Sleep well Philae

Philae is indeed going to sleep. No hop, no sun shining on the solar panels.

Philae Lander @Philae2014 ·1 hour ago
.@ESA_Rosetta I’m feeling a bit tired, did you get all my data? I might take a nap… #CometLanding

Thank you, @ESA_Rosetta! I did it! I became the first spacecraft to land on a comet & study it! But it’s not over yet… #CometLanding [Read more…]

Women become more silent

Ed Yong wrote a post in 2010 about a study of how objectification silences women.

Many people brush off the importance of men staring at women’s bodies.

Tamar Saguy is different. Leading a team of Israeli and US psychologists, she has shown that women become more silent if they think that men are focusing on their bodies. They showed that women who were asked to introduce themselves to an anonymous male partner spent far less time talking about themselves if they believed that their bodies were being checked out. Men had no such problem. Nor, for that matter, did women if they thought they were being inspected by another woman. [Read more…]

Pants in flames

News not news: Brendan O’Neill “argues” dishonestly.

Case in point: he has a stupid rant about how the Grand Old Feminism of Yesteryear has reversed course and gone all wrong. You know what it is without looking – feminism used to be brave and tuff and liberatory, and now it’s all about being viccctimzzzzzzzz. The first few paragraphs could have come from Christina Hoff Sommers or Richard Dawkins or TIME magazine. Then he gets into particulars, and that’s where the dishonesty comes in. [Read more…]

Use coercion and threats, use intimidation

Excellent – so Brazil is another place that won’t be giving Julien Blanc a visa. John Morales left a link to this ABC (Australia) article yesterday.

Brazil has said it will deny a visa application from an American “pick-up artist” who was forced out of Australia last week after a social media campaign against his methods of teaching men to seduce women.

No, not seduce – assault and (if successful) rape. Seduce means persuade. You don’t “seduce” people by grabbing them and shoving their heads onto your crotch. [Read more…]

TIME flops

Surprising no one anywhere (maybe that can be  one of TIME’s “words” to be banned next year), TIME’s offering of “feminism” as a candidate for its annual “what word should be banned” poll provided inspiration for the kind of people who hate feminism. How could TIME possibly have foreseen that??! Other than by thinking about it for a quarter of a second, that is.

Yes, why does everyone have to talk about feminism? Why can’t we all just be feminists quietly? At home? Only very late at night when everybody’s sleeping? Or like in our teeny tiniest voices? Or in a soundproof hyperbaric chamber, maybe, where it won’t, like, bother anybody?

Ok, maybe that’s not quite fair, but making a case for banning a word that refers to a mass social movement alongside the nonsense phrase “om nom nom” is pretty stupid. So stupid we suspected it’s the work of 4Chan’s /b/ board, and we were correct. Over at /b/, the Internet’s home for barely potty-trained trolls, everyone’s being encouraged to vote for “feminist,” with one user declaring, brightly, “Let’s trigger some bitches.”

And that’s exactly why there’s no need for feminism any more and the word should be banned.

Obvi.

 

European Space Agency hangout

For your enjoyment and enlightenment: a hangout with a bunch of people involved in the Rosetta project. They are there to give updates on what’s happening.

One of the people is Matt Taylor, he of The Shirt. Starting at 15:20 (which is the first time he talks) he apologizes for wearing The Shirt. Good; thanks, ESA. Then he collects himself, and gets a pat on the shoulder from the guy next to him, and then he talks about the project.

Good. Done. Now we can talk about the project and leave The Shirt behind!