thusspakezuska | February 10, 2007I saw a commercial on t.v. the other night for something called the "Gender Knee" so I looked for it on the web and voila!
The First and Only Knee Replacement Shaped to Fit a Woman's Anatomy
Now, I'm not sure I love all the rhetoric on their website:
From the cells in their bodies to their taste in clothes, it's no surprise that women are different from men.
Uh, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the cells in our bodies function in much the same manner. I'm always a little wary when people start waxing eloquent about our innate womanly natures...usually they end up making pronouncements about…
thusspakezuska | February 8, 2007What is diversity?
People talk about it all the time. We say we want to increase diversity. We want to have more diversity on our faculty or in our workforce. We want to manage diversity for success. We have diversity programs and diversity training and diversity workshops. So we must know what diversity is, right?
Isn't diversity what those Other people have?
You know, sort of like a disease. Everybody but white males has Diversity, and if we get more of those Others, we can catch some Diversity. (Though we may have to Lower Our Standards to get the Diversity.)
I have never been…
thusspakezuska | February 8, 2007John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts is keeping a list of all the Basic Concepts posts that my Science Blogger pals have been doing. You can find his list here. He is keeping it pretty up to date.
There are several entries worth taking a look at as a nice preliminary for the start of "class" next week. Of course, they are worth reading all on their own, but they fit in nicely with a course on feminist theory of science.
One is David Ng's lovely musings over at the World's Fair on how it is we know a flower, or, what is epistemology?
Another is Janet Stemwedel's (aka Dr. Free-Ride)…
thusspakezuska | February 6, 2007I like to scan the New Scholarly Books section of the Chronicle of Higher Education; every so often, something interesting in History of Science or Women's Studies pops up. Recently I saw a little blurb under history of science that read
Science in Latin America: A History, edited by Juan José Saldaña...Translation of writings by Latin American historians on the role of science in the region's societies since the colonial era.
That piqued my interest so I poked around on the web. You can order the book on Amazon. The summary below is from this site, where you'll also find the table of…
thusspakezuska | February 5, 2007Low on cash? Need to repay student loans? Not bothered by morals or respect for reality? Then the American Enterprise Institute has a deal for you!
... according to an article in The Guardian, a British newspaper [the AEI], a right-leaning think tank that has received more than $1.6-million from Exxon Mobil, wrote letters to scientists asking for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs," The Guardian reported.
All you have to do is write a "critical review" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Serve up a little truthiness and $10,000…
thusspakezuska | February 2, 2007Another AWIS Washington Wire in my inbox today. Here are a few tidbits I thought looked especially interesting:
Why Aren't More Women in Science? Top Researchers Debate the Evidence
This 248-page book is a collection of 15 essays by experts on gender differences in ability. They consider the question of why more women are not pursuing careers in science, engineering and math, considering innate differences, societal discouragements, differences in aspirations and other key factors. This book should challenge readers' emotional and political biases through empirical science.
This looks…
thusspakezuska | January 31, 2007Kristin wrote, in a comment:
Hey, although a search for blogs by Hispanic scientists is coming up empty, it looks like there's a new anthology by female Hispanic scientists and engineers! But you can't find it in the online bookstores. Looks like if you want a copy, you have to email NCantu AT malcs DOT net. I think we should give them a boost at getting the word out, don't you?
And she gave us this website to check out.
Here's a press release about one of the contributors to the book.
Growing up in rural Los Angeles County in the 1960s, Cal State Northridge biology professor…
thusspakezuska | January 31, 2007Mollishka writes to ask plaintively:
"Feminist theory of science"?! Other than a nice set of buzzwords, what does that even mean??
So I thought, why not go ahead and launch the Basic Concepts idea now?
On the super-secret Scienceblogs back channel, we have been discussing the idea of each doing a series of "Basic Concepts" posts on our blogs; some of my SciBlings are already doing them. You know, choose a few fundamental concepts or terms in your field, write a post describing/defining/delineating their use, label it Basic Concepts, and voila! A series is born. We thought that in…
thusspakezuska | January 29, 2007See Bill Hooker's comment about finding books for the course here.
Bill's comment got held up a day or so in junk comments because of all the links in it. Sorry, Bill! But this would be helpful for anyone trying to find/buy the books.
thusspakezuska | January 29, 2007Female Science Professor describes the amazing (and amazingly depressing) power of invisibility women in science seem to possess - at least when Distinguished Schmucks are visiting the department:
A male colleague and I walked up to the Distinguished Visitor in the hallway, and the visitor stuck out his hand at my male colleague and gave him a manly handshake; they introduced themselves to each other. For some reason, I assumed it was my turn for a handshake and introduction. Social horror! He ignored me. I dropped my hand, but I introduced myself anyway, saying something like "I'm on your…
thusspakezuska | January 29, 2007Thanks for all your initial interest and inquiries about the course. I thought maybe I'd better do a "going over the syllabus and answering some questions" post as a result. So here it is!
Books: The books needed for the course are posted on the syllabus. PLEASE NOTE THIS ADDITION TO WEEK 1 READING: Beyond Bias and Barriers:Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, NSF Report, Summary, pp. 1-10 (available free to read online; must pay to download).
I know the books are expensive, so not everybody can afford to buy them. If you have access to a university…
thusspakezuska | January 29, 2007So, I have insomnia. I'm catching up on some blog reading. I come across this courtesy of Asymptotia. It's one of those quizzes; this one is "Which Science Fiction Writer Are you?" It's fun, it's harmless, more or less; I came out as
I am:John Brunner
His best known works are dystopias -- vivid realizations of the futures we want to avoid.
Which science fiction writer are you?
More or less appropriate, I'd say.
But what's really interesting to me is this item in the quiz:
5) Are you a total dork when dealing with the opposite sex?
I'm so smooth, I couldn't possibly be a science…
thusspakezuska | January 26, 2007I promised my friend Bill Hooker at the Science Blogging Conference that I would attempt to conduct a course of sorts on the blog. What I mean is that I am actually going to be teaching myself the course and discussing it on the blog; you are all invited to follow along if you like, or just listen in on my discussion of course material if you like.
The course syllabus is one I designed for a course called Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. I never got to teach this course so I'm pleased to now enroll myself as a student. Hopefully I will complete the assigned readings on time. I…
thusspakezuska | January 25, 2007Dr. Free-Ride has graciously put the slides from her talk at the Science Blogging Conference on the conference wiki, so I'm thinking I can go ahead and blog about the stuff I thought I couldn't blog about in my earlier post.
Specifically, Dr. Free-Ride spent some time talking about conversations that happen in the blogosphere that might not otherwise take place. She enumerated and categorized these. Her basic categories were as follows:
Educational Conversations
Political Conversations
Conversations About the Scientific Literature
The Virtual Scientific (or Lab) Meeting
Conversations…
thusspakezuska | January 24, 2007Hunt Willard spoke at the NC Science Blogging Conference about "Promoting Public Understanding of Science". Willard is the director of the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. He made a distinction between getting people to actually understand the science itself - which he felt was really hard to do - versus getting them to understand the implications of science. He felt it was very easy to get people on the bandwagon with implications.
I'm not sure, however, that you can do an adequate job of getting people to understand the implications of this or that bit of science without…
thusspakezuska | January 24, 2007Just had to share this ridiculous photo of Bora taking a picture of Dr. Free-Ride taking a picture of Bora...
...and Bora looking so suave in his Darwin t-shirt! Or is it Professor Steve Steve who makes Bora look suave?
Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference
thusspakezuska | January 24, 2007Penny writes:
January 23rd is the birthday of Gertrude Elion (1918-1999) -- she won the Nobel in Medicine and held 45 patents.
January 24th is the birthday of a less famous medical researcher who was about the same generation as Elion: Virginia Minnich (1910-1996) was a hematologist. She was only able to attend college during the Depression because her older sister lent her the money--yeah for older sisters!
I would just like to add that January 20th is the birthday of Zuska and I celebrated with Mr. Zuska (but not till the 21st, since I was at the Science Blogging Conference on the…
thusspakezuska | January 24, 2007I think my favorite part of the day at the Science Blogging Conference was when Dr. Free-Ride gave her talk. It was titled "Adventures In Science Blogging: Conversations We Need To Have, and How Blogging Can Help Them". I am hoping she will turn this into a paper and publish it somewhere so I don't want to steal all her thunder. But I do want to share just a bit of what she talked about.
Dr. Free-Ride talked about the need for community and communication as key ingredients for human beings to flourish. She also drily noted that since, when she last checked, scientists are still human…
thusspakezuska | January 24, 2007At the Science Blogging Conference, I picked up a bookmark from the North Carolina Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Center. The SMT Center's website is very, very cool. If you are a K-12 teacher, or if you run an outreach program, or if you are a scientist looking to collaborate with a K-12 teacher or someone who runs an outreach program, then you might want to visit this site. They have some nifty resources and lots of good links, including some links to funding sources. This site is especially helpful, of course, if you live in North Carolina, but even if you don't live in…
thusspakezuska | January 23, 2007At the Science Blogging Conference, Bora urged us to visit the conference wiki and "click on the logos of our donors to show them interest in their sites". Because it was Bora who asked me to do so, and because I want our donors to come back next year and support us in this endeavor again, I obediently went to the conference wiki and started clicking on donor logos.
And what a lot of fun I have been having! Who knows when I might have discovered the Endeavors site without the conference wiki donors page, with this nifity article on Cultivating New Scientists.
Eleven years ago, Tomeiko…