The other big gender-disparity graph making the rounds yesterday was this one showing the gender distribution in the general workforce and comparing that to science-related fields: This comes from an Economics and Statistics Administration report which has one of the greatest mismatches between the tone of the headline of the press release and the tone of the report itself. Nice work, Commerce Department PR flacks. There are a couple of oddities about this report, the most important being that they appear to have excluded academics from the sample, though that probably depends on how people…

There are two recent studies of gender disparities in science and technology (referred to by the faintly awful acronym "STEM") getting a lot of play over the last few days. As is often the case with social-science results, the data they have aren't quite the data you would really like to have, and I think it's worth poking at them a little, not to deny the validity of the results, but to point out the inherent limitations of the process. The first is a study of lifetime earnings in various fields that includes this graph showing that women with a Ph.D. earn about the same amount as men with a…

PhD thesis delight | Turning mirrors "In the beginning vast public funding created heavenly lab-space on earth. Now the labs were formless and empty and the spirited physicists were contemplating over their future experiments. And they said let there be light and they built a grating stabilised external cavity diode laser. And they said let there be an optical table to separate the floor from the ceiling. And it was bought. And they browsed through catalogues from Thorlabs, MiniCircuits, and Farnell and populated the optical table and the racks above it and the entire floor-space below it.…

An angle I had hoped to get to in last week's broader impacts post, but didn't have time for, was this piece questioning meet-the-scientist programs by Aimee Stern at Science 2.0: Over the past several years, a growing number of trade associations, foundations and science and engineering companies have started major efforts to get scientists into schools and hopefully inspire students with what they do. The goal, of course, is to get kids interested in pursuing careers in scientific fields, by showing them just how cool science is. But I wonder - no matter how well meaning, how much do these…

It's that time of year again, when I start thinking about my fall term classes. I would really prefer to put it off for another couple of weeks, and I will put off spending much time on class prep in favor of finishing up some paper-writing and other things, but when the calendar turns to August, I inevitably start thinking about what I'm going to be doing in September, no matter how much I'd like to be thinking about other things instead. This year is worse than most, because I'm planning to really shake things up with regard to the way I teach the intro mechanics course. I've been doing…

News: The Education/Religion Connection - Inside Higher Ed "For years, a commonly held belief has been that more educated Americans are less likely to embrace religion. But an article forthcoming (abstract available here) in The Review of Religious Research suggests that the relationship between education and faith is more nuanced, and that more education has a negative impact only on certain religious questions, not on all of them. Some religious beliefs and practices -- including belief in God and regular prayer -- increase with years of education, the research found." Lev Grossman |…

SteelyKid has used a pacifier from very shortly after she was born. We've been slowly working her off it-- she's stopped taking it to day care, or using it other than at bedtime or in the car-- but she's resisted giving it up entirely. since she's now a great big three-year old, we decided it was time to ditch the pacifier completely. For help in this, we turned to her favorite tv show: MythBusters: In that clip, Adam and Jamie investigate how difficult it is to take candy from a baby. This, predictably enough, results in a bunch of unhappy babies. SteelyKid has watched this clip a lot, so…

When we got home from visiting Kate's family yesterday, there was a large shipping envelope from my agent waiting for us. This can mean only one thing: author copies of foreign editions! That's the Czech edition, Jak nauÄit svého psa fyziku, which seems to have used the same glasses-wearing golden retriever as the Brazilian edition. The overlaid equations and graphics are lifted directly from the translated figures, which is nice. My new favorite edition, though, is the Korean edition, whose cover designer went for "Puppy Innnn SPAAAAAACE!!!" as a concept: There's nothing remotely…

While future historians will undoubtedly remember August 7th primarily as SteelyKid's birthday (it would be irresponsible of me to encourage people to go edit the Wikipedia date page accordingly, wouldn't it?), there was another locally important event on August 7th, some years earlier: August 7th, 2001, saw my first blog post ever, the inaugural post of my old book log The Library of Babel, so long ago it was hand-crafted HTML with no item permalinks-- scroll all the way to the bottom to see the first entry. It's a little hard to believe that I've been doing this blogging thing for a decade…

Well, you're right. The cutest toddler in the universe turns three today: Happy birthday, SteelyKid!

Chuck Klosterman on Planet of the Apes and Project Nim - Grantland I'm a pretty massive Planet of the Apes fan, even though I'm never able to watch an entire Planet of the Apes movie without reading a magazine. It's definitely my favorite film franchise that's 80 percent boring. I really, really love the first 20 minutes of the 1968 original film, and I've probably rewatched that opening sequence a dozen times: I relate to Charlton Heston's character2 and adore the idea of gorillas riding horses while playing instruments that remind me of Jonny Greenwood's solo album. There are numerous…

Last week, I asked for advice on the show Fringe, because I need to be able to speak sensibly about it for the purpose of talking about parallel universes. I've been working through Janne's list of recommended episodes, watching on my laptop while SteelyKid goes to sleep, and have got up through the Season 3 premiere. So, what's the verdict? The three-word review is "Entertaining but maddening." Because it's pretty well done in an X-Files kind of way, but partakes of all the things that drive me nuts about the portrayal of science in fiction. The chief problem with this is that, in fine…

Chuck Klosterman on the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction - Grantland "[T]hat's what's so weird about the whole Hall of Fame process: The public sees it as an argument, but -- within the mind of the elite athlete -- it must be one of the most confusing, painfully personal scenarios they'll ever experience. Being inducted into a Hall of Fame is both the greatest thing that can happen to an athlete and the effective end to his or her cultural import; being rejected by a Hall of Fame is a major blow to one's self-image and the single-best thing that can happen to a retired player's legacy. The…

As she never tires of telling us, SteelyKid keeps getting bigger and bigger. How big? She can touch the ceiling! OK, she has to be on my shoulders to do it, but the distance between her head and the ceiling has gotten really small. She's huge! the picture above was taken by Kate standing a few steps up on the stairs. For the ground-level effect (more or less), click through below the fold. She wouldn't allow a picture tonight, which is a shame, because we spent at least half an hour playing the world's most ridiculous game of hide-and-seek. But these, from last night, were too good not to…

I didn't pay that much attention to the mini-controversy over the NSF's proposed revision of its grant evaluation criteria when they were first released, because I was working on the book. I was asked to say something about it yesterday, though, and having gone to the trouble, I might as well say something on the blog, too. The main source of complaint is the "Broader Impacts" section of the grant, a category that has always been sort of nebulous, but which the new standards attempt to clarify: Collectively, NSF projects should help to advance a broad set of important national goals,…

Back at the AAAS Meeting, I was really annoyed by a session on fracking, the process by which natural gas is extracted from shale deep underground. As I wrote at the time, regarding the industry shills who spoke: I left before the whole thing had wrapped up, because it was that or start throwing stuff at Martin and Gorody. Honestly, their presentations made me more convinced than ever that we need strict regulations governing the development of the shale. While the gas will inevitably be extracted (unless somebody comes up with a cheap and readily manufactured solar cell with 60% efficiency…

The science and magic of beer | Andy Connelly | Science | guardian.co.uk "Beer is the juice of grain skilfully treated: it is liquid bread. The first people to make beers as we know them today were the Sumerians, who cultivated cereal grains specifically for brewing and drank beer to honour their gods. Many cultures have seen beer as a gift from God (a medieval English term for yeast was godisgoode). It is an expression of place and tradition - one of the few truly regional foods to which we are regularly exposed. Brewing is a combination of art and science and great brewers are blessed…

Several weeks ago, now, SteelyKid flipped out at bedtime. We had told her that the episode of MythBusters playing on the DVR was the last one for the night, but when it ended, she demanded more. When we said no, she went into a full-on toddler freakout, screaming, crying, kicking the floor. I eventually carried her upstairs, put her on her bed, and waited until she could get herself under control enough to talk in a halfway normal voice. Once she did, we negotiated a compromise. We wouldn't put MythBusters back on tv, but we would go back downstairs and watch three short videos on my…

In the "ideas I wish I'd thought of first" file, the Canberra Times has an op-ed comparing politicians to quantum objects, because they seem to hold contradictory positions at the same time, and are impossible to pin down. It garbles the physics a little, and is very specific to Australia, though, so let's see if we can do a little better at identifying quantum properties of US politicians. Duality: Quantum physics tells us that all objects in the universe have both particle-like and wave-like properties, and which you observer will depend on the design of your experiment. Similarly, quantum…

The Worlds Weirdest Book A truly unique work of fiction, ââ¬ËThe Codex Seraphinianusââ¬Ë is a book that appears to be a visual encyclopedia of some unknown world or dimension. Written down in one of that worlds beautiful curving languages, the book by Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini, explains the odd inhabitants and their colorful behaviors. The book was created between 1976 and 1978 and for the low price of about $500.00 you can ponder over your own copyââ¬Â¦ Views: Myths About Fair Use - Inside Higher Ed "Academics potentially enjoy some of the greatest…