From the first link -- Sally Ride --
"I remember the engineers trying to decide how many tampons should fly on a one-week flight; they asked, 'Is 100 the right number?'
"No. That would not be the right number."
2: The last paragraph was supposed to be in italics too.
It is possible that a woman, qualified from a scientific viewpoint, might be persuaded to donate her time and energies for the sake of improving crew morale
I did read somewhere that scientists who overwinter in Antarctica commonly come to an understanding with one or more of their colleagues, on the basis that what happens at the South Pole stays at the South Pole. People do what they have to.
what happens at the South Pole stays at the South Pole
At least, what happens at the South Pole doesn't get very far away from the South Pole.
I'd like to thank the ladies of the blog for donating their time and energies here.
When I applied for a job in Antarctica, the process did include them pointing out that the job could entail sharing a tent with a member of the opposite sex, and I should be sure I was OK with this before taking my application further.
Did they also ask if you were O.K. with cold weather?
Oddly, that never came up. Maybe it would have done later on in the interview process.
"Here is a penguin. How does it make you feel?"
"Awwwww."
(writes notes) "Good. Gooooood."
"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success. Must be willing to share tent with member of the opposite sex."
The question of direct sexual release on a long-duration space mission must be considered
NASA invented the fleshlight.
More seriously, I wonder sometimes about menstruation when people are refuges or other awful, extreme situations.
I don't think I understand what exactly you are wondering.
How they get sanitary supplies, what sort of underground system is established or if it fails to get established.
If NASA had been more knowledgeable about the old ways, they would have known that injaculation was the answer to their problem.
"suspicious perytons" would be a good pseud.
There is an old SF story that included engineering space-men (no gurls allowed) to be gay, but I can't find it right now. I remember being extremely amused at the bundle of preconceptions that made this particular what-if heresy seem plausible enough to run with.
10: that might actually have been a dealbreaker for a lot of explorers of the Heroic Age. Not for Robert Peary, of course.
Re: refugees, that's a thought that's occurred to so many of those donating items to help people in the Jungle at Calais that sanitary items are one of the things they are asking people not to send any more of, along with baby clothes, nappies, and high heels. (Who the hell sends high heels to a refugee encampment anyway?)
19.last: Space-men genetically engineered to be gay.
19 Are you kidding? Who the hell turns down a pair of free Manolo Blahniks?
Give my back my suffix.
Opinionated Person Who Is Using Their Faint Memory of Sex and the City To Make Fashion Jokes.
CS Lewis wrote a really unpleasant short story, meant to be funny, about a Mars expedition with two women sent along for 'crew morale' -- one of them an unfuckably annoying intellectual, and the other a fat, elderly prostitute.
I suppose Arctic and space explorations generally involve faint memories of sex and cities, so.
23 Heebie's rockin' nothing but Christian Louboutins these days.
I sort of wonder what is happening in Nicaragua these days. It isn't in the news much.
On Antarctic expeditions, having to share a tent with a member of the opposite sex is the least of your worries.
The question of direct sexual release on a long-duration space mission must be considered.
Fly, fly, masturbate, fly.
The gene that prevents parthenogenesis in mammals does not make a protein. Mammals lacking the gene can be created, and are capable of parthenogenesis.
That seems like a great deal to read to establish that C.S. Lewis was sexist.
If you bothered to read it, you'd find out that he was also hostile about gay people. I mean, I suppose you could have guessed that too.
I once read a whole book to figure out maybe he might not like Islam. But at least that had a horse.
If there's a horse on Mars, that would be different.
"scientifically speaking, a woman." "WHAT-HO"
I've heard of CS Lewis, of course, but I'm not sure which one he is, between him and Chesterton.
To put it bluntly may it not be necessary for the success of the project to send some nice girls to Mars at regular intervals to relieve tensions and promote morale?"
"Nice girls"? I thought those were the ones that wouldn't put out.
They weren't even contemporaries as far as the period when they did the bulk of their work.
38: This is my fail-at-italics thread. 38.1 is a quote from the esteemed Dr. Robert S. Richardson.
36: No horses, but it does have hrossa.
(in Out of the Silent Planet)
"Nice is different than good."
I've heard of CS Lewis, of course, but I'm not sure which one he is, between him and Chesterton.
If you've seen one blimpish British religious apologist, you've seen them all.
I really kind of like Chesterton, in a believing that he should have been kept away from sharp objects and smacked whenever he started talking about Jews sort of way. Lewis, less so.
Less with the liking. Probably about the same with the smacking.
Lewis was a friend of Tolkien and wrote bad science fiction an pop theology; Chesterton was a friend of Belloc and wrote passably good detective stories and pop theology.
I feel we aren't giving Lewis' work on lyric poetry its due. Campus conservatives have nearly wrecked the poor man's reputation, as they have so thoroughly destroyed Chesterton's.
I have to say, the "we should totally ship along a sex worker and she should also be a scientist angle is novel. "We'd have to have sex workers in spaaaaaaaace" is a pretty common pre-Women's Lib* SFnal trope, but the idea that the sex worker would also have to be a working scientist who would "donate" her services - that's amazing.
I also wonder what effect these guys thought the "donation" of "services" would have on the woman's scientific career. Men of the past, you are so stupid and horrible.
*Someone called me a Women's Libber as an insult at work this week. I demurred when two near-retirement faculty who I had never seen before and do not work with made this giant sexist production (one step down from twirling their arms and calling me M'Lady) out of holding two doors open for me. It was really creepy and aggressive (and actually walking between two strange men brings up this totally ridiculous panic response from being harassed and attacked in junior high) and I said (and sounded panicked, I could hear myself) "no, please, you go ahead" and one of them called me a Women's Libber. They also wouldn't move until I walked through the doors. It was the worst, as far as that kind of thing goes.
Basically, they forced you to be a prop in whatever play they were running in their heads. That sucks. But if you had spit on their shoes, you would have been the asshole.
I have a soft spot for Lewis. This is partly because I find him a bracing innoculation against Christianity because he is such a dishonest bully when he argues, but also because a lot of his psychology is spot on.
He just didn't get women, bigtime. Of course, spending his twenties fucking the widowed mother of his best friend who had been killed in the trenches might not have helped there. And then spending the ensuing decades living with her but not fucking her, while both were coping with his alcoholic brother, also back from the trenches ...
AN Wilson wrote a very good critical biography.
I think maybe being not killed in the trenches didn't help Lewis a whole bunch either.
Being not killed in the trenches was better for him than being killed in the trenches, but still.
Anscombe apparently utterly destroyed Lewis in an early encounter (that led, I think, to her first publication), and he had the grace and sense to acknowledge his defeat and attempt to address it in later work.
In conclusion, Anscombe rules, Lewis drools.
I dunno, "I was traumatized so we excuse my sexist ravings" doesn't cut much ice with me (and they're pretty ravey - That Hideous Strength is absolutely looney-tunes and makes his short stories look comparatively benign). What's the excuse for Lewis's racism, I wonder?
I like quite a lot about the Space Trilogy, actually, but not the part where the woman grad student derails the second coming because she wants to get her degree before having a baby, or the part where we learn that modern life is better than past life because in the past she would have been beheaded for her temerity. The lesbian cop who puts out cigarettes on women's breasts - I could also have done without that bit. And the part where the maternal woman character refers to herself as ugly and stupid - but virtuous! - a bunch of times. Or the part in Perelandra where the Eve figure almost brings about a second fall because she isn't willing to be self-abnegating enough.
The various post-war-Surrealist Space Trilogy covers are great, though.
(I did not realize until comparatively recently how influential and persistent surrealism was from about 1930 through 1950 - lots of surrealist photography and illustration in the fashion press, lots of immediate post-war surrealist painters.)
The lesbian cop who puts out cigarettes on women's breasts - I could also have done without that bit
Maybe it's just a holdover from The Goshawk but this seems like it could be explained by his being preverted in a classically British way.
This thread started making a lot more sense once I realized that C.S Lewis wasn't Lewis Carroll.
Mere homophobia or classic perversion - an important question. Why not both, would be my answer, and add a side of misogyny.
Does anyone else get a Shriekback earworm whenever they see the word "parthenogenesis"? Just me?
57: According to one biographer his nickname for himself was Philomastix, Lover of the Whip.
I really like Lewis's The Discarded Image. Or, at least, I did as an undergrad. He's a lot better describing other people's archaic worldview than his own.
No, Lewis Carroll was Charles Dodgson.
Screwtape is amusing, if ultimately unconvincing.
I guilty enjoyed much of Lewis' space trilogy to but god those last few pages of Perelandra are just cringe-inducing dreck.
I think we ought to be especially nice to people named Lewis.
Speaking of British detectives, one of the cast of Airplane! has written a novel about Mycroft Holmes.
It's always nice to find unexpected nerds.
And he's from my neighborhood, too.
I'll probably read it. I should read the one about the bees first.
They had us read Lewis's Space Trilogy in 5th grade. Such a weird book selection.
I've never read any Lewis but Narnia.
And I never read any Chesterton except for the Father Brown stuff. I did like that. British mysteries of a certain period have a weird bloodless quality about them that I find very appealing.
I should find a better way to describe things I like reading than batshit, but Chesterton's other stuff is, in fact, batshit in a way I find appealing even when I shouldn't. The Man Who Was Thursday and The Napoleon Of Notting Hill are both worth it if you've got a spare afternoon that you'd like to spend involuntarily twitching due to confusion.
The piece that Ume links to is really fine.
Not really relevant, but I read the last 140 pages of "Lucky Jim" last night. It's been at least 5 years since I stayed up that late to finish a novel. Very emotionally involving.
He doesn't start out especially lucky, if that hangover is anything to go by.
I've never read any Joseph Conrad.
Lucky Jim could have been about ten times better a book if Amis hadn't decided to make one particular character a vile caricature.
I may be thinking of Lord Jim, which is probably different.
82: The painter guy, or the lady professor?
The lady professor. I don't mind about the painter guy.
The lady professor was a portrait of his then mother in law
Ah, my hate for Lucky Jim is so strong! I'd like to kick it--the book, embodied as a human form--in the ear. Meanwhile, I have, as oft attested here, a completely indefensible fondness for the Space Trilogy, including That Hideous Strength, which is indeed ludicrously sexist. Books!
I'm pretty deep into searching the NASA pre-1975 archives for slightly risque keywords now, which I like to think is confusing someone looking at the analytics.
89: How do you feel about Lord Jim? I always felt I should have read that.
91: I liked it. If you're not up for the book, you can always just watch the movie. It stars Peter O'Toole.
The final epiphany about how the disagreeable woman is disagreeable (and crazy) because she's unattractive, and the delightful woman is delightful because she's beautiful, and it's unfortunate but inevitable that this is how women grow up, was a bit much. Also the painter going from pompous buffoon to guy who makes Howard Rourke-style speeches about how he deserves everything because he's a superior man, that was not needed.
My charitable interpretation of the end of the book is that SO many things go right for him that it's supposed to make the reader confused and unnerved. As opposed to the sort of Brief Encounter ending you think is going to happen which, though seemingly unsatisfying, would leave the reader feeling good because it's morally sound. Everything is set up for that to happen, but then the aforementioned characters suddenly become caricatured monsters, and the emotional logic is flipped. Can it really be that easy?
I really liked Lord Jim in high school. Haven't re-read it. My favorite Conrad novel of the few I've read is Under Western Eyes.
If this is the Arts & Culture thread, can I ask: Was Bon Jovi an authentic example of working-class culture, or is that even the right question to be asking? I guess maybe it's more about audiences. I remember this girl in 5th grade in my inner-city elementary school, who was a HUGE Bon Jovi fan. She was Laotian or Cambodian, and had all the Bon Jovi Trapper-Keepers and what not. People kidded her about it, but she was always the first to admit she was kind of being silly being that smitten. And if that's not authentic, then what the hell is?
Totally inauthentic. Come on, the hairspray? The pants?
95 This is the Science thread, Natilo, the Arts thread is some other one, I thought you read your C.P. Snow.
95, 96 there's something about her not being born American that gives it a pass with me, even moves it into the aww that's cute realm. But if she were American, no way.
It's kinda weird that we didn't talk more in school about Vietnam and the genocides and stuff. Some of those kids must've been dealing with amazingly messed up stuff. Sigh. This world.
I've become a real Axl Rose fan in my old age. Working class cred, advice for the youth, Axl is your man.
But, like, what about The Ramones? They were intentionally contrived and self-conscious. Bon Jovi was out to make records that would sell and live a rockstar lifestyle and the rest of it. And not that The Ramones were immune from those temptations, but there's an intentionality there which isn't part of Bon Jovi.
Say what now? The Ramones were always cool. Though I've come to notice recently that I'm at the age where I seem to be the only one around with a Ramones t-shirt who's actually seen them play live.
I've seen twenty-somethings here walking around wearing Ramones t-shirts. It's odd.
I saw a guy about my age, Mexican or Ecuadorian, wearing red footer bags and some kind of Never Mind the Bollocks... parody T-shirt just an hour ago while I was waiting for the bus.
It's free, but it starts really slow.
Summary of the first two chapters:
Jim is lazy, smart, and on a boat.
Maybe Lucky Jim is $9.99 better? Either way, I'm going for run.
There's some interesting stuff about academia in Lucky Jim. It's kind of at the periphery of the main story but there's one conversation where are the two guys are complaining about grade inflation and how they can't fail people out anymore and it's all because after the war, all the students who are not from rich families but they're getting their tuition paid for by the government and therefore the government doesn't want to see that it's paid a bunch of tuition and ended up with nothing to show for it.
104: what's weird isn't that they're wearing the shirts and haven't seen them perform, it's that they're 20-somethings wearing the shirts in Arrakis.
Chapter 4: I was right, but apparently describing the sinking is going to wait some more.
Chapter 5: Non-sexual use of the phrase "keeping up his pecker" and only vague details.
IIRC, there's a point where Marlowe stops to take a drink and you wonder how many days he's been talking.
116: I expect everybody to decide to play bridge and for him to narrate everybody's hand.
This is some top-notch liveblogging, Moby.
The basic plot reminds me of a shipwreck I read about in a Cracked article.
Anyway, it's getting interesting but the idea that a novel should "show, not tell" was very clearly not a thing for Conrad. His greatest fear appears to be having a reader make an inference.
Any Lit professors out there, feel free to use that line in your lectures.
Chapter 10: Madness is a strong possibility if you lose your hat.
I think high school-me called it a descriptive action novel or something like that because I had to say something in the presentation we all had to give on the books we picked for the "choose one pre-1900 and one post-1900 novel" assignment. I hated giving presentations. Just let me read!
Lord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900.
Does that make it pre- or post-1900?
I picked it partly for that reason. I got to assign it to the century of my choice. I think I read Defoe on plague and put Lord Jim in the 20th century.
I think maybe the story might have to do with the difference between how we perceive our own character and how we behave.
That sounds suspiciously like an inference.
I last read Lord Jim in a really quiet place and taken without any distractions available it was simply overwhelming. My memory of the bulging rivets on the abandoned pilgrim ship, the heat and the smell, is now woven into all my other sensual memories of that time -- hay drying in the field, swallows, mosquitoes, purple skies above dull green pine forests -- in a way which is completely incongruous but impossible to untangle.
I don't suppose I have ever been happier.
If this is going to be the book thread, let me lower the tone quite sharply. Has anyone else come across Lois McMaster Bujold? I discovered her through Jo Walton's book of fannish criticism "WHy is this book so great?" which is a wonderful counteraxample to everything that's wrong with hack book pages. And now I seem to be committed to buying all 17 books of a series which is full of all the things I normally dislike. Any fellow-sufferers?
I've never read Lucky Jim or Lord Jim, but I have read Bujold, so I can help lower the tone. I read Ethan of Athos. It was okay.
127. Glad someone else has read Defoe on plague. Most A handful of intellectually inclined people have read Crusoe (vol.1) and a significant subset of them have read Moll Flanders, but hardly anybody has read the Journal, which, apart from being the first ever historical novel, AFAIK, is incredibly vivid and moving.
132: I like them. Her recent stuff is mostly fantasy -- there's one series in a vaguely American frontier setting I don't like much, and another in a more fantasy-European-castles and so on setting that I like a lot, starting with The Curse Of Chalion.
They're a bit of a guilty pleasure -- I'm not sure there's much in the way of literary value -- but I've been buying her next book for getting up to thirty years now.
132: I have have missed some of the whelm by reading it while the computer took its turns on Civ.
132: I read Lord Jim last year and was blown away. OTOH I am also a huge Bujold fanboy, to the point of classing them as non-guilty pleasures. (I agree with LB that the vaguely-frontier fantasy novels are comparatively weak, and so I think was Ethan of Athos.) But yes, the "17 books of a series which is full of all the things I normally dislike" is awesome, and I normally dislike most of those things, too.
Chapter 14: cannibalism, guano, and slavery.
138 ought to be a convenience store
Other people get confused by the distinctions between kumiss, kvass and keffir, right?
chesterson is an extraordinarily good writer in a technical sense. frex I am pleased with his tendentious claims about Nietzsche--which I myself believe to be false--simply because he's so funny.
nosflow has the right of it on lucky jim. jolly hijinks and bitter satire and then just viciousness, followed by gary stu finale. fuck amis.
140: if people are offering you kvass to the extent that you need to figure out whether you in fact want kefir, then you like in a weird neighborhood.
Kvas is nothing like kefir except in involving fermentation, surely?
Kvas is just another word for kefir left to lose.
I can mostly distinguish kombucha from the others.
If Rowling were this wordy, we'd still be waiting to find out what house Harry was sorted into.
136: yes. That would do it. You have to submerge.
141 And that was probably the high point of his career. Fuck Amis twice.
Re: 134
Despite being repeatedly told, when an undergrad, that Defoe basically invented the English novel, I've only read an abridgement* of Crusoe, and none of the rest. Which is odd given how much philosophy from that period I have enjoyed.
* a relative gave me a set of abridged classics when I was about 10. Defoe, Twain, Melville, etc. My recollection is that they were shortened and slightly modernised,** but not Bowdlerised.
** we had the Twain original in the house, too, and I read and found the original a bit slow*** and archaic by comparison
*** God knows why, I read interminably lengthy fantasy novels aged 9/10.
Hey ttaM are you back from vacation yet?
134: A Journal of the Plague Year is, I think, the only Defoe I've read.
I think Moby might prefer Defoe on plague to Conrad on Jim, mostly for the inappropriate moments of dark humor.
I've read Robinson Crusoe but no other Defoe.
...no other Defoe than that and the Journal, I meant.
I'm not reading two books and I'm halfway through the one.
95: Ridiculously late, but I can't let 96 stand. Back in the day, that was absolutely an authentic central NJ look, for any reasonable value of "authentic". I grew up one town over from Bon Jovi--his was certainly perceived as the grubbier, working-class counterpart to my more UMC-trending town. But the hairspray and the pants and the rest of it were a signature look for a sizable subculture of my mid-80s high school (a subculture which, in retrospect, clearly had class correlations). We even had a term for it that I hadn't heard since HS or thought of in ages, and which the internet now tells me was specific to my hometown.
156 that is the longest urban dictionary entry I've ever read.
132, 135; I've just recently read "Cordelia's Honor" on the recommendation of my son (an omnibus of "Shards of Honor" and the Hugo-winning "Barrayar").
The latter in part explores how issues of pregnancy and motherhood can intersect with an action-adventure storyline when you have a woman protagonist.
It also has one of the best innocently badass lines from a female action-adventure hero, in response to her traditionalist father-in-law:
"Good God, woman, where have you been?"
"Shopping. Want to see what I bought?"
(Rot13 Spoiler: Gur fubccvat ont pbagnvaf gur frirerq urnq bs gurve zhghny rarzl.)