brautigan’s toothbrush

Gruesome DiY costuming advice from the Collegiate Times. Because all women are secretly dying to expose our inner “whorr-ors,” right?

Highlights:

“Easily constructed from things you probably already own, each of these three costumes can be thrown together almost as fast as they will inevitably be taken off. Check in next week for the final Halloween DIY.  ”

Spider Web: Because if You Spread Eight Legs, You’re Bound to Catch Something

Although gruesome costumes are always noble, they aren’t the most popular among the college audience. Meet halfway with this spider web dress that flaunts your inner gore and your outer “whorr-or.”

Christmas Tree: For the Festive “Ho Ho Ho”

Everyone with a knack for fashion knows the trends are decided seasons in advance. Flaunt your keen sense of style and God-given gifts with this Christmas tree ensemble that will have guys pining to dig through your stockings.

Extra bonus irony points for the ad shown at the bottom of the article:

PS – Is it possible the author was joking? Compare and contrast her other very straight Halloween column for the guys – how to make a Godzilla costume out of a hoodie.

Completely unreported by the Collegiate Times, no notification from campus authorities, this incident seems to have completely gone under the radar. No wonder, considering the attitude of Tom Gabbard, associate director of athletics for internal affairs (see following article).

After reported sex crime, no security changes in store for Tech game

A Tech police official said staffing is “well-suited” for Hokies games despite a woman’s report that she was sodomized in a restroom.

By Mark Berman
981-3125

Virginia Tech is not planning to change or upgrade security at Lane Stadium on Saturday in the wake of a reported sex crime at the last home football game.

A woman told Tech police Sept. 26 that she had been the victim of forcible sodomy in a women’s restroom at Lane Stadium during the Hokies game that day. No arrest has been made.

Saturday’s noon contest against Boston College will be Tech’s first home game since the reported attack.

“No security plan could eliminate all risks, but we believe the security plan and staffing that has been in place is well-suited,” Tech Deputy Police Chief Gene Deisinger said Wednesday.

Deisinger said the female fan reported that the incident took place at about halftime of the 3:30 p.m. game.

Tech police have not recommended any security changes to the athletic department, said Tom Gabbard, associate director of athletics for internal affairs.

“We don’t know that it happened,” Gabbard said. “We know that it was reported. But we don’t know that she was assaulted.”

The “crime remains under investigation,” Deisinger said. He said fans should be aware of their surroundings Saturday.

The restroom was on the east side of Lane Stadium, Gabbard said. It will remain in use Saturday.

“We have custodians that work almost every restroom,” Gabbard said. “We have them in there the whole game.”

Police are not sure how a man got into a women’s restroom unnoticed, Deisinger said. It was pouring rain that day, but Deisinger did not want to speculate on whether rain gear might have helped the man hide his gender.

It was a large restroom and was never locked, Deisinger said. Police would like to hear from any potential witnesses.

“If anybody observed a male in any … women’s restroom or behavior that caused concern to them that maybe they hadn’t reported up to this point, we would welcome that report,” Deisinger said.

No weapon was used, Deisinger said.

Gabbard said fans should not be alarmed.

About 200 police officers from Virginia Tech and nearby communities are at each home game. There also are about 200 event staff members at each home game, including employees of the company that handles security at the gates.

“There were officers and staff members throughout the stadium complex, including around the area of that restroom throughout the game,” Deisinger said.

(From http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/221722)

Deisinger said “no weapon was used,” while Gabbard claims nothing happened at all. Because there’s nothing more fun than making up stories about being raped in a bathroom, right?

PS – after a sex assault on Radford Campus this week, the entire campus was notified immediately.

Sharon Begley is one of my favorite science writers.

In an October 2008 piece for Newsweek, she exploded one of my pet peeves:

If I ever again hear the word “hard-wired” used to describe anything other than an electrical system—the human brain, for instance—I’m going to scream. Even allowing for the unfortunate fact that old ideas in science tend not to die out until the mandarins who hold those ideas are in their graves, the dogma of the hard-wired brain has endured for an inexcusably long time given the evidence against it. The motor cortex is supposedly hard-wired, its left half controlling the right side of the body and its right half controlling the left side. But therapy developed for stroke patients can coax the left motor cortex to move the left side of the body, taking over for the stroke-damaged right motor cortex. Even our visual cortex, which you’d think would be as hard-wired as hard-wired can be given the centrality of vision, can change jobs: when people spend a week blindfolded and receive intense tactile stimulation (feeling Braille dots), the visual cortex switches from processing what the eyes send to what the fingertips send, scientists led by Harvard’s Alvaro Pascual-Leone reported in August. Something similar happens in people who are blind from birth. So much for hard-wired.

She went on to discuss the dearth of women at the top levels of mathematics – and how the ratio of M:F math geniuses in the US had dropped from 13-to-1 in 1983 to 2.8-to-1 in 2005. So much for hard-wired.

Her piece this week is “The Math Gender Gap Explained,” on a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research compares the “gender gap,” as calculated by the World Economic Forum, to the “math gap.” Begley wasn’t surprised that they found countries with the highest levels of gender equity had the smallest M:F “math gap.”

Just in case you are thinking to yourself, “Why is there a math gap in the USA, women aren’t discriminated against here?” – have a look at some of the slashdot response to this research.

You’ll see a lot of insistence on gender based differences – in athletics. You’ll see a lot of moaning about anti-male sexism. You’ll also see many comments to the effect of, “well, OK, women can do math but they just choose not to because they aren’t interested.”

As has been pointed out elsewhere, it’s hard to “choose” something that isn’t on the menu.

But, Daniel Dvorkin made one of the smartest comments I’ve seen on this issue, als0  on Slashdot:

In every field which was once exclusively male, but is now no longer, it’s been claimed first, that no woman can perform alongside men; second, when the first claim is disproven, that hardly any woman can; and third, when the second claim is disproven, that maybe a few women can, but a majority lack the ability or the inclination. And every single time, as the residual sexism fades, the third claim is shown to be false as well. Business, politics, medicine: it’s a familiar pattern. Now math is next on the list.

In short, if there’s a difference, it’s not the sex, it’s the sexism. Anyone who can’t acknowledge this is a bigot and a twit.

Zombie stories hold a special place in the American imagination. There’s something inherently creepy about the idea of your neighbors and loved ones suddenly becoming hostile, homicidal, and hungry – but it goes much further than that. King of the genre, writer/director George Romero, has used zombie movies to comment on race relations (1968’s Night of the Living Dead), consumer culture (1978’s Dawn of the Dead), machismo and military research (1985’s Day of the Dead), terrorism (2005’s Land of the Dead), and citizen journalism (2007’s Diary of the Dead).

In his Masters of Horror entry, “Homecoming, ” director Joe Dante used dead soldiers turned zombies to shine a laser-light on voting integrity and unjust war. “Sean of the Dead” addresses pub culture and friendships. The “28 Days/28 Weeks Later…” movies address fears of genetic engineering and bio-war.

Just when you think nothing new can be said about zombies, Max Brooks (son of Hollywood legends Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft) comes along with a fresh take on the subject of catastrophic zombie infection. In his 2006 novel “World War Z,” he uses the framework of oral history and social anthropology to take a global look at the many forces in play that make international response to a zombie epidemic catastrophically slow and ineffective. The oral history framework of the novel is unusual, and allows for great flexibility in characters and settings. In the introduction, his narrator explains, “I have tried to maintain as invisible a presence as possible. Those questions included in the text are only there to illustrate those that may have been posed by readers.”

The scope of the book is huge – it moves among China, Tibet, Greece, Brazil, Barbados, Israel, Palestine, Virginia, Finland, Antarctica, Texas, Montana, Tennessee, India, Kansas, Russia, Greenland, Colorado, Southern Africa, Ireland, Ukraine, Canada, New Mexico, Vermont, Washington, California, Bohemia, Micronesia, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Chile, Nebraska, Siberia. The globetrotting narrator has access to military leaders and soldiers, doctors, scientists, a corporate criminal, a famous movie director. Each short chapter is told by one of these different characters; it’s easy to visualize the narrator sitting quietly with microphone and recorder, taking in all the different stories that build a mosaic of apocalypse. The profusion of detail and characters, from craven to heroic, weave a dense fabric. The parallels between zombie invasion and the outbreak of a global disease are inescapable.

The issues addressed are similarly broad – greed in the medico-corporate culture, bravery and stupidity in the military, authoritarian and short-sighted government policy, manipulation of the news media, movies as a source of hope, international political and religious mistrust. Some of the episodes are a bit heavy-handed, but, hey, it is a zombie story.

Hollywood’s love affair with the undead makes the rumors of director Marc Forster taking this project on no surprise. One hopes that he will find a way to retain the narrator’s relative invisibility, and maintain the episodic, interwoven, structure of the book. It’s an epic tale that could make compelling watching. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to Brooks’ next book.

Seen on College Ave. – a crocheted parking meter cosy

Keepin' it warm

Vehicle is secured!

Seen on the Drillfield, Spring 2009

On May 14, 2009, performance artist Katherine Gwaltney was arrested in downtown Roanoke for the crime of (very intently) watching an unplugged television.

From the Richmond Times Dispatch:

The Virginia branch of the American Civil Liberties Union is offering to help a woman arrested during a public art performance in downtown Roanoke.

Katherine Gwaltney, 27, was one of about 60 people who sat in front of blank televisions in the city’s market district last week. She was arrested and charged with impeding foot traffic and obstruction of justice.

Virginia ACLU Executive Director Kent Willis says video of the incident appears to show she wasn’t blocking pedestrians.

Willis says the group is willing to argue Gwaltney’s free speech rights were violated, but hasn’t spoken directly with her yet.

Roanoke Police Chief Joe Gaskins says he stands by the officer who arrested Gwaltney.

The deer circled Conservation Police Officer Troy Phillips several times before he had to put it down.

Three people were attacked by a deer in Pulaski County recently.

Days later, a deer was shot after it displayed aggressive behavior.

The animal circled Conservation Police Officer Troy Phillips several times before he had to put it down.

He’s not sure if it’s the same deer that attacked a man and his son on Saturday and bit another man Monday morning.

All of the incidents happened in the Delton area of Pulaski County.

Tissue samples from the deer were sent to the Department of Health for rabies tests.

Phillips wanted to remind people they should not try to feed, care for or approach wild animals.

People in the Delton area should remain extra vigilant.

Update:

The deer involved in several attacks in Pulaski County tested negative for rabies.  The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries ask residents of the Delton section of the county to be on the lookout for deer behaving aggressively or without fear of people.

If you observe agressive behavior, call 804-367-1258.

(Thanks to WDBJ 7 and Sarah http://www.wdbj7.com/Global/story.asp?S=10405443)

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