It's true that the science isn't settled about what will happen as more and more carbon dioxide CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere because our climate has changed in the past and will change and change again in the future. But given that we can only run this experiment once, we better get the answer right.

Now since there are many things acting upon our environment some people think this is a call to do nothing - like it's out of our control - but we know that's not true. We are one of the actors and we have a lot of control over what we do and what we will permit. For instance they've found plastic bags in the depths of the ocean and in Antarctica. We have a large impact on our planet and each time we cut down a tree we are impacting our environment. So we are being disingenuous to think our environment is completely out of our control.

So while the science isn't settled on climate change, this is not a call to do nothing. In fact it is the opposite, it is time we take responsibility for the well being of our environment and if the sun is causing climate change (which I doubt) we should be doubling down on our efforts to ensure the climate stays stable - for purely the sake of self-preservation.

Why? For a start a) there is no where else for us to move to. While we are looking to building habitats on the moon and Mars, we are still a long way off from being able to live there and b) we will still be dependent on the earth for our technology and food for a long while to come.

Yes, our technology is dependent on our civilization on this planet earth. Apparently there is no single person on earth who knows how to make a computer mouse - everything from the tiny circuit board in there, the laser, the plastics that make up your mouse, and all the code - plus then the people who know how to make the plastics and mine the materials for the circuit board, they very probably don't know how to grow all the food those people need to eat or the coffee they drink while they are creating those circuits and plastics and then assembling your mouse - and that's just your mouse. Then there are clothes, the technology to move about and the entertainment you might want when you are living on Mars, plus then there are all the other people you need to make up your world, whether they are medical personal, people you work with, people you love or the people who brew your coffee at your favorite coffee shop.

So let's do a cost-benefit analysis on climate change. This is definitely the kind of thing you might find mixed in with your quarterly stock report so here goes:
We have 2 options, do nothing about climate change, or do all we can.
And the climate scientists might be right or they may be wrong. Either way they have been studying this - kind of like if you get cancer, you don't go to your barista for advice. Why is it we don't trust climate scientists? I have a PhD in data science, I know I am no expert on climate science, but I am a scientist. When scientific consensus is that we have a problem, I am not going to disagree with them.

So the experts say we have a problem, if they are right and we fix our environmental problems, then great. We get a bunch of new technology, we get to continue living and can continue to use our technology. Plus we get a clean environment. This is the responsible and adult thing to do. The downside is some old rich guys are out some money but they are old and will be dead soon because they are old.

If the scientists are right and we don't fix the environment - old rich guys will remain rich which won't benefit them much because they're old and will soon be dead anyway. The downside is we and our technology are fucked. We are already experiencing extreme weather events.

If the scientists are wrong and we don't fix the environment - old rich guys will of course remain rich. We get to continue to live in the filthy mess that rich old guys want us to live in.

If the scientists are wrong and we do fix the environment then we get a whole bunch of new technology and we get a clean planet to live in. Sure old rich guys may be out of some money but they'll be dead soon anyway.

In my opinion there is no downside to fixing the environment and it is the responsible thing to do. We have the knowledge and skill to manage our environment and we will be dependent upon this planet, whether we set up colonies on the moon and Mars, for probably centuries to come.

We can't afford to live in denial despite all the money there is in denying the problem. We need oil for much transportation that our technology doesn't cover yet. Plug-in hybrids work well for the average family who can afford one. But our plug-in hybrid tech may not cut it for ships, trains, planes and semi-trailers. However we have CO2 recapture technology which we could use for fuel rather than drilling for oil.  The environment will thank us and this recaptured CO2 fuel could be used for transportation plug-in hybrid doesn't work for, otherwise we can store the CO2 underground while we work on solving our emissions problems.

In many ways our understanding of ourselves and our environment is just beginning - our technology is cool but it also is quite primitive in that we don't have recycling built into our manufacturing - we bring products to market that are designed to be thrown into landfill too soon. When our manufacturing and development recycles itself in accordance with the principles of the universe, IE the universe and our environment recycles everything in time, will our society be sustainable, then we will be able to live on new worlds.

I have recently been reading 'Smoke gets in your eyes' by Caitlin Doughty. While in her book she focuses on how death is hidden from us in our western society, what I really think is being hidden is that we are animals - or - as people prefer to put it - mammals.

For some reason people consider being called an animal insulting. Calling someone an animal is a kind of moral judgment, that animals are beneath us civilized human beings. Religion has tried to distance us from animals by creating words like 'soul' and deeming that animals don't go to heaven/limbo/hell when they die - that animals can't think, communicate... whatever... as we are somehow not like them - that we are different. (If there is a real difference between us and animals it is we use money and will destroy our environment to get it - money is useless outside of human society.) Yet increasing evidence shows that we share much with our closest primate relatives, consciousness (imo dreaming probably appears when animals have enough brain matter to support consciousness) appears to be a kind of continuum between us and other animals; and other animals communicate, use tools, have rituals and innovate just as we do and ultimately live in hives or pacts just like we do. Nevertheless the reality is we are a kind of animal. And not being able to admit it speaks to it's denial.

Google defines mammal as "a warm-blooded vertebrate animal of a class that is distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for the nourishment of the young, and (typically) the birth of live young."

In classical deductive reasoning - if you happen to be offended by the notion of being an animal:
all mammals are animals
human beings are mammals
therefore human beings are animals

There are some truths that come with our mammal/animal nature, we are born, we eat & drink, we have sex to procreate, we sleep, we come with a body that we have to care for, we get sick, we use the bathroom (another thing we seldom discuss) and we will die.

In the course of my years I have only ever seen one dead body. It's not like I haven't been to funerals, I have been to many and I have known lots of people who have died but all but one of those bodies society protected me from.

I gave my husband Doughty's book to read and he said as a man he could go for years without seeing blood. Being alive is different for women, every month we are reminded we are alive by our menstrual blood - something that we must not discuss and pretend doesn't happen because I think it reminds society that we are animals.

Being protected from our animal nature also hides babies and children from society, older people, the sick and disabled are also hidden from us. All those things that remind us we are getting older and our bodies are fallible.
Our animal/mammalian nature is bound to our fear of death, our fear of the unknown and what will happen next - once we die.

I have often thought that our fear of death springs from our fear of being left out - that there will be an on going party and once we are dead we're no longer invited. And part of that is that we will be forgotten. That those who are at the party will go on to forget about us because we won't be there to remind them that we existed. But there are other reasons too - like not being here to be able to help those we leave behind. If you are afraid to die then you might have other reasons.

I am not sure if we are afraid of death because it reminds us we are animals or whether we are afraid of acknowledging we're animals because it reminds us we will die. Either way, the universe recycles everything (just like our environment recycles everything) especially our bodies - if being alive is distinct in some way from our functioning body - it would seem that our life too would be recycled. Besides there are plenty of anecdotal stories of reincarnation and ghosts, I can't believe that all these people decided to lie about their experiences.

Doughty wrote an important book - I recommend reading it just to know what to expect - so you can be prepared when someone you love dies.

Women have to be perfect.

I'll give you an example. I knew a woman who developed a computer system that was completely bug free. All bugs associated with the system occurred in other products that her system used. If she'd been a male she'd have been the equivalent of a god walking on water. It wouldn't matter what he looked like, it wouldn't matter how heavy he was or his relationship status, he'd be a god in his field.

But she wasn't promoted, she wasn't even even respected much. She was too good looking, a little overweight and her relationship status was a bit of a joke.

As an aside according to this woman, if you are too good looking and a woman you will always be considered an airhead, vain and frivolous, not great in a technical environment like computer programming. Whereas the men who were good looking were quickly and efficiently promoted.

When it comes to perfection, a woman's body must be perfect. The internet has helpful images to show what her face and body must be like. Here is a helpful list of what would make a woman perfect. Note, a woman being intelligent comes in fourth place (out of 8). If she is to be perfect, the most important is appearance which comes in first. The intelligence bar isn't very high, just being able to string a sentence together beyond social media will suffice. Having personality isn't a requirement at all, but being partially independent is. Not fully independent though.

Men would be perfect if they had even two of the qualities on that list.

Reading more google results only depresses me. Because it just reinforces the idea that women are merely ornaments there to be commented upon like they are nothing more than cattle to be bought or sold. The only important thing about them is whether you (a man) would want to fuck her.

Another take on female perfection is: serial murderers think it's a good idea to kill women who they deem not perfect. I was watching a show on Anthony Sowell where they said he killed women he didn't deem good mothers. He is not the only serial killer to pass judgment on his choice of victims, many serial killers have chosen female prostitutes.

The media, the legal system, the police, society... pass judgment on women constantly. If a woman was raped, it is somehow always her fault, if her child does something like disappear, kills someone... first question asked is always: where was the mother? Never: where was the father?

The idea that nobody's perfect only applies to men. The idea of woman not having the perfect body/face is reason enough to crucify her. If she is a mother and deemed too pretty then she is vain and frivolous. And if she doesn't live up to expectations you might as well kill her, not even the police will care.

There are many articles in conservative mainstream media on the death of masculinity. That, basically, any progress for women only comes at the expense of men, that women are destroying men... and on and on it goes. Consider the assumptions in this... that women prefer girl students, that women aren't wearing burqas so they deserve to be raped on college campuses... (because men can't control themselves - when we know men can control themselves, why aren't men bitterly offended by this assumption? - and if men can't control themselves then perhaps they should go live somewhere else?) But people who think feminism is bad for men, ignore how bad the status quo is for men, for instance the high suicide rate for men, men raping men, men killing men, men being much more likely to experience violence at the hands of men than women do. Basically, in this system, men have a serious man problem.

We, men and women, go together into the future. But as things stand if things aren't working for women and we know things aren't working for men, then perhaps we need to figure out what is going on for both genders.

My take on disappearing masculinity is that of the bully, the man who feels entitled to sex and doesn't think that's rape. As many people have pointed out that this kind of masculinity is really toxic. And that it's as bad for the man as it is for those around them.

However there are things that will never die, like bravery. The bravery of protecting those who have less power than them, those who stand up for others, who risk their lives for others. I would like to think this kind of bravery isn't restricted to men alone. But they do get most of the credit for it. And many of us wouldn't be here if it wasn't for this bravery.

It should go without saying every time a woman gets pregnant she is risking her life for another. That history is full of women who have died in childbirth and so we should remember that many of us wouldn't be here if it wasn't for this bravery and after all, the woman often didn't get a choice in getting pregnant, yet she risks her life anyway. While often men's bravery is always a choice.

Society no longer works for women because women don't (as often) die in childbirth. Women have to have things to do because there is no longer a need for women to reproduce like the human race is about to go extinct. Pandemics which wiped out huge portions of the population are a thing of the past, and husbands leave, die, and sometimes can no longer support the family because of health or accident or whatever reason and the women have to support the family instead. Besides the woman may have had kids because her husband wanted children and he wants to stay at home and look after them. Why shouldn't women get the recognition they deserve both in terms of money and promotions?

But it's my experience that the toxic masculinity of Trump and other conservative men is coming to an end. It seems like their bullying and their entitlement will no longer be tolerated by either gender. That their entitlement is toxic for everyone, the environment and our future.

We go together into the future.

I was asked to write about the psychology of sex workers. Having never being a sex worker, a user of such services or a psychologist I thought I'd improvise a little and talk about the psychology of those who use their services.

For a start we seldom talk about men, and men probably use sex workers of either gender more often than women do. Indeed when articles on the internet talk about the users of sex workers services, they exclusively refer to men.

If men are hiring prostitutes, and using them for sex rather than merely talking to them, I think it's primarily for human contact.

We are primates after all, animals that spend hours grooming all members of their group.

In our society touching is nearly forbidden. We spent the first 9 months of our lives completely encased in human contact. While women can hug and touch their friends, men cannot ask for affection in our society. However it is completely okay for men to ask for and have sex. And the only other socially acceptable way for men to have human contact is via handshake and physical violence. All of limited social acceptability.

If men hug each other it is usually done while hitting the other male on the back and then it's usually only between close male relatives, like father and son, who have a good relationship.

In my opinion, men generally use sex as a substitute for affection. Sex is macho, affection is wussy.

And as such, sex therapists, marriage counselors use the frequency of sex in a marriage as a barometer for how healthy that marriage is. That's great if the sex isn't excruciatingly painful for the woman; or, the man or his partner (male or female) doesn't place undue pressure on him to perform. Nevertheless, I suspect affection would provide many of the benefits that sex supposedly delivers without the need for often invasive contraception or the risk of unwanted pregnancy. But I think the therapists who recommend sex are thinking about his ego when they advocate sex improving self image because it would definitely not be macho to say they engage in frequent cuddling, for instance.

The usual way for men to get regular sex (affection) is having a partner. But maintaining a relationship can be difficult for some men. Either they aren't emotionally/financially ready, or equipped for a partner's needs. So prostitutes may fill that need as well. The other need that prostitutes might help satisfy is loneliness. The need for intimate/personal conversations to have conversations with someone who isn't a man.  When I used to talk to clients (all men) I used to have a stockpile of topics I could discuss with them and it would involve sports and cars, these topics were extremely abstract.

Loneliness and our need to touch and be touched are what, I think, drives prostitution. But what about hormones? Yes, sex is really for procreation and our bodies are driven to procreate because of hormones. But do we really want to risk unwanted pregnancy and STDs just so one gender can relieve their hormones that could be easily relieved with masturbation?

I assumed when I was asked to write on prostitution why women took on a profession that would make them reviled. Everyone needs money in our society. Not all women have someone who can support them and men always seem to want sex - goddess knows how many times I've been asked if I was working while wearing sweats, exercising, just walking down a street or waiting for my husband...

But the problem here is the macho. Men pretending or completely unaware they are pretending to be impervious to needing anything. Needing makes men vulnerable, but that lack of vulnerability makes men commit suicide at high rates 3.5x that of women in the USA, because men cannot ask for help, affection, intimacy... things they need but pretend they don't because it just wouldn't be macho.

Over the past few days I've blogged about systems and disappearing women, but I haven't stressed much about why it's important that humans utilize what both (all) genders bring to the table, together they are better than just one gender carrying the intellectual weight for the species and convincing everyone that there is only one way of seeing the universe.

I think it will take time for women to fully understand the science they bring because for so long we've only been told only about male science, but in my opinion we know so little about ourselves, we've been too busy looking outside ourselves in context with our society to see what we do. How can we go to the stars when we know so little about ourselves? How can we make that trip without spending so much time with ourselves?

No doubt men have uncovered some of women's science already - while women were raising the next generation, dying in childbirth, managing their homes, cooking, cleaning and making money to survive, they had little free time to do their own science themselves. It's only recently women have been making any impact on society, like Rachel Carson, Elinor Ostrom, Jane Goodall, Grace Hopper, to name just a few. While none of these women used calculus to any great extent, they made major impact on society, and probably all will have an impact on any journey to mars.

It reminds me of the story of the potatoes and monkeys. While washing potatoes doesn't require calculus, no doubt it helped the monkey's more directly than mere abstract reasoning.

So long our society has looked for absolutes like there is absolute good, absolute truth, absolute knowable things, when all these things exist in context. For instance symbols take their meaning from the symbols around them. The internet gives the impression that symbols are restricted to math and perhaps astrology, I posit that we communicate entirely in symbols. All the words we use, the letters of our alphabet, numbers, all of language, data science... are symbols. And as a data scientist, I posit that learning is nothing more than the building indices between symbols. However as a data scientist I am in a front row seat to see men mystifying the field with with words like 'machine learning' when it is clear they don't know what 'learning' actually means, or AI - artificial intelligence, when they don't know what 'intelligence' means... and then they think things like the system, indeed, can spontaneously become consciousness. I was once told by a man that he knew it would becomes conscious because he'd done a course on 'ontology' once - which is still one of the funniest things I've ever heard. Indeed what they call data science is nothing like what I'd call even 'science' because the 'deep learning' isn't repeatable. It's a kind of 'crossing your fingers and hope it works' thing.

Another thing considered an absolute is 'good'. To me good is relative and perspective - in some instances a good may be bad, and what may be intended as a good may result in bad, and depends on the motivation of actions and circumstances... Hence there can't be an absolute good - or at least in my opinion. This may impact religious beliefs. However I like what the Dalai Lama says 'Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them'.

I remember reading once there is nothing bad a human can do that no good can come of it. I don't know if this is true either. But then it's not possible to know all things. So there is no absolute 'bad' either, it is also relative; and thus is morality.

In my opinion, men tend to think more in terms of absolutes rather than look for the relative nature of the universe.

There is much of our universe we've misunderstood and sometimes forgotten and until we reconsider our perspective on the universe will we be unable to traverse space. Because in my opinion the incredible spaces between the objects in our universe is to protect the universe from us. Until we've understood the relative nature of morality will we know how to deal with the rest of the universe.

Because everything in the universe is connected. Men tend to think in tasks - or atoms there is this idea that everything is independent, discrete, distinct - it's why men think they can build stuff (businesses...) completely by themselves rather than seeing they are using the building blocks from society. That they need the rest of society for the technology they use to build other stuff with. What we need is a much more holistic approach to the universe.

We know all particles have a de Broglie wavelength, even you and I. While our wavelength is beyond microscopic small - nevertheless it disperses us, in a sense, connects us in/to the universe.

While men think in terms of discrete tasks, this will be beyond them.

Of course, my ideas are independent from those who've gone before me, and knowledge isn't absolute either, it is relative as well. Some men have had ideas as well who were influenced by women that we've forgotten about or ignored because that's what men do, they disappear women. Until we realize women have something to offer and get credit for their thoughts and ideas we will never reach the stars.

In my previous post I started talking about systems and how women tended to be better at being able to see the big picture; and the problem with men managing  big projects is that they tend to be task-focused rather than looking at the consequences of the big picture.

This is why history focuses on specific men in history, like Churchill, generals, presidents because all those men who worked for The Man disappear into the hierarchical organization that allowed The Man to accomplish whatever task, such as running a country or winning a war... Thus The Man appears greater because he (in large part is due to his organization, attributed to his leadership) achieved something big. [In my opinion, this is why men who build businesses or corporations don't think they needed their employees, customers, government... to help them build their business - all those people he depended on for help disappear in the task of building the business]

This is primary reason we have so many problems with environmental collapse: men are focused on their quarterly reports to stockholders rather than the fuck-up their industry is causing the planet. Pollution is beyond the scope of their task, to make money; the rest is irrelevant. They only care about what involves money and what will hurt their corporation and how they will continue to make money.

My husband says that when you are (a man and) part of a hierarchy you are only looking at your boss and those below you to get the task done. This very quickly narrows your perspective. And men who get to the top of corporations likely were raised never having to tidy their bedrooms - that was either a job for their mother or the maid/nanny.

Women are generally better at being able to see the consequences of their actions because they focus on more than the immediate tasks to be accomplished; instead, they anticipate and plan for the consequences of what they do.  This may be primarily due to social conditioning -- after all, men, and seemingly especially those men who are groomed for positions of privilege and leadership in our society, are often raised to believe that the rules do not apply to them ("boys will be boys!") whereas women are raised to respect the rules... and thus have to be more aware of the consequences of their actions.

--

Why is the difference between how men and women think important?

Men tend to follow the leader, line up behind other men, and seldom learn to think outside the box. This is especially evident when it comes to Artificial Intelligence. The men who implement AI don't try to make it better by experimenting seriously with the algorithms. It takes women to truly experiment;  we see but one example, historically, with Admiral Hopper especially. She was told not to write a compiler by her male bosses, who were quite happy with the idea of having one, perhaps two computers, per town - they weren't interested in putting computers into every home. But Hopper wrote the compiler and here we are.

The same old ugly techniques of developing AI becomes a problem when you hear about cases like Google's awful racist image-recognition misfire (which was patched, rather than carefully understood).  It seems to me that for really outside the box thinking, you need women, because men do tend to (in no small part due to social conditioning) fall in line. Men can really only see one way to solve the problems with AI.

And this is important for space travel - okay wait a minute, how did we get from AI to space travel?

Well I think our civilization won't come of age until we learn to live in harmony with our environment. We might have to manage our environment but we must master ourselves to live with the confines of our environment because we depend on it. We and our technology can only function within a very narrow range of temperatures and even if we build colonies on the moon and Mars we will still be dependent upon earth for technology and our environment.

Our biggest problem is that we are all so dependent upon each other we don't see how the person who builds the circuit board in our mouse depends on, for instance, the technology of growing coffee. And the many steps in a supply chain are needed to make something as taken-for-granted as computer mice. So when we are living in our colony on the Moon we will still need the next shipment from earth for something as seemingly prosaic as a replacement mouse.

However mastering our environment -- controlling our use of it so it becomes sustainable -- will be a major milestone for our civilization. It will signal that we have come of age, that we are an adult species.  We have made steps towards our civilization's adulthood before - by walking on the moon and seeing a new perspective of ourselves and the universe. We avoided a nuclear war (so far) - and the cold war ended (or so we thought) without a nuclear war.

These are milestones - but the other one will be to manage our world - by managing our environment and making sure we don't get wiped out by an asteroid. We have been lucky so far but these steps are salient in protecting the future of our species.

Because in my opinion - while space is massive - it is massive, in some sense, to protect the rest of the universe from us. And we won't be able to traverse space until women break us out of Einstein's light box - because you see that is what limits our ability to traverse space. The same thing that cripples our AI - calculus, at least as a way, or rather, THE way, of understanding everything.

In my opinion we need to realize what women bring to the table - which so far men think is pretty useless because they think they know everything - they make everything mysterious to control knowledge - and thus women and their knowledge has been marginalized.

There are vastly different ways of seeing the universe than merely using calculus (the mathematical backbone of physics).

But women's ideas have become mainstream for the benefit of men. One of the fundamental axioms of womanhood is that women form equalities. It doesn't take much to step from equalities to the notion that 'all men are created equal'.

Another is women being upset about rape has led to people being wary of their sons (as well as our daughters) being raped by older men.

Another fundamental law of the universe is that everything is recycled. Everything. Whether it is in our environment or in our universe - all will be recycled sooner or later. This isn't very interesting to men who are focused on their profit & loss statements. But it will be fundamental to off planet colonies. In my opinion until recycling underpins our technology our whole civilization will be unsustainable.

These are merely a few examples of women can bring to the table that will benefit all of us. And until we give women and their minds all the recognition they deserve then our society will not function as it will need to to survive.

(to We know so little about ourselves in society - how men operate, how women operate - how they interact with each other. Unfortunately research on how society operates is relegated to women's studies, perhaps philosophy, perhaps sociology, but no self respecting man would be caught dead in the area unless he wanted to 'score' or is trans - either way, this is pretty much a man free zone.

This is unfortunate because we really know so little about ourselves and how we operate. And because we don't it means we have no way to fix the myriad of things that are going wrong with our society.

A lot of these things are male things, like men suiciding, men raping each other, male on male violence which is all about the hierarchy's imposed upon society, how to gain ranks on this hierarchy... much of this we know but it's code. We aren't allowed to talk about it, we can't appear vulnerable, we have to adhere to social norms, be attractive, be funny, be not too clever, but clever enough, be average sized, be rich... We should really study these things because much of this have devastating impacts on individuals.

The other thing that seems to happen with amazing regularity is using women to make men look better and this can be done by saying essentially no woman can ever achieve anything because all women are less than men. This I have seen so many times even by men who pretend to foster the accomplishments of women. I have seen this particularly when it comes to Admiral Hopper (who?).

I've seen this especially when we talk about computer history - they say things like Babbage-Turing instead of Lovelace-Hopper. This how women are edited out of history.

Turing may have done useful things with computers but he didn't invent the compiler, which gave us operating systems for computers; the internet, the web, the IoT, AI, smart phones and basically filled our homes and offices with computers and other devices.

In my opinion Hopper gave us the 21st century in much the same way Tesla gave us the 20th century.
But when you read about her, they say things like she invented COBOL (which is not very sexy - not like JAVA or python - which are all based on Hopper's original compiler). That she coined the term 'bug' - cute but hardly groundbreaking. Or if they mention she invented the compiler, it is often 'Hopper and her team'. But when it comes to other male inventors they never ever mention the team, while they no doubt had one.

One of the things you men do is use other people, especially women.

For instance, I know this guy who writes 'academic' material and he says he can't distinguish between my thoughts and his own and so it is unnecessary to credit me because he also talks to his wife. I told my husband that this person can't remember the difference between his thoughts and mine and my husband said that should be all the more reason to credit me. This guy did say that I was supposedly influenced by his ideas. I can remember all the ideas he has given me over the years on one hand.

However, he never comes to me with an idea to discuss - he only comes with boring stories of how people aren't delivering what they said they would to the point I said don't tell me anymore of this drivel. And so now he has nothing to tell me at all.

Given that we often speak for about an hour to 90mins a week I then go on to fill in the time with my ideas and what interests me. I know sometimes the stuff I say isn't profound but he definitely considers it more interesting than anything that he shares with me, because these ideas get repeated back to me as his own.

I once asked him for a reference and he gave me this sorry excuse of a reference that he even doubted my achievements and asked me to give him proof. I gave him proof. Nevertheless the reference was given grudgingly and written without interest or thought.

I asked him today if he ever acknowledged me in these endless books he never stops blathering about. He said perhaps he did once - a long time ago. So he has been passing off my ideas as his own and not crediting me. I feel completely disappeared.

I find it curious that this person calls himself an academic when he doesn't understand the concept of plagiarism.

Other things men do is mystify things that aren't mysterious. Men like to make things complicated so it will make them look more intelligent or clever.

I remember explaining to this 'academic' person how computer programming was simple yet he started telling me I was really doing something else.

Yet he can't even write computer code. In my opinion, men shouldn't write computer code because they make it too hard for them to do. Women are much better at doing system thinking, as women who run households are capable of managing many problems at once and dovetailing them in together. Men tend to think in terms of tasks rather than looking at the whole picture.

We see this problem with men doing housekeeping all the time. Men focus on one task at a time, women often see many tasks at once and optimize the completion of the tasks at once.

We see this in the packing problem which men tend to out perform women on because men tend to make this an abstract (to be fair he used the word abstract - but this was the first time I'd verbalized this concept and no doubt would have summarized it as abstract later) problem. I saw this on a show called Brain Games that men were able to pack a car trunk quicker and more efficiently than a woman - you see the woman considering what to put where but the man just puts objects in. I rather think the woman is actually trying to organize the objects going into the trunk instead, like diapers, want this to be easily accessible, yet away from food, clothes go at the bottom because won't be needing them until we've arrived... At least that's how I pack the car trunk. I am also solving many problems at once when I am packing the dishwasher, and while I am optimizing for exposing the dirtiest dishes to water flow, I am trying also to get as much as possible in and also remembering how I will unpack it knowing where dishes are stored and how far I can reach to return those dishes into cupboards easily and efficiently.

All of my code is bug free, unlike men's code. I have written systems that have never developed a bug, this is situation normal for me. But perhaps I am not normal. Men on average just can't do it.

But this is something that isn't studied. It is possible that a lot more software could be bug free if women wrote it instead of men. But men have taken over an area that was invented and once performed exclusively by women.

Of course we are all on bell curves - some people are better than others at somethings - regardless of gender.

So it's prime day and I received an email saying there's a special edition of 'a mighty girl' with pictures of microscopes, action figures of - I suppose it looks like Hermione Granger, who in my husband's opinion really didn't need Harry or the red haired one because she could do everything by herself - except, you know..., for plot. Still that would have meant that Hermione was pretty lonely - and that is a serious problem - loneliness.

Yes I know a lot of people don't have a problem being alone for periods of time but loneliness means never having someone to talk to ever, or probably more precisely, for perhaps months - or even years on end.

Perhaps you can press someone into service, pay a psychologist to talk to you, a fortune teller, a prostitute - if you're a man... In Japan they solved this problem with rent-a-friend services. But are we ready for rent-a-friends in the west?

Yes, obviously, because we have plenty of fortune tellers, psychologists and prostitutes, which are all there for other reasons obviously and their excuse for being there is because we have a problem admitting to ourselves, that we are lonely. I guess the real reason for the coyness is it feels somewhat shameful to admit to ourselves that we have needs and this makes us vulnerable.

And loneliness is a problem because we are extremely social. We're so social that I think we're really addicted to TV because there are people there that don't/can't hurt us. Sure we can't participate in conversations with them - tell them they are wrong, tell them how much we are fascinated by their perfectly scripted lives... but they can't ask us how we are doing, what our day was like, how we feel.

The embargo on admitting loneliness seems based on the desire to appear impervious to emotional pain or neediness. Is there anything more shameful than being vulnerable in someway? It opens us up to ridicule, it lowers our social ranking if we have needs that in someway aren't being met by our day to day life.

The most popular people get all the attention they need by being surrounded by adoring fans. The rich too. But I also think that is a fantasy because plenty of film and TV stars suicide at all points of their career even at what might appear to be it's pinnacle. My guess is that they were lonely for genuine contact with someone they considered an equal.

For most people that equal is their partner. If you don't have a partner, the world is a very lonely place. Because it is that partner that we are supposed to get our quality communication from, the person who is meant to be most kind and honest with us, most sensitive to our needs, who won't ridicule us for having toilet paper stuck on our shoe but will let us know kindly and discretely so as not to further embarrass us. The person who gives us all the affection we need, whether it is straight up affection, a hug, a kiss - or sex. And in my opinion it doesn't have to be sex - it can be a hug or a kiss.

I think a problem with our society is that sex is overrated. Do we need affection, yes. We are primates after all, our ancestor apes spend half their days grooming each other. They didn't spend half their days having sex though. Do people sometimes have sexual urges? Yes, but that's something they can deal with themselves. (I am not going to tell you what to do in the bedroom - I don't care so long as you are adults engaging in consensual acts where no one is being permanently harmed or hurt.)

With all the taboos on sex, it has become the only valid way men can receive affection - it leads to bragging rights as to how much males are 'getting' and results in all manner of evil - whether it is unwanted pregnancies or rape and even death. Males can't admit to needing to touch or being touched - so parents I recommend you get your kids pets they can pet as much as they like.

The other side of the taboo is women have to play this game of being virginal and "pure" yet sexy. This is women go nuts trying to pretend they are young because young girls are supposed to be virginal and "pure" and sexy because they are at their most fertile... so women become infantile by removing their body hair, get plastic surgery, and do all kinds of crazy things in the name of 'beauty' aka making themselves small, in need of protection. in other words, generic, that their only assets are their virginity (they didn't 'put out') their DNA (their appearance) and the intelligence to spend time playing this game of subterfuge. Beyond that women are supposed to tease men into chasing them and refuse to 'put out' to make the other half of this game of making sex taboo. A number of serial murderers have admitted to killing women because they didn't consider the women pure/perfect enough)

Well I digressed some and then some more. My point about mighty girl - is how much extra does it cost your parents so their daughter can be mighty? The image above is a screen capture of a wonder woman and batman cup - both on Amazon today and you'll note that wonder woman will cost over $7 more than being batman (that's over 50% more). I asked on the listing why this was so and I was told that their daughter loved it. I'd love to have one too but I can't justify paying $7 more for a silly cup. The problem is, it can be very expensive to be a woman.

I do have issues with girls dressing up as boys to be mighty though. Hollywood's idea of a female friendly movie is substituting the male lead with a female lead, so wonder woman is really just a guy with more flesh showing - perhaps? The reality of female friendly are movies like Hot pursuit, Wild, Bad Moms, the Heat, and TV like Sharp objects and Little Big Lies (this show genuinely terrifies me)...

People have this misconception that Jane Austen wrote romances. Especially Pride and Prejudice - which was written at a time when novels were just a step removed from the devils work and young ladies were encouraged to read sermons rather than the Gothic horrors, such as The Mysteries of Udolpho, which Austen references in Northhanger Abbey, that had been general fair available for young women to read instead.

I think people underestimate Pride and Prejudice as a guide to seeking employment and economics for a particular class of women society. The choice was, a) be rich and independently wealthy, such as Emma, Lady Russell, Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her daughter, b) be a governess, and c) marriage.

And thus it's considered to be a romance.

Austen states pretty clearly that women have to enter marriage with their eyes wide open (Charlotte Lucas and that love is for men). While keeping your eyes open when you have no idea what a man is like in private because you are only allowed to meet him in public (to ensure your virginity), you have little experience of the world (because you are very young) and figuring out how much money he has, has got to sound mercenary but the reality is many women died in child birth at the time. So if marrying might mean your death in delivering an heir, you might as well make it as comfortable as possible by being rich.

And this seems to have been so easily forgotten - it wasn't until very recently that women stopped dying in child birth but then again the numbers are increasing again, at least in the US.

Austen wrote about the class system and how easily the rich manipulate those with less money for their own amusement. Think of Emma and how easily she manipulates Harriet Smith and in the end (the book not the movies) Emma will no longer associate with Harriet who goes on to marry the farmer. In movies they always reunite Emma and Harriet, and imply they remain life long friends.

Probably the weirdest thing people have told me is that Bridget Jones is a modern Pride and Prejudice - I always cringe when hearing this because the Bridget Jones is nothing like Elizabeth Bennett. But the only reason why people say this is that in the 1995 BBC version was made with the same actor playing Darcy as they used in Bridget Jones. While Darcy is important to the story, Austen pretty much uses him as a potentially interchangeable protagonist - we never really get inside Darcy's mind until he writes his letter to Lizzy. Even the author of Bridget Jones said she has no pretensions of crafting a modern Elizabeth Bennett.

Pride and Prejudice is about Elizabeth and her mental life. I am pretty much convinced Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in response to Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria, where Wollstonecraft complains about the portrayal of women in literature.