Isn't It Ironic?

It seems all the Science Bloggers are doing it... ...submitting their blogs for rating at this site. I am so proud to say TSZ came up with an R rating. Mingle2 - Online Dating Bora has an NC-17 but he's the only one. He's the only one in lots of ways, though, you know?? (I mean that in a good way, Bora!) My rating was based on the presence of the following words: sex (8x) pain (3x) poop (2x) puke (1x) Now, I am absolutely sure that the word "puke" appears more than one time on this blog, so maybe I really should have an NC-17. But, whatever. I'm no "G" blogger like PZ, Doc…
The New York Times reports today on a study published today in two papers in Science (Science 22 June 2007: Vol. 316. no. 5832, p. 1717) and Intelligence: "Research Finds Firstborns Gain The Higher I.Q." The study could settle more than half a century of scientific debate! Frank J. Sulloway, psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, says "I consider these two papers the most important publications to come out in this field in 70 years; it's a dream come true...there was some room for doubt about this effect before, but that room has now been eliminated" !!!!! Get this: The…
For those who may be interested, I have written an addendum to the infamous "I Support Gender Equity in Principle..." post. The very ugly comments thread on that post is now closed. You'll notice you can't post comments here either. I'm doing this for my mental health. It's either this, or all gardening and no blogging.
UPDATE: I have appended some text to this post at the end. I have closed the comments on this post because they have become so unpleasant all around and I don't think further dialogue here is serving any positive purpose. If you disagree with me, I'm sorry. I'm also sorry I didn't do this a lot sooner. I was browsing around Absinthe's blog looking for something in an old post when I happened across an entry I had missed. It seems Absinthe has taken down an older post discussing the differential treatment of two physicists - husband and wife - at Fermilab. The post commented on an…
I sat down on my front porch this afternoon with a cup of coffee and the Philadelphia Inquirer and I was shocked beyond belief to find Jonathan Storm , the Inquirer's tv critic, offering up a critique of not just one new fall tv show, but the entire new fall lineup of all three networks, based on nothing more than "clips and the networks' hyperbole-heavy presentations to advertisers (all a critic has to go on at this early stage)". Well. This is an outrage! I am particularly hoping that Chris over at Mixing Memory will get on the horn ASAP and let Mr. Storm know just what he thinks of…
So, the Chronicle of Higher Education announced a new blog On Hiring. An item of interest: Don't Just Search, Recruit. There's a link in the post to a Heads Up column on the topic, which I read in this week's print version. It's a great article, with lots of good tips, most of which are summarized neatly in the On Hiring blog post. Design a Web site dedicated to the search with links that will showcase the institution and the community. Advertise in multiple venues so "the greatest number of people have the potential to see the announcement." A little extra personal attention goes…
So, I just finished reading Lost Clown's tale of her entry into mathematics - from feminist theory. (Thanks to Sciencewoman's compilation for the 6th round of Scientiae for leading me to that post!) It's really inspiring, and exciting to hear how Lost Clown's physics teacher helped her find her true love of math and physics and encouraged her to pursue it. Her physics teacher also talked with her about mixing feminism with science: We had many discussions about me going into a scientific field; I was still concerned about leaving a possible career in women's studies for one in science, she…
Bora notes that some people are wondering why there aren't more Indian (or Serbian) science bloggers. Bora links to an interesting post from Selva on this topic. This is all very ironic to me because just two days ago I discovered the blog Nanopolitan (which, as it turns out, Selva has on his blogroll, so I could have discovered a lot sooner and by a lot less circuitous route than the one I followed). Nanopolitan is written by T. A. Abinandanan (Abi for short). Abi recently had an interesting series of posts on possible gender discrimination in India's top engineering institutions (TEI's)…
The other day I wrote Previously, primate groups were generally seen to be composed of harems, ignoring the active roles of females in mate choice and aggressive sexual behavior with multiple mates. But the entry of women with a feminist perspective into this field opened up the kinds of observations that were made. Another great myth we've always had handed to us is that of Man the Hunter. Now comes evidence from the world of primatology that upsets that apple cart. Carl Zimmer at The Loom writes: Today the journal Current Biology publishes yet another piece of the puzzle: female…
So, I have insomnia. I'm catching up on some blog reading. I come across this courtesy of Asymptotia. It's one of those quizzes; this one is "Which Science Fiction Writer Are you?" It's fun, it's harmless, more or less; I came out as I am:John Brunner His best known works are dystopias -- vivid realizations of the futures we want to avoid. Which science fiction writer are you? More or less appropriate, I'd say. But what's really interesting to me is this item in the quiz: 5) Are you a total dork when dealing with the opposite sex? I'm so smooth, I couldn't possibly be a science…