I'm pretty curious to see how today goes, in South Carolina and Nevada.

Right now, Hawaii is at a local version of the National Girls & Women in Sports Day, where college athletes teach girls about different sports and the girls can try them out (at least that's how it goes at our version). Leading up, she was saying that she didn't want to go because she didn't know the rules already. It drove home the point to me how exactly important and great this event is. Feeling like you don't know the rules is exactly the kind of impediment that can keep you from joining in at recess or after school, especially if you believe everyone else has a big leg up on you.

My colleague's wife just their first baby. In general he is a very good colleague. He's dropped a few comments around our department about how his priorities have shifted now. Not exactly putting us on notice, but not not doing so, either. Whereas when I had babies, I felt a deep internal push to demonstrate that nothing had changed, I would not be asking for disproportionate favors, and so on. I guess I resent that I held myself to that standard, because I'd rather his was the norm? Anyway, I'm finding it aggravating to hear him verbally carve out space for his home life.

If Sanders is elected President, can you even imagine how much more parental pressure Jewish kids are going to face? Will being a doctor cut it anymore?

Nick S. writes: Surprisingly interesting article about how the new mini-series on the O.J. Simpson trial prompts a re-examination of the ways in which the media (and the judge) treated Marcia Clark, and how different the media environment was very different (emphasis mine).

Marcia Clark's crucible came smack in the middle of the 1990s, when it is indeed fair to say that very few people wanted to talk about sexism. It is being revived for the screen today, during a period when lots of people want to talk about sexism and perhaps especially want to talk about the sexism of the 1990s.

In 2013, filmmakers examined the egregious treatment of Anita Hill . . . . And now there is The People v. O.J. Simpson, which reopens a chapter in America's judicial (and entertainment) history that highlighted a laundry list of America's systemic weaknesses: racism, domestic abuse, the special treatment of celebrity, the dismal treatment of African-Americans by law enforcement and the press. And, yes, sexism, too.

. . .

Toobin, who also wrote a book about Bill Clinton's affair with Lewinsky, offered this theory: "Suddenly the mid-'90s seem like a long time ago, and one reason I think they do is that the media environment is almost unrecognizably different from 1994 and 1995. There was no internet, no Fox News, no MSNBC, no social media. So you had a kind of crude, broad focus without the compensations of alternative voices on Twitter and Facebook. So when the National Enquirer decided to make fun of Marcia Clark's hairdo, there was no article in Slate or Salon or posts on Twitter saying 'Stop this sexist bullshit.'"

Maybe, though of course it's not as if the swift judgments of social media have banished sexist bullshit from the land. In fact, I suspect that it's an unconscious awareness of our contemporary hang-ups that prompts us to chew on the past. The comparison of Marcia Clark to Hillary Clinton remains apt, though the difference is that while Clark can be safely examined from a distance of 20 years, Hillary cannot. The conversation about the double standards and biases she faces remains contemporary, and therefore practically impossible. With less present-day figure like Clark, we can more easily pick apart the threads of bias; we can take a hard look at the limits we put on female self-presentation and the higher bars we set for women, and acknowledge them as unfair without making Clark -- and others who have failed to easily clear them -- into perfect martyrs. It doesn't hurt, of course, that when we look back at the O.J. case and Clark's treatment during it, some of the misogyny is so flagrant by our slightly improved contemporary standards -- topless photos? "hysterical?" short skirts? her hair? -- that we can pat ourselves on the back for having come such a long way.Surprisingly interesting article about how the new mini-series on the O.J. Simpson trial prompts a re-examination of the ways in which the media (and the judge) treated Marcia Clark, and how different the media environment was very different (emphasis mine).

Heebie's take: And the fashion!!

Last fall, we acquired kittens which the kids named OJ and Nick Jr, male and female respectively. OJ is a rather jealous kitty, and it prompted me to realize (with horror) what Nick is actually short for. So cruel, Hawaii and Pokey!

I have no idea what the context was here, and I don't care.

They see me Rowlin'
They hatin' https://t.co/dfiqou7vpD

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 17, 2016

Chris Y writes: Questions. Year 11 in England and Wales is 16 years old. The other systems are equivalent.

Heebie's take: I do have a link to the answers, too. These are great questions because they aren't gotchas or tricks. They are just thoughtful math questions at the high school level.

Also I like the instructions - Number 8 in particular:

8. Your Answer Sheet will be read only by a dumb machine. Do not write or doodle on the sheet except to mark your chosen options. The machine 'sees' all black pencil markings even if they are in the wrong places. If you mark the sheet in the wrong place, or leave bits of rubber stuck to the page, the machine will 'see' a mark and interpret this mark in its own way.

That is not written the way it'd be written here. Here it would say "Fill bubbles completely. Do not make stray marks," and then there would be a diagram showing a correctly filled bubble, several incorrect bubbles, and then stray marks. But there would not be any explanation and nor appeal to common sense based on the underlying reason.

Also: Invigilator!

I hate this person.

I like this person.

total wackadoodles.

I was peripherally aware of these types of conspiracy theories, but this makes it sound a lot more like a stand-alone phenomenon, distinct from your garden-variety rosicrucian.

A map of the US where each state is labelled according to the foreign country with a comparable education system.

HomeSnacks.com used information from the U.S. high school graduation rates from the U.S. Census and compared them against the education index of each country from the United Nations Development Program.

Mostly we're just supposed to marvel at how many poor countries show up on the map. Maybe the lesson should be that many ostensibly poor countries still do a relatively decent job of funding education?

Nick S. writes: As she acknowledges at the beginning, it is a well-defined genre of personal essay, but she takes that as motivation to write a strong piece (albeit one which is, in places, addressed too narrowly to women in their 20s)

Anti-Valentine's rants are almost as cliched as the hearts-and-flowers parade. I have too much respect for you to subject you to yet another list of reasons to enjoy being single, or things to do whilst you wait for your soulmate to arrive. In practise, these mostly seem to involve wearing pyjamas, applying face-masks and modelling for stock photos. But this is a point in the calendar when people start asking the internet for love advice, so here's mine.

I think that it's usually better for women to be single. Particularly young women. Particularly straight young women. Not just 'alright', not just 'bearable'--actively better.

Heebie's take: One of the things I worked on in therapy was not feeling like a failure if I was single. (How embarrassing to admit!) Before that I'd done serial monogamy with crappy boyfriends. Then I had about one year of enjoyable single life before getting together with Jammies. I wish I'd worked that out sooner and spent more of my 20s comfortable being single, because it is a really great position to be in.

(Haven't read the link yet. Also probably Nick's right about the focus being too narrow.)

Parodie writes: I thought you'd get a kick out of this new study: apparently the much-lauded "grit" is less of a factor in academic achievement than previously thought. Do you think this will actually influence those who think there is One Quick Fix for academic success? (or haters of bunnies...)

Heebie's take: hooray!!

I went off on an inappropriate rant on a colleague's FB post. She'd reposted a meme that drives me fucking nuts, of a picture of a blank piece of yellow lined paper and a pencil with the caption "Here is a list of exactly everything that society owes you." Fuck grit. (The rant was calm, but I was very serious and longwinded, when she clearly thought she was being light-hearted.)

Minivet writes: Ask and you shall receive, though it take 8 years.

Also note LaVoy Finicum was from the same remote area as Colorado City, and had a PO box there, though I have no knowledge or information that he was any variety of LDS.

Heebie's take: Turn off your sound before clicking through to the Rolling Stone link, but it's an interesting read.