why the hell does it always have to suck all day friday until sundown? i don’t want to be out there freezing my ass off for these people. i’m in a really pissy mood tonight as is, so i better not get any of those “well, in MY telescope….what’s the power of this one? I usually get blah with mine” jerk-offs.
i’d so rather be at the hockey game screaming at clarkson. this is why i shouldn’t get up at 7am. so. pissy.
Some of the political comments made by today’s Collooquium speaker got me thinking about a subject I’ve been stewing on ever since it came up during a discussion about diversity during the DCAL mentoring seminar the other week.
Before I further get into this rant-like musing on cultural bias and stereotyping based on region within our country, I’d like to toss out a couple of disclaimers:
1) I’m not trying to lay claim to any sort of “victim” status, but I feel like I’ve got something worthwhile to say on this subject.
2) I feel certain that today’s Colloquium speaker tossed out his first politically-tinged wisecrack about “certain Southern states” with no particular malice, especially since he later followed it with several others targeted at different elements of the right-wing side of the “culture war”. I also suspect that his comments were mostly a reflection of the sort of sour grapes humor that necessarily manifests among the learned who are currently experiencing a serious political disenfranchisement.
3) I’ll be the first to admit that politics in the Deep South is characterized back some really backwards-thinking leadership (we had to call the evolutionary biology course at my high school “Biological Change” to avoid the ire of the fundamentalists in the state house), but, since I was born and raised under them, maybe I’m a better judge of it than a total outsider.
I’ll save the rest of this for after the jump.
(more…)
…are profiled and praised in this Slate article by a resident New Mexico skier.
Particularly funny passage:
A guy like that probably skis once a year, tops. When that’s your reality, you have two choices: You can take a lesson every year, eking out slow, dull little wedge turns under the tutelage of a bored instructor. Or you can drink a couple of beers, strap on your planks, and point ‘em toward the parking lot.
Indeed.
