Archive for November, 2006

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The Great Livejournal Crash of Aught-Six

Saturday, November 4th, 2006

It’s a daily morning ritual between First Cup of Coffee and Brushing Teeth: Check Livejournal Friends List. When habits get thrown off-kilter, a kind of disconnect develops. It’s like an older pair of glasses you keep around as your spare. When you put them on, they still bring everything into focus, but you get a little dizzy trying to adjust.

Livejournal is down (or running extremely sluggish) at the moment, and the void it left in my life is tremendous. Where will I read my RSS feeds? Where will I find the latest fanfics? Where will I complain about my NaNoWriMo wordcount? What will I do while my main social network is missing?

Users flee to other networks in the interim. We have our usernames reserved on GreatestJournal and JournalFen and even Vox, and you know what? It’s not the same. The vibes of online community and discussion and yes, even the flame wars and the wank don’t feel right on these other sites. And that’s because the communities and the friendships were forged on LiveJournal. The people and the source code might be the same, but not the URL. For some, that’s enough to make any other site a shallow knockoff of the original.

Users complain about LiveJournal “selling out,” and yet when crashes occur, we miss it. Livejournal is not only a major social network; it’s a measure of Intarwebs Zeitgeist, of what’s on the minds of thousands of people at a particular time. Load up a random community’s friends page and take a snapshot of the thoughts and lives of dozens. Ultimately, it’s voyeurism. Unfortunately, I’m addicted. And desperately waiting until those guard monkeys report no problems.

Posted in Games and play, Tech talk, True confessions | 2 Comments »

Junk science hurts women’s brains: it’s official

Friday, November 3rd, 2006

If you tell women they’re genetically worse at math and science long enough, it’ll become true. Or at least that’s the impression I get from a new paper in the journal Science. (From MadScienceMama.) Researchers divided women into four groups. Each group took an “exam” in which they answered math questions, and the math questions were broken up by an essay in the middle which the women had to study.

One group had an essay that stated that women do worse in math than men due to genetic factors. Another group read an essay which said women do worse at math than men, but blamed it on environment. A third group read an essay that had nothing to do with women or math. And a fourth group read an essay that wasn’t about math, but talked about women artists, thus “reminding” the women of their group membership.

The women who had the essay stating that women are genetically less gifted at math did much worse on the math questions than the women who read the neutral essay. The women who read the essay that blamed environment for women’s lower performance in math did as well as women who read the neutral essay. And the really surprising result: the women who read the essay about women artists did almost as badly as the women who read the essay that said women were genetically inferior at math.

As MadScienceMama says:

The study suggests that genetic theory can give powerful support to discriminatory stereotypes. It is likely due, in no small part, to the way genetics is presented to the public, with an emphasis on determinism.

She goes on to say that this study may not explain the “leaky pipeline” in science, because women who actually work in the sciences may know better than to believe in junky theories about genetics. She may well be right, but the results of this study may go some way towards explaining why fewer women enter the pipeline in the first place.

Posted in Career advice, Sex & gender, They actually said that? | No Comments »

A river of crap drowns out women in academia

Friday, November 3rd, 2006

Former Health & Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala recently took part in a taskforce on the status of women in academic science and engineering. The taskforce’s findings were dismal.

Despite this optimistic piece in Newsweek, women still don’t have proportional representation in academic sciences, Shalala writes:

For more than 30 years, women have made up more than 30 percent of the doctorates in social and behavioral sciences and more than 20 percent of the doctorates in life sciences. Yet at the top research institutions, only about 15 percent of the full professors in these fields are women.

The reason isn’t biology, childrearing demands, or differences in biology, as Alternet’s Caryl Rivers wrote. It’s “discrimination pure and simple.” She cites a river of crap spewed by supposed experts who claim, based on sketchy science, that women’s brains just aren’t suited for anything involving leadership or tricky number crunching. (Warning: reading Rivers’ piece will piss you off.)
Shalala puts it best:

Yes, there are some slight differences in the ways men’s and women’s brains operate. But the same researchers who stress these differences often fail to note the many more areas in which men and women share the same approaches. Study after study indicates no significant biological differences between men and women in performing science and mathematics that could account for the lower representation of women in these fields.

She recommends a raft of policies, including woman-friendly hiring and tenure policies and new federal regulations.

And the problem starts early, as I See Invisible People points out:

My daughers had not a single woman teacher in science or math in high school. My son has had only one. Universities, as well as high schools, need to make a serious effort to recruit and promote women in under-represented areas if we’re to make any headway on the issue. To quote the old public service announcement, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. And that’s exactly what’s happening. I’m encouraged to see the Academies make a stand on it.

Posted in Career advice, Progress and politics, They actually said that? | No Comments »

Yay, a White Town reference! Our favorite band!

Friday, November 3rd, 2006

From Chicagoist:

Women in technology are hard to find, and we don’t mean the White Town album. According to the 2001 Current Population Survey data, one out of 10 employed engineers was a woman, while two out of 10 employed engineering technologists and technicians were women. Women made up 17 percent of all industrial engineers, 12 percent of metallurgical/metal engineers and 11.5 percent of chemical engineers. Among all other engineering specialties, women represented fewer than 11 percent.

Such statistics make us happy that organizations such as Women in Technology International exist. And on Thursday at Northwestern’s Kellogg Conference Center, the organization will honor those women who have excelled as industry and civic leaders in the Chicago IT community.

Posted in Career advice, Inspiring women, Tech talk | No Comments »

Ask your candidates the tough questions!

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

This is awesome. Culture Kitchen has a science quiz that you should all ask your local House and Senate candidates. Questions include whether the candidates support stem cell research and teaching evolution, but also immigration policy for scientists and engineers and federal funding for science research.

Posted in Progress and politics | No Comments »

Overalls and cliffs: we’re all feminists

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

Margaret Atwood admitted she likes science fiction at a Barnes & Noble reading, according to Bookish Love. Asked whether she considers herself a feminist writer, though, she got “subtly indignant.”

…not towards the woman who asked the question, but towards the need for the question in the first place. She said terms like that were “filing mechanisms.” Then, she addressed the audience as a whole, saying, first we have to talk about what you mean by feminism. Are we talking about driving all the men off a cliff, wearing overalls, or equal rights under the law? She said if she held a tally right now, she would guess we all were feminists. First, she said, the question would be do we think women are human beings or animals? She guessed we’d all say human beings. Then, she continued with a list of several questions in her hypothetical survey, do we think women should be able to learn to read and write, to vote, and then to the “more sticky” question of should women earn and equal amount as men for the same work, in the same position. Her final point being, implicitly, we should all be considering ourselves feminists if we understand our definitions correctly.

Posted in Beautiful geekery, Inspiring women, Progress and politics | 1 Comment »

New Bionic Woman to tackle “the role of professional women”

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

According to Solar Flare, the new Bionic Woman TV series is going to be a lot more than Lindsay Wagner weeping, getting chloroformed, and looking upset about having to fight bad guys. Instead, according to show creator David Eick, who is also co-creator of the SciFi Channel “reboot” of Battlestar Galactica, it will deal with what it means to be a woman in contemporary society.

Eick talked about how NBC greenlit the series with Variety, which reported:

Instead of focusing on terrorism and militarism, the new “Bionic” will explore the role of professional women in contemporary society and how they juggle their various roles.

“It’s using the idea of artificial technology as a metaphor for what contemporary women sometimes feel is necessary to do everything that needs to be done,” Eick said.

One of the lead writers for the show will be Laeta Kalogridis, a film scribe who worked with Oliver Stone on Alexander, and with James Cameron on the upcoming flick The Dive. Apparently, Kalogridis is a Bionic Woman fan. “She basically indicated to me that Bionic Woman, and the possibility of one day being able to do a (new take) on it, was one of the reasons she got into showbiz in the first place,” Eick told Variety. This new “take” will involve nanotech as well as reimaging our bionic pal as a professional (instead of a tennis player like she was in the first show). Yay for feminist nanotech TV!

Bionic Woman was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid, but I remember distinctly feeling disappointed when Jaime would cry or freak out when she had to fight. Why couldn’t she act tough and steely? The message definitely seemed to be that ladies are wimps in a smackdown. Also, I always resented the hint that the bionic woman cost less than the “six million dollar man” because her parts were smaller. Hello? Didn’t those writers know that smaller tech is better and more expensive?

Let’s hope Eick and Kalogridis know it.

Posted in Games and play | 1 Comment »

Why can’t Jenny play Halo?

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006

So why don’t more women play video games? Apparently it’s because unlike men, they have “relationship or family responsibilities.” Also, online games have too much emphasis on, well, gaming and not enough socializing, according to this somewhat condescending press release:

“40% of the Second Life membership is female, largely because, unlike a conventional ‘game’, Second Life is a virtual world that emphasizes social activity and creativity,” said Reuben Steiger, CEO of Millions of Us, an interactive marketing firm.

The release is promoting a Nov. 11 event in San Francisco called “Couples, Computers and Gaming.” The announcement makes it sound as though the event is really about women and computer games, but they chose to call it “couples” instead. Because of course, women would only want to get involved with games if their boyfriends were playing already.

The event will feature “comedic” MCing from all-female pro gamer team girlz 0f destruction, who have corporate sponsorship from event organizers VIA Technologies. It’ll also feature John and Mary Schuyler, producers of the “Desperate Housewives” computer game, which looks like a trashier Sims.

Posted in Games and play, Tech talk | 1 Comment »

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