Saturday roundup

Hi again. I got stuck in Boston through late Monday, and then had a lot of work (worked Monday from my parents' house, too, because deadlines). Anyway, here's your roundup.

It's fine not to care for the work or views or character of the departed, but you needn't vocalize your feelings on the matter immediately following their deaths.

We know that Richard Dawkins is an insufferable douche bag, so why hold him up as a moral leader? I said as much in response to a Salon article, and the writer of that article tweeted his response at me, which still doesn't address the issue.

I love not just that trees have social networks, but that lower-technology approaches can simultaneously save money, increase productivity, and conserve resources.

Barbie is now in many body types, but people are still arguing that slim people need Spanx, "too." How fucked up is it that no woman is allowed to go about in her own body as it is?

Good for their happy ending, but I can't stand small-talky texters (especially those supposedly trying to date you). I was in a week-long, intermittent text conversation with this dude I met speed-dating, and it never managed to get past 'how was your day'-level discourse.

Contrary to Tracy Moore's take on Adelle Waldman's piece on women's and men's respective value placed on the intellect of a partner--and my mother's and well-meaning friend's admonishments to me-- men absolutely do value intelligence. That is does not preclude their also valuing youth and attractiveness, even as she implies that it does. From Waldman's piece:

For as long as novels have been written, heroines in books by women have studied their beloveds’ minds with a methodical, dispassionate eye. The ideal mate, for Jane Austen’s heroines, for Charlotte Brontë’s, for George Eliot’s, is someone intelligent enough to appreciate fully and respond deeply to their own intelligence, a partner for whom they feel not only desire but a sense of kinship, of intellectual and moral equality.

Yes. And that is why women run into trouble--because of the shortage of such partners, and not, as Moore says, because dudes don't value the same. And yes, there are men out there who are intimidated by intellectual, successful women--and her example, which is Maureen Dowd's example, is more an issue of success than intellectual prowess being the intimidating factor--but that there's a shortage doesn't mean there's a generalization to be had.

I guess I see it more as 'there's a Jack for every Jill,' and there are men who could give a shit, as my well-meaning friend would say, about how smart you are--and there are women who are cool with that, regardless of how smart they are. And there are women, myself included, who absolutely need the men in my life to engage me intellectually.

Conversely--turning to social science as a supplement to the literature review linked to above--women not only don't mind, but want, to be admired for our appearance as long as that's not the only thing we're valued for. More precisely, we're okay with being objectified by committed partners, but I agree with Fusion's explanation: it's because in those cases our appearance is an aspect of our overall being, not the basis of it.