Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 7.24
- Sally Ride, first American woman in space, dies at 61 – Before her first astronaut mission, Gloria Steinem said of Dr. Ride, ““Millions of little girls are going to sit by their television sets and see they can be astronauts, heroes, explorers and scientists.”
- When flying to Olympics, women are second class to men – “Japan’s women’s soccer team scored a huge win for their country last year when they beat the United States for the World Cup. But apparently that amounts to nothing. They flew to Europe earlier this week along with the men’s team in anticipation of the London Olympics. The men had seats in business class. The women sat in coach.”
- How to suck at your religion – From Mark.
- Utah “goat man” worries wildlife officials – How soon until this becomes fodder for a cryptozoological investigation into Goat Man?
It appears the Goat Man identified himself.
http://news.yahoo.com/official-goat-man-utah-mountains-hunter-072526154.html
All my hopes for a goat Dian Fossey have been shattered.
Obviously the Goat Man is Goat Boy all grown up. Bill Hicks lives! (Not exactly his best routine…)
On a serious note, I was terribly saddened to read of Dr Ride’s death yesterday. She did a lot of good work, and I hope her foundation has a long and successful legacy in her memory.
favorite quote from the comic “Every time someone has homosexual intercourse, God punishes us by letting Nickelback release another album.”
I will stand up in public and say it: I like Nickleback.
Wow, I guess the women’s footbal team is lucky they didn’t sent them by slow boat to Wladiwostok where they can board the Trans-Siberia Express. Third class.
According to Jezebel, Sally Ride’s obituary identified her as a lesbian:
http://jezebel.com/5928654/sally-rides-obituary-announces-she-was-a-lesbian
The oatmeal always has this way of finding way of detracting from his message by posting one too many screams in his comics. Okay so I get the left vs right battles over religion and the point he is making, but it seems like he’s calling out gay rights like its some kind of whiny cliche. I’ll even take environmental claims as whiny because sometimes there are activists that take it too far beyond logic, but gay rights is firmly rooted in logic and definitely not some kind of whiny cliche. Otherwise it’s pretty clever.
It is saddening to see the loss of Sally Ride to the world.
She was truly one of the greats.
Of the names of the early shuttle astronauts, she was amongst the few I knew immediately.
May her legacy live on.
About the “When flying to Olympics, women are second class to men” story: There was an extremely reasonable and detailed explanation given about that in a post bellow the article that you linked.
The post roughly explains that professional athletes get favorable treatment over amateur athletes, the mens football team is made of pros the womens team not so much. While i surely don’t like that policy, i think it’s in the exact oposite direction of the spirit of the olympic games and i’d surely prefer if they’d all (pros and amateurs) be treated equally, it’s obvious that this is not about them being women. Them being women was just a coincidence that the press noticed and thought would make for exciting news headlines, and obviously they were right.