- History’s under-appreciated women inventors – From Angie.
- Politicians and celebrities say the darnedest things about science – Scientific American brings us some of the most head-desky.
- Girls and reality TV are potent combo, Girl Scouts report says – “Overall, the girls weren’t clueless–everyone surveyed thought reality shows promote bad behavior, 86% felt the shows often set girls against each other to make things more exhilarating and 70% believed that reality TV leads people to think it’s all right to treat people badly.”
- Gucci Girls form an all-women “unmanned” Air Force flight crew – “You’d think that with only one female Boeing KC–10 flight engineer in the U.S. Air Force, it would be hard to imagine an all-female flight crew. But with a little logistical tweaking, the Gucci Girls were formed, becoming a rare all-female operating a refueling tanker in the Middle East.”
FYI during WW2 the Soviets had several all female flying regiments. Called Stalin’s Falcons in Russia and the Night Witches by the Germans.
See here for more info.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nk0g9
Thinking of someone reabsorbing semen makes me go “RAHHH” too…but I think the inflection may be different.
Re: History’s under-appreciated women inventors
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WHUUUUT?
According to recent accounts everything that has ever been invented sprang from the genius minds of Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs or, according the Cracked.com, was stolen from Nikola Tesla.
.
I think we need some fact checking; imagine, women inventing things, what will they think of next.
/snark
Funny thing is that I feel they missed out on some rather important ones.
– The first compiler
– The double helix
– many of the basics of astronomy
A woman invented the double helix?
Now that’s what I call powerful. :P
Rosalind Franklin discovered the double helix structure of DNA, or would have in a matter of days or weeks, if Watson and Crick hadn’t stolen her X-rays of the crystalline DNA she had prepared. (Franklin was very systematic and methodical and was analyzing her other, earlier X-rays first, but she would have gotten to these if W&C hadn’t scooped her. Also, she shares my birthday, which is totally awesome all by itself.
Siveambrai, I think the article was concentrating on inventions rather than scientific discoveries, which does exclude Franklin and the Harvard Computers (a job title, not a machine), but Grace Hopper, inventor of the first high-level computer language (and compiler) should definitely be included.
Franklin was one of the best X-ray crystallographers of the time, but I don’t know if she invented her own techniques or used prior art. If she did, then she should probably be included as an important inventor on that basis. Same with the women who applied numerical techniques to variable stars, spectroscopy, stellar classification and so forth.
(Disclaimer: In addition to sharing Franklin’s birthday, I once met Adm Hopper and I studied at the HCO, so I’m a partisan of all these women.)
My great-grandmother was a Hopper, so I like to delude myself into thinking we’re related.
I know about Rosalind Franklin, in fact I’m a big fan. I was poking a little fun at the oft made confusion between invention and discovery.
The ‘Gucci Girls’ article was a bit of a challenge for me. From the short article I have questions like: Is this segregation of the sexes? Why an all woman work team? Are these women separating themselves from the pack to distinguish themselves?
That’s a good question.
“”My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.”—March 25, 2010”
This one doesn’t sound serious, and is hilarious in my opinion.
(Replying to myself, but really to Weatherwax):
So Granny Weatherwax was a Hopper? FTW!
Other great-grandmother, LOL.
Shoot, come to think of it, here she is
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53149321@N06/5193157324/in/photostream