shallowwater's comments

More serious to who? Sometimes it's the little things that hit the worst.

Thank you for being wonderfully articulate.

Am I missing the part where they actually no longer intend to have female-only event staff/beer-servers? The apology makes it sound like they just changed the ad copy.

pretty much. that's why I find this valuation system that so grossly over-emphasizes future people at the expense of current ones so creeeeeepy.

That moral weight to the future hypothetical people is something that I have just now put a name to (thanks!) and the more I think about it, the more places I see it, and the creepier it gets.

But on a purely biological note, natural selection favors just that: those who make more babies than anyone else, who then go on to make more babies than any of their contemporaries, etc etc etc.

Uh. what? I was trying to explain that feeling uncomfortable or violated was a reasonable reaction to a virtual strip search for people who aren't you. What the actual bleepity bleep does not allowing weapons onto planes have to do with the price of peas in Persepolis?

damn, where where you when I was buying my latest bike headlight! I ended up with a super-bright flashlight that I am quite satisfied with, but that cost a bit more than $6.

I think the point to be made is that not everyone has the same comfort zone as you do. You may not care about strangers seeing you naked, but other people do. Being naked in front of someone can be an intensely vulnerable experience, and the feelings of vulnerability can be compounded by a wide range of factors, including power differentials, the fact that they are strangers, or that those strangers may be letching on your naked body.

For instance, I don't particularly care about being naked in front of people, but when I feel like I'm being objectified/letched on, that makes me uncomfortable, regardless of my state of dress.

I really liked the discussion of the habit loop. I've never seen it explained that neatly before.

Is there any evidence that private screening companies are any less skeevy than actual TSA? I'd be shocked if there was and appreciable difference between the two. They still have to follow all the same screening procedures that the TSA does.

I can in no way substantiate this, but the xray ones are usually two large (maybe always blue?) mostly rectangular blocks that you stand in between. The millimeter machines are usually rounder and have clear bits. The illustrations here might help: http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/1/5/163631/3181/travel/Ful...

edit: never mind, the flyer talk pics are much better.

I also checked out the talk page, and if I didn't know the author was an expert, I would also have assumed he was a crank. He approached editing Wikipedia on a lark and failed to offer sources in an acceptable format. No wonder he got smacked down. He cited a blog post for a historical event!

ha! I will bust out my best sweet thing voice and biggest innocent eyes next time some one tries to tell me that. Even if it does only apply to the xray machines.

Basically, yes. It's very easy to end up herded through unless you're paying attention. Now I watch carefully and see which lines are going through the big scanner and which are going through the smaller metal detector. Most of the time, I can just get in the metal detector line, no muss no fuss.

However, when it is unavoidable (happens at smaller airports when there are fewer lines in my experience), I just stop in front of it and say in my most polite sweet little thing voice "no thank you" or "I don't want to go through the radiation scanner" when I'm told go through it. I've had people try and tell me it's safe and (gently?) badger me into doing it (at which point sometimes I try and offer a reason, but mostly I just say "I don't care"), but every time I've been on my toes enough to refuse, I've gotten the patdown instead. The TSA folks have sometimes gotten kinda freaked out/uptight or antsy, but it generally blows over pretty quickly and 80% of the time doesn't take much longer than the regular screening. The rest of the time, it takes them 15 minutes to find another lady agent to do the patdown, so I always start through security a little sooner if I can't see separate lines for a metal detector-only screening.

I also refuse to go to the 'private' screening area. If they're going to grope me, I'd rather it be in public in full view of everyone else.

Whereas my brain boggles at how big a pain it must have been to do a literature review pre-JSTOR/Web of Science/pdfs in general.

I am a voracious reader (generally 2-5 novels/equivalent per week, depending) and love ebooks. Carry 5 long novels, 3 YA series, 4 non-fiction books, my work literature, and an assortment of my favorite comfort/pickmeup novels/short stories/essays with me constantly and instantly searchable? Yes please.

I do agree with your first point, and it would basically be a continuation of the status quo, which seems like a pretty reasonable compromise between allowing people to profit from their work without stifling the creativity of others and criminalizing harmless behavior that is going to keep happening anyway.

My rebuttal to your second point is to acknowledge that you have part of a point, but also to draw a comparison between the futility of policing digital sharing and the futility of policing fanwork. Since we're (sortof) making a 'in a perfect world' wishlist, I think we can do better than fall into the same traps that current law/lawmakers/our assorted predecessors fell into, criminalizing behavior that is entirely or mostly harmless and where enforcement has minimal benefits.

With your other examples, I think that there is a case to be made on both sides with regards to the dangers vs the benefits from enforcement. But with those cases, I can more clearly see the arguments that enforcement has benefits that are worth the difficulty (depending on how damaging you think pot, gambling, and car accidents are). So I could see where a person would argue that noncommercial fanwork is severely enough damaging to the creator/rights holder to make enforcement worth it, but I personally don't see it as such and would have a very hard time believing such arguments without strong proof. Car accidents where someone is not wearing a seatbelt, on the other hand, has pretty demonstrable damages.

(I'm not really going to get into pot or gambling, because I think ath this point, the arguments for and against pot criminalization are well-established, and starting to weight every-so-slightly toward decriminalization, and I personally find gambling distasteful and boring and don't have the energy to read up on the damages associated with gambling or the benefits associated with enforcement of anti-gambling laws.)

The way I got over my public speaking jitters was by being a TA for highly unstructured discussion sections for ~6 semesters. I was given absolutely nothing to do with the kids, so I turned each session into an extended review/Q&A. Explaining basic concepts in my field 4 hours a week for 6 semesters to undergrads who barely cared enough to show up was excellent practice for talking in front of people and thinking on my feet. Not to mention I'm much less nervous, and I know what nervous reactions to expect.

tl;dr Practice practice practice.

The only problem with your derivative works proposal is that it won't work. Fans will make fanwork of things they are fans of, regardless of the legality involved. Akin to the culture of digital sharing, that horse has already left the barn, it is pointless to try and close the door now. If you wanted to ban only commercial derivative works for a longer period, that might work, but non-commercial fanwork isn't going anywhere.

Well, the fact that people are attempting to argue that, as a lady, I am somehow 'naturally' unfit for intellectual/mathematical/logical tasks is pretty insulting. I know that you (general) are not talking about me (specifically), but it's pretty hard not to take it a little personally.

Then there is the tone of "No, there could not possibly be a problem with US" that permeates so many comments on this thread. There are very few voices that are even willing to entertain the idea that there is an aspect of this culture that is unwelcoming or hostile to women.

And finally, there are all the comments that seem to be saying that who cares why there is a strong gender imbalance in this field, they don't see a problem with the status quo, and that including more women in the field is completely unnecessary and not worth considering, much less actually doing anything about.

So yeah. Not feeling like I could ask any of these people and a question about something I'm studying or make a comment about something technical without getting either a lot of "pat pat little girl" or otherwise insulting and unhelpful reactions.

Thank you for your kind words. I confess that I am completely taken aback that in 2012 there are still people postulating that women are not capable of or inclined toward intellectually rigorous or difficult work.

Oh those ladies and their feeble, overheating lady-brains!