Context is everything

Here’s something else I ran across at Making Light, and it will cheer you right up: it’s a history of Machiavelli’s time and place. If you thought Machiavelli was a ruthless, cunning schemer who presaged the modern political world of cynicism and expedience…you might just change your mind after reading it.

And now I want to visit Florence. Wait, I’ve always wanted to visit Florence…OK, now I want to visit it more.

Aww, heck, I want to see all of Italy.

Note also: her intelligent re-interpretation of the Avengers movie is also well worth reading.

The cables!

I saw this on @cstross‘s twitter feed and had to laugh. Audiophiles and other bewildered purchasers of high-end electronics can get thoroughly deranged and start throwing ridiculous sums of money at the most trivial components — like cables. How would you like this extra-special X-Box cable? I found one place selling it for $85; the non-elite cables without the virus protection are about $8.

If you really want an amazing deal, though, go for an AudioQuest K2 terminated speaker cable.

It’s only $8,450. And Amazon has 5 in stock! Order fast before they’re gone!

I don’t think they’re selling, though. The most wonderful thing about over-priced (or possibly typoed) cables are the reviews. You must read the reviews! Even the 5 star reviews are loaded with snark, but my very favorite is this one-star review. It’s a whole tragic story.

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

PLEASE! You must listen! We cannot maintain the link for long… I will type as fast as I can.

DO NOT USE THE CABLES!

We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this… accurate. For a few short days, we marveled. Then the… whispers… began.

Were they Aramaic? Hyperborean? Some even more ancient tongue, first spoken by elder races under the red light of dying suns far from here? We do not know, but somehow, slowly… we began to UNDERSTAND.

No, no, please! I don’t want to remember! YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME REMEMBER! I saw brave men claw their own eyes out… oh, god, the screaming… the mobs of feral children feasting on corpses, the shadows MOVING, the fires burning in the air! The CHANTING!

WHY CAN’T I FORGET THE WORDS???

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

Do not use the cables!

I want to read more of the author’s work. Alas, after that one flash of brilliance, most of Whisper’s work is pedestrian: shoes, exercise equipment, computer accessories. No audio gear, though, which is only to be expected if he has to wear earplugs all the time.

Not just Sally Ride

I had never heard of the Women in Space Program before, but apparently, after the Soviets sent Valentina Tereshkova into space, there was actually an effort to train American women as astronauts.

The participants of the Women in Space Program experienced tremendous success. “Nineteen women enrolled in WISP, undergoing the same grueling tests administered to the male Mercury astronauts,” Brandon Keim wrote in 2009. “Thirteen of them — later dubbed the Mercury 13 — passed ‘with no medical reservations,’ a higher graduation rate than the first male class. The top four women scored as highly as any of the men.”

The graduates were Geraldyn “Jerrie” Cobb, Wally Funk, Irene Leverton, Myrtle “K” Cagle, Jane B. Hart, Gene Nora Stumbough, Jerri Sloan, Rhea Hurrle, Sarah Gorelick, Bernice “B” Trimble Steadman, Jan Dietrich, Marion Dietrich, and Jean Hixson, called the “Mercury 13”.

I never heard of them before. They didn’t go into space, either. What happened?

Well, there were some revoltingly sexist attitudes at NASA.

In fact, one NASA official who declined to give his name to a reporter, said it made him “sick to his stomach” to think of women in space. Another called Tereshkova’s flight “a publicity stunt.”

A few did think of one use for women in space: “improving crew morale”. They nixed that because “such a situation might create interpersonal tensions far more dynamic than the sexual tensions it would release”. Yeah, they went there: the one thing a woman astronaut might be good for is getting her male colleagues off during long space flights.

So they come up with a lovely catch to prevent well-qualified women from joining the space program.

For a short while, it seemed that their quest to fly might advance. In 1962, the women were scheduled to continue testing at the Naval School of Aviation Medicine in Pensacola, Florida, but NASA declined to support their visit. Without official backing, the Navy canceled the trip. Cobb tried to save the program, flying to Washington and testifying before Congress. But NASA officials, John Glenn among them, told the Congressmen that women couldn’t be astronauts because they hadn’t flown jets, which were only available to the military, which also barred women.

This argument apparently proved persuasive and the Mercury 13 never got another chance to make their case for space, even after Tereshkova’s record-setting flight.

Would you believe I got a comment from a Thunderf00t acolyte on youtube just this morning?

FEMINISM IS A NON ISSUE. WOMEN ALREEEEEEEEADY HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS IN THE WEST. NO MORE NEED FOR FEMINISM IN THE WEST.

Nice to know these problems have all gone away already.

Portland, Oregon is having a humanist film festival!

I wish I could be there. The Humanist Film Festival is happening on 26-28 October, and they’re looking for submissions. If you’ve got anything that fits their categories, send them in soon. They’re looking for films that speak to humanist themes, including:

  • Reason, Critical Thinking and Skepticism (such as claims of the paranormal, critical thinking education, rational living, etc.)

  • Ethics and Human Wellbeing (including human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, rational ethics, challenging scriptural ethics, sex education and attitudes about sex, etc.)

  • Science and the Natural World (e.g. science appreciation, science education, evolution, global warming, pseudo-science and pseudo-medicine etc.)

  • Freedom of Thought, Speech and Critical Inquiry

  • Challenging the Claims and Value of Religion (e.g. anti-apologetics, education about atheism and atheists, uncovering problems with religion, etc.)

  • Separation of Church and State

  • Joie de vivre and human thriving (art and aesthetics, living the good life, human progress etc.)

And here’s their mission:

The Portland Humanist Film Festival is an outreach event designed to broaden the understanding and acceptance of a secular, humanist world view. It specifically addresses audiences who are friendly to our views but who are not necessarily familiar with atheism or humanistic ethics, or why we value reason and scientific thinking. The Film Festival presents these themes through an accessible, entertaining medium.

Got any suggestions? If you’re a godless filmmaker, think about sending them something!

NSFW

It’s a shame that I can only feature an occasional panel from my favorite webcomic of them all, Oglaf, because it tends to get raunchy, explicit, NSFW, rude, cartoonishly pornographic, and silly, but who cares? I thought I’d mention the message in this one, at least. Only tune in if you like your humor lowbrow and occasionally obscene.

Also, if you’d ever read the comic, you’d know that the last thing that anyone would do is go home and lead calm, rational lives.

P.S. The author is Trudy Cooper. She’s Australian, which explains a lot.

I’m soon to be stuffed and mounted on the mantelpiece

Bora has put together a history of science blogging, and there I am, one of the grizzled old pioneers, chewin’ tobaccy and slapping mules around. There’s also mention of my old Tangled Bank carnival, which isn’t totally gone — I’ve got the archive stashed on my lab computer, and someday I have to figure out how to extract and resurrect an old Expression Engine blog.

Larry Moran also talks about the crucible of talk.origins, and how a lot of the early science bloggers got their start on usenet (myself included). A lot of the feisty, confrontational style comes straight out of a history of prolonged combat with idiots.