sundries

[rm]

Patty has a cold. :(

Also, Buffy and Angel? Not here yet.

Finished my WIAD story.

Can we talk about Lady Gaga's new video? Because I could. All day. Not only is it a response to a certain era of Madonna, but it also goes to a lot of strange, strange uncomfortable places, the fascist references in its physical language being close to the top of the list. It's incredibly cool, smart stuff. There needs to be a Gaga Studies Journal, that's all I'm saying.

From all of my friendslist to all of yours: liljacks_corner is a community that has been set up for fan creators to make G-rated stuff for an eight-year-old boy named Jack who has just lost his legs; one of the only things that cheers him up right now is Doctor Who. He's only seen the first two seasons of the New series. What's being requested is a story about a little boy, much like the one it's for, going on an adventure with the Doctor and Rose. Details at the community.

Ready to start hollering? Daring to discuss women in science.

The Century Athletic Club.

New York now has an AllStaints Spitalfields.

Does anyone know more about this: is Judy Shepard's book homophobic? Accusations vague, scenario murky. Bwah? Anyone read it?

Didn't know this: Stephanie Flores, the Peruvian woman van der Sloot has reportedly confessed to killing, was a lesbian.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I think we're in 99% agreement here. Taking things by parts:

Yes, my point was not the same as the point of the article. I still think the article is well written and well sourced, but I think its premise -- that the reason men dominate the high end of the professoriate due to especially high intelligence -- is flawed.

the reason women do not single-mindedly devote themselves to a pursuit (scientific or otherwise) in their 20s, 30s and 40s is because it is a cultural taboo

This is true. I'm not sure how much this cultural taboo affects women in physics and astronomy, simply because they've already overcome so many other cultural taboos. But it may be significant. Most of the women I know in physics and astronomy and aerospace engineering are culturally conservative (though veering toward the more liberal end of that spectrum), with their churches and communities forming important parts of their lives. I don't know if this is a way of demonstrating to the world that their scientific careers have not turned them into non-women, though I won't claim that couldn't be going on.

There is nothing that indicates that women are innately less ambitious, intelligent or science oriented than men

I completely agree. Given that my summer interns run around 3 to 1 women to men, I'd say that the population of high end undergraduates getting NASA summer internships suggests that young women in the sciences are ahead of their male peers at this point in their careers.

Getting back to the NYT article, I think what needs to be addressed is its flawed premise (Which would be Larry Summers' flawed premise) that men dominate the high end of the professoriate due to the way that more men appear in the very high end tail of intelligence distribution. While it's true that men dominate the high end of the science professoriate, and it's true that in the extreme high end of the intelligence distribution there are more men than women, the two facts have less than nothing to do with each other. So while the writing is good, and the sourcing is good, the premise itself has to be exposed as unjustified. If that premise were true, the IQs of senior science professors should represent the very highest end of the IQ curve. I'm quite sure that's not the case.