HOLY HELL.

You know where it's NOT fun to feel an earthquake? In a chemistry lab. Sheesh. I ducked and covered because of the chemicals in here, and I have never seen anything - not even the fire klaxon - clear out this building faster. You can tell everyone here was wondering "was that an earthquake or did someone blow something up?" There was a horrible chemical fire in here last year, so the first thing through my mind wasn't "earthquake" but "holy shit explosion".

Ottawa's on a fault, though an old and relatively stable one, and I've felt maybe five earthquakes in my twenty plus years here. This one was by FAR the biggest and most abrupt - mad instant shaking rather than slow waves. Funny thing, though - organic chemists share my lab, complete with dozens of tiny glass vials all over the counters, and none of them tipped over.

Potentially shitty thing is that I'm running a rheometry test right now, and that could have blasted my sample to hell. I'm hoping it survived, and it's early enough that if it's still there it won't destroy my data, but still! Too bad it wasn't taking data continuously.

ETA: Apparently it was a 5.5 on the Richter scale, and it was centered *just* north of me, thanks to this really awesome real-time reference with specific data already!

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Title somewhat irrelevant but from a Maclean's news article which is essentially a post of the Canadian Association of University Teacher's complaints about the recent Canada Excellence Research Chairs 19 "coups" of international, established scientists at 10 million a piece over seven years, plus whatever the individual universities offered on top of that (my university, for example, added another 15 million to get an American expert in nonlinear optics and photonics).

Oh, and by the way, all 19 were men. 18 were white men. All 36 scientists on the short-list, in fact, were men. Better yet? These were all the scientists named at all - programs were nominated first, and if accepted, the university nominated one or more names - were men. Not a single woman scientist was mentioned in the whole process. And by better, by the way, I meant worse.

Bullet points of my scattered thoughts on the positives:

• Funding for science is a good thing. Our government doesn't do enough of it.


• Big name researchers are necessary for a university's research program: they draw bright grad students, more funding, and other productive researchers to the university. I do believe this also benefits undergraduates, and am skeptical of the cries of "but you need to improve universities for the students and this is sucking money away!" This is not a zero sum game, and good research has to be good for a university's finances.


• Accepting that some of these minds are not Canadian, and going out of the way to bring them here? A-okay with me. There are existing sources of big-time grants for people already in Canada. This isn't decreasing that amount. Again, not a zero sum game.


• The government can't actually steer research. However, I think focusing on a few (very broad) research areas is a good thing. We are a small country, and most of these universities cannot be cross-spectrum powerhouses, at their sizes and with their locations. Picking focuses, and saying, "let's be the best at this", that's good. Trying to pick focuses that the government thinks will be patentable or money-makers? Not awesome, but these categories are really too broad to be guilty of that: environmental sciences and technologies, natural resources and energy, health and related life sciences and technologies, and information and communications technologies. All things I think Canada should be awesome at.
  
  For example, the I&CT category? Take a look at the recipients. Quantum Nonlinear Optics, Quantum Information Processing and Quantum Signal Processing? Yeah, okay, quantum means this isn't "hey let's make Nortel work again" type research, this is primary research. Only the third scientist's research chair title sounds anything like it's application centric, and application research is not evil, hi.

However:

100% male is not "we didn't want to engage in affirmative action". 100% is not "hey, look, we were taking established scientists in fields that, 30 or 40 years ago when they went into them, women weren't going into". 100% is not "every university independently submitted men, what were we supposed to do?" 100% is not "it was a competitive process so women suffered" (WTFWTFWTF). 100% is this:

The academic “old boys club,” also was a factor. With limited time to find and court top researchers, universities resorted to “informal processes” to find candidates, the study finds. “These informal outreach processes may have involved senior researchers identifying potential nominees from among their international peers,” it says.

Ding ding ding. Look, I could have accepted 70% male. I probably could have accepted 90% male. I'm in a field that is, top to bottom, 80% male, and while that isn't awesome, I can see that whatever causes it starts before 18-year-olds pick their majors. But this quote is so freaking illuminating as to why there's a big fat ZERO in this outcome.

Look, it's all circular. We get this idea that men are better at "excellence" in research because that's who we see, again and again, in the forefront, being highlighted as being "excellent", so no wonder we - men and women alike, I firmly object to the idea that you can fight this kind of sexism by simply having women on the panel - have an instinctive preference for men, and thus give them the opportunities to excel, by giving them publications and publicity and reputations and above all, money. I don't "like" the idea of affirmative action or quotas or equality for equality's sake, but the fact is, this is not choosing the best and the brightest of everyone, this is choosing the people we're told are the best and the brightest. How is that putting excellence above gender equality? It's putting the difficulty of confronting our long-trained biases above excellence.

Can I say that clearer?

If we have a precedent of highlighting male excellence, we will continue to do so because that is who we believe are capable of excellence, because that is who we let be excellent, call excellent, and see being excellent.

If I tell you that red smarties are the tastiest, and then only give you red smarties for a year, and then hand you a box of them all? I bet you'll eat the red ones preferentially. This is not complicated psychology. This is not about "men just prefer science", because prefer does not equal "all scientists are male", so even if that argument holds water, there should be at least one woman on the bloody short-list. But the fact is, give a bunch of scientists an opportunity to say "hey, let's pick who we want to work here from around the world", and all of them will pick a man.

It's not rocket science to see that this isn't just the power of statistics.

ETA: Icon sadly inappropriate.

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My province has unrolled the first overhaul to its sex ed curriculum since 1998 (is that really twelve years ago?), and this stood out to me as being awesome (and thus is also the most contentious part for all those conservative objectors who think telling a kid about sexuality will result in them being sluts.)

Some of the most controversial changes are in the Grade 3 curriculum. In a discussion on human development and showing respect for people’s differences, for example, teachers are invited to discuss “invisible differences,” including gender identity and sexual orientation, in an effort to reflect the fact that more and more students have same-sex parents.

I liked boys enough I wasn't troubled by also liking girls until the middle of high-school, but so much of the pain I read about queer kids growing up is that nobody tells them they exist. This is grade three, so I'm sure it will be couched in pretty light terms, but there will be terms with which to talk about not just sexual orientation but GENDER IDENTITY. In public school! To ten year olds! Go Ontario.

(The suggestion that this is too early is clearly laughable - I want to hit that Reverend over the head for thinking (a) it's going to make kids want to be transgendered or (b) that clearly these things aren't an issue for ten-year-olds.)

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I just took the "Project Implicit" Gender-Science association text, having read about it in the book Blink. By all accounts, this is an essentially impossible test to fake. And I ended up with:

Your data suggest a moderate association of Female with Science and Male with Liberal Arts compared to Male with Science and Female with Liberal Arts.

Whoo! I mean, yes, I'm female and in physics, but I am surrounded by men, have male teachers, read about male scientists, etc. I would have thought I was conditioned to assume men = science. However, it occured to me that many of my female friends are in biology fields, so that may have helped unconsciously!

Here's their general breakdown:


Definitely going to try some of their other ones later - I suspect I will not to as "well", or even sans-bias.

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Dude, if you are in need of a set of good knives, this deal on a Henckels knife set is outrageous. J has one of those knives, and it is a dream to use.

And while your at it, want to order me a bunch of things and send them up my way? Stupid free shipping and it being a stupid American thing. How much more expensive can it be to ship a few kilometers north? This is especially annoying when the dollar is at par (more or less), since OMG so many things are so much cheaper in the US.

Cooking and baking things I would like:

• a pizza stone and peel
• a coffee grinder
• a digital weigh scale
• a digital all-purpose thermometer
• a silicon baking sheet

( And while we're at it, things I would like but am not going to be able to afford until... uh, maybe a long time, how about... (cut for pictures!) ) This post has comments at Dreamwidth. Leave a comment!

TOTALLY GOT AN A+ IN THEORETICAL PHYSICS.

That course was hardcore, man, and I went into it with really crappy math skills - and the course is essentially mathematical tools for physicists, fourier and complex and differential analysis.

It was curved, and like whoa, but I put twenty hours a week into that course more often than not, so that was definitely earned. And the three people I worked with, Joseph, Jeff, and Zack, all got A+'s too, which is awesome, because that course was such a team effort.

Just thermodynamics left, and I realized today that if I get 56% on the final, I get an A- in the course. Everything after that is just gravy! Awesome.

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From rm and mellacita.

1. The illness I live with is:
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

( cut for the other 29 questions )

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DAMN YOU KEL. DAMN YOU TO PIECES.

No, not really. *blows kisses to kel_reiley*

But it is her fault I just dropped too much money on this cape, especially after factoring in shipping and exchange rate (andtheextraheadbandithrewin), because I'd never heard of Modcloth before she linked to it.



My excuse? I live in Canada. I have to wear a coat for a good six or seven months out of the year. I need variety! (Plus, CAPE.)

I've never bought clothes offline online* before, but the reviews are good so... *crosses fingers*

*I have trouble with this phrase, because I really want to say "off online", but it gets shortened to "off line" and then the total opposite of what I really mean.

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