Big Think: Women in Science

There have been previous posts on here in reference to the issue of women in science.  The Larry Summers comments a while back have stirred this debate up in recent years, and I thought maybe some of you would be interested in a new video series on Big Think, in which they are interviewing women scientists.  This is the first of the series, a brief clip of Dr. Bonnie Bassler of Princeton University, discussing what it’s like to be a female scientist. 

In other news, I encourage you to read more about what Big Think is and does.  It’s a pretty cool site that encourages users to make video feedback to the interviews they have with the famous intellectuals and other popular talking heads.  Enjoy!

Not for the squeamish at heart…

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=33a_1218642189&p=1

Hungarian weightlifter Janos Baranyai suffers a dislocated elbow during competition.  Once again the Olympics: Showing the Thrill of Victory, and the Agony of Defeat.

Instead of Doing Real Work, I read my Google Reader

Pole Dancing Healthy for Woman Ages 70 (read at CNN): The need to use a room setup like a strip club is pointless. Trying to pass this off as invovative is pathetic. People are just going to go because they want to feel sexy – if there was an old gymnasium with a bunch of vertical poles and some lesbian named Big Bertha told you to do the same thing you’d go home. Equally entertianing is this week’s satire on gymnastics (read at The Onion).

Groping Gets Headline for Sheriff charged with 14 rapes, 7 sodomy charges, and others. May get 467 years in prison.

Last night’s upset with America’s superteam of female gymnists to China leave questions of validity due to the age of Chinese gymnasts sparked by an investigation by The NYT. Just because you can’t google it in China doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

-Beltway Bob

Computer Literacy

I have been reading a lot of article discussing McCain’s professed ignorance of all things internets, and I’ve begun to wonder what all of you think about how important computer literacy is to being president in 2009. Though there are obvious political undertones to this question (that is, Obama can use computer and McCain, well, can’t), I am genuinely curious about how it relates to the office of the presidency.

Welcome to America!!

If you weren’t already having a bad day, let me be the first to introduce you to today’s depressing Times story. This is just an excerpt of a story about the mistreatment of detainees at the hands of U.S. officials. It gets worse from here, so if you’re a sucker for punishment, read on. The story begins with this fact “Born in China, he entered the United States legally on a tourist visa.”

Meanwhile, his sister said, Mr. Ng (pronounced Eng), who was known as Jason, graduated from high school in Long Island City, Queens, worked his way through community technical college, passed Microsoft training courses and won a contract to provide computer services to a company with offices in the Empire State Building.

In 2001, a notice ordering him to appear in immigration court was mistakenly sent to a nonexistent address, records show. When Mr. Ng did not show up at the hearing, the judge ordered him deported. By then, however, he was getting married, and on a separate track, his wife petitioned Citizenship and Immigration Services for a green card for him — a process that took more than five years. Heeding bad legal advice, the couple showed up for his green card interview on July 19, 2007, only to find enforcement agents waiting to arrest Mr. Ng on the old deportation order.

For Inquiring Visitors

Visiting New Yorkers Legal Eagle, The Trader, and The Bureaucrat all were wondering what the deal with the bikes locked up outside of George Washington University Hospital/ Foggy Bottom Metro Stop was. While Beltway Bob knew that they were Bike Sharing systems that had just been put in place, the link has the full details. Bureaucrat, Mr Mayor says he likes the idea, so put in a good word about your awesome experience in the Capital City.

On the World Outside of Politics

Since our contributing staff already has experts in the fields of liberal politics, world conflicts and dogs turned mortician, here are some morning news highlights of things that may affect some of you more than campaign advertisement spending and whether Lin Hui or Yang Peiyi have a better voice.

 

British Scientists Discover that the Pill Changes How Men Smell: Read: Times Online

Besides knowing countless women who have been quite changed emotionally after taking “The Pill” during their teenage years, they may now find mates that they are unnaturally attracted to. This unnatural binding of gene pools can create fertility problems and children that are vulnerable to infections. The research also points out that because of the unnatural attraction to a different type of man caused by the pill, a woman may become extremely disinterested in the same man after she is off the pill. Perhaps poor pharmaceutical research and not societal problems the older generations bitch about is the culprit to our 50%+ divorce rate.  Just another thing to consider when you are out there buying Miller Lights for Ms/Mr right at the bar.

Prince Charles to Join Gore; Also Getting Fat: Read: The Telegraph

Prince Charles getting involved on the save the world bit, but is much more practical than Gore but not without Royal disillusions.  Prince C is right when he says that genetic engineering and small farmers being forced into poor land is a global problem, however there are major benefits to large corporate farms. Corporate farms in highly regulated countries like the US (which has the most amount of fertile soil on earth and very well for this reason) are able to manage crop fields in a scientific rotation manner so that the soil gets replenished. The countries he mentions, India and Australia, are not as heavily regulated in their acreage usage and so are ruining the land they farm on. Also, the problem with us all building family farms like he suggests is that much of the world population lives in concrete cities and not all of us own medieval castles in Scotland that we can just build farms on. Large corporate farm companies allow countries like the US to operate in a way where we have cities on the coast and farms in the heartland. The economies of scale in large corporate farms allow us to transport our food cheaply and grow it cheaply. Prince is ok, he does have good tips to making your own house more eco friendly, which Paul Burrell speaks of in great length in a wonderful read, A Royal Duty.

Third of Homeowners Owe More Than House Is Worth (Bloomberg) – But the depressing thing is that my rent is still way higher than the mortgage payment on a similarly sized house.

Be Wary of Taste of Ivory Liquid replacing Trans Fats.

The Conzz / Double Agent to be more careful on night on the town.

US Finally Overcomes China with most amount of Gold Medals for Olympics ‘08: However, they still fall short of my personal goal for the US of having more Olympic Medals than every other country on earth combined…ever.

And since I am trying to write this as I am trying to actually work, I notice the Legal Eagle has already posted the morning’s news. As predicted however, he has stuck to liberal politics, world invasions, and sports. PS was at the Nats/Mets game last night and it was fantastic. Thankful for a Mets victory and a stadium full of Mets fans in the National’s home stadium. Only in DC do you have such a little fan base that you can have the visiting team start a chant against the home team.

 

-Beltway Bob

Creation Class ≠ Science Credit

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.

Rejecting claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said UC’s review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts – not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.

How about it’s not a science credit because it’s not science.

Morning News; August 13th, 2008

1) Mets find someone not named Wagner to close a game, while Yankees’ Rivera picks the wrong time to start blowing saves- (but A-Rod uncharacteristically picked the right time to homer).

2) Today, the Olympics gets its own bullet: Phelps got two more golds last night, both WR’s, in the 200m Butterfly and the 4×200m Freestyle Relay. Anyone who hasn’t been staying up to watch the live coverage of the swimming should do so- especially as Phelps continues to get golds and inches closer to Spitz’s olympic record. Speaking of records, with the two golds last night, Phelps now has more career gold medals than any other olympic athlete in history, with 11. Women’s gymnastics suffered a loss in the team competititon to a Chinese team still mired in the suspicion that some of its athletes are younger than 16, which is the limit for olympic gymnastics. Anyone who has seen the Chinese gymnasts likely understands the concern.

3) The guy who brought us the beginnings of the Swift Boat campaign four years ago has released a similar book attacking Obama, “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.” An excerpt of the Times article, displaying the author’s rock solid integrity:

For instance, Mr. Corsi writes that Mr. Obama had “yet to answer” whether he “stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended to his law school days or beyond.” “How about in the U.S. Senate?” Mr. Corsi asks.

But Mr. Obama, who admitted to occasional marijuana and cocaine use in his high school and early college years, wrote in his memoir that he had “stopped getting high” when he moved to New York in the early 1980s. And in 2003 The State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill., quoted him responding to a question of his drug use by saying, “I haven’t done anything since I was 20 years old.”

In an interview, Mr. Corsi said “self-reporting, by people who have used drugs, as to when they stopped is inherently unreliable.”

Perhaps the author’s last statement is right- but you can’t accuse Obama of “not answering” whether he has used drugs as if it were important and then point out that self-reporting is a meaningless activity. It’s one or the other, buster. If you see this book in the book store, turn it around or hide it.

4) Once again, Russa is full of shit. This time, it has begun openly violating it recently brokered cease fire.

5) Not to dwell on sports, but I think it’s worth mentioning that our Women’s Softball team is, well, ridiculous.