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Girl Geeks Launch Picosatellite
Anonymous Coward writes "Girl Geeks Launch Picosatellite
Artemis, a team of
Girl Geeks at
the Santa Clara University have designed and built a pico-satellite. An
EE Times article
says the Santa Clara women spent
over 5000 hours designing and building the satellite. Ham radio operators
will be able to tune in and listen to the telemetry from the satellite
to be launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California.
The girls took the name of their team from Artemis, the Greek hunter
godesss of the moon."
I must applaud their choice of acronyms: "The Santa Clara Remote Extreme Environment Mechanism (SCREEM)".
Werd.
Ummm... ok, I THOUGHT your first statement was a joke, and a damn funny one. Now I think your an insane biggot with no clue whatsoever and an IQ of around 75.
Have you ever bothered to even SPEAK to a female engineer? They are competent bastards! I've YET to see a Fem programmer or engineer make a serious mistake. They are VERY VERY good at what they do. And guess what, a lot of them do it without and sometimes inspite of parental or societal guidance. A good female friend of mine, despite her insane mother, is an excellent programmer and techie. As is my GF. You are just insane. And should I ever meet you I would be hard pressed not to maim you and leave you in a ditch to die to make sure your DNA was never propogated.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Maybe most of you already knew that women are good at math and science, but there are still plenty of people, including plenty of women, who haven't quite caught on to that. I'm writing this from the a women's college, and I've met a startling number of women here who struggle through their math and laboratory requirements, and while they will never say that math and science aren't a "girl thing" still don't believe that the statement can hold true for them. Most women I see majoring in sciences tend to be drawn toward softer sciences, like biology and psychology, as well; there's still a relatively prevalent feeling that areas like engineering are pretty much the boys' domain. Being a "geek" as a girl (in junior high and high school, especially) is very strongly discouraged; there was a lot more pressure for me as a teenager to "get away from that computer and get a life" than I saw in any of the guys I knew.
I freely grant that we've come a long way from my mother's adventures as a chemistry major in the late 60's and early 70's; most women don't get asked "You mean you want to be a chemistry teacher?" or told by their guidance counselors that they have no chance and should maybe look into something that they can handle. This doesn't mean that girls are quite convinced that this can be their realm, too. So to speak.
I'd be really, really happy if a group of female undergraduates designing a satellite wasn't a really big deal, or at least wasn't a big deal primarily because they were women... because things like that happened everywhere. But they don't. The fact that the final team was not, in fact, completely female (replacing the woman who left, I suppose) and the way that this was ignored by the news article does certainly say something. Basically, it's reflecting a desire to get a story about "girls and science" out, because "girls and science" is still news. That's why it's good to hear about things like this... not everyone quite gets it yet.
Notice how all the the girls have things they do in their "free time"; like hiking, dancing etc, while they guys apparantly don't? This is the fundamantal difference, one which I don't think will go away for quite a while - for many guys, computing/hacking/electronics etc IS what you do on your free time (and in school, at work, at night, while eating etc). Sure, there are exceptions (there always are) but this holds true for most... //Sasq (sasq@c64.org) [A.C. cause password forgotten :]