Science Follies
thusspakezuska | April 5, 2008What is it that the world really needs? What should we be devoting our time, energy, and talent to, in order to make this a better world? Climate research? No. Renewable energy? No. Sustainable living? No. Gardening with native plants? No.
What we really need is some computer software that can "judge" how attractive women are.
We can thank Amit Kagian at Tel Aviv University for this great gift to humankind - I'm sorry, mankind. Because what we have really been needing is a new method of judging (heterosexual, I'm sure)) standards of female beauty.
As if we didn't already have…
thusspakezuska | October 27, 2007Since Jim Watson's recent self-destruction, there's been a lot of talk about pseudo-scientific racism versus actual "scientific" studies of race. Earlier this summer, Lennard J. Davis had an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled A Grand Unified Theory of Interdisciplinarity in which he had this to say about race and ethnicity in the sciences/medicine versus the humanities/social science:
A truly interdisciplinary approach is potentially dangerous: Some kinds of knowledge might refute or negate other kinds of knowledge. For example, if we took the advances the humanities have made…
thusspakezuska | October 19, 2007The latest Watson news is that Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has "suspended [his] administrative responsibilities...pending further deliberation by the board." Watson, meanwhile, has begun the "Did I say that? No! I didn't mean it!" apologia that usually follows when some noted figure catches hell for being more frank about his or her racist views than the public is used to.
He also said that "to all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly…
thusspakezuska | October 17, 2007Spitting on Rosalind Franklin's grave is apparently not satisfying enough for Jim Watson. When you are a largemouth ass, you have to do much, much more. So now he's maligned all of Africa and everyone of African descent. Here's a quote:
he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".
Also,
His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities…
thusspakezuska | October 16, 2007Really. I am not making this up. As quoted in The Guardian:
He smiles. "Rosalind is my cross," he says slowly. "I'll bear it. I think she was partially autistic." He pauses for a while, before repeating the suggestion, as if to make it clear that this is no off-the-cuff insult, but a considered diagnosis. "I'd never really thought of scientists as autistic until this whole business of high-intelligence autism came up. There is probably no other explanation for Rosalind's behaviour.
Oh, yes, a considered diagnosis, I'm sure. He's been considering since 1953 what he'd like to preemptively…
thusspakezuska | September 19, 2007The Scientist wants you to vote for your favorite life science blogs. To get the party started, they asked seven prominent science bloggers to recommend their favorite science blogs. I mean, they asked seven prominent male science bloggers for their recommendations. This is science, after all, and we need to be precise.
So, they didn't ask any women - big deal, whine whine. Right?
Yeah, well, in the grand scheme of things, who gives a rat's ass? It's just some dumb article in one magazine.
But in the grand scheme of things, this is just one more example of how women get overlooked…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2007I can barely bring myself to blog on this topic, it is so tiresome. (Thanks to Sheril at The Intersection for this link.)
Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.
Men like attractive women! Women look for security and financial success in men! It must be evolution! All proven from some bits of data gathered in speed dating! Because this is totally how we pick the people we spend our lives with! All men seek out women on the basis of physical attractiveness, and all women screen men on the basis of financial potential! It's in the…
thusspakezuska | August 22, 2007Perhaps 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 determined preference for "pink fluff". Fairer Science quoted a June 1918 edition of Ladies Home Journal thus:
There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate…
thusspakezuska | August 19, 2007Have you read the Nature editorial? Have you read my earlier post about it? Maybe what you are wanting is a deeper textual analysis of the editorial itself. You've come to the right place.
Men [sick]
Our 1869 mission statement is out of date.
That's what the bitchy, complaining women are making us say.
It was 1833 when the English polymath William Whewell first coined the word 'scientist'. Over subsequent decades, the word gradually replaced such commonly used terms as 'natural philosophers' and 'men of science.
Scientist, you see , actually means "men of science". So even if we changed…
thusspakezuska | August 16, 2007By way of the daily Chronicle of Higher Education, I learned that Nature has made a quantum leap into the...well...sort of into the early part of the 20th century.
In an editorial published online this afternoon, the journal announced that it would amend its mission statement, which appears each week next to its table of contents.
The original statement, which dates to 1869, says that Nature's mission is, among other things, "to aid scientific men themselves, by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of natural knowledge throughout the world."
In these tres modern times…
thusspakezuska | August 13, 2007I am so happy for Debbie Schwartz.
I read in my paper this past weekend that Debbie has given her laundry room "the star treatment"!!!!!
What can this mean? Why, let me tell you:
Her super-capacity washer and dryer sit on marble floors and bask in the light of twin bronze chandeliers. A Romanesque sculpture stands on one of the wide polished marble counters designed for folding laundry. The large room has the same cabinets as her gourmet kitchen and a tile stall to dry delicates. There's even a garden view.
Oh my! But wait, that's not all! Debbie, you see, longs for the fresh scent of…
thusspakezuska | June 19, 2007When I lived in North Carolina, I got to know a woman who worked in one of the Research Triangle labs. She had a baby girl, and I occasionally baby-sat for her. She had named her daughter Melina, which I thought was an incredibly beautiful name for a little girl. I remarked upon this one time, and she said to me "yeah, I like it, and I figure when she's a little older she'll be nicknamed Mel, which isn't too girly."
Melina's mother did not fit any "girly" stereotypes. She had rennovated her house pretty much on her own; she didn't dress in typical feminine garb, and she was, of course,…
thusspakezuska | May 7, 2007A long-time reader tipped me off about a recent New York Times article poetically titled
Getting the Most Bang Out of Quarks and Gluons.
It's all about the really nifty guy-physics going on at Brookhaven National Lab and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC or "rick". Hah.)
I'm not sure what I find most annoying about this article. Is it the doofus-y physicists pretending to be Captain Kirk, Scotty, Spock et al. aboard the Starship Enterprise? (You may not be surprised to learn that there was no Lt. Uhura in the group.)
"That's Captain Kirk over there," said Dr. Trainor, pointing…
thusspakezuska | April 27, 2007You'll recall I posted about fellow Scibling Shelley Batts's run-in with Wiley over fair use of a figure and graph from a journal article. This incident created quite a firestorm in the blogosphere. You'll find a good summary and a nice link roundup provided by Bora over at A Blog Around The Clock. It's a big deal because it gets to the heart of science blogging and science reporting.
It generated enough attention that both Nature and Scientific American posted about it.
Now Nature's blogger reported on the issue as follows:
A few days ago Shelley Batts at Retrospectacle reviewed a…
thusspakezuska | November 7, 2006File this under: I have an imaging tool and I need something to do with it that will garner grant support. Hey, let's study people speaking in tongues! Because we will learn....something! That will be of use for....whatever!
At least as far as I can tell they aren't claiming the images prove that men have superior math abilities. Which is usually the result of functional imaging studies.
Imaging tool: SPECT
At: University of Pennsylvania
Who studied: Healthy, active, female churchgoers
The New York Times had to go all the way to a pentacostal church in the Congo to find a photo of…