Friday, June 05, 2009 - Posts
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Meghan,
thanks so much for posting about the importance of female mentorship.
I'm no physicist (anymore) but with many friends plus a mom in science,
I am especially sensitive to the need for and frequent lack of XX
mentorship in these disciplines. We've all heard reports that Americans
lag behind in the hard sciences generally—but less reported is the fact
that women rarely take on the quant-heavy jobs that do exist, or that
tenured female science and engineering faculty are almost nonexistent.
Then there are the other, real disadvantages talked about in the
Fisman/NBER report.
Some of this, of course, has to do with... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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A post from Double X writer Vanessa M. Gezari:
Like you, Anne,
I’ve been wondering what kind of big, concrete policy changes will come
out of Obama’s Cairo speech yesterday. The specific programs he spoke
of—far down near the end of the hour-long address—seemed
soft-focus and shallow compared to the gigantic arc of intercultural
understanding traced by his rhetoric. But I want to spend a moment here
on Obama’s language, which, as always, rewards... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Samantha, David's dad in the dentist video was his actual dad, so we
hold him to the standard of life, not art. I actually found this MGMT video
refreshing, as an antidote to the Disney-fied, chock full o' lessons
kid fare that's out today. (Hola, Dora!) Once upon a time, fairy tales
helped kids make sense of their outsized terrors and emotions. They did
not teach them how to wash their hands, or say "recycle" in Spanish.
Babies do cry frantically when they are left alone in a crib, as if—and
many a parent has said this—there were monsters in there. Or they swear
they see monsters in the... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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When the David after the dentist video came out, we had a good conversation about whether it was wrong for the father to post this video of his son all drugged up and in pain. Hanna cried foul, but some of us agreed it was funny—and harmless—enough to be worth the potential privacy invasion. Not so with the latest music video from MGMT, in which... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Over on Slate, there's a really interesting piece by Ray Fisman about the importance of female mentorship.
Apparently, a recent working paper from the NBER found a way to measure
the effects of female vs. male teachers on students at the Air Force
Academy. It can be hard to distinguish among various complicating
factors when... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Willa, it's amazing that Kate Gosselin—and Kate Gosselin's hair—have graced the cover of US Weekly for the past six weeks.
And it's clear that hunger for TomKat news has waned. But I've become
increasingly skeptical of economy-driven explanations for shifts in
mass culture, and I'm not as sure as you seem to be that this
preference for reality-based tabloid fodder is attributable to our... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Sonia Sotomayor has a lovely smile, and like many Americans she has paid a price for it. According to the questionnaire she completed as part of the Senate confirmation process, she owes approximately $15,000 to her dentist.
Several writers have been boggled by the size of the bill. In fact,
it's pretty easy to spend $15,000 on dental treatment. Dental plans
generally cover... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Oh joy! I have discovered another reason why I love Rachel Maddow. The totally original MSNBC news anchor and XX Factor heartthrob twittered a link yesterday to Minnesota Zoo's interactive game highlighting their new Africa exhibit. (Maddow's tweet: "My inner 8 year old will not let me do anything today that does not somehow involve this website: http://whopooped.org/.") The game... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Randy Cohen, the New York Times ethicist, caused a tizzy this week with his proposal to decrease gun violence: strip all men of their firearms, and give women guns.
Men are way more likely to shoot and kill people, he argues, citing the
figure that “in 2005, 91.3 percent of gun homicides were committed by
men, 8.7 percent by women.” So taking away their guns should cut down
the number of gun-related deaths. As for giving guns to women... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)