Your Veggies!

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:11:35 -0500

Well, with a little pork.

My mother used to make haluski, which is basically chopped cabbage fried in butter and served over boiled noodles. In the old days, the bubbas made their own noodles, but we used store-bought packaged. As I kid, I was not fond of haluski, but as my palate became more refined, I fell in love with the treasure that is fried cabbage.

I like to eat haluski in the winter and so does Mr. Z. Lately we have been mixing up the basic, simple recipe. Tonight we got a little carried away.

You could make this without bacon and it would still be delicious, but we started with five or so strips of bacon, fried crispy and set aside to drain. I am not ashamed to tell you I used the bacon drippings along with butter to saute my chopped cabbage. Well, a little ashamed, but what's done is done.

One quarter of what must have been a helluva large cabbage, obtained from the Philadelphia Winter Harvest, chopped coarsely, dumped in the sizzling butter/bacon grease mix and stirred around. Helps if you have a nice big pan with high sides for this. Stir and turn the cabbage to coat nicely. I had a few baby organic sweet potatoes that Mr. Z scrubbed clean and chopped up in small bits - throw those in there and stir around.

Put the water on to boil for the pasta while Mr. Z starts peeling and coarsely chopping two medium-sized onions, and then toss those in, too. If your skillet is hot enough and you've got enough butter/grease in there, everything will cook up fine. Just keep it stirred around so it doesn't stick. Pepper, salt, mix it up some more. Mm, sweet potatoes getting tender and it's all looking good. Time to cook the pasta!

Near the end, sprinkle in some black fennel seeds that you just got from Penzey's Spices, just for fun and good looks. Crumble up all that bacon (if you are using bacon) and sprinkle it in the pot and give it another stir. Drain the pasta - small shells are nice for this dish. Butter up the noodles a little, just because. Ladle out a little pasta in your serving dish and then ladle out your haluski supreme on top. And then commence to eatin'. Na zdrowie! and Dobru noc.

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Should You Comment On This Blog Post?

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:23:57 -0500

1. First, a question. What is a blog?

Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:
A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
An archive of older articles.
A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a "blogroll".
One or more "feeds" like RSS, Atom or RDF files.
...Want an interactive website? Wouldn't it be nice if the readers of a website could leave comments, tips or impressions about the site or a specific article? With blogs, they can! Posting comments is one of the most exciting features of blogs.

2. Second, a quote. As seen on this blog post. Context: quoted comment came just after a detailed, friendly comment explaining how increase to ease and frequency of commenting.

Thursday, 28 Jan uary 2010 - 22:49 UTC

Richard Grant said:

The logic seems to be

more comments = good

Not sure that's true.

3. Third, an observation.

WTF are you blogging/commenting for, then??? Why not just stay home and jot down notes in one's own leather-bound journal with a quill pen? Shouldn't you be feeling rather sheepish about being the trigger of that 50k huzzah-fest?

Hypothesis: If you, like Richard Grant, agree that the "logic" of "more comments = good" is "not true" you MUST restrain yourself from commenting on this post.

You may, however, feel absolutely free to sit down in your comfy chair with a cup of tea and jot down any number of witty ripostes in your leather-bound journal. Those taking particular umbrage with the contents of this post may wish to fire off a letter by snail mail.

p.s. I did not link directly to RG's comment. Cumbersome as it may be, it is actually possible to link to comments on that particular blog. However, those following the link are required to log in to the blog network to view the linked comment and this seems onerous. Just go to the blog post and scroll down to the date/timestamp to find the comment if you so desire.

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For My Friend With The Douchey Boss

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:40:29 -0500

You, my dear friend, have been EXCEEDINGLY ill for weeks, but still making sure everything at work gets covered, via arrangements with colleagues and telecommuting despite being on strict bed rest orders from your doctor. You're getting slowly better and we, your friends, rejoice at this news. Your douchey boss, however, is hacked off about your "poor planning".

Hmm. I would like to help my husband plan for a bout of a devastating pulmonary illness that leaves him wracked with coughing, weak, housebound, etc. Or some other illness, parameters to be specified in the future (e.g., time of onset, duration, symptoms, etc.) I assume your boss will be making him/herself available to me and my husband, and anyone else in similar circumstances, who might need to take advantage of douchey boss's clearly superior skills in Future Sight Illness Career Planning. I will be phoning them up just as soon as I look up "A. Douche" in the phone book.

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Men Who Cannot Follow Clear Directions From Women

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:31:22 -0500

I warned Jon, I did. D00d, that thread is for MOCKING MANSPLAINERS.

Now, here I will repost Jon's mis-directed comment. Zuskateers, you may feel free to read (warning: contains mansplaing) or skip right over to the comment thread and post your own examples of Men Who Cannot Follow Clear Directions From Women.

SKM,
I used the word "system," for a reason. I'm not opposed to the idea that there's a particular kind of gendered condescension on the part of males in response to females.

The problem I have is the way it's being discussed, in the sense that there are a number of conceptual problems with how the behavior is being described, and what constitutes such a behavior.

The other issue is how criticisms are treated. Take for example the response that I've just written to your comment. It's an explanation, isn't it? I mean, I'm pointing out what I see as a flaw. I could have started off with that instead of my "passive-aggressive" response, but I wouldn't have gotten anywhere with it based on the reactions I've seen in this discussion.

I doubt I'm going to get anywhere with it now either. You can just keep pounding on the idea that I don't know what I'm talking about or refer back to any number of examples of ad hoc reasoning in this discussion.

I know, I know, I'm mansplaining. Who am I after all to point out conceptual problems? Who am I to come into this discussion and treat it seriously when it was meant for fun? The freakin' audacity!

Here's a thought experiment for you. Let's say that I agree with the premise that there's a particular kind of male behavior that is condescending to females.

Now, let's say that while I agree that this behavior exists and has certain identifiable qualities, more conceptual clarity is needed, in that there needs to be some sort of boundary around this behavior.

For the sake of argument, let's also assume the following:

(1) that not everyone has a clear idea of where this boundary is and some of their examples may not fit the initial definition.

(2) the possibility of error, i.e., that some of you are potentially incorrect in identifying certain behaviors as mansplaining when they're better described as some other behavior (may or may not be related).

(3) a male is actually able to participate in this discussion and disagree without being a mansplainer and the same goes for a female without being a FemaleMansplainer

Okay, if you agree with that I've written, I want to you imagine your perfect interlocutor, presumably someone that's well-informed about the issues and the arguments. Imagine that this interlocutor nonetheless disagrees with some or all of your arguments. What criticisms would they offer?

What constitutes the best possible argument against this idea of the Mainsplainer? Can you play devil's advocate and come up with arguments? What would they be?

Posted by: Jon | January 25, 2010 4:56 PM

Jon followed up with:

Not sorry Zuska, already posted.
P.S. I'm female. I posted under a friend's name to see what my response would be. Oh, I know, I'm terrible for abandoning the sisterhood. .

You'll have to post the thread as "snooty women who cannot follow clear directions from other women"

Posted by: Not Jon | January 25, 2010 5:05 PM

Oh, Not Jon. You haven't abandoned the sisterhood. You have to locate, comprehend, and join the sisterhood before you can abandon it.

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You May Be A Mansplainer If...

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:23:47 -0500

Mansplaining. We've all had to endure it, on the internets or IRL, so frequently we are often overwhelmed with the desire to hork up serious chunks on the mansplainer's shoes. And yet, you can't always do that. Maybe the mansplainer is your boss. Maybe he's mansplaining on your blog or your Facebook page, and you just can't get at his shoes. What to do?

First, some clarification. Just what is mansplaining? I like this definition.

Mansplaining isn't just the act of explaining while male, of course; many men manage to explain things every day without in the least insulting their listeners.
Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate "facts" about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.

Bonus points if he is explaining how you are wrong about something being sexist!

Think about the men you know. Do any of them display that delightful mixture of privilege and ignorance that leads to condescending, inaccurate explanations, delivered with the rock-solid conviction of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course he is right, because he is the man in this conversation?

That dude is a mansplainer.

So, herewith, I open the official TSZ "You May Be A Mansplainer If..." thread. Feel free to post your favorite examples, though I expect there may be a certain loopy repetition after awhile...

Keep in mind that if you post a comment with more than one link in it, it may get caught in the spam filter. If you feel you are not making your way out of spam as fast as you'd like, shoot me an email. I try to check as frequently as I can but sometimes life gets in the way.

I will start us off with a few recent examples. Many, many thanks to commenter Michael Hawkins for these delightful examples of You May Be A Mansplainer If...

1. You MUST explain why everything I said is beside the point, and wrong, and silly.

2. You MUST explain why you are not a mansplainer, then re-explain things to the wimminz. Also, call them sexist.

3. You MUST explain that you mansplain because you assume that blogs are written by men, then re-explain things to the wimminz AGAIN.

4. Ignore everything everyone says, then accuse everyone else of being sexist to you. Follow this with some SERIOUS explaining! Teh wimminz are slow, but they will surely understand someday! Because you are a MAN! And you are SPLAININ'!

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Sunday Evening Domestic Dramedy, In One (Wee) Act

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:31:36 -0500

Mr. Z records live music and is nuts about microphones.

Whenever we watch t.v. he is always pointing out microphones to me. Earlier this evening, the first NFL playoff game ends, there's a crazy scene on the field, confetti flying in the air:

Mr. Z: Did you see that mic?
Me: No.
Mr. Z: There! There it is! See? It's on a long boom! Wow! That is a really long boom mic!
Me: Wow.
Mr. Z: I guess you don't notice this stuff like I do.
Me: No, I don't, but that's okay.
Mr. Z: I just look for mics whenever I am watching tv. See, you aren't the only nerd in the family! I'm a microphone nerd! Or maybe I'm more of a dweeb. Yeah, a microphone dweeb!
Me: Honey, I wouldn't be proud of that. In the hierarchy of things, nerds are better than dweebs.
Mr. Z: Really?
Me: Yes, but that's okay, honey, because you've already mated.
Mr. Z: Well, look at me! A dweeb who snagged a nerd! I'm doing pretty good!
Me: Yeah, but I'm not.
Mr. Z: Well, you just need to raise me up to nerd level, then you'll have something to brag about.

[one or two minutes pass]

Mr. Z: You want to blog that conversation, don't you?
Me: Yes. Yes, I do.
Mr. Z: That's what I was afraid of.

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Eat Your Soup! If You Can...

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:01:04 -0500

This is a story about making chicken soup completely from scratch, with local, organic ingredients, and starting with the carcass of a roasted chicken. The soup was very, very good, and looked like this:

The chicken in question came from Pikeland Pastured Poultry. All the vegetables in the soup came from Landisdale Farm.

But the chicken had to do a little traveling before its bones came to rest in my soup pot.

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CNN Reports Overweight Decapitated Female Torsos Unhealthy, Unstylish

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:12:31 -0500

Okay, the actual story is this:

if you are an overweight woman you:
• May have a harder time getting health insurance or have to pay higher premiums

• Are at higher risk of being misdiagnosed or receiving inaccurate dosages of drugs

• Are less likely to find a fertility doctor who will help you get pregnant

• Are less likely to have cancer detected early and get effective treatment for it

And the story goes on to outline a whole host of reasons, some discriminatory, some actual problems caused by physical realities, why the above might be so. But before you get to any of that, you are greeted with the following:

just so you can be sure to remember that the world is staring at and judging you when you are overweight, young lady! No, we don't need to see your head or even your whole body. Just the boobs and crotch - the pieces that define women's worth. White women only need apply for our decapitated torso shot, please, even though the problems of access to adequate medical care and weight-related health issue are just as critical and maybe even more so for brown women.

CNN is basically re-reporting a story from Health.com, which is primarily aimed at women. That may explain why the story focuses on the problems being overweight causes for women, as if overweight men didn't experience any issues with obtaining adequate health care. But what I find really interesting is comparing the photo that Health.com chose to illustrate their story, as compared to CNN. It's this:

First of all, the photo takes up a lot less real estate on the page than CNN's photo does. It sits beside the story, instead of blaring across the top of the page as something you have to scroll past before you can get to the story. And finally, CNN's photo says to the female reader "this is how the world sees all you fat bitches" whereas Health.com's photo says something more like "you are taking control of your health".

CNN, I wish you had shoes, because I really need to puke on them right now.

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: Pre-Order NOW!!!

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:47:12 -0500

You may have been hearing some of the buzz about Rebecca Skloot's forthcoming book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons--as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the effects of the atom bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Abel Pharmboy has a great post on it. I have not yet read it but we all know The Skloot can write, the topic is of major importance for just about any scientist, and as Abel says,

What is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks really about? Science, African American culture and religion, intellectual property of human tissues, Southern history, medical ethics, civil rights, the overselling of medical advances? The difficulty in defining the book is also what makes so appealing to academics in both the arts and sciences.

Abel also points out the advantage to everyone of pre-ordering NOW:

Forthcoming February 2, 2010, you can pre-order from your local independent bookseller, or online via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders or Powell's
Pre-ordering the book is a mutually-beneficial proposition.

First, Amazon, for example, is currently offering the book at a 34% discount off the retail price - almost $9 off - an offer that will disappear on the release date.

Second, I learned that all book pre-orders count toward a book's first-week sales, the major determinant of subsequent momentum and popularity of the book. Being such a vocal booster of this book, the story, and the author, I urge you to consider pre-ordering the book in the next two weeks if you have any inkling that you will ultimately be interested in reading it.

So pre-order before February 2! Let's help make this important book's first week sales as big as possible. We need more of this kind of science journalism, more of this kind of telling the stories that have previously gone untold - indeed, have been buried. Kudos to Rebecca Skloot for bringing this story to the scientific community - now let's make sure we do our job as a community and help it get as much attention as it deserves.

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Underrepresented Groups, Online Science Media, and ScienceOnline2010

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:17:42 -0500

Over at A Blog Around the Clock there are a series of posts with great video interviews from ScienceOnline2010, but I'd like to especially point your attention to this one with David Kroll and Damond Nollan, both of North Carolina Central University. It was filmed shortly after their session on "Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Session: Engaging underrepresented groups in online science media".

I missed this session due to a combination of sleep deprivation and headache, and am really regretting it. Isis has a good post based on her attendance at the session, however - you should read it.

You can also follow the Twitter conversation about the session with the combined tags #scio10 #mlk.

Dr. Free-Ride has posted a collection of her tweets from the session here. And a fine job she did, too.

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How Do You Prepare For The Unimaginable?

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:34:42 -0500

I've been reading a lot of Casaubon's Book lately. I usually come away from it feeling like I ought to convince Mr. Z to move back to southwestern PA with me so the two of us can become gentleman farmers and live sustainably after peak oil - maybe we can live out our days in mom's house and garden in the backyard, as my grandfather used to, or buy some nice cheap land out in the countryside in Greene County, and I'll raise chickens, and maybe we'll even have goats, or...

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