What They're Saying
thusspakezuska | February 15, 2010Philagrafika 2010 is happening now, all over Philadelphia.
Involving more than 300 artists at more than 80 venues throughout the city, Philagrafika 2010 will be one of the largest art events in the United States and the world's most important print-related exposition. Prominent museums and cultural institutions across Philadelphia are participating in Philagrafika 2010, offering regional, national and international audiences the opportunity to see contemporary art that references printmaking in dynamic, unexpected ways and to experience the rich cultural life of the city in the process.
If…
thusspakezuska | February 10, 2010Arborvitae. It is snowing. Again. Snow, then freezing rain, then more snow with a vengeance that promises to keep on all day through to midnight. This is on top of the batch we got last Saturday. Philadelphia got 28.5 inches though round these parts it seems we "only" got about 17. It was enough to give the arborvitae quite a beating, even though we brushed and shook the snow off them as soon as possible. That snow last Saturday was light and fluffy. This batch is wet and heavy and the arborvitae are sad, sad, sad.
Arborvitae, you will recall, are supposed to be upright, hedge-like…
thusspakezuska | February 2, 2010Just finished listening to Rebecca Skloot talking about her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, on Fresh Air this afternoon. You can now listen on the web (transcript not yet available).
Around 25:10, Skloot tells Terry Gross about an experience she had with a faith-healing ceremony with members of Henrietta Lacks's family. Among other things, that was the point when Skloot realized that she had to write herself into her own book. It was also the turning point when Lacks's daughter became more trusting of Skloot the journalist. I recommend that you listen to the whole interview…
thusspakezuska | February 1, 20101. First, a question. What is a blog?
Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:
A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
An archive of older articles.
A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a "blogroll".
One or more "feeds" like RSS, Atom or RDF files.
...Want an interactive website? Wouldn't it be nice if the readers of a website could leave comments, tips or impressions about the…
thusspakezuska | January 21, 2010Okay, the actual story is this:
if you are an overweight woman you:
⢠May have a harder time getting health insurance or have to pay higher premiums
⢠Are at higher risk of being misdiagnosed or receiving inaccurate dosages of drugs
⢠Are less likely to find a fertility doctor who will help you get pregnant
⢠Are less likely to have cancer detected early and get effective treatment for it
And the story goes on to outline a whole host of reasons, some discriminatory, some actual problems caused by physical realities, why the above might be so. But before you get to any of that, you are…
thusspakezuska | January 20, 2010You may have been hearing some of the buzz about Rebecca Skloot's forthcoming book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million…
thusspakezuska | January 19, 2010Over at A Blog Around the Clock there are a series of posts with great video interviews from ScienceOnline2010, but I'd like to especially point your attention to this one with David Kroll and Damond Nollan, both of North Carolina Central University. It was filmed shortly after their session on "Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Session: Engaging underrepresented groups in online science media".
I missed this session due to a combination of sleep deprivation and headache, and am really regretting it. Isis has a good post based on her attendance at the session, however - you should read it…
thusspakezuska | January 7, 2010This evening Marketplace Report had a segment on " A push for Latinos to pursue education". It's a great segment, based on a report from the Southern Education Foundation. (Possibly this one; four page summary of the report, A New Diverse Majority: Students of Color in the South's Public Schools is here.)
The Hispanic College Fund started out funding college scholarships, but found that wasn't sufficient; now they are reaching out to the high school level, as early as ninth grade, to encourage young Latino kids to pursue a college education. Many of these kids are from low-income…
thusspakezuska | November 6, 2009You should never, ever criticize something a New Atheist says about science and religion. Never tell them maybe it's not the best idea in the world to just go on about science/evolution + religion in whatever way, at whatever time, in whatever manner, for whatever reasons. In fact, you cannot criticize the speech of New Atheists even if your goal is not to tell them to shut up, but to suggest that they might get their message across better and more effectively if they tried delivering it in a different manner than the one they've been using, because suggestions like that are CENSORSHIP and…
thusspakezuska | October 5, 2009By which I mean, this.
The comix being, as it were, a bit of solace for Him leaving us to wander about this hideous world choked by gender smog.
MAJOR hat tip to Pat at Fairer Science.
UPDATE: And for more turning-the-tables fun and shenannigans, be sure to read Peggy's post on The Sultana's Dream over at Women in Science.
thusspakezuska | August 14, 2009Via Female Science Professor, 'Study: Women create 'their own glass ceiling':
A new study shows female managers are more than three times as likely as their male counterparts to underrate their bosses' opinions of their job performance.
The discrepancy increases with women older than 50, the study states.
"Women have imposed their own glass ceiling, and the question is why," said Scott Taylor, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico Anderson School of Management who conducted the study.
No, no, no, it should read this way:
A new study shows male managers are more likely than…
thusspakezuska | July 15, 2009Everybody's talking about Unscientific America 'round these parts lately. I've almost finished reading it and will post a review of my own sometime soon. In the meantime...Isis has a post up where she makes note of ERV's displeasure with the book. In response, ERV comments thusly on Isis's blog:
Isis-- I havent read Unscientific America. I called foul on some shit Mooney wrote in 2006 he has yet to address, I would have been shocked if he sent me a copy.
My issue with Mooney initially had nothing to do with atheism, nor does my problem with him today have anything to do with atheism.
PZ…
thusspakezuska | July 9, 2009Ed Yong has started a "who the heck are you, dear reader?!?!" meme that is floating around with my Sciblngs. If you haven't already visited a thousand other blogs and read it a million times, here's what he posted:
1) Tell me about you. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier, more academic fare? And if not, what brought you here and why have you stayed? Let loose with those comments.
2) Tell someone else about this blog and in particular, try and choose someone who's not a scientist but who you think might be interested in the…
thusspakezuska | June 24, 2009Bloggingheads.tv has John Horgan interviewing Richard Wrangham of Harvard on a variety of topics related to his new book Catching Fire. The part of interest to me - and to our ongoing discussion on patriarchy - relates to cooking as a "primitive protection racket" in which men agree to protect women's food supply in return for being fed so they can just hang out and do manly shit. It's a fascinating discussion, if you can get past Horgan giggling in sheepish delight every time Wrangham points out what a shitty deal patriarchy is for women.
Interestingly, this section of the interview is…
thusspakezuska | May 24, 2009Longtime Zuskateers know that one of the reasons I am feel able to speak so freely is that I am not currently employed. Thus, I do not fear an employer's displeasure with what I might have to say about the sorry state of affairs for women in science and engineering in educational, academic, and workplace settings.
But now and then I do wonder...one of these days I suppose I will be in a position to go back to work. Though I blog as Zuska, my real name is right up there at the top of the page for anyone to see. To re-enter the workforce, I'll be a position of supplication, and any…
thusspakezuska | May 20, 2009Everybody needs to read the eight posts on Historiann's list of Lessons for Girls. I really mean that. Go NOW and read. If you don't have time for all eight, please at least read about anger.
If I wish I had learned one lesson earlier in life, it's this: it's okay to be angry, it's okay to make other people angry, and anger can work for you. (Well, that might be three lessons, but I find it hard to disentangle them, so bear with me.)
I found this link to Historiann's goodness from a comment on a post over at Dr. Isis's pad, but unfortunately I did not pay attention as to where. If…
thusspakezuska | May 8, 2009The most excellent Dr. Isis has launched her most excellent Letters to Our Daughters project. Isis tells us
The inspiration for my Letters to Our Daughters Project comes from my hope that we can recreate our family tree here, creating a forum where the mothers and aunts in our fields (which I hope to not limit to physiology, but that's where I'll start because that's who I know) can share their wisdom with us. I think there is a wealth of information among these successful women and I hope to use this forum to share it with young scientists who are yearning for that knowledge.
Today, Isis…
thusspakezuska | April 27, 2009Sooooo....it appears some of you take your comics quite seriously. At least, should one be so foolish as to point out painfully obvious, boringly everyday occurrences of sexism.
Danimal asks of Comrade Physioprof: "So you are saying the comic reflects real life?"
What Physioprof said is this: "Every single one of the Foxtrots themselves represents absolute conformity to patriarchal gender norms. And the characters who are not part of the family who appear to violate those norms serve the patriarchal narrative purely as foils."
Inasmuch as patriarchal gender norms represent Real LifeTM,…
thusspakezuska | April 8, 2009Oh, linky blogosphere, how I love thee!
I was just starting to browse through Atoms Arranged Meaningwise by Rachel McKinney - which I found via Scientiae's blogroll - when her most recent post sent me shooting off to Threadbared. Rachel notes:
And I know we're supposed to be good little serious philosophers and clothes aren't supposed to be the sort of thing worth thinking too hard about, but that's just the kind of fucked-up masculinist logic that got us into this mess in the first place, right?
I suspect Isis would agree!
Then the pitch for Threadbared:
Threadbared is a blog by two…
thusspakezuska | April 7, 2009Yesterday I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR and caught this very intriguing segment, Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong. Would you describe a bridge as fragile, elegant, beautiful, peaceful, slender, pretty? Or as strong, dangerous, long, sturdy, big, towering? Lera Boroditsky, an assistant psychology professor at Stanford University, found that it depends - for native German and Spanish speakers, on whether your native tongue assigns a feminine or masculine gender to the noun bridge.
Boroditsky proposes that because the word for "bridge" in German -- die brucke -- is a feminine noun…