{"id":13,"date":"2011-09-30T01:16:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T01:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2011\/09\/7-quick-takes-93011\/"},"modified":"2012-11-15T22:44:36","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T03:44:36","slug":"7-quick-takes-93011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2011\/09\/7-quick-takes-93011.html","title":{"rendered":"7 Quick Takes (9\/30\/11)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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\u2014 1 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I finally wrote the long promised reply to \u201cSoup Nazi Approach to Sex<\/a>\u201d and \u201cSexual Responsibility and Culpability<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0So here\u2019s hoping that the new post, \u201cWorlds We\u2019re Not Having Sex In<\/a>\u201d helps clear up why I want to make it hard for men to opt out of\u00a0responsibilities\u00a0to a child they fathered.<\/p>\n

One thing\u2019s for sure, I\u2019m pretty sure all the posts in this sexual ethics series earned the \u201cI am a fuddy duddy\u201d tag I assigned them. \u00a0Now, on to the Takes!<\/p>\n

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<\/a>\u2014 2 \u2014<\/strong><\/div>\n

I hope all of you are already following xkcd and saw this cartoon on Wednesday:<\/p>\n

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The cartoon references Piaget\u2019s stages of cognitive development<\/a>, and I found this cartoon riotously funny. \u00a0That wasn\u2019t because I\u2019m a Piaget aficionado, but because, many years ago, I was at summer camp taking a cognitive science class. \u00a0I have a summer birthday, and parents were allowed to order cakes for their children and their dormmates. \u00a0Here\u2019s what my mom ordered up:<\/p>\n

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(In case you can\u2019t tell, this week\u2019s theme \u2014 as is traditional \u2014 is geekery)<\/p>\n

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<\/a>\u2014 3 \u2014<\/strong><\/div>\n

Setting new personal records for nerdiness: this week, I awoke from a dream with my\u00a0adrenaline surging. \u00a0In my dream, someone was showing me their data in an excel spreadsheet. \u00a0As I was looking through it, the person in my dream told me they planned to analyze it using Principal Component Analysis<\/a>\u00a0(a statistical technique that reduces the number of variables needed to accurately describe your data). \u00a0In my dream, I was trying to explain to my friend that this statistical trick was inappropriate to use on the dataset they were showing me. \u00a0The conversation grew more and more heated until I woke up.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>\u2014 4 \u2014<\/strong><\/div>\n

Comic books aren\u2019t really my\u00a0bailiwick, but I\u2019ve been seeing posts all over my favorite science fiction\/fantasy blogs complaining about the trite, over-sexualized\u00a0revisionings\u00a0of comic book heroines. \u00a0The best take down came from Michele Lee, a comics fan who asked her seven year old daughter to review the reboot of her favorite heroine: Starfire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat about this Starfire? What do you think about her?\u201d \u201cI can see almost all of her boobs.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd?\u201d
\n\u201cWell she is on the beach in her bikini. But\u2026\u201d
\n\u201cBut?\u201d
\n\u201cBut, she\u2019s not relaxing or swimming. She\u2019s just posing a lot.\u201d *my daughter appears uncomfortable*
\n\u201cAnything else?\u201d
\n\u201cWell, she\u2019s not fighting anyone. And not talking to anyone really. She\u2019s just almost naked and posing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read the out of the mouths of babes interview and see the reboot designs on io9<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>\u2014 5 \u2014<\/strong><\/div>\n

While everyone was discussing the problem, cartoonist Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak<\/a> proposed some solutions. \u00a0He offered five redesigns<\/a> of popular (but problematic) comic book characters. \u00a0He covered Stargirl, the character discussed above, but my favorite by far was his Wonder Woman.<\/p>\n

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His redesign expanded her mythological origins:<\/p>\n

Just as nobody thinks of Thor as \u201cSuperman with a hammer\u201d I don\u2019t want Wonder Woman to be \u201cgirl Superman,\u201d as she\u2019s sometimes seen. I\u2019ve also tweaked her origin slightly, making her a more literal \u201cstatue come to life.\u201d This isn\u2019t as extreme as it seems: in regular canon, Wonder Woman\u2019s origin was that she was formed out of clay by the queen of the Amazons, and imbued with the powers of the Greek Gods. This, I think offers more story possibilities if she\u2019s less literally human, physically. Her personality would remain the same (nothing more fun than the perspective of an Amazon in the modern world), but we now have an added Pinnochio-style layer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a>\u2014 6 \u2014<\/strong><\/div>\n

I\u2019m loathe to let a Quick Takes go by without some medical\/biological science links, so perhaps you\u2019d be interested in this article on fetal microchimerism<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Apparently, a substantial portion of women who have ever been pregnant end up with cells from their fetus scattered in small quantities through their body. \u00a0The phenomenon is still being explored, but may contribute to autoimmune disease. \u00a0Assaying for these foreign cells turned up some surprising revelations:<\/p>\n

In fact, testing women\u2019s cells for the presence of the Y chromosome \u2014 the \u201cmale\u201d chromosome, which females shouldn\u2019t carry \u2014 uncovers it in about 30% of the bone marrow of grown women and 47% of cardiac aortas. Even among women who have truly never had a reportable pregnancy, 7% or more would test positive for XY cells. Doubling those numbers to account for fetuses of both sexes further supports the idea that many pregnancies go undetected.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a>\u2014 7 \u2014<\/strong><\/div>\n

I don\u2019t know if\u00a0Sesame\u00a0Street counts as geeky. \u00a0All I know is that this documentary (and the man it stars) look AWESOME.<\/p>\n