Stuff Is Real, Y'all

Yes, it's been a while.  Enough about that.  Back to blogging about physics and the environment, y'all.  This stuff is for real. 

A friend of mine alerted me today to a Bloomberg article about a proposed bill in Kansas to "outlaw sustainability."  Now, a title like that makes you do a double take, but a good critic of science journalism always hesitates to take a sensational title too seriously, so I found the actual house bill, proposed by state congressman Hedke after, according to the Bloomberg article, "maybe a dozen" people had approached him about it.

(Man, I want to propose some bills in my own state, too! I want to propose one outlawing congressional stupidity!  Maybe I should get twelve of my closest friends to give my congressman a call and he'll work something up...oh wait.  Twelve of my friends aren't oil and gas lobbyists.) 

Anyway, I was correct in my skepticism that "outlawing sustainability" is not exactly what this bill does--but in its own way, what the bill is actually doing is much worse.  And, contrary to most hopelessly incomprehensible piece of legislation, it's also a surprising short, plain, and easy read.  I've quoted it in it's entirely below, with emphasis on the things that especially stood out to me.

Growth and Foolish Optimism

Housekeeping:  You may have noticed the title change.  I just discovered that, far from being uniquely my own genius idea, "Science Fiction and Fact" is in fact the title of a speculative fiction magazine.   They were around first, so I figured I'd cede any claim on the phrase to them, with apologies for any inadvertent trademark infringement.

Now business.  I can't seem to write anything on my own anymore: this is a great link that is well worth reading on the subject of growth and energy security.  No matter what your particular ideology is about how the future will evolve in the face of climate change and dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, it is worth questioning how much your belief comes from pure optimism rather than an actual confrontation of the facts in front of us.

I admit, of the ideologies described, I have pretty much always fallen into number 4:  We're nearing peak oil, and things may be tough for a while, but we'll eventually get back on track and start growing again once we perfect our use of solar energy and other renewable sources.

In Favor Of

Holly Lisle is a writer whom I absolutely love.  In fact, you probably ought to add some of her books to your reading list right now, including The Secret Texts trilogy and Talyn.  I've been meaning to post a review of her work for ages:  it takes a stand, it is larger than life adventure, it is fascinating physics of magic and complicated choices and heroes fighting against pretty overwhelming odds.

On her website Lisle has on occasion made her political views very clear, and they differ quite vastly from my own--which I find extremely fascinating because the stories she creates come from her beliefs and values, and part of why and I really love her stories is that how they are shaped by values I can relate to.  It is interesting that sharing many similar values, we have come to very dissimilar ideas about how this world ought to be, which perhaps highlights that there is a very big difference between one's values and one's perception of how the world relates to them.  But sure, I can still respect someone with different opinions than my own, interacting with him or her usually makes my own thinking deeper and richer.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I'm told I'm kind of a buzzkill moviegoing partner for the enjoyment of most movies:  I get infuriorated by trope characters and stupid science and most especially by plots that fall apart under close examination, a problem that is pretty common in many mainstream movies and is in fact kind of the point of many of them.

Take, for instance, Moon,  which I watched with SigFig on Friday.  It's an engaging science fiction movie with a compelling enough plot and an interesting enough premise, so it's a good story and worthwhile if you like science fiction movies.  I didn't mind passing my Friday night watching it.

Three Gender Messages That Bother Me

One:  A couple of weeks ago I was climbing with some friends, and one made a heckling comment at the other along the lines of "well at least I'm not a girl."  All in good fun among old friends of course, but since I've started mentoring young girls with low self-confidence, I couldn't help but speak up in an equally friendly and heckling manner:  "It's not an insult to call someone a girl."

I do know it's just a good-natured and non-serious poke at someone's masculinity as occurs as a bonding mechanism between male friends, but it is also a message that is prevalent in our culture, that it's kind of an insult to be female, that being female is inherently kind of inferior.  That this is only true for men but that it's somehow not an insult for women to be women doesn't make it okay because that doesn't even make any sense.

Give the Gift of Science and Gender Policing

A recent series of blog posts at Scientific American criticizes a company's offering of extremely gendered science kits for kids, including thirteen perfume and makeup related chemistry investigations for girls and six rocket, outer space, and slime related editions for boys, all complete with pink and blue wrapping as appropriate.  What is especially interesting is that it there is actually much of the same stuff going on in both versions of these kits, minus some extra rocket and space stuff for the boys :soap-making, slime analysis, crystal growth.   Yet the girls' are exclusively about beauty, while the boys' are all about shenanigans and grossing out your sister.

So while you're giving your child the gift of budding Scientific Curiosity this Christmas, you can wrap it up in a nice layer of gender policing, because you know, girls have to be beautiful while boys just want to make things explode!

Naturally, I find the very concept so all kinds of wrong that it gets my blood boiling, from the insult that pink and sparkly helps girls be interested in something to the subtle yet toxic reinforcement that if you are a girl it's only normal after all for you to care about being beautiful and all of the shit that does to one's self-image later in life.  Whenever you say "hey look, we changed this up so that your can do this too even though you're different!" you are subtly implying that all those things that make you different are set in stone and sort of bad for you but we know you can't help it.  Or, as the post author put it:


"In tandem, the messages conveyed by these kits seems to be saying:  you can like science without transgressing the boundaries of acceptable feminism--but those boundaries are important, and you would do well to learn to stay within them."

However, this whole charade of reaching out to young members of each gender differently is a subtle, subtle affair, because there are girls who really love pink and sparkles, who like to be pretty and smell good, who might also actually like science.   It is insulting to dumb something down to make it acceptable--but it is also hugely insulting, and a whole separate load of gender-related baggage, to assume that a girl who likes pink and sparkly is also dumb and not also totally into science of her own accord.  Pink and sparkles are neutral, not an indication of inferiority.

There is nothing inherently right or wrong in liking to smell good and look good or in liking slime and to watch things explode...within reason. (Clearly I'm talking Mythbusters here, not terrorism.)  It's is just when you start wrapping things in contrived narratives that tell kids that because you are a girl, you should like to be beautiful (and when you're an adult you'll find that if you aren't beautiful then you aren't desirable and if you aren't desirable than you are a failure), because you are a boy you should like to blow things up (and when you're an adult you'll find out that if you don't like violence then you aren't masculine and if you aren't masculine then you are a failure and possibly gay or a woman and that's even worse) that we get into what's actually a really toxic and mean present to give to some unsuspecting little kid.

There is an incredibly fine line between "oh, you like to be pretty, well there's some science you can learn about that, too!" and "you're a girl so you must to like to be pretty (even if that doesn't mean you can't do science.)" I doubt the creators of those kits intended anything like the last message, and probably meant all the best, but I'm not convinced that the second message isn't what they've ended up selling anyway.

This is not a new trend in children's toys, but science is really something it is worth just keeping all the gendered crap out of.  We don't need all of that baggage.  What's masculine or feminine about looking through a telescope, envisioning a deep sea creature, collecting interesting rocks or shining light through a prism, anyway?  What has to be so masculine or feminine either about launching a rocket or making soap?

Age and Experience

It turns out when your levels of work-related stress go up, your bloggin' mojo goes way down.   And I'm still young enough and inexperienced enough that small changes induce heavy stress. I'm looking forward to being so weathered and calm in my professional self that most everything leaves me un-fazed.  But then, I might get bored.

When I look at my co-workers and see that they are mostly twice my age and hear their stories of living in tents or otherwise wiling their lives away in a direction-less stupor when they were my age, I start to wonder. If I didn't hit all that like I was supposed to at this point in my life, does that just mean that phase is coming?  Does having it mostly together when you're young, aside from continually feeling clueless but stumbling through anyway, mean you're going to burn out and hit a midlife crisis when you're thirty-five?