"Math class is sure hard!"

...and this is why I believe that having a lot of formal education doesn't mean you're smart. How can you have a math class with no right or wrong answers?

From the linked essay by Jay Schalin:

And if somebody is better at language skills than quantitative reasoning, and therefore less interested in scientific matters, it is often best for all concerned if he or she does not study to be an electrical engineer.

Heh. My favorite anecdote from my least favorite EE lab was when my assigned partner for the week was the other chick, and we both arrived at the wrong answer in the pre-lab assignment and thus wired our transformer backwards--instead of stepping down from 120V to 6V, we stepped up to 2400V--and overloaded some capacitors, which caught on fire and shot across the room, narrowly missing some guys who got the right answer. (We were never assigned to work together again, which I'm sure was coincidence. ;)

But it really hammered home the fact that there are right and wrong answers, and you can't accomplish anything by assuming all answers are equally valid as long as they're written up properly (also made me realize I wasn't as smart as the "educators" in Podunk Community High School told me I was...alas).

Key graf:

Perhaps the key to producing more scientists in our society is not some sort of feminist Manhattan Project to produce more women scientists, but rather to promote science universally to all young students, and let those who have talent and inclinations in a given field pursue them.

Yup.

Good grief.

Youngsters of both genders avoid careers that involve math and science because they lack confidence in those topics, "despite the fact that the largest number of kids ranked math and science as their favorite subjects."

All told, 85% of kids say that they are not interested in an engineering career, according to a survey released Monday from the American Society for Quality.

The headline the J-S puts on this is "Girls shun engineering careers, ASQ study shows". As if anyone needed a survey to know that, or we already know why. But why don't boys want to pursue engineering careers? What are they being told to do instead? What's changed in the past 20 years?

ASQ cited numbers from the National Science Foundation, which projects that the U.S. shortage of engineers will reach 70,000 by 2010*, even as the nation's employers court talent from China and India.

Who cares what an engineer has between their legs if they're qualified and capable? Seriously, why does it matter? China and India don't make a big deal out of forcing women into science...

I suspect the "lack of confidence" in math and science has something to do with a) how it's presented in classrooms, in the seven minutes left in the school day after all the multicultural feel-good self-esteem social-services stuff by b) K-6 teachers who have no mathematical interest or ability. (In my weekend with Facebook, I've noticed a strong positive correlation between "couldn't pass pre-algebra without cheating on the homework" and "employed as a teacher.")

* In January 2009, there seems to be a glut of software engineers. Next life, I'm majoring in Lesbian Latina Deconstructionist Studies.

International Year of Astronomy

2009 is the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first public demonstration of the telescope, and the International Year of Astronomy.

So in addition to "drink beer" and "eat vegetables" (but only vegetables I can identify), I've added "look at the sky" to my list of New Year's Irresolutions. I spent a lot of time looking at the sky as a child (I got yelled at a lot for setting my alarm clock for the middle of the night), but not so much after I graduated from college and started living in cities. I'll have to see what's going on around here.

Well, this explains Hawkeye fans.

And Kos Kidz, gangsta rappers, NOW, etc:

From screaming baseball fans to political rally-goers, groups that engage in boastful self-aggrandizing may be trying to mask insecurity and low social status.

I fully expect someone to denounce the study as racist.

(They don't say what it means when you cry yourself to sleep wearing your Brewers pyjamas.)

It's like they're writing about me...

(They are, sorta. I was a research subject at SMPY at Iowa State, although they don't seem to have used data from those years in the referenced study.)

The harpies who continue to push Title IX into places it wasn't meant to go now want the federal government to start insisting on hiring quotas for women at research universities.

I've spent 20 years observing all this "chicks in science" stuff from the inside--from special summer programs to jobs at companies that make a big show of hiring women and minorities first--and probably the only thing I can say with some certainty is you can't make women who'd rather play with babies be interested in calculus or debugging circuit boards. Especially if they don't have the abilities to do calculus in the first place (remember the variation amongst women is greater than the difference between the male and female average, thanks).

Ms. Pinker, a clinical psychologist and columnist for The Globe and Mail in Canada (and sister of Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist), argues that the campaign for gender parity infantilizes women by assuming they don’t know what they want. She interviewed women who abandoned successful careers in science and engineering to work in fields like architecture, law and education — and not because they had faced discrimination in science.

Instead, they complained of being pushed so hard to be scientists and engineers that they ended up in jobs they didn’t enjoy. “The irony was that talent in a male-typical pursuit limited their choices,” Ms. Pinker says. “Once they showed aptitude for math or physical science, there was an assumption that they’d pursue it as a career even if they had other interests or aspirations. And because these women went along with the program and were perceived by parents and teachers as torch bearers, it was so much more difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that the work made them unhappy.”

Wow. That sounds exactly like me. Lots of encouraging talks from men and women in science/engineering careers about how exceptional women should go on and succeed; lots of scorn and derision from women not in science/engineering about how women shouldn't bother (men outside frightened away by my job title, sigh). And I've tried to leave the field twice post-college, and ended up unemployed and broke both times. I love science, I liked math enough, but the business is soul-destroying.

I'll have to pick up a copy of this book.



I'm sure I could rant much more, but it's time to watch Ben Sheets and Ryan Braun and Corey Hart. :) Keeping focused on what's important here...

Don't have a baby in Minnesota.

Holy #!(*~*$!.

Last night, the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee voted against consent rights (ownership) of infant blood and DNA, reported Twila Brase, RN, President of the Citizens' Council on Health Care. That means DNA material on children can be stored and used by the government or third parties without the consent of parents. The bill (SF 3138) now goes to the Senate for a full vote.
....
As reported last year, the CCHC had discovered that for ten years, the Minnesota Department of Health had been illegally collecting DNA material on at least 780,000 babies which it was storing indefinitely, and has already given away the material on more than 41,000 babies for genetic research, all without the knowledge or consent of parents. Since then, the CCHC has been working for informed consent and arguing that the state cannot take or use genetic material without parents’ consent. The CCHC has cautioned that the state’s genetic database will soon be linked electronically to its medical database, with a permanent impact on patient records and genetic profiling that could be used against people by insurers or employers.

Michael Critchton has just joined Tom Clancy on the list of "people whose fiction turns out to be documentary."

I don't know enough about babies to comment on newborn screenings, but I do know no one should be collecting or doing any sort of research on anyone's tissues without their explicit informed consent (for babies, that would be their parents' consent). And under no circumstances should any medical records be released to businesses or employers without explicit consent. Good grief.

UPDATE: I think I figured out why MN skipped "parental consent for DNA collection/research on babies." When you have more than two people involved in conception/pregnancy/parenting, it's a legal laocoon. Adopted children--the legal parents have no genetic material in the baby. They can sign off without fear of the government database affecting their future; the biological parents cannot (you'd think a parent would be concerned about the effect on the child's future, but anyone who's read a newspaper knows you can't count on that). And then there's all the unknown fathers...you'd never be able to get consent from both biological parents from those women who have Montel Williams perform three, four, ten paternity tests. That's a lot of time/money/hassle; far, far easier to just seize every baby's tissues without telling anyone they're being used for anything other than the common newborn disease screenings.

So don't donate sperm or eggs in MN, either, if you're concerned about your DNA becoming property of the state without your consent.

Lunar Eclipse tonight

I forgot to post this yesterday.

Sciencey goodness.

North Americans will have their next opportunity to see a total lunar eclipse on 2010 Dec 21.

Unless global warming destroys the planet, of course...

You can't see the moon from my apartment, ever (which disturbs me), but I am determined to not be a wuss and go out to view it. In my car. With hot cocoa. With amaretto.

The sane among us may prefer a live webcast (scroll down).

UPDATE: I need a tripod and a better camera.