Hope springs eternal

From the BBC article “Nasa to rethink Hubble decision”:

Following Mr O’Keefe’s decision [to abandon the Hubble telescope] Senator Barbara Mikulski, whose home state of Maryland hosts the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute, sent a letter asking him to reconsider his decision.

In reply, Mr O’Keefe wrote: “I have asked Admiral Hal Gehman, Chair of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, to review the matter and offer his unique perspective.

“[He] has agreed to undertake this review and offer his view in a thoughtful and expeditious manner.”

In a statement Senator Mikulski said: “When someone is told they need major surgery, any prudent person would get a second opinion.

“That’s what I told Administrator O’Keefe and that’s what he has agreed to do. Hubble has made so many extraordinary contributions to science, exploration, and discovery,” she continued.

“We cannot prematurely terminate the last servicing mission without a rigorous review.”

Thanks for questioning, Senator Mikulski!

The drama! The heartbreak! The science!

Just recently, I’ve taken the plunge into audio books, specifically those on general science with a cosmological slant. So far so good–I wasn’t sure that I could enjoy audio books. And I still think I wouldn’t like fiction delivered that way, the act of reading is too much a part of that experience for me.

I was curious on how well I would absorb the information, but actually I’ve been doing very well in that respect. Actually I pay much more attention to the content and don’t get distracted the way I will while reading the same material. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been more conditioned to take in information in an audible fashion or if my innate politeness is kicking in and so I cannot possibly ignore the person talking to me—even though it’s and MP3 on my computer. And it’s perfect for when I’m drawing, I will actually focus more on drawing listening to a book. As Steve put it, it’s like your giving yourself a cookie for sitting and drawing.

Anyway, recently I’ve been enjoying A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, which has so far covered the origin on the universe and earth and the laws of physics, mostly told through people’s attempts in understanding and defining all of the above.

And these scientists, let me tell you, what a bunch of characters, in some cases such dramatic lives. Guess they would have to be, dedicating large portions of there live in pursuit of evidence for their theories, and, once they found it they would often discover someone else had as well. or they would submit their findings only to have them shelved and ignored for over a decade, sometimes determinedly so. As Bryson quips “Sometimes the world isn’t ready for a good idea.’ (Uh, sometimes?)

Some get very zen in the face of all this and will adapt a befitting sense of humor. One of my favorites has been Niels Bohr, who once commented that “a person who wasn’t outraged on first hearing about quantum theory, didn’t understand what had been said.” He also once told a young physicist “Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true,” and then there’s my favorite “There are some things so serious that you have to laugh at them.” No wonder he chose the yin-yang symbol for his coat of arms when he was knighted.

But the tale I absolutely adore is of the bitter feud of Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, who were the two most prominent paleontologists in 19th-century America. Apparently they were once bosom buddies until some completely unknown tif turned them into the fiercest enemies. And they went at it hammer and tong: theft, forgery, vandalism, plagiarism not to mention their dig crews throwing rocks at each other.

I’m truly inspired, I tell you. I truly would love to do a comic about this, either taking inspiration from their story or actually adapting their story. I can actually visualize certain scenes and, let’s face it, no one can be as bitchy as a Victorian gent. And there were some equally nasty characters around the same time, some of them paleontologists as well. Not to mention that this was the same time period as Nellie Bly,* so, you know…

But, naturally, this would have to wait a decade or so, until after I finish Dicebox. Ah, well.

*Childhood hero.

Look natural

Friday evenings is traditionally when I give myself a break, catch up on some reading, both on on paper and on screen. Tonight I remembered to check out this month’s Nervy Girl, Portland’s once paper, now webzine feminist magazine. (Hopefully soon paper again, as that is where they will make true revenues with advertisers.) One of the things I read was one of their regular columns, Damaged Goods, this month’s installment being “Men are for MACH3, Women are for Venus” by Jessica Hoffmann.

It’s basically a compare and contrast of the language and attitude of the Gillette Company’s marketing of safety razors for women as opposed to men. Here’s great example of that difference is given by Hoffmann in her column:

On the “Experience Venus” page, I learned about how Venus can give me “oh-so-touchable legs.” And I got the inside scoop on some features special to the Venus system, including the super-simple blade-change function—“No fiddling. No mistakes. Blade-changing made simple. Click. That’s it. Just open the refill and click on the handle. You couldn’t do it upside down if you tried. Phew.”

Phew indeed. The MACH3 site’s version? “Open cartridge architecture makes rinsing and cleaning the MACH3Turbo blades easier than ever; the single-point docking system … makes it virtually impossible for consumers to accidentally load a cartridge upside down.” Architecture? Docking system? Thank goodness they didn’t try those 50-cent words on the girlies.

All this dredged up memories for some research I did for a column I wrote for Anodyne about hair as gender signifier. Specifically, an 1991 article by Susan Basow “The Hairless Ideal: Women and their Body Hair” and the role that the Gillette Company played in popularizing the shaving of female skin back in the 1920s.

The following is a quote by Susan Basow from a post she made to a Women’s Study List in 1995, which sums up :

In my research, I found that in the U.S., prior to 1915, very few women removed underarm or leg hair. Then Gillette began “The Great Underarm Campaign” to get women to shave with their new safety razor. The ads emphasized “smoothing” the underarms and had a racist tone (to make skin “white” and “fashionable” at a time when waves of “dirty” “old-fashioned” immigrants from Eastern Europe, Italy and Ireland were flooding the U.S.). In the 1920s, the female “look” was a boyish and youthful one (the flapper), but this is also when women had won the vote and were leaving the domestic sphere for the public one. Ads emphasized the importance for women to manage their appearance in order to be sexually attractive to men. Leg shaving didn’t become popular til the 1940s, and coincided with the shortage of silk stockings due to the war (and the consequent bare-legged look). Ads emphasized attractiveness, neatness, cleanliness, and modernity. Given that women were behaving more like men (in terms of jobs and education), the gender lines became drawn on women’s bodies: men are hairy, therefore women must be hairless. Legs, leading as they do to the crotch, also have a sexual association. Shaving them can be viewed as a means to socially control (modify) women’s untamed sexuality.

Basow also surveyed 420 women on their personal and cultural attitudes on hair removal among women:

The major reasons for starting were because “it was the thing to do.” The major reasons for continuing were because it makes women feel “feminine” and sexually attractive.

I admit it, I do shave—very irregularly, mostly on what can only be described as a whim, sometimes for a grooming effect. I still find it amusing that some people identify feminists by their hairy legs, as if hat was a side effect of a condition. Ah, if only it were that simple—don’t shave your legs and you have instant enlightenment on a philosophical belief system.

I have to say, the Gillette ads have always annoyed me, even without probing very deeply into their “culture.” On the whole, I was much more impressed by the blades in The Seven Samurai—a movie which I just saw for the first time tonight.

Kip and Jenn go to the movies!

So, yeah, we finally saw Lord of the Rings : Return of the King. Yeah, yeah, real Johnny-Come-Latelies are we. What can I say? We’ve been terribly occupied since the opening week of said movie.

Anyway, loved it, can’t wait to but the box set of all the extended versions and O.D. on the thing. I have to say my favorite bit was the lighting of the signal fires. Hey, it’s inherent lizard brain stirring symbolism on mountain tops, how could it not grab me? Very odd to see movies of the first “adult” book I’ve ever read, knowing what’s going to happen and yet still find it suspenseful nonetheless.

But actually I’m here to talk about the trailers.

I love trailers—which is something in serious conflict with being the dame who loves nothing better than being given a good story without knowing a damn thing. And it was a lot of trailers, after about seven damn commercials all right before a three hour and fifteen minute movie.

Not a bad selection really and it all made sense*—the fantasy special effect movie mix. It was The Chronicles of Riddick, The Village, Harry Potter : The Prisoner of Azkaban**, Hellboy, and Troy. And Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

While I would not be unhappy to find myself in a theater watching one of these (well, I‘m uncertain about Riddick) the one I’m going to make a point of seeing is Sky Captain. Good lord, is it a pretty looking movie, in all things. As Kip kept saying it looks like a live action Max Fleischer cartoon. (You can can view the trailer here)

There’s the funky 1930s-1940s robot designs, daring aerobatics, Gwyneth Paltrow as intrepid reporter Polly Perkins. And flight jackets. And Angelina Jolie as the dashing eye-patched Capt. Franky Cook. I am so there.

Moral of the story: I want Capt. Franky Cook.The end.

*I’ve often been absolutely bewildered by the trailers before some movies, of what the theaters thought of the demographic of the movie in question. Like Final Destination 2 right before the second Lord of the Rings movie.

**With new director Alfonso Cuaron. Yow.

In other news

Though Kip isnÕt officially back yet, he has made quite a few posts recently, including ones on magic and fucking.

Also I have decided I will move to the country that buys the Hubble Telescope in the yardsale NASA will have to have to do what George Bush the Second wants to do on the 33rd of the budget George Bush the First was told it would take to do that very feat—ten years ago.