Feminist Foremothers
thusspakezuska | July 6, 2010By now, perhaps, you are aware of the uproar about the ScienceBlogs corner of the bloggysphere. PepsiCo has bought started a blog here, called Food Frontiers. Many are unhappy, bloggers and commenters alike. Read PalMD's take, and commenters there, for one perspective.
One of the potential disadvantages [of a blog network] is advertising and sponsorship. Here at Sb, we've been very fortunate in that our content is completely independent. We control anything in the center column. The top and right however belong to Sb, and they use this space to keep the place running. There have been…
thusspakezuska | July 1, 2010BREAK THE CHAINS!!!
UNLEASH THE FURY OF ZOMBIE WOMEN AS A MIGHTY FORCE FOR REVOLUTION!!!!!
Zombie women of the world, I ask you: why are we content to shamble aimlessly along behind our brethren, following them willy-nilly, eating the leftover brains, and cleaning up after they senselessly destroy some village? Would it kill them to take a turn minding the zombikins for a change? No, it would not. Because they are undead.
There I was just last week, shambling along after Nigel on Shakedown Street. Like he knew where he was going! "Would it fucking KILL you to stop and ask for directions…
thusspakezuska | June 24, 2010While I was at work on this whole work-life balance stuff, a raging conversation sprung up on the WMST-L listserv about domestic workers and whether feminist women should or should not hire someone to clean their houses and help take care of their kids. (The discussion is still going on.) Some of the more interesting points have to do with questioning why this work has to be called women's work, and why it just can't be called work proper, and given some respect, and along with that some decent wages and benefits.
Meryl Altman, a professor at DePauw, posted a link to a short video, "Women…
thusspakezuska | March 26, 2010March is women's history month, but don't let that circumscribe your fun. You can get together with a posse of your like-minded women friends and mock mansplainers anytime. Now, I know many of you have just recently learned that there even existed a name you could attach to this annoying behavior plaguing your existence. Believe me, I know how important naming experience is - that's why I have a whole category assigned to the topic. But your joy need not begin and end with just knowing that the craptastic manifestations you've been subjected to are (1) not your fault, (2) part of a larger…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2010This is the third and final part of a multi-part presentation of a sample chapter from a forthcoming book, The Madame Curie Complex. Part One can be found here. Part Two can be found here.
Recently I was approached with an offer to share with my readers a sample chapter from a forthcoming book called The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science. A caveat: I have not read the whole book, and offering the sample chapter here for you to read does not constitute an endorsement by me of the book. But I was sufficiently intrigued by the sample chapter I read to think it…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2010This is part two of a multi-part presentation of a sample chapter from a forthcoming book, The Madame Curie Complex. Part One can be found here. Part Three can be found here.
Recently I was approached with an offer to share with my readers a sample chapter from a forthcoming book called The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science. A caveat: I have not read the whole book, and offering the sample chapter here for you to read does not constitute an endorsement by me of the book. But I was sufficiently intrigued by the sample chapter I read to think it was worth sharing…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2010This is part one of a multi-part presentation of a sample chapter from a forthcoming book, The Madame Curie Complex. Part Two can be found here. Part Three can be found here.
This is something a little different for TSZ. Recently I was approached with an offer to share with my readers a sample chapter from a forthcoming book called The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science. A caveat: I have not read the whole book, and offering the sample chapter here for you to read does not constitute an endorsement by me of the book. But I was sufficiently intrigued by the…
thusspakezuska | February 5, 2010Penny Richards has created a new purse, available on her Etsy site. Here's some info about it she shared with me (details about the purse construction available on the site):
[the purse honors] Melba Roy, a Howard University graduate (undergrad and masters) who was a mathematician at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in the 1960s. She led a team (four women, seven men) who did computations to track the movements of satellites. I wish I could find more about her, but there's nothing much online--can't even find a birth year (or death date, but she might still be alive).
Get it while it's…
thusspakezuska | December 29, 2009Last time I checked, Erma Bombeck, when she was alive, was a hugely popular American humorist who wrote a newspaper column and published 15 books, most of which were best sellers. She came from the working class, and made quite a successful career for herself in publishing, at a time when women normally did not have careers.
But apparently, since she wrote about housewives and domestic issues, there's nothing to admire about what she did. And if you want to mock a woman writer these days, why, you just link her to Erma Bombeck and call it at day. See: "Erma-Bombeckian" (Steven Pinker…
thusspakezuska | November 24, 2009Part of my socialization into the world of science and engineering was, of course, the worship of great and important historical figures in the professions who, naturally, just happened to all be white males. This socialization was an informal, even casual, process - passing references in the introductory matter of various textbooks; framed portraits and busts on the walls and in the halls of university buildings dedicated to science and engineering; and the ubiquitous idolatry of a few key figures, e.g.: Galileo, Newton, Mendeleev, Darwin, Einstein.
As an acolyte of science, I was more…
thusspakezuska | May 5, 2009Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad frets about committing physics heresy via a reading of Goldilocks and the Three Bears to his young offspring.
The story may convey a useful moral message, but it's way off base on the physics.
After all, the Papa Bear, being the biggest, presumably has the largest bowl of porridge. Here, the story fits what we know about thermodynamics, as the largest bowl should take the longest time to cool, and thus should be the hottest at any time before the porridge bowls reach thermal equilibrium with their environment.
The description provided of the other two bowls…
thusspakezuska | March 26, 2009
It's here! The second edition of the Diversity in Science Carnival! But it wouldn't be here today without the help of Dr. Free-ride and Dr. Isis. With all the time I have had to devote to my mother and her issues the past two weeks, there is no way I could have gotten the carnival up today without their help. Indeed they really get full credit. I haven't even managed to finish a special post I wanted to do for the carnival - so check back later. I'll update when I have it done and add it in here.
But enough of my travails! Let's get on to the really good stuff submitted to this…
thusspakezuska | March 23, 2009Yeah, I should be asleep, restoring strength for spending another day with mom. But I'm catching up on email and blogs and preparing for the upcoming Diversity in Science Carnival WHICH YOU SHOULD TOTALLY BE WRITING SOMETHING FOR - GET BUSY, NOW!
And in the course of all that I read this post by Stephanie Z which led me to Sheril Kirshenbaum's post (Goodbye, Sheril, we will totally miss you here at Scienceblogs) Where Are The Women With BIG Ideas?
I'd like to point readers to a recent piece from The Guardian asking 'Where are the books by women with big ideas?'
Books like Freakonomics,…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2009Just in time for Women's History Month and the second edition of the Diversity in Science Carnival, the Association for Computing Machinery has announced that the 2008 Turing Award goes to Barbara Liskov! Here's all the info from the press release:
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named Barbara Liskov of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the winner of the 2008 ACM A.M. Turing Award. The award cites Liskov for her foundational innovations to designing and building the pervasive computer system designs that power daily life. Her achievements in programming…
thusspakezuska | July 20, 2008This weekend is the 160th anniversary of the first (US) women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, July 19 and 20, 1848. At Seneca Falls, Elizabeth Cady Stanton rewrote the Declaration of Independence as the Declaration of Women's Rights, beginning, of course, with "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal..." And the Declaration included the shocking call for women's right to vote. It took 72 years till the right to vote was accomplished.
The final resolution in the Declaration called "for the overthrowing of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for…