- Caught in a lab romance – A sciencey fan video of “Bad Romance” which will now be stuck in my head for a week. From Ellen.
- Women more troubled by bag theft than rape, BNP candidate claims – “A senior BNP leader with a strong chance of winning a seat in the London Assembly next month has written that rape is a “myth” and that “some women are like gongs – they need to be struck regularly.””
- Science cheerleader – Cheerleader turned Navy officer turned anesthesiologist. Rachel’s pretty much lived out my childhood career plan.
- Smut for smut is a bad idea – Hemant weighs in on encouraging people to trade their holy books for porn.
Ha ha! Lab Romance = very ropey awesomeness. I love that people take the time to do this sort of thing. It’s terrible and yet brilliant at the same time.
Go Nerds!
Hey – just noticed the rape article is from April 2008 – nothing changes about the disgustingness of his views but having just checked, the guy was sacked following his comments.
@Tracy King: Well that’s good, at least. I’ll go throw a pillow at Maria for sending in an ancient link.
Meh, I am sure they only sacked him because he’s bad PR. The BNP are scum all the way through. If the UK didn’t have a huge media machine I have no doubt that his candidacy would have stood.
Only the most unspeakably foul scum of humanity are fit to join the British National Party. Although, until just this past February membership was only open to the most unspeakably foul Caucasian scum of humanity. Nice of them to march boldly forward into the 19th century like that.
Fortunately, they have very little real support. But still, 6% of the vote was enough to get them two seats in the European Parliament last year. gag.
I tried reading that rape article, but I only got as far as this quote…
…when I sprained my shoulder trying to grasp the irony.
@Amanda: Poop. I am guilty of spreading that outdated article on FB too. Glad to know he was sacked.
Lab Romance looks like something fabulously dorky our lab would do. Kudos!
Reading that cheerleader’s bio, it sounds like she’s going to be a nurse anesthetist (CRNA), not an anesthesiologist proper. She says she’s “currently in graduate school for Anesthesia,” not medical school. “When I was deployed to Afghanistan that solidified my passion for anesthesia as I was able to ‘shadow’ the CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist) for the eight months I was there, while I was also applying to Anesthesia programs. ”
Perhaps that’s picking nits, but I still haven’t seen a cheerleader / Hooter’s waitress / exotic dancer become a doctor, which is what so many claim their work is paying for. :-)
Great now I have to fly to London and kill that guy.
I would like to manually give Nick Eriksen a testicular torsion.
After all, it would just be forcing him to get a hand job. Which is sex, so he’d like that.
I completely agree with the smut for smut campaign being a poor advertisement for atheism. It may help in the short term with attention and membership, but it’s alienating in the long run. It makes it much easier for people who disagree with us to write atheism off as angry and intolerant.
It’s the same thing with the Young Republicans who hold “affirmative action” bake sales. I disagree with their ideals, so when I saw their bake sale it made it easier for me to talk about how inflammatory and myopic they are- without having to really consider the substance.
Let’s not be Young Republicans. Words to live by.
@BigMKNows: And here I always thought it was a degree in communication.
From the Cheerleader, Navy officer, CRNA, possible future DNP-article, what is “We’re learning about how all of the pressures and every symbol on the planet affect the vessels and body.” supposed to mean?
@Chasmosaur: I don’t think going at his goolies with a pair of pliers counts as giving him testicular torsion.
I’m not opposed to the idea either way, however.
Smut for smut reminds of PETA…doing dumb things in a flashy way to get attention, but undermining the cause as a whole and making it easy for the other side to knock you down for being silly and offensive.
@BigMKNows:
I know it’s easy to be cynical when you see a pretty girl doing something that requires thinking. I mean… THAT never happens.
And I’m just curious… how many strippers and Hooter’s waitresses have you actually followed up with throughout the years to find out how their studies are going? Or did they just say, “I’m going to school” and you said, “Ok. Give me 20 3-mile-island wings and a bucket of Red Stripe.”
But anyway we got the link from her dad, a Skepchick reader, who I trust to be telling me the truth that his daughter is actually a grad student.
@Bjornar: I think it’s a comment about how chemicals work. The symbols as in the symbols on the Periodic Table. It…sounds like a reasonable explanation of chemistry from a medical student (really, after teaching chemistry labs that have disinterested medical students in them, finding one that’s just happy to be there is nice).
@Elyse: Thank you, Elyse. Pretty girls can be smart and driven and can have successful careers. And honestly, I don’t know why this continues to be considered an anomaly. All of the pretty girls I hang out with are successful and brilliant. While it’s possible that I have a monopoly on hot smart female friends, I somehow doubt it.
It does sound like she is studying to be a nurse anesthetist, not an anesthesiologist (MD) mainly because of the grad school part. MDs don’t get trained in school for anesthesia, they get trained in residency after med school. Not that it takes anything from her accomplishment, just trying to maintain accuracy.
@Displaced Northerner:
And I believe that a nurse anesthetist is more like a physician’s assistant. She can actually administer anesthesia. Am I wrong?
@Elyse: I saw the dad post it originally on Facebook and thought it was a great story. It really is all the more amusing because she was a professional cheerleader and her career choice is against type and perception; and changing perceptions is a good thing!
@Elyse: You’re exactly right. Technically it’s closer to a nurse practitioner (both require an RN) but I’m still not perfectly clear how the responsibilities/privileges of an NP and PA are different from one another. In my darker hours, I sometimes wonder why I didn’t take the NP/PA route- less debt, good money, and less likely to be sued.
@Displaced Northerner: Actually, you are very likely to choose friends of similar intelligence to you, so your sample in this instance is biased, sadly. Find a stupid pretty girl and her friends are likely to be also stupid. Find a smart pretty girl and her friends are likely to be smart. You don’t hang around with people you have nothing in common with, usually.
So yeah, I know loads of attractive women who are clever, but when I was in a theatre career I knew loads who were dumb as a post. Nothing can be gleaned from our own social circles as they’re just a reflection of ourselves.
@Tracy King: I don’t deny a selection bias, I just can’t believe that I’m the only person who experiences this particular phenomenon. All I’m saying is that it seems statistically unlikely that the only smart hotties are the dozens who live in MA or VA. It seems even more unlikely that I know them all – there must be more.
I think there’s a tendency to want to categorize women as either smart or pretty- not both. By no means am I saying all pretty girl are smart (or even that most are). I’m just saying that there are enough out there that this stereotype shouldn’t exist.
@Bjornar: Unfortunately there are a number of typos introduced into that article by the blogger–most notably the word “Anesthesiologist” rather than “Anesthetist” in the title. I’m sure that the word “symptom” was intended rather than “symbol” in the instance you note.
With reference to some other comments posted here, both Anesthesiologists (i.e. MDs) and CRNAs (i.e. RNs) are trained in the same procedures of anesthesia. In many places (laws prevail of course) they may work independently and provide anesthesia, in other places they may not, but in general I think you find the team approach in use–doctors and nurses working together, in this case providing anesthesia as needed in a given situation.
@Brian:
Congrats, BTW. You made a good one!
@Brian: Thanks. That makes more sense. And congrats once removed. :)
@Displaced Northerner: I know plenty of women who want to dismiss very attractive women as stupid because they don’t like the idea that she has “everything”. I think it’s probably all a hangover from the not-to-distant days when women were housewives or decorative, but not careerists or academics. In 200 years we’ll see a different attitude from society, I hope. Well, WE won’t, but someone will.
Unless some smart woman finds the cure for ageing like the chick in The Trouble with Lichen.