thusspakezuska | August 28, 2008I read it in the Philadelphia Inquirer. (Longer version here in the LA Times.)
In a news release, Roy Den Hollander, who's best-known for suing Manhattan nightclubs because they offered free or discounted Ladies' Night drinks to women, contended that [Columbia] university could not use government money, such as federal financial aid, to fund its Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
Women's studies courses, he maintained, discriminate against men and are therefore in violation of the Fifth and 14th amendments. He also called Columbia a "bastion of bigotry against men . . . [that has…
thusspakezuska | August 27, 2008So: Long promised substantive reply to comments on previous post is not materializing anytime soon. Migraines, mom in hospital again, coming down with headcold, sister arriving tomorrow for holiday weekend visit, possible trip to western PA next week to tend to mom when she is discharged from hospital (extra attention on top of what assisted living can provide)...I planned to get a post out today but unexpectedly the roofers we just contracted with on Monday phoned at 7:30 a.m. and said surprise! we're going to be hammering and pounding over your head all day long! and the cats were going…
thusspakezuska | August 19, 2008A reader named Paul Murray left this comment on a older blog post of mine:
The comments on tit-staring make me wish the women could occupy a man's body for a day. Ignoring tits in your visual field is as easy as it is for a woman to simply ignore a cute baby in the vicinity.
I was flabbergasted, to say the least. What to be more annoyed at? The suggestion that women are somehow programmed - biologically, of course, I am sure - with some sort of infant-adoration module? Or Mr. Murray's casual insult to his fellow men, that they are simply incapable of behaving decently? That's quite some…
thusspakezuska | August 15, 2008Lab Cat is hosting the next Scientiae, and her theme is My Summer Vacation!
Even for those not in education or with children, September means the end of summer so this Scientiae gives one more chance to look back over the summer to relive some enjoyable experiences, or assess how well we achieved our goals. Did we get everything done we had hoped? Did we have fun? Did any one go some where exotic or exciting?
You can write about anything to do with summer - for example, pick your best experience this year or talk about what summers and vacations mean to you in general. Feel free to use a…
thusspakezuska | August 14, 2008Via the AWIS Washington Wire, this news of interest to young black academics:
In The Black-American's Guide for Winning Tenure - Without Losing Your Soul, authors Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy provide dos, don'ts, advice and support. One of the tips in the Q&A with Rockquemore includes being proactive rather than reactive in creating a professional network of support. She emphasizes the importance of knowing the institution's exact promotion and tenure process, as well as unwritten rules from department-specific norms to whether race can be explicitly discussed. Once the…
thusspakezuska | August 14, 2008You are a university president. You naturally wish to avoid scandal and negative publicity during your administration. The time to make it mandatory for all faculty and staff to undergo training in how to avoid sexual harassment is:
A: When you take office, or shortly thereafter.
B: After one of your professors is caught emailing female students a quid pro quo: A's if they would expose their breasts and allow him to fondle them.
If you are University of Iowa president Sally Mason, you will, of course, pick option B.
If this is only the first time the esteemed Professor Miller has engaged…
thusspakezuska | August 13, 2008Hey Readers!
Seed is running a reader survey. You could win an iPod AND a MacBook Air AND an Apple TV!!! just for participating! Apparently the chances of winning are pretty darn good. So maybe you want to sashay on over to this page and complete the survey. It only takes 10 minutes, I've been told, though the survey site says 20. Good luck!
thusspakezuska | August 7, 2008I never got around to reviewing Danica McKellar's first book, Math Doesn't Suck, and now she's got a second one out, Kiss My Math. You gotta love the title at least. I think she's got a whole franchise going here. Maybe by the time she puts out her calculus book I'll get my review of Math Doesn't Suck up on the blog.
Hat tip to Veronica for letting me know about this.
thusspakezuska | August 6, 2008The National Association of Scholars, in its tireless quest to have the little-noted perspective of the white man represented in our nation's colleges and universities, has succeeded in getting a pet project funded via the Higher Education Act reauthorization. As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
The new grant program, which would provide aid to institutions to establish or strengthen programs to promote "traditional American history," "the history and nature of, and threats to, free institutions," and "the history and achievements of Western civilization" has had an even longer…
thusspakezuska | August 5, 2008In the past it's not been my practice to read the business section of the newspaper but lately I've been paying more attention to it. Sunday, the Philadelphia Inquirer's business section featured an article I just couldn't resist: Hacker Camp: Computer programmers get to play attacker in order to learn how to do security better.
Early in the article we learn that all the "campers" are men. This is discouraging. I don't know how attendees were recruited or selected but I'm guessing there wasn't a lot of outreach to women. This is the part of the article that really woke me up, however:…
thusspakezuska | August 4, 2008Jenny F. Scientist reports the following:
Recently, three women joined my lab, more than doubling the female population. (Just in time for me to leave.) There was instant bonding, which I had only seen before among married postdocs or among single grad students. But it is lovely to have other women about. We go to lunch together; every couple weeks we all go out together for drinks or dinner. (Which I love, by the way.) Every so often one of the men comes along- we are outnumbered about 3:1- but mostly, not.
Dr. S argues that this is discriminatory of me. What if the poor dears fell left out…
thusspakezuska | August 4, 2008For those of you who participated in last fall's Donors Choose challenge - and those of you who didn't! - here is a painless way to help out a really worthy cause.
A media website Seed digs called BigThink is in the middle of a DonorsChoose drive, and Seed has agreed to help them out.
Basically, they've negotiated a deal with Pfizer where for every person who clicks on the "Vote for this video profile" button on this page, Pfizer will give $1 to DonorsChoose, up to $10,000. Unfortunately, they've only raised about $1,200 so far.
To help them reach that $10,000 goal, we're going to try to…
thusspakezuska | August 4, 2008Please note, if you were planning to attend the ScienceBlogger meetup in New York City this coming Saturday, the location has changed. Here are the details about the new location:
The new spot will be at a bar on the west side called Social. Seed has reserved a room in the back, and it's three floors in case we need even more room. Seed will buy the first round of pitchers (alcs and non-alcs).
Details:
2pm-4pm on Saturday, August 9
Social
795 8th Ave (close to 49th St.)
New York, NY 10019
thusspakezuska | August 4, 2008During my time as a blogger, I have discovered that I am lousy at one of a blogger's sacred chores: maintaining the blogroll. The ideal of what my blogroll would be is perhaps best exemplified by Janet's at Adventures in Ethics and Science, or Peggy's at Women in Science. The sad reality, of course, was a mish-mash collection of links that were never updated and certainly didn't constitute anything like a comprehensive look at the vibrant women in science blogging community. I suck at blogrolling.
Recognizing my failure, I have decided, at least for now, to just point readers to other…
thusspakezuska | August 4, 2008A great post at eduwonkette looks at gender and stereotype threat in math performance. Stereotype threat has been well-documented in "laboratory" settings, but eduwonkette reports on a study in a real-life setting:
These men and women were, by all accounts, in the pipeline for math and science careers. Students in the "gender nullifying" treatment read just a few extra sentences before taking their tests:
What about gender differences? This mathematics test has not shown any gender differences in performance or mathematics ability. The test has been piloted in many mathematics courses across…
thusspakezuska | August 3, 2008I believe there was at least one of my readers who expressed an interest in attending this Saturday's ScienceBlogger meetup in New York City - Falyne? Still planning to attend? Maybe there are more of you and you just didn't speak up? I know there are many people who are primarily readers of other blogs who are planning to attend. Anyway, here are the details on the meetup:
We'll be meeting at 2:00 pm on Saturday, August 9, at the Arthur Ross Terrace at the American Museum of Natural History in Central Park. Once there, please head to the cafe tables and chairs set by the trees on the…
thusspakezuska | August 1, 2008Female Science Professor has a great Q&A post, So They Had To Hire A Woman. Here's a sample:
Question: So you're going to get a Ph.D.? Couldn't you find anyone to marry you?
Answer 1: Why would I want to get married when so many men are just like you?
Answer 2: That's right, and I want to be a professor so that there are fewer people like you saying things like that.
I much prefer the first answer. Heh.
But really, once you start perusing the comments, it's absolutely stunning how many women report having some variant of this question thrown in their face. Like this comment from…
thusspakezuska | July 31, 2008What makes you a member of family, or a citizen of a nation? Over at Sciencewoman, Alice reports on a session she attended at this year's NWSA conference:
In a session on the technologies of citizenship, Banu Submramaniam of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst talked about the developing practice of doing DNA maps to understand your heritage, and then linked into a discussion about how caste is argued by some activists as analogous to race, and then DNA scientists go in to study caste with no sociological or historical theorization of what it means.
It's all very interesting to me,…
thusspakezuska | July 29, 2008The theme for August's Scientiae is transitions. All month long I thought I would write something about the transition that was forced on me some time ago, to which I am still not quite adapted: from happy participant in the paid workforce to migraineur on disability. But as it happens, I've got other things on my mind.
The major transition in my life this past year has been helping my mother move from the house she lived in all her life to an assisted living facility. It's not just been a transition for her; it's affected the whole family. The very notion of a stable "home place" has…
thusspakezuska | July 29, 2008You all may be aware of the moronically stupid column by John Tierney that ran in the NY Times recently, an opinion piece disguised as reporting. I haven't had a chance yet to give my own response to this piece of tripe, or to show you how it is but one more piece in Christina Hoff Sommers's American Enterprise Institute-funded propaganda campaign against women in science.
The Association for Women in Science wrote a letter in response to Tierney's trash. Naturally, the NY Times refused to run it. However, you can read it here. In addition,
[AWIS] constructed an in-depth op-ed, also…