I often don't feel that the US education system is streamlined enough.
I recall very vividly that math in middle school (5th, 6th, and 7th grade) was exactly the same thing, for three years. I know I went to a poor dinky little grade school in the middle of the midwest, but you'd think a curriculum wouldn't repeat exactly the same material for three years.
I'd like to know what the typical age is for children in other countries to start learning alegbra. I was put into the section of my class that took alegbra for 8th grade math. The rest of the class was still doing pre-alegbra.
I'm sure the repeat math experience has happened to other people.
I can tell you that the best english teacher I ever had was in my junior year of high school. She ran English IV like it was a college course. Our first nine writing assignments were to write papers that had to be rewritten until we got an A over A. You had to get an A for grammar and and A for content. Everyone wrote a thesis paper in her class. For the last semster we studied literature.
I took the AP test for college. I had to take the 2nd class of the required college english classes. I hated that class. After going through English IV, I felt that sitting in that college course, with required attedance, was a waste of my time and my money. I had to sit through discussions of things like "what makes a good martial arts scene" brainstorming sessions.
One of my friends, once got a note sent home to his parents, becuase he was reading a book in class while his english teacher was taking attendance. He went to a different high school than I did. Apparently the english teacher didn't want him reading in her class. I think he was reading Stranger in a Strange Land at the time.
Face it, the american education system is just getting worse.
The first university I went to decided that every engineering and computer science student would be required to get a laptop. Almost every laptop class I went to, in which the laptops were supposed to be brought to class, had the students clicking through the professor's powerpoint slides as he went over the slides at the front of the classroom. Since we were also required to have a wireless connection, we had free access to the internet at the time. Most of my fellow students played games, while our professor went over the notes. Having a laptop didn't make a difference.
A friend of mine was a TA for a basic gen ed college chemistry class at a fairly large university. He was going over the basic stuff in the first couple weeks (scientific notation, simple graphs, etc.)
He had a couple of US students that had no idea how to plot graphs at all. I'm not really sure how he got students that had never plotted out a graph by hand, but he did. This happened in 1998 or 1999.
Another article. Text is from an article on msnbc.
SANTIAGO, Chile, July 2 -- A huge, gelatinous sea creature found washed up on Chile's coast has stumped scientists, who have sent samples to a specialist in France for help in identifying the mystery specimen. The dead creature was mistaken for a beached whale when first reported last week, but experts who went to see it said the 40-foot-long mass of decomposing lumpy gray flesh apparently was an invertebrate.
"WE'D NEVER before seen such a strange specimen, we don't know if it might be a giant octopus that is missing some of its parts or maybe it's a new species," said Elsa Cabrera, director of the Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago.
The round substance looks like a mammoth jelly fish and is about as long as a school bus.
Giant octopus live at a depth of up to 9,500 feet and only rise to the surface when they die. Specimens have been known to be as long as 30 feet.
WHALE SKIN?
There was speculation that the mass might be a whale skin, but Cabrera said it was too big and did not have the right texture or smell.
Steve Webster, senior marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, wasn't ready to rule that out, at least based on the photo and limited information he has read.
If the texture is leathery, he said, "I would opt more for whale skin... the rotted, separated skin of a blue, Sei or fin whale could easily be this size."
"In addition," he said, "at least 50 percent to 80 percent of the length of a giant squid or octopus is arms and tentacles, not the body. From what I can see in the picture, this is one big mass of tissue, and is not divided into what might be arms or tentacles."
The Chilean Navy first spotted the mystery specimen along with another large mass near Puerto Montt, in southern Chile, but the other dead animal turned out to be a humpback whale.
GIANT OCTOPUS OR PLANKTON?
Cabrera's group sent samples to French specialist Michel Raynal. The center contacted him and his initial impression was that it is a giant octopus, Cabrera told MSNBC.com.
A review of literature found only one other giant octopus of a similar shape and size, Cabrera said, a specimen found on a Florida beach in 1896.
Cabrera noted the Chilean specimen is bigger than what was found in 1896, measuring about 40 feet long, 18 feet wide, and three feet high at its highest point.
Webster raised the possibility that if the blob is gelatinous, and not particularly tough and leathery, then it could be what's known as a pyrosome -- a colony of millions of plankton that can grow to up to 60 feet long.
He said that genetic analysis of the tissue should reveal some clues to identify the specimen.
"If this were just the head and body of a squid or octopus," he added, "then it appears to be far larger than any such critter known to date."
I wouldn't mind it if they got the major people that worked on LOTR to make the Hobbit though.
I'd imagine that won't happen, considering how many people they would have to coordinate to work on another film (Not so much actors, but as in the people who did costume design, digital, the director etc.)
I've never had that problem with a pizza place. I've been using a cell phone exclusively for over 6 months now. I've never had a problem.
I have gotten one solicated phone call though. Apparently the university were calling students and alumni wanting more money (excuse me, donations). Bah.
As far as I know, cancerous cells just never stop growing. The cell doesn't go through the interphase step of Mitosis. They just reproduce continuously (with no delay, unlike normal cells).
I wonder how well they could isolate the sequences between a cell dividing normally and a cancerous one.
Does anybody else not think that a brightly glowing fish could be a prime target for food? Look, what's that shiny light over there? Oh yummy, food!
On the other hand, (since I believe fireflies do this) it might just advertise that it doesn't taste good.
I agree that if you're going to tamper with the fish to produce one effect, you should probably go a little further.
There are so many cases that show up in the news already becuase somebody didn't want some non native fish and released it into a native pond and caused huge amounts of damage.
I have found that simple typos have crept into my actual handwritten material, which is horrible. I admit I never really paid attention to spelling as much as I could have when I was younger, however.
One of my friends prints everything. He writes faster that way, and (to him) the cursive is just left over from the days of quill pens, and it's outdated. Basically, in his opinion, with the advancement of ball point pens, we shouldn't need to use cursive anymore.
I don't really agree with him on this issue, but I admit I print when I want something to be legible. After several years of taking notes in college, my handwriting has gotten noticeably worse. I have horrible handwriting, and I don't really pay attention to that factor too much, unless I intend on someone else reading it. If that happens, I make the attempt to write legibly.
I don't really think that the amount of time I have spent behind a keyboard has really reduced how legible my handwriting is, other than typos I don't even notice. The word "autocorrect as you type" feature has probably made that worse. I do know that the amount of time I spend writing notes in class has made my handwriting worse.
It is my understanding that supersonic just isn't where research is going. We have a hard time selling new concepts to the airframers as it is right now.
With the current Iraq sitatuation, SARS and becuase of the 9/11, all of the airlines (except Southwest) are taking a huge hit. This does not bode well down the line. I work for a company that makes parts used on the major airplanes (turbines, fuel pumps, the electronics, etc.) and we are laying people off again because the airlines aren't recovering. The major airlines aren't expected to recover until 2005 now.
The SR-71 Blackbird is still a beatiful plane. It has records that have not been broken by modern planes, and it was the last plane designed with SLIDE RULES.
Something that most people don't know is that there are 3 different kind of sleepers. There are long sleepers (people who need more than 8 hours), "normal" sleepers (7 to 8 hours) and short sleepers (6 or less). I did not catch any sort of reference in this article about these. This only counts if you are NOT tired during the day. I tend to run the edge of being a short sleeper. There is a lady that sleeps an hour an a half, per day. She sleeps an hour at nightime, and takes a half an hour nap in the afternoon.
Another thing, along with age, you sleep the best when you are about 8 or so. This the time when you can fall out of your bed and still be sound asleep.
I can't run links to back up this information, but this material comes out of a physiological psycology class i took last year.
Sleep is a funky thing, and it varies from person to person, and it also changes as you age. When you get to your 20's or so, you need naps again. (How much of that has to do with the college student lifestyle, I have no idea:)
There is also another thing that most people don't know about sleep. Psychologists have done studies with rats so that they never sleep. (Rats hate water, and they set up a turntable like item, such that there is a rat on both sides. The rats have to keep walking in order to keep the wheel turning, which keeps them from falling in the water). After at least 40? days (maybe it was 80, I don't remeber exactly), which is something like 2/3? of the rat's lifespan, the rat developed lesions, and generally went insane.
For a human to reach this state, you would have to never sleep for something like 60 years. I would want the acutal study results to really judge what they concluded.
Anybody rember a show in the 80's called Herman's Head? I don't think The Sims as a tv show would be a hit. In the show Herman's head, Herman had a t least 4 or 5 characters in his head that basically fought over a chair, and the person who was sitting in the chair was in control of Herman. For example, if the party animal was in control of Herman's head, he might say something incredible crude to a woman that he wanted to date or along those lines. I don't remeber this being a big hit . The couple of times I watched it for a few seconds, I wasn't interested and went back to flipping channels.
Considering the popularity of the game, and this is just a personal observation, does it ever seem reminescent of playing with dolls (only better)?
I mean, here you are, controlling your sim's lives, except you don't control absolutely anything.
gives a new meaning to the term viruses doesn't it? Nice friendly little "computer virus..starts wrecking havoc in your brain... a madman behind the scenes..look, if i unleash this virus, i turn the people into my personal soldiers..MUHAHAHAHA or something..i'm in a weird mood:P
I'm all for mapping the genome, but there are things you have to remeber when you start "tinkering" with it.
For example, did you know there's a whale gene in your tomato? There is, and the reason's it's there is to prevent it from freezing (or at least making it harder to freeze).
Good things: production goes up, losses go down. Bad things: weeds that don't freeze and die in the winter.
This is just a simple example, but some of our crops are genetically enhanced for pesticides. Now what happens when our crops undergo natural pollination and cross breed with weeds?
I read an article about this a few months ago, and I wish I could point out the exact name, or give some links on topics like this, but it was a gardening magazine, and has since disappeared.
This is the reason why Europe boycotts some of our crops.
And for those that are didn't know, they use modified viruses to implement the genes:) Excuse me, I have to run off to class now.
I'm not very thrilled with my University's network admin, (well, the way it's being run in general) I suppose. Considering there have been at least 2 warez sites that were finally taken down (at least 2 years after the student had already graduated. There are been several hacking atempts, most of the CS computers were formatted, and ECN has also been hacked into before. Also when the FBI were investigating a couple of years ago, the student admin policy was changed a bit. So if you have a serious email problem and you go to an SA (whose job is to help you), they can't do anything about fixing it, other than say "rebooting the lab computer". About all they can do overall, is reboot your computer, give you a new username, reset the printer settings, fix printer jams, and reload the printers. The lab computers aren't that great in general. They break down and then stay broken for a least a couple weeks. It's not the lab SA's job to fix the computer, just help people with problems. I could go on about what I think or I could further describe the situation, but that's not the point here.
How many times are there female superheros? As a child (and I am female), I rember watching things like He-Man, transformers, X-men, and others. I even remeber briefly watching My little pony, so I didn't always watch shows that were directly aimed at boys. But if you look at the superhero's, then okay, She-Ra was neat, but for some reason He-Man was always cooler. They put a lot more work in to that cartoon than She-Ra, his toys sold better, and more people watched it. And I don't really remeber a single female transformer, (the original ones, not the ones out now). Then (and that was the 80's) almost always the guy superhero had better powers, neater toys, and in general better stuff.
Call me a tom boy when I was younger, so what? I went out and played with boys becuase there weren't that many girls my age in my neighboorhood. So I went out and climbed trees, played with tonka trucks (they were a friend of mine's though), and even played baseball with my friends (and yes, I sucked at it, but I played outfield, so it never mattered that much. However, I still had fun).
How many times do we start out boys with trucks and girls with dolls? I didn't want or get barbies, until I found a female friend that was my age, and I still played with the boys a lot. Oddly enough, in a recent day care study, the girls almost always went for the dolls, and the boys went for toys like trucks.
A possible correlation for the study that "males are better at math and social skills, while women are better at communication" goes back to the cave days. Men were out hunting, and since part of hunting is waiting for food to arrive. Spatial skills and eventually math skills developed and were encouraged from that. Woman who gathered food and stayed to take care of the children, had better communication skills by staying around other women, etc.
A lot of what we do is a result of society, and what our parents teach us. I loved science as a kid, and I was encouraged in it. One of my female friends in school played with dolls more often than I did, so what? She started out with the internet before I did, and she could code better than I could if she wanted to (she chose to go into the radio industry).
Another thing is, she had a computer (which was up to date) more often than I did. I know very little about hardware beucase I didn't get a decent desktop computer at an early age, and i can't quite afford one yet. (I have a laptop due to college requirements). I admit I had a pc jr, and a commodore 64 when I was 8 or younger, but plodding along as a early teen with a tandy with a 5 1/4 disk drive, when other ppl have a computer with a 3 1/2 disk drive and windows capability doesn't help much.
John Varley's "Steel Beach" discusses nanotechnology on the effect of a human society in detail. It also goes a lot futher in discussing human gender and sexuality.
(Be warned, the main character does some gender switching, and tries to find a meaning in his life, also sex is dicussed a lot).
Another main character of the book is the CC (central computer), which helps humans run their daily lives, and is in some way part of the goverment. Incidently, the earth has been taken over by aliens, and humans now live on the moon, and some of the other planets.
It's an interesting book, and if you're willing to read it, I'd suggest you read it. The book does cover some interesting issues that may crop up in the future, and the paperback is still in print according to amazon.com
I admit he's a good writer, and if I recall correctly, he has done some influential work outside of cyberpunk ficiton. However, if you're going to put a writer on the list, I think Asimov, is a much better choice. Asimov is credited with inventing the word "robot" and "robotics". He also influenced actual people to start building robots, and the three laws of robotics probably exist in almost every robot in some form or another (even subconsciously in the mind of the designer).
Slashdot Mirror
It is about 2 years for an elephant pregnancy.
I often don't feel that the US education system is streamlined enough.
I recall very vividly that math in middle school (5th, 6th, and 7th grade) was exactly the same thing, for three years. I know I went to a poor dinky little grade school in the middle of the midwest, but you'd think a curriculum wouldn't repeat exactly the same material for three years.
I'd like to know what the typical age is for children in other countries to start learning alegbra. I was put into the section of my class that took alegbra for 8th grade math. The rest of the class was still doing pre-alegbra.
I'm sure the repeat math experience has happened to other people.
I can tell you that the best english teacher I ever had was in my junior year of high school. She ran English IV like it was a college course. Our first nine writing assignments were to write papers that had to be rewritten until we got an A over A. You had to get an A for grammar and and A for content. Everyone wrote a thesis paper in her class. For the last semster we studied literature.
I took the AP test for college. I had to take the 2nd class of the required college english classes. I hated that class. After going through English IV, I felt that sitting in that college course, with required attedance, was a waste of my time and my money. I had to sit through discussions of things like "what makes a good martial arts scene" brainstorming sessions.
One of my friends, once got a note sent home to his parents, becuase he was reading a book in class while his english teacher was taking attendance. He went to a different high school than I did. Apparently the english teacher didn't want him reading in her class. I think he was reading Stranger in a Strange Land at the time.
Face it, the american education system is just getting worse.
The first university I went to decided that every engineering and computer science student would be required to get a laptop. Almost every laptop class I went to, in which the laptops were supposed to be brought to class, had the students clicking through the professor's powerpoint slides as he went over the slides at the front of the classroom. Since we were also required to have a wireless connection, we had free access to the internet at the time. Most of my fellow students played games, while our professor went over the notes. Having a laptop didn't make a difference.
A friend of mine was a TA for a basic gen ed college chemistry class at a fairly large university. He was going over the basic stuff in the first couple weeks (scientific notation, simple graphs, etc.)
He had a couple of US students that had no idea how to plot graphs at all. I'm not really sure how he got students that had never plotted out a graph by hand, but he did. This happened in 1998 or 1999.
If you want to buy a robotic lawn mower. Try this link
http://www.robotic-lawnmower.com/
There's also another company that sells a robotic vacuum cleaner.
http://www.roombavac.com/
All we need is the infinite improbablity drive. Who says we need wormholes?
Another article. Text is from an article on msnbc.
... the rotted, separated skin of a blue, Sei or fin whale could easily be this size."
SANTIAGO, Chile, July 2 -- A huge, gelatinous sea creature found washed up on Chile's coast has stumped scientists, who have sent samples to a specialist in France for help in identifying the mystery specimen. The dead creature was mistaken for a beached whale when first reported last week, but experts who went to see it said the 40-foot-long mass of decomposing lumpy gray flesh apparently was an invertebrate.
"WE'D NEVER before seen such a strange specimen, we don't know if it might be a giant octopus that is missing some of its parts or maybe it's a new species," said Elsa Cabrera, director of the Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago.
The round substance looks like a mammoth jelly fish and is about as long as a school bus.
Giant octopus live at a depth of up to 9,500 feet and only rise to the surface when they die. Specimens have been known to be as long as 30 feet.
WHALE SKIN?
There was speculation that the mass might be a whale skin, but Cabrera said it was too big and did not have the right texture or smell.
Steve Webster, senior marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, wasn't ready to rule that out, at least based on the photo and limited information he has read.
If the texture is leathery, he said, "I would opt more for whale skin
"In addition," he said, "at least 50 percent to 80 percent of the length of a giant squid or octopus is arms and tentacles, not the body. From what I can see in the picture, this is one big mass of tissue, and is not divided into what might be arms or tentacles."
The Chilean Navy first spotted the mystery specimen along with another large mass near Puerto Montt, in southern Chile, but the other dead animal turned out to be a humpback whale.
GIANT OCTOPUS OR PLANKTON?
Cabrera's group sent samples to French specialist Michel Raynal. The center contacted him and his initial impression was that it is a giant octopus, Cabrera told MSNBC.com.
A review of literature found only one other giant octopus of a similar shape and size, Cabrera said, a specimen found on a Florida beach in 1896.
Cabrera noted the Chilean specimen is bigger than what was found in 1896, measuring about 40 feet long, 18 feet wide, and three feet high at its highest point.
Webster raised the possibility that if the blob is gelatinous, and not particularly tough and leathery, then it could be what's known as a pyrosome -- a colony of millions of plankton that can grow to up to 60 feet long.
He said that genetic analysis of the tissue should reveal some clues to identify the specimen.
"If this were just the head and body of a squid or octopus," he added, "then it appears to be far larger than any such critter known to date."
I wouldn't mind it if they got the major people that worked on LOTR to make the Hobbit though.
I'd imagine that won't happen, considering how many people they would have to coordinate to work on another film (Not so much actors, but as in the people who did costume design, digital, the director etc.)
I've never had that problem with a pizza place. I've been using a cell phone exclusively for over 6 months now. I've never had a problem.
I have gotten one solicated phone call though. Apparently the university were calling students and alumni wanting more money (excuse me, donations). Bah.
As far as I know, cancerous cells just never stop growing. The cell doesn't go through the interphase step of Mitosis. They just reproduce continuously (with no delay, unlike normal cells).
I wonder how well they could isolate the sequences between a cell dividing normally and a cancerous one.
Does anybody else not think that a brightly glowing fish could be a prime target for food? Look, what's that shiny light over there? Oh yummy, food!
On the other hand, (since I believe fireflies do this) it might just advertise that it doesn't taste good.
I agree that if you're going to tamper with the fish to produce one effect, you should probably go a little further.
There are so many cases that show up in the news already becuase somebody didn't want some non native fish and released it into a native pond and caused huge amounts of damage.
I have found that simple typos have crept into my actual handwritten material, which is horrible. I admit I never really paid attention to spelling as much as I could have when I was younger, however.
One of my friends prints everything. He writes faster that way, and (to him) the cursive is just left over from the days of quill pens, and it's outdated. Basically, in his opinion, with the advancement of ball point pens, we shouldn't need to use cursive anymore.
I don't really agree with him on this issue, but I admit I print when I want something to be legible. After several years of taking notes in college, my handwriting has gotten noticeably worse. I have horrible handwriting, and I don't really pay attention to that factor too much, unless I intend on someone else reading it. If that happens, I make the attempt to write legibly.
I don't really think that the amount of time I have spent behind a keyboard has really reduced how legible my handwriting is, other than typos I don't even notice. The word "autocorrect as you type" feature has probably made that worse. I do know that the amount of time I spend writing notes in class has made my handwriting worse.
It is my understanding that supersonic just isn't where research is going. We have a hard time selling new concepts to the airframers as it is right now.
With the current Iraq sitatuation, SARS and becuase of the 9/11, all of the airlines (except Southwest) are taking a huge hit. This does not bode well down the line. I work for a company that makes parts used on the major airplanes (turbines, fuel pumps, the electronics, etc.) and we are laying people off again because the airlines aren't recovering. The major airlines aren't expected to recover until 2005 now.
The SR-71 Blackbird is still a beatiful plane. It has records that have not been broken by modern planes, and it was the last plane designed with SLIDE RULES.
ABET
Accrediation Board of Eengineering Technology
Is anybody else reminded of the book Steel Beach, by John Varley?
considering we haven't had a human get to this point of sleep deprivation, we'll probably never know.
Something that most people don't know is that there are 3 different kind of sleepers. There are long sleepers (people who need more than 8 hours), "normal" sleepers (7 to 8 hours) and short sleepers (6 or less). I did not catch any sort of reference in this article about these. This only counts if you are NOT tired during the day. I tend to run the edge of being a short sleeper. There is a lady that sleeps an hour an a half, per day. She sleeps an hour at nightime, and takes a half an hour nap in the afternoon.
:)
Another thing, along with age, you sleep the best when you are about 8 or so. This the time when you can fall out of your bed and still be sound asleep.
I can't run links to back up this information, but this material comes out of a physiological psycology class i took last year.
Sleep is a funky thing, and it varies from person to person, and it also changes as you age. When you get to your 20's or so, you need naps again. (How much of that has to do with the college student lifestyle, I have no idea
There is also another thing that most people don't know about sleep. Psychologists have done studies with rats so that they never sleep. (Rats hate water, and they set up a turntable like item, such that there is a rat on both sides. The rats have to keep walking in order to keep the wheel turning, which keeps them from falling in the water). After at least 40? days (maybe it was 80, I don't remeber exactly), which is something like 2/3? of the rat's lifespan, the rat developed lesions, and generally went insane.
For a human to reach this state, you would have to never sleep for something like 60 years. I would want the acutal study results to really judge what they concluded.
Anybody rember a show in the 80's called Herman's Head? I don't think The Sims as a tv show would be a hit. In the show Herman's head, Herman had a t least 4 or 5 characters in his head that basically fought over a chair, and the person who was sitting in the chair was in control of Herman. For example, if the party animal was in control of Herman's head, he might say something incredible crude to a woman that he wanted to date or along those lines. I don't remeber this being a big hit . The couple of times I watched it for a few seconds, I wasn't interested and went back to flipping channels.
Considering the popularity of the game, and this is just a personal observation, does it ever seem reminescent of playing with dolls (only better)?
I mean, here you are, controlling your sim's lives, except you don't control absolutely anything.
gives a new meaning to the term viruses doesn't it? Nice friendly little "computer virus..starts wrecking havoc in your brain... a madman behind the scenes..look, if i unleash this virus, i turn the people into my personal soldiers..MUHAHAHAHA :P
or something..i'm in a weird mood
I'm all for mapping the genome, but there are things you have to remeber when you start "tinkering" with it.
:) Excuse me, I have to run off to class now.
For example, did you know there's a whale gene in your tomato? There is, and the reason's it's there is to prevent it from freezing (or at least making it harder to freeze).
Good things: production goes up, losses go down. Bad things: weeds that don't freeze and die in the winter.
This is just a simple example, but some of our crops are genetically enhanced for pesticides. Now what happens when our crops undergo natural pollination and cross breed with weeds?
I read an article about this a few months ago, and I wish I could point out the exact name, or give some links on topics like this, but it was a gardening magazine, and has since disappeared.
This is the reason why Europe boycotts some of our crops.
And for those that are didn't know, they use modified viruses to implement the genes
I'm not very thrilled with my University's network admin, (well, the way it's being run in general) I suppose. Considering there have been at least 2 warez sites that were finally taken down (at least 2 years after the student had already graduated. There are been several hacking atempts, most of the CS computers were formatted, and ECN has also been hacked into before.
Also when the FBI were investigating a couple of years ago, the student admin policy was changed a bit. So if you have a serious email problem and you go to an SA (whose job is to help you), they can't do anything about fixing it, other than say "rebooting the lab computer". About all they can do overall, is reboot your computer, give you a new username, reset the printer settings, fix printer jams, and reload the printers.
The lab computers aren't that great in general. They break down and then stay broken for a least a couple weeks. It's not the lab SA's job to fix the computer, just help people with problems.
I could go on about what I think or I could further describe the situation, but that's not the point here.
How many times are there female superheros? As a child (and I am female), I rember watching things like He-Man, transformers, X-men, and others. I even remeber briefly watching My little pony, so I didn't always watch shows that were directly aimed at boys. But if you look at the superhero's, then okay, She-Ra was neat, but for some reason He-Man was always cooler. They put a lot more work in to that cartoon than She-Ra, his toys sold better, and more people watched it. And I don't really remeber a single female transformer, (the original ones, not the ones out now). Then (and that was the 80's) almost always the guy superhero had better powers, neater toys, and in general better stuff.
Call me a tom boy when I was younger, so what? I went out and played with boys becuase there weren't that many girls my age in my neighboorhood. So I went out and climbed trees, played with tonka trucks (they were a friend of mine's though), and even played baseball with my friends (and yes, I sucked at it, but I played outfield, so it never mattered that much. However, I still had fun).
How many times do we start out boys with trucks and girls with dolls? I didn't want or get barbies, until I found a female friend that was my age, and I still played with the boys a lot. Oddly enough, in a recent day care study, the girls almost always went for the dolls, and the boys went for toys like trucks.
A possible correlation for the study that "males are better at math and social skills, while women are better at communication" goes back to the cave days. Men were out hunting, and since part of hunting is waiting for food to arrive. Spatial skills and eventually math skills developed and were encouraged from that. Woman who gathered food and stayed to take care of the children, had better communication skills by staying around other women, etc.
A lot of what we do is a result of society, and what our parents teach us. I loved science as a kid, and I was encouraged in it. One of my female friends in school played with dolls more often than I did, so what? She started out with the internet before I did, and she could code better than I could if she wanted to (she chose to go into the radio industry).
Another thing is, she had a computer (which was up to date) more often than I did. I know very little about hardware beucase I didn't get a decent desktop computer at an early age, and i can't quite afford one yet. (I have a laptop due to college requirements). I admit I had a pc jr, and a commodore 64 when I was 8 or younger, but plodding along as a early teen with a tandy with a 5 1/4 disk drive, when other ppl have a computer with a 3 1/2 disk drive and windows capability doesn't help much.
John Varley's "Steel Beach" discusses nanotechnology on the effect of a human society in detail. It also goes a lot futher in discussing human gender and sexuality.
(Be warned, the main character does some gender switching, and tries to find a meaning in his life, also sex is dicussed a lot).
Another main character of the book is the CC (central computer), which helps humans run their daily lives, and is in some way part of the goverment. Incidently, the earth has been taken over by aliens, and humans now live on the moon, and some of the other planets.
It's an interesting book, and if you're willing to read it, I'd suggest you read it. The book does cover some interesting issues that may crop up in the future, and the paperback is still in print according to amazon.com
I admit he's a good writer, and if I recall correctly, he has done some influential work outside of cyberpunk ficiton. However, if you're going to put a writer on the list, I think Asimov, is a much better choice.
Asimov is credited with inventing the word "robot" and "robotics". He also influenced actual people to start building robots, and the three laws of robotics probably exist in almost every robot in some form or another (even subconsciously in the mind of the designer).