The most comprehensive analysis ever of the gender of New York Times writers
In this post I present the most comprehensive analysis ever reported of the gender of New York Times writers (I think), with a sample of almost 30,000 articles.
This subject has been in the news, with a good piece the other day by Liza Mundy — in the New York Times — who wrote on the media’s Woman Problem, prompted by the latest report from the Women’s Media Center. The WMC checked newspapers’ female byline representation from the last quarter of 2013, and found levels ranging from a low of 31% female at the NYT to a high of 46% at the Chicago Sun-Times. That’s a broad study that covers a lot of other media, and worth reading. But we can go deeper on the NYTimes. The WMC report, it appears (in full here), only focused on the A-section of each newspaper, with articles coded by topic according to unspecified criteria. Thanks to the awesome data collecting powers of my…
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An Open Letter To Dr. Drew Pinsky
On April 24, 2014, a man called into Dr. Drew’s radio show “Love Line” regarding his fiancé who suffers with a number of medical ailments that are causing a lot of pain. The transcript is as follows:
Caller: My fiancé has a multitude of diagnoses. She has IC, Endometriosis, lactose intolerance. She has no stomach lining. I mean, a bunch of things going on.
Mike: No stomach lining? Is that real, Drew? Can that happen?
Dr. Drew: No. And by the way, IC is, I assume, interstitial cystitis?
Caller: Yes
Dr. Drew: These are all, these are all sort of what we call functional disorders. Everything you mentioned, everything you mentioned, are things that actually aren’t discernibly pathological. They’re, they’re just sort of what we call “garbage bag” diagnoses. When you can’t think of anything else, you just go, “Eh it’s that.” So it then makes…
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Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal
The pedantic, censorious quality of “sic”
Jessica Mitford, in The American Way of Death,* quotes a text that uses compliment when complement was intended, and adds [sic] to indicate this. What’s of interest here is the footnote she then appends:
I do not like the repeated use of sic. It seems to impart a pedantic, censorious quality to the writing. I have throughout made every effort to quote the funeral trade publications accurately; the reader who is fastidious about usage will hereafter have to supply his own sics.
This “pedantic, censorious quality” is sometimes insinuated and sometimes unmistakeable. Sic – not an abbreviation but a Latin word meaning thus or so – can usefully clarify that a speaker said or wrote just as they are quoted to have done. But it can also serve as a sneer, an unseemly tool to mock a trivial error or an utterance of questionable pedigree.
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A letter to that Nice Guy I ignored that one time
a shift in perspective can help.
Dear Nice Guy,
I’d say you probably don’t remember me, but I know you do. I know you remember me the way you remember every single girl you’ve ever latched onto like a leech who also happens to recommend books and carry shopping bags. I know you remember me because this is a small town and people talk and you wouldn’t believe some of the things people tell me you say about me, except that I guess you would because I know for sure that you said them.
I know you’ve waxed poetic at length to anyone who will listen (and a fair few people who won’t) about how I don’t know what I’m missing. And you know what? I guess you’re right. I don’t know what I’m missing. Maybe if, somewhere between the endless offers of a lift home and the free coffees…
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Exporting Winter
A few weeks back I was part of an Urban Sketchers art exchange. I had partners in Girona and in Sao Paulo. There were other swaps with NYC. All told, about 40 artists participated.
We each did sketches of our towns and sent them off to our partners. The drawings were meant to arrive as a surprise, so I’ve been waiting til is was safe to show these.
I’d been fed up with the cold and wet of winter, and was feeling envious of these guys in sunny countries. Somehow that meant I really had to paint some snow. They had to see something that could only be found in Montreal. Perhaps there’s a little northern pride going on.
We were lucky enough to get the last snow of the year that very weekend. I got up early and headed straight to Mount Royal Cemetery to get these scenes. It was…
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Am I Crazy? Or Is He? – How Addiction Warps Us
From the film “Silver Lining Playbook” about mental illness
He was already high when I picked him up from the bus station to bring him home.
I’d hoped after a month in jail he’d be clean and sober and ready to make a fresh start on the road to recovery. That’s why we were letting him stay with us. He had nowhere else to go, and we wanted him to be safe until we could get him into rehab.
But it was already too late for safe, for clean, for a fresh start.
I could have refused to bring him home, of course. I could have left him at the bus stop. But I didn’t. I had my suspicions, but I wasn’t absolutely certain he was high.
I was sure a couple of days later though when, after I refused to give him a ride into town, he disappeared in…
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