BUT WHY IS HE WEARING A SHIRT? Comrades! We must agree to boycott Downey until Isaiah Mustafa takes his shirt off! Let them feel the power of the people!
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At a Wednesday session of this summer's Television Critics Association press tour, Aaron Sorkin took the stage alongside Newsroom accomplices Jeff Daniels and executive producer Alan Poul to pedantically explain to critics and journalists who, on the whole, don't much care for his new show that The Newsroom is actually awesome. Vulture's Denise Martin notes that, among the many topics Sorkin touched on during the session, he kept making the point that the show, contrary to what critics like the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum have written, doesn't have "a woman problem."
Sorkin said that, while he respects the opinions of those critics who've charged The Newsroom with sexism, he "100 percent disagrees" that the show is sexist. He contended that he's created fully-wrought female characters, all of them "every bit the equals of the men," which sound and sturdy character-construction allows him to fearlessly explore their many foibles:
Caring about things other [sic] than yourself, reaching high, being thoughtful, curious, plainly smart, being a great team player, those are to me what define these characters. Once you have those things down, you can have them slip on as many banana peels as you want.
After Sorkin explained how he didn't sack the show's entire writing staff, someone led him back to the show's women, specifically about why MacKenzie's function seemed to only be to "screw up and apologize to Will." Predictably, Sorkin disagreed with the inquisitor's assessment of MacKenzie:
After you've got that down, it's permissible for her to make a mistake, that I know I've made, with an email. I disagree that all she does is apologize to Will.
Then when the critic cited a specific instance of MacKenzie apologizing to Will in the fourth episode, Sorkin further elucidated MacKenzie's real intentions:
She's talking about cheating on Will there, not ‘I'm sorry I'm doing bad in the newsroom.' She's talking about something worth apologizing for. That's not slipping on a banana peel.
Do you see? Aaron Sorkin can too write complex female characters, and he'll prove it to you by explaining how complicated and nuanced they really are, so nuanced, in fact, that your brain couldn't even deal with all the nuance when you were actually watching the show.
Aaron Sorkin Defends The Newsroom, Denies There's a Woman Problem [Vulture]
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The female brain, according to some recent scientific gleanings, might be so overloaded with stress that it actually ages faster than the male brain, but don't stress about that because, first of all, nobody really knows for sure yet if this is true, and, second of all, stress is a rapacious zombie that may right this very moment be clamoring for your braaaaaaaiiiiiins.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley went rifling around through some old brains to find out what the differences in gene activity between male and female brains were. They compared the "transcriptome" — a set of RNA molecules that indicate the activity of genes within a population of cells — of 55 male and female brains of different ages and found, much to their collective chagrin, that the pattern of gene activation and deactivation that occurs with aging seemed to occur faster in women than in men.
Overall, men seem to hasten to their mortality's logical conclusion faster than women, so researcher Mehmet Somel was a little surprised to find that the male brain seemed to age slower than the female brain. Not all organs age at the same rate, however, so the surprise, presumably, soon wore off. Somel and his team compared the expression of over 13,000 genes in four brain regions, finding in the superior frontal cortex that 667 genes expressed themselves differently in aging men and women, with 98 percent on a speedier ageing monorail in women.
Many of these changes have been linked to cognitive decline and degenerative diseases, though the researchers noted that the changes were not uniform among all women, meaning that environmental rather than strictly biological causes were probably at play. Somel explained that "a higher stress load could be driving the female brain towards faster ageing-related decline," and pointed to his team's work with monkeys, where stress seemed to induce similar changes in the transcriptome.
Cyndi Shannon Weickert from Neuroscience Researcher in Sydney says that the Berkeley team's study is fine and everything, it's just that the connection between aging female brains and excess stress is really speculative. It could be stress that's making the lady-brain wear away like an old penny, or it could be inflammation, which could lead to similar genetic changes. This much is certain, however: scientific certainty and consensus remains as elusive as the mysterious dancing walrus.
Stress may cause women's brains to age prematurely [NewScientist]
Image via eurobanks/Shutterstock.
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The New York Times Book Review's How-To Issue lists eight pieces on its cover, two of which are written by women. And guess what they're about? Raising children and cooking.
"That cover made me feel like I was in a time warp," writes Molly Templeton, who was inspired to create her own How-to Tumblr in response:
There is nothing wrong with cooking and raising children; there are lots of things right and wonderful with these pursuits. They are also, as I'm sure I don't need to tell you, traditionally female tasks, and when you take into consideration the VIDA stats, the history of gender imbalance in literature and journalism and the world at large, you might find yourself a little frustrated by the fact that it's 2012 and we are still too often relegated to writing about deeply gendered topics. (Of the 18 bylined reviews and essays in the issue, five are by women.)
I'm sure there's something you know how to do. I'm sure there are things your many brilliant friends know how to do, or something you could write about that has to do with doing a thing (most of the NYTBR pieces were, of course, book reviews). I would like to read the essays, reviews, comics, lists and more we, and they, could write in this vein - irreverent, funny, heartbreaking, ironic, wry, snarky, sweet, clever, brilliant, silly, and everything else.
Here's how you do it:
1. Write a how-to piece on the topic of your choice. Because time moves extra quickly on the internet, I would like to have the first round of essays/reviews/etc. by Sunday, August 5.
2. If you have a blog/Tumblr/LiveJournal/other internet presence, post the piece on your own blog/internet space, and email me a link.
3. If you don't have a blog, send it to me, and I'll post it here.
4. Read and link to the pieces written by other women.
Go contribute!
[How-To Tumblr]
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