Naming Experience
thusspakezuska | August 15, 2007Female Science Professor has been posting a set of tales based on her recent, annual trip to spend quality time with the extended family. Those of you with families should be able to sympathize.
In Men Are So Special, she reminisces about last year's bang-up good times:
It might be easier to endure these family visits if I could get away once in a while and take a break from making sandwiches for my uncles, but our family get-togethers occur on an island, in a house surrounded on 3 sides by tall trees and on the fourth side by a cliff. I think it would be easier to escape from Alcatraz.…
thusspakezuska | August 13, 2007So, I can't sleep because I'm very worried about my mom right now. I won't bore you with details; she's okay for the moment but a lot is weighing on my heart.
The upshot is, you get a post about Barbie dolls.
Yes, Barbie dolls. Inspired by Keet & Nini, whose site I found by way of Astrodyke. Thank you, Astrodyke!
The stuff about Barbies is in this post at Keet & Nini's. Keet talks about her daughter loving Disney princesses and playing with Barbies, and reminisces about the other girls in her high school Science Club. She concludes:
I wonder what they are doing now, and…
thusspakezuska | August 11, 2007The other day I wrote, half in jest (but only half), about the threat of women taking over the nation's technical universities and thus filling up campus wastecans with used menstrual pads and tampons.
This inspired Absinthe to comment:
Your comment about the trash cans hits a nerve with me... don't even get me started on the issue of female bathrooms in physics departments I have worked/studied at. At UPenn (for instance) for two years I had to hike down three flights of stairs and over to an annex of the physics building to get to a women's bathroom that had a total of two stalls and was…
thusspakezuska | July 31, 2007Absinthe has an announcement on her blog about a new online support group for junior female particle physicists.
There is a new online discussion group aimed at junior female particle physicists (up to and including the postdoctoral level). The group allows junior females to talk openly and anonymously with other junior female particle physicists from around the world about career issues that are important to them. Most particle physicists at the junior level are based at large laboratories in Europe and the US. The unique work environment at these labs can lead to workplace issues and…
thusspakezuska | July 30, 2007The word of the month is "balance", or so they tell me for the upcoming scientiae-carnival. I have been thinking for days about what I could write on this topic. What does balance mean to those without careers?
I can talk about stuff from the past, how I made choices about balancing career and relationship over a period of several years. First there was the decision to leave my life in Philadelphia and all my friends to move to Kansas, because I wanted to continue living with Mr. Zuska. That was a hard decision, but I was able to find a job that represented a significant career advance…
thusspakezuska | July 24, 2007That fabulous group of women, the X-Gals, is back with the last of their installments in the Chronicle of Higher Education and it is truly Must Read C (of Higher) E.
This last installment is titled On the Origin of Academic Species and it is a cataloging of the various types of folks who've responded to their columns over the past year. Included, as might be expected, are The Generally Disgruntled, The Me-Too, The Condemning Wo/man, and The Dismissive Male. Of the latter, X-Gal Tess Isaac writes:
...when Jana described an adviser who told her to choose between work and family while her…
thusspakezuska | July 17, 2007From the Chronicle of Higher Education today:
Women who play sports in high school are more likely to earn a college degree than women who do not, according to a new study by Mikaela J. Dufur, an assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, and Kelly P. Troutman, an adjunct instructor of anthropology and sociology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania...The findings..."suggest a societal benefit to female sport participation in the form of increased educational attainment," they say. Therefore, they argue, "rather than looking for ways to excuse schools from Title IX…
thusspakezuska | July 11, 2007I want to go to California and eat cheese. From the LA Times:
The benchmark for California cheese is higher than ever in a market that finally has caught up with a few pioneers who were way ahead of the curve. Both the flavors and types of cheeses are constantly evolving. From the highest end (an elegant triple crème made with cow's milk crème fraîche stirred into fresh goat's milk curds) to the more accessible (a creamy farmhouse sheep's milk cheese drizzled with a little olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt and cracked black pepper or a buttery, rich, handmade cheddar) -- cheese-wise…
thusspakezuska | June 24, 2007One year has passed since Denice Denton's untimely death. It's a real understatement to say that Denice was a trailblazer. Here's Jean Bahr's memory of Denice:
I met Denice at a reception at the Women's Studies Center in the fall of 1987 when we were both beginning our tenure track appointments at Madison. There were only a handful of women faculty in the physical sciences, and Denice was the ONLY woman faculty member in the College of Engineering. Someone suggested that the women in physical sciences and engineering should try to get together periodically for mutual support. If my memory is…
thusspakezuska | June 21, 2007The Chronicle of Higher Education had a great piece this week about A. Van Jordan and his new book of poetry, Quantum Lyrics. Unfortunately, I think you need a subscription to read the article online. It's the June 22, 2007 issue, p. A48, if you have access to the print version.
"Physicists talk in metaphor all the time," says Mr. Jordan, 41, who weaves theories and theorems into his latest poetic examinations of history, race relations, memory, and grief. The centerpiece of Quantum Lyrics is a lengthy cycle of poems about Albert Einstein, but the book is alive with a wide array of…
thusspakezuska | June 19, 2007For 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.
thusspakezuska | June 14, 2007I have been thinking all week about the topic for the next scientiae-carnival, "Transitions" and what I might write about. I had thought I would write something about the transition from health to disability, from employed to jobless, from known career to uncertainty about just what to do with my life.
But I didn't get it done and I don't have the heart for it right now.
What I'm thinking about instead at the moment is the transition I made with my blog from relative obscurity at the old site on Radio Userland, to the somewhat more visible position here on Scienceblogs. It's been good…
thusspakezuska | June 11, 2007UPDATE: 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…
thusspakezuska | May 31, 2007The next Scientiae Carnival topic is How We Are Hungry. scientiae-carnival
We spent the Memorial Day holiday weekend at Mom's house, so hunger and food are topics much on my mind. Sunday we had a cookout at my brother's house; the weather was perfect, and Brother Zuska was in his element at the grill/smoker, delivering up enough grilled meat to feed at least three times as many people as we had there. Food - feeding each other, sharing meals - has always been a big deal in my family. Are you familiar with the Wedding Song? One time my sisters and I made up parody lyrics to it,…
thusspakezuska | May 31, 2007So, 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…
thusspakezuska | May 31, 2007From the Chronicle daily update:
The White House announced on Tuesday the winners of the 2005 National Medals of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor. The prizes recognize achievement in the physical, biological, mathematical, social, behavioral, and engineering sciences.
I'm shocked, shocked! to discover no women's names on the list of honorees.
And now...let the comment whiners commence whining
thusspakezuska | May 29, 2007Some of you will remember the Life as a Leak series that I posted awhile back. If you were interested in that then you may want to read this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education: Conference Confidential. Annoyingly, it is behind a paywall, so you may want to look around for a print version of the Chronicle - the June 1, 2007 edition, page C3.
Alexandra M. Lord writes about her decision to leave a tenure-track job in history for life as a public historian, and her subsequent experiences attending professional conferences. She also mentions in passing her father, a chemical…
thusspakezuska | May 24, 2007There's a great post over at the blog Women in Science on a resource, the Harvard Open Collections Program Women Working 1800-1930.
...a great digital database of books, photos, diaries, and trade catalogs. It covers all kinds of work, from unpaid household labor to lawyers and politicians. And, of course, scientists.
Go read the post for a sampling of goodies from the collection. Many thanks to Women in Science for pointing us all to this rich archive!
Also, from the WMST-L listserv, I learned of a new Feminist Philosophers blog . This is not a philosophy of science blog, it's subject…
thusspakezuska | May 12, 2007The theme of the upcoming Scientiae carnival is "Mothers and Others, women who have influenced you along the way". So here are my musings. scientiae-carnival
I am fond of saying that my mom is the reason I became an engineer. She is not, of course, the sole reason I became an engineer, nor is she the sole person responsible for me sticking it out despite all the crap I had to put up with and all the jerkwads who tried to discourage me and get me to quit along the way. But she played a pretty significant role, and that's all the more remarkable given who she is and where she came from.…
thusspakezuska | April 25, 2007From the Chronicle of Higher Education daily update yesterday:
The strongest source of white opposition to affirmative action today is neither racism nor a sincere conviction that any favoritism, even if compensatory, is wrong, but rather a "desire to protect fellow whites," three scholars argue in a paper released last week by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. That finding, the authors contend, offers a new window into white opposition to affirmative-action programs.
The Chronicle article needs a subscription but the paper it refers to, Why White Americans Oppose Affirmative Action…