thusspakezuska
Posts by this author
December 11, 2006
Penny commented that today is Annie Jump Cannon's birthday. I have long known of her as a famous astronomer but I did not know that she became deaf as an adult. Thanks, Penny, for providing the link to Disability Studies at Temple U. and the bit about Annie Jump Cannon for her birthday today. Do…
December 10, 2006
Negative geekhood stereotypes abound - geek boys have no social skills. Geek girls are ugly.
But The Onion has recently put forth a new, semi-positive geek stereotype. It seems that now, geekhood is a protection against addiction.
Thanks to my friend Cindy for sending this my way!
December 10, 2006
White papers from the WEPAN 2006 National Conference are now available on the web here. Papers available are:
But, Engineering IS Cool - Effective Messaging for Pre-college Students
Dump the Slump: Retaining Engineering Women into the 3rd Year
Facilitating Success for Women in STEM through Living…
December 10, 2006
I'm one day late getting to this, but...
...Penny posted this comment on Let's All Have a Party!
Posting this on the centenary of Grace Murray Hopper, born 9 December 1906. Math PhD from Yale in 1934, taught at Vassar till she joined the Naval Reserve during WWII and became a computer programmer.…
December 7, 2006
Others before me have noted that whenever the Montreal massacre is discussed, the shooter's name is always mentioned but the names of the murdered women rarely are ever mentioned. Let's take a minute just to recount their names and ages at the time of their deaths.
As listed on the Gendercide.…
December 7, 2006
This entry should have been posted yesterday but I wasn't able to finish it in time because of migraine. I should have left the other easier stuff alone and concentrated on this earlier in the day when I was feeling somewhat better. In the spirit of better a day late than not at all, here it is,…
December 6, 2006
The 28th Carnival of the Feminists is up at Diary of a Freak Magnet, and it's a tasty one.
Yours truly has made the Carnival! Yay! That's fun.
Go check it out. Lots and lots and lots of good stuff. Especially this Bitchitorial about why young girls don't go into math and science. Love it,…
December 6, 2006
The latest installment in the X-Gals series is out: Life As A Mother-Scientist. Subtitle: The X-Gals, a group of nine female biologists, see a direct correlation between their productivity and their child care.
Note that last phrase: the link is not between productivity and having children.…
December 6, 2006
Yesterday, PZ Myers over at Pharyngula posted an entry with a link to my post on Why I Am Not Polite. And just like that - shazam! - blog traffic here tripled. Oh Mighty PZ, Zuska salutes you!
So, a hearty welcome to all you new readers, and I hope you'll stick around to join in the fun. Check…
December 4, 2006
Occasionally one of my (usually male) readers will take me to task for what he considers to be my unwarranted angry - dare I say, strident? - tone of voice. Can I not be more polite? More reasonable? Would I not catch more flies with honey? Only speak sweet reason, dear crazy bitch Zuska, they…
December 4, 2006
I should have posted this yesterday but wasn't able to...so this is a belated birthday celebration for Ellen Swallow Richards. Thanks again to Penny Richards for sending along the following information.
December 3, 1842--birthdate of Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911), first woman admitted to…
December 4, 2006
SuzyQueue is a frequent commenter on this blog and usually has something interesting to say. I just had to promote one of her latest comments to a blog post:
I have made it a point to celebrate each 'first' woman elected to membership in the engineering professional societies by ordering a cake…
December 4, 2006
Longtime Zuskateers know that I often recommend, or express the desire to engage in, puking upon someone's shoes when they have behaved in an egregious manner. Perhaps you have occasionally wondered whence came this delightful phrase.
A thousand years ago, when I was still a graduate student in…
December 4, 2006
The Chronicle of Higher Education's news blog has a little item on Joseph Schlessinger. You may know him as the "internationally known researcher and head of the pharmacology department at Yale University" famous for his "his work in figuring out how information flows between a cell surface and…
November 29, 2006
Penny Richards wrote via email to tell me that Saturday, November 25 was Kate Gleason's birthday.
Gleason (1865-1933) was the first woman admitted to full membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, in the 1910s (she represented ASME at an international conference in Germany in…
November 29, 2006
What's the funniest lab accident you've ever had?...
...asks "Ask A Science Blogger".
Definitely not funny at the time. But funny in retrospect.
As a grad student and a postdoc, I worked with cultured mammalian cells (animal and human). I used magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study their…
November 29, 2006
From the WEPAN listserv:
The University of Washington has received a grant from the National Science Foundation ADVANCE program (grant SBE-0619159) to offer a series of national leadership workshops for science, engineering, and mathematics department chairs and emerging faculty leaders. These…
November 21, 2006
Over at Dr. Free-Ride's pad, Ken C. is most distressed that no one has attempted to debate our dear friend Rachel's serious critique of the NSF report, Beyond Bias and Barriers.
Knowing how ably Rachel dissected the work of that horribly biased panel that put together that shoddy piece of work, I…
November 21, 2006
Thanks to Dr. Free-Ride of Adventures in Ethics and Science for alerting me to this most wonderful post. Transient Reporter has provided a most delicious translation of one of Toadygawa's emails to Alla Karpova. It is too, too good to pass up. Here's the intro:
From: Susumu Tonegawa
Sent:…
November 21, 2006
Jokerine wrote in respone to Let Her Eat the Oppressor's Cake:
had a discussion in my group today about affirmative action. One of the guys comented that if we promoted women in male fields soon all groups on the fringes of society would ask for prefferential treatment. I couldn't figure out what…
November 20, 2006
Following up on my entry on Joanna Russ's book, How to Suppress Women's Writing, and its application to women in science and engineering...
In discussing "prohibitions", Russ notes"
First of all, it's important to realize that the absence of formal prohibitions against committing art [or science]…
November 20, 2006
Joanna Russ wrote a wonderful book in 1983 called How to Suppress Women's Writing. (You can purchase it on the internet here or at your local bookseller or at amazon.) Sadly, you could read that book today and apply its insights directly to science and engineering.
So, with an acknowledgement…
November 20, 2006
Toadygawa is history! At least at Picower. The Chronicle's news blog reports that Susumu Tonegawa is stepping down as head of Picower after an university investigation found he "behaved inappropriately when he tried to discourage a young female scholar from accepting a job offer from MIT". Sadly…
November 20, 2006
This post grew out of an exchange with Benjamin Franz on my post This Is The Patriarchy: When Talking To The Master, Speak In A Civil Tone. I felt the exchange itself was worth promoting to a post, with some additional commentary, especially since we are getting so close to the anniversary date of…
November 17, 2006
Normally I think one should be a bit gentle with the young un's, as they are still not fully formed and their thinking has not developed much complexity. They haven't had a lot of experience; you have to give them time to grow into understanding.
But if they will go about writing screeds for…
November 17, 2006
The second line of that quote, you know is "Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King".
At the Frontiers in Education conference held in San Diego at the end of October, there was an interesting work-in-progress titled "Evaluation of Canadian High School Girls' Perception of CSET Using A Play…
November 17, 2006
This is a first - a post that gets classified under both "moron management" AND "role models".
If you are a female professor who has ever had to deal with rowdy, disrespectful boys in your classroom, I urge you to read Susanna Ashton's column in the Chronicle of Higher Education. This must…
November 17, 2006
Yay! Finally! The good guys - that's us - are finally getting their/our own Discovery Institute! Only ours will actually promote real science and science policy as opposed to God-told-me-so science and science policy. Ed Brayton over at Dispatches From the Culture Wars has a post on the nifty…
November 17, 2006
Congratulations to Donna C. Boyd, professor of forensic anthropology at Radford University! She is one of four professors (and the only woman) to be honored as Professor of the Year for 2006 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of…
November 15, 2006
It's been a migrainey sort of week here at Chez Zuska, so in lieu of something new at the moment, I'm giving you a "best of Zuska" from the old blog site. By coincidence, it's also trash and recycling night here in my hometown. Read and decide for yourself.
Shake Off The Dust Under Your Feet…