Odds and ends from Baitcon

[rmd]

I mentioned some stuff to people at Baitcon and I forget what I mentioned to whom. So, here's a list of links!

• Rebecca's War Dog of the Week and The Dogblog.
• Susie Bright's take on the Atantic Article about women being unable to have it all.
• An inexpesive bidet that bolts on to your toilet seat and doesn't require major plumbing changes. Bidets are awesome.

And finally, Timothy Anderson imagines the cover of the pulp novel version of Blade Runner:
He's got a bunch of other imaginary book covers for SF movies, too.

ETA: I totally forgot to link to the Best Error Message Evar.

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I read the Atlantic article, and my first assessment is that Ms. Slaughter is incorrect in an odd way -- she doesn't realize that her arguments carry much more weight than she realizes. From what I can see of the world, the average father and the average mother differ greatly in their visceral need to be involved with their children. (This isn't universal, but the difference in population averages seems to be large.) The reason that "leaving to spend time with your family" is a euphemism in the high-powered male world is that, while we all agree that such an act is laudable, it's inconceivable that someone would actually make such a choice. The (average) upper-tier man doesn't feel anywhere near the family burden that an (average) upper-tier woman feels. He certainly isn't going to mess up his face time with The Most Powerful Person On The Planet fretting about his screw-up son. The fretting can be done later...

Looking at her article from another angle (and comparing with some other things I've seen), it seems that brutal kids-vs.-job competition doesn't set in these days until one is in the upper ranges of the middle class, where people have unique and non-standardized jobs that are only a couple of rungs down from serious power. As far as I can tell, there are now a lot of women professionals whose pay is near, if not over, the 90th percentile, who haven't had the sort of conflicts that Ms. Savage has. It wasn't that way When I Was A Boy...

[chhotii.livejournal.com]

...it seems that brutal kids-vs.-job competition doesn't set in these days until one is in the upper ranges of the middle class, where people have unique and non-standardized jobs that are only a couple of rungs down from serious power.

Is that your assessment of the situation, or hers? I haven't read the original article.

In any case, that's complete bullshit. I have quite a lowly job (although it is rather non-standardized I admit). At my lowly pay-grade, I quite feel the kid-vs.-job competition. It's a product of having a "problem" child who doesn't just go to school and activities and do what s/he is supposed to, which results in maternal fretting, which cuts into attention to job at any level.