via Google news
A pair of biologists propose that tiny honeycombs within minerals may have served as the first cells, incubating the first self-replicating life forms.
This proposal contrasts with theories that life started with the emergence of self-replicating chemicals, and cellular boundaries evolved later.
Microfame
Why would someone build a model of the starship Enterprise in legos?
Because of micro-fame, says Tom Coates. On the internet, everyone can find the 15 other people who are interested in the same obscure hobby.
“There’s now an audience for the strangest and smallest little projects. All the disconnected people around the world who might find a Lego Enterprise cool are suddenly connected up. It’s worth making that tiny little thing you thought would be quite cool once, it’s worth writing the dumb ideas down that you thought no one would ever listen to. Because the odds of finding people who will care about them, will gel and relate to you, will celebrate your idea or project and make you famous (tiny-fame, micro-idol), is radically improved. The future will be full of dumb projects, tiny ideas, silly concepts – each celebrated by their own bespoke fan-base… And human creativity will have taken a massive leap forward…
girlism continued
… in which doc asks for more credit for acknowledging the contributions of feminism.
Requested and granted 🙂
Especially since Doc regularly cites the girls in the gang as a matter of course. That’s why I was surprised and disappointed to see such apparent misreading of history. Halley doesn’t get off so easy because of the historical errors and propaganda-swallowing, as Sheila anwered so well.
… and asks for positive contributions building on Halley’s insight…
There is a point here. I agree thoroughly with Ruth that there’s a continuing need for a political movement to improve the status of women in society.
But for those of us who are lucky enough not have to fight for women to be allowed to go to school, or hold a job; or own property, or vote… those of use who take for granted women’s full participation in society… the rhetoric of the last generations’ battles may be less helpful on a day-to-day basis in building identity and politics.
… back to Doc, then, to clarify what he found insightful about Halley’s comments, what struck a nerve.
The “rules girl” goes to the office
Lotta response to Halley’s Girlism blog entries, which bug the heck out of me.
Basically, Halley is in favor of using one’s feminine wiles to get ahead in the workplace. “Women want to be sexy girls and use all the tricks girls use. Crying, flirting, begging, winking, stomping their feet when they don’t get their way, general trotting around showing off their long legs and whatever else they decide to show off thereby distracting and derailing men.” And she has a stereotype of feminism as the exclusive property of butch dykes, right out of Rush Limbaugh.
Doc finds Halley’s flirtatious approach appealing and charming; he and his wife both agree that feminism is boring. I’m glad that Doc and his wife have had so little experience with sexism that they can’t remember why feminism was ever relevant in the first place.
My grandmother wasn’t allowed to finish high school. My aunts had to fight to go to college. Early in my career, I worked in a place that had big gender disparities in pay (and had a male mentor who researched the subject and got me a big raise). I’ve seen women who flirt with the boss, sleep with the boss, and get their cute butt canned when things go sour.
I’m really not persuaded that the best response to injustice is to giggle and flirt.
Via doc, Sheila Lennon responds to Halley with a testament on the last wave of the women’s movement, about equal pay for equal work, being respected as a woman instead of dismissed as a girl, legal birth control, and first-hand reports on the sexual revolution.
Doc finds feminine style attractive in women; and that’s peachy.
But the point isn’t to make all women chop their long flowing tresses and wear blue jeans. The point is that people are different from each other. Some of these differences line up by gender averages, and some of them don’t. I have straight guy friends who wear more nail polish than I do. I have lesbian friends who own more make-up than I do. I have many male friends who love to cook and are dedicated parents. I have short hair, like books, hate shopping, like cooking, and find violent first-person shooter games really boring.
These things don’t line up in neat little rows by gender stereotypes, and that’s part of the lesson of feminism for me.
The latest “demotivators” are out
They’re really funny. I must have missed last year, didn’t remember consulting.
Supreme Court to hear case on Texas sodomy law
Washington Post story here.
Western science writers discover non-western science
Thanks to Jerry for the link, and to Swamy for some education on the subject.
It is pretty amazing how often American and European books on the history of science and technology contain obvious errors of fact when they discuss the “discovery” and “invention” of various ideas and techniques.
Most favorite non-fiction books
My very favorite non-fiction books are based on a foundation of substantive research, knit together by compelling human stories (Common Ground; J. Anthony Lukas on the Boston busing crisis), or an interesting and persuasive argument (More Work for Mother, Ruth Schwartz Cowan on the impact of technology on housework).
There are many books that I like very much that don’t live up to this standard. Then again, Lukas’ standards were so high that it took him more than a decade to write his next book, after which he committed suicide, perhaps because he was unable to live up to that standard of perfection. I need to reread More Work for Mother one of these days to see if its brilliance holds up to five more years of additional reading.
What are your criteria for favorite books?
Travelling and offline for the weekend
see y’all next week.
Blog Prom Queens
New blog database shows who links to your blog and lets you watch your rank in the blog hierarchy; and provides a for-pay service to track your blog ranking.
What I like: lets you discover inbound links.
What I don’t like: treats blogs like a high school popularity contest.
The single-peaked popularity ranking obscures “subcommunity” patterns — there are knots of java bloggers and political bloggers and Austin bloggers; and plenty of bloggers who participate in multiple communities (like physical life).
When Blogdex started picking up a lot of Persian blogs in its top rankings, the designer considered reducing his coverage to english-language blogs only. That’s exactly wrong. The right thing to do is to reveal blog blogcommunities, and identify leading voices in those subcommunities. Hmm… Valdis Krebs probably knows how to do this…
And raw popularity seems beside the point. Some of my favorite blogs are low-traffic blogs from people who don’t do much self-promotion. This blog is a place to write about the various topics I’m interested in; not filtered by which topics are most popular.