Quickies

Skepchick Quickies 9.4

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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35 Comments

  1. So canned biscuits are an indicator of the dissolution of the family because they are a measure of women working outside the home instead of getting up early to make their husbands and families biscuits for breakfast.

    Maybe we can dig a little deeper and ask why women are in the workforce today where they were not in previous generations. Perhaps, families now need two adult incomes to survive. Perhaps, failure of wages for middle and lower classes to keep up with inflation is denying men and women the opportunity to make domestic bliss their first priority. Aren’t we continually told that the major reason given in divorce is financial stress? Maybe the cause of high divorce rates is not Satan. Could it be …..The Economy?

  2. I make biscuits with the kids sometimes. I do this because I enjoy it, it fills an otherwise lazy Sunday morning and kids should learn how to cook so that they can feed themselves when they grow up. I’d be disappointed if my partner made them because I enjoy it so much. I’d be a rubbish American.

  3. That letter writer sounds like he wants a faithful dog that can cook rather than an actual human companion. ‘Women exist to serve men and stoke their massive egos’ is pretty much what I got out of that editorial. And if these women occasionally fall into their man’s muscular arms and announce, “I do declare, I have a touch of the vapors”, that would be a plus as well.

  4. I don’t understand this debaptized thing. If you’re an atheist, then you don’t need to be debaptized because you should believe that the baptizing was just some silly ritual that means diddly squat, right? And if you’re agnostic, you probably of the mind that you don’t know for sure; so either it is “real” or it’s just some silly ritual that means diddly squat.

    Seems like a way to get press.

  5. What is a canned biscuit? As a Brit who was MASSIVELY confused by the existence of something called a ‘sausage biscuit’ when last in the US, I fear an American biscuit differs from a British one.

    My definition would be something along the lines of a ‘hard, sweet, baked confection’, although I run the risk of reigniting the Jaffa Cake Controversy. Biscuits aren’t really a breakfast food in the UK…

  6. Ah, I see – are they pretty ubiquitous then? Generally, cooked breakfasts are weekend-only things over here. Me, I get up 10 minutes before I need to leave the house on weekdays – I’m not sure how that will affect my marriage, mind…

  7. Fast food restaurants like biscuits pretty well, because they’re a quick bread and can be made ‘fresh’ very quickly from a batch that was made very early that morning or from frozen. And you can get frozen or the canned varieties for home that heat up quickly. I hardly ever have them at home, though, being single and not having time in the morning to heat up an oven. My family did do the full ‘country breakfast’ with biscuits and gravy on the weekends when I was a kid, though. Biscuits were canned (or Bisquick!), the gravy was not. So we were all good. :)

  8. English biscuit = American cookie
    American biscuit = similar to a scone, but a little more bread-like

    In our house, I (the male half of the union) do most of the cooking. My wife does like to bake, but she does it less these days, at my request. I was putting on too much weight and my cholesterol was through the roof.

  9. That biscuit story is the funniest thing I’ve read in months. In a sad way. And people ask me why I care at all about this “feminist” stuff …

  10. Really don’t understand ‘debaptism’ at all…if we’re replacing religion with reason in the first place, why dignify a meaningless ritual (baptism) with another meaningless ritual? o.O

  11. Well, this explains a few things … I make really fabulous buttermilk biscuits from scratch, but I make them at night, with soup. I bet if I just made them in the morning for the Lord and Master of my Home, all would be right in my tiny domestic world!

    Ya think?

  12. Really don’t understand ‘debaptism’ at all…if we’re replacing religion with reason in the first place, why dignify a meaningless ritual (baptism) with another meaningless ritual?

    It’s not meaningless in Italy. If you’re Baptized, you’re legally held to Canon Law. Separation of church and state is somewhat less there than in America. Getting “debaptized” frees you from legal accountability to the local diocese and bishop, which can matter a lot if the bishop finds out you’re an atheist and decides to start using Canon Law to make your life unpleasant (rather rarer than it would be if American clergy had that power, I think, but still a possibility).

  13. Flippy, I know for a fact that you have KFC in the UK. In the name of discovery, go down to your local KFC and order a biscuit ….wait a sec. I just googled UK KFC and you don’t have biscuits!!! What the hell?

    I’ll just go eat my spotted dick now.

  14. I don’t know about the UK, but when I was living in Germany, I could get biscuits at Popeye’s, and they tasted pretty much exactly the same as they do here.

  15. @Rystefn: Yeah, thanks for the clarification. That makes a lot more sense when you realize it has significant social and legal ramifications rather than just “it feels better this way.”

  16. @Rystefn:

    It’s not meaningless in Italy. If you’re Baptized, you’re legally held to Canon Law.

    Wow, I didn’t know that. I’ll have to check if that’s the case here in Argentina. It might not be, but on the other hand, our constitution specifically says that the state supports the Roman Catholic Church, whatever that means. I wasn’t till now interested in de-baptizing, but this could make me change my mind.

  17. When you said biscuit I assumed you mean something like a cookie or digestive. An American biscuit looks like a muffin. I know that my girlfriend enjoys a muffin as much as I do, probably more.

    That double entendre only works if “muff” means the same thing in America as it does in England.

  18. Is it me, or does ANY headline claiming “____________ is ruining the American family” run under the false assumption that the American family (whatever the hell THAT is) is being ruined?

  19. “English biscuit = American cookie”

    “American biscuit = similar to a scone, but a little more bread-like”

    and …

    Canadian biscuit = something somewhere between, but including, something like an American cracker and a small sconish-like thingy — we Canadians are particularish peoples.

  20. Wait! Stop! I’m consufed. Is an American cracker anything like a Cream Cracker? Not Robbie Coltrane Cracker or Christmas Cracker but cream cracker.

    I’m starting to feel that there should be some kind of international standardisation for biscuits, crackers, cakes and pastries.

  21. Yeah, that would qualify as a cracker in America. It’s a pretty broad word, though, much like chips (which I’m told is the word used in the UK for fries).

  22. What you call chips we call crisps. Fries are those skinny things unworthy of the name “chip”. A chip should be thick and sturdy and made from potato and nothing else. You might know them as potato wedges.

  23. No, no… I’m from the south, and we don’t cotton to those Yankee skinny fries. One potato makes about six fries. Eight if it’s a big ‘un.

    A chip is what happens when you slice them ridiculously thin and they come out crunchy – which I believe is what led to British types calling them “crisps.” In modern times, though, the word has expanded to many similar types of food made from tortilla or corn or whatever.

  24. Ever since we read that Scientific American article a few years ago, my wife and I have been stressing to our kids that practice makes you better, and that working hard to understand and achieve is more important than being naturally smart or talented. We never praise them anymore for “being” smart, but instead for “doing” their best, practicing, and working hard. Already (my oldest is about to turn 6) I think it’s had an awesome effect. My daughter loves to tell me about how much she practices things, and she’s less daunted by difficult tasks than she used to be. And of course, she’s still smart as hell.

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