helen-louise's journal

Having given up and gone to bed two and a half hours ago, work is now happening. Well, WHATEVER - I don't care what time the clock says if I have a concentration span and am able to get useful work done. However, I am now reading an article by this man who is obsessed with the word physicochemical, and it's annoying me greatly. I'm not joking about his obsession - on the same page, we have:
"the physicochemical features of protein folding"
"the physicochemical basis of protein folding"
"the same physicochemical features of the polypeptide chains" and
"under the physicochemical conditions found in the living systems".

The reason it's annoying me is that physicochemical is a horrible kludge of a word. Technically, it means "relating to physics and chemistry"; but in practice, the features that are being described are entirely physical - as in "relating to physics". But they don't use the word "physical" in these papers for two reasons:

1) Virtually no one reading the paper would describe themselves as a physicist. You'll get a lot of Physical Chemists, a few Chemical Physicists, and a few Biophysicists - but no unmodified Physicists. (Also, the word "physicist" now looks like it's spelled wrongly through having been typed too many times, hmmm). The author doesn't want to alienate readers by implying that these mysterious but very important properties are all to do with physics - even though they are! (We're talking about very basic properties such as electrostatics, here - opposite charges attracting and same charges repelling. Electrostatics cover at least 90% of the "physicochemical" features being referred to in this context).

2) When people read the word "physical" next to "features", many people will jump to thinking in terms of what the molecules look like. After all, my physical features include brown eyes and long hair. Non-physicists don't immediately associate the word "physical" with physics!

So instead, this horrible made-up word appears to try to stop biologists and biochemists^* freaking out at/being confused by the mention of physics.

Have I mentioned recently how much I hate the division of science into three main and a handful of ancillary subjects? There's a huge amount of physics in chemistry, a huge amount of chemistry in biology, and even quite a bit of physics in biology (though I'm not sure there's too much biology in physics); while materials science crosses over everything. Students tell me "I love biology" / "I hate physics" without being aware of how much of one subject is in the other. Tell me you hate a topic - I'll happily accept "I hate electricity" / "I hate Newtonian mechanics". But don't tell me you hate an entire discipline until you've learned how much nifty cell biology and functioning of the nervous system is due to basic physics.

This rant has been brought to you by the letter P for physicochemical, and the letter C for cold. Which it is. 2.4 deg C outside right now, brrr!

^* Interesting note: I no longer know what I am. I used to be a Physical Chemist. Then I was either an Atmospheric Physicist or an Environmental Chemist. Now I could be a Biochemist or a Molecular Biologist or a Chemical Biologist or a Medicinal Chemist... Woo, interdisciplinary!

My brain has dropped out of my head. Something happened today, and I spent several hours thinking "I should post this to livejournal when I get home", and can I remember what it was now? Of course not. Bah.

I've received a very strange email - a photograph sent from someone's mobile phone of the "evolution museum holding massive numbers of dinosaurs captive to ruin christmas!". It has MANY cuddly/plushy dinosaurs in it, so it's obviously not spam, as I am known for having a dino, but there is no indication of who sent it! Unless the random number in the email address is someone's phone number - but if so, it's not a UK person. Am rather mystified.

Though in a Google search for "evolution museum", I found the utterly terrifying Creation Museum, which offers a "Christian" perspective on evolution. As in a crazy right-wing American "Christian" perspective, as all the Christians I know are sane and scientific. I simply cannot imagine the current Archbishop of Canterbury giving the time of day to the idea of God creating the Earth in a literal seven Earth days, and I believe that all of the mainstream Christian denominations in the UK are in accordance with the idea of God working on a Godly timescale. I wish the crazy religious people hadn't co-opted the same name for their beliefs that has been used for 2000 years by millions of non-crazy people :/

I tried to read a review of the Creation Museum, but it made me all twitchy; and I was ever so glad to find the link for the Unicorn Museum, which sounds much more like somewhere I'd like to visit. Hehehe.

I've had the link for Quixotic Clothing open in my browser for a few days. They don't do anything in my size GRRR damnit, but the Herbivorous Rex and I am a mammal t-shirts are awesome. It seems kinda appropriate to link to them with the rest of the links here :)

Some people on another forum were doing a "Which Muppet are you?" test and wanted me to take it too. It decided I was Kermit, and I was unimpressed. When I said I'm not a fan of Kermit or Miss Piggy, someone replied saying "What is wrong with you!?". This is my answer:

When I first became aware of gender, aged around 3, it seemed like just one of those things that made people different, like hair and eye colour. It never occurred to me that it should be a big deal. But I had toy cars, a garage, and a train set, and so from that early age, I had to deal with people telling me that the toys I wanted to play with weren't suitable for girls. This made no sense to me - no one was going around saying that only kids with blond hair or only kids with brown eyes could play with some particular toy, so why were toys labelled as "for boys" and "for girls"? Thus I became a feminist at the age of 3.

At primary school, I was mad about dinosaurs, cars and football. At secondary school, it was science, computers and science fiction. I spent a lot of time wishing I was a boy - not because I thought there was something intrinsically wrong with my gender, but because everyone else seemed to think there was something wrong with me. I figured that if I was a boy, I could be into what I enjoyed without anyone giving me grief for it. I wish that when I was told "Girls don't do that", I'd thought of the argument "But I'm a girl, and I do that".

So why do I hate Miss Piggy? Well, as far as I'm aware, Miss Piggy is the only female Muppet. (I've thought through the characters of the Muppet Babies cartoon: Kermit, Miss Piggy, Animal, Gonzo, Bunsen, Beaker and Rowlf; and I can't think of any other female Muppets among the regular cast, like Pepe the Prawn and the two old guys in the theatre box). I was a child annoyed at the second-class position in life that being a girl seemed to occupy, and I always noticed inequalities in stories and tv programmes. It would bother me immensely if female characters were treated differently from male ones.

Miss Piggy is the antithesis of me. Femmy, flouncy, self-obsessed, in love with makeup, clothes and boys. A total diva. She flirts with any handsome man who appears on the programme, in a silly, swoony sort of way. Not with humour, not with wit or cleverness, but purely with physical appearance. I cannot stand that character and any real-life people who are like that - like many of the girls I was at school with. They might have had brains, but as soon as a boy came along, they lost all their intelligence and turned into simpering idiots. Ugh.

I have believed for as long as I can remember that tv programmes should show equal numbers of male and female characters, and that all types of male and female should be represented. OK, you want to have a silly girl who loses her head over "boys" for some reason that will make no sense to your preschool audience - fine - but make sure there are plenty of strong women there too. (I note that many of the mothers of my acquaintance are the strongest women I know.) In the same way, make sure that strong men aren't the only type presented - give us creative and intelligent men - artists, songwriters, dreamers, crafters. The Muppets managed that side of the equation, with sensitive Kermit and dreamer Rowlf, so I don't get why they dropped the ball with the female characters. Show kids that girls should be able to do everything that boys can do - and vice versa.

And guess how the other poster replied to my explanation, over at that other forum? "lol - it's just the Muppets!".

I disagree. On one level, it is just a tv programme - but children are born with no real prejudices at all. They absorb and are taught their prejudices from the adults around them. Miss Piggy is gender stereotyping presented for generations of kids in a multitude of countries to absorb subliminally. She portrays a form of ridiculously vulnerable "femininity" that makes girls think that's what being a woman is all about. It messes with the head of any girl determined to put her brain before her beauty, and encourages us to reject femininity altogether. But just as you can be female without being feminine, you can be feminine without being silly or vulnerable. It's always possible to wear stompy boots under your skirt in case you need to run or fight.

There's an advert on some bus stops round here that's bothering the hell out of me. Apparently a programme called "Ugly Betty" is starting here on 5th January.

Um. Is it me, or is she not ugly at all? The photo on the bus stops shows the lead character with thick, glossy brown hair; smooth, unblemished coffee-coloured skin; deep brown eyes; and a pair of totally hot reddish purple geek glasses. Sure, she has braces on her teeth, but they're not forever. And she dresses like Velma from Scooby Doo, but that kind of nerd chic is refreshing compared to fashion victims.

Um. She's not ugly. She's a beautiful geek girl, and I would love to have her pick me up in the library. So, er, what's the programme's point?

Today's piece of non-news: 98% of Daily Express readers would like the "full-face Muslim veil" banned.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's news article, where they mention that:

• 95% of Daily Express readers would like Britain to withdraw from the EU.
  
• 80% lament the loss of "Christian Britain".
  
• 70% of the lamenters of "Christian Britain" haven't actually stepped foot in a church in 20 years yet still resent all the "non-Christians".
  
• 50% would like Muslims banned.
  
• 33% would like all Muslims "sent back to where they came from".
  
• 25% would like all the "darkies", no matter what religion, to be "sent back to where they came from".
  

Unsettling encounter with a student. He turned up wanting to have a lesson on a topic that only appears on the IB syllabus - it's not part of A-level. So it's not something I already had a set of notes or questions prepared for. Managed to find some questions in one of my books, but my printer/scanner/photocopier doesn't photocopy books very well. There's a corner shop about 5 minutes' walk away that has a proper photocopier, so I was going to run round there, except I didn't already have my boots on. He was still wearing shoes and volunteered to go instead of me.

I don't know exactly what happened, but a 10 minute round trip turned into half an hour (he admitted he'd somehow managed to go the wrong way, despite my clear instructions of "Go to the mini-roundabout & turn left - you'll see a wine shop, a bridal shop and the corner shop, called [name deleted]") and he came back in a foul mood without the photocopies. Apparently the way the photocopier was set up made it impossible for him to get the book to copy properly (also despite my clear instructions of how to do A3 to A4 reduction). But even though he couldn't get the copies, the guy who was working in the shop at the time still wanted 10p for the messed-up paper. This had made him angry.

He said "I'm not racist, but I hate these grasping Asian businessmen."

My response should have been "If you're not racist, why did you need to specifiy an ethnicity?"

It's a historical accident that the vast majority of corner shops in this country are run by Asians. It's to do with the way Britain went out and colonised parts of the Indian subcontinent, and the fact that when our "colonists" came to settle in the UK, they found that racist attitudes about the quality of their education prevented them from getting a lot of jobs. To pay their children's way through university, so the same arguments wouldn't be applied to the second generation, they took whichever niche work was available to them. In the 1950s and 60s, supermarkets were starting to push the traditional grocers, greengrocers and butchers out of business. But supermarkets tended to be available only in the very centres of large towns, and people who lived in smaller towns or villages, or who didn't have ready access to transport, couldn't always manage to get into the supermarket - especially if it was for one "emergency" item like milk. Hence the idea of a corner shop was a niche market for the Asian immigrants to take. The fact that the immigrants wanted to work as hard as possible so they could afford the best possible for their children meant that corner shops started to be open later than the old grocers and greengrocers they replaced, and as many of them were not Christian, they had no qualms about opening on Sundays. Nowadays, a large proportion of the corner shops on the outskirts of urban areas are run by people of various Asian origins - some of them even second- or third-generation British Asians. ( Read more... )

So, there is apparently a bit of a war going on because livejournal has deemed a woman's default usericon as "inappropriate". The icon apparently showed her breastfeeding her child. It's now been removed, so I don't know what it looked like.

All of the arguments I've seen about this so far have tended to go on about "the 50 states" and "the First Amendment". But Livejournal is an international community, with many users from Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. So I don't care about First Amendment "rights", because I don't really understand what they are. Instead, I want to point out the mistake in livejournal's current reasoning.

This is what the livejournal FAQ looks like at the moment. Notice it's been updated as of 2006-05-20. ( Copy & paste )

Note the specific wording of the FAQ. In particular, icons which contain nudity or graphic violence tend to be inappropriate for default userpics. Speaking as a European, I have to say, OMG WTF? Breastfeeding is nudity now? When did that happen?

Whenever I run up against rules that involve "but everyone knows what x means"-type logic, I get made uncomfortable. If I can't understand a rule, I might break it by accident. Saying something like "well, everyone knows what nudity means" doesn't actually make sense to me, because what nudity means in my country is not the same as what it means in other countries. For example, topless sunbathing is de rigeur on beaches in the South of France - and I mean that it's not just usual, it's expected. You'll be looked at strangely if you wear a bikini top, and possibly hear a muttered comment of "ah, les anglais". Scandinavians happily strip off in mixed-gender saunas with strangers. So what does nudity mean from an international perspective? In some countries, women are expected to cover their heads, in others both men and women are expected to dress modestly and cover shoulders. How can livejournal ban "nudity" without first defining it?

I feel that if livejournal is to say icons which contain "nudity" are inappropriate for default userpics, they need to define which parts of the body count as "nude". I am presuming that naked heads and hands are allowed, simply because no one's ever complained about those. What about naked arms? Backs? Legs? Bottoms? (I'm guessing not bottoms.) If I took a picture of my naked legs, that would be nudity, wouldn't it? Especially if all of me was naked at the time, but I cropped the image to only show my legs. So is that ok? If it is ok, why is that ok, but my naked breast isn't? How about naked babies? Are they allowed? Is the issue about the breastfeeding mother nothing to do with her breast, and actually to do with her baby?

You might think I'm being deliberately stupid for the sake of making a point, but I'm not. People need to understand rules in order to obey them. This is particularly true for livejournal users who have disabilities such as autistic spectrum conditions, for whom things which are "obvious" to "everyone else" do not make sense. I have several autistic friends on my lj friends list, plus many other friends with other disabilities who love the internet as an accessible means of communication. Livejournal is a tool for keeping people in communication with each other, and rules must be understandable to all livejournal users - including those who have disabilities.

I believe that, rather than simply saying that nudity is not allowed, livejournal must define the parts of the body that must be covered in default userpics, and also specify explicitly whether this restriction applies only to photographs, or also to icons of paintings, cartoons, or screenshots from video games. If it is indeed the nipple that makes the breast indecent, then that argument must apply to men as well. (I'm reminded of the Aerosmith album "Get a Grip", which has, as the CD illustration, the nipples of the five band members.) And it must be consistent.

I would post this to livejournal Customer Service if I could find a direct link - Contact Info seems to send you round in circles to direct everything through lj support, which really doesn't seem like the right place for this. It needs to be sent to the policy makers, not the enforcers. Update.

I just realised something.

Now, it's no secret that I'm childfree by choice. While I like children perfectly well, I also like to be able to give them back to their parents at the end of the day. I understand intellectually the level of responsibility required to be a parent, and it is something I have no interest in doing myself. However, that doesn't mean that I don't have an interest in other people's parenting, or the decisions they make. I am interested in the progress of the offspring of my various parent friends, and I want to support them in raising their kids as well as possible.

Lately I've become very aware of this idea of competitive parenting - where in reply to someone having made the best decision in their circumstances, someone else, usually a total stranger, pops in with some comment about how that decision is rubbish according to statistics, and their child is going to suffer as a result. The two examples I've seen recently are breastfeeding and childbirth - where two people who I know damn well are good parents are being made to feel guilty for decisions they've made, in one case, to save the child's life, and in the other, to save the mother's life. I'm not exaggerating here - those are the honest, truthful reasons why they made the decisions the way they did. Yet fucking moron strangers can come bleating in with "don't you know breastfeeding is best for the baby's health?" and "don't you know vaginal births are safest in 95% of cases?", and make those parents feel guilty.

I don't blame the parents for feeling guilty. I know it's easy enough for me to be made to feel guilty after some decision with far fewer hormones involved. It's even worse when you know full well that yes, theoretically what the other person is saying is true, but in your situation it hasn't worked and you're having to go for the second choice option. I put the blame entirely on the apparently "well-meaning" strangers. People who are "so concerned" about the health of a child they've never even met that they trample all over the intelligent, well-educated parents of that child. What is it about parenting that makes other people feel they can stick their noses in?

I have a new theory that it's nothing less than bullying. Parents, particularly mothers who are awash with hormones, are vulnerable - they need support and understanding, not bullying about their decision. If you, the observer, don't know or understand all the details about the relevant medical histories - what the fuck are you doing expressing any opinion other than support for the parent concerned? Why do you think you know more about the health of a child you've never even met than the caregivers and medical professionals who see that child?

If it was another child making comments like "don't you know that?", with the implication of "aren't you stupid?" to your child, you'd see that as bullying. So why don't you see it as bullying when you make those same comments to another parent? Morons. Fuck off back under your rock, and take your opinions with you. Save them for the people who are feeding Coca-Cola in bottles to their babe-in-arms.

A while ago, the lovely rjw1 wrote a list of seven things that were pissing him off, and he tagged me to do the same. I was feeling quite mellow at the time, so even though I thought "OMYGODIGOTTAGGED!!" and got all excited, I couldn't think of anything to say. Now I can.

1. My evil gall bladder. Enough said.
2. Stress, depression, anxiety and panic attacks. My 4 favourite things in the universe. Not.
3. The Windows "Update" that killed all my clients. Still can't use Semagic to get to livejournal. This is not progress.

4. Bittorrents. Some of my bittorrents download for all of 30 seconds (slight exaggeration), then declare "Error: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process". So I'm having to sit here constantly clicking "Start". Uploading is fine, it's just downloading that won't work :/ (And, while this may sound like whining, what I'm using it for is at least semi-legal: viewing of anime that's been shown on tv that isn't available to buy yet - and yes, I will be buying it, as soon as I can. Have you seen how many Pokemon DVDs I own?!)

5. Timetabling woes. I have 3 students who live within 20 minutes walk of each other, and they're all available on Tuesday evenings. You'd have thought it should be possible for me to make ONE trip to see all three of them, but no. Two of them aren't available before 5pm, and the other is ONLY available 7-8pm. And, given the fact they don't live exactly next to each other, it doesn't work out. Bah.

6. The hole in the ozone layer. Every single time I have to teach atmospheric chemistry, and intermittently at other times as well, I get all stompy and bitey about how the world's going to hell and the governments don't care. This is why I'm not a researcher anymore. I just couldn't handle KNOWING all this stuff and knowing that y'know, CFCs were proven to be causing ozone destruction in 1973, yet it took until 1987 before the Montreal Protocol was signed, and plenty of ozone-depleting substances weren't even phased out until 1994. We're still using a bunch of solvents that have ozone depletion potential. I personally don't, we only buy paints and varnishes that have Minimal VOC content, and the only aerosol I use has nitrogen as its propellant.

7. Global warming. See previous rant. Bah.