Thursday, May 26, 2011

Feminism


If you have an hour available, I highly recommend the full video posted above linked. Professor Nancy Hopkins of MIT gives the keynote speech at a conference on The Status of Women in Science and Engineering at MIT. The transcript is also available from the website.

At 19 minutes into the speech, she mentions "I fled from feminists. I just wanted to be seen as a scientist."

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Wealth

I've been reading S.M. Stirling's Change series lately, which begins with the book:

The premise is that in 1998, something happens around the world which eliminates all of Earth's high technology, particularly electronics and explosives.  It's alternate "history," with both utopian and distopian elements.

But reading the series has had me thinking about wealth.

See, in the Dying Time that followed the Change, very few people in the cities survived.  All our stockbrokers in New York?  Turned cannibal and/or died.  Wealth did not necessarily mean survival.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Preschool Games

 I've been reading this book again:



One of the things I like about it is that it talks about child development, and about what skills the different games and activities we do as parents can help develop.  The book divides games into four large categories: Cognitive, Motor, Social, and Language.  Each large category has about 3 smaller categories, and each smaller category has 12 games.