Why Aren't You Reading This?

I thought things would settle down a bit after I got back home, but it appears my life is still more or less consumed with endless amounts of paperwork relating to my mother's finances, change of addresses needing to be made, dealing with the insurance companies. I am sure this will all settle down into a normal routine of monthly paperwork soon, but right now it's still an issue a minute. I seriously do not know how people deal with this when they have full time employment. This all means I have little time/energy to spare for good blog posts still, so I thought I'd just offer up to you…
Hmm. I seem to remember this thing called blogging...used to do it all the time...lo these many weeks ago. Let's see if I'm able to get started again. The past month and a half I've been taking care of mom and working with my siblings to arrange everything for her to move into assisted living. Let me just say it takes a great deal of time and emotional energy to accomplish something like this, especially given that my mother still lived in the house she was (literally) born in. All along the way, I kept thinking (and my siblings kept saying), how in the world would we ever get this done if…
Ask a Scienceblogger asks: " What's the deal with "virgin birth" (parthenogenesis)?" Many people, when they hear "virgin birth", think of the Virgin Mary. But all good Catholics know that Mary, Queen of Heaven, is not a true example of parthenogenesis. Really - do you imagine that the Catholic church would let a mere female lay sole claim to giving birth to the God-child? God had to send his "Holy Spirit" down to help Mary along and cuckold poor Joseph. Mary may be the Handmaid of the Lord and the Vessel of Selfless Service but no pope is going to give her sole credit for Jesus. No,…
Some great posts on other blogs you may have missed reading: Language Log has a great critique of the new PBS show WordGirl, which I found via Fairer Science. If that's not enough to make you grind your teeth, then read Pat's roundup on the Bionic Woman, Ubisoft's Imagine video games, and Barbie Girls. Bleah. Female Science Professor ran into Dr. Troll this week upon coming out of a committee meeting. Dr. Troll asked her if she was taking a class from the other committee members. I am not making this up. You can read about it here. I mean, really. You have to work at being that much…
So you're despairing of your future as an academic research scientist, and looking for "alternative" careers. When I was a grad student and postdoc I often heard my fellow students/postdocs say things like "well, I'll just get a teaching job" or "I'll just go teach at a community college". The implication was that any community college would be so incredibly grateful that such a fabulous research scientists had deigned to come teach at their lowly ranks, they would jump at the chance to hire them. Admittedly I was a graduate student a hundred years ago, and maybe this kind of attitude no…
This week's Friday Bookshelf is actually a repeat of a blog post from the old blog site. It begins with a question: Who was Annie Montague Alexander? She lived from 1867 to 1950. Naturalist and philanthropist, she was the founder of two natural history museums at the University of California, Berkeley. Over her lifetime, she ranged widely throughout western North America and beyond, collecting specimens of plants and animals as well as fossils, many of which formed the basis of the museum collections. Early on she realized that increasing population growth in California was threatening…
I love it. You must read this book review in the TimesOnline (found via Arts & Letters Daily) of Deborah Cameron's The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? Commenting on Cameron's take on all the myths about language differences between men and women: For Cameron, this is simplistic eyewash, best countered with a few well-aimed stats. She cites the meta-analysis of Janet Hyde, a psychologist who has collated masses of research findings on male-female communications. Hyde's number-crunching suggests that the difference in language use between men and…
MentorNet, the premier e-mentoring organization, has recently launched the MentorNet Blog. Mary Fernandez tells us in the inaugural entry: In this blog, I plan to explore the inspiring, unexpected, and exciting reasons to choose a STEM career, and I am asking the MentorNet community to help me tell their stories. Here's a list of some of the more obvious reasons to explore: Fun! Freedom Flexibility Challenge Impact on society Money If you would like to contribute a story about your career to MentorNet's blog, just email Mary at blog AT mentornet DOT net, and she'll post your contribution…
Geez, have I ever had a bad blogging month. I've not blogged much lately. I completely missed contributing to this month's Scientiae (these last two weeks with Mom took up a lot of time...) And then I completely blanked out that it was even time for Scientiae to be up, until I saw Sciencewoman's announcement. But indeed, the new Scientiae is up, at Wayfarer Scientista, and the topic is mentoring. Skookumchick offers up a devastating dissection of a mentoring workshop she was required to attend, but which offered zero useful information as to how she could actually acquire or improve…
There's a wonderful three-part interview with Shobita Parthasarathy, author of Building Genetic Medicine: Breast Cancer, Technology, and the Comparative Politics of Health Care , over at The World's Fair. The interview is broken up into three parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Here's an excerpt from Part 1 to get your mouth watering: WF: What's your argument? SP: I argue that the influence of national context is felt far beyond public policy and political debate to the level of practice, fundamentally influencing human genome science and technology. Through a comparison of how genetic testing…
I saw this advertised in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action, by Peter Schmidt. Schmidt is a deputy editor at the Chronicle. I don't have a copy of the book but the excerpt I read on amazon.com is very well-written and just astonishing. There's a website and blog to accompany the book, where you can find an excerpt and table of contents, a list of books cited or of interest, and links by chapter. These links put a world of information at your fingertips - reports, books, websites for information about…
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…
Alert reader Linda Carpenter has given me a heads-up about a forthcoming book that is a "take down of ev-psych style cave-masculinity". Ooh, that sounds tasty! The book is The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and Science by Martha McCaughey. Here's the book description: Has evolution made men promiscuous skirt chasers? Pop-Darwinian claims about men's irrepressible heterosexuality have become increasingly common, and increasingly common excuses for men's sexual aggression. The Caveman Mystique traces such claims about the hairier sex through…
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…
So, I can't sleep because I'm very worried about my mom right now. I won't bore you with details; she's okay for the moment but a lot is weighing on my heart. The upshot is, you get a post about Barbie dolls. Yes, Barbie dolls. Inspired by Keet & Nini, whose site I found by way of Astrodyke. Thank you, Astrodyke! The stuff about Barbies is in this post at Keet & Nini's. Keet talks about her daughter loving Disney princesses and playing with Barbies, and reminisces about the other girls in her high school Science Club. She concludes: I wonder what they are doing now, and…
Benjamin Cohen at The World's Fair has an excellent post up that should interest many readers of this blog. It is an interview with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization. Here's the intro, to tempt you to go read the whole post: David Hess is a longtime leader in the field of STS. Like few scholars, this claim holds true by reference to academic leadership, mentoring, research, and community involvement. His past books, Science and Technology in a Multicultural World (Columbia University Press…
The latest Scientiae is up over at Twice's place. Haven't browsed through it all yet, but it's always good reading, so go read!
What is this thing called feminist science studies? Have you ever been asked that question, or perhaps asked it of yourself? You wanted a nice, short, pithy answer to hand over to your interlocutor. And yet, it's like being asked, what is this thing called science? The subject area is huge, the topics are diverse, the perspectives vary, contrasting and complementing one another. Well. I don't have that nice, short, pithy answer for you today, but I do have a very nifty book to recommend: Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies, edited by Mary Wyer, Mary…
Tara at Aetiology has a review of Danica McKellar's new book Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind Or Breaking A Nail. She also snagged an interview with McKellar which you can find here. She asks McKellar about her motivations for writing the book and also why she choose to weave examples around stereotypical "girly" things like fashion, shopping, and makeup, among other questions. McKellar, for those of you who don't know or remember, starred as Winnie in the television series The Wonder Years. Afterwards she went on to earn a math degree summa…
That fabulous group of women, the X-Gals, is back with the last of their installments in the Chronicle of Higher Education and it is truly Must Read C (of Higher) E. This last installment is titled On the Origin of Academic Species and it is a cataloging of the various types of folks who've responded to their columns over the past year. Included, as might be expected, are The Generally Disgruntled, The Me-Too, The Condemning Wo/man, and The Dismissive Male. Of the latter, X-Gal Tess Isaac writes: ...when Jana described an adviser who told her to choose between work and family while her…