The Bluestocking, vol XVII: Missiles, mammaries and Mercer
Evening all,
This week, it's been all tampons, tax credits and Germaine Greer for me. I'm presenting Week in Westminster at 11am tomorrow on Radio 4, and it's a welcome chance to hear the word "mooncup" on the radio.
One of my guests was a new Tory MP, Johnny Mercer, who made a splash with his maiden speech about the armed forces and mental health. I found him pleasingly independent-minded - I guess after surviving Helmand a bollocking from the whips' office doesn't hold much terror - and he is definitely one to watch.
Helen
PS. For those of you keeping up, I think Camille has really blown it with Robespierre now.
The Okinawa Missiles of October
Immediately after opening his pouch and confirming that he had received orders to launch all four nuclear missiles under his command, Capt. Bassett expressed the thought that something was amiss, Bordne told me. Instructions to launch nuclear weapons were supposed to be issued only at the highest state of alert; indeed this was the main difference between DEFCON 2 and DEFCON1. Bordne recalls the captain saying, “We have not received the upgrade to DEFCON1, which is highly irregular, and we need to proceed with caution. This may be the real thing, or it is the biggest screw up we will ever experience in our lifetime.”
This story is not fully verified, but . . . wow. Even thinking about this kind of human error makes me feel more uneasy about the existence of nuclear weapons.
The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield
Anna took hold of D.J.’s hand. ‘‘We have something to tell you,’’ they announced at last. ‘‘We’re in love.’’
‘‘What do you mean, in love?’’ P. asked, the color draining from her face.
To Wesley, she looked pale and weak, like ‘‘Caesar when he found out that Brutus betrayed him.’’ He felt sick to his stomach. What made them so uncomfortable was not that Anna was 41 and D.J. was 30, or that Anna is white and D.J. is black, or even that Anna was married with two children while D.J. had never dated anyone. What made them so upset — what led to all the arguing that followed, and the criminal trial and million-dollar civil suit — was the fact that Anna can speak and D.J. can’t; that she was a tenured professor of ethics at Rutgers University in Newark and D.J. has been declared by the state to have the mental capacity of a toddler.
This is one of those stories that you wouldn't believe if it weren't true, particularly when you realised that Stubblefield essentially seduced herself, using DJ as a puppet to tell herself things to make her fall in love. And the hocus pocus of facilitated communication is so sad: how do you tell desperate people that their ray of hope is a false one?
Why Are Sports Bras so Bad?
Well guess what, sometimes the uniboob is in fact the best way to reduce breast motion and pain. But women are constantly being told that even their sports bra should be sexy. Styles with spaghetti straps and low V's and padded cups win out over wide straps and good support. "Women feel like they have to present themselves in the best possible breasted way that will appeal sexually," says Schultz.
... partly because manufacturers keep trying to make them "sexy", it turns out. Arrrrgh.
Quick links: David Mitchell (not that one, the novelist one) on Ursula Le Guin. How an episode of the Simpsons is made. The New York Times has snowfalled a piece about, essentially, snowfall in Greenland, and it's beautiful. How the internet has changed bullying. The Dunning-Kruger effect - and how it is misunderstood.
Special GIF section: Scariest cosplay EVAH. Robot snubs Merkel. DARPA is trying to scare us with robo roaches. Best religious headwear choice in history. Jeb Bush wishes he was a baller.
Baroness Meacher is unimpressed with your thoughts on tax credits, sir:
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