AP Sex Ed

Came across this guide on tumblr.  Liked the title and the straight talk (example below.)

“Vaginal Opening: This is for sex and toys and babies.  Not pee.”

Observer withdraws vicious transphobic crap

Well, this bit of vicious transphobic crap anyway. And they’ve apologised too. Let’s hope this represents a turning point for them. As many have pointed out, they have a long history of publishing garbage like this. (Thanks, Mr Jender!)

On the Expected Gender Balance of (Computer) Conferences

From the blog, PROGRAMMERS BEING DICKS:

“Dave Wilkinson performed some back-of-an-envelope statistical calculations to determine the probabilities of various gender balances if a conference line-up of 15 speakers were selected in a gender-blind process, leading to this dramatic conclusion:

So, the probability of having 15 men and 0 women is 3.5% given 20% of the tech world are women. A rather unlikely outcome. What is more interesting is that the probability of having more than 3 women is 35.4%. Therefore, a conference with a selection process that is blind to gender is 10 times more likely to over-represent women than to not represent women at all.

Keep that in mind next time someone claims an all-male speaker selection is an expected occurrence in an industry free from discrimination.”

Oh, and go have a look at the blog for the VOCO ads under discussion: Play with my V Spot and Oral is Better.  Just what you’d expect really given those lines.

Thanks DF.

The Chronicle on Women in Philosophy

I’m glad to see the Chronicle paying attention, but this article really annoyed me. I fear that one could come away with the impression that there aren’t any women in philosophy who want to do e.g. traditional metaphysics.