Quickies
Quickies: Robin Williams, STEM is for boys and dancing is for girls, and jellyfish
- Robin Williams’ widow says depression didn’t kill him – “As Lewy bodies form and take over different parts of the brain affecting body movement, mind and mood, patients suffering from LBD experience symptoms of a person with both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, conditions that alone are devastating.” From Amy.
- Florida school offers STEM night for boys, offers dance for girls – “A public elementary school in Florida had apparently created a “STEM Night” at the Orlando Science Museum that was offered specifically to the boys in the school and their mothers. The equivalent event–for daughters and their fathers–was a traditional father/daughter dance.”
- Masculinity, a comic
- It sucks to swim like a jellyfish, study of animal movement suggests – “…a study published on Tuesday suggests that rather pushing water rearward, jellyfish and lampreys – a species of snake-like, jawless fish also known as lamprey eels – “pull” themselves forward by creating a region of low pressure in the water ahead of them.”
That school thing is annoying on so many levels, not just the obvious sexism but the fact that it assumes that kids have mothers and fathers. As someone whose father died when I was young I find that sort of assumption stupid and potentially very hurtful.
Hasn’t it been speculated that if we are to ever have the ability to travel faster than light (the very possibility of which is up for debate) that we would need to do it by “swimming through space time” like a jellyfish swims through water.
Yeah, it sounds very Star Trek/Michio Kaku to me too but then a lot of very smart people thought that traveling on trains would kill us, so you never know.
The whole Robin Williams thing keeps getting sadder and sadder.
Susan Williams is not the only one who thinks that Lewy body syndrome was what killed Robin. His very close and long time friend Bobcat Goldthwait was on the Nerdist podcast recently talking about his documentary Call Me Lucky (which looks really good BTW) and spent the last half of the hour plus talking about his friend and how hard it was to see the effects that Lewy body was having on him. It’s well worth a listen.
Fair warning, it’s definitely NSFW.
Oops, I made a bad assumption and called Susan Schneider by Susan Williams.
Damn me and my patriarchal ownership labels, bad ally, bad.
It is just so sad. What an awful disease.
I looked over the Florida school night things and it just feels so out of touch. Why must a child be assigned to any particular parent, ever? Why not just a caring adult? Grandparents, aunts, uncles, the neighbors, family friends are often great at filling these rolls. (And if an adult doesn’t like doing the event, it makes sense to pair them up with someone that would be better suited.)
It just seems out of touch that these events are not held for both boys and girls. Maybe it is time for someone hip with the times to set the activities.
Exactly, who’s to say that Russell couldn’t bring good old Carl along with him?