Comments

  4. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    lotharloo, maybe they aren’t so smart, as Mitchell still comes across as a smarmy asshole (from the Political Madness thread)
    https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2018/07/17/discuss-political-madness-all-the-time-7/comment-page-6/#comment-1970970
    https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2018/07/17/discuss-political-madness-all-the-time-7/comment-page-6/#comment-1970978
    https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2018/07/17/discuss-political-madness-all-the-time-7/comment-page-6/#comment-1970997
    It appears that things didn’t go as Grassly had hoped.

  7. chris says

    Forty years ago I was majoring in engineering, and as one of two women in our entire class for that department I had lots of very stupid things said to me by men. In my junior year one guy took it upon himself to make to make sexual comments to me every time we both happened to be in the student lounge. Fortunately he was no where to be found during my senior year (about half of the class moved on to other majors, but both of us women did graduate).

    Fortunately I am used to people saying stupid things to me, especially since I had to quit work because I gave birth to a kid with multiple medical conditions (no, cranial sacral therapy, which is a homeopathic head massage, will not fix the damage in my son’s brain). I also let my membership in the Society of Women Engineers lapse. Yesterday they sent me an email asking me to join up again, and it included this link:
    http://www.boeing.com/company/about-bca/washington/women-make-us-better-06-27-17.page

    It is about men saying stupid things for well over a century. It includes lots of eye rolling, something I have doing lots during the last two years, and especially the past couple of weeks.

  9. lotharloo says

    @Nerd:

    Yeah, I saw some snippets of Mitchel and it pissed me off a lot. For example, her thing about asking her fear of flying and then asking her how she got there. But I’m sure they included in their calculations the fact she’s a woman hired to gaslight another woman.

  11. Ed Seedhouse says

    @10: “They will confirm his asshole tomorrow”.

    They can’t. The committee has first to vote to recommend him to the house. Then the house votes to confirm, not the committee. There all it will take is one Rethuglican to vote against and he’s toast.

    I predicted yesterday that he’s toast, and so far I stand by it.

  14. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    There is one R on the judiciary committee that may tank things tomorrow.
    Jeff Flake from Arizona. He isn’t running for re-election, an he may decide to play statesman versus an asshole partisan in one of his last votes. Tentacles crossed.

  15. hemidactylus says

    I wish men would shut up and let these female sports commentators (Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer) have a unlimited say in the booth:

    https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2018/9/25/17901944/first-all-woman-nfl-broadcast-team-amazon-prime-thursday-night-football-hannah-storm-andrea-kremer

    I wasn’t paying enough attention to a morning radio show this morning and thought they would have full reign. I don’t have Amazon Prime. Sad ☹️☹️☹️

    From the article: “Amazon Prime viewers can still stream Thursday Night Football games with commentary from Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, who will call the broadcast for FOX and NFL Network.” Bleck. I hate the teams anyway.

    And: “While it’s understandable that Amazon would not be able to change the cast of the FOX and NFL Network broadcasts, promoting the Storm-Kremer team as compelling for being different rather than simply being good reinforces some unsavory conclusions. The implication of that list of streaming options—whether it was intended that way or not—is that when it comes to football, women speak another language.

    Many NFL fans would agree with that exact statement, if the response to Beth Mowins’ call on the first game of the Week 1 Monday Night Football doubleheader this season was any indication. Her name was trending on Twitter as hordes of (mostly) men declared they would rather listen to the Spanish-language broadcast on ESPN Deportes (which, presumably, they couldn’t understand) than hear Mowins call the game, regardless of her years of experience and deft play-by-play commentary.”

    I feel ill. Not watching the regular airing now if I cannot see these competent women call the game. Is this 2018? Women can’t call a football game? WTF?

    I will shut up now. Zip.

  16. Artor says

    I love the expressions on the women to Kreepy Kavanaugh’s left and right. The one on his left looks like she’s just stunned by the shit that’s coming out of his pie-hole. The woman on the right seems revolted, and about to lose her lunch down Kavanaugh’s back. And the woman of the far left is just very, very disappointed in him. And Kavanaugh himself looks unhappy that his dirty laundry has finally come to the surface where everyone can see it. He thought he got away with that decades ago. Sucks to be him.

  18. Ed Seedhouse says

    @13 “The committee votes to recommend Kavanaugh to the floor, meaning the entire Senate”

    Right, of course. I’m Canadian, eh, so perhaps I may be forgiven for my confusion over the convoluted and arcane system to the south of us, as opposed to the perfectly straightforward and sane system we Northerners sport.

  19. Ed Seedhouse says

    If Kavanaugh defies my prediction and gets confirmed I propose he be known forever more as “Judge Rapist”

  20. Tethys says

    Today, a senator who has lost any pretense of governing, and a prospective SCOTUS member both had literal temper tantrums on live television.

    The one on his left looks like she’s just stunned by the shit that’s coming out of his pie-hole.

    That’s his wife, Ashley.

    And the woman of the far left is just very, very disappointed in him.

    His Mother. No idea who the woman on the right is, but the other one on the left is apparently also a family member. He is toast, but the GOP are sore loser manbabies who have never had to suck up their richwhiteboyentitlement before, so it may take them awhile to figure that out they just lost the war on women.

  23. Saad says

    I thought Grassley was the biggest piece of shit in that room until the angry, emotional, and hysterical Lindsey Graham got “triggered” and started defecating out of his mouth.

  25. says

    @5 chris

    Your link stands out to me. Why? Because 90% of all freaking dress codes are almost entirely based on, “We can’t have girls distracting guys in class, so we need to change the dress code to look like we are being far, when we are really trying to make the girls less distracting.” The school, rightly, got pissed at this guy for being a complete and utter ass, but… I would bet good money that their own “reason” for the dress code change is a more PC version of the same bullshit they suspended him for – blaming girls for problems that have nothing at all to do with girls, and everything to do with warped societal norms, body shame (and the confusing mix of fear and confused hyper-awareness and interest it creates), and, the fact that they are dealing with hormonally overcharged teenagers, whose nom de plume is pretty dang close to, “If its forbidden, but really interesting, obsess over it to the point of mindless distraction.” Just as the nom de plume of every school, and 90% of all adults is, “If we hide things from them better, they won’t get distracted by it.” Which, you know, always works. lol

  26. Richard Smith says

    If Kavanaugh gets voted in, he should be addressed by other Americans as “Our Dishonor” (referring to the country, not so much the people), or perhaps “Their Dishonor” if another Republican is nearby to point and glare at.

  28. chris says

    Kagehi: “Your link stands out to me. Why? Because 90% of all freaking dress codes are almost entirely based on, “We can’t have girls distracting guys in class, so we need to change the dress code to look like we are being far, when we are really trying to make the girls less distracting.””

    I don’t really care about the minor “dress code” issue, which is due to the scant detail from the article. For all I know it was implemented because boys were wearing those shorts so low that they showed too much butt crack.

    Obviously the “girls distracting guys in class” is hilarious to me since I am old enough that I was not allowed to wear slacks (just dresses and skirts) to school until the rules changed when I was in 7th grade (I am about PZ’s age). My mother who grew up in Wisconsin always thought it was an idiotic policy, especially when there was snow on the ground. So she made me slacks that matched my skirt that I could remove when I took off my coat as I arrived at school.

    I am concerned about the “it is the girls’ fault” bit. As the gender minority in my math/science/engineering classes I encountered that sentiment too many times. Which I find ironic when I had to explain what I did (structural dynamics) to stress engineers. The main difference in our jobs was they worried about forces when it was essentially sitting still (statics), I dealt with more bits because due to actual motion (dynamics). I had to deal with a few more variables and equations. And yes, I often came away thinking why I had to prove myself everyday to guys who forgot so much of their required undergrad course of physics.

    Though this and the Kavanaugh frat-bro bit reminds me of another aspect of my college career. I had entered college thinking to become a physical oceanographer, but some grad students and professors decided to give us incoming freshman a picnic on the first weekend. This is where they laid out the reality of life as an oceanographer… low pay if you can geta job after getting a doctorate. So I switched to engineering, and the applied math is similar. Yes, an oceanographer has accused me of “going after the money.” To which I replied, “Of course I did!”

    But I did actually take class in oceanography, not the intro 101 version but the one required by the fisheries and ocean departments. What was nice was a friend I knew from the dorms was in the class, he had gotten married and was living in an apartment.

    The class was taught by an older professor who had been a pioneer in the field and had written a “bible” of oceanography. He was entertaining and gave weekly quizzes. Oddly enough the average score on those quizzes was very high. My friend and I were on the lowest level even with 70% to 90% scores. We both thought this was odd. As it turned out the fraternities kept a “test catalog” with all the answers, all the the frat-bros had to do was memorize the ten digits to the correct answer.

    My friend and I explained this to the teaching assistant on a lab day. The only thing the professor had to do was mix up the order of the questions and the list of possible answers. It was just a wee bit more work. On the next Friday quiz just after the tests were passed out one could hear several whispered curses. The average grade plummeted.

    My friend and I did much better because we actually studied for the quiz.

    I vividly remember studying for that quiz for that class (but not for that particular test) when I waited to see a premier for the very first Star Wars movie in 1977 with a bunch of dorm friends. We had arrived twenty minutes before a showing, only to be told it was sold out. So we were the first in line for the next showing… and I sat on the sidewalk with my books studying.