A friend of mine is a government documents librarian, and he wrote today on facebook:
“The 1940 U.S. Census reported more than 1,100 women with the occupations
of locomotive engineers or firemen. The published Census reports
listed them as “Tailors and tailoresses.“”Falsely reporting the data to preserve the status quo, exhibit A.
My librarian friend further reports that explaining the intricacies behind why they did this would take ten minutes, but that it boils down to ‘cover your ass.’ So, still – protecting the perceived status quo.
WOW OKAY he just explained it got so much more banal. Still sexist – at least, a reflection of sexism from decades prior – but more convoluted. See:
“Oh
boy. Here we go down the rabbit hole. Starting in 1910 they used sex
as a way to double check machine tabulation of the records. In other
words, if a woman was listed in an unusual occupation, they checked the
original record (ditto for children listed
as lawyers, people over 90, etc.). Inevitably this meant that female
numbers were depressed (if not suppressed). By 1940 when it was obvious
that the early numbers were way too low, they either had to admit the
earlier screw-up, or be currently accurate (thereby suggesting a HUGE
increase in women in unusual occupations) or hide them in similar
occupation classes. RR engineers and tailoresses were considered to be
in the same class: semi-skilled, I believe. So as I said, more CYA than
deliberate sabotage. Clear?”SO. Initial assumptions lead to depressed numbers of women in ‘odd’ occupations. So they hid the ladies so no one could tell their statistical oops from earlier.
Not ‘falsely reporting data to preserve the status quo,’ as I originally assumed (BAD SHADES), but falsely reporting data to make it look like you hadn’t been screwing up for years prior… said screw-ups being themselves based on the perceived status quo.
Which makes a ton of sense, really. People making bad decisions based on assumptions is a lot more common than people setting out to be malicious, I think.
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Earlier this morning I was listening to Pete Williams on MSNBC saying there’s basically precedent on both sides for what the Republicans are now trying to do: block the President from making a Supreme Court nomination at the beginning of the last year of his term, and that the GOP has plenty of precedent on its side. That is frankly an astonishing claim, with virtually no history to support it. It is also a sobering example of how successful Republicans are usually and are now at working the mainstream media to normalize what are in fact unprecedented actions.
It is also a sobering example of how successful Republicans are
usually and are now at working the mainstream media to normalize what
are in fact unprecedented actions.Do your fucking job, media.
(via wilwheaton)
If you actually want to know historical precedents, read Amy Howe’s excellent post Supreme Court vacancies in presidential election years at Scotusblog.com.
Hint: None of them set the precedent Pete Williams and Republicans now claim exist.
Look, if I was on a hiring committee for a job that needed doing and I swore to block every candidate before even knowing who they are, people would be totally justified in saying that I was failing to do my job. That’s exactly what this is: intentional refusal to do the job they’re paid to do for political gain.
(via shadesofmauve)
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Repost to make a racist angry
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Reblog if you name your computer and put it’s name in the tags
My laptop is named Harvey
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Casual reminder that working off the clock is illegal. Unless you’re salaried or authorized for overtime there is no reason for you to stay late. None. Your employers know this, too.
Coming over here from Europeland one of the things that’s most bizarre is this concept people seem to have that they need to be working all the damn time. For nothing. If I’m working I’m damn well being paid. I don’t mind the odd 10 minutes here or there, but if you want me to be doing work, you are damn well paying me.
I am super interested in my job, but [company] is being reimbursed for my effort by [customer], and I am having some of that money for myself, thanks*.
* When I want to feel like I’m purely giving back to society, that’s what volunteering is for.
The US attitude toward work and work ethic is honestly really weird, and pretty unhealthy and dysfunctional.
Yup. Thank you, puritans!
I’ll never forget the WSJ article I read on the plane back from Japan, talking about how France might “finally” raise the hours of it’s work week. The article just assumed that this was a good thing in every way, and that not doing so was holding the country ‘back.‘ It totally ignored why the 35 hour work week was initially instituted (to combat unemployment), but even more, it seems to ignore what seems to me to be the defining mark of the march of civilization: human beings having to spend less time working for subsistence. Seriously, all the ‘great leaps’, like agriculture and automation, have basically made huge societal change by reducing the working hours necessary to live. ‘Free time’ is when you get arts and innovation. We ALL want to work less, right? Or at least, to do less work that feels like, well, work?
AND YET.
My aim is to get to a point where I only have to work a little. Or ideally, I don’t *have* to work, it’s just something to keep me from getting too caught up in building some device to sink Australia and ending up some kind of supervillain…
Course the tricky thing is that I also want to get to that point without doing too much work, or anything hideously unethical. Which has spoilt the plan somewhat.
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Bonus yay/unyay
I think I may, just may, finally, have trimmed enough material off the back of the turntable mat that I can actually play most records. I will have to get a new mat at some point, and I’m slightly confused by the fact that pictures of the thing show it with a massive-great-thick mat which clearly won’t work at all on mine.
For example:
Mine has had to be created, more or less, by turntable mat beam epitaxy. I’ve trimmed it so bloody thin you can barely see it in places.
Still, the turntable is now working. So yay.
Of course, I’ve now discovered that it can’t play one of the albums I own without covering the sensor – it can’t cope with the pale pink Taffy lixiviate album at all – scanning the disk and then giving up completely.
Also yay/unyay:
Lots of waves and smiles for Rebecca today…
…but she’s still leaking. I’ve tightened up the wiper spindle onto the rubber, but I think I’m going to need to buy some silicone sealant to run around the base of it.
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Without question the Supreme Court should be at the center of this election, and a new vacancy puts it there. Americans deserve to know what kind of justices a candidate would appoint, and the 2016 elections will have an enormous impact on the Court’s future. But what this election will not decide is who gets to replace Justice Scalia. That happened in 2012, when the American people elected President Obama to another four-year term that still has 11 months remaining. Once the president nominates, the Senate must take seriously its constitutional obligation to give that nominee a fair hearing and a timely vote. They owe it to Justice Scalia and his philosophy of obligation over outcome. And as stewards of our democratic institutions, they owe it to the American people.
? We Already Had an Election to Decide Who Gets to Appoint the Next Supreme Court Justice. It was in 2012.
Elections have consequences. As Scalia was so fond of saying after he halted the Florida recount and installed George W. Bush in the presidency: get over it.
(via wilwheaton)
