Gender

Not to riddle this post with spoilers or anything, but the latest installment of Big Love is a doozy.

Bill Hendrickson, hot on the trail of a senate seat manages to completely screw his best friend Don Embry: Asking his staunchest ally to admit to polygamy, then health insurance fraud, and if that weren't enough, to then resign from the company he helped found. All to support Bill's bid for senate.

If that weren't enough, 5 seconds later Bill is giving his eldest son Ben the heave-ho and away you go. Why? For that ancient, extended family faux-pas' - making eyes at Marjean, the youngest of Bill's three wives, and it ought to be mentioned, Ben's erstwhile babysitter.

My head's just reeling at all the back-stabbing and treachery, reeling so much that I got to thinking about a similar alpha male TV bad-ass - the stylish but no less leonine or gynastically prolific, Don Draper.

What is it about capital M Men on TV these days. They are completely fucked up. Their self-awareness, emotional intelligence, respect for others, personal ethics. All seem prey to a boundless need to conquer.

So essentially, the blogosphere (recently a barren and lonely sphere indeed) has been buzzing like it's 2004 because clay shirky wrote a 'rant' about 'women' where he essentially...

(ahem, and when I say essentially I mean okay I skimmed because I find it irritating when people write stupid hella long blog posts that they don't bother to edit. It irritated me in 2004 and it irritates me even more now that I have managed to starve my attention span down to 144 characters in the service of finding reputable, readable journalism)

Anyways, Shirky is plus ou moin arguing that women don't put themselves forwards enough, and that's why there are more pundits like him, and fewer shrill gadflys with vaginas like me in the upper firmament of whatever, you name it, the government, NASA, the CIA, management at Walmart, elite terror cells in the middle of the Afghan dessert.

So check out this fascinating little peice of image-based sociological research: Gender, Technology, and Toys R Us.

The author, Lisa Wade, checked out gifts for the geeky boys, vs gifts for the geeky girls using the Toy's R'Us suggestion centre. She points out that in terms of defining interests Toy's R' US gives very similar options for boys and girls ie; arsty, sporty, outdoorsy, techie etc.. But given that, the gift suggestions are very different. The breakdown is essentially this:

So that’s 13 building/engineering games (like Lego and KNEX), 3 ipod accessories, 4 portable DVD players, 2 MP3 players, and a few other things.

What do girls get? Seven ipod accessories, 5 portable DVD players, 4 MP3 players, 3 laptop computers, 3 cameras, and one building/engineering game. One.

So it's early on a Saturday morning, I have several hours to kill before breakfast plans materialize, so I finally have some time to think about that post I wanted to write a few weeks ago:

So tonight, a post about gender, appetite, weight-lifting, saying yes, and being alone. Wait for it....