Survivalism, British Style
John Christopher’s 1956 No Blade of Grass is an extremely compelling page turner that portrays our moral traditions and social glue as being so fragile that they can be swept away in a day. Compassion, mercy, and even friendliness are not as hard-wired as we would hope, and they quickly dissolve when the urgency of survival forces us to view all other people as competitors.
I was reading an excellent piece from GeekDad (sum ergo lego) on the original The A-Team television show and why is was “awesomer” than other, similar shows of that era, when it struck me: Burn Notice is the 21st century version of The A-Team.
Dr. Mrs. Rugbyologist had dinner this evening at Jamie Oliver’s newish restaurant here in Cambridge called Jamie’s Italian. The food was excellent, with the charcuterie anitpasti platter being the definitive highlight of the night. We had to wait about twenty minutes for a table, ten of which were taken up watching the bartender make our dirty gin martinis (i.e., the bar is good, but very meticulous and slow). Of course, I am not here to do uncomped restaurant reviews[1]. I am here to complain about trivial things in a pedantic fashion.
You may have noticed that I provide no solutions to the problem[1] of the under-representation in either my hacky attempt to quantify said problem or my personal response to the experience of investigation. There is a good reason for this. I do not have any. I don’t do PR. I’m not a psychologist, a sociologist, or any other “-ologist” that might have expertise on such things. I’m also not a woman, although I have had rugby opponents imply as much in inexcusably sexist and misogynistic tones. Basically, I have as much confidence that I have something constructive to contribute to the proposal and evaluation of solutions as I do to solving the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Continue reading “Solutions to “The Skeptical Boys Club””
It has been a few weeks since I originally published “The Skeptical Boys Club” on the significant under-representation of women in Skepticism[1]. It generated some serious response, criticism, and discussion. At the time, I tried to focus the article on the information I gathered, but tried to restrict the injection of my personal motivations for being interested, my thoughts on possible causes, and my thoughts on possible solutions. In the first case, those motivations were not immediately relevant. In the latter cases, I have no reason to believe that my thoughts on these matters have any value, and to put it next to “impressive” looking graphs might give those ruminations an inappropriate appearance of authority.
There has been some more recent interest in “The Skeptical Boys Club” by some individuals for whose thinking I have tremendous respect (but not always agreement, which is healthy) and whose thoughts on feminism, skepticism, and women in skepticism is infinitely more developed and considered than mine. After all, I can really date my intense interest in these types of issues quite accurately to precisely 28 months ago (more on how I know the date so precisely below). That is not much time to form a fully coherent philosophy of life.
So, I thought I would take this time to share some of my reflections from the experience of conceiving, researching, writing, and getting responses to the article.
Continue reading “Reflections on “The Skeptical Boys Club””
The Finch and Pea 