thusspakezuska | October 2, 2006Hi folks. Last Friday I had a botox treatment for my migraines and it does seem to be having some good effects already. I'm going to give myself another day or so off from blogging since the computer can be one of my migraine triggers.
Please let me stop you before you get a chance to write that clever comment about how at least I'll always have a youthful appearance because of the botox treatments, or some such other clever riposte. I have heard them all. FYI, botox treatments for migraine have nothing in common with beauty treatments, and I had to fight tooth and nail with my…
thusspakezuska | September 27, 2006I originally wrote this as a comment to my interview over on Page 3.14 and then decided it ought to be its own entry. I thank BSCI for raising this issue, and admire BSCI's prescience, for lauding my role models and mentors is, indeed, the subject of a forthcoming post.
BSCI, regarding the role model thing: role models can do many, many different things for a person. One of the things they can do is model for the person a particular way of being a particular kind of person in a particular field of endeavor. Men have many, many, many models to choose from of how to be men in science.…
thusspakezuska | September 25, 2006I was just traveling around the blogosphere and landed on this most helpful post; thanks to Bill Hooker, of Open Reading Frame, who launched my odyssey. Zuzu, who writes for Feministe, will explain much you need to know about keeping your place. This is invaluable information for any white women, or minority women or men, who are contemplating questioning the powers-that-be. Zuzu quotes Jill, who suggests one way to avoid being pegged as angry and hysterical:
...[preface your comments with] "I think y'all are SO awesome, and I totally love what you do and you're all so talented and…
thusspakezuska | September 25, 2006There is a super-fabulous interview with Zuska over on Page 3.14. Page 3.14 is "is your guide to ScienceBlogs. Maintained by Seed's editors, web editors, and the other people who make Seed tick, it points you in the direction of some of ScienceBlogs' finest offerings." But I think it's really mostly written by the wonderful Katherine Sharpe, whom Zuska adores, and hopes to meet someday in person.
The interview is loosely based on the infamous Proust questionnaire. At the interview page you will find a spiffy photo of Zuska. Here is a little snippet of the interview to whet your appetite…
thusspakezuska | September 19, 2006From the September 15, 2006 AWIS Washington Wire
Women at Work-Striving for 25% Female Faculty
In 2000, the European Research Ministries set the goal that 25% of all faculty members would be female by the year 2010. Unfortunately, the numbers are likely to fall far short. To show what the visual impact of this proportion of women would be, Petra Rudolf, a professor and materials scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, convinced 35 of the university's 50 female professors to show up at the opening ceremony of the new academic year. As a result of Rudolf's planning pushed…
thusspakezuska | September 18, 2006Jeff Knapp asked what kind of advice would I give to a 14-year-old girl who is showing an interest in neuroscience, taking AP classes, and has articulated an interest in science. As the "1" in the title indicates, I'll be posting again on this topic. I'm going to preface my remarks by saying that I don't have the last word on this topic, and I'm going to invite all my colleagues in WEPAN to weigh in on this if they want to. WEPAN is the Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network; it's a national organization whose mission is "to be a catalyst, advocate, and leading resource for…
thusspakezuska | September 18, 2006This seems as good a time as any to reprint this entry from my blog's previous incarnation. The original title was "Zuska Recommends a Dose of Absinthe".
After some preliminary stuff introducing Absinthe's blog and referring to the then-current Ben Barrres news story (Ben is a neurobiologist who used to be Barbara Barres, and thus has some unique insights on the situation of women in science), the entry deconstructs Fermilab's discourse in a propaganda rag. Fermilab presents the story of Elizabeth Freeland, who overcame Fermilab's considerable barriers to restart her physics career, as if…
thusspakezuska | September 18, 2006Tim left this comment over at Uncertain Principles on Chad's post The Pipeline Problem:
I thought the data was pretty clear about this: past high school, the [physics] pipeline is no more leaky for women than it is for men...here's the
Report:
Read it for yourselves.
Examination of the academic "pipeline" reveals that women disproportionately leave physics between taking it in high school and earning a bachelor's degree. While almost half of high school physics students are girls, less that one-fourth of bachelor's degrees in physics are earned by women. After this initial "leak" in the…
thusspakezuska | September 15, 2006Earlier this summer, a famous cheesesteak purveyor here in Philadelphia put up a sign in his establishment that read "This is America: When Ordering, Speak English", thus touching off a controversy that raged for weeks. Owner Joey Vento was eventually served with a complaint claiming he was in violation of two sections of the city's anti-discrimination laws.
Vento's sign was just one manifestation of the xenophobia sweeping the nation these days, politely euphemized as "immigration controversy". It's also a stark illustration of how the dominant group (in this case, moneyed Republican…
thusspakezuska | September 11, 2006I just wanna hurl chunks right now at fellow Sb'er Chad, who writes Uncertain Principles. Chad wrote this foolish entry about the so-called pipeline problem of women in physics. Which just goes to show that even an advanced degree in physics is no guarantee you won't have your head up your ass now and then.
The gist of Chad's post seems to be that, since he is a nice guy, it is awfully unfair of unnamed personnages to go about bashing physics profs for their bad behavior vis-a-vis women, especially since most of his colleagues on the faculty are also nice guys. Here's the whiny end of…
thusspakezuska | September 11, 2006Many women in science and engineering have long suggested, only half tongue in cheek, that if we could only have an L.A. Engineer t.v. show it might do wonders to increase the number of young girls choosing STEM careers. Zuska, of course, thinks we'd still have to do something about the morons, cretins, and sexual harassers, but maybe if we did become a significant minority, they'd have to think twice about some of their behavior.
Well, L.A. Engineer isn't here, but the Discovery Network via Beyond Productions has come a-knockin'! Diane Matt, Executive Director of WEPAN, just posted this…
thusspakezuska | September 8, 2006It's the start of the fall semester. New committees are being formed, old committees are having new members appointed and all of them are convening for their first meetings of the year. I happened to get hold of the minutes of the first meeting of the Committee on the Status of Women in Science and Engineering (CSWSE) at IncrediblyLowPercentageOfWomenInEngineering Polytechnic University (ILPOWIE Tech). The committee members were appointed by the provost, and they included the Engineering Dean, the Women in Engineering (WIE) Program Director, and a Women's Studies (WMST) Professor. Read…
thusspakezuska | September 7, 2006This entry is sparked by a recent comment from Markk:Quit yelling about men -in engineering- and yell about men -in authority- especially academics, abusing their position.
While it is unrealistic to think that I will ever quit yelling about men in engineering, at least until the revolution comes, I do like to think that I also do a fair amount of yelling about men in authority who abuse their position as well. Is Markk perhaps not familiar with my earlier writings on Dr. Toadygawa of MIT, and Rollins President Lewis Duncan (regarding the latter, I have been promising you an update entry…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2006So, what would be an example of someone creating a hostile environment in the workplace or educational setting?
An example of "frequent, non-trivial acts of a sexual nature" might be, oh, say repeatedly raping your lab assistant nearly 80 times. The rapist in this case was R. Igor Gamow, "a prominent inventor and chemical engineer who was fired by the [University of Colorado] in 2004 for 'moral turpitude.' " The multiple rapes took place between 1995 and 1998. (See The Chronicle of Higher Education daily news, May 5, 2006.)
Or, as Kay Weber alleges in Weber v. Fermi National Accelerator…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2006It was Faramir in The Lord of the Rings who described Frodo's task as "a hard doom and a hopeless errand". I must confess to feeling that way myself about my own self-imposed task of reporting to you about the pond scum of academia, those who discriminate and harass, the bilious lechers and sexual abusers of the young. And yet it must be done. Because if I don't do it, who will? And these miscreants must not be allowed to slither away into the dark recesses of our classrooms and buildings, attempting to rehabilitate their reputations or escape scandal altogether. No, they must be publicly…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2006So, here's the latest set of reports telling you exactly what the situation is for women in science, nicely collected for us in the AWIS Sept. 1, 2006 Washington Wire (thanks, AWIS!) FYI: STEM = science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. What follows are the titles of three reports, AWIS's summary, and then my summary.
Rapid Increase in STEM Occupations in the Last Half-Century
A new study published by the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST) shows that the growth in American STEM occupations between 1950 and 2000 outpaced the growth of the total labor…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2006The mysterious pixies who were haunting Thus Spake Zuska and messing with my ability to post comments and do other blog tasks have gone away. Either the fabulous Tim Murtaugh has cured my website, or it healed itself. Whatever. All seems to be operational again.
thusspakezuska | September 5, 2006If you have tried to post a comment to this blog in the last few days and got a message telling you it was being held for approval by the blog owner, don't feel bad. I got the same message.
Also, I didn't receive my own comment to be able to approve it. And I didn't receive yours, if you made one. So don't think I'm ignoring you. I just haven't heard from you. I don't know why. The good folks at Scienceblogs.com will have this sorted out in no time, I am sure. In the meantime...
Please stand by...
thusspakezuska | August 31, 2006Possessing, as I do, numerous credentials that allow me to pontificate in an authoritative fashion** upon the significance, meaning, and import of global warming, I, James S. Robbins, am here to tell you the truth.
Who gives a rat's ass about global warming? We here in the U.S., and our neighbors in Canada, will be just fine, and really, who else counts? I mean, if you don't care about massive species extinctions, and the disappearance of entire island nations, there's really not a whole lot else to worry about. You lose a little shoreline here, you gain a little over there. We'll bulid…
thusspakezuska | August 30, 2006This post is a reply to a comment earlier this month from a very distressed young woman named Ellen. I'm sorry I wasn't able to reply sooner but family crises intervened. Ellen commented on the third in a series of posts I made regarding two calendars recently published, one in the U.S. and one in Australia, that feature women in IT dressed up as fancy whores (my term) or Screen Goddesses/Geek Gorgeous (their terms). The third post, Let Them Eat Cake - Beef vs. Cheese, compared the two calendars to the hot firemen's Flame Calendar (pun intended). In that post, I discussed why beefcake adds…