If you don’t read XKCD, you should. But I don’t need to tell you that, because you already do. That is all.
August 4, 2010
August 3, 2010
Why Aren’t There More Women in Computer Science? Because They’re Just Not Into Your Bullshit
Female Computer Scientist has a great post up called “Women in CS: It’s not Nature, it’s Culture” in which she points out that the U.S.’s piss-poor recruitment of female students into university computer science programs is far from universal–many countries have gender parity, and in some, computer science is a female-dominated field. She offers up 5 specific suggestions on what US universities can do to fix this, all of which boil down to “So, please – stop mansplaining and start doing.”
I dated a math/CS double major toward the end of her undergrad years. She’s exceptionally good at shooting down sexist dickheads, but even so, she same home with some nerd-douche horror stories.* She’d occasionally refer offhandedly to ‘the other girl’ in her classes. The one. In a school with 30,000+ students. If I’d had to deal with that kind of environment just to get a freaking BS, I’d have gone with a less dudebro heavy program. Like agriculture. Or poultry science.
*Which I’m gonna keep to myself, since I haven’t asked if I could use her college unpleasant experiences as blogfodder.
August 1, 2010
Solar Power now Cheaper than Nuclear
Inhabit reports that one study in North Carolina shows solar-produced electricity from a new plant clocking in at 14 cents/killowatt hour, while nuclear-produced electricity clocks in at 16 cents. This is big news, potentially, for reasons I touched on here: photovoltaic solar (i.e. solar-produced electricity, as opposed to passive solar heating) has been improving in leaps and bounds over the last decade or so, and as it does, it starts to cut into the profitability of dirtier energy sources.
Bulky, expensive, fragile glass panels are giving way to cheaper, flexible vinyl ones. Increased demand (especially from China) has allowed companies that make solar panels to scale up their operations, making each panel cheaper. There are still some drawbacks–those are some very large, non-renewable silicon wafers they use, the cheaper thin-film cells are a few percent less efficient than the crystalline cells, and so on.
The folks at Inhabit point out that this study isn’t even the tip-top of the solar world: this study used regular flat-panel-generated power, not any of the sexy concentrating reflectors shown above. And North Carolina isn’t exactly the sunniest place on earth. Moreover, they show the cost of nuclear power rising. Nuclear power plants are hugely expensive to construct, and when states use nuclear to add to their electric output, those costs get split between the consumers and taxpayers–it’s not like the company is going to just eat the cost. You can download the complete study, done by Duke and NC WARN, here. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with their money graph (though I don’t know why they insisted on using straight lines for their best fit curve, when the cost of nuclear is definitely more of an S-curve), and one of my favorite ever solar power station: this one in Seville, Spain, that channels sunlight toward a giant boiler/turbine tower. It works on the same principle as a coal burning plant, but with sunlight instead of coal. And it’s literally awesome:
July 30, 2010
Recreational Sex is a Survival Strategy
There are plenty of studies out there on human sexuality that seem to assume that evolution hasn’t quite caught up with all our modern sexual tinkering, seeing as how they start off assuming all sex, and all our sex drives, stem only from a fundamentally a reproductive urge (this one, which that claims that women who are approaching menopause become “more willing to engage in a variety of sexual activities to capitalize on their remaining childbearing years” is what spurred my thoughts today) There are points where this makes sense–genetically-driven instinct won’t catch on to the advent of The Pill for a few millenia to come. But other purposes for sex, and forms of non-reproductively oriented sex, have been around for more than enough time.
Queer sex, oral, manual and anal sex are OLD. Judging from our closest living relatives, all those ways of fucking are older than we are as a species. Our hind brains may not have picked up on condoms yet, but ‘I don’t want to get pregnant, so how about you go down on me instead?’ is older than time.
And why should all sex be driven by reproduction? Humans do, and probably always have, used sex for lots of other things–for fun, to strengthen relationships, to ease tensions (and did I mention for fun?). We’re social creatures, and our gene’s survival depends not only on our ability to churn out babies, but on our ability to gain the love and support of others. With fucking. Or sharing food or whatever. But fucking is free.
I’m not an expert in human sexuality, so I’m curious: is there any evidence that having more not-PIV-sex is strongly correlated to having more PIV sex and higher pregnancy rates? If there’s not, wouldn’t it be important to distinguish between sex-in-general, which may or mat not include PIV sex, and sex that’s actually able to lead to pregnancy, when you’re doing research on sexuality and reproduction? Because it’s not a good idea to assume that when you ask someone about how often they have sex, or how intense their sexual fantasies are, that their personal definition of sex is all missionary, all the time.
July 24, 2010
Housekeeping
Just FYI–I went back and cleaned up the tags a little bit. It’ll probably take a few passes before I’m happy with them. I don’t really expect you to care, but hopefully they’ll be a teeny bit more useful in the future.
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July 19, 2010
Mini-post: Anonymous Racists try to get Utah to do Their Vigilanty-ing for Them
I haven’t seen this much anywhere else, but this is fucking terrifying. An anonymous group of people in Utah sent out a list of the names, addresses, social security numbers, workplaces, phone numbers, children’s names and due dates (of pregnant women) they feel should be ‘immediately deported’ to Immigration, Enforcement and Customs (ICE) and media outlets. Their targets are 1,300 Latinos, who they claim are all undocumented. But unsurprisingly, that much isn’t even true–several of the people who have found out they were on the list have come forward to make it clear the group’s claims of careful data thieving are bullshit.
Colorlines magazine speculates that the information may have been stolen from (or rather, by people with access to) state health and/or employment agencies. They say Utah officials are investigating who might have stolen these people’s identity info, but ICE wouldn’t comment as to whether they intended to target the people on the list or not.
What. The. Fuck.
July 12, 2010
Waxing and waning
Hey y’all, just a heads up–I may be posting even more erratically than usual for the next month. I’ve got some spare time on my hands right now, being underemployed, and I decided to play with my zombie story, NaNoWriMo style. Since I doubt/hope I won’t have this kind of time come November, I’m gonna try and do it now, starting this evening. My deadline is 50,000 words my midnight, August 12. If I don’t make it, feel free to mock me mercilessly.
And really, there’s better than good a chance procrastination will set in, and I’ll post twice as much. Either way, now you know.
June 23, 2010
Hello, Detroit
I’m in Detroit for the US Social Forum this week. Not much to say–it’s fabulous and I’ve been hella busy–but there’s one thing I wanted to comment on before I pass off the laptop to my lovely traveling companion.
Detroit is really, really empty.
Walking through the center of downtown at rush hour, there was only a light smattering of cars on the wide, major roads. Few pedestrians. It’s hard to tell if a lot of businesses are open, and those that are have few customers and close early.
There are tons of abandoned buildings, vacant lots, streets with only one house left per block.
And there are nice, solid-looking, architecturally interesting abandoned buildings. Art-deco era semi-scyscrapers, giant Victorian houses, stuff like that. Not just ugly shit is vacant.
I was joking earlier that I keep expecting zombies to come out from somewhere.
My partner just said it looks like they already did, got bored, and moved on.
I’m used to urban poverty going hand-in-hand with overpopulation. Cities get full, prices go up, people get squeezed out of their homes or have to crowd more people into each apartment. I had unconsciously assumed it was something of a law of nature.
But this is different. Eerie. And also full of a weird sort of unrealizable potential–I keep thinking, there are so many empty buildings and so many people living on the streets, it seems like at some point someone would have to just say fuck it, and look the other way on urban homesteading.
I’m so accustomed to problems of scarcity, it’s hard to imagine a collapse that brings overabundance of space. And yet, something tells me Detroit is the wave of the future for America.
June 17, 2010
Short Story
Right this moment, there’s a firefly buzzing around my head. They’ve been quite scarce the last couple years, and I was worried their population might be permanently declining in this area. This year, though, they’re everywhere again, every evening at dusk. And in my office, it seems.
It reminded me of the time a few years ago, when a firefly got into my house and fell in love with the green, blinking power indicator LED on my laptop. It would wait until I’d gone to bed, and then come out to tentatively circle the computer’s power brink.
Blink blink?
Blink.Blink.Blink.
A little closer every time. This went on for three nights in a row. I tried to catch the poor little guy and release him outside, where he night find a more appropriate love interest. But I never could. He’d go dark and hide, wait until I was back asleep, and then resume courting the power brick.
June 14, 2010
The Free Market Comes to Academe
Not too long ago, I finished my BS at a Huge Public University. For various reasons (partner working on a master’s, looming student debt, wanting to test-drive some research interests before grad school, needing to get some distance between myself and my GPA), I’ll be staying put and working for a couple of years.
Which should be fine–I worked my way through school doing science-themed drudgery, the Dept of Labor assures me my degree is in high demand, my needs are modest, and there’s an enormous land-grant university right down the street. So landing an entry-level lab tech job should keep me fed, housed and entertained for the foreseeable future, right?
Well, not so much. There are jobs out there for me, which is better than how most of America is doing right now. If and when I get one of those jobs, I will be making much more than I am now, by sheer dent of putting in more hours at a slightly-to-much higher paygrade.
But positions that used to be full time are now hourly. Nearly half the listings are for temps, but they’re not temporary jobs–at an interview recently, the PI told me they have funding and work to do for years to come, but it’s just too hard to get the administration to approve a ‘permanent’ position. They don’t want to pay for benefits. They don’t want to offer job security. And while that PI’s research sounds fascinating, and the people I met there would be great colleagues, I’m not sure I can get by making less than I did last time I was in food service.
Which isn’t a coincidence. Landgrant U is far and away the largest employer in an otherwise poverty-riddled small city. They set the tone for wages in all sectors. It’s easy to see the connection with geeky jobs like mine, but they also hire an army of custodians, cooks, welders, mechanics, office workers and so on. Budget cuts from the statehouse (and oh, how there are budget cuts) don’t just affect those employed by the school, they make sure other employers don’t have to compete. Hell, to the hypercapitalist Republicans running the state, that’s a feature, not a bug.
I’m lucky. I’m an able bodied white guy without any kids or family relying on my paycheck. I’ll be ok. But what the hell will become of my hometown if $10/hr temp work is the best thing out there?