Headline writers are at it again

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Jezebel has an article right now with a headline that asks “is office air conditioning a sexist conspiracy?” The answer to this question (despite the response I saw on Twitter) is clearly “no.” Nor does the article actually make any claim to there being a conspiracy, sexist or otherwise. It supports an article from the Washington Post that posits the status qui in office AC use is another tentacle of the patriarchy. In fact the article makes a perfectly reasonable argument, backed up by statistics, that the tendency by particularly male managers to keep the air conditioning at frigid (65!) temperatures during the summer a) disproportionately discomforts women and b) has a negative impact on the quality of work. The article uses an anecdote to point at male managers and while it might be appropriate to bleat “not all men” or “not all women,” I won’t fight the lack of nuance this point. I also have a problem with the misuse of air conditioning, and with heating systems during the winter, which tend to overcompensate and stifle the occupants (despite the parallel, this is also not a sexist conspiracy). The author is a bit glib for my tastes concerning how men dress during the summer, but the big problem is sweating up a storm outside on the way to work, anyway, rather than in the office, when 75 or so is not more than the office is heated to in the winter.

One might wonder where the insulation has gone and perhaps question the blind decisions of bureaucracy that also seem to miss the points about perceived temperature being relative, that one of the great virtues of AC is to, you know, condition the humidity away, and that heating and cooling are both things the company has to pay for. The author makes valid points and men, both as the larger proportion of managers and as the people who are less affected by the cooler temperatures, ought to bear the brunt of the blame for this situation. So is this status quo of the patriarchy? Is it stupid? “Yes,” to both questions. Is it a conspiracy? Well, that is something else.

If the headline claimed that office air conditioning is sexist, that is one thing, but it claimed a conspiracy, which is, by definition, is a secret plot concocted by a group of people working in tandem. As someone who has been compared to a polar bear and has embraced the resemblance on account of love for the cold (and for being bundled up in sweaters and the like), I would like to think I’d have been invited, even though I am never in a position to rule the thermostat. So a conspiracy is a hyperbolic. How about in the spirit of reconciliation, we all stop overcompensating for the weather at all times of year and reject the tyranny of the thermostat in all its forms. While we are at it, we can keep from getting carried away with the headlines.

Lessons from Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Posted on by Josh Nudell

Early this month, I finished reading the first volume of Lo Kuan-chung’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is touted as China’s oldest novel. The book combines oral stories and written histories about the period (c.200 CE) when the decaying Han Dynasty fell apart under the influence of rival warlords and eventually split into three rival kingdoms. Dated translation aside, the text is fairly dry and repetitive as people run, walk, ride, and march from place to place (without a map, for those of us unfamiliar with large swathes of Chinese geography), with duels generally consisting of two heroes waging bouts against each other on horseback until one dies or flees. In this regard, the video game series Dynasty Warriors largely captures the essence of the romance. At the heart of the conflict in the story is the struggle between the clever and ruthless minister Cao Cao and the virtuous and royal Liu Bei [these are not the transliterations used by my text, but are those in Dynasty Warriors, and the ones I am most familiar with]. In the time honored tradition of reading classic Chinese texts and extracting lessons for westerner audiences, I have found a few.

  1. Every stratagem has been used before and has a name. Usually this name will be a literal rendition of the trick and, sometimes, the end objective.
  2. If a man you respect comes into your house, you should feed him meat. If you have no animal meat, you should still try to feed him meat, but if the choice comes down to serving him your wife or mother, you should kill and serve your wife, because you will likely be compensated with cash to purchase yourself a new wife. However, a reputation for this behavior will have a deleterious effect on getting local women to marry you.
  3. Unless you are going for sympathy points with your guest, do not just leave your butchered wife on the kitchen table overnight because your guest will likely stumble upon the body. If the guest finds out, though, this is the surest way to be compensated for your loss.
  4. If you happen to be a guest at a dinner like this, do not be overly alarmed at the possibility of cannibalism and make sure to pay the host for his loss. If possible, get your rival to actually make the payment.
  5. Wives are expendable, but less so than peasant soldiers. A single hero can trump hundreds of peasants, and one of the most effective forms of misinformation is to thrash peasants within an inch of their life and then release them to the enemy.
  6. Children are replaceable, talented subordinates are not. If subordinates risk their lives for your children before the children grow up and amount to anything, they should be rebuked.