Naming Experience

If you are, you may want to read this article over at ScienceCareers. It's very informative, with a link or two to some resources, and what's even cooler, it features quotes from Mrs. Whatsit (named "Abigail" in the article) and Sciencewoman (named "Mary")!!! Good stuff. p.s. hat tip to my Sciblings on the back channel for letting me know about this!
Sciencewoman ponders seen and unseen parenting responsibilities. In a discussion about parceling out responsibilities for a large project, the department chair expressed his desire not to unduly belabor a Department Dad because of his Very Special Parenting Responsibilities; Sciencewoman, however, he had no problem assigning the task to her. Until reminded by her colleague that Sciencewoman, too, is a parent. Why was Daddy's time more worth protecting than Mommy's? Well, one hopes the department chair has learned a lesson. What really burns my shorts even more, however, are the…
Raise your hand if you've been to diversity camp! You know - sometime during the academic year, your department head or dean announces there's going to be a diversity meeting/seminar/retreat. People grudgingly attend, they do some exercises to maybe show them just how prejudiced they actually are, they're told Diversity is Good!, and there's a little talk about how they can be more supportive of diversity. Everybody goes home feeling like they wasted an hour or day or weekend of their lives, and nothing substantially changes. No one has addressed why resistance to diversity is so…
The Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting article today about the "issue of cultural sensitivity...in the world of comedy". Comedy: When The Laughing Stops looks at how comedians struggle with knowing where to draw the line - and when to go ahead and cross that line. Some people fear that when comics don't delineate boundaries, it gives the public the impression that it, too, can freely utter offensive comments. [Chris] Rock addressed the subject during his sold-out New Year's Eve show at Madison Square Garden. Fat girls make fun of skinny ones, he said, but skinny ones can't do the…
Mrs. Whatsit pointed out that Propter Doc has recently written on the topic of blogging under a pseudonym. It's a very thoughtful post and touches on many of the issues we discussed at the NC Science Blogging Conference. In the middle of the post, Propter Doc says the following: If you blog about being a scientist then you are probably in a position where you need to take steps to conceal your identity. The world doesn't need to know what flavor of scientist you are, or even your gender. Is this really the case? That is, does your gender not matter in science blogging, even (or especially…
Coffee, good food, and the world's best popsicles - these were just a few of the perks associated with attending the 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference! Not to mention mingling with 200 other bloggers, journalists, educators, and students. I've been so out of touch with the blogging world for so long recently; it was delightful to feel the energy and ideas sparking off each other. Plus, I got to meet Sciencewoman and Minnow! Karen Ventii and I had planned to webcast our session on Gender and Race in Science Blogging, and we did, in a manner of speaking...unfortunately, it…
David Perlmutter, professor and associate dean for graduate studies and research in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, has a column in the November 2 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education on knowing when to keep a secret. Perlmutter offers up some good advice about managing one's career by knowing when to hold one's tongue, or even by avoiding hearing the secret someone else is dying to share. He suggests you fend off the would-be gossipers by saying, "I think I know what you are going to tell me, and it's really none of…
When I was a postdoctoral student my supervisor sent me for three or four days to what we participants called "cancer camp". It was a mini-course on the histopathbiology of cancer. We learned to interpret pathology slides, how to look at them, read them, identify cancer in all its various forms and stages. We were taught the vocabulary that pathologists use. Just as importantly, we were taught how to see. How to understand what it was we were looking at, to tease the meaning out of the brightly colored and oddly shaped masses we were looking at in the microscope. Without being taught…
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, Home-Schooled Students Rise in Supply and Demand: "Home schooling often really allows students to develop a passion," says Sabena Moretz, associate director of admissions at Richmond. "With a traditional high school, most of the time you don't see a kid who's gotten so excited with the history of Monticello or got themselves onto an archaeology dig." Recognizing that sense of passion is what led Virginia Commonwealth University to create two engineering scholarships this year for home-schoolers, says Russell Jamison, dean of the engineering school. "We…
Saw this over at The Chem Blog. Couldn't help offering my own spin on it. Chem Blog needs some serious shoe-puking. I recommend you read the original, then my version. It will be more fun that way. Oh god that is so freaking depressing isn't it? Reminds me of a sad story from when I was in grad school. Seems there was a boy with good looking transcripts but about equivalent to those of a girl in the program so they gave a hearty fellowship to the boy because, as you may have guessed, he's got a Y chromosome and this advantage must be exacerbated with fellowships, grants and pats on…
The Scientist wants you to vote for your favorite life science blogs. To get the party started, they asked seven prominent science bloggers to recommend their favorite science blogs. I mean, they asked seven prominent male science bloggers for their recommendations. This is science, after all, and we need to be precise. So, they didn't ask any women - big deal, whine whine. Right? Yeah, well, in the grand scheme of things, who gives a rat's ass? It's just some dumb article in one magazine. But in the grand scheme of things, this is just one more example of how women get overlooked…
Lots of my Sciblings have blogged about 9.11.01 today. I particularly recommend Abel Pharmboy's post, and the video that Orac posted if you can stand to watch it. I don't feel that I have anything meaningful to add. I felt that way in the weeks after the tragedy, when K-State engineering organized a panel to talk to students and faculty about...I suppose our response to the aftermath. There was a lot of worry about how some of our graduate students, postdocs, and faculty might be treated. I worried about my dear friend who is from Iran. I have no memory of what I said to the gathered…
Young Female Scientist asks her readers to rank their undergraduate and graduate institutions on a scale of 1 to 10, "10 being the most egalitarian and synergistic even with conflicting opinions from strong personality types (probably doesn't exist), 1 being the most sexist, demeaning, lawsuit-deserving place in the world". She wants people to name names - not their own, but that of their institutions. In the four comments she got, nobody named names. Apparently people - women? - do not feel safe enough to call out their departments and institutions on their sexism. What if someone…
I found the link to this video over at She's Such a Geek! - thanks, Charlie! Listen to one female geek's response to reading the book. I particular loved her saying that the "she" in "She's Such a Geek!" should not make men feel excluded - they should just "ignore the s in front of the he as we have been ignoring its absence" for lo these many years. Hee! Enjoy!
It's late summer, and the harvest is bountiful, and so with the contributions to Scientiae. Thanks to all of you who submitted such fabulous posts. Some of you even wrote two posts! It must be that back-to-school enthusiasm. As you know, this month's theme for Scientiae is "Unleashed", chosen by moi. I wrote about furious women the other day, which will tell you a little about where "unleashed" came from (and just how long it's been fermenting in my brain). But I have to give a hat tip to Karmen at Chaotic Utopia for inspiring me to make it the theme of the carnival, in the course of…
As a graduate student at MIT, my daily commute took me past a construction site bordered by the sort of concrete dividers you see along highways. It was a pretty long stretch of concrete dividers, and on it someone had energetically spray-painted the following in large, excited letters: UNLEASH THE FURY OF WOMEN AS A MIGHTY FORCE FOR REVOLUTION! This caused me much disquiet every time I passed by. Would people think I was one of those furious women? Who were those furious women and what were they furious about? What in hell would happen if their fury was unleashed? It did not bear…
Sooooo beautiful. You must read what Pat has to say about APS's CSWP compiling a list of female-friendly physics departments. And follow the links therein. Here's how my various alma maters responded to this survey question: Please describe why someone applying to graduate school who is interested in a female-friendly department should choose your department. Duke University The physics department at Duke University has quite a few females. Interaction among the women of this department is encouraged by having lunch together a few times a year among and other social events. I am told by…
Maxine Clarke commented on this blog: It might be an idea to read the Nature site before you opine. As I mentioned at the blog from which you found this information, Nature's mission statement was updated years ago and is available at the "about the journal" page free access. See http://www.nature.com/nature/about/index.html What has changed is that we have put in a correction to the original mission statement written in 1869. Try coming over and reading the source first, "then" write your post ;-) This is puzzling...surely if Nature had already updated its mission statement, it would not…
Have you read the Nature editorial? Have you read my earlier post about it? Maybe what you are wanting is a deeper textual analysis of the editorial itself. You've come to the right place. Men [sick] Our 1869 mission statement is out of date. That's what the bitchy, complaining women are making us say. It was 1833 when the English polymath William Whewell first coined the word 'scientist'. Over subsequent decades, the word gradually replaced such commonly used terms as 'natural philosophers' and 'men of science. Scientist, you see , actually means "men of science". So even if we changed…
Nothing gets by Absinthe's diligence. Inspired by my recent post regarding women's washrooms, Absinthe writes to tell me: Not having enough washrooms for women violates Title IX. who knew??? Check this out. Absinthe suggests we study the ratio of womens' to mens' rooms in the top 50 physics, engineering, chemistry, and other science departments. It would certainly be interesting to see the results of such a survey.