Quickies

Quickies: Finn from Star Wars, Building a House on Mars, and How Teamwork Affects Women

  • Why Finn is the Best Character in Star Wars: The Force Awakens – “I wonder if the idea that ‘Finn isn’t a cool enough hero’ is tied to perceptions of masculinity. A Washington Post critic was disappointed that Finn got ‘friend-zoned’ by Rey, probably because he doesn’t ‘exude sex appeal’ the way Lando Calrissian did. (Me, myself, personally, I wouldn’t tie the worth of a black man to his sexual prowess, but you do you, white lady.)” From Courtney.
  • How to Build a House on Mars – “That’s the challenge facing astronauts as they move forward with colonizing Mars. They’ll either need to bring materials with them, which will be wildly expensive and generally unreliable (what if you need a spare part?), or make use of the Red Planet’s rugged, inhospitable terrain.”
  • Off-Putting Logo Brings N.Y. Village to the Polls – “Upstate New Yorkers will hit the polls Monday to vote on whether to change an off-putting village seal that depicts a white settler strangling a Native American.” This sounds like something out of Parks and Rec but unfortunately it’s real. From Radium.
  • The Funny Thing About Abusive Relationships – “Following Beth Stelling’s posts about rape and abuse in a past relationship, many women in comedy have responded by sharing their own similar experiences. Every time I’ve heard someone at a party or in a Facebook comment ask, ‘How could this happen to her?’ “
  • When Teamwork Doesn’t Work for Women – “Economics remains a stubbornly male-dominated profession, a fact that members of the profession have struggled to understand. After all, if the marketplace of ideas is meant to ensure that the best ideas thrive, then this imbalance should arise only if men have better ideas than women. That implication infuriates many female economists. Now new evidence suggests that the underrepresentation of women reflects a systemic bias in that marketplace: a failure to give women full credit for collaborative work done with men.” From Rachelle.

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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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7 Comments

  1. Regarding the logo, you’d be surprised. In recent years, “Injun rollin” (the practice of finding some passed-out homeless or drunk Indian, abducting him, and throwing him off a cliff) has come back.

    1. In Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, it was a semi-regular police practice to take drunk indigenous people to the edge of town in winter and leave them there. The practice was called “starlight tours” and resulted in the deaths of at least 2 young aboriginal men. One man survived by making it to a nearby power generating station where the guard let him in and drove him back home in the morning.

      No charges laid, of course.

      1. Oh yes, I know all about that. There are also Indian women kidnapped and forced into prostitution.

        Yet the concern trolls tell us “Don’t you dare get on stage at that Black Lives Matter rally you were asked to speak at.”

  2. The logo story never states when the seal was adapted, nor what meaning it was supposed to impart. It IS suggested/claimed that the ‘Indian’ in the picture is ONLY being shoved off his feet. And it does seem that if strangulation was intended, it wasn’t clearly depicted.

    Didn’t South Park do this a few years ago?

    1. Yeah, back then it was a reference to the SC stars and bars (because no one in the South can pronounce ‘saltire’, the proper name for an X pattern on a flag or coat of arms, let alone know what one is). The South Park flag had four white men lynching a black man, and the kids thought it was just about execution.

      I’m actually not completely against the death penalty. I just reserve it for crimes against humanity, a.k.a. a charge only the most privileged of individuals could ever be accused of.

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