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My High School CS Homework Is the Centerfold
theodp writes: To paraphrase the J. Geils Band, Maddie Zug's high school computer science homework is the centerfold. In a Washington Post op-ed, Zug, a student at the top-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, argues that a centerfold does not belong in the classroom. "I first saw a picture of Playboy magazine's Miss November 1972 a year ago as a junior at TJ," Zug explains. "My artificial intelligence teacher told our class to search Google for Lena Soderberg (not the full image, though!) and use her picture to test our latest coding assignment...Soderberg has a history with computer science. In the 1970s, male programmers at the University of Southern California needed to test their image-processing algorithm. They scanned what they had handy: the centerfold of a Playboy magazine. Before long, the image became a convention in industry and academia."
(Wikipedia has a nice background, too.)
We demand that you CHANGE EVERYTHING! Everywhere! In every thing that you enjoy or spend time doing, you must alter it for our benefit! Fuck you and fuck your history and fuck your interests!
The Mesa Teapot is an outrage to hard-working lower and middle-class developers too. To use such an upper-crust elite symbol as a teapot, partially a symbol of British oppression, is offensive to me.
This is dumb. Lena headshot is the standard image for virtually every image processing publication in the past 25 years. It's just a headshot for crap's sake.
Some people just like to complain.
Grow up.
Its a woman face and she's very proud of her picture. If there is anything about the image and the way its being used that bothers you, YOU have a problem and need to shut your uppity ass up.
You will not survive in the world if you unable to look at the face of a smiling woman in a photograph. You need to be evaluated. You aren't principled you're an uppity drama queen that no one is going to give a shit about in 2-4 years.
To take that a step further, if the naked female form bothers you in general, you also have serious issues and one has to wonder how you managed to cope with yourself this long in life? Or is it just jealousy?
Theres pretty much no way you come out of this without making it clear that your just being an uppity cunt. I presume the statue david and Venus shouldn't be in your lesson plan either?
If this post offends you, then it also applies to you, so just consider that when replying.
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No she doesn't. ITS A FACE, not a nude body.
The picture used WAS JUST HER FACE, if you want to see the full image you don't get it from the first Google search with Safe search on. You have to go out of your way to see nudity, and if they want to see nudity on the Internet, she's pretty fucking low quality nudity. A much less targeted Google search will yeild 18 year old boys HUNDREDS OF FREE PORN SITES ...
They don't give a flying fuck about Lena.
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Naa naa na-na-na-na na na na nanana nah nah!
That picture has been a standard for a long time. I can remember the original article in an IEEE magazine. Unfortunately the young kids of today still need to grow up.
I say this as someone with a daughter in STEM.
It's a portrait. A head shot. Not a Playboy pinup. Now if the centerfold was actually pinned up in the classroom I'd have some serious objections.
What would you rather use? The whole point was to use a human image instead of a test pattern.
If we've gotten to the point that refusing to use a face because the person is naked out of the shot we're so far down the rabbit hole it's ridiculous. With that theory, we can't ever use any picture of anyone in any circumstances because they're - GASP - naked under their clothes.
The only argument she has is that they were told to search for the image, which inevitably would result in them finding the naked image. The instructor should have given them that image along with a few others to use.
We're a sexual species. If we can't ever talk about sex while we preen ourselves to look good no wonder we're so screwed up.
No, I believe you are incorrect. The woman is giving a sexually suggestive glance, with bare shoulders, as expected of any centerfold cover model. Imagine your mother looking directly at you in the same way. Would you be uncomfortable? This is simply inappropriate for K-12, in my opinion. I teach community college. I would never use such an image, and if I did, I would expect many women in the class to be irritated by it.
Agreed. There are a bazillion more suitable images one should use nowadays for *technical* reasons to legitimately test compression and processing algorithms. Yes, I'm aware of the history. Not all traditions are worthy of being preserved. Let's move on, and leave it as an interesting historical footnote.
Are people too easily offended by this? Absolutely. After all, the top half of the image is no more risqué than many covers on modern fashion magazine. Some people just don't like the fact that it was an image from a men's magazine, which is naturally associated with a female-hostile work environment. But why go out of your way to offend people when it's really not necessary, and a complete distraction from what you're trying to do anyhow?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
So, full disclosure, I am gay guy and most of my friends are women. They (we) ogle pictures of sexy guys in magazines and post them on message boards etc. all the time.
The problem here is not female nudity.
The problem is not nudity.
The problem is a RELIGIOUS legacy of people being ashamed of their bodies. Women, especially, are taught to feel ashamed of their bodies.
Note that the complaint isn't from the subject, or the photographer, or the publisher.
It is from women who have been taught to be so ashamed of their own bodies that they have to project that shame on other women who are more proud of their bodies.
These are the same women who tell a plus-size (that's "chubby") semi-pro model friend of mine to stop posting pictures of her in sexy clothing all over her Facebook feed, because there's something wrong with being proud of your body and ugh it's disgusting and blah blah all sorts of bullshit which comes down to, "My daddy/mommy told me this was bad so I'd feel bad doing it so you can't do it either."
Grow the fuck up.
And guys who think that such images are an excuse to objectify women are behaving equally awfully, but this is not the problem right here.
It is not a standard head shot. It is a sexualized model. If a woman is looking at you in a sexually suggestive way, you don't have to see her naked body to realize she is looking at you in a suggestive way. Twenty years of cheap digital cameras and we still have this shit. Damn.
. But why go out of your way to offend people when it's really not necessary, and a complete distraction from what you're trying to do anyhow?
The problem with that is *something* is *always* offensive to someone. No matter what.
If I pick a male face it's offensive because I underrepresent women. If I pick a black face it's offensive because I'm a racist. If I pick an Asian female I'm sexualizing. If I pick a cute animal I'm promoting abuse. And so on and so forth.
Whatever.
If we have to limit our actions to what doesn't offend anyone at any time for any reason under any conceivable circumstances we can't ever do anything.
Honestly it's pretty tame. I was introduced to this image at university and didn't even realise where it came from until years later.
Dear diary, today I learned that a completely ordinary photo of a woman is a cause of a hostile work environment for women. Truly, living in the USA in the year 2015 must be a life of suffering. I don't even want to imagine what other horrors women must endure. Maybe, occasionally, someone even dares suggest that the world does not revolve around each of those super unique snowflakes!
Any young man who grew up in the age of PornHub will call this pretty tame. But teenage girls are not the biggest fans of pornography sites, so they may not be as desensitized. Many schools ban bare-shoulder outfits, anyway.
My problem with the Lena image has nothing to do with the context. It has to do with the fact that it is an entirely outdated test image with poor properties to visually assess the effects of image processing algorithms. It wasn't chosen carefully (as the historical background indicates) with this purpose in mind. Retrospectively, a variety of academics have justified its suitability (e.g., the fine detail of the feathers, the texture of the hat, contrasted with the smooth skin tone; as well as the uniquely human ability to perceive minute aberrations in facial structure), but this is really a post-hoc rationalization not supported in the face of such facts as the image as it is frequently used is not even color balanced.
I'm well aware that researchers want a way to be able to compare their results with published papers from decades ago, and Lena provides an easy way to do that. But let's be honest here: it's lazy. To truly make reasonable comparisons, you'll invariably need to test algorithms against each other over a wide variety of inputs, not just a single input; therefore, the real work of implementing earlier (even if known to be relatively inefficient, outdated, or poorly performing) algorithms is a necessary part of making those comparisons.
As for the context...honestly, if you don't know what it's like to be a woman living in a male-dominated world, it's not really your place to be able to say "it's just a face" or complain about how "feminazis make a shitshow out of everything." I don't personally object to the image's content. But I absolutely understand why others would. And that's what makes the difference in maturity level.
LOL you are a fucking prude. Who gives a fuck if she's looking sexual. Let's ban all pictures with a sexual looking expression then. Will that satisfy your taste for SJW? FFS, get a clue man.
From a purely technical POV, it's never seemed like a great test image to me. It's soft, the red channel is washed out, the blue channel is noisy, there's absolutely no green or cyan (in the sense of pixels where green is the strongest channel, or red is the weakest channel) and very little blue.
Also, they cropped out her knockers and bum.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Hi.
Computer vision scientist here.Yes, I've taught such a practical as a postdoc, so no I had no control over the content. Yes Lena was used. Sooner or later someone figures out where the image is from and everyone, well the guys, all have a good laugh.
So yes it does create a hostile environment. I'm afraid that your armchair logic and reasoning are going to come in second to those who have not only witnessed it, but been a part of the whole thing first hand.
The new guy who took over thankfully changed the images because he rightly realised that Lena was in poor taste and was inviting problems that are very easy to avoid.
I look forward to receiving replies on how my actual real personal experience was somehow wrong.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"Imagine your mother looking directly at you in the same way. Would you be uncomfortable?"
Yeah, trying to use that specious argument makes you look idiotic. That's probably why you teach community college.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Are people too easily offended by this? Absolutely. After all, the top half of the image is no more risqué than many covers on modern fashion magazine.
If I were a K-12 teacher, I wouldn't even use a model from a magazine at the grocery store checkout. Doing so would suggest that I endorse the look of the model, as an authority figure, which I don't. The model's look is is usually the latest lame culture fad. This affects young girls more than you know, so why even bring that shit to the classroom when there are zillions of easily available appropriate alternatives.
You must have conniption fits when you go to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or the Los Angeles County Art Museum's Egyptian section. Think of the children (TM)....Er... no, if you think of the children, you're a pervert.
Join the real world, please.
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> teenage girls are not the biggest fans of pornography sites
Shows how much you know.
in the early 80's i started working in the photofinishing industry
custom color and black and white HAND enlarging and such
lenna was one of the KODAK standard test images
almost EVERY book on photography has her image ( the G RATED VERSION!!! )
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
0h come on, you could say similar about the handsome/pretty models used in workstation/office furniture magazine.
An important reason for using it is the vast amount of literature using it as a standard.
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What pinup, the picture is of her face only. You prudes really need to properly integrate with society, or go to a muslim country where they keep tarps with eye holes on their women.
You have proof that half the sculptors of such things weren't female? I thought not
I'm naked behind my clothes. Just a kind notice in advance, should you ever see me or picture of me. I haven't found a way around having a body and taking it with me in public yet.
Bert
I'm not saying whether it's a good idea or a bad one, but isn't the fact that it's a defacto standard, sort of the objectors' point? Yes, you're right: it's a long-established tradition, with deep roots going back to when the computer room was a total sausagefest. I can't playfully slap the secretary's ass and then get off the hook by saying, "oh c'mon, we dudes have been doing that forever! It's always been like that. Quit trying to change our culture."
Changing the culture is an explicit part of a lot of peoples' agenda, because nobody really likes the damn computer room sausagefest (we just don't know what to do about it, which is why I really have no idea whether or not the picture is really a problem).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
...and you're worried about a fucking photograph!
This perfectly summarises everything that's wrong with the western world today.
The pose is a face, a little bit of bare shoulder, hair, and a hat. That kind of exposure (ie, the shoulder) is common throughout the United States anywhere that's warm enough to dress that way. There are entire fashions dedicated to off-shoulder blouses and dresses for women. Women of all ages, including minors, are free to dress that way, and men and women of all ages, including minors, need to learn how to control themselves when something as sexual as a shoulder is displayed.
You want to not be tantalized or enticed? Move to a country that requires women to cover themselves. Otherwise learn to control your base instincts, you animal. If she's not displaying her sexual characteristics then your being excited is definitely your problem, not anyone else's.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Honestly it's pretty tame.
"Pretty tame" is not the same as appropriate. The image itself is not offensive, but the comments, jokes, and snickers from the teenage boys will be offensive, and will happen. There are plenty of alternative images available, and there is no pedagogical reason to raise the issue of pornography in a high school CS classroom.
Right! We should stop all women from looking at people in sexually suggestive ways. That will solve the problem of ... wait, what's the problem again?
Knowledge Brings Fear
You must have conniption fits when you go to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or the Los Angeles County Art Museum's Egyptian section.
Those are not for children, and they don't require mandatory attendance.
We had field trips to the Detroit Institute of Arts nearly every year throughout elementary school after 4th grade or so, and occasionally later in school, and yes, we did see the racy stuff from the 16th-18th centuries. The trips weren't manadatory, but I don't recall anybody getting opted out by their parents. But in the 70's you could dress your kid as a 50lb bag of weed for halloween and send them to their 3rd grade class and people would say "how cute!" rather than sending them to prison as an adult and confiscating your home.
The Lena Rossi image is famous, but tossing it into a CS class with a bunch of eighteen-year-old men is just asking for a hostile work environment for any women in the class.
I must ("must", because i really hate modern "feminism"...) agree with you, since i remember how i could turn the most innocent picture/writting in to a sexual point, just to draw the attention of the females (as Freud would expected) when i was in school.
A picture (even just a face) of a Playboy model may have a place in CS History class (or even in an Art class), but in strict CS class you must use something neutral that it would not be connected to a pornographic magazine in any way and/or would not force any -sexy, or not so sexy- female compare herself with one more (semi-)virtual competetor...
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
What the devil do you want, an image of Golda Meir? Lena is looking over her bare shoulder at the camera. She looks healthy and attractive. She's even wearing a hat!
Her mouth isn't open, her tongue isn't visible, her eyes aren't half-closed, she's not gesturing "come hither" with her finger, etc., etc.
If that image is sexually suggestive to you, the problem is squarely between your ears.
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When I do internet searches in the classroom I use safe search, or the equivalent. (Remember Yahooligans?) But I try never to do live searches in front of students. For example, a simple search for "LaTeX" (typesetting) yields pornography on some search engines. Any informed K-12 teacher knows the existence of typo-squatters and takes steps to avoid them. All those half-naked women in the margins of your browser you learned to ignore years ago are nevertheless still there. Teachers must be extra careful.
Have you been to a movie recently? Or watched tv? Or gone thought the checkout line at a grocery store/supermarket/newsagent? Or do you just live under a rock?
The problem with that is *something* is *always* offensive to someone. No matter what.
If I pick a male face it's offensive because I underrepresent women. If I pick a black face it's offensive because I'm a racist. If I pick an Asian female I'm sexualizing. If I pick a cute animal I'm promoting abuse. And so on and so forth.
Whatever.
Use the six face panel that the onion uses for the person on the street interviews. It's diverse and everybody will recognize the source and get a chuckle. You probably have to get permission though.
Any young man who grew up in the age of PornHub will call this pretty tame. But teenage girls are not the biggest fans of pornography sites, so they may not be as desensitized. Many schools ban bare-shoulder outfits, anyway.
Unfortunatly your comment where you asked the -rhetoric- question "The woman is giving a sexually suggestive glance, with bare shoulders, as expected of any centerfold cover model. Imagine your mother looking directly at you in the same way. Would you be uncomfortable?" is (currently) modded down as "flaimbait" - who ever did it, maybe did not noticed that you also write that you are a teacher (so probably you understand more about the teenager phychology than many of us).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
Would it have been as reprehensible if it had been a similar picture of Grace Hopper? Or does is it tainted by where it was published?
No complaints over this?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
How is a picture of a woman 'hostile'?
and sends the message to the females that they are only valued in that class as visual objects
Not 'only'. The women are valued both for their looks and their brains. The men only for their brains.
That same bullshit happens no matter what you're looking at. They're teenagers. They'll see genitalia anywhere they look for more than 10 minutes.
You'll note I left gender off of that... because gender doesn't matter much, here.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Well at some point these girls will have to learn those hard lessons that reality doesn't nor shouldn't revolve around them. If you're telling me a photo on some lame magazine on a register checkout rack causes them PTSD, then those girls have much bigger problems than use of a woman's picture in a compression algorithm lab.
Are you from Saudi Arabia?
But teenage girls are not the biggest fans of pornography sites
This Victorian attitude that centers on the idea that women don't like sex just needs to die. Teenage humans are fans of pornography sites. Different strokes for different folks, of course. When a man and a woman both get drunk enough to lower their standards enough to actually get laid, this is not "rape culture", dammit, because men and women both are interested in sex. It's not "lie back and think of Britain" for fuck's sake.
Only from TFS did I learn where this image came from: having first seen it in an age where 16-bit (and even 8-bit) color palettes were the norm, I just assumed it was chosen for the purple feather, the details of feather and hatband and hair (which emphasize compression artifacts) and the human face, which we're very good at seeing distortions in. It just seemed like a challenging photo to compress in the days when jpg was too heavyweight for most PCs.
Still seems like a perfectly reasonable test image.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
A pic of a woman's face is not 'anti-female.'
was from the text used in a graduate-level data communication course I took many, many years ago. It said, more or less, that "Communication requires three things: a shared model, a shared set of symbols, and a common system for associating symbols with objects from that model."
Now here's the thing that I think is wise about that idea. People respond as if something like a famous photograph has an objective meaning and that everyone *should* somehow all have the same reaction to it. But intelligent, educated people should know better than that. Personally, I see a considerable element of self-deprecating humor in this particular choice of photo. However nobody should be particularly surprised that not everyone is laughing.
After many years of watching people drag out the pitchforks and torches when they're offended, or man the ramparts when they're offended by that offense, here's what I think the sensible way to handle this kind of thing is. When you feel offended by something someone says, say so, but without accusing the sayer of bad faith or collusion with the Forces of Oppression. When you have given offense you apologize and express yourself a different way.
You have a choice: you can either accept that people coming from different experiences will view things differently than you and work around that; or you can try to convince everyone in the world to think and feel the same way you do about everything.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That same bullshit happens no matter what you're looking at. They're teenagers.
Yes, teenagers will engage in adolescent behavior. That does not mean it should be initiated and encouraged by the instructor.
What do you think is the probability, that because an image associated with pornography was used, that the (few) girls in the class were subjected by their male classmates to jokes about tits, asses, pussies, etc? My guess is about 100%. Even if you disagree that this creates a hostile environment, it is still an unnecessary distraction from learning about image processing.
Did I say teenage girls are not fans of porn at all? You're responding to not what I said, but what you wished I said.
The problem with that is *something* is *always* offensive to someone.
Except that pornography is offensive to about 50% of the human race.
If you think that, you really need to start meeting actually women instead of fantazing about them.
The Venus de Milo is showing her breasts. Michaelangelo's David has his cock out.
Countless renaissance works depict nudes.
When they excavated Pompei they found everything from dildos to pornography.
Hell, I was in the National Gallery a while back and it had a famous exhibit of a sculpted goat being penetrated by a man. Just there, in the museum. There was a warning sign that that gallery contains such works, but that was about it. Kids were roaming freely through it and past it and looking at it. No parent did anything more than "Yes, it's very funny, keep moving" and a sly smile between them all.
Nudity is slowly being outlawed, which is ridiculous, given that sex is just as much at the front of the agenda as it ever has been. I'm not naturist and I don't want to go around showing my body (especially not my body, actually) but, fuck, it's a breast or a leg or even a cock, get over it.
There's a line of obscenity, but it's not the very existence or a bare depiction of a nude body. And certainly not the Lena image which isn't pornographic in any way (the others in the series, possibly). You see worse in any historical painting, on TV adverts, and let's not actually get into the dramas, and movies, and videogames, and what they contain because, fuck, we'll be here forever.
I agree it's probably not the best thing to KEEP using but it's used because it has certain properties that aid in the judgement of imagery. Sure there are other images. But you're an adult. It's an adult woman, barely nude. Grow up.
And in any European country you see worse on the top shelf of every single newsagent, and not even in the "pornographic" section. Just things like the men's magazine's front covers.
We can never outgrow wanting to look at beautiful people, male or female, but we can sure as hell outgrow trying to ban it.
Fuck, there was a public protest in London the other month over the banning of depiction of face-sitting, so thousands gathered outside the Houses of Parliament and demonstrated what was about to be banned. We have bigger issues than a picture of a woman.
Which is a concern, except the imagine isn't pornography. It is a picture of the face of a woman wearing a hat.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
His rhetoric question is also a bona fide straw man. I would feel uncomfortable yes and having sex with my mother would make me off the scale uncomfortable (both not just because she's dead). With another woman on the other hand, not so much, but still depending on who she is.
So, different people may have different feelings when it comes to a person or a picture thereof. Someone who only digs blondes or is gay may be like "meh"; no complaints were mentioned, if any. Other people get off on shoes.
Probably it was not too much too ask that the teacher had offered alternatives so as to increase the likelihood that an even greater number in the class like doing their assignment.
You can make a problem of anything. Look for a person. Why is it a man/woman? OK, one of each. Why is it a person of that skin color? Why is it a person of that age? Pffff.
Bert
What do you think is the probability, that because an image associated with pornography was used, that the (few) girls in the class were subjected by their male classmates to jokes about tits, asses, pussies, etc?
If the boys can't control themselves, they should be disciplined.
Well at some point these girls will have to learn those hard lessons that reality doesn't nor shouldn't revolve around them.
Yes, at some point they will learn that. But high school CS class is not the appropriate place. The instructor should focus on image processing algorithms, not teaching the (few) girls that, hey, the world is sexist and they should just get used to it.
Except that pornography is offensive to about 50% of the human race.
[Citation Needed]
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
I can introduce you to a bisexual necrophiliac and you can argue the point with her.
That everything is offensive to at least one person doesn't mean that some things aren't more offensive than others. I am sort of sympathetic to the "but it's history!" view, but... honestly, it's a crappy picture to use for a number of reasons, it does create a hostile environment, and many many other images would be better.
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I cannot disagree, which is upsetting as my wife and I discussed it and both came to the conclusion that "it's fine". Thanks for the healthy does of reality.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Which is a concern, except the imagine isn't pornography. It is a picture of the face of a woman wearing a hat.
You are missing the point. Of course the image itself isn't offensive. But everyone in the class was aware of where it came from, and there were lots of jokes and snickers about that. At worst that creates an environment that many would consider hostile, and at best, it is a distraction from learning. So why use it, when there are at least a billion other images that could be used?
What do you think is the probability, that because an image associated with pornography was used, that the (few) girls in the class were subjected by their male classmates to jokes about tits, asses, pussies, etc? My guess is about 100%. .
Not all of us grew up on Vulcan. On the planet earth that probability is 100% that teenagers tease each other about their sexual characteristics.
BTW: Does that sensitive touchy feely BS get you laid more than once every 7 years ?
Really seems like you are the one missing the context. A CS classroom is far and away the most appropriate context for showing the Lena image. There are at least hundreds of papers written on processing algorithms that reference results for using this image. If the students want to be able to compare their results to the work of others there is no better choice of image. Maggie was wrong, the news paper was wrong to publish her editorial, and the school was wrong to cave into her demands. Now CS students graduating from TJ will be slightly less prepared than they would have been.
This picture does not teach anyone anything by itself. It is a picture of a (then) young woman's face. It's a long time standard used for such classes. There's nothing 'sexist' about it.
I think his rhetoric question was just to show that the picture has a sexual notion. I am not so "sensitive" (and veeeryyy against modern "feminism"/"SJW's"/etc!), and i agree with you that "you can make a problem of anything", but using a picture with a sexual notion (even if not explicit) in a CS class (instead of a neutral) is inappropriate i think - many (if not most) young girls will not be so comfortable in such a situation while in class with some teenage boys.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
No she doesn't. ITS A FACE, not a nude body.
The picture used WAS JUST HER FACE, if you want to see the full image you don't get it from the first Google search with Safe search on. You have to go out of your way to see nudity, and if they want to see nudity on the Internet, she's pretty fucking low quality nudity. A much less targeted Google search will yeild 18 year old boys HUNDREDS OF FREE PORN SITES ...
They don't give a flying fuck about Lena.
So are you in favour of prayer in the classroom? Having endless religious speakers and abstinence only advocates come in to speak?
Because your comment suggests you think it's perfectly appropriate for teachers to push their personal views on the classroom. I take the converse view, they don't get to preach their beliefs and we don't get to preach ours. And yes, using an image you know many students will find offensive or threatening just because you think they should feel otherwise is preaching.
I stole this Sig
Or c) any message will be hostile to somebody, if they really try.
After reading many many inane comments in this particular thread, my mind comes up with only one thing to say:
She may have a point, but Lena has two.
Speaking of the "come hither" look, here's Golda with a similar pose: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/1914_Golda_in_Milwaukee.jpg.
I'm sure if it was photo crop from ISIS vide, you would be all fine with that, after all it would be just some guy with beard with lots of sand behind him.
Context matters. But it's funny to hear that society is going to implode if we won't use photos of women from porn magazines in our classrooms in subjects unreleated to sex.
Thing is, this is not a generic STEM class (since such a thing does not even exist). This is a CS class that was working on image processing. The image in question has been used in nearly all of the image processing literature for the last 40 years. The teacher would be doing a huge disservice to the students by not using this image. They should be encouraged to compare their work to previous work. It is how technological advancement continues. The time to object to the image was in the 1970s.
I would be interested in the rest of the story. Her editorial is almost pure drivel and it seems likely that she had a lot of input from someone pushing a social agenda. Very little of the editorial discusses the image or why it might have been a bad choice. From an argument standpoint it is a complete failure because it doesn't address the primary counter-argument, that there is no better image, in any way. Maddie has done real damage to all future students at TJ. That is really unfortunate.
The lena picture is a standard way of measuring image compression quality. Thus when you write an algorithm and use the standard way of measuring quality, then you can compare your algorithm with other algorithms by just looking at white papers. Thus you will not have to recreate other's compression algorithms for a comparison.
That is a good explanation for the so common use of it, one that i was suspecting - but maybe it's time to find some more neutral one as a standard, especially since it's been used in classes with teenage girls.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
Equally? Probably not, but it's damn common for both men and women. Everyone has different tastes in what arouses, of course, but Fifty Shades of Grey is no more targeted towards men than Twilight or a Harlequin romance or Sex in the City was.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think his rhetoric question was just to show that the picture has a sexual notion. I am not so "sensitive" (and veeeryyy against modern "feminism"/"SJW's"/etc!), and i agree with you that "you can make a problem of anything", but using a picture with a sexual notion (even if not explicit) in a CS class (instead of a neutral) is inappropriate i think - many (if not most) young girls will not be so comfortable in such a situation while in class with some teenage boys.
Why wouldn't they be? Their (young girls) magazines are filled with scantily clad women in suggestive poses. So are magazines for young men. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that both young men and young women think women are more beautiful than men. I'm inclined to agree with them.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Now you're making shit up. For a visual algorithm test nobody would complain that the person on the image wasn't diverse enough. It's a test of an image, not a representation of the student body.
Hell, your entire basis for argument is a contradiction: if the picture is such a small issue that anyone who claims it offends them should shut the fuck up, then the logical conclusion isn't that the picture should be defended to the death by all right-thinking people, the logical conclusion is that the picture is such a small issue that all right-thinking adults should not care one way or the other about said picture. In order to live with the other people who make up most of the world the picture should be sidelined.
You're probably going to assume I'm implying you're racist, or sexist, or evil -ist. I'm not. I'm calling you immature and childish. As an adult human being you have to deal with everyone, including people whom you think are oversensitive. If you choose to fight them on every issue you will spend all your time fighting. And you'll be fighting people who make perfectly good friends and allies. You are wasting your time, and you are wasting your life; to defend a contradiction. Grow up.
The Lena Rossi image is famous, but tossing it into a CS class with a bunch of eighteen-year-old men is just asking for a hostile work environment for any women in the class.
So what are you saying exactly?
That any classroom that has a woman's face in it is a hostile work environment?
That the only way to treat women as equals is to force women to wear masks over their faces? Or do you feel women should flat out be excluded from being in a classroom to prevent this hostile working environment?
You do know you can get your wish just by moving to a country more in line with your morals, like a Muslim school that forces women to cover their faces by law.
You don't need to turn America into what you want. What you want is out there already, just go get it.
If you choose to fight them on every issue you will spend all your time fighting.
Some things are worth fighting for.
So it's standard. Windows is too. That don't mean it's the best tool for the job.
This ain't the best picture for the job (it was picked because it was handy, not because it's objectively superior to any of dozens of other pics), and it definitely doesn't mean that you should be explaining to your 11th grade Computer Programmers that this particular image isn't really porn because it's only a headshot and all good computer programmers use it because they've always used it.
Somebody will freak out, and instead of spending an hour or three devoted to learning image processing you'll spend a week or month explaining that, no this is not Porn because it was shot in Playboy, this is not evidence that the Liberals have stormed the Academy and are corrupting our daughters, and really Rev. Patterson I have no fucking clue why you're talking with me about evolution when I teach CompSci...
Oh you thought feminists would be the problem? That's in College. In High School the problem demographic is typically evangelical Christians with either a) no college education, or b) an education from a conservative institution that simply refuses to believe that intellectually honest and intelligent people exist outside the confines of the Evangelical Community; and since they always fucking show up for School Board elections they can get your dumb ass fired quite easily. As a High School teacher you'd expect some push-back from feminist students (or at least some dirty looks, combined with decisions not to take the second half of the course), but it's much more common for a School Board to screw over a teacher whose offended the local Baptist Pastors then the National Organization for Women.
So if you're a High School teacher you'll recommend a bunch of pictures that have nothing to do with porn, and then when some kid shows up with a project based on Lena you deal with it then.
You guys are missing the context. It is already extremely difficult for public school teachers to get students interested in math and science. The slightest distraction in class can ruin a lesson, and repeated distractions can ruin morale and interest of students for an entire semester. A teacher would be crazy to voluntarily introduce anything with such an obvious connection to pornography, whether explicitly known or unknown. You have to appreciate the amount or effort it takes to get students interested and involved, especially in K-12 where the goal is to educate ALL students.
I think his rhetoric question was just to show that the picture has a sexual notion. I am not so "sensitive" (and veeeryyy against modern "feminism"/"SJW's"/etc!), and i agree with you that "you can make a problem of anything", but using a picture with a sexual notion (even if not explicit) in a CS class (instead of a neutral) is inappropriate i think - many (if not most) young girls will not be so comfortable in such a situation while in class with some teenage boys.
Why wouldn't they be? Their (young girls) magazines are filled with scantily clad women in suggestive poses. So are magazines for young men. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that both young men and young women think women are more beautiful than men. I'm inclined to agree with them.
Young girls (and older women) are constantly "attacked" (as a "never ending beauty contest") by what you describe in any environment (more if a mixed one with males) - in a class it is better to provide a less sexual environment (as possible, since full asexuality is unrealistic) in which females (and males) can concentrate in their studies.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
If the boys can't control themselves, they should be disciplined.
So instead of teaching image processing algorithms, the instructor should spend class time monitoring the boys to make sure they aren't muttering crude jokes under their breath, all instigated by the actions of the instructor himself? Or he could just use a different image and avoid the issue entirely.
Which is a concern, except the imagine isn't pornography. It is a picture of the face of a woman wearing a hat.
You are missing the point. Of course the image itself isn't offensive. But everyone in the class was aware of where it came from, and there were lots of jokes and snickers about that.
For all of what, ten minutes?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
For example, a simple search for "LaTeX" (typesetting) yields pornography on some search engines.
FYI, if you Google "TeX", nearly every result on the first page is for LaTeX. The two exceptions are an IMDB page for a movie and a Google Finance page for the TEX stock. It also helps that there is a tex.stackexchange.com site.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
If someone finds a picture of a face offensive or threatening, then they've got problems no amount of preaching is going to fix.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Young girls (and older women) are constantly "attacked" (as a "never ending beauty contest") by what you describe in any environment (more if a mixed one with males) - in a class it is better to provide a less sexual environment (as possible, since full asexuality is unrealistic) in which females (and males) can concentrate in their studies.
I'm not going to address the "attacked" issue - magazines read by women, written by women, for women with nary a male involved in the process can hardly be the fault of men.
What I will ask is... how less sexual can you get from the headshot pic used? That's as asexual as it gets - face of a lady.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
The planets (except Earth and Uranus) are named after Roman gods:
- Mercury, god of commerce, poetry, travelers, luck and thieves, guide of souls to the underworld
- Venus, goddess of love, beauty, sex, fertility, prosperity and desire
- Mars, god of war
- Jupiter, king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder
- Saturn, god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation
- Neptune, god of freshwater and the sea
- Pluto, ruler of the underworld
Christians believe in one god, and it's a sin to have other gods beside the one god. Astronomy is science, not mythology, so shouldn't we stop using these heretic names, customary as they may be?
The Lenna picture (the cropped version) is as standard as the Utah teapot, the Stanford bunny or the Cornell box.
Some things are worth fighting for.
Agreed. But using an image derived from porn in a high school classroom is not one of the things worth fighting for.
Actually I agree with you. The picture is irrelevant. I'm not fighting for it. My whole point is that if each and every one of us goes out of our way to be offended by something, then nothing will get done.
I remember one of my profs introduced a guest speaker as a long-time personal friend of his, spoke of her professional and academic credentials at length, and mentioned in passing that she was the mother of 3 children and a wonderful cook and he enjoyed going to her house and talking to her over dinner.
One of my female classmates got incredibly offended by this, to the point that she wanted to file a formal complaint of sexism against the prof, for mentioning that his long time friend knew how to cook. This was particularly absurd in that this was an urban studies class where we talked at length about the social implications of modern cities, and being able to go to a friend's house for dinner had been discussed in the class.
There are people who simply look to be offended by something.
Computer vision scientist here.Yes, I've taught such a practical as a postdoc, so no I had no control over the content. Yes Lena was used. Sooner or later someone figures out where the image is from and everyone, well the guys, all have a good laugh.
So yes it does create a hostile environment. [...] I look forward to receiving replies on how my actual real personal experience was somehow wrong.
Not wrong, you just leapt to the wrong conclusion. It's not the picture that creates a hostile environment. It's bullshit puritan attitudes towards sexuality that you, right now, are helping to promote.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
She's going to faint once she sees some of the images in her art history class.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
No, the instructor should focus on teaching image processing. However, if he notices undesirable behavior in the classroom, he should correct that. That's part of a job of a teacher.
Or he could just use a different image and avoid the issue entirely.
With the same reasoning, schools in Europe are taking the holocaust out of the history lessons, to avoid nasty remarks from muslim kids in the classroom.
Yes, at some point they will learn that. But high school CS class is not the appropriate place. The instructor should focus on image processing algorithms,
Hey, you know what a lot of people take pictures of? Pretty girls, maybe including their faces, maybe their whole body with their clothes off. Nobody who's going to actually work on image processing algorithms used in the real world on general cases is going to get out of using a massive corpus of nudes, pun intended, or at least images which feature mostly skin.
If you're discussing image processing, the only subject more worthy of consideration is either a landscape, or someone doing something embarrassing while drunk. Or these days, some thot material.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do you know why it's extremely difficult to get students interested in STEM?
My daughter is in 12th grade honors biology. Instead of labs they have "class activities" where they read out loud the "lab report" that had been prepared for them, and then - get this - then they get to color in a drawing showing the "experiment".
Contrast that with my science education. We made contact explosives and spread them out in the hallways. We put bits of sodium metal into other lab groups' sinks and laughed at the fireball. We used bunsen burners and gloriously burned things and had to evacuate until the stink went away.
All of these things are now forbidden in the name of safety and security and budget cuts.
That's why you can't get anyone interested in science. Because we have cut funding to the point where science education barely exists, where we no longer do "science" in high school.
That's why kids aren't interested in science. It's BORING.
I find the glance to be rather neutral (as far as sexually suggestive glances go). Maybe your perception of her glance as being sexually suggestive is due to your own issues. I don't doubt that the picture will make some people feel uncomfortable. I am not even saying it is appropriate for high school. All I am saying is that I disagree with your assessment of the facial expression in this picture as sexually suggestive. I think you are incorrectly inferring this from the picture because you know what magazine it's from and whats in the rest of the picture. If this picture wasn't famous, I don't think anyone would care. It would just be one of a billion pretty faces we see every day all around us in media.
Is everything black or white for you, no intermediate shades?
The slippery slope is not a fallacy, it's a real thing and once you slide down one, it's a long trip back up.
However, it is easy to see how a sexualized image sends a certain message to men and women in an STEM environment.
Yeah, and that message is "sex is not evil, contrary to what your child-raping priest may have said"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A picture of a naked female is not "anti-female" either. Yet it is inappropriate in a high school computer imaging class.
I'm not saying whether it's a good idea or a bad one, but isn't the fact that it's a defacto standard, sort of the objectors' point? Yes, you're right: it's a long-established tradition, with deep roots going back to when the computer room was a total sausagefest.
That's why it's not a problem. It wasn't chosen to be offensive.
Changing the culture is an explicit part of a lot of peoples' agenda, because nobody really likes the damn computer room sausagefest (we just don't know what to do about it, which is why I really have no idea whether or not the picture is really a problem).
It's not a problem, and I know what to do about it! In this particular case, anyway. Just add in a similar photograph of a man's face, cropped from a similar and equivalent picture of a man. People photograph men, too. Sometimes with no clothes on. Yes, I know, it's shocking, but it's true. Men aren't as likely to wear makeup, so you can take the opportunity to talk about the differences in processing of the two classes of image instead of pretending that there are no differences between men and women at all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why does it matter what you use to test your CS homework, if a centerfold bothers you then maybe you need to mature abit.
Now CS students graduating from TJ will be slightly less prepared than they would have been.
Up until this last sentence, all of your statements sound reasonable, even though I disagree with them. I think this last statement you made is just wrong.
This shouldn't be modded flamebait. It is her considered opinion, delivered reasonably well, with no ad-hominems, etc. She states what she would do, and doesn't tell you what you have to do.
Let's try to hold /. to a higher ideal--at least for the commenters and modders (the editors are beyond our control or hope).
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
This argument will surely be heated. Lots of friction on both sides. But at least one will come to an understanding in the worst case scenario. Both will come in the best case naturally.
That's like saying "many people try to force others into doing stupid things, so anything I want to try to force you into is good, right and holy."
Some dumb-ass school rule stands as absolutely no legitimate justification for pop-culture repression of personal and consensual choice.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There are times to tell the offended to go away, and there are times where you live with it.
In this case, since it is actually high school, you're much better off living with it because there are precisely zero school boards in the history of the universe who would defend a teacher from a) the feminists, and b) the Evangelicals. And using a vaguely porn-related photo as official class materials (when you could use fucking jelly beans) is gonna get you in trouble with both.
At higher levels you can get away with it, but since most CompSci departments are actively trying to recruit female students and a small (but significant proportion) of the female population will decide that CompSci clearly isn't for them if their assignments are about Playboy pictures (and be honest: if the class figures out where the Lena picture came from one of the 19-year-old-boys is gonna make a juvenile crack about how cool it is to work with PORN), so using it for undergrad is probably not a wise choice either.
The big problem is it's easily replaced, and not terribly professional. Better pictures are available. Better pictures are easily found. If you're a grad student writing an academic paper you can make a case that you need it to compare your tool with the ones other people have written papers about, but if you're not a grad student you really don't need it.
OTOH, the lady your prof brought in was not being unprofessional, and was not easily replaced. Thus your female classmate was easily dissuaded from making a big deal out of a little deal.
That doesn't mean a pic of a a woman's face is inappropriate. It's not nudity.
With the same reasoning, schools in Europe are taking the holocaust out of the history lessons, to avoid nasty remarks from muslim kids in the classroom.
No, they are not. You may be thinking of this: http://www.snopes.com/politics...
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
With the same reasoning, schools in Europe are taking the holocaust out of the history lessons, to avoid nasty remarks from muslim kids in the classroom.
That is a false analogy. The holocaust is an important part of history. Using images derived from porn is not an important part of learning about image processing. Using a different image would not diminish the lesson in the least.
But that's not what the image is. Have you actually bothered to look at the image?
*sigh* back to work...
In a Washington Post op-ed, Zug, a student at the top-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, argues that a centerfold does not belong in the classroom.
The thing is, Maddie should have just used a picture of Justin Bieber for her homework (or someone equivalent to Justin Bieber). I am sure that the teacher would have adapted (even if it's not the current standard, it could become one).
And in her op-ed article, she should just have campaigned for that. Making light of the situation by making your own one-sided request sure beats telling everyone not to do something. Nobody likes to be told that they can't do something, even men. Instead of telling someone not to do something, replace it with a positive action they can do instead. And if she wants to win the argument, she should argue (tongue-in-cheek) that everyone, even the heterosexual boys in her class, should be using Justin Bieber from now on for learning image processing.
The first thing that needs to get done is to translate some of the current tutorials on image processing with a picture of Justin Bieber. The second thing that needs to get done is to improve on those tutorials in whatever way possible. If you get a bunch of teenage girls working on those two tasks, I can guarantee you that they'll learn something about Image Processing. And of course, the tutorial examples with Lena Soderberg won't disappear because of this, but at least, you'd be creating alternative materials, so you'd actually be giving high school teachers a choice in which materials to choose.
Is Lena by chance Hawaiian?
Table-ized A.I.
Michaelangelo's David has his cock out.
A perfect substitute. "Ok, students, now that your architecture and design documents are complete, it's time to code out with ..."
so is "twerking"
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
One could argue that this doesn't belong in any educational setting.
Why is it wrong? I didn't try to overstate it. future students will not get the benefit of directly comparing their work against most of the meaningful literature in the field. How will they not be less prepared?
You should read her editorial it barely talks about anything in the summary or the comments.
well we cant have any joking going on now.....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
But as a computer vision scientist you can surely understand why that particular image is used. It is used because it has been used before. Sure there are other fairly common images, but none with the same ability to allow wide-spread comparison with other research. New research that doesn't use it is weaker because it lacks the direct comparison. Perhaps if there was a movement to begin establishing a new baseline it could be done away with. Seems like a pointless waster of time and resources to me. the image itself isn't offensive. The fact that it comes from Playboy is only offensive to be people that are looking for a reason to be offended.
. Doing so would suggest that I endorse the look of the model,
I think half of the problems today are because people assume if I use X in a discussion, I support X, and therefore we cant use or talk about X. It is getting really bad when we cant even have simple discussions about things that are harmless because SOMEONE will pretend to be offended
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
believe it or not. the image is of... get this... a girl!!!! I know shocking. that a girl would WANT to be photographed.
if your precious snowflake cant handle the image of a beautiful womans face wearing a hat, i blame you as a bad parent more than I blame the student for pretending to be offended.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
that mannequin was undressing me with its eyes....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Question. My high school English teacher had us watch an adaption of Romeo and Juliet in class. And *gasp* there was a nipple in it! A female one!
So, was my teacher wrong for doing such a thing? Showing a work of art that had a part of human anatomy in it?
Lets not go into all the vile things my high school health class had in it.
I stand by, all the jokes you say are likely to happen are a symptom of your view on the subject. If you, and people like you, didn't make such a big deal about it, they wouldn't know it was something to make a big deal out of.
you can keep saying it is. but the truth is only in YOUR head is that true (well YOUR head, and all the other imbeciles out there complaining about a headshot)
Be thankful its only a headshot and not a money shot
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
and thats not what this is. this is a photo of a womans face and shoulder. Anything out of frame is irrelevant
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It's the face of a woman in a highly sexualized setting, arranged specifically to titillate. There's nothing wrong with this, and I agree that it's pretty mild compared to porn, but that's not the point. The point is that it presents a context in which hormone-fizzed young men (I've been there, I know!) will want to say something inappropriate, and some of them probably will. It doesn't make the young men bad people, but it can be pretty crappy for a young woman in that environment, and can even be unsafe for her, depending on the particular young men who happen to be in the class.
It should be dead obvious to any college instructor that this is inappropriate. She is absolutely right to call them out for it.
How exactly does it create a hostile environment?
For bonus points, explain how nudity in classic art (paintings, sculptures, etc) does not create a hostile environment in the classroom.
My take: it's not the world's biggest problem, but if it's necessary to provide comparisons with earlier papers go ahead and use Lenna, go right ahead. If you just need to illustrate a technique on human skin tones, pick something else and stop needlessly pissing people off.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Those are not for children
Who appointed you as the arbiter of that?
Correct. Nobody did. Climb off the damn horse.
thinking of the children is actually the appropriate thing to do.
Of course we should be thinking of our children. I am a parent. I care a great deal about the well-being of our children. There is a point where you begin doing too much thinking, and actually end up hurting rather than helping.
This incessant shielding of our children from anything and everything is not encouraging them to grow as human beings, ready to take their place in the world. You risk becoming a part of the problem, rather than the solution.
Hell, I was in the National Gallery a while back and it had a famous exhibit of a sculpted goat being penetrated by a man. Just there, in the museum. There was a warning sign that that gallery contains such works, but that was about it. Kids were roaming freely through it and past it and looking at it. No parent did anything more than "Yes, it's very funny, keep moving" and a sly smile between them all.
I'm mostly surprised that goats were roaming freely through the exhibit.
How about this? There are BILLIONS of photos out there... what if we just choose another one for a homework problem?
Also, frankly I've never met a Puritan. Are they still around?
You don't even want to go there.
Poses in Cosmo and Vogue can often times be more suggestive than the ones in Playboy. Your precious princess is already being sexualized even without bringing pornography into it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And part of growing up is learning to not let the comments, jokes, and snickers get you. Stop being an apologist for stupidity.
Right. Because helping further the Victorian Era sexual repression that's ingrained in our culture is a good thing. Hint: it's not. No, we don't need to go overboard with it. That being said, not so long ago 14 year olds were getting married and having children. Get over your sexual repression and just grow the fuck up.
"We Need More Women in Computer Science".
"Well not THAT woman."
#YesThatWoman
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Playboy was very tame in the early 70s. It's unlikely that even the head from a centerfold from that era would be genuinely scandalous by modern standards.
People are just hearing the world "Playboy" and disengaging their brains and assuming things they really have no business assuming.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I find this picture totally unacceptable! Mostly because they replicated the top line, because their scanner fucked up. Fortunately it features a friendly looking lady.
How exactly does it create a hostile environment?
Context.
For bonus points, explain how nudity in classic art (paintings, sculptures, etc) does not create a hostile environment in the classroom.
Context.
I stole this Sig
How about a picture of a mountain, or food? Or if it's a face recognition class, then just some random ordinary-looking people in a public setting, rather than a model?
I'm seeing the context of the "Lena" image as being a standard test for image processing.
As for art, a lot of it appears to have a sexualized component when it was created (some of it very explicit), but in the context of a class, it's being studied for its place in art history.
So what am I missing? Tell me how a cropped Lena picture is any worse than (say) Goya's The Nude Maja, which Wikipedia notes was probably created to hang in a private collection, and whose subject, just like the Lena photograph, looks directly at the viewer (and unlike the Lena photograph, "Nude Maja" tends not to be cropped).
No, that making a huge deal out of high schoolers acting like teenagers is silly at best, and moronic in general.
Should the teacher have used a different picture? Maybe.
Should the teacher have simply had the picture already downloaded and available on the computers? Certainly.
Should the teacher tell students to google an image, but make sure they don't get the full nude version of a Playmate centerfold? No, he was an idiot.
But to turn that into some moral crusade to avoid a situation that teenage boys laugh at for a few minutes, or that they tease teenage girls about for a few minutes, is moronic. Maybe you don't remember high school, but that situation happened on a daily basis, with far less source material than a photo of a woman wearing a hat.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Choice quote: "Lena became for the engineers something like what Rita Hayworth was for U.S. soldiers in the trenches of World War II."
More historical background available here and here.
I looked at the original full image. In that image, there is no part of Lena's body that is not on public display on beaches around the world.
And - even if there were - what of it? Do the people who are offended by the image not possess the same body parts? I mean, WTF? Don't they see all of that and more, every time they bathe?
Oh, I think I get it. They don't like their own bodies, how can we expect them to like images of bodies that are in any way similar to their own?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I suspect most teenage girls (and boys) have looked at porn sites out of curiosity, since access is so easy. However, I'm pretty sure the majority of views are by men. No doubt there are a significant number of girls that use them in much the same manner as the boys do.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Objectively, yes, it has one feature which makes it superior to most other images. It is "the standard". That is, the same work has been done with the image a zillion times, and much of that work can be referenced for comparison.
It has already been mentioned that Windows is the "standard", and that the standard is not always the "best" tool for the job. I can agree with that. But, show me the Linux administrator who can't use Windows, and I'll show you an incompetent Linux administrator.
Same here. The COURSE wasn't built around this image, was it? TFA implies that this image was used for one assignment in the course.
If, in all other respects, the image were exactly the same, but the subject in the image was selling makeup, would people still be offended by it? If not, why not?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Short answer: Reproducibility. The image is one of several which have been commonly used in the literature for decades.
Also, it's actually, it's a really good photo for testing various types of computer vision algorithms - complex backgrounds (including a mirror), varying textures and colors (e.g. the hat feather thing), and a simple grayscale conversion works well.
.: Semper Absurda
Cosmo? I've seen images in Cosmo that I consider pornographic, although it does contain mostly glamour shots to break down women's self image so that they'll buy more stuff they don't need... and that, my friends, is truly obscene!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
That's why it's not a problem. It wasn't chosen to be offensive.
I'll buy it wasn't chosen to be offensive. So? Someone has to want to offend you, to be offensive? They were sitting around at work, with porn magazines out in the open. Does that really not strike you in any way to be misogynistic?
The problem isn't with the image itself but where it is from. Claim that it is from somewhere else and there isn't a problem.
Which itself is almost the definition of the ad hominem fallacy.
.: Semper Absurda
My high school English teacher recommended we watch "I, Claudius" to learn about Roman history. It was on PBS, and shockingly to me at the time, contained a significant amount of bare breasts. The real irony was that my high school English teacher was a fairly conservative Catholic Nun!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I'm sure I'm just walking into this one, but... what's Uranus named after?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
That picture (even as just a face of a Playboy model) has a sexual notion (even if not explicit) and it is connected to pornography - it may have a place in -if ever existed- a CS History class (or even in an Art class), but in a strict CS class you must use something neutral. Young girls (and older women) are constantly "attacked" (as a "never ending beauty contest") by sexualization - in a (mixed with males/teenage boys) class, where many (if not most) young girls are already not so comfortable, it is better to provide a less sexual environment (as possible, since full asexuality is unrealistic) in which females (and males) can concentrate in their studies.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
If someone finds a picture of a face offensive or threatening, then they've got problems no amount of preaching is going to fix.
So what? Just like it's not the role of the school to fix your attitudes towards sexuality it's not the role of the CS class to "fix" theirs.
And it's very disingenuous to say it's just a picture of a face, kids aren't morons, someone will figure out the source and spread the news. And even as just a face it's very obviously a sexualized picture.
I stole this Sig
Read your own statement again. You seem to argue that women don't belong in subjects unrelated to sex. Now, if I were to agree with you, then I would be one sexist bastard, wouldn't I?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
What I will ask is... how less sexual can you get from the headshot pic used? That's as asexual as it gets - face of a lady.
I think that in a CS class (not an Art class!) you can get something other than the face of a -pornographic magazine's- model... yes, you can get less sexual stuff than this!
Remember: it's not you (or me) who has the problem.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
So - only the faces of virgin girls should ever be seen in public. All other female faces have been "corrupted" by having sex? Sounds a lot like Islam to me . . .
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I'm seeing the context of the "Lena" image as being a standard test for image processing.
There's no technical reason for that to be true. It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines, its continued usage suggests that hasn't really changed. I don't think that's a message you want to send about a technical field.
As for art, a lot of it appears to have a sexualized component when it was created (some of it very explicit), but in the context of a class, it's being studied for its place in art history.
That's art, the sexualized component is part of the statement, a certain degree of controversy, offense, or shock actually adds to the artistic value.
I don't think the standard computer vision test image should be making provocative artistic statements.
So what am I missing? Tell me how a cropped Lena picture is any worse than (say) Goya's The Nude Maja, which Wikipedia notes was probably created to hang in a private collection, and whose subject, just like the Lena photograph, looks directly at the viewer (and unlike the Lena photograph, "Nude Maja" tends not to be cropped).
It's not any worse. But neither image should be used as a standard test image.
I stole this Sig
later you find out this fellow made a name for himself as a rabid white supremacist.
I don't believe this is a good analogy. In the case of the white supremacist, the portrait is offensive because of its content. That is, it depicts a known white supremacist. The source doesn't enter into it at all (let's give the photographer the benefit of the doubt).
But for the standard Lenna image, the content is "just a face," as you said. Lenna's portrait is said to be offensive solely because of the source of the image - and that is the position you need to defend.
.: Semper Absurda
Can't you even look up the image before complaining about it? It's just a face.
.: Semper Absurda
If you seriously believe that porn is equally socially acceptable to admit having been seen for both men and women, you need to get in touch with reality.
FTFY.
.: Semper Absurda
Using a different image would not diminish the lesson in the least.
Right - it only diminishes the ability to reproduce past work or compare new results to old.
.: Semper Absurda
How can you tell the glance is sexually suggestive? I'd really like to know!
Great topic for your next computer vision thesis!
.: Semper Absurda
I doubt the face picture with a history really bothered her that much. She saw an opportunity of being published (that might help when applying to the good colleges) and went for it, maybe she even wrote the op-ed.
not so long ago 14 year olds were getting married and having children
And a bunch of US states currently have age of consent set to 16, with close-in-age exceptions going down to 14.
.: Semper Absurda
It has to do with the fact that it is an entirely outdated test image
Fair enough, it is pretty small by current standards.
Poor properties to visually assess the effects of image processing algorithms...Retrospectively, a variety of academics have justified its suitability (e.g., the fine detail of the feathers, the texture of the hat, contrasted with the smooth skin tone; as well as the uniquely human ability to perceive minute aberrations in facial structure)
All of those features are real. It also has a mirror and a partially occluded face. It has a bunch of regions which tend to oversegmentation by most algorithms. No computer vision result can be taken seriously unless many images are used (yes, that excludes much old research), but the Lenna image is certainly sufficient to be placed in standard test libraries.
but this is really a post-hoc rationalization not supported in the face of such facts as the image as it is frequently used is not even color balanced.
I disagree - I think that the relative suitability of the image is a large part of why it has persisted for so long.
I don't personally object to the image's content. But I absolutely understand why others would.
Almost no one is seriously objecting to the image's content (certainly not TFA), but only to its source. You should address that fact and argue why that is justified, since the content thing is a red herring.
.: Semper Absurda
For a visual algorithm test nobody would complain that the person on the image wasn't diverse enough.
Of course - for a single image. But computer vision research should employ a large number of images, and if they are not diverse, then I do object - on technical grounds. I'm working on a face processing algorithm now, where a lot of past work employs almost entirely Chinese face images. The results are noticeably worse for black and white (African/Caucasian, not monochrome) faces. So diversity in image databases for research use is important.
.: Semper Absurda
I think half of the problems today are because people assume if I use X in a discussion, I support X, and therefore we cant use or talk about X.
I encounter this all the time - people (especially my fellow millennials) are uncomfortable with any reference to subjectivity without loads of boilerplate ("just an opinion," "someone else might say," etc.). Even obvious statements of personal opinion/taste are frequently taken as offensive/arrogant assertions of objective truth, unless tiresome disclaimers are constantly issued.
.: Semper Absurda
They were sitting around at work, with porn magazines out in the open. Does that really not strike you in any way to be misogynistic?
Oh yeah, they hated women so much, they wanted to look at pictures of them naked.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You'd need an uncompressed image, so jpeg is right out.
The classics are here Lena, mandrill, etc.
yeah? you know how bad search engines can be. Also the back story is inappropriate for HS. It almost sets a tone of "You want to be a Software Engineer? You need to have porn handy." No wonder programmers are laughed at as unprofessional.
Totally inappropriate.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Hence more than the face which is what they would have if the teacher had provided the image. While many worse things happen in schools it's still a fuckup and against the policy of just about every high school on the planet.
So while it's probably not any more exposure to nudity than a school trip to an art gallery it's still a fuckup, even if it's only at the level where the teacher's Principal or Supervisor punishes the guy by simply telling him not to do something so stupid again.
The baggage of Playboy Magazine versus a Waterhouse nude (or whatever) that doesn't come with such baggage.
Not if the kids get it off the net as a Playboy centrefold.
If the teacher had just provided the students with the image, even the full body one, instead of getting them to search for it there would be no story here. It's just a fuckup of breaching school policies due to a lack of preparation.
The story is not about the face. It's about students being told to look for it, finding more, and then going into Bevis and Butthead mode.
How is it not blind puritanism to label anyone who's looked at pornography - or in this case what was once regarded as pornography - a "slimy scum bag?"
.: Semper Absurda
The context for Michelangelo's male nudes is he was very, very probably a homosexual and thus probably enjoyed painting, sculpting and viewing penises. The context for classical Roman nude art was a society that was (relatively) sexually open, with sexually explicit pictures and sculptures not uncommon.
By arguing that a centerfold is fundamentally different, you are projecting your puritanism onto the art of the classical world.
This is High School, not PhD-level research. There is no point in comparing the tools a 16-year-old kid in 2015 makes to one made by ComSci PhDs in 1975. It is a waste of time.
Moreover, this is a high school class. It includes 16-year-old-boys who revel in excessive male horseplay, and have not mastered the fine art of turning it down because it's incredibly dickish. It also includes 16-year-old girls who have not mastered the fine art of dealing with excessive male horseplay/dickishness. By telling the kids they are using porn you will increase the excessive male horse-play by roughly infinity, which will in turn increase the misery of the poor 16-year-old girls by a similar amount. Your defense of this picture's use in the specific place this article is about (High School) is simply cruel, and the actual High School stopped using it for precisely this reason.
Most importantly this is a High School class. The boss isn't some wizened old PhD who thinks deeply about the abstract concept of Academic Freedom, it is an elected school board. The School Board consists of (in my experience) precisely two kinds of people: religious conservatives striving to Jesusify the country via the education system, and union shills striving to prevent the religious conservatives business allies from gutting their pensions. If the Jesusify people find out you used part of a pornographic photo in your class you get fired and call you evil because you probably believe in evolution, and your entire program gets cancelled., If the feminists go crying to the union about your misogyny for using part of said pornographic photo to teach your class, you get fired and your program, they will call you evil for threatening their campaign donations, the entire program gets cancelled, but at least they make sure you retain your equity in the pension plan.
So, in conclusion read the fucking summary. This is about High School, not a Post-Doc research symposium. The kids are not 20-something adults who can deal with porn in a mature and non-dickish manner. They are immature 16-year-old-kids who (as you probably remember) specialize in making each-other miserable, and you are advocating that they have yet another opportunity to do so.
There's no contradiction there. Bare boobs is a historical drama or art gallery don't come with the same baggage as bare boobs in Playboy or a strip club and your Nun would have been very aware of that. She probably didn't see anything wrong with breast feeding in public either. There's "conservative" and there's the far side of crazy that wants to protect children from the merest hint of a nipple in any context.
What do you think is the probability, that because an image associated with pornography was used, that the (few) girls in the class were subjected by their male classmates to jokes about tits, asses, pussies, etc? My guess is about 100%.
What is the probability that you are just making shit up that has no bearing on reality? My guess is about 100%. The subject of naked women came up a few times while I was in school, but not once do I recall anyone reacting by pouncing on the nearest female and suggesting she has nice tits too (or whatever.) I'm sure it has happened somewhere, sometime, but to claim this is a universal reaction among is worryingly delusional. I heard many more jokes about the size of male penises in classical art, coming from the females slightly more than the males.
errr, first paragraph should have been quoted
So the US school boards say and they set the rules in this context. Outside it is a different story.
This exact same line of reasoning is being used at this very moment to remove all pictures and mentions of pigs in children's stories and textbooks in the United Kingdom because some Muslims might be offended.
Yeah, it's "no big deal" to change this stuff, but it's a worrying precedent. Some of us are of the opinion that, while Muslims and anti-pornography feminists and others are fully entitled to their beliefs, we shouldn't be wasting ANY of our time, money and energy kowtowing to their taboos.
It was cute for the first hundred posts pretending to be stupid, but then it just got old.
Of course the entire point is it's from a Playboy centrefold and the kids googled for it, then went into Bevis and Butthead mode.
The "if your precious snowflake cant handle the image of a beautiful womans face wearing a hat" tripe is missing the point by so far it may as well be on the moon.
It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines
As a "tradition", there is surely some value in being able to compare current vs .historical efforts to analyze the same image.
Also, you are implying (very un-subtly) that there is something inherently shameful, or at least "non-proud" in guys looking at porn. I would call that prudish and potentially misandric.
Looks like people aren't even bothering to read the summary before posting "with certainty" these days.
A teacher fucked up and told them to search. They didn't just get the "face", they got the info that it was a centrefold and suddenly all the baggage that comes with that became an issue. Storm in a teacup but even if taken seriously it's still very different to "That any classroom that has a woman's face in it is a hostile work environment" deliberate idiocy.
Look up the phrase "paternalistic". What you're saying is that women are so weak, so feckless, so lacking in agency and personal strength, that they can't handle their own media/em made by women, marketed to women, and consumed by women.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Teenage girls are not pure and fragile spun glass vestal virgins, they're just as filthy and often far more abusive and toxic than teenage boys.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Except that pornography is offensive to about 50% of the human race.
Yeah, women are utterly disgusted by all depictions of female bodies. And I'm sure there wasn't a single woman who read Fifty Shades of Gray or saw the movie.
Also, women are equally offended by homosexual porn, because the lack of females clearly indicates rampant misogyny.
Women currently have a 2:1 advantage in STEM fields, are nearly 2/3rds of college graduates and even more than that in some STEM disciplines, utterly dominate virtually every measure of academic success and achievement we have at pretty much every level, and are on average only a third or less of the homeless, and are virtually none of workplace fatalities.
If we live in a "male dominated world" men are doing a really shitty job of oppressing women.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
If it was Runaway1956's "girl on beach" in the same pose etc and you'd managed to get it in a gallery they'd have no problems bringing school groups into the gallery.
Since it's a Playboy centrefold that brings in extra baggage and implied support of that baggage, which in a school setting just sends the kids off into Bevis and Butthead mode.
The only fuckup was getting the kids to search for the image instead of supplying it.
The "they don't like their own bodies" is way off the planet since the whole discussion is about some kid finding it funny that his homework is from a centrefold.
Don't have to go so far - people are just complaining about the source of the material and not the content. They don't want their kids searching for stuff connected to Playboy magazine as part of their schoolwork.
and can even be unsafe for her, depending on the particular young men who happen to be in the class.
No, no it fucking won't and the fact you're even saying that is testimony to how astoundingly sexist our society has become. The rate of sexual assault in the general population is 7.6 in 1000 and even less in academic settings, and when you don't specifically redefine the term "rape" to exclude female perpetrators the stats prove women commit nearly half of all rapes in the US.
It's astronomically more likely that any man in that class will be violently attacked or die just trying to earn a paycheck than any woman will be attacked.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Wait until you see what images they show teenage girls in art class. My god... sometimes... they even see penises!
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I got a good laugh out of your "grow up" post in response to a teacher's obvious fuckup in telling kids slightly younger than yourself to do a classroom google search for something that's likely to lead to Playboy magazine. It's pretty good advice kid, but you should try following it yourself before unleashing such a torrent of shit on someone who's just posting about an amusing classroom fuckup.
You're not a kid? Why haven't you grown up mentally then? Why are you picking on little girls?
The computer room isn't a sausagefest because people inside try to keep women out, it's a sausagefest because it's the ghetto that people outside shove unattractive or non-conforming men into. You want to change the sausagefest stop demonizing the men in it. You can't keep screaming "sausagefest! neckbeards! fuckbois!" and act like you're not the origin of that stereotype.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines
As a "tradition", there is surely some value in being able to compare current vs .historical efforts to analyze the same image.
True, but I'm not sure it's worth the baggage.
Also, you are implying (very un-subtly) that there is something inherently shameful, or at least "non-proud" in guys looking at porn. I would call that prudish and potentially misandric.
Not quite, I'd say there's something inherently shameful about inserting porn into a technical field not caring or realizing that there's people who won't want to view it in a professional setting. I would call that asshole-ish.
I stole this Sig
Wow. Your limited view of school board members is really something. Maybe you're just projecting your own inner turmoil onto those board members?
As for the rest of your post - well - the boys AND the girls need to grow the fuck up. Oh - yeah - that's what high school is all about, right? Growing up?
The boys will eventually come to terms with being dicks, and the girls will eventually come to terms with the dicks. That's life.
I'm sorry that you were so damaged in the process of coming to terms with dicks. Unfortunately, it seems that it does happen sometimes.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Except it's not porn. it's an image of a face cropped from a larger image that happened to feature softcore nudity.
So, there are two implicit assertions here: first, that softcore nudity is porn and unprofessional (unless it's at least a couple hundred years old, in which case it's merely 'art'). The second assertion is that softcore nudity is so horrendously unprofessional that it taints even derivative works where no nudity is detectable or implied.
You need to be voted up as both informative & insightful. Unfortunately I don't have mod points at the moment.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Why stop your censorship at that image? Many people in the world consider the unveiled female face to be sexually provocative. To be logically coherent you also need to ban the images as well but I see nothing in your posts calling for this too. Why are you not sensitive to their views as well?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Sure, lets ban that. Then we can ban all images of the unveiled female face given that many people find that equally provocative.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
"Zug, a student at the top-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, argues that a centerfold does not belong in the classroom"
:)
So, I always knew the average american to be fairly prude - well, unless they are tweeting their nude behinds on a daily basis, 'cause that doesn't count, obviously - but this is crazy nuts. I've been in image processing research for the 15th year now, and Lena's face was among the very first test images I've ever saw. It was about 2 years later I found out where it's coming from, I smiled a bit, and went on with my work. As did hundreds and thousands of other image processing students before ad after me.
Well, until the the top-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology came along, 'cause well, there we can't tolerate such heresy. Heresy, I tell you! This just can't be! How dare one use the image of anice face as a test image, for decades nonetheless. Outrage, man, outrage.
Well, [most] idiots are funny
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
High School is not about growing up.
It's about surviving long enough to make it to college. You can grow up in college.
Except it's not porn. it's an image of a face cropped from a larger image that happened to feature softcore nudity.
Even if it were only the face it would still be creepy since the expression is clearly suggestive, but a lot of the kids are going to find the original and that changes the context.
So, there are two implicit assertions here: first, that softcore nudity is porn and unprofessional (unless it's at least a couple hundred years old, in which case it's merely 'art').
This is playboy, I'd consider it professional softcore pornography.
Nudity in art regardless of age can have pornographic aspects or not.
The second assertion is that softcore nudity is so horrendously unprofessional that it taints even derivative works where no nudity is detectable or implied.
Here I'm assuming you mean "unprofessional" as in don't bring it into the workplace. I don't know what "softcore nudity" is but softcore pornography should not be brought into the workplace. Cropping helps, I doubt having the cropped Lena photo as a desktop background would be an issue, but using it in a presentation? I'd say that's unprofessional.
I stole this Sig
Yup, and people complain. I worked at an artificial intelligence lab one time and one researcher complained smutty images even though the most you saw was her shoulder. I didn't even know it was a centerfold image for several years after that.
Now on that note, if someone said "go google for Lena Soderberg", innocently thinking it was just a picture of a head, I could understand the problems that would come up...
The problem perhaps comes from googling for the name and ending up with links to Playboy instead of image analysis sites.
If you type the woman's name, you don't get any results for the original image, even in image search engines.
Sooner or later someone figures out where the image is from and everyone, well the guys, all have a good laugh.
So yes it does create a hostile environment. I'm afraid that your armchair logic and reasoning are going to come in second to those who have not only witnessed it, but been a part of the whole thing first hand.
Maybe you could elaborate a bit? Because "all the guys had a good laugh" does not in my mind instantly imply a hostile situation. It's not mutually exclusive with hostility, but neither does it imply hostility. If there are details you're leaving out then please, fill us in.
If on the other hand you do actually believe that "Hah, so she's naked!" alone is inherently and irredeemably hostile towards all females everywhere, just what in the world did you think about all of those Bobbitt jokes (preferred by females, in my experience) back in the 90s?
You're wrong but even if you were not, the fact remains that there's *nothing* wrong with "sexualized images." If you think teens in first world countries haven't seen "sexualized images" far more sexually explicit than the backside and reflected nipples of a woman in a tastefully shot vintage nude photograph, you're living under a very large and naive rock.
Incorrect. Image number 4 for me in a search for "lena soderberg" was this:
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://std3.ru/57/a9/1382360119-57a9226b58e2e1baa311e9f0f6fa0728.jpg&imgrefurl=http://imgarcade.com/1/lena-soderberg-original/&h=700&w=384&tbnid=sHNdiBO8gK9_6M:&zoom=1&docid=G3OImPX1TScqOM&ei=g8VFVbHPAYTsmAXfoICwBA&tbm=isch&client=firefox-a&ved=0CB8QMygDMAM
Don't bother with the long URL just do the search yourself.
So a fuckup by the teacher. Maybe an irrelevant storm in a teacup but the image does come up.
I'm British. That's in Europe. The above is true of Britain at the very least, and it's not alone.
And, every time I drive through Europe (including France), that's the only time you see things quite so blatant as huge pink neon signs declaring "Sex Shop" from miles away. Even in tiny, sleepy little villages, miles from anything else.
And, sorry, but sometimes the models in fashion magazines and men's magazines are showing more than the full Lena image, and on the front cover.
It may not be true in every town/city (Paris relies a lot on tourism), true. But we're a damn sight more open about it than the US.
Yes to all that, but a high school CS class is not the time and place for the full image or the info that it was from Playboy, which is really the issue at hand.
Art class? Maybe. They'd probably use something out of copyright though.
Thank you for proving a point.
...not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines...
Here you imply that porn and looking at porn is somehow morally wrong.
Only if you're doing so around people who don't want to be exposed to it, I think a computer vision lab qualifies.
the sexualized component is part of the statement, a certain degree of controversy, offense, or shock actually adds to the artistic value
Here you see sex and sexual themes as shocking or offensive.
So please explain how your statements about sexuality are better grounded than those coming from fundamentalist christians,jews, muslims et al.?
Cut the crap.
Of course sexual imagery in art is shocking or at least provocative, that's the point, it's one of the strongest desires we have. That's the whole bloody point unless you want to look at a painting of a fruit bowl.
I stole this Sig
I hope you're raped by a rabid chimpanzee and left to rot. Really, you are that stupid.
Quite possibly, but Lena wasn't chosen to make a stand again bad attitudes, so even with here there, the fight against puritans wasn't being made. Instead, you had a bunch of immature guys giggling over nudie pics.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Thanks a lot! Now I'll spend the day trying to come up with a lewd joke involving linoleum... Lie oiled on 'em? No... *wracking brain*
Please go wander into oncoming traffic. Seriously, no one is going to find out where that image comes from unless they specifically investigate. And only fucking retards could possibly be offended by the existence of the image or the source.
Who the Hell do you think attends computer vision labs, cows? Of course the attendees are interested in porn, or at least in sex. You're a fucked-up moron.
Like all mammals, humans are sexual in nature. How can we not be, when we require two genders to procreate? You are a fucked-up piece of shit. Swallow some rat poison and leave a note for your family explaining that you're too stupid to live.
What? The Chinese don't like porn?
You really should meet some women who aren't your mom. It's not that your mom doesn't like porn; it's that she won't talk to you about it.
For the record, my wife is a fan of porn, but we don't watch it together because she is overweight and feels self-conscious.
You're an asexual fuck-tard. Please commit suicide by ripping your unused penis off and bleeding to death.
The only fuck-up was the mother that birthed you.
Porn is not misogynistic.
That's because you're a fucked-up piece of shit. It used to be that teenagers were responsible adults, old enough to start families and support them. Shit like you have turned teenagers into over-sized children because you can't stand the idea that you might not be in control over a sexually-mature child who is perfectly capable to run their own life. Or would be, if you hadn't ruined them.
You deserve death by torture. Your stupidity and idiocy are practically overwhelming. There are probably hundreds of people out there who have lost intelligence just by being in your presence. I truly pity those who have actually talked to you.
>Short answer: Reproducibility. The image is one of several which have been commonly used in the literature for decades.
If we are going by that standard we would probably have to use something like BBC Test Card F
>Also, it's actually, it's a really good photo for testing various types of computer vision algorithms - complex backgrounds (including a mirror), varying textures and colors (e.g. the hat feather thing), and a simple grayscale conversion works well.
Not really. Firstly we don't have great documentation on the hardware involved. The hardware involved is also highly non typical by modern standards (if your system is designed around drum scanned film and its 2015 you are doing something wrong). Using an image produced by a digital camera using Bayer filter would be more fit for purpose (the most obvious difference is that you will get more information on the green channel that the red and blue channel, this doesn't happen with film) . It would also avoid the rather messy copyright situation around the image.
Its not 1973 we are not short of digital images to use for testing any more. Chosing one that doesn't come from playboy is a reasonable choice.
>This exact same line of reasoning is being used at this very moment to remove all pictures and mentions of pigs in children's stories and textbooks in the United Kingdom because some Muslims might be offended.
You appear to have believed something you read in the Daily Mail. Unfortunate.
In practice one of the most popular character's aimed at children is Peppa Pig. Perhaps you don't know anyone with young children so aren't aware of this fact. In which case I'd suggest you avoid expressing opinions on the matter.
Dog-Cow is overly abusive with his response - but he's not far off target. Most, not all, but most of my generation were grown up when they graduated from high school. Legal adults, with the right to vote, the right to drink, the right to fight for our country, the right to marry, the right to have children, and the right to work.
Today? WTF has happened to our country?
We need Charles Darwin to remind us of that "survival of the fittest" thing.
If the kids aren't ready to make adult decisions sometime between 15 and 20, then they are not fit for survival. If parents aren't ready to cut the apron strings by the time the kids are 20, then those parents are unfit, themselves.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Very strong words - why exactly? Would you like high school CS teachers to discuss porn with their students or do you have some other motivation for your sad attempt at bullying me?
It's not the time, place or the person that should be trusted with doing it. By sheer co-incidence I'm currently reading a biography of a radio "shock-jock" who was driven out of high school teaching for having frank discussions about sex with his high school students until 3am (and other stuff that was suspected but not proven). It's not something that should be encouraged since teachers have so much influence over their students.
I suggest you get off the computer before daddy comes back and sees you have logged into his account.
I'd have thought the fact that it is copyright Playboy would have dissuaded academics from using it by now, but I suppose as long as no lawsuits are filed...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You seem to be confusing Playboy for classical art. It's not the nudity, it's the source and the nature of the image.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Seems like it was one moronic head at one school, and some bullshit hype from the Daily Mail. Pigs are not being banned in children's books, the publishers have confirmed it.
I doubt many people would agree with your logic, since the obviously conclusion must be that any kind of pornography or images are acceptable in a classroom. In a civilized society there are limits in certain situations, and institutions respond to the views of their customers.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
WTF has happened?
There's no jobs that pay for high school educated kids. You need at least an Associate's, or you're in retail. If you're in retail you really can't be a parent because the scheduling is so fucked up I work one of these places, and they insist that all their employees should be able to be their, and chipper, with 7.5 hours between shifts, even the poor motherfuckers who have a half-hour commute and happen to be your fucking age).
OTOH, when you were 18 you could get a job that paid the equivalent of $20 an hour (it actually would have been more like $3 or $4, but inflation), with a set schedule, and good benefits, just by being a US Citizen who showed at work every day. With that much money, and no commitments, emotional maturity is a side-issue. As long as you were emotionally mature enough to avoid the legal system and show up at 9 AM you were fine. If weren't quite that mature you got to go to Vietnam.
But today you not only need to be mature enough to avoid the cops, you also have to be good enough academically to get into a real college (a two-year-program that has a track record of getting people jobs counts), if you're working your way through college you have to maintain a job with a terrible schedule plus school, which costs at least $10k a year (in the 70s, even after adjusting for inflation, most schools were under $5k), etc.
Baby boomers.
Your parents freaked out at things that most people today would think of as just part of High School, like losing your virginity and using any mind-altering substance. Can you imagine what they would have done if you'd said "yes Mom, this picture from Playboy is part of my class's assignment?"
And it's not because she's a stick-in-the-mud-no-fun-prissy-pants, it's because your Mom knows what being a 16-year-old-girl is like, and your Mom doesn't want you to make your classmates cry.
But, through your stoner-haze, you vaguely remember that most of your friends were claiming to do all that shit, and you're quite confident that you would have been fine if you had actually succeeded; and you have no experience whatsoever being a 16-year-old-girl you're whining because you don't want the boys to be denied the dubious pleasure of talking about their playboy-picture-using class.
Look up the phrase "paternalistic". What you're saying is that women are so weak, so feckless, so lacking in agency and personal strength, that they can't handle their own media/em made by women, marketed to women, and consumed by women.
Yes, females are weak, feckless, lacking in agency and personal strength... much more than males (who also are vulnerable to "paternalism" from stonger personalities, usually also males) - and young girls are more vulnerable than older women, which are also vulnerable, just less than younger girls (as young boys are more vulnerable than older men).
And the media/em made by women, marketed to women, and consumed by women, usually are formed based on paternalistic influences from men who are the top hierarchs in this paternal social hierarchy that is the real world.
This is natural -something people may call sexism (and sexist anyone, like me, who accepts it as a truth), but still does not change the facts-, and it is a moral duty of good people (men included!) to protect the weaker members of the society (not just "from themselves, females" -how paternalistic!- but -mostly- from stronger bad members/hierarchs - who are usually men...).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
Sounds like a heap of excuse making to me. We were discussing growing up, were we not? And, you bring up how badly the economy sucks. How does a bad economy justify immaturity? I simply don't see any connection.
Had you attacked my generation's parenting and nurturing skills, I would be right on board with the attack. Can't spank a child, can't speak harshly to a child, can't just drop kick the smart mouth into next week. How in hell did we EXPECT the kids to grow up, if they never face harsh consequences for improper conduct?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Even with safe search off and on the images page I have no nudity with that search in the first 1000 images... The first 5 pages of standard google results don't lead to any nudity either. Why again was the teacher wrong? The first image under image search is the desired head-shot.
Wait until you see what images they show teenage girls in art class. My god... sometimes... they even see penises!
As i wrote just 2 levels upper in this thread: "A picture (even just a face) of a Playboy model may have a place in CS History class (or even in an Art class), but in strict CS class you must use something neutral that it would not be connected to a pornographic magazine in any way and/or would not force any -sexy, or not so sexy- female compare herself with one more (semi-)virtual competetor..."
I am Greek. Our Greek little girls see such things not just in their Art classes, not even just in their History classes, but in every visit to public places! But in a CS class i would expect matterial not connected to pornographic magazines, matterial that would not make young girls in the class deal with issues unrelated to the subject of their studies - there is no need for that, especially if you understand that the problem is that young girls are problematic (what they may accept as appropriate for an Art class, they will make a big deal out of it in a CS class... hmmm... which is not so stupid if you think about it).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
Cartman would call you pathetisad and I would be inclined to agree with him. You and Maddie should both take the time to learn why this image was used and grow up a little.
Because this is the one that someone chose 40 years ago and there is a lot to compare your work to. Given the fact that there is absolutely nothing at all offensive about this image, other than the source, why stop using it?
When did Slashdot get filled with so many people who don't have a basic understanding of research?
Except you don't. Even an image search with safesearch off gives you 1000 rated g images before you give up trying to find porn. No links to playboy on the first 3 pages of standard search either.
Have to wonder if anyone complaiend about those two women using Fabio images. He is looking very suggestive and the image probablly came from the cover of a romance novels. I am offended because romance novels tend to sexualize and objectify men.
TV test pattern, because it has a stereotypical representation of a Native American on it....
The whole purpose of a standard image is to be able to make direct comparisons between your work and the work of others. For better or worse, the Lena image (cropped so as not to show the naughty bits) IS the standard test image in this field, much as the old Indian Head was in the days before color TV.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
The image was just remastered from the negative in 2013. But the original one from the archive is still often used as a reference.
Well, that escalated quickly.
Waterhouse? Waterhouse was a porn artist, plain and simple. The only difference is medium. So you would be ok of the students used : http://www.wikiart.org/en/john... instead of the Lena image? Talk about objectifying and sexualizing women. Just because someone took the time to paint something does not somehow make it automatically better than a photograph. Just because something was done a couple hundred years ago does not make it better than something that was done 40 years ago. Most playboy centerfolds have at least as much right to be called art as anything Waterhouse created.
By your logic you can't use a picture of anything. In the end, there are many good reasons to use this image in a CS class and no good reasons not to.
So there is something out there to offend everyone, and some who are offended by almost everything.
The picture in question? If you are offended by that photo, you are very close to the Offended by Everything portion of the spectrum. Either that or a member of some religion that believes that women should be covered with a garment that makes it impossible to see her face.
What is important is who we pay attention to
To assuage anyone's booboo feelings caused by the oppressive men's hegemony that has the nerve to show and use such an offensive image that apparently degrades all women, here are some appropriate and healing videos from Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Changing the culture is an explicit part of a lot of peoples' agenda, because nobody really likes the damn computer room sausagefest (we just don't know what to do about it, which is why I really have no idea whether or not the picture is really a problem).
If the picture is a problem, you got a problem.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Is it. I read the editorial again to see what you were talking about. Maddie never suggests the boys sexual comments had anything at all to do with this picture. She was tuning out the boys sexual comments before this image ever came up. It sounds more like a girls struggling with growing up. Happens to a lot of people. Had nothing at all to do with this picture.
That's why it's not a problem. It wasn't chosen to be offensive.
I'll buy it wasn't chosen to be offensive. So? Someone has to want to offend you, to be offensive? They were sitting around at work, with porn magazines out in the open. Does that really not strike you in any way to be misogynistic?
Looking at porn and finding the women attractive is misogynistic? Let's run with that one. Gay guys who look at gay porn are now homophobic, as well as gay women who enjoy looking at porn pics of females.
So how it's suddenly some sort of historic baggage that you have to bring with the photo? That a very attractive woman's face and shoulder photo, which shows nothing offensive (unless you belong to a religion in which showing any part of a woman is offensive) now must have some sort of context that it cannot escape form?
So if we only showed her hat from the photo, it would likewise be sexually offensive? According to your rationale, it would be.
Christ, it's so complicated in today's modern world with misogynistic pornhats and people who like to look at things they apparently hate.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The computer room isn't a sausagefest because people inside try to keep women out, it's a sausagefest because it's the ghetto that people outside shove unattractive or non-conforming men into. You want to change the sausagefest stop demonizing the men in it. You can't keep screaming "sausagefest! neckbeards! fuckbois!" and act like you're not the origin of that stereotype.
Well said. Why on earth would any woman want to get into that work world? Yet we're constantly told we are the lowest of the low.
By the way, sausagefest guy or gal forgot to add that we're living in our mom's basement, and have never seen a real vagina since exiting her's.
Odd how that photo of a woman's face is offensive, but all the hatred shoveled in shitloads on us isn't offensive.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Women currently have a 2:1 advantage in STEM fields
This is nonsense. According to the latest numbers Women get 49% of all bachelors degrees in STEM fields and 40% of doctoral degrees, but if you look at individual disciplines there are very big disparities: Women are 18% of computer science majors, 19% of engineering majors, 38% of geosciences majors, 39% of physical science majors, 42% of math majors, and 58% of agricultural and biological science majors.
Moreover, this report shows that the fraction of women in STEM fields has gone down over the last decade, most sharply in computer science.
But nowhere in this report do we see that women have an overall two-to-one advantage in STEM disciplines.
The problem isn't with the image itself but where it is from. Claim that it is from somewhere else and there isn't a problem.
Which itself is almost the definition of the ad hominem fallacy.
No it's not.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
this heinous pornography that every human is guilty of must be stopped now!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
How about a picture of a mountain, or food? Or if it's a face recognition class, then just some random ordinary-looking people in a public setting, rather than a model?
Why - do you have a problem with attractive people? A lot of women absolutely hate attractive people. All of this is easly explained by mis-whatever beauty hatred is called.
Here is a column written by a woman that addresses just that.
http://un-ruly.com/why-women-h...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Is this wrong? I saw this displayed in public in an all-ages museum, to be seen by children, adolescents, and adults:
A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros
Or these, on display literally in the hallowed halls of one of the departments of our federal government:
Spirit of Justice and Majesty of Justice
Or this famous painting, representing sentiment and struggle in the French Revolution:
La liberté guidant le peuple
Before you argue that these are paintings or statues and that you're not supposed to feel anything, that would be completely wrong. These works are intended to stir feelings, that's the whole point in their having been created. The artists that created these kinds of works often based them on women that they had intimate knowledge of as well, and had the medium of photography existed or been appropriate at the time the works were created, I suspect it would have been employed, exactly the same way that Playboy operated for most of its existence.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The connection is that your memory is biased by your economic success. You were not more mature then us, and you cover it by a combination of rationalizations and the fact it was trivial to get a good job in 1970.
Let me put it to you this way: according to your parents you were much less mature then they were, spoiled as children, and failures as adults. According to their parents your parents generation was much less spoiled then their (the grandparent's) generation. And on and on and on. One of two things is going on: either every generation of old people forgets precisely how pathetic they were at 18, or back in 1750 8-year-olds had the emotional maturity of our 60-year-olds.
OTOH, that was the Revolution generation, and you are probably in your 60s, so you may just have proven your case.
IT'S A FACE, not a nude body.
I agree. It's a pretty chaste image. Nowadays, people seem to think they have the right never to be offended, no matter how easily offended they are.
Another thing, generally speaking: If I wanted to be treated as an equal, I wouldn't want to then demand special accommodations, which would only serve to underline my inabilities. But that's just me.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
According to my parents? There is no doubt that my generation was far less mature than my parent's generation. I didn't find it necessary to go to the Pacific Ocean when I was fifteen years old to fight against Imperial Japan. There was no Pearl Harbor for my generation to respond to. My sister didn't find it necessary to work in a factory at age sixteen, to provide ammunition for her brothers in the Pacific. There are a lot of differences between my generation and my parent's generation.
My grandparent's generation? Huge difference again. My mother's children all survived to adulthood, except one infant. Grandma? Guess again. I'm a guy, so I don't really remember accurately - but memory indicates that the old woman birthed 18 babies - only 9 of whom lived to adulthood. The medical sciences sucked back then, and the Great Depression helped to ensure that not everyone had ready access to the best that medical science offered.
You may go on, seeking to minimalize the differences between generations, but there are real differences between us.
Trivial to get a good paying job? Really? You mean it wasn't necessary to work hard? Maybe you're confusing me and my generation with the sixties Union activists. Hell, a union member in good standing couldn't be fired for much of ANYTHING. Sorry, but I wasn't part of that socialist shindig.
Now - as for good paying jobs - have you CREATED any jobs, yourself? No? Why not? Open up a business, and put some people around you to work. Get after it, Pal. Do something useful.
Before you ask - I DID go into business. Ultimately, I failed. I employed 5 to 8 people for a few years, competing against the invading illegal aliens. I thought I was doing alright, until one of my people was injured. Ooops - no insurance. I got out from under that impending disaster, but realized it was only a matter of time before another injury would destroy me. So, I folded up, and went back to work for more established companies.
Why don't you do what I failed at, and prove yourself the better man?
Or, do you feel that government owes you a living?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Playboy disclaimed copyright because the image was so ubiquitous by the time they figured out, it was too late.
Still I'm going to quote the BMVA style guide (latex cls file) which uses Lena as an example image with the caption something like "if I never see this image again it will be too soon". While not exactly the official position on the BMVA, it's a common attitude among reviewers.
Personally, when I review papers, while this image won't put it instantly in the discard pile, it generally is a black mark because it's almost always indicative of laziness on the part of the author. There are very, very, VERY few legitimate uses of such an image. Most uses sadly are along the lines of "look at the features we get ", which makes me reply, "where are objective measures such as repeatability and information content or matching score? "
So suck it, MRAs. I get to review papers and you don't, so I get to decide. So there!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
From Wikipedia: "An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, means responding to arguments by attacking a person's character, rather than to the content of their arguments."
The Lenna image is supposed to be "bad" solely because of its provenance (Playboy) rather than because of any content, so the analogy to an ad hominem argument is pretty clear.
.: Semper Absurda
So you could have gone down to the plant, gotten a good-paying job, and then earned a very good wage for your hard work; but you're arguing that it was not trivial to get a good-paying job in your generation? Sounds pretty trivial to me. A lot more trivial then this generation has it. Hell, even a minimum wage job in your generation paid more then many full-time jobs do in this generation.
And this generation to get more you can't just show up at the plant with a High School Equivalency Certificate, you either need very good business skills, or you need a degree. Generally the degree is pretty advanced and it costs you a lot of money.
In my experience the correlation between hard work and compensation is non-existant. In many cases the worst-compensated work hardest because you don't give the guy with nothing to offer but his back a good wage. At the top you'll get people who work long hours, but they aren't actually working harder then anyone else. They're working smarter, and they're working longer. But they ain't working harder the guy loading a half-ton of mulch into a van by hand.
Way too many computer vision papers get through while relying on just one or a few images, or without any real results (e.g. "look at the features!"). I can't count the times a promising-sounding segmentation algorithm turns out to be based on one or two easy images...IMHO if anything you should probably become even more stringent about lazy image selection in your reviews.
.: Semper Absurda
That picture (even as just a face of a Playboy model) has a sexual notion (even if not explicit)
only in your head.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Right! We should stop all women from looking at people in sexually suggestive ways. That will solve the problem of ... wait, what's the problem again?
It's either men are misogynists, or women are misogynists. If looking at an image of an attractive woman makes a person angry, they probably don't like wonen.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No complaints over this?
Interesting that you bring that up. Fabio, the fantasy man of the freely available at department store cash registers, literary porn for women.
Of course no one cares. Men aren't all priggish about porn, and women enjoy it. It's somehow "different."
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The problem isn't with the image itself but where it is from. Claim that it is from somewhere else and there isn't a problem.
Which itself is almost the definition of the ad hominem fallacy.
I looked up some of her other pix, and I can claim she's from heaven.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
TIt includes 16-year-old-boys who revel in excessive male horseplay, and have not mastered the fine art of turning it down because it's incredibly dickish. It also includes 16-year-old girls who have not mastered the fine art of dealing with excessive male horseplay/dickishness.
It is noted that you have no reference to 16 year old women being rude and nasty. Apparently they are all pure. It is also noted that you refer to the male penis when you refernce their activity. Your sexist attitude against males is duly noted.
So you figure complete separation of the sexes should help keep thes pure women from being abused by these - as you refer to them - "dickish" boys? Indeed, we need to have studies that show that in all girls schools, that an equal amount of young ladies turn to STEM careers as boys do. Sounds like a great study, as they would not be around boys, which is apparently the major factor in keeping women out of STEM - right? We'll even demand they have only Femal STEM instructors, or do we want to go for the trifecta, and not allow and male teachers at all, to avoid any male interference?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
High School is not about growing up.
It's about surviving long enough to make it to college. You can grow up in college.
I'm beginning to understand a little more about you.
Yes, High school is indeed about growing up. Putting that off until college is not a good thing at all. I'll venture to say that is a person isn't mature by HS graduation, they ar eprobably never going to fully mature.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Don't worry, I'm quite brutal. Feature detection papers won't get past me unless they at least have some repeatability experiments not fouled up, or some better or equivalent alternative.
Also argh! I hate the Berkeley segmentation dataset. I know, let's make a low level algorithm try to perform the "same" as humans doing a high level task where each human had to guess what the task was! Mind blowingly bad :(
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You went to an unusual school. At mine we got a new scanner for our computer room. One of the first suggestions was that one of the girls should scan her tits.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Seems like it was one moronic head at one school, and some bullshit hype from the Daily Mail. Pigs are not being banned in children's books, the publishers have confirmed it.
The publishers blew a hell of a lot of hot air during which they denied blanket bans "in dictionaries" and agreed that they would never "edit a pig out of a work of historical fiction"; however:
"What we do, however, is consider avoiding references to a range of topics that could be considered sensitive – in a way that does not compromise quality, or negatively impact learning. So, for example, if animals are depicted shown in a background illustration, we would think carefully about which animals to choose."
This is covered in layers of squishy politicospeak. They will "consider", they would "think carefully", yadda yadda yadda. This is clearly obscurantist, euphamistic babble. What are their actual policies and guidelines given to authors? This is what Graun has to say, a paper not generally known for their support of Daily Mail anti-Muslim puffery:
One brief for an author seen by the Guardian warned that the book: “should also work in all areas of the world including more modest markets like the Middle East. For this reason you must be extremely cautious about cultural taboos such as young men and women cohabiting as students, or girls going shopping for shorts, or friends going out drinking.”
Doesn't mention pigs, but I think it's relevant (particularly the girls + shorts bit.) This is written evidence actually "seen by the Guardian". Other evidence re: pigs that was printed in the Guardian is testimony from the authors themselves. So yeah, the very next day the publisher comes along and smears it all over with weasel-words that admit some form of soft-ban is in place... and you interpret this as proof the entire claim against them was a right-wing fabrication. Well done!
I doubt many people would agree with your logic, since the obviously conclusion must be that any kind of pornography or images are acceptable in a classroom
No, my "logic" is that pictures of faces being deemed unacceptable because they happened to be cropped from a larger nude image is a dangerous attitude to placate. With right-wing prudes, you are catering to people who will be perfectly happy to ride this slippy slope until classical art has been censored as well (See: John Ashcroft and Lady Justice.) With left-wing prudes... well, I'm not even sure what their endgame is, but it appears to involve vilifying male sexuality and/or treating women as psychologically brittle.
Oh and guess what? In every single computer vision lab I taught (which was quite a few) someone always went and looked and shared the knowledge with everyone else. So if you have it in a lab you are implicitly expecting everyone to find out.
So yeah it's in pretty poor taste. And you get a bunch of giggling guys all huddled round a computer at some point. Is that a good thing to be happening in a vision lab? Nope.
But what do I know, eh? I only taught a bunch of these so I only have more first hand experience than almost anyone else here.
And like I said in another comment, I get to review papers in cv, so I get to have some small say in how this persists. Guess which direction I go. Bonus points for also jumping to incorrect conclusions.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm not saying sexual comments directed towards females were unheardof (although I can't recall any instances offhand that were directed at a female that wasn't a friend joking right along with them. Admittedly I didn't go to a lot of frat parties, but then again that's not what we're talking about here.) I'm saying that, when exposed to or talking about a picture of a naked female, I never witnessed any kind of male sexual frenzy that instantly targeted nearby females with jokes or crude suggestions. If there were any jokes, the picture itself was the subject of the joke.
The meme I am questioning here is the one that says that males looking at, or perhaps even laughing about a picture of female nudity in any way creates a "hostile atmosphere". This is a phenomenon I simply do not believed I've ever witnessed. What I *can* imagine are prudes (both male and female) becoming uncomfortable with the sight of nudity, or the sight of other people making jokes about sex or nudity. Some people appear to interpret their own, personal discomfort as evidence of a hostile atmosphere directed *at them* (or at the entire female gender.) I'm just saying that people really don't work like that. If you are female and you wander down Bourbon street during Mardi Gras, sure you will encounter people asking you to do things. But that atmosphere is just a wee bit different from seeing a picture of a face in class and hearing someone else giggle and mention that the full pic is a Playboy centerfold. What is the dirty comment here: "Maybe you should pose for Playboy too?" "Oh, so that's why you got into CS?" These are extremely inane comments of a sort that I've never heard. But the poster I was replying to said he was 100% sure that ALL of the girls in the CS class would have been exposed to something like this due to Lena's cropped picture being used. I hope you will at least agree that this is, at minimum, crazed hyperbole.
So basically you admit that you see women as inherently weaker than men and believe you need to coddle and protect them... which inevitably means controlling them.
Funny how feminism has come full circle.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Try Again. Also CompSci is somewhere around 10% of conferred degrees and shrinking.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
We studied the effect of such stereotypes in an experimental market, where subjects were hired to perform an arithmetic task that, on average, both genders perform equally well. We find that without any information other than a candidate’s appearance (which makes sex clear), both male and female subjects are twice more likely to hire a man than a woman.
So basically you admit that you see women as inherently weaker than men and believe you need to coddle and protect them... which inevitably means controlling them.
Yes, i proclaim that females (usually) are inherently weaker than males, and the (stronger) males have (the moral duty) to coddle and protect them... which inevitably means controlling them (in the degree needed for coddling and protecting them).
Funny how feminism has come full circle.
Well, thank God that my mother (a very tough female!) never taught me this (modern) "feminism"...
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
This is hardly evidence that women "utterly dominate virtually every measure of academic success and achievement we have at pretty much every level."
Very cute trick you used there, going from a study proving women have an advantage in hiring commensurate with their phenomenal institutionalized advantages in education to claiming that said recorded facts don't exist. Very cute indeed.
Then again when your entire worldview and ideology, to say nothing of millions of dollars for massive lobbying efforts, is hinged on the idea that women are oppressed it is of course necessary to do everything possible to ensure that nobody ever admits women are not in fact oppressed and actually doing very well.
By the way going by your own link my study is both newer and more methodologically sound than yours since it's a randomized study with an N of nearly 1000 that actually controls its variables properly.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
The summary above is a complaint FFS and some of the comments here contain complaints. There's no need to bring imaginary factors in, lets just keep things real OK?
The boys in that class probably were (think back to your schooldays) so the search for something that was sourced from a centrefold is a fuckup on several levels.
Did a shock-jock eat your brain? No? Then lay off with the ridiculous over-reaction that insults the intelligence of everyone that reads it. You cannot possible be so stupid as to connect a complaint about porn in the classroom with a vast social conspiracy - shock-jocks had to destroy their brains with years of cocaine abuse to get that far.
A centrefold with nipples on show rated G in the land of the massive outrage of a nipple at the Superbowl? Not a chance of it being rated G. Mild or not, it's still porn in the CS class and the boys went into Bevis and Butthead mode which upset the girls. It was a fuckup. It's as stupid as rolling out the porn at Sunday school.
My artificial intelligence teacher told our class to search Google for Lena Soderberg
So at least one person is going to find out and spill the beans.
...
Way to get waaaay off the point, and you missed the "Art class? Maybe" above.
Deliberate pretence of stupidity is not cute you know.
The issue at hand is boys in a class giving a girl a hard time because the teacher fucked up, not ten tons of irrelevant baggage you want to pretend I'm against.
Don't get out much, do you? That look is - is this photo shoot finally done yet?
Never the less, she is a fine example of a woman and Heff realized it. He has a very fine eye. Reminds me of a 1978 I think photo of a 50 year old woman that was in playboy. Caption was she's hot isn't she? She's also 50. I can still see her in my mind.
It is astonishing to me how many ways commenters have found to contort themselves around the obvious problems that come with using a porn-derived image in a classroom.
We should try to create environments at school and at work where people can excel based on their ability, character, and drive. And we should try to break down barriers related to identity, whether they be external (limits imposed on someone by the prejudices of others) or internal (messages received by someone saying they don't belong, or aren't competent, that assault a person's self confidence purely because of their identity). That should go for our field, and for every field. That should go for every conceivable way we could label a person: gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, nationality, language, everything. This is liberalism 101.
This photo is a slap in the face. It is derived from porn, a medium that is today inseparable from images of women as objects for men to control and humiliate, and that obliterate women as human beings. Like it or not, these are the connotations of porn, and these are the messages that explode into the classroom when you put a playboy centrefold in your students' homework. Young women hear that this is how women are thought of in this field. Young men hear that it is OK think of women this way too. This isn't about causing offense, this isn't about anybody's feelings. This is about the tacit messages of porn infiltrating CS class.
Yes, the cropped image itself has no nudity. Yes, it's an established piece of CS history. Neither of these things lessen the problem.
Folks, your reaction here is a big part of the reason why we have a massive gender imbalance in software and IT. You and I are each responsible a little slice of the culture that has excluded women for so long, and we are each responsible for changing our slice for the better.
So, we have a situation with the following:
1. Teenaged or young adults-a group known for level headedness, quiet confidence and eminently sensible on matters of gender and sexuality.
2. One gender being very much in the minority.
3. The majority gender gathering round to have a giggle over nudie pics.
4.In a professional/educational environment.
If you don't see anything wrong with that picture, then you either have no empathy, have no understanding of people and have entirely forgotten what it was like to be a teenager.
The fact that you brought up the bobbit jokes indicates you simply don't care. It smacks of the attitude "well females did this thing that time, so males get to so something too now". If a bunch of women were doing that kind of thing in an inappropriate environment making a minority guy uncomfortable, then it was a shitty thing to do. Having some guys do the same doesn't even up the score, it just makes the world a worse place.
It also indicates that you view the world in a binary males versus females fashion (why else bring up something females did? ) which is a dumb ass attitude which propagates problems and nothing more.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Again, my main point is simply that there is a huge gulf between words like "unprofessional", "giggling", and even "awkward" and words like "hostile". You have yet to bridge this vast, vast gulf.
I remember being a teenager. I remember being around other teenagers. I do not remember giggling about particular pair of tits making any of us hostile towards other people who have tits. I remember some girls joking about it and some girls not joking about it. I remember some guys joking about it (a greater percentage than the girls, sure), and other guys not joking about it. I remember a handful of moments that were a bit awkward. What I cannot recall is any trace of anything I would call "hostility."
What is the submitter's beef? Or cheese cake, or whatever the current slang is? Or does he/ she/ it/ they not actually have enough of a complaint to express what they're complaining about?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Well, I believe you are mistaken. It's not a huge gulf it's more or less a smooth continuum.
Do you ever remember giggling around when in a class in which you were very much a minority in some respect, and the giggling around was along the lines of your minority aspect?
If not, your experience is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Uranus is named after a Greek god (Ouranos), slightly Romanized in spelling.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Look, at that age, lots of things were sexually suggestive to me, including but not limited to head shorts of attractive women. The ears are not what the problem is between.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
oh please. Those proto-neckbeards just bought Playboy for the fine articles.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Next time you see your great-granddad, ask him what he thinks about interracial marriages.
(That is basically the level of your argument, in case this isn't readily obvious.)
The point here is that there is a message conveyed. If I look at a nude photograph from an unknown source, I cannot state categorically that was done with intentions that objectify women. But this image is not from an unknown source - it is from a magazine that exists to objectify women and titillate men. When attitudes and intentions are the issue under debate, "ad hominem" is no longer a fallacy.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Have you ever dealt with actual High Schoolers?
Because your entire argument is based on abstract principles that have jack-squat to do with reality. 18-year-olds are not mature adults. Period. They have quite the legal responsibilities of adults, but nobody is surprised when they check a criminal record which includes a lot of stupid shit prior to the age of 21 and is clean thereafter. Just ask Jenna Bush. Her father took even longer to grow up.
The education strategy appropriate for them is not at all similar to the one you;d use with adults. Moreover, this story is not about 18-year-olds. It is about 16-year-olds. They have even less maturity. They have fewer legal responsibilities. If you give them rifles and send them to Afghanistan you get dinged by War Crimes Tribunals.
What happens when you give a class of 20 of them Lenna is quite simple:
A couple of them (95% of this groups will be boys) go crazy. They are so happy to be working with porn they barely contain their glee. As soon as teacher is out of the room they boast about it. All their friends/enemies/frenemies/random people walking the same hallway know about it. Within minutes everyone knows that if they, too, take this class next year they, too, will get to work with porn. Note that these boys are not mature or discerning enough to care that the actual bit of Lena that gets used is a headshot, all they care about is !!PORN!!*
Which really pisses off a couple of their classmates (probably majority girls, but committed religious boys would be here too). They did not go to a taxpayer-funded High School and take an Advanced Placement class in Computer Science because they wanted to have a deep discussion about contemporary sexual mores. They did not go because they wanted to listen to some juvenile gloat because this one time his mom can't yell at him for looking at Playboy. They went to learn about computers. And now everyone knows that a) they're in the porn class, and b) they had to work with porn. They, too, do not particularly care that it's a headshot with the actual porn removed.
If you're lucky you don't get in huge trouble for pissing off people who vote (ie: the religious boys I mentioned), and next year your class is full of bright young boys eager to work with porn and precisely nobody else. Thus the brogrammer problem.
What happened when this particular CompSci teacher tried it? A bunch of the boys went around boasting about porn which made at least one girl so uncomfortable that she went to her principle and got the entire class changed. And then she got the whole story written up in the national media because everyone more mature then a 16-year-old-boy could not believe some idiot teacher had tried to impose this on a class of 16-year-olds of both genders.
*Dwarf Fortress reference intentional.
If I look at a nude photograph
It's not a nude photograph - the content of the image has nothing to do with TFA's point.
it is from a magazine that exists to objectify women and titillate men
Stipulated. The interesting questions are, given the above two elements, should the image, despite it's unobjectionable content, be considered 'bad' in some way because of its provenance, and if so, why.
So far all I've heard is appeals to emotion - with which I am inclined to agree - but no arguments.
.: Semper Absurda
I think a better idea would be to encourage the students to participate in bringing their objections to the teacher, whom could let them do the assignment with a different image.
That's a great idea! Tell you what, from now on, lets bake sexist messages into every assignment in every class, so that our students can have endless learning experiences confronting their teacher's authority. Better than doing homework!
Good luck trying to remove Peppa Pig
Have you ever dealt with actual High Schoolers?
Because your entire argument is based on abstract principles that have jack-squat to do with reality.
I've been an Ice Hockey coach from the Squirt level to the Midget level. That's roughly 10 years old through 18 - 19 years old. I've been the president of a Youth Ice Hockey association, and probably surprisingly to you, associated with "Take our Daughters and Sons to Work" day for several years, and as part of that, attempted to steer young women toward Science and technical careers.
The young boys and girls on the hockey teams have a marked tendency to be well behaved at the squirt level - with only a few exceptions, then when puberty kicks in, can become quite erratic in behavior. By the time they reach 15 years old, most have adapted to the surging hormones. By the time they are at Midget age, they are pretty close to physical adulthood, and are in large part, pretty sensible, and are capable of making intelligent decisions. note: I was not around many young ladies at the midget level, because with a few exceptions, they had moved to women's Hockey from co-ed hockey due to differences in mass of the young men.
While my experience with the young ladies in the TOSADTW events was not as in-depth as the coaching, the same maturity level was true. Little kids that turned into giggly early teens, then by they time they were seniors, intelligent and articulate young ladies. If they were allowed.
18-year-olds are not mature adults. Period.
And some folks want to extend that age of adulthood to 25 years old. But it really doesn't matter, because children will stay children as long as you allow/force them to be children.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/ad...
I'll bet that 30 years might be the next extension.
Not too many years ago, people were married at the young age of thirteen or so, and supported themselves and raised families.
I was 21 when I was married, and my wife had just turned 18. I was working full time, just having started my first retirement program - at her insistence, which turned out to be a rather mature move on her part, perhaps?
But if you are correct about their immaturity, it is because we don't allow them to be mature, not because they are inherently biologically or psychologially incapable of maturity. Millions of years of evolution mock your "Period". If 18 year old people were not capable of maturity, we wouldn't be here today. We'd be sleeping with the fossils.
They have quite the legal responsibilities of adults, but nobody is surprised when they check a criminal record which includes a lot of stupid shit prior to the age of 21 and is clean thereafter.
And you know, some people never gain adult maturity either. Regardless, my notation of the biological versus artificially extended childhood still stands. You didn't see those 15 year olds a hundred years ago with a couple children getting into trouble.
Moreover, this story is not about 18-year-olds. It is about 16-year-olds. They have even less maturity. They have fewer legal responsibilities.
Sure. But it's part of the extended childhood thing. And I'm not even arguing against extended childhood within reason
But people - all of them - have to realize that there is simply no possible way to protect their children from every possible threat or from bad people, or even other people who are just goofy. That's why colleges had so many problems with Helicopter Parents. The parents were still trying to make every decision for the pseudo adults they were refusing to let go. Ever have a adult child call mommy and daddy, because some professor is "mean" to them, then the outraged parents demanded the professor be fired? It's happened. Ever see a parent scheduling their childs classe
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
First a totally off-topic question, which you (or may not) be able to answer:
How common is it for a High School Ice Hockey team, to have a couple of girls on defense because they're the only ones who know how to skate backwards? I read a story ages ago about hockey in Tennessee, and one of the things it said was this team's top two defenders were the coach's daughters, because when they were tiny they'd learned to figure skate, which meant skating backwards. And I thought "Gee, that makes sense, it's fucking Tennessee, they don't make a frozen pond in their back yard every year thing that the Canadians and Minnesotans do."
Now back to on-topic (or at least the off-topic we were discussing before), as I mentioned another time on one of these (it may even have been to you) I'm not sure you're maturity was actually emotional maturity. Years years, when the Baby Boom was entering the work force, somebody with a High School degree could get a job earning the equivalent of $10-15 an hour, full-time, virtually no questions asked. The staring UAW salary (which, again, was there for the taking for almost anybody who lived near a union auto plant), was the equivalent of $23.59 in 1970. That means just about any guy who could show on-time for a shift can afford to pay for a House, a wife (who may even be able to be a stay-at-home wife), and a couple kids; even if they're immature.
The 2015 economy is not that simple. Jobs for High School guys who will show up guaranteed are almost all part-time/minimum wage deals. The maturity level is irrelevant, no girl's gonna marry that. Much less settle down to be a stay-at-home mom. Jobs for college graduates (including two-year Associates programs) can be much better, and a college grad is pretty much by definition demonstrating a significant amount of maturity just by getting through a four-year-program that they had to design themselves. But unless you have the exact right major and/or are great at marketing/networking you can easily end up having student loans greater then 10% of your monthly income, which you deal with by getting on a payment plan, and whose gonna marry a guy who can't make his debt payments?
And in the end, if young women are so turned off by a completely innocuous photo that they declare that as a reason to go into another field, and that a photo like that is ispo facto sexual harassment, we have a choice of three things.
1.Try these obnoxious males as adult sexual offenders, and give them the same punishments.
2. completely segregate the sexes in school. Send boys to one, and girls to another. At that point, there will be no male harassment to dissuade the young ladies, and the field should quickly even out in a gender equitable mode
You're ignoring 3, just don't use the damn picture. There are plenty of other pictures. The world is not gonna end if you use a picture shot by the photography club. One of the kids finds it on his own, and tries to use it because it's "standard," you cross that bridge when you come to it. Depending on how you designed the assignment maybe you have to let him use another picture. But you do not announce to the class they should look for Lenna. If you don't get caught using Lenna you've pissed off several of your students to make the most obnoxious boys gleeful. If you do get caught you'll get written up in the Washington Post as "that guy," and thanking the author for not a) using your name, and b) insisting you be fired.
BTW, it's interesting how you've defined STEM. I'd say Veterinarian is one of the most STEM fields possible. And yes, for the record Veterinary schools try to figure out how to get guys to apply.
I'm perfectly happy to limit the conversation to your experience instead of mine. From what you have said, your experience appears to have been limited to being in a room with people who are giggling. I am sorry, but that is not the same thing as hostility.
Hostility implies some degree of anger and/or an adversarial stance. Giggling, by itself, does not imply any of that. There are certain pictures (e.g. let's take the extreme example of a picture of a woman being raped) that, if giggled at, would imply hostility--but a cropped version of a softcore nude picture is not such a picture. There are certain kinds of comments that, in tandem with giggling, could convey hostility. But you have not mentioned any of these comments. You seem to think that giggling over a naked woman is a hostile act, and that is ridiculous.
If you disagree, please pick up a dictionary of your choice and explain how your experience coincides with the definition of "hostility".
First a totally off-topic question, which you (or may not) be able to answer: How common is it for a High School Ice Hockey team, to have a couple of girls on defense because they're the only ones who know how to skate backwards?
The girls tend to play a little "smarter" than the boys do early on. And the Before puberty, the girls tend to be a bit bigger, and faster. It's when the boys start really really growing.
But that smarter thing is important, as a defense player has to be smart. A rule of thumb is that the Wingers tend to play better when they ar ea little pissed, the center has to have alittle control over emotion, but still being "wound up". But the D needs to be calmer and smarter, and needs to think a lot more on the ice. And there is that backward skating.
Which is to say that especially early on, the girls tend to be rather better.
What happens though, is after puberty has kicked in for the boys, they become incredibly strong and fast. So they can make up for some mistakes with speed. Though we always try to impress on anyone who wants to Play D that they have to skate backwards as much as they skate forwards.
So while the girls can still skate pretty well backwards, they aren't fast enough as they get ot the higher/older levels.
And then there is that mass thing. Someone like my son, who was 6 foot 4 and a something over 210 pounds as a senior, versus say someone like a young lady we had on our team who was areound 5 foot 4, and maybe 110 pounds, and a slower skater to boot, it was nasty. We allowed her to play as long as she wanted - even though her parents ended up wanting my help to convince her to quit. As a President of a youth hockey association, that is a minefield, so I couldn't do much but keep close tabe on her health. The association didn't carry several multi-million dollar liability insurance policies on me for nothing, and anything that even remotely resembles discrimination can get a lawsuit that you won't win, so if a female wanted to stick it out, she would get preferential treatment over a possibly more qualified male who was near the bottom of the talent roster - that's just the facts of life today.
But the poor girl was just head to toe bruises, and it was really pretty heartbreaking - I gotta give her credit for trying, but you we actually do like our players.
Fortunately, we went to a tournament in a city where she came form, and her friends on the team she was on before ours managed to talk her into joining up with them again. Playing with people her own mass and speed, she tore it up. Happy ending.
Now back to on-topic (or at least the off-topic we were discussing before), as I mentioned another time on one of these (it may even have been to you) I'm not sure you're maturity was actually emotional maturity.
Yeah, that's true, but its kind of like how I'm more mature now at my age than I was even ten years ago, and I'm as old as dirt. A person 18 years old isn't as mature as one that's 21. But we gotta start someplace to call them adults.
The 2015 economy is not that simple. Jobs for High School guys who will show up guaranteed are almost all part-time/minimum wage deals. The maturity level is irrelevant, no girl's gonna marry that. Much less settle down to be a stay-at-home mom. Jobs for college graduates (including two-year Associates programs) can be much better, and a college grad is pretty much by definition demonstrating a significant amount of maturity just by getting through a four-year-program that they had to design themselves.
Wow, we're all over the place - that's okay, its good to have a mature conversation here - Yes, I agree with what you say there.
But unless you have the exact right major and/or are great at marketing/networking you can easily end up having student loans greater then 10% of your monthly income, which you deal with by getting on a payment plan, and
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Cropped? Who said anything about cropped. Sure the original test image is, but b let me assure you that people don't giggle over that.
If you think such behavior simply bounces off minority nervous teenagers, then you have entirely forgotten what being a teenager is like. This kind of thing very very much gets in the way of education which as you recall is the entire point of the exercise.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
So it was uncomfortable, sure. And perhaps it should have been stopped or prevented. You could even (though I personally disagree) make an argument that the awkward giggling should be proactively prevented by not using the image.
I'm just asking for a little honesty in language. I expect this kind of behavior from the Right, but as I get older I am noticing more and more newspeak tendencies from the Left as well. "Hostile" is an actual English word with actual English meanings, none of which are a synonym for "awkward", "embarrassing", "uncomfortable", "distracting", "prurient" or any of the other fine English words we have at our disposal to characterize the events you have described.
In case you think I'm making a mountain over a molehill here, "hostile" is a word that dovetails nicely into the ridiculous MRA vs. SJW nonsense that is wasting time and distracting from very real issues of gender inequality in the world (the large majority of which are of course anti-female, at least on a global scale.)
It's oddly entertaining that you're trying to argue against my personal experience with semantics. But OK...
So it was uncomfortable, sure. And perhaps it should have been stopped or prevented. You could even (though I personally disagree) make an argument that the awkward giggling should be proactively prevented by not using the image.
OK, why do you disagree. In what way is that sort of thing appropriate for such an environment.
I'm just asking for a little honesty in language.
I'm not convinced. You are engaging in semantic nit-picking which I would hardly classify as honesty in language. There's also a completely smoothe continuum from "not hostile" to "really very very hostile".
I expect this kind of behavior from the Right, but as I get older I am noticing more and more newspeak tendencies from the Left as well.
Ah, so you have bought into the idea that political views are one dimensional? Interesting, but a debate for another thread, I think.
"Hostile" is an actual English word with actual English meanings
To the dictionary batman!
1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of an enemy: hostile forces; hostile acts. 2. Feeling or showing enmity or ill will: interpreted the remark as hostile.
3. Being in opposition; opposed: hostile to the proposal.
4. Unfavorable to health or well-being; inhospitable or adverse: a hostile climate.
Shoving someone into embarressing situations intentionally is a pretty hostile things ot d oand it fits well enough with the definitions above. You don't need to be actively being physically attacked for something to be hostile.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Listening to someone talk hockey brings back memories...
As an ex-Detroiter in Cleveland it's very rare for me to encounter anyone who knows what a Left Wing is, much less understands anything about the game.
You're ignoring 3, just don't use the damn picture. There are plenty of other pictures. The world is not gonna end if you use a picture shot by the photography club.
The problem though, as I see it, is not necessarily the original photo. It's the whole clusterfuck of the photo as proof that men are sexist pigs, and that is an acceptable reason to call them pigs, and that somethig has to be done. Yes, you can use a different photo. But do you have to make it a national story, broadly calling all men sexist pigs? We get very very close to saying that young men should not ever be around young women. Because both sexes spend a lot of time thinking about the other sex at that age, yes boys, but girls too. We will not scrub sex from any career.
You're reading the "all men are sexist pigs" bit into her piece. She's not denigrating all men, or even a particular man, she's denigrating using a pic from Playboy in High School. And given a) the maturity level of all teenagers, b) the probable reaction of some of them (mostly boys) to be being able to use the pic, and c) the probable reaction of others (mostly girls) to said reaction it's hard to argue with her case.
She's 17. The article was written about a class when she was 16. his is a country where most teenagers go through abstinence only sex ed. Sex-positive is controversial, and having your 10th graders use a Playboy pic is one of the most sex-positive things you could do.
BTW, it's interesting how you've defined STEM. I'd say Veterinarian is one of the most STEM fields possible. And yes, for the record Veterinary schools try to figure out how to get guys to apply.
You see, I'm not the one defining it . Despite the 80 percent females in Veterinarian schools, how much do we hear about "Veterinarian careers ar ea shinig example of success in getting young women into science fields" How do we emulate that success in other careers?
If you read articles on Veterinary medicine you'll find plenty of talk about it. But if you read articles about STEM in general it gets one line because it is one line, and since the field was male-dominated for so long even roughly a decade of 3/4 of new vets being female means it's still quite close 50/50.
Cornell did an article on this a ways back:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/st...
Is that guys have simply stopped applying. Which makes sense. It's very difficult to get into Vet School (in many cases more difficult then Medical School), it's as hard as Med School, and when you get out your salary is comparable to an MD during his residency. Which is more then I will ever make, but don;t try telling an MD his residency salary was anything but a pittance.
Which means you only apply if you have a true passion for making pets feel better from childhood, and the people like that are mostly girls.
I have never heard that. In fact, I have heard some women complain about that, saying it still isn't "right". There will soon be no male veterinarians. Hell where we take our pets, there is a staff of 25.
1 male staff person, the guy who cleans up. That's a sample of 1, but it meshes well with the statistics if a little worse (unless the goal is no males
Young vets are female. The ones in a large practice like that are going to be mostly young, and probably disproportionately female for their generation because guys are less risk-averse and thus more likely to hang out a shingle of their very own.
My point in all of this, is that we have to be careful who we listen to. And what we have been listening to is a tremendous amount of n
No one brought 'sexuality' into the classroom. It's a picture of a face.
Then that's their problem. It's still just a picture of a face.
I'm being trolled here, aren't I?
What are you, some sort of weird face fetishist?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them