The researchers speculate about cultural effects such as prejudice in teachers and guidance counselors; a friend thinks women keep each other down, by punishing exotic behavior.
I have little direct opinion or facts of my own to contribute, though my parents raised me with a belief that girls get told they're bad at math. A Texas girl at Caltech told me of her mother teaching her to play dumb to catch guys. A couple of female students at IU whom I tutored in "finite math" claimed they'd done okay in math until 5th grade (age 10); I think one mentioned discouragement from the teacher.) Me, I find "I'm bad at math" to be a big turn-off, especially if pitched as an inherent failing, rather than as a lack of practice a la my own minimal art skills. My default assumption is egalitarian, but "males are more variable" seems pretty plausibly on reproductive logic grounds; if you can manipulate a risk-reward tradeoff in one's offspring, it makes sense to roll the dice more for your sons than for your daughters. Though we're not a harem species, so that's somewhat bounded.
Tangentially, googling finds this article alleging Finnish girls get better math scores (grades?) but don't know it as well.
* "only eight of 180 tenured professors at the nation's top five mathematics departments, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, were women"
* "Math prepares you to do just about anything"
Or am I forgetting something? I guess Uhura and her nameless Orion roommate talked very briefly about Uhura's work, so maybe a partial pass.
There's a blog but it went on hiatus before the movie came out.
I had my first Balboa swing lesson tonight. I feel like a newb all over again. I'm reading Krugman's Pop Internationalism, on the myths and ignorance about international trade. It's good. Catchphrase: "A country is not like a corporation." Countries can't go bankrupt (in the close up shop sense), and corporations basically "export" everything. More later.
* Wired discovers Settlers of Catan, calls it a Monopoly killer, talks about German board games in general.
* Palestinian orchestra performs for Holocaust survivors. Outrage ensues.
* Mayotte votes to become fully French, abandon Islamic law.
* Waterboarding's failure. I'm sure we're all so shocked.
* New law on Afghan women passed. The patriarchy is dead, long live the patriarchy.
* Federal pension insurer switched to stocks before the crash.. Head was from Lehman, denied any additional risk. Fox, meet henhouse.
* ETA: I haven't been keeping up with the flap about Dawkins speaking at Oklahoma University. The legislature (of both parties) is still buzzing in outrage at his coming "to indoctrinate students in the theory of evolution."
* What if Atlas Shrugged were a trilogy?
* A thread started on pre-Flood Creationist Earth as an RPG setting. That led to this, which ascends to new levels of bizarre. Who knew the antediluvian Sun was hot pink?
* Scalzi on Modern YA SF
* http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/171
* Speaking of mellow anime, we seem to have found something with less plot or action than even Aria: Bartender. And I thought Aria was bad enough as "Maria-sama without the dramatic tension". Actually Bartender seems a bit like a cross of Master Keaton and Aria: the odd ubercareerist of one, the lack of... anything... of Aria. Except Aria had stunning visuals, cute girls, and the puzzle of "what the hell is that thing?", and the hints of science fiction (it's a flooded Mars, with what *has* to be a genetically engineered supercat.)
* Oh no! Michelle Obama shows muscle! For mlc23.
* Obama to speak at Notre Dame, bishop to boycott.
* Budget reconciliation -- a way around filibuster abuse?
* Conservapedia on Mars and Velikovsky. Oy.
* Comments on the Prometheus Awards
* 538 on Wall Street overpay
* Tom Kratman: experimenting with women in the military is like unethical medical experiments.
* CFL bulbs that don't work.
* A list of the 'progressiveness' of the US Senate. There's a big gap between the Democrats and even the most progressive Republicans... and between those 3 and the rest of the GOP.
* Blogs, newspapers, and journalism
* Sean Hannity and "socialism"
* Obama to use more honest budgetting
* 40% support legalizing pot. This is more than approve of Republicans.
* Krugman wonders if the right-wing job network is in trouble.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_
* Singular they, and in the Bible. How 'they' became 'him'.
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fpb is a pro-life Catholic I know of from johncwright's LJ, so I think of him as right-wing. But he's also Italian or British and living in Britain, so when it comes to universal health care he has some differing opinions. Also this on health care, taxation, voting, and citizenship. Vs. Wright's "The free market is the mechanism, and the only mechanism to make the rich man answerable to the common man.". (Really, James, if OSC isn't being provocative enough, what with his supporting the banking bailout, you're missing another gold mine for baiting your readers.)He's also got something interesting on monasticism and the role of women in Western Europe. More randomly, Pope Benedict has apparently lifted the excommunication on the Lefebvrists. "Nazi Pope embraces Nazi schismatics."
New Yorker article by Gawande on the path dependence of universal health cares. E.g. the British NHS is rooted in WWII experience; France's system is rooted in its labor movement; etc. Thus he advises against radical remakes of the US system... of course, that still leaves us a choice between aggressive expansion of Medicare (which already works) vs. patching private insurance coverage, or even (unlikely) aggressive expansion of the VA hospitals.
It occurs to me (again) that while we can assume Jesus, as a Jew, was against any form of infanticide, the Gospels don't say anything about abortion. Neither does Paul or the rest of the Bible, it seems. Thought prompted by a Catholic LJ thread bemoaning Obama's lifting of the gag rule, and a comment bemoaning our spending "money we don't have" on international social programs to feed the poor. Because I remember three strong messages from the Gospels: "believe in Me", "don't divorce", and "help the poor, even unto all the wealth you have."
Bush's legacy: failing to defeat the Taliban.
Aka pygmies, highly egalitarian, father in reach of their infant 47% of the time. Paternal 'suckling'. Mothers as primary caregivers, men as primary hunters, but lots of flexibility and switching. Named positions are all male, but only somewhat important, vs. common decision making. Lots of time, not "quality time".
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Charlie Stross links and spawns discussion. The 'Law' is rooted in a character who refused to see movies that didn't have (1) two+ women who (2) talked to each other about (3) subjects other than men. (That doesn't mean they can't talk about men, but they should talk about something else as well.) Not a perfect heuristic, and anything with first person or tight-third person POV on a male protagonist is likely to fail naturally, but it's something for evaluating a field, say of novels, or recent Hollywood movies. (3) can be extended to "other than men, babies, or fashion."
Comment link: film schools teaching to fail the test.
Of works I like:
Hodgell generally passes (not sure about Dark of the Moon, where Jame/Lyra might be the only female conversation, and its partly about Lyra's husband); Seeker's Mask passes enough for 20 other books. Buffy should pass, not sure about Angel -- probably at some point, like Cordelia&Harmony. Less sure about Babylon-5. Firefly may or may not; 4 female characters, but Zoe mostly talked to the men and River didn't have a lot of conversations. Serenity supposedly doesn't apart from River+teacher. Egan tends to fail, though he largely writes 1st person autists who happen to be male. Banks may tend to fail. Vinge has strong female chars but may fail this test anyway. McKinley's Sunshine passes multiple times; Blue Sword may fail (any other women? Harimad/Aerin vision maybe), Hero has Aerin and a female cousin but they hate each other. Xena passes by overwhelming default, as does Gilmore Girls. I think Roswell and Dawson's Creek would pass but it's been a while. Simpsons? Well there's Lisa and Marge. I don't know about Star Trek, though I think Voyager has to pass and would guess DS9 would. I have little hope for Enterprise. Torchwood passes.
Anime would be interesting... I won't dump out my list, but it seems to do well. Of course, for a TV series to fail is probably pretty egregious, indicating either tight male POV, a total absence of female characters, or a total romance focus. I think even romance series like Lovely Complex or Karin pass, if only by talking about school instead. The anime we watch often has more women in a military situation than you find in real life. (Then there's Simoun, where they're all women, for yuri-powered mecha.) A typical anime series will have 8 hours of screen time, 16 for US live action, if the women don't manage to find something to talk about besides men in that time...
Ah, radicals. Giving feminism a bad name since (insert year here).
From James Nicoll; funny comment here.
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