| Schrödinger’s Rapist |
[Oct. 10th, 2009|07:49 pm] |
I always thought the statement "All men are potential rapists" was more than a little over the top. But yesterday Phaedra Starling rephrased it in a way that made the little light bulb go on over my head.
See, the problem that I--and I think a lot of people--had was that we skipped over the word potential. All men are also potentially not rapists. From my perspective, until I've opened the box by talking to them, getting to know them, and comparing them to known profiles, all men are Schrödinger's rapist. Now usually my rapist-identification program is running in the background, at the subconscious level, somewhere down below the don't-forget-where-you-put-your-keys program, but you'd better believe it's always present.
Dudes, here's a handy hint: want to know why women smile insincerely and sidle away when you try to talk to them? There's a good chance that it's because you're pinging their rape-avoidance radar. Don't do that.
Also, to male self-defence instructors: Want to know why all those silly women went and read your carefully-researched profile of a rapist and then disregarded it? Maybe it was because you prefaced your remarks by telling them that it was paranoid of them to actually apply your test on an ongoing basis. |
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| Zellers fail |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|06:52 pm] |
I seem to be harping on a theme here lately, but since I took up reading Junkfood Science and Shapely Prose, these things keep jumping out at me.
I walked into the pharmacy at my local Zellers today and discovered that in a display at the end of an aisle they were prominently promoting laxatives for anorexia. This is what our culture has come to. I have no words.
Needless to say, I will be boycotting my local Zellers for awhile. |
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| Cognitive dissonance |
[Apr. 21st, 2009|05:45 pm] |
Why do stores that sell "natural" products always seem to devote most of their shelf space to pills? What's more synthetic than a pill? |
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| Medieval pop culture |
[Mar. 5th, 2009|01:38 pm] |
I don't know whether to celebrate or groan over pop culture's current fascination with all things medieval. On the heels of Carl Pyrdum's post about the Crusade movie Arnold Schwarzenegger never made, I give you Dante's Inferno: The Video Game. I quote:
[The manufacturer's] take still features Dante as the protagonist, but the poet-philosopher is now a hulking veteran of the Crusades. He returns home from war to find Beatrice, the subject of his love and admiration, murdered. When her soul is "kidnapped" by Lucifer himself, Dante dives down to the very depths of hell, armed with Death's scythe, to win her back.
It was bound to happen sometime. |
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| Landlady fail: Aleksandra Buchavski, 739796 Ontario Ltd. |
[Feb. 16th, 2009|03:26 pm] |
Aleksandra Buchavski
739796 Ontario Ltd.
Monday, February 16th, 2009
Dear Ms. Buchavski:
This morning it rained on my bookcases. This is the second time that this has happened in the last sixteen months. The handyman who was working upstairs at the time informed me that the floor of the bathroom in Apartment 3 upstairs is rotted through and that any water that falls on it is going to leak into my apartment. This means that unless the problem is fixed properly, it is only a matter of time until my bookcases are deluged again.
In our phone conversation today, you claimed that “building repairs are not your problem.” I beg to differ. Ms. Buchavski, I am a graduate student in history; my books are my livelihood. Some of them are quite rare and they took a lot of trouble to obtain. Since the apartment does not have room for me to move both of the bookshelves out from under the leak, I am faced with the prospect of playing Russian roulette with my most important assets. As someone who likes to claim that she is a businesswoman, I’m sure you will understand that losing my biggest investment is very much my problem.
The recent federal budget announced a tax deduction for home renovations. Given that G--, the tenant in Apartment 3, is frequently away for several days at a time, making necessary repairs does not seem like an unreasonable proposal to investigate. It will protect both your investment and mine. However, you have indicated that you prefer to choose the path of conflict and to lose my rent money. What a shame. What a waste.
Please consider this letter notice of my intention to move out at the end of March.
Yours truly,
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) henchminion
P.S. This is going to be expensive and time-consuming for us both—especially after it reaches the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal. Until I sign a lease with someone else, there is still time to negotiate. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|06:05 pm] |
When I hear back-to-back news stories about David Miller calling for a ban on handguns and Stephen Harper promising to toughen the Youth Criminal Justice Act, it occurs to me that even though the two politicians come from opposite ends of the political spectrum, they're really proceding from the same premises. Both of them believe that you can solve the problem of violence by making crime more illegal. |
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| Statistics, Damned Statistics and Maclean's Magazine |
[Jul. 10th, 2008|12:21 am] |
The series of articles comparing Canadians and Americans in this week's Maclean's magazine provides lots of amusing statistics with which to annoy my American friends. However, I have my doubts about the rigour of the research. In fact, I've been snickering over the magazine all night long.
Each article comes with sidebars full of numbers, which don't seem to have been reproduced in the electronic versions of the stories. The "Insatiable North" piece had a box with the following factoids:
Lifetime number of sex partners reported by Canadian/American men: 23/13 respectively.
Lifetime number of sex partners reported by Canadian/American women: 10/9.
It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone at Maclean's to wonder where Canadian men are finding 13 more partners than Canadian women. Are they boinking foreigners? Each other? Sheep? Enquiring minds want to know.
Also, since I've read Rethinking Thin, I can't help but notice the ubiquity of fat prejudice in the mainstream media. The article "Good health, for less" by Alexandra Shimo in the same series compares obesity rates in Canada and the U.S. as if obesity were an illness like heart disease or diabetes, or as if it were a strong indicator of an early death, which the science on the subject doesn't really support. |
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