Thursday evening roundup

Hate on Wendy Davis at your own political peril. We need more mensplainers calling women beautiful but confused.

Why I'd rather keep foregoing pay than see the White House yield (bonus Calvinball reference).

Another thing agriculture needs to use less of is phosphorus.

Ignore the unsubstantiated bow to STEM ("which offer so much in the way of job prospects, prestige, intellectual stimulation and income"?? Really? Prove it) but do read Eileen Pollack's take as to why there are so few women in them. Other issues: why, in this article, is "science" synonymous with "physics"? Do other sciences not matter? Also, as with so many other things, I can't but help the rebalancing would move in both directions: women could be very happy to be introduced as physicists, and men might be less so. Have you ever noticed that male physicists tend to drop their profession with an implied "...impressive, right?" I'm tempted to say, "your mom must be very proud." More interesting, though:

Urry told me that at the space telescope institute where she used to work, the women from Italy and France “dress very well, what Americans would call revealing. You’ll see a Frenchwoman in a short skirt and fishnets; that’s normal for them. The men in those countries seem able to keep someone’s sexual identity separate from her scientific identity. American men can’t seem to appreciate a woman as a woman and as a scientist; it’s one or the other.”

Which is why success is about not giving a $hit:

Four young women — one black, two white, one Asian by way of Australia — explained to me how they had made it so far when so many other women had given up.

“Oh, that’s easy,” one of them said. “We’re the women who don’t give a crap.”

Don’t give a crap about — ?

“What people expect us to do.”

“Or not do.”

“Or about men not taking you seriously because you dress like a girl. I figure if you’re not going to take my science seriously because of how I look, that’s your problem.”

But, lest we get so enamored with science that we lose sight of the value of other things (Pollack is, after all, a professor of creative writing): what have I been telling you for years about reading fiction (and the tie-in to personality)? I hadn't specified literary fiction, though, as the study does:

In literary fiction – Dostoyevsky, for example – “there is no single overarching authorial voice,” he said. “Instead, each character presents a different version of reality and they aren’t necessarily reliable. You have to participate as a reader in this dialectic, which is really something you have to do in real life.”

Dr. Castano, a study author, added that in many cases, “popular fiction seems to be more focused on the plot. Characters can be interchangeable and usually more stereotypical in the way they are described. The plot is what’s interesting.”