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Zuska is the kick-ass alter-ego of Suzanne E Franks. When not dispensing Zuska's wisdom, Suzanne can often be found gardening, reading, or having one of her thrice-weekly migraines.
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19 Questions With Zuska
The place where I come from...is a small town. Coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains
You will be wanting to read my excellent essay, 'Suzy the Computer' vs. 'Dr. Sexy': What's a Geek Girl to Do When She Wants to Get Laid? in She's Such a Geek! Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff.
If you have not yet figured out why you shoud not be using terms like "hard science" and "soft skills", then you absolutely need to read Telling Stories About Engineering: Group Dynamics and Resistance to Diversity in NWSA Journal v. 16 No. 1, 2004 (Re)Gendering Science Fields.
You should also read They Blinded Me With Science: Misuse and Misunderstanding of Biological Theory, an excellent critique of Thornhill and Palmer's nonsense about rape as an evolutionary strategy. You can find it in Burack and Josephson's must-read tome, Fundamental Differences: Feminists Talk Back to Social Conservatives.

Support the Mautner Project for Lesbians With Cancer! "The Mautner Project improves the health of lesbians, bisexual, and transgender women who partner with women, and their families, through advocacy, education, research, and direct service. [The Mautner Project envisions] a healthcare system that is guided by social justice and responsive to the needs of all people."
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August 31, 2007
Category: Announcements
Just a very short post to tell you all that I've had migraine all day, and am still headachy. Which means no Friday Bookshelf today (maybe tomorrow) and quite possible a delay in Scientiae. I doubt I will get it...
Read on »
Posted by Zuska at 4:58 PM • 2 Comments •
August 30, 2007
Category: Manly Men
Alert reader Linda Carpenter has given me a heads-up about a forthcoming book that is a "take down of ev-psych style cave-masculinity". Ooh, that sounds tasty! The book is The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and...
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Posted by Zuska at 10:22 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: What They're Saying
Perusing Google Reader tonight, and here are some items of note: Absinthe seems to be in a bad way, at least as regards blogging and the blogosphere. Doesn't seem to be much we can do to cheer her or change...
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Posted by Zuska at 9:58 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Naming Experience
As a graduate student at MIT, my daily commute took me past a construction site bordered by the sort of concrete dividers you see along highways. It was a pretty long stretch of concrete dividers, and on it someone had...
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Posted by Zuska at 5:31 PM • 12 Comments •
August 29, 2007
Category: Announcements
By way of the Chronicle news blog: The National Institutes of Health has released new guidance about its policies on diversity and on child care. One set of guidelines, or "frequently asked questions," released Friday, concerns the NIH's efforts to...
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Posted by Zuska at 4:25 PM • 1 Comments •
August 28, 2007
Category: Announcements
Maybe by now you've noticed the new box at the top of the comments, just below every post, asking you to enter the ScienceBlogs 500,000th comment contest. You have to submit your email address with your comment to be entered....
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Posted by Zuska at 6:11 PM • 4 Comments •
August 25, 2007
Category: Friday Fare
I'm supposed to be enjoying the music at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival this afternoon. But it's a hundred and ten, hundred and ten in the shade. And I don't know if I can even drag my ass out there for...
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Posted by Zuska at 1:09 PM • 0 Comments •
August 24, 2007
Category: Announcements
There was no Friday Bookshelf last week because I was in NYC having a good time, I mean discussing science and such with the Scibling crew. This week I am in Gettysburg for the Bluegrass Festival, so no Bookshelf again....
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Posted by Zuska at 2:03 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Friday Fare
Thanks to the Chronicle for pointing me to Beloit College's annual Mind-Set List, which reminds us just how out of touch we old fogies are with this year's crop of first-year students. As the Chronicle notes: The Mind-Set List draws...
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Posted by Zuska at 2:00 PM • 12 Comments •
August 22, 2007
Category: Announcements
So, Happy Blogiversary to me! One year ago today I officially started blogging here at Science Blogs. Here's my incredibly dull first entry. Although I did use the word "penis" in it. By the way, this is also my 300th...
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Posted by Zuska at 3:32 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Daily Struggles
It isn't enough to merely abstain from attending the cock-fight, so to speak.
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Posted by Zuska at 3:29 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Burns My Shorts
Perhaps you don't remember an entry I wrote about a year ago titled Pink Is For Boys, Blue Is For Girls. I linked to a Fairer Science post that was debunking a Times Online editorial suggesting girls had a biologically...
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Posted by Zuska at 3:08 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Announcements
The end of the month is creeping up on you, faster than you think. So doggone it, get your post for the Sept. 1 Scientiae carnival written and submitted! Or at least start thinking about procrastinating writing it. Remember the...
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Posted by Zuska at 2:47 PM • 2 Comments •
August 20, 2007
Category: Announcements
You must read what Pat has to say about APS's CSWP compiling a list of female-friendly physics departments.
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Posted by Zuska at 7:41 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Ludicrous Language
The cannon fodder of science.
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Posted by Zuska at 4:18 PM • 32 Comments •
Category: Friday Fare
You know, bad karaoke can happen to good Sciblings. But however distressing some people might find the proceedings, other people will always blend tastefully with the surroundings. Kevin and Karmen just sat back and took it all in. As Chris...
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Posted by Zuska at 1:40 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Burns My Shorts
This is puzzling...surely if Nature had already updated its mission statement, it would not need to write an editorial about updating its mission statement, right?
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Posted by Zuska at 11:07 AM • 5 Comments •
August 19, 2007
Category: Friday Fare
Sciblings in NYC....we came, we met, we ate and drank, we talked nonstop, thanks to Seed and Adam Bly. I did not puke on Adam Bly's shoes after all. He is a very nice guy. And has a beautiful home...
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Posted by Zuska at 10:34 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Apologists for the Oppressors
Scientist, you see , actually means "men of science".
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Posted by Zuska at 8:36 PM • 14 Comments •
August 16, 2007
Category: Burns My Shorts
...physicists are studying how Nature has managed to warp the space-time continuum...
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Posted by Zuska at 7:54 PM • 22 Comments •
Category: Naming Experience
who knew???
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Posted by Zuska at 5:39 PM • 23 Comments •
August 15, 2007
Category: Daily Struggles
We learn our gender politics early and often, and in the strangest of places.
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Posted by Zuska at 6:59 PM • 4 Comments •
August 14, 2007
Category: Naming Experience
G.I. Joe rampaged through the prom with his gun and took Barbie hostage.
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Posted by Zuska at 3:11 AM • 16 Comments •
August 13, 2007
Category: Why Aren't You Reading This?
Benjamin Cohen at The World's Fair has an excellent post up that should interest many readers of this blog. It is an interview with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in...
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Posted by Zuska at 10:53 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Burns My Shorts
Yes, global warming be damned, no technology is too expensive for Debbie to get back to simpler times and fresher scents.
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Posted by Zuska at 4:34 PM • 16 Comments •
August 11, 2007
Category: Daily Struggles
Where, indeed, did those women go to answer nature's call all those years when the buildings had few or no women's restrooms?
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Posted by Zuska at 9:16 AM • 13 Comments •
August 10, 2007
Category: Friday Bookshelf
Three for the price of one in this week's Friday Bookshelf! Which maybe makes up a little for the complete lack of a Friday Bookshelf last week. First up is Lynn M. Osen's classic, originally published in 1974 and simply...
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Posted by Zuska at 2:13 PM • 0 Comments •
August 9, 2007
Category: Totally Freaked
I read this article in the LA Times about Russians racing to claim the seabed under the Arctic ice as their territory, other nations fussing that it's really theirs, and everybody ignoring that the only way they can even have...
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Posted by Zuska at 3:55 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: The Occasional Post on National Politics
It's not that people walk into the voting booth and say "no way I'm voting for a woman!"
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Posted by Zuska at 3:15 PM • 10 Comments •
August 8, 2007
Category: Announcements
I just wanted to take a minute to explicitly thank the two readers who created the nifty new banners you've been seeing here at TSZ. The banner on the main page was created by Alexis and the banner on the...
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Posted by Zuska at 5:32 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Stereotypes We Know And Love
Why, wastecans all over campus will be full of used menstrual pads and tampons!
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Posted by Zuska at 5:16 PM • 12 Comments •
August 6, 2007
Category: Announcements
Does something make you so angry you think it might just destroy the world if you let it out?
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Posted by Zuska at 3:59 PM • 0 Comments •
August 3, 2007
Category: Why Aren't You Reading This?
The latest Scientiae is up over at Twice's place. Haven't browsed through it all yet, but it's always good reading, so go read!...
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Posted by Zuska at 12:28 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Friday Fare
Oh, the mighty struggle of sperm to fertilize egg!
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Posted by Zuska at 12:26 PM • 0 Comments •