Monthly Archives: July 2006

Feminism History

Remember, they weren’t the good old days

July 16, 2006 – 10:12 am

This almost defies comment:

Soon after, Einstein collapsed from the strain of work and moved into a flat adjoining Elsa’s, where she could care for him. Mileva finally agreed to a divorce in 1918, leaving the way open for Einstein and Elsa to marry, but once again by the time the wedding was imminent the physicist’s focus had already moved on. This time his roving eye had alighted rather too close to home on Elsa’s daughter, Ilse, then 20.
Einstein then made an extraordinary proposition: he would marry either Elsa, 44, or Ilse and he left it to them to decide which of them it would be. The problem was that Ilse was in love with Einstein’s friend Nikolai, to whom she confided: “Yesterday, suddenly the question was raised about whether A(lbert) wished to marry Mama or me . . . Albert himself is refusing to take any decision, he is prepared to marry either Mama or me. I know that A(lbert) loves me very much, perhaps more than any other man ever will, he also told me so himself yesterday.”
At 40, Einstein was impressed by the the “stunning youthfulness” of his young sort of stepdaughter but after much discussion, Ilse delivered her judgment: she did love Albert but only “as a father”. So Einstein married her mother.

From a piece in The Times about Einstein’s love life, a very long piece. Of what interest? Prurient I suppose (yes, I was reading it), but also rather interesting in revealing societal mores – so much for the alleged “morality” of the era.

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Feminism

Got a woman’s story to tell?

July 15, 2006 – 5:00 pm

Mary Turner is collecting accounts of women’s lives over at Her Stories.

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Friday Femmes Fatales

Friday Femmes Fatales No 63

July 15, 2006 – 4:20 pm

Yep, it’s Saturday. Sorry. But do I have some great links this week – remember this is 10 new (to me) female bloggers, on all subjects and across a range of opinions and interests.

Now FFF aren’t usually ranked in any sort of way, but occasionally I’ll put a “should be on your blogroll” link at the top, and this is one such: Natasha on Feminish is quite a new blogger, but has a fascinating, original range of opinions. I’ll point you to her review of Muhajababes, but do check out the whole blog.

Turning even more topical, on Sachiniti, kaveetaa kaul has some worrying questions after the blast in Bombay. On the Resonance Partnership Blog, Marianne Richmond is considering the likely role of blogs in forthcoming US political races.

Jax on Making it Up has been reading the latest Feminist Carnival, and that led her to musing on how to change the world of work to make it practical for women, and men, and the rest of the world – ending the rigid eight-hour day seems a good start. Angel80 is at such work, and finding that women are, at this “equal opportunity employer”, just a make-up-the-numbers afterthought.

Alice Marwick on tiara.org (which has a really great banner picture) is suggesting, rightly not so gently, that regarding “women” as a single market for technology is a little, ah, simplistic.

Then one for the academic readers (since I spent the end of the week mixing with academics) – Dr Four Eyes leaves some interesting thoughts on how to overcome a particular sort of writer’s block, or how to convert a section of your PhD into a journal article.

In the you’ve got to laugh because otherwise you might cry category, “Cranky Old Lady” writes on Time Goes By about the casual ageism that is so prevalent – of course all old people are interested in “shuffleboard and bad dinner theater”.

Turning personal, Beth on So the Fish Said reports on the joys and pains of her “first love” (well mostly pains, which I suspect is usually the case), and what happened when he found her blog.

Finally, Penny Pressed on Fashionable Chaos has a description of what it is like to “go home” as an adult that I’m sure many of us will sympathise with.

If you missed the last edition, it is here. (If you’d like to see all of them as a list, click on the category “Friday Femmes Fatales” in the righthand sidebar. That will take you to a collection of 600 (and counting) women bloggers.)

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Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience” (particularly someone who doesn’t yet get many hits), drop a comment. It really does make my life easier. Or don’t be shy – nominate yourself!

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Environmental politics Science

Life’s too short to wash dishes

July 15, 2006 – 10:30 am

… and now it is definitively the green thing to do. (Whew!)

A study by the UK pressure group Waterwise…. showed that new, water-efficient dishwashers used as little as nine litres of water per wash, although the average was between 12 and 16 litres. By contrast, washing and rinsing dishes by hand used as much as 63 litres.
According to the study, just under 30 per cent of households in the UK use a dishwasher, compared to 5 per cent in 1977. But growth rates have slowed and the number of households with dishwashers in the UK compares poorly with other European countries.

I’ve had a dishwasher ever since I’ve been in London, and couldn’t possibly live without it. (Having unfortunately misplaced along the way a former boyfriend who used to be so disgusted by the piles of dirty dishes in my sink that when he arrived for the weekend the first thing he’d do was wash them up – his mother had trained him well.)

Staying on the practical science side, a fun bit of whimsy: 340,282,366,920,938,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000 new web addresses have been created.

Of the internet addresses available, more than three quarters are already in use, and the remainder are expected to be assigned by 2009. So, what will happen as more people in developing countries come online? The answer is IPv6, a new internet protocol that has more spaces than the old one: 340,282,366,920,938,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000 spaces, in fact. “Currently there’s four billion addresses available and there are six billion humans on Earth, so there’s obviously an issue there,” said David Kessens, chairman of the IPv6 working group at RIPE, one of five regional internet registries in charge of rolling it out.

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Books

Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter

July 15, 2006 – 10:16 am

Anyone else love George Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter? Anyone read George Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter?

… just wondering, because a question I asked at the Literary London conference about it fell heavily into silence and disappeared (during a discussion of Keep the Asphadistras Flying) and I wondered why.

It is my favourite Orwell — a fascinating account of how women are encouraged to turn abuse and exploitation in on themselves, to the point of self-harm — and I think a wonderful portrait of English life. (There’s an e-text if you’d like to sample.)

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Feminism Science

Sanity on the cervical cancer vaccine

July 14, 2006 – 9:11 pm

Not surprised but still pleased to read that British parents are having a wholly sane reaction to the possibility of young teens being given the cervical cancer vaccine.

Two vaccines, most effective in girls between 10 and the early teens, are expected to be licensed for girls and young women in Britain within 12 months. Although immunising girls before they are sexually active may prove controversial, parents surveyed for the government are said to be “very positive”, with mothers more interested in details than fathers.

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