Racism in the States: Would you believe it? August 15, 2010

You may know about the very conservative radio advice giver, Dr. Laura Schlessinger.  She pretty much outdid even her quite mean self in a recent response to a woman calling for advice.  There’s been quite a bit of discussion, and I found a longish piece on CNN that seems quite decent.  One aspect of it I like is the way in which a number of comments come back to the effects today of racist comments.  Being the stereotypically questionable or strange group creates a toll, we have pointed out before, independent of any overt discrimination.

Looking for the CNN clip, I found one of the incomparable Richard Pryor; that’s the second one below.

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Domestic Abuse is Grounds for Asylum in US August 15, 2010

A Mexican woman who says she endured beatings and rapes for decades at the hands of her common-law husband has won the right to stay in the United States. Experts say the case makes clear that domestic violence is valid grounds for asylum.

For more, go here.

Thanks, Jender-Parents!

Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice August 15, 2010

A nice anecdote:

When I was about 11 or 12, I asked my mom out right, “Why don’t we go to church?” Her reply? “Because they say I can’t use these,” as she held up her birth control pills. We then had a short chat about how the Church was trying to control her and other women’s lives. How she wanted to be the one to decide when and if she would have another baby (by this time, she had been pregnant 4 times and given birth 3 times with one miscarriage). And I think she ended it by saying that all women should be making this decision, not the church.

For more, go here. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)

Mexican Supreme Court: All states must honour same-sex marraiges August 14, 2010

On Tuesday, Mexico’s Supreme Court issued a ruling saying that all of Mexico’s 31 states must recognize same-sex marriages carried out in Mexico City.

Last week the Supreme Court upheld Mexico City’s gay marriage law after the conservative federal government challenged its constitutionality.

For more, go here. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)

Result of Advice August 13, 2010

Remember a few days ago, when a reader wanted some advice regarding what to do when people use the wrong title? You might be wondering what happened as a result of all your excellent advice. Well, now we know:

I thought readers might be interested in the rest of the Dr/Mrs saga. Remember? The person who addressed me as Mrs after seeing my name on an academic website in connection with a conference I was organising? [And thanks to everyone for the wonderful comments and suggestions!!!!!]

In the end I chose the nice approach. I wrote ‘Dear Dr xxxx’ and mentioned in the email both how organising this conference was part of my post-doctoral research project, and that I had done my PhD in this topic. (hint, hint, hint)

His response was stunning. It went:

“Dear Ms/Mrs [my lastname], Dear [firstname], rest email”

I am completely and utterly baffled. I really don’t know what to say. I think I am just going to file this in my head as an anomaly.

Anyway, i thought the site might want to be updated on the result – with thanks again for posting and commenting.

Quite a marketing strategy… August 13, 2010

Want to promote your “high-precision displays for the examination and diagnosis of radiographs”? Medical Imaging company Eizo decided to go with the ‘sex sells’ strategy:

Oops August 13, 2010

Maybe they overdid the photoshopping.

(Thanks, Mr Jender!)

This is fun! August 12, 2010

Iris Murdoch on philosophy and literature.  The interviewer is Brian McGee. 

There’s a second part that comments on the first say is much better.  Be good and you may get to see it.  ;-)

I haven’t been able to watch all of it, but since I’m off for a while, I thought I’d put it and see the rest later.  One thing I’m wondering about is how distinctly Wittgensteinian the conception of philosophy she articulates is.   Do her descriptions fit analytic philosophy generally?

 

Women’s Rights in Afghanistan August 12, 2010

Reader KR alerts us to this horrifying report on the abuse, torture and murder perpetrated against women in Afghanistan by the Taliban. The video is publicised by RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. You can find out more about their activities promoting women’s rights and welfare, often undertaken at great risk, here.

MARY ANNE WARREN, In Memoriam: addition August 12, 2010

Addition: See Rob Wilson’s further comments here.  In them he notes that there isn’t much on the web about MAW; he would welcome additional material. 

The following comes from SWIP-L.  We relay it with sadness:

—

It is with great sadness I share the news of the death of  long-term SWIPer,
Feminist Philosopher, and friend, Mary Anne Warren. She passed away  on August 9th at home, with her husband Michael Scriven by her side. Her will to live couldn’t be
stronger and her love of life was undiminished by her illness.

Mary Anne  was an amazing, talented, kind, and adventuresome woman.
Not only did she make a contribution to the field of Philosophy and to
Feminism, she helped keep SWIP alive all those years there were just a few of us
at the meetings. So many stories we could tell.

Her work in Philosophy has already changed the field and
moved it forward to a more inclusive way of thinking. There
is no doubt that she will continue to have more impact.

May all the memories of dear Mary Anne help carry us through the sadness of our
loss.

(Submitted by Wanda Teays)

Oxford Bibliographies Online August 10, 2010

A couple of questions, which I hope others will also find interesting:

1.  Have you used an Oxford Online Bibliography?  If so, what did you think of it?  I’ve just looked at the related ebook** one can get for the kindle; the one I have covers a lot of topics, but the bibliographical entries under each strike me as pretty scant.  The Standford Encyclopedia entries seem much more useful.  What do you think?

2.  Does your library have a subscription to them?  If so, do you have any sense of their usefulness in that form, as opposed to the things one can get through Amazon?  (As far as I can tell, my library doesn’t, but it has recently become very updated and supposedly user-friendly, and I really can’t tell anymore whether the absence of an entry means the corresponding absence of what I’m searching for.)

3.  Do you have any idea of how the representation of women looks generally  in the Oxford philosophy bibliographies?  There are a number of bibliographies in traditional philosophy.

**Here’s what Amazon tells us about the relation between the ebook and the online material:

This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of social work find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated related. This ebook is a static version of an article from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy, a dynamic, continuously updated, online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through scholarship and other materials relevant to the study Philosophy. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.oxfordbibligraphies.com.This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of social work find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated related. This ebook is a static version of an article from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy, a dynamic, continuously updated, online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through scholarship and other materials relevant to the study Philosophy. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.oxfordbibligraphies.com.

This leads me to think the online material might be richer than that of the ebook I have, which itself may not be representative of the series.  Hence, the questions above.

How to tell people they sound racist (or sexist or ableist or…) August 10, 2010

Some good advice.

H/T Feministe.

LEGO Stereotype Fail August 10, 2010

In a new series of Lego figures, only 2 of the 16 are female. Bad news.

Even worse: those 2 are cheerleader and nurse (while the men get to be ninja’s, deep sea divers, spacemen, forestmen, magicians…). Talk about limiting imagination and aspiration early on.

It must be said, though, that the nurse sounds pretty awesome:

She can tape up a boo-boo, dash to the scene of an accident with a wheelchair or build a fully-functional MRI machine out of random spare pieces, all in a dizzying blur of motion

Recommended solution to the limited roles for the female figures: utilise the detachable heads.

Also: I’m confused about what Lego are doing with race. All the figures have yellow skin. In the mini figures series, it seems the only way to indicate any racial or ethnic identity is with costume and accessories (witness the ‘tribal hunter’).

Then in the other products, all the figures also appear to be yellow, except in the ‘Prince of Persia‘ set where the figures are light beige (and the Star Wars set, where one figure is blue). So is yellow supposed to indicate white skin? Or (false) racial neutrality? I thought maybe the makers were afraid of making figures with brown skin and getting it wrong. But then their duplo (pre-lego) series has a ‘world people set’ which obviously includes people of different races. So it seems all very confused.

Thanks to reader L for the tip off!

Downsizing: An addition August 9, 2010

After 9/11, former President Bush urged people in the US to get out and shop. This was doing one’s bit for the US economy; we are too aware of what he regarded as his bits to do.

According to the NY Times, that strategy – the one for ordinary people – is getting seriously rethought. People are actually saving now. The Times article also has some interesting observations from the recent field of happiness studies, which has never seen much in the way of benefits in having a lot of money.

Some people are trying to do with very few clothes or personal possessions. See also here and here (referred to in the NYT article). And no doubt hundreds of other sites. This is a deep strain of thought in the US, and of course many other cultures and countries.

And of course there are these often very attractive tiny houses. If you have a tiny house on wheels, you get a moveable dwelling and freedom from lots of ordinances.

Books are a problem, but I think one can just decide a category won’t count. Ditto for notebooks, reprints, etc.

This all seems to me very appealing. One attraction is being in control of one’s things by getting them down to a number one can actually hold in one’s mind. At the same time, one has much less need to think about the things.

What do you think? Does your office illustrate the minimalist approach? Would/do you want it to?

Addition: Rob’s comment (#2) reminds me of a facet of the NY Times article that I only just mentioned. It has quite a long discussion of recent research in “happiness studies.” It turns out that in general human beings are not to good as telling what is going to make them happy, at least in the sense of contributing to pleasure and a sense of satisfaction. It’s worth reading. One bit of advice I like is that if there is something you want, waiting for as long as you can to get it will making having it more pleasurable.

Suggestions for teaching ethics of sex? August 9, 2010

A reader has sent us the following query:

I’m going to co-teach a class on the ethics of sex, for the first time. We want to cover topics such as the ethics of homosexuality, and what the laws on homosexual sex and marriage should be; the ethics of rape (what constitutes rape, why rape is wrong) and what the laws on rape should be; and the ethics of premarital sex. Would readers post links to syllabi that would be helpful resources of readings on these topics? Would readers post suggestions of specific readings?

Post away!!

Just make it! August 8, 2010

From an NY Times article on pet-centric design:

cat walkway

About the walkway:

“When I had cats growing up, they were always able to go outside,” said Bill Hilgendorf, 30, who lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Maria Cristina Rueda, also 30. “We felt a little guilty having our cats confined to a relatively small apartment space.”

A late-night cat food commercial inspired the couple, who are furniture and graphic designers, to build a bright yellow staircase that runs along one wall, over a doorway and above the stove, where it meets the kitchen cabinets. The piece — made from a four-by-eight-foot panel of fiberboard, cut into seven-inch-wide strips with remnants of industrial carpeting on top — took a weekend to build.

“We wanted to make something that was a design element, but didn’t take over the space,” Mr. Hilgendorf said. “We painted it yellow, because we wanted it to be an architectural element. But it’s also very narrow, so it doesn’t encroach on the room too much.”

They weren’t sure if their cats, Miles and Attila, would actually use it, he said, but it didn’t take long for them to turn the addition into their own personal jungle gym. “At night they do this loop,” he said. “They run up and then jump down onto the refrigerator and chase each other around.”

Canadian census decision devalues work of women August 8, 2010

From the Toronto Star: “All but lost in the controversy over the Conservatives’ impending elimination of the mandatory long-form census is how, in the proposed $30 million dollar replacement — the voluntary National Household Survey — Question 33 from the long form has been cut. Question 33 (let’s call it Q.33) is a three-part query that has been in place since Canada made commitments at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. The question gathered data on how much time people spent on unpaid work: domestic chores, child care and attending to the needs of elderly relatives and friends. It helped make Canada a world leader in “time-use” data. The results have also been showing how women are faring, socially and economically. For example, the results indicate that despite a higher volume and percentage of women in the workforce over the past 20 years, changes between men and women in respective unpaid workloads have merely been “marginal.”

Based on information gathered in the 2006 census, StatsCan reports that, on average, “Women spend about an hour a day more on basic housework chores than their male counterparts. In 2005, women aged 25 to 54 averaged 2.4 hours daily cooking, cleaning and doing other basic unpaid household chores, compared with 1.4 hours per day for men in this age range.”

Two-thirds of Canada’s unpaid work is being performed by women. No matter how the value of that is evaluated —anywhere between 30 to 45 per cent of Canada’s $1.5 trillion GDP. That’s a heck of a lot of productivity that is being completely discounted.”

The full story is here.

Problem: There are disproportionately few women in mathematics August 8, 2010

The Sunday cat doesn’t mind… August 8, 2010

if you fold a futon on top of her. Or anything else, for that matter. (Photo is a Jender-Cat. Link is to many similar cats, courtesy of the Jender-Parents.)

Anti-Rape Campaign August 6, 2010

Directed at men. (And, rightly, acknowledging the possibility of men being raped.)

via Men Can Stop Rape | The Frisky.

Thanks, Frog!