thusspakezuska | May 4, 2007Info, resources, network, academic life - it's all good.
From the WEPAN listserv:
The National Clearinghouse on Academic Worklife combines into a single website information resources and community discussions to support those who study or participate in academic work: faculty, administrators, graduate students in the pipeline, staff.
Up to date articles, policy examples, and discussions are available on topics ranging from family-friendly benefits, tenure attainment, and faculty satisfaction to policy development, productivity, and demographics. This one-stop website was developed at the…
thusspakezuska | May 4, 2007The Chronicle of Higher Education daily update reports on this year's inductees to the National Academy of Sciences. A total of 72 members and 18 foreign associates elected this year - and guess what, they managed to find 9 worthy women. Yes, NINE.
Is that not amazing?
But fear not, friends. We are told:
The number of women inducted is nearly half the record 19 elected in 2005 (The Chronicle, May 4, 2005). Nevertheless, the percentage of all members who are women has steadily grown to reach about 10 percent this year, an all-time high. The proportion should continue to grow as more…
thusspakezuska | May 1, 2007The Chronicle Review this week is essentially devoted to analysis of and commentary on the Virginia Tech massacre. The Chronicle asked a number of individuals what they would say if they were asked to speak to the Virginia Tech graduating class at commencement this year. Edward J. W. Park's contribution deserves special attention from everyone, I think. (no subscription needed)
Park's message to the graduating seniors - and to all of is - is about how racial and ethnic labels function in our society and in particular in the case of shooting incidents. It is about his hope that education…
thusspakezuska | May 1, 2007The 5th Scientiae Carnival is up at Clarity. I've been so out of it most of this month that I had nothing to contribute to it this time. The carnival theme this time is why and how do you labor at what you do?
There's lots of good stuff on the carnival, as usual. You might want to check out this horror story, I mean nightmare, I mean descent into hell and back, I mean tale of a graduate student's struggle to wrest her PhD from the slimy paws of her advisor and committee.
thusspakezuska | May 1, 2007I needed something to lighten up my day today. Maybe you do, too. How about this picture from my garden?
See, even my garden knows I'm a bleeding heart liberal.
thusspakezuska | April 30, 2007Maybe it's not a bad time to repost the link to this post, and to requote this snippet from it:
When the topic at hand is men not taking an issue seriously, suggesting that the issue might not really be all that serious is not being dispassionate. It is, in fact, taking a side. And the people on the side you're taking, incidentally, include the gropers, the rapists, the sexual-favor-demanding bosses.
Thanks to Jane for reminding me of that excellent post.
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 | April 27, 2007The last week or so, some of you may have noticed that you submit a comment and it doesn't show up in the comments thread right away. I'm assuming you get the message that the comment is being held for approval by the blog owner. At least I hope so.
Please note: you are not being singled out for any special treatment. Usually, comments with more than one URL in them will be automatically flagged as possible spam and shunted to a special folder for me to review and approve. Unfortunately, my checking in is sporadic and sometimes a comment in holding gets held up for a long time. I do…
thusspakezuska | April 26, 2007All last week I was silent on my blog because I wasn't feeling well enough to spend much time on the computer. So I didn't post anything when many other people were writing about the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. I thought about what I might say if I were well enough to blog and I concluded that I was not up to the task. I just didn't have words that seemed adequate, beyond expressing my grief and shock, and my sympathy for everyone at Virginia Tech. I know some people who work there and I can't imagine what this has been like for them. And I can't think of anything I can possibly…
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…
thusspakezuska | April 25, 2007UPDATE: There was a veritable blogswarm on this issue, and Shelley reports that it seems to have generated results. Although, I will note that "granting permission" is not quite the same thing as acknowledging that her original post fell under fair use.
Shelley Batts at Retrospectacle wrote a post the other day analyzing a journal article that has been reported misleadingly in the popular press under headlines like "Alcohol Makes Fruit Healthier". In her post she had reproduced a part of one figure and a table from the original journal article in order to analyze what was going on in…
thusspakezuska | April 24, 2007I have never been a huge fan of the comic strip "Cathy". In the comic strip office world, I had Dilbert on one hand, as exemplar for engineers, and Cathy on the other hand, as the model for professional working women. Neither was particularly appealing to me. Dilbert personifies all the negative geekoid engineering stereotypes, but seems to be taken by the masses as a hipsterish anti-hero. Cathy, much of the time, seems to be a blithering idiot who is way too fixated on her appearance, the need to cram the body she doesn't love into the latest skinny-minny fashions, and the desire to eat…
thusspakezuska | April 23, 2007I recently finished reading Intuition, by Allegra Goodman. It's a great novel, and anyone who's done time as a postdoc will appreciate it, especially if you've done time as postdoc in biomedical research. You may find yourself reading it and thinking that surely Goodman must have been spying upon your research lab at some point.
She really captures the flavor of research, the tools and materials that are simultaneously so fun and so tedious to work with. She captures the emotions, too. In the first chapter, the postdoc Cliff is berated by his supervisors for continuing to work on a…
thusspakezuska | April 23, 2007The Spring 2007 issue of SWE Magazine has an article on the newest inductees into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Among them is Eleanor Baum, the fifth SWE member to be so honored. The others are Lillian Moller Gilbreth, Beatrice Hicks, Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, and Sheila Widnall. Baum is currently dean of engineering at Cooper Union. You could while away some pleasant time just browsing among the list of members of the Hall of Fame.
Baum was nominated for the Hall of Fame by Jill Tietjen, a past-president of SWE. Jill has a distinguished career as an engineer and is the…
thusspakezuska | April 23, 2007Hello again, everybody. I've not exactly been blogging up a storm lately, have I? Well, I am feeling better this week so I'm hoping to get back to a more regular blogging schedule - in between sneezes and sniffles from spring allergies. It's absolutely gorgeous here today and I can practically hear the hostas sprouting up and the tulips unfolding. Most of the bulbs I planted last fall came up this spring, including a few I don't remember planting. I am afraid my record-keeping last fall left a little something to be desired. Basically, my record-keeping consists of the labels from the…
thusspakezuska | April 13, 2007Karmen at Chaotic Utopia has honored/saddled me with the Thinking Blogger Award/meme.
I rarely ever participate in memes. But since this one is disguised as a compliment I'll make an exception. Since this comes from Karmen, I do take it as a compliment - thank you, Karmen! It was nice to read what you wrote about me...especially this week, which is a bit of down week for me.
So, okay, here's the award/meme guidelines:
If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2007This is the third of several discussion posts for Week 3 of Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. You can find all posts for this course by going to the archives and clicking on Joy of Science in the Category section.
This post deals with the readings by Subramaniam and by Margolis, Fisher, & Miller (MFM). (Summaries are available here.)
I really wish that all of you could read "Snow Brown and the Seven Detergents". There is actually a pdf version on the internet but I'm not linking to it because it seems to be a pirated version. First of it, it attributes authorship to Sue Rosser…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2007This is the second of several discussion posts for Week 3 of Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. You can find all posts for this course by going to the archives and clicking on Joy of Science in the Category section.
This post deals with the readings by Margolis, Fisher, & Miller (MFM), and Hynes. (Summaries are available here.)
Why might women want to become scientists or engineers? Do their motivations and interest differ from that of men? If so, is the difference in intensity or in kind?
In the two papers by Hynes and by MFM, we read about women's early interest in science…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2007Bora at A Blog Around the Clock alerted me to an article in Science Daily titled Power And Sexual Harassment -- Men And Women See Things Differently.
Issues of power, workplace culture and the interpretation of verbal and non-verbal communication associated with sexual harassment were the focus of a study by Debbie Dougherty, assistant professor of communication in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Working with a large healthcare organization in the Midwest, Dougherty examined the question: why does sexual harassment occur?
Dougherty's findings show…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2007This is the first of several discussion posts for Week 3 of Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. You can find all posts for this course by going to the archives and clicking on Joy of Science in the Category section.
This post deals with the readings by Margolis, Fisher, & Miller (MFM), and Ginorio, Marshall, & Breckinridge (GMB). (Summaries are available here.)
"Feminism is not a unitary concept", Ginorio, Marshall, & Breckinridge (GMB) tell us. There have been many efforts to categorize different types of feminism. GMB refer to one of the most well-known, Alison Jaggar…