Links for 2012-03-20

"Understanding doesn't matter. You've got to show confidence or no one will believe you're smarter than me."

We tend to mock conservatives for endlessly keeping the culture war alive, but the truth is that it was we liberals who started it. We're the ones who, among many, many other things, banned school prayer, legalized abortion, fought for gender equality, and are currently pressing to legalize gay marriage. You'll be unsurprised to learn that I think we were right to do all these things and right to keep fighting for them. But make no mistake: we're the ones demanding change, and we're the ones who keep fighting for it. Every time I hear some liberal complaining about the way that conservatives keep turning everything into a new front in the culture war, I feel a twinge of chagrin. Why are we complaining? We're the ones who really own the culture war, and we should be proud of it. It was a war worth starting and a war worth winning.

While rents have been rising, wages have stagnated, making affordable housing an increasingly scarce commodity. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group, calculated how many hours of work at the minimum wage would be required to afford a two-bedroom unit at Fair Market Rent--the government's measure for the monthly cost of a "modest, non luxury rental unit" in a specific area, plus utilities. In no state was a 40-hour work week enough

In this report, the results of a longitudinal study with PhD students in chemistry in the UK are presented. Men and women show radically different developments regarding their intended future careers. At the beginning of their PhD studies, fully 72% of women express an intention to pursue careers as researchers, either in industry or academia. Among men, 61% express the same intention. By the third year, the proportion of men planning careers in research had dropped from 61% to 59%. But for the women, the number had plummeted from 72% in the first year to 37% as they finish their studies. If we tease apart those who want to work as researchers in industry from those who want to work as researchers in academia, the third year numbers are alarming: 12% of the women and 21% of the men see academia as their preferred choice. This is not the number of PhDs who in fact do go to academia; it's the number who want to. 88% of the women don't even want academic careers, nor do 79% of the men!