is you is or is you ain't?

the caster semenya debate (is she a woman?) seems almost like a performance studies case file. i don't mean to assume any identification for her, conventional or non-, but continue to marvel that in the face of so much evidence that gender and sex simply can't be accounted for by a binary, debate still centers around the is/isn't she armwrestle rather than a suggestion of a continuum (or series of venn diagrams, or a polymap, or . . . whatever someone smart is going to come up with next).

my favorite quote: “For me, she is not a woman" (Italy's Elisa Piccione, an eclisped competitor). not that it's contingent, or anything.

(also interesting? that image, which i shamelessly ganked from the site cited below, has a default file name that starts with "BOY2". someone's decided.)


story via the UK times online.

senior cyborgs, robot unemployment.

"In a sport tarnished by doping scandals, the older athletes raise anew the question of what constitutes a natural body for people who are at an age when drugs are a part of life."

and: "Japan’s legions of robots, the world’s largest fleet of mechanized workers, are having a tough time finding work as the country suffers its deepest recession in more than a generation."

particularly interesting locution on the last story . . . a generation of mechanized workers? o, the humanity.

both via the new york times, registration may be required (try bugmenot).