At FairerScience.org I found this link to Val Henson's home page. Val is an operating systems programmer and one helluva woman. You'll want to check out her A Woman of Deeds essay. The essay takes its title from one of those "there, there, don't you worry your pretty little head about it" comments Val got from a 'friend' who, along with her husband, stole and patented one of her ideas. (Yes, I said along with her husband. Yep, they're now divorced.) The friend dubbed her "a woman of deeds, not ideas". That is just so precious. Val, if you will just point me in the direction of your…
Zuska wishes to announce to the entire blogiverse that Dr. Shellie was NOT being snubbed on the blogroll after I moved over here to Scienceblogs.com. Her temporary disappearance from my blogroll was due to my own ineptitude with HTML code and learning the ins and outs of Movable Type's publishing platform. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, Dr. Shellie. Everyone, please go read Dr. Shellie's blog because she is totally a member of Zuska's pantheon of goddesses. Even goddesses screw up now and then.
A wonderful blog, FairerScience.org, has brought us this delightful piece on our innate biological womanliness. ...last winter, the Times Online published an editorial by Anjana Ahuja suggesting that little girls' preference for "pink fluff" is a biologically determined feature of girlhood. Perhaps Ahuja is not aware that this premise is not universally supported: 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…
Last Tuesday's the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that evolutionary biology, you will recall, had been left off a list of eligible science majors for students applying for federal SMART grants. A Department of Education spokeswoman had assured us this was only due to a "clerical consolidation" and not any nefarious intent of minions from the Ministry of Science and Culture. But the prayers of the science community have been answered, the Chronicle reports today. For on the third day, which was last Friday, the Department of Education announced that evolutionary biology had…
Each year, Beloit College publishes a list that gives you a sense of what the world looks like to matriculating college students. Read the latest list and weep at just how out of touch you are with this year's entering college students.
Update: Okay, screw Typekey, it's anything goes here. Anyone may comment, comments will be immediately published, and I will rely on the spam filter. Let's see how that works! Advantages: Still less work for me, less hassle for you. I can always delete spam that slips through. Also, apparently the email link on the Contact tab wasn't working, so I just replaced it with my email address written out. I'm still settling into the new home here, and finding my way around. I did have the comments filter set to accept comments from anyone after screening by me, but that seemed unduly…
From the August 22, 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education daily news update: Educators Question Absence of Evolution From List of Majors Eligible for New Grants Like a gap in the fossil record, evolutionary biology is missing from a list of majors that the U.S. Department of Education has deemed eligible for a new federal grant program designed to reward students majoring in engineering, mathematics, science, or certain foreign languages. That absence apparently indicates that students in the evolutionary sciences do not qualify for the grants, and some observers are wondering whether the…
If you are a long-time reader, thanks for following me here. New folks can look up all the prior good stuff here. Information available under the "About" tab may help orient you in the Zuskasphere. Important You should note straight off that this is not a blog about hearts and flowers and kittens and happy thoughts (the beautiful picture of my Globemaster Allium to the left notwithstanding). I often write about things that are so unbelievably atrocious and disgusting, you'll feel like horking up your breakfast. Thus, I do not recommend reading Thus Spake Zuska while eating, except for…