(no subject)

Via james_nicoll and pharyngula, a reminder of why we still need feminism:

You're a girl. And girls shouldn't read big books like that. It's too thick. Boys don't like girls who read thick books. You want boys to like you, don't you?

And it's worse in Nigeria:

Most victims are college students such as Chioma, a slim, quiet 22-year-old with a B average, who repeatedly failed political science after refusing her teacher's explicit demands for sex. She said he was a pastor and old enough to be her grandfather.

"Now it has been two years and everyone else has graduated," she said sadly, arms folded neatly in her lap. She is desperate to finish her studies and begin working to help support her family, yet "my life is stopped," she said.

(Not that that sort of thing can't happen over here - I knew of one academic at ANU who made a habit of preying on postgrad students - but it's nowhere near as widespread or institutionalised.)

Asimov oddness

I'm probably going to lose my geek accreditation for this, but I never managed to get into Asimov. Every so often I try reading another of his books to see what the big deal is, and every time I give up partway through. I can see why he appeals to people, but certain parts of his style really irritate me.

To explain why... Suppose I came up with a simple and elegant mathematical result. Rather than just publishing it in a mathematical journal, I wrote it out on canvas, with a brush, and then framed the canvas and hung it on the wall.

To my mind, that's "a mathematical result presented in painting format". But it's not, except by purely technical definition, a 'painting'.* If somebody called me a 'painter' on the strength of that work, I think the people who actually put some creativity and technique into the step where paint meets canvas would quite rightly feel a little put out.

(Or, as Truman Capote put it, "That's not writing, that's typing.")

And that's pretty much how I see Asimov. Everything I've read of his has turned out to be a logic problem presented in story format, rather than an actual story; the story exists not for its own sake, but merely as a sort of front-end to lead readers into the logic problem. Which would not be a bad thing if he were marketed as a logician - it works well enough for folk like Martin Gardner - but I get irritated to see this stuff described as "master storytelling".

And sometimes, the logic puzzles themselves really aren't that great.

( As an example... )

*Which is not to say that it isn't some sort of art. IMHO, certain mathematical results are a type of art in themselves, and if I presented it in painting format with the aim of making people think about "what is art?", that might be an artistic act in itself.

Hicks trial

The judge also decided that Hicks’s civilian lawyer, New York criminal attorney Joshua Dratel could not represent Hicks because he had not signed a form demanded by the court saying he would conform to the regulations governing proceedings.

Mr Dratel protested strongly, saying he could not sign the form because the regulations governing the conduct of attorneys had not yet been formulated by the Secretary of Defence. He was not going to sign a blank cheque for his ethical obligations.

No frickin' wonder Hicks has settled for a plea-bargain. IANAL, but I'd be curious to know what his chances would be of getting that overturned later, by some other court, on grounds of coercion.