Sunday, May 10, 2009

Appropriate for Mother's Day

This link seemed appropriate for Mother's Day.

In recent paper in the journal "Science," a study claimed that there was gender-based differences in standard testing, in layman's terms: boys did better then girls. It's probably better not to get me started on the topic. My rant would last forever. I'm going to let the Feminist Chemists do the talking for me, they are much more articulate than me. They wrote a letter to the editor, which Science decided not to publish. I must say, I'm very disappointed in Science, I've always considered they wouldn't shy away from controversy. If they were bold enough to publish such a study, they should be bold enough to publish the response. I'd be interested to see the reviewer's comments too. I wonder if they sent it to a bunch a males for review.

Now the Feminist Chemists have published the letter themselves, and it can be found here (in case you missed out on the first link).

Added later:
I honor of Mother's Day, this story might seem relevant. I seem to remember when I was young that my mother didn't consider herself to be exactly a math genius. Although she always encouraged me, she probably was a result of an era in which girls just didn't do math. When she returned to college later in life, I had the opportunity to tutor her in math. Let it be known that my mother aced it! Easily. Way to go ma! Girls can do math just fine.

Monday, May 4, 2009

It's not too late yet!

To bid on your own personal genome. There is one bid right now for the low, low price of $68k, and you still have a few hours to place your bid. You can have your own genome sequenced and the proceeds got towards the X-prize foundation.
Click here if you want to place a bid.
Now if I could only find my checkbook to write out $70k, I would place a bid in a heartbeat.