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 29, 2007UPDATE: Unfortunately, this contest is only open to U.S. citizens because of laws regulating sweepstakes and contests. Apologies to any readers outside the U.S.
Seed Magazine is having a writing contest, and you're invited! It's actually the Second Annual Seed Writing Contest presented by Honeywell.
Throughout the 20th century, science changed our perspective on the world. It altered our sense of individual identity, compelled us to environmental consciousness, and shaped our view of the cosmos. Its legacy is apparent in what we learned: the three Rs, our As, Ts, Cs, and Gs, the…
thusspakezuska | May 29, 2007Hey, I bet you thought I forgot all about this course, didn't you????
No, I didn't! Just lots of stuff going on in the personal life that has made it difficult for me to give the attention needed to the next set of readings, which are very....dense. However, now I'm ready to go!
Let's say next Tuesday, June 5, for putting up the reading summaries, with the discussion entries to follow throughout the week. Okay??? And then hopefully we will be back on a more regular schedule.
thusspakezuska | May 24, 2007Please don't forget to nominate posts for the 2007 Science Blogging Anthology. I've added an icon to the left sidebar that you can click on (it's the blue "Open Lab 2007" bit just below "nominate posts for") to go to the very easy, very short nomination form. Let's make sure that this year there are some posts on women and science, some posts from women science bloggers, in the anthology.
Bora tells me that nary a single post in those categories has been nominated since I made my original plea a week ago. Everybody too busy with end of the semester? And now Memorial Day weekend is…
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 22, 2007I don't know what is going on, but most new comments seem to be getting held for moderation and/or sent by the spam filter into my junk folder. I have just retrieved a bunch of them from the junk folder (including one of my own) and gotten them published. However, I am about to leave for an overnight trip and won't be back until late tomorrow evening, and won't have computer access the whole time. Please be advised that if your comment does not show up, it may be due to whatever strange glitch is causing this weird behavior of my spam filter. I'm sorry, and will get all comments published…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2007I would not have believed this would be possible in 2007, and yet, here it is.
CBS is bringing to your television, this fall, a series so full of stereotypes, so dazzingly stupid, so ridiculously puerile, that it must surely offend the sensibilities of everyone in science.
I am talking about "The Big Bang Theory".
Dubious thanks to alert reader Maggie W. for letting me know about this. My life would have been happier had I been in blissful ignorance, but alas, it is my mournful duty to skewer the moronocity of things of this ilk.
Here is a quote from the show's web site:
"The Big Bang…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2007Bora pointed me to a post at The Phineas Gage Fan Club about an undergraduate student in Sweden who has been rather severely punished by her university for appearing naked in the pages of a "lad mag".
The department demanded that the student attend psychotherapy with a member of faculty, and that she apologise in front of her entire year. They then barred the student from going on work placement (which all the other students in her year were doing), leaving her to work in the department (presumably photocopying and boiling coffee).
I have to agree with Johan that this is an expression of…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2007Mr. Zuska and I spent a few days in Gettysburg at the Bluegrass Festival. I am a conflicted fan of bluegrass music. That is, I do love me some banjo. And hearing a good banjo, fiddle, bass, mandolin, and guitar together is, to me, a true aural delight.
The problem lies with some of the lyrics. As the Steep Canyon Rangers pointed out Thursday night, there are a lot of "mean woman songs" in bluegrass. Thursday I must have heard at least three whose story went along the lines of "you done me wrong and broke my heart; that's why I had to shoot you and him with my daddy's gun; you're layin…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2007Dave at the World's Fair asks:
Can you show us your coffee cup?
Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?
Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary?
Can you try to get others to comment on it?
I'm a day late and a dollar short, as my dad used to say, in answering this, but I'll give it a try anyway. Most of my sciblings have already given it a go, with lots of nifty pictures of fab coffee mugs. Check out Dr. Free-Ride, Sandra Porter. Dr. Joan Bushwell, CR McClain, Chad Orzel, and Tara's lack-of-coffee lament.
When all this started…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2007I recently received a copy of Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies in the mail from the Seed offices. Although I can't say I was particularly dying to read this, free books are always a nice thing.
So I opened it up to take a look. Chapter 1 starts out this way:
For thousands of years, human beings have contemplated the world about them and asked the great questions of existence: Why are we here? How did the universe begin? How will it end? How is the world put together? Why is it the way it is?
and I might not have gotten the giggles there except that the next sentence goes on
For all of…
thusspakezuska | May 18, 2007So, 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…
thusspakezuska | May 17, 2007Perhaps you are familiar with the 2006 Science Blogging Anthology, The Open Laboratory, that was put together by Bora Zivkovic. It is a great collection of (most) of the best of last year's science blogging, but as Bora has recently noted to me, it is lacking something important. That is, there are NO contributions pertaining to women in science. NO posts from any of the fabulous women scientists writing about the issues women deal with daily on the job, in the classroom, in the lab.
Bora and I would like to change that for the 2007 anthology. But we need your help.
We need you to…
thusspakezuska | May 17, 2007The 6th Scientiae Carnival is up over at Sciencewoman's pad. The topic is "mothers and others, those who influenced us along the way" but the collected posts are not limited to this topic. Scienceowoman has put together a very interesting mix of some truly thought-provoking posts. As always, the richness of writing by women scientists and engineers continues to delight me.
This post by Female Science Professor on a new professorship for a woman in engineering in Switzerland sparked a lively discussion in the comments. And I very much liked this post by Jokerine on gender coding in talk…
thusspakezuska | May 14, 2007I have to admit, I am an avid reader of comic strips in the daily newspaper. There's a lot of social commentary in the daily comics. Over the past year or two, I've watched as a few of the more conservative strips have slyly (or not so slyly) introduced references to intelligent design into a panel here and there. Here's an example I commented on in September 2005.
You will also find reflected in many comic stips stereotypical attitudes about gender. You don't have to look very hard most of the time. So when you find something different, it's really a pleasure.
Today's Baldo strip…
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 | May 10, 2007This post is for all who love plants...
I visited the Jenkins Arboretum yesterday. It's located in Devon, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, on the "Main Line". This arboretum is a real jewel of biodiversity in the midst of a region that has been developed to the ultramax. It has a special focus on rhododendrons and azaleas, and right now the azaleas are in peak bloom.
The eponymous Mr. Jenkins established the arboretum as a living memorial to his wife, Elisabeth, "an avid gardener and wildlife enthusiast". He also stipulated in the terms of the foundation that admission to the arboretum…
thusspakezuska | May 10, 2007So, according to WT, I have minions.
This would be awesome, if it were true.
Alas, I fear it is not. Mr. Zuska and I still must fetch our own food and load the dishwasher, and last night we were forced to gather the trash and wheel the container to the curb ourselves. I am pretty sure if I had minions, I wouldn't be doing any of that. Especially the trash part, because that includes dealing with the kitty litter. Mr. Zuska being faint of heart when it comes to kitty poop, that duty generally falls to me.
I am for damn sure if I had minions, I would not be carrying kitty poop around…
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 | May 4, 2007Bora 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)…