As an example, if you give some men a brick and ask them to hold it at arm's length for as long as they can, they will be able to do it for about five minutes. But if you hypnotize them, they will hold the brick out for 15-20 minutes....
However, if you tell males that some females who were just tested held the brick out for 20 minutes, they, too, will hold it for that long without being hypnotized.
Who needs hypnosis when a simple threat to the ego can do just the same job?
heh - thanks for that link - nothing like a little potted musical nostalgia over coffee. Funnily, the Codeine listing ("BOOM sniff CRASH BOOM BOOM CRASH") works for many of my favourite bands.
Re:Let's make this more interesting...
on
Top 20 Geek Novels
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· Score: 1
I nominate Milo from The Phantom Tollbooth (surely an influential proto-geek novel) for these entirely superficial reasons:
- he was skinny and wore glasses
- he had no friends (well, not real ones)
- he got to play with cool technology like The Great Chromo's wand
- he bamboozled a Mathemagician
It's this depth that I find so fascinating with Stephenson. It may be fiction but there's a great deal of fact/truth underneath.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm just heading into the home straight of Cryptonomicon right now (can't believe it took me this long to get around to reading it) and pretty much every page has a) made me laugh and b) made me learn something. Which is not to say I was always necessarily thrilled to be learning all this stuff - the several-page digression into Greek mythology was a bit of a struggle - but the healthy applications of dry wit makes it entertaining rather than didactic.
My top 10 looks a lot like everybody else's but I'd have to put in a special plug for the indispensable grep|cut|sort|uniq team - master these and no logfile can keep a secret from you ever again. Plus of course alias, so you don't have to keep typing out headache-inducing grep|cut|sort|uniq commands.
well, yeah. I like stuff where *all* the characters are complex, fallible, interesting, realistic humans, of both genders. That doesn't mean they all have to be'unisex', and it doesn't mean making a huge deal out of what gender they are. Just spread the personality traits around a bit more even-handedly, is all I ask. (And if the one-liners are crap, I ain't watching anyway.)
Yeah, concerns about role models are generally held by certain people on behalf of other (usually younger) people. Nobody watches/reads particular things because they feel their minds will be improved by the morally edifying nature of the characters.
However. For me personally, it is more fun to watch things where women are real people who participate in the action, make decisions and get some good one-liners. This is not because I think it's good for me (I already know women can do all these things), but because it means I get to enjoy the show without grinding my teeth and wanting to slap the writers.
Also, staring at static until it makes sense is fun:)
speaking as a female sci-fi fan, I feel the need to point out that women can be aliens *and* wear short skirts *and* be positive role models, all at the same time.
Linking the increase in women viewers to shows being more 'character-led' might seem like a stereotypical generalisation but it rings true for me. The sci-fi I've always been most into is the kind that uses speculative, imaginary environments to explore big ideas and hopefully arrive at some interesting truths about human personalities... rather than the car-chases-in-outer-space kind.
There's no point even trying to reason with Greens, because they fundamentally don't get science.
Well, there's probably not much point responding to a blanket statement like that, but here I go anyway...
Just prior to the recent national election in New Zealand, a non-politically-aligned energy engineer was asked to rank the energy policies of the various parties. His findings make a pretty interesting read.
Basically he found, to his surprise, that the more left-wing the party, the more sensible, well-researched and forward-thinking their energy policy was. The Greens scored highest with 4.5 out of 5. I can't speak for your local FotE chapter, but the NZ Greens are a pretty clued-up bunch, and for you to tar every environmentalist in the world with your "don't get science" brush is pretty insulting.
The story behind Mr Buckley's exploding trousers is actually kind of a good one. Back in the 30s farmers in New Zealand needed a way to control ragwort, a weed that is toxic to livestock. Sodium chlorate seemed like a miraculous solution at first, but what they didn't know was that it is a strong oxidising agent and can become explosive when mixed with organic material. So spraying it hither and yon while wearing cotton trousers is not the best idea. There followed a nationwide epidemic of exploding trousers - on the clothes line, in front of the fire, even while being worn - before the connection was figured out.
Deadwood is a good example of the contagiousness of cursing as well... watch a single episode and suddenly you're yelling "COCKSUCKER!" at everyone who cuts you off in traffic.
indeed... there have been many conversations in our office about the need to kill the children when they get too fat, probably causing some raised eyebrows in passers-by...
Don't know when you asked, but there is a partial credit option now. I took the RHCE exam last week, and we were told that if we got tasks X and Y right, but not Z, we'd get an RHCT instead. Haven't found out my results yet, but I'm hoping for the E - nice to know there's a runner-up option though.
I checked out a couple of RoboCup games yesterday... the "legged league" seems to get all the attention because the players look like cute little doggies, but from what I saw their most outstanding feature was the ability to fall over amusingly (although to be fair they do get up again pretty quick).
The f-180 and f-2000 leagues (robots with wheels) are way cool though... the game between Sharif University from Iran and Melbourne's RMIT United yesterday had everyone on the edge of their seats yelling "go 17!" and "get out of the goal 23!". Seems unfair though that when bits fall off the robots they just get removed from the field... shouldn't they be allowed injury time?
I think maybe the *creative* possibilities of computers need to be emphasised more to get girls' attention, and the web is a great way to do that. When I was at school I would never have considered going into computer science as it seemed really boring, but I ended up following a kind of roundabout route of arts degree -> journalism -> web design -> programming and realised to my surprise that coding was actually really interesting and rewarding and fun. I hadn't expected the feeling of *power* - not in the sense of dominance but the ability to create stuff out of your own head - or the aesthetic satisfaction you get from really elegant code. It was nothing like my preconceived notions of a programming job as being something akin to eight hours of long division a day.
People trying to encourage girls into computers should be using web development as a point of entry, because it really makes it clear how creativity and code interact, and scripting languages like PHP make it really easy to get started. You can learn a few basic principles and then go in whatever direction your imagination takes you, and once you get over those qualms about the 'funny-looking things' you realise there's heaps more interesting stuff out there.
Of course it's still not going to appeal to everybody, and there's no particular reason why Katy Prendergast *should* care about programming if she'd rather be a travel agent or whatever... just as long as girls get to have a go and see if it's for them before they write it off as 'too technical'.
yeah. Normally I find Katz's rantings interesting but this one really pissed me off and you really pinned down why - it's that "they are" as opposed to "there is". Wow, look at all those chicks out there learning how to click! Good for them, the little troopers, making their first forays into the scary world of technology, finding empowerment in the fact that they don't have to care how it works.
It's like, the next big thing in the development of the internet... da da da dum... Internet for Women!! Sorry, Internet for Chickclickers! Yesterday I was a *person* using the internet the way I have been for years, in my job, at home, in the same way I use the postal system / telephone / library / etc. And today, all of a sudden I'm a Chick who's lucky enough to know how to Click my way into chat rooms where I can form amazing cliques and argue about whether parents should enter their children in beauty pagents.
Dammit, we've been here *all along*. Doing all the same stuff that *you* have. The fact that marketers have started trying to specifically target women via the web does not constitute any kind of cultural revolution.
Slashdot Mirror
Who needs hypnosis when a simple threat to the ego can do just the same job?
heh - thanks for that link - nothing like a little potted musical nostalgia over coffee. Funnily, the Codeine listing ("BOOM sniff CRASH BOOM BOOM CRASH") works for many of my favourite bands.
I nominate Milo from The Phantom Tollbooth (surely an influential proto-geek novel) for these entirely superficial reasons:
- he was skinny and wore glasses
- he had no friends (well, not real ones)
- he got to play with cool technology like The Great Chromo's wand
- he bamboozled a Mathemagician
hey, this is fun :)
My top 10 looks a lot like everybody else's but I'd have to put in a special plug for the indispensable grep|cut|sort|uniq team - master these and no logfile can keep a secret from you ever again. Plus of course alias, so you don't have to keep typing out headache-inducing grep|cut|sort|uniq commands.
well, yeah. I like stuff where *all* the characters are complex, fallible, interesting, realistic humans, of both genders. That doesn't mean they all have to be'unisex', and it doesn't mean making a huge deal out of what gender they are. Just spread the personality traits around a bit more even-handedly, is all I ask. (And if the one-liners are crap, I ain't watching anyway.)
Yeah, concerns about role models are generally held by certain people on behalf of other (usually younger) people. Nobody watches/reads particular things because they feel their minds will be improved by the morally edifying nature of the characters.
:)
However. For me personally, it is more fun to watch things where women are real people who participate in the action, make decisions and get some good one-liners. This is not because I think it's good for me (I already know women can do all these things), but because it means I get to enjoy the show without grinding my teeth and wanting to slap the writers.
Also, staring at static until it makes sense is fun
speaking as a female sci-fi fan, I feel the need to point out that women can be aliens *and* wear short skirts *and* be positive role models, all at the same time.
Linking the increase in women viewers to shows being more 'character-led' might seem like a stereotypical generalisation but it rings true for me. The sci-fi I've always been most into is the kind that uses speculative, imaginary environments to explore big ideas and hopefully arrive at some interesting truths about human personalities... rather than the car-chases-in-outer-space kind.
Well, there's probably not much point responding to a blanket statement like that, but here I go anyway...
Just prior to the recent national election in New Zealand, a non-politically-aligned energy engineer was asked to rank the energy policies of the various parties. His findings make a pretty interesting read.
Basically he found, to his surprise, that the more left-wing the party, the more sensible, well-researched and forward-thinking their energy policy was. The Greens scored highest with 4.5 out of 5. I can't speak for your local FotE chapter, but the NZ Greens are a pretty clued-up bunch, and for you to tar every environmentalist in the world with your "don't get science" brush is pretty insulting.
Women coders are just as bribable with money, pizza and caffeine as males. Though speaking for myself chocolate also goes a long way.
The story behind Mr Buckley's exploding trousers is actually kind of a good one. Back in the 30s farmers in New Zealand needed a way to control ragwort, a weed that is toxic to livestock. Sodium chlorate seemed like a miraculous solution at first, but what they didn't know was that it is a strong oxidising agent and can become explosive when mixed with organic material. So spraying it hither and yon while wearing cotton trousers is not the best idea. There followed a nationwide epidemic of exploding trousers - on the clothes line, in front of the fire, even while being worn - before the connection was figured out.
Deadwood is a good example of the contagiousness of cursing as well ... watch a single episode and suddenly you're yelling "COCKSUCKER!" at everyone who cuts you off in traffic.
Yeah, the other goodie I used to come across in my old job filing insurance claims was "carless driving". Even harder to have an accident that way.
And if they grow up listening to grindcore, you get Hatebeak
even better, in my Firefox tab the title is trunced to read "Mozilla's Goodger on Fire..."
indeed... there have been many conversations in our office about the need to kill the children when they get too fat, probably causing some raised eyebrows in passers-by...
Don't know when you asked, but there is a partial credit option now. I took the RHCE exam last week, and we were told that if we got tasks X and Y right, but not Z, we'd get an RHCT instead. Haven't found out my results yet, but I'm hoping for the E - nice to know there's a runner-up option though.
yeah, everything sucked except the free coffee and donuts and the robosoccer. oh, and those multimedia armchairs.
I checked out a couple of RoboCup games yesterday ... the "legged league" seems to get all the attention because the players look like cute little doggies, but from what I saw their most outstanding feature was the ability to fall over amusingly (although to be fair they do get up again pretty quick).
The f-180 and f-2000 leagues (robots with wheels) are way cool though... the game between Sharif University from Iran and Melbourne's RMIT United yesterday had everyone on the edge of their seats yelling "go 17!" and "get out of the goal 23!". Seems unfair though that when bits fall off the robots they just get removed from the field ... shouldn't they be allowed injury time?
I think maybe the *creative* possibilities of computers need to be emphasised more to get girls' attention, and the web is a great way to do that. When I was at school I would never have considered going into computer science as it seemed really boring, but I ended up following a kind of roundabout route of arts degree -> journalism -> web design -> programming and realised to my surprise that coding was actually really interesting and rewarding and fun. I hadn't expected the feeling of *power* - not in the sense of dominance but the ability to create stuff out of your own head - or the aesthetic satisfaction you get from really elegant code. It was nothing like my preconceived notions of a programming job as being something akin to eight hours of long division a day.
People trying to encourage girls into computers should be using web development as a point of entry, because it really makes it clear how creativity and code interact, and scripting languages like PHP make it really easy to get started. You can learn a few basic principles and then go in whatever direction your imagination takes you, and once you get over those qualms about the 'funny-looking things' you realise there's heaps more interesting stuff out there.
Of course it's still not going to appeal to everybody, and there's no particular reason why Katy Prendergast *should* care about programming if she'd rather be a travel agent or whatever ... just as long as girls get to have a go and see if it's for them before they write it off as 'too technical'.
yeah. Normally I find Katz's rantings interesting but this one really pissed me off and you really pinned down why - it's that "they are" as opposed to "there is". Wow, look at all those chicks out there learning how to click! Good for them, the little troopers, making their first forays into the scary world of technology, finding empowerment in the fact that they don't have to care how it works.
It's like, the next big thing in the development of the internet ... da da da dum ... Internet for Women!! Sorry, Internet for Chickclickers! Yesterday I was a *person* using the internet the way I have been for years, in my job, at home, in the same way I use the postal system / telephone / library / etc. And today, all of a sudden I'm a Chick who's lucky enough to know how to Click my way into chat rooms where I can form amazing cliques and argue about whether parents should enter their children in beauty pagents.
Dammit, we've been here *all along*. Doing all the same stuff that *you* have. The fact that marketers have started trying to specifically target women via the web does not constitute any kind of cultural revolution.