Women 1.5 Times More Likely to Leave STEM Pipeline after Calculus Compared to Men.

I read the paper, but as to my personal bias I’d like to believe that by the time women hit calculus being in general more practical by social indoctrination, they just realize how godawful boring it is and want to do something, anything else.

It’s no secret that I’m atrocious at math. But in addition to natural inability, I also find it just paralyzingly, insanely boring.

Surely I can’t be the only one who’s had the reaction of wanting to gouge his or her eyes out with dull sticks rather than do math?

That’s a line that Kristen Wiig says in the new Ghostbusters film in an embedded (and funny) commentary on the online brouhaha instigated by man-children over the idea of an all-female remake of a beloved (and IMO overrated) film. She’s reading YouTube comments on a video the Ghostbusters themselves make in the film.

I think what incensed these man-children more is that when the film came out it was actually really funny and damn charming. I don’t like most comedies but this one is pretty great. Yeah, it’s big and it’s loud and it’s kind of overindulgent but the characters have real chemistry and the film has just ridiculous energy and heart. Even better, they’re not all 22 years old and presented for their sexual attractiveness with all else secondary. They’re actual people and that makes all the difference.

Yes, they aren’t the women I’d prefer to have been in the movie but they all did a fine to amazing job. Kate MacKinnon is glorious in the film as Holtzmann. She is truly a weirdo and not the Natalie Portman Garden State style pseudo-weirdo who is just a cipher for male (and some female) fantasies, but rather someone that most people wouldn’t actually like much in real life.

There is so very rarely a female character like her in a film and it’s nice to see.

Is the film great? No. Is it better than the original? Yes, by a good amount.

It’s worth seeing just for Kate MacKinnon alone, though. Trust me on that. One of the top three comedy performances of all time in my book.

“It’s 2040. Our president is a plant.”