FairerScience Weblog

Woman A: Just saw Hilary Clinton on the Nightly News. Please Hilary, do something with your hair!!!!
2 people like this.

Woman B: I know right!

Woman C: At least she ditched the big black headband!

Woman D: Yea I really want to Luke this but I just had my drivers lic pic taken. :( I need a do myself!! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Woman E: Thats why the cease fire agreement will only last about 2 days. The hair had little impact on the cease fire agreement, they told the "HAIR" exactly what it wanted to hear and got Hillary back on that plane home so they didn't have to deal with 'The Hair". Yep, 2 day's and they'll both be launching bottle rockets at each other and Hillary will have seen the stylist.

Me: Woman A I think really highly of you but do you really think that while Hillary is doing a pretty darned good job stopping more killing in the middle East,we should worry about her hair? BYW are we worried about Barak's hair or Joe's hair or....

Woman F: Amen with her hair! She's looking bad!

Posted by Pat at 09:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So yesterday The Register reported that "The British Ruby* Conference has been cancelled, after a row started over allegations the speaker roster at the conference is insufficiently diverse."

Ah you gotta love it- "insufficiently diverse" that would 100% of the speakers are white guys. The justification-the ever popular "We must remember that Speakers are chosen on merit, what they have to say and how they say it ". The lovely Josh Susser (ok I don't know him, maybe he isn't lovely but I sure hope he is because he busted them with his initial tweet that everyone was white and male) responded to their push back about 'we want the best" by tweeting "Are you saying minority speakers can't get in on merit? Plenty of confs have great speaker lineups that are not 100% white guys."

So their response was (wait I feel like I am channeling a soap opera) was ok fine, we will cancel the whole conference. Wow who knew how powerful the white girl and girls and boys of color cooties were.

Thanks to Josh for busting them. Josh if you are reading this- send me your snail mail address-- I totally owe you cookies! Thanks too to FairerScience friend Mort for letting me know about it (you already get cookies).

The thing that gives me the most hope for the future is that increasingly wonderful white guys are busting other white guys for their-- hmm what's the best way to say this- ok I'll go with lack of diversity. Now that is a reason to give thanks!

*Ruby is an open source programming language.

Posted by Pat at 06:23 PM | Permalink

Ok sure I wish that you would vote for my candidates, but regardless of whom you support, US citizens I want you to VOTE tomorrow (if you haven't already). Our whole future as a democracy depends on you voting. Spoiler alert- in case that last sentence didn't convince you, I am about to guilt the heck out you.

Have you ever heard of Viola Liuzzo? She was a 39 year old white woman, mother of 5, murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on the last night of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March . She was working for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) transportation service ferrying marchers between Selma and Montgomery when she was shot and killed.

How about Fannie Lou Hammer? Mrs. Hammer, an African American woman, who was long involved in voter rights, challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and spoke to them about how African-Americans in many states across the country were prevented from voting through illegal tests, taxes and intimidation.

And oh my goodness what about Alice Paul? Dr. Paul, a white woman born in 1885, dedicated the whole of her life to women's equality. She was part of the first political protest to picket the White House for women's right to vote. Arrested she commenced a hunger strike, which led to her being moved to the prison’s psychiatric ward and force-fed raw eggs through a feeding tube.

These three women are just a sample of the women and men who sacrificed, suffered and in some cases died, for our right to vote. So folks, I don't care how busy you are, what the weather is like, how much you hate the political ads (with you there) or how cynical you are about the political process. Just vote damn it! Your country needs you.

Posted by Pat at 08:17 PM | Permalink