But you know, “shared misery is decreased” and all that. This week’s most disturbing photo from the internet. Get your eyedrops ready, and then click for more… if you dare.
Apologies in Advance For Sharing This
Friday, July 25th, 2008Oh, the Irony
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008I think I confuse them sometimes by being half-woman, half-engineer!, and that’s how I end up on these e-mail chains at work. Yes, I did say “AT WORK.”
Subject Line: FW: WOMEN AS EXPLAINED BY ENGINEERS
Oh, That Controversial New Research! Part Two.
Friday, May 30th, 2008Continued from Part One.
My last major business trip was to Sweden. See, if I just left it at that, it would sound like, really c-o-o-l but in fact, what it was was really freaking C-O-L-D (February!) and yo, it was also really freaking b-u-s-i-n-e-s-s. The trip consisted of twelve-hour days in a mostly unheated test lab putting the brand-new centrifuges we bought for the large-scale plant we’re building through their paces. The highlight of the trip was the weekend between the two work-weeks I spent there, when in an attempt to hop on the Swedish public transit system for some sightseeing Saturday morning I managed instead to accidentally attend a big-ass anti-US rally in the Stockholm central train station. “Surreal” is probably the best one-word description I can use to capture that event (though I couldn’t stop myself from forking out a mere 10 kronor for an awesome souvenir button!):
Admit you want one.
Oh, That Controversial New Research! Part One.
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008Why aren’t there more women in science and engineering? Controversial new research suggests: They just aren’t interested.
Really, we’d much rather be changing poopy diapers, scrubbing toilets and providing “companionship” for room, board and an allowance. And that’s what choice feminism is all about!
…no, I’m not being fair. It’s just that the endless quest of total strangers to prove that I personally am either (a) some kind of genetic mutant freak or (b) living in a silent hell of self-suppression for the sake of the Feminist Agenda sometimes makes my teeth hurt.
No matter which language you say it in, “I love George Bush!” is always the right response
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008I love it when the mainstream media in the US lets its liberal freak flag fly. You know you’ve found yet another true lefty when they’re writing articles about genocide abroad, the evils of Big Oil, or our health care crisis. Also, when they write an editorial titled “Why I defend President Bush when I’m abroad.”
Love me.
Americans abroad can thank George W. Bush
For ruining our reputation. For reminding them why they left. For making the locals around them feel like the good guys, no matter where they live. For not causing global thermonuclear war (yet)?
for sharpening our survival skills.
Does this mean that all the international asskickings brought on merely by mentioning you’re American have been by design? I suppose we were getting soft in our hegemony.
We have weathered a sea of anti-Iraq war protests and had the intelligence of our president and those who voted for him questioned more times than we care to remember.
False assumption #1: That Americans abroad are “weathering” these insults as opposed to lobbing them.
False assumption #2: That our president’s intelligence has been “questioned” as opposed to demonstrably proven false.
In my hometown of San Francisco,
See? Liberal. This is totally going to turn out liberal.
Deleted and altered scenes from Prince Caspian.
Monday, May 19th, 2008Right on the heels of Marc incisively questioning the distance between progressive rhetoric and action. I bring you… movies! yaay!
I saw Prince Caspian a couple of days ago. It wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t great. Mostly, it failed to make an impression on me at all beyond wondering who these people are, and why there is a movie about them. More vodka was clearly necessary.
Oh, and there were bits that irked the hell out of me, which I shall assume were just replacements for scenes that would not have irked the hell out of me. Like these! (All apologies to Maia, who does this better.)
More Laugh, Cry or Go Postal? Fun
Thursday, May 15th, 2008I spent a day offsite again–my company is building a new, very large scale manufacturing facility and so we are buying all kinds of goodies for it from a whole slew of outside companies. On this occasion, the company in question was going to show us their pride and joy, a software package that simulates mixing behavior inside various types of stirred tanks. So we watched the demo in the morning, then they brought some lunch in and we had time to ask various questions more pertinent to our specific applications. I am only peripherally involved in this project so I didn’t get deeply engaged–I made a few comments about comparability of results involving various mixer designs but other than that pretty much just munched pizza and listened to everybody else talk.
After lunch was over, the simulation engineer asked if we wanted a quick tour of the shop. We all agreed that would be interesting and informative and got to our feet, and as we were all milling around securing laptops and dumping pizza trash he said to me, very abruptly, “Don’t be scared if they holler at you.”
I froze in mid-dump, then peeked around to insure that he was, in fact, speaking to me; he was, judging from the peculiar paralyzed looks on the faces of our corporate engineer and project manager standing right behind me. So I returned my attention to him: small guy, mid to late twenties, skinny with a pot belly, black-framed glasses, earnest expression. “I’m sorry?” I said, totally confused.
“The guys,” he said, and essayed a smile. Note: We had all gone round the room with the standard introductions that morning, but aside from that, this guy had not once made eye contact with me, and had only spoken to me in direct response to my few earlier queries during lunch; I hadn’t even thought he’d really noticed my existence. “They’re not used to seeing anyone like you on the floor.”
Light dawned. I involuntarily glanced down at myself, half expecting to see my quite boring business casual ensemble of button-down shirt, slacks and loafers completely replaced with a red leather miniskirt, platform shoes and a corset, but no–a snort issued from someone behind me and I straightened back up to stare at him. “I’m sorry I shaved off my moustache this morning–I just wasn’t thinking,” I said cheerily. He turned red, which pleased me enough to add, “Maybe you should let those poor guys out of their cages at night, you know, so they can mix with the rest of humanity more often, see a few girls now and then!”
Suspense! Did he pass out from mortification and/or apologize for being a complete and unprofessional moron? Nope to either one. Though I am happy to report that he did not inflict any more conversation upon me for the rest of our sojourn there. And did any of those shop floor savages holler, hoot, whistle, catcall or make any other vocal incursions upon my person? No, in fact they did not. Til the next time, signing off!
–Lisa, the Perky Girl Engineer
Laugh, Cry or Go Postal?
Monday, May 5th, 2008I spent a recent day offsite–my company hired an outside company to design and build a piece of equipment for our manufacturing plant and the outside company had asked us to come down to their fabrication shop and vet the design, see what we thought of the work in progress, etc. With me were another engineer from our manufacturing group (male), an engineer from the corporate office (male), and a machine operator from the plant (female). The morning went pretty smoothly; I was able to identify some potential functional issues in the design that in the still-early phases of manufacture weren’t going to be much of a problem for them to solve, so everyone was relatively happy by the time we all decided to break for lunch.
So, we’re all sitting around the table at the restaurant waiting for our food to show up, and one of the two guys from the outside company (they were the senior director of sales and the lead design engineer respectively, both male, the speaker in this instance was the sales director) was talking about how hard it was to get good welders in any quantity. “Kids these days, they just aren’t so interested in the trade schools!” (Yeah, he was in his fifties. At least.) “Our shop foreman, our lead welder, his dad actually teaches welding, but–”
“Actually,” said the other guy, “it’s his mother that teaches welding.”
Blank silence, coupled with wide-eyed stare, then… “Really?”
“Yeah,” said the other guy. “She’s probably one of the best welders in the area.”
“Really?” said the first guy. Pause. “Seriously?” (The other guy nods, looking deadpan.) “You’re kidding!” Longer pause. “That’s amazing!” Still staring bulge-eyed at the other guy, very much as if that guy had whipped a two-headed calf out of his pocket and plunked it down on the middle of the lunch table. “I really did not know that–”
Our two engineers were looking anywhere but at me. Our operator was looking sideways at me with narrowed eyes. So I perked up, beamed at the first guy and said brightly, “Yeah, the next thing you know, they’ll be driving and voting!”
I may let how this scene ended remain a mystery. 
Polymers are all around you
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007Anyone one up for a lecture on polymers? Because in about a day or so, I can provide.
Someone please ask these men to shut the f*** up
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007Life is good when I forget askmen.com exists. I sleep better, I smile more, I believe in a brighter future for our children.
But then they write an article on video games and it shoots to the top of the charts at n4g.com, my favorite aggregator of geeknews. You might be asking yourself, “why would an article from that shithole spark such interest from the gaming community?” And you probably don’t have to think too long before answering “boobs.”
Yep, AskMen.com tackled something completely refreshing — they rated the hotness of some women. In this case, they focused on what they’re calling the Top Ten Hottest Women in Tech. The article kicks off with one of the least coherent intros in paid-writing history:
While there used to be a social stigma attached to geekdom, nowadays it’s become fashionable to label oneself a nerd. While there are surely a cavalcade of factors behind this change, the rise of the internet has clearly played a substantial role in the nerd’s ascent.
The proliferation of scientifically minded women has proved instrumental in this shift, as the majority of contemporary tech pundits seem to belong to the fairer sex. Stranger still, many of these women possess the kind of looks one normally associates with supermodels and A-list actresses — which, admittedly, is a great way to capture the interest and attention of a garden-variety nerd. While there are certainly a number of drop-dead gorgeous ladies within the world of tech media to choose from, we’ve narrowed the list down to 10.
I confess I was delighted that the intro’s start was so eerily reminiscent of the “Since the dawn the dawn of time” openings we used to write in 4th grade. Was anyone else subjected to this diagram as a youth?
Clearly this guy was. But he didn’t seem to pick up much else, because the rest of those paragraphs came together like bleach and bowels.
First, the painfully obvious: the internet has played a role in the rise of geek-chic. GET. OUT.
Then, the absurd: that tech pundits are “scientifically-minded.” Kyso Kisaen is scientifically minded. Taking nothing away from the profession (I make a fantasy football show for pete’s sake), people who make TV shows about Grand Theft Auto have not necessarily proven their scientific credibility. After all, science is generally defined as:
1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
The askmen.com definition apparently means “reporting on the use of gadgetry.”
Then, the moronic: claiming that it’s “stranger still” that women who are attractive might also be intelligent… and feigning surprise that women selected to talk tech on television possess the afore-mentioned good looks. It’s almost like he doesn’t write for a website that tries to draw an audience by showing pictures of attractive women. You’d think he might have a clue why pretty girls are picked to be on TV. Oh wait, he does — he says it’s how you get “garden variety nerds” to pay attention. So why is it strange to him then? Argh.
The intro’s the highlight, but the 10 awkwardly phrased summations of why these women were picked give it a run for its money.
Speaking of #10 Wendy Cheng, a blogger who also writes for Maxim:
And Wendy’s brutal honesty on estrogen-centric topics, such as sex, dating and fashion, has made her an icon with the fairer sex.
Now, I could be missing something, but I believe this writer just described sex and dating as topics pertaining only to women (to say nothing of fashion). Even askmen.com editors *probably* should’ve caught that one.
On #9, G4 TV writer/personality Blair Butler:
Blair’s natural charisma and quick-thinking demeanor made her an ideal fit for on-camera work, and it wasn’t long before she started popping up in a number of X-Play’s recurring sketches.
Quick-thinking demeanor. How would that work, exactly?
#7 Amanda Congdon manages to dress herself well AND have a personality:
Amanda Congdon is one of the hottest women in tech because she possesses the sort of unattainable looks one associates with a supermodel, yet she’s certainly proven herself to be a far more complex figure than your regular clotheshorse.
Note: “tech” in this case means making a web show about driving across country in a hybrid.
The others are all just as inane, but in case you missed the entire point of his article, he drives it home in his final sentence on, um, “winner” Amber MacArthur:
At any rate, Amber can’t help but come off as that rare beauty who’s as smart as she is attractive.
Got that? You ladies need to stop trying to be all that and pick hot or smart, because the two almost never go together. And if they do, you deserve to be covered in askmen.com drool. Now, who’s up for a Ten Hottest Readers of PAB piece?
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