If you watch the video, you'll notice several of the factors that contribute to the head-banging, teeth-grinding inanity of this so-called debate. For one thing, the whole question is pretty damn hetero-normative-- pretty sure that the gay trans-men I know don't resent me for not banging them. It's also set up to make women look like idiots. The filmmaker asks leading questions whose answers are unavoidably speculative ("Of those guy friends, do you think any of them secretly like you?") and creates hypothetical situations that change the nature of the relationships in question ("Would Dave hook up with you if you gave him the chance?") Probably the most succinct example of this video's stupidity lies in the conversation that starts at about the 1:50 mark.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Adventures in the Sexy Vacuum: Can We Please Stop Asking Whether Men and Women can be Friends?
Lately, I've been talking with friends, acquaintances and coworkers about the annoyingly persistent question of whether a man and a woman can be "just friends." This all started when YouTube suggested the following video to me. Ten points for spotting the implicit sexism!
If you watch the video, you'll notice several of the factors that contribute to the head-banging, teeth-grinding inanity of this so-called debate. For one thing, the whole question is pretty damn hetero-normative-- pretty sure that the gay trans-men I know don't resent me for not banging them. It's also set up to make women look like idiots. The filmmaker asks leading questions whose answers are unavoidably speculative ("Of those guy friends, do you think any of them secretly like you?") and creates hypothetical situations that change the nature of the relationships in question ("Would Dave hook up with you if you gave him the chance?") Probably the most succinct example of this video's stupidity lies in the conversation that starts at about the 1:50 mark.
If you watch the video, you'll notice several of the factors that contribute to the head-banging, teeth-grinding inanity of this so-called debate. For one thing, the whole question is pretty damn hetero-normative-- pretty sure that the gay trans-men I know don't resent me for not banging them. It's also set up to make women look like idiots. The filmmaker asks leading questions whose answers are unavoidably speculative ("Of those guy friends, do you think any of them secretly like you?") and creates hypothetical situations that change the nature of the relationships in question ("Would Dave hook up with you if you gave him the chance?") Probably the most succinct example of this video's stupidity lies in the conversation that starts at about the 1:50 mark.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Statistics of the Hidden Temple
Nineties nostalgia is so in right now around the blogosphere. My generation hit peak television-watching in the early to mid-nineties. Twenty years later, we're hitting our peak analytical-blogging years. Thus, the ultimate result of this alignment of the planets, the timing of our parents' unprotected sex, and the programing decisions of Nickelodeon executives is an ongoing explosion of blog posts about Legends of the Hidden Temple.
They range from in-depth scene-by-scene analysis to candid interviews with past contestants to impassioned rants, but there are a few themes uniting them all.
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| The theme music will be stuck your head all day. You're welcome! |
They range from in-depth scene-by-scene analysis to candid interviews with past contestants to impassioned rants, but there are a few themes uniting them all.
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| You know what's coming next. |
Friday, April 5, 2013
Residuals: What the hell are they, and why are they important?
Lady luck has blessed me recently with some AP Stats students in need of tutoring, and it's been wonderful getting to tutor in my area of expertise! Not that I dislike helping students with geometry proofs or trigonometric calculations; it's just nice to work with my favorite flavor of mathematics for a change. The perennial "when am I going to use this in real life?" question is a lot easier to answer when it's asked about statistics.
One of the questions that my students have been asking is why they should care about residuals. It's a valid question! High school math classes don't typically have time to cover the reasoning behind their subjects with much depth, so the only thing most high school students know about residuals is "it's bad if the residuals have a pattern." They don't know why it's bad, or what exactly the residuals are, and they're often confused as to why this is the one time in their stats class when they want to see a scatterplot with no correlation at all. Truthfully, I didn't really understand much about the importance of residuals until late in my college career.
One of the questions that my students have been asking is why they should care about residuals. It's a valid question! High school math classes don't typically have time to cover the reasoning behind their subjects with much depth, so the only thing most high school students know about residuals is "it's bad if the residuals have a pattern." They don't know why it's bad, or what exactly the residuals are, and they're often confused as to why this is the one time in their stats class when they want to see a scatterplot with no correlation at all. Truthfully, I didn't really understand much about the importance of residuals until late in my college career.
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