A-freakin'-men.

The Social Network

I must see this movie.
I am in love with Aaron Sorkin.

Mimi Times

Uh

Where to begin with this? The portrayal of women as self-centered and shallow? The way every man in this video is the woman's superior, yet is a victim to her? And, um, excuse me, what the hell is going on with the prostitute thing? Oh right, pimps are always sooooo longsuffering with their ladies that they own, prostitutes just hang out all day and chat with each other instead of getting their jobs done, those poor poor pimps have to do all the work. Also, I hate it when dudes act like victims of ladies being appearance-obsessed when the grills-only appearance obsession is actually most definitely a symptom of patriarchy.

'Nuff Said Ladies

My Free-Will Astrology for the week:

Explorers found a 30,000-year-old carved stone artifact in a German cave and brought it to the University of Tubingen for study. Experts there determined that it had a dual purpose for the ancient humans who made it. Phallic-shaped with rings around one end, it was obviously a sex toy. But other markings indicated it was also used to start fires by striking it against flints. I'd like to make this power object your symbol of the week, Aquarius. You're in a phase when you should be alert for ways to mix business with pleasure and practicality with adventure.

"Werner, the English language is full of a preference of semen to ovaries!"

I don't really know if this article is my favorite. I mean, I feel like we can abstain from praising male genitalia openly for another few years, you know, to balance things out. As a condom advocate, I really didn't like the way it discourages condom use and I felt like it even hints at certain antifeminist or homophobic (more specifically anti lesbian) ideals-- the overarching theme of the article, after all, is that women need men.

I guess it's not the article I'm criticizing, though-- more the research I have a problem with. I mean, I have absolutely no problem with research and it's not like I'm going to disregard legitimate scientific evidence just because I don't like it. Mainly it's annoying when researchers' motives are so blatant. The reader almost imagines a group of science dudes sitting around trying to think of experiments they could conduct that would make women more apt to sleep with them. Male scientists, I'm sorry you can't get any. Please try talking to women with your words, that might work.

New job!

So I've already talked everyone's ears off about my new job, but just to make it official I thought I should say a little something about it here. Aside from the fact that this is where all my main ladies are with whommmmmm (sorry, mom) I want to share all the good news I ever get, I also thought the new job merited a posting here on account of my boss is a bad-a lady computer scientist.
She is completely brilliant (exhibited by her 1 hour lecture during which she basically explained machine learning to me, and then introduced me to an algorithm she developed that increases accuracy of a commonly used (I think) other algorithm by a ridic amount), and we are still in the honeymoon phase of the job during which she thinks that I am equally brilliant (exhibited by her suggestion that I just brush up on linear algebra just after I'd told her I'd never taken a class on it, and then lending me a copy of her fave text book for the week.) Even though I'm completely overwhelmed in every single class/area of life right now the only thing I want to do is learn more about the project/machine learning so as to impress her when she gets back from presenting a paper next week. Excellent managerial technique? I'd say so.

OH ALSO, I'm going to be a coauthor of a paper in the Machine Learning journal coming out this December!

AND here's a link:

http://www1.ccls.columbia.edu/~cmontel/ci.html