Jeanne Brooks

@jmfbrooks

Posts Written by Jeanne

By Jeanne Brooks • 15 years ago

Donate to Planned Parenthood in Bob Marshall’s name

As most of you in the US will have learned by now, Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall yesterday said that children born with disabilities were God’s punishment on women who have abortions. “Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.”

In response, I have started a Facebook group called “Donate to Planned Parenthood in Bob Marshall’s name “.

By Jeanne Brooks • 15 years ago

A Rant About Pale/Male/Staleness

Last week Clay Shirky, a new media guru and professor at NYU wrote “A Rant About Women.” His main observation is dead on: In a competitive work environment, particularly in his field of new media, self-promotion is an essential key to success. He’s also right when he says that women do not promote themselves as much as men do in the workplace. But his conclusions couldn’t have missed the mark more. Shirky’s rant epitomizes what some of us call the pale/male/stale syndrome: antiquated ideas applied ineffectively, perpetuating the problem instead of providing a solution.

First things first, a small subset of women does not an entire species make. Shirky lumps his observations of his female students in ...

By Jeanne Brooks • 15 years ago

Dear Prudence, he tickles me. (Dear Prudence, he assaults me.)

(Possible trigger warning:)

I ran across a very disturbing letter in a Dear Prudence column. The letter-writer has a problem (to some extent long-standing) with her boyfriend: he tickles her, although she’s repeatly told him she doesn’t like to be tickled :

Whenever we are lying on the couch or in bed together, he will start tickling me, and when I react he gets on top of me and pins me down so that I can’t defend myself. I have repeatedly told him that I hate being tickled…. He insists that because I laugh, I must enjoy it. He adds that I need to learn to master my mind, and once I "convince" myself that I am not ticklish, then I ...

(Possible trigger warning:)

By Jeanne Brooks • 15 years ago

The Bible is too liberal!

Wing whackaloons at Conservapedia have a new project they’re working on: Re-translate the Bible to meet their standards.
The Bible, you see, is just too darn liberal.
So they’re re-working it.
Among other things, they want to avoid emasculating it with unisex, “gender-inclusive” language;
to explain Jesus’ “economic parables with their full free-market meaning”;
to remove liberal falsehoods such as “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, and
later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the whole “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” bit;
and to get rid of socialistic terminology, such as “comrade”, “laborer”, and “fellow” (as in “fellow worker”, they note).
(H/t to PZ ...

By Jeanne Brooks • 15 years ago

Polanski arrested

Entering Zurich for the Zurich Film Festival, Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police. The US is expected to make a formal extradition request.
Honestly, I don’t quite know how to feel about this. He had pleaded guilty in 1978 to a charge of “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” of thirteen, and then skipped the country. However, he claims the judge in the case had agreed to a plea bargain (“time served”) and then reneged.
And the person he molested — now forty-five years old — has also asked that the charge be dismissed. She came to a settlement with him in civil court, and now just wants it to be over.
Any thoughts?

By Jeanne Brooks • 15 years ago

Alan Turing deserves an apology

Well, he deserved an apology when he was alive. But even now it would not be out of order.

For those not familiar with the name, Alan Turing was a British mathematician, logician, and the father of modern computer science. He was closely involved in breaking the Nazi’s "Enigma" cipher. He developed the Turing test, to determine the quality of machine intelligence.

He was also gay, in a time when homosexuality was widely regarded as a curable mental illness — and was also prosecutable as a crime. He was outed, charged with "gross indecency" (the same thing Oscar Wilde was charged with), and given a choice of imprisonment or chemical castration. He accepted the latter. He lost his security clearances and could ...

Well, he deserved an apology when he was alive. But even now it would not be out of order.

For those not familiar with the name, Alan Turing was a British mathematician, logician, and the father of modern ...