Quickies

Skepchick Quickies 10.17

On October 17, 1956, Bobby Fischer (13 years old) and Donald Byrne (a chess Olympiad) played a game of chess that came to be known as The Game of the Century.

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Mary

Mary Brock works as an Immunology scientist by day and takes care of a pink-loving princess child by night. She likes cloudy days, crafting, cooking, and Fall weather in New England.

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14 Comments

  1. Beautiful as the space shuttle is, those photos mostly serve to remind me that you could not pay me enough to live in Los Angeles. What a pit.

    1. Los Angeles is no more of a pit than any other large city which houses a diverse strata of economic classes. It is much less of a pit (to me) than a few other cities I have visited. The areas the shuttle was going through were some of the less cared for areas of the city as they are not where the wealthier people live. Still, having lived here for over a decade now, I can say there is a lot to love about this city, in particular its diversity as well as the random beauty and weirdness you can find just by taking the time to walk around. The weather means that people are outside often, so I find myself naturally getting to know my neighbors and community in a way I never have elsewhere. Also the mild climate is great for my hobby of gardening so while some areas of the city may not look so nice, my yard is pretty fantastic and I can enjoy it year round. People have a lot of negative ideas about LA and many of them are true, but I would much rather live here than most of the other urban areas in the country.

      1. It has been a long time since I have lived in LA, but it still has a place in my heart for many of the reasons violets states.

  2. BHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA that maxi pad thing just cracked me up!

    My friends’ family is the one that filed the official complaint about that Bible class…now they’re worried about their kids being bullied for it. It seems a little testy in the school right now, I’ll keep you posted. They did the right thing.

  3. There were an awful lot of “bits of untruth” in Romney’s performance last night. My favorite was when he was asked about what loopholes would help him balance his budget his “detailed” plan started with the words “I’ll pick a number”. What I thought was, you might as well since everything else in your plan was pulled straight from your ass like that number.

    And did anyone notice this passage later in the “Binders full of women” answer? He said,

    “Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort. But number two, because I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.

    She said, I can’t be here until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o’clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said fine. Let’s have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.”

    What a patriarchal, privileged prick. Just my opinion.

    My summation of the debate, indeed Romney’s entire campaign, is “That’s not true, Governor Romney”.

    1. I just about punched my car stereo at that part. The fact that in 2012 a presidential candidate thinks that the solution to inequality for women in the work place is to give them more time to make dinner for their families is horrifying to me.

      It also saddens me that even the liberal candidate openly directs all of his language toward upper middle class families as if they are the only people in the country that matter. I understand that these are considered the most likely voters, but is that any surprise when they are the only people whose needs are presented as important? Not only that, but even as one of that group I feel alienated because I am a person who truly believes the government should me meeting the needs of everyone, and especially those worse off than myself, not just catering to me, since I am actually fine, for the most part. Maybe other people will vote more when they feel like someone actually even cares about them.

      1. I agree that even President Obama does not quite get what those of us who stand one paycheck away from disaster go through daily, but I at least believe that he tries to understand. That may be just an act but I don’t think so, I feel he has empathy even if he doesn’t quite get it.

        But Governor Romney looked like he was talking to the help all night and if you have seen the pictures from that night he (as well as Queen Anne and Matt) looked downright indignant that “these people” where daring to speak to Mitt like that. But I wouldn’t expect much different from a woman who said it was “their turn” and told the conservatives who were complaining about the way Mitt is running his campaign to “stop it, this is hard”.

        Personally I would love to have a test for high public office (Senate and higher). The would be candidate would have to move into low cost housing and live on public assistance for a week. That’s all, just a week. That wouldn’t give them the full picture but I would venture that there would never be another argument that having to be on public support is a picnic. I return their campaign would be fully funded by the taxpayers and no outside money would be allowed. But then “corporations are people my friend.”

        1. Great idea, but I would go further. Give them a hoe and send them into the fields to work!

          This to apply not only to candidates for high public office, but all intellectuals and bureaucrats.

          Pol Pot had the right idea, according to socialist ideals, he just took it a little tiny bit too far!

  4. Come on now, Romney is a wonderful man – he ran himself ragged trying to find the ever elusive Competent Female. A species nearly extinct in the year 2012. What sacrifices he must have made to hire the wretched likes of us women!

  5. No god, there’s some beautiful comments in that misogyny article. I think Kelly Jones was my favourite:


    Sexism is not an entrenched prejudice against women. It’s discriminating on the basis of sex, which all sexed species do — or there would be no successful reproduction.

    Although points definitely have to go to the “the definition of words doesn’t change” post.

    How do these people function without a basic understanding of how language works?

    1. And for that matter, how do I function without a basic understanding of HTML tags? That second paragraph was went to be an indented quote, but I couldn’t figure it out.

  6. I have said it before, and I will no doubt say it many times in the future. If there were a world championship tournament for sarcasm, the Brits would win every single time.

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