Case in point: I'm in social sciences (let's call it psychology for simplicity's sake), and I recently discovered that to use some of the statistical methods I'm interested in using (well, to actually understand them rather than just poke a computer button and say I used it), linear algebra would be very useful. This had never occurred to me all through undergrad or my master's program, but now my husband (a mathematician) is teaching me linear algebra.
While I see other students in my PhD program who struggle with basic statistics and wonder how they are ever going to interpret their data in any meaningful way. But of course, there are plenty of people using the math who don't understand it - and unfortunately, their papers get reviewed by others who don't really understand the math and accepted into journals when their statistics don't really make much sense at all. At least some of the non-math people stick to qualitative research.
CNN.com certainly hasn't picked it up yet - although they do have an article on the effects of climate change on backyard gardening. And the obviously faked/staged "Russian cat lady" video, important news there! I don't think you have to be paranoid to think the mainstream media is going to skip on something so non-sensationalized as a data correction that shows things being slightly less bad than before.
Me. I don't have $50/month lying around to pay for 8 channels I'd watch and 100+ I wouldn't. I'll get cable as soon as they offer an a la carte version for under $25/month. Until then, Netflix meets my non-broadcast needs. Sure, I can get "basic cable" for $25, but it includes nothing that's not broadcast, news, or shopping - so I'd be paying for about twenty channels I wouldn't watch, and a dozen I can get with my antenna. Woo!!
But luckily, they have entire universities full of professors (including those in computers and law) to help them out and keep them from losing touch with reality. No, college students couldn't beat the RIAA on their own. But college students plus college faculty? That's a different ballgame.
(I'm nearsighted plus astigmatism and still have several contact brands to choose from, so I'm wondering what problem would hold you down to one brand.)
In the case of professors, at least, their email addresses are usually publicly available on the school's website, so Google could at least check that it's coming from the right account. Of course, most other professionals that might be interviewed in an article, not so much; no clue how they would verify those.
There are lots of interesting ways to use these in the classroom. For example, you set up a wiki for your class to accumulate knowledge about local history. A few classes in different states all participate, and suddenly you have a rich resource where students can read and compare how cities developed in different parts of the country and at different times in history.
Modified wikis can also be useful for learning the writing process and editing, etc. If you control who can edit which papers at any given time (which some wiki software allows), and keep track of histories, you can transform the normal "peer-editing" process.
I was surprised when I walked into a Best Buy a few weeks ago and found Macs, not just iPods, on sale there. They have a huge eye-catching display you can see from the front of the store (even though the macs are near the back), too.
I have two CRT eMacs at home, and my husband and I both use the latest (well, now second-latest) iMacs at work. We both LOVE the iMacs. I mean, the eMacs are great and all, and the price was certainly right (and the main reason for choosing it), but damn. 51 pounds, and I've moved four times since I got mine. Not fun. There's a *reason* people wanted the flat screen iMacs. Plus, I love having widescreen - I can actually put two documents side-by-side on my screen without making both incredibly narrow!
Yeah, must be judeo-christian, couldn't have anything to do with... oh, I dunno... our species (like most) evolving in such a way that favors behaviors that result in more of the species being created? Including a tendency to form social structures that support the creation of more members of the species?
This is not a quote from a person with a fulfilling career, by any definition. Yes, for many people both their career and parenthood are fulfilling in different ways and in different amounts and it is a balancing act. The example you originally gave did NOT seem to be one of those cases, and I can pretty confidently say that my career is more fulfilling to me than this woman's is to her.
Finally, is it just me, or have they slighyl repackaged everything, made no huge advances
... And then they announced Numbers, their brand-new spreadsheet. But that didn't make it into *this*/. post, because someone had to jump the gun and get it on the front page OMGNOW.
I'd say it's probably one of the top 3 considerations for men when even _thinking_ about having a child.
I'm saying that for women, children are an automatic, up-front consideration when even thinking about having a career, not the other way around. It's admirable that you're thinking about it now, long before you plan to have kids - but in my experience, you're a rarity among men.
I know some of those people too, and they're all blessed with rich mommies and daddies (that 12k stipend definitely isn't enough to raise a child).
None of the people I know are, but our stipend is a bit higher than that. And typically only one spouse is in grad school, which helps.
Anyway, if all of these women friends of yours aren't skipping a beat in their careers while having children, doesn't that prove the opposite of your point?
Did I say none of them were skipping a beat? No, I said they're not giving up their careers. It's far more complex than "work or be a stay at home mom," and that's the whole point - women start out their careers knowing that they're going to face that complexity, knowing that society and their employers expect them to face it and will judge them based on how they navigate it. Nontraditional career paths have to be explored, balancing time off with being able to keep a job or get another job a year later, etc. Not everyone wants to be a SAHM "until they get bored with it" - many women want to specifically take a year or two off, but planning that into a career is not easy. I'm sure there are men who would love to do the same, and it is a shame that they typically get even less support than women when they do - but they generally don't think about that until, say, they get married at least. They're not worrying about it while they're still in college, trying to choose a career, as most women are. And they don't have to worry that someone won't hire them because the employer assumes they'll take time off when they have kids.
I'm not saying, and never said, that having kids doesn't affect a man's career, or that being a father is easy, or anything like that. But 90% of guys graduating from college are not thinking about kids when they decide what career path to start. I'd say more than half of women are, and have to if they want to be prepared when the time comes.
I'd say it's probably one of the top 3 considerations for men when even _thinking_ about having a child.
See, that is exactly the difference I mean. For women, replace the word "child" with "career." Even women who don't plan to have children are faced with the expectation from everyone around them that they will have kids eventually, and that it will impact their career. Care to go to a job interview knowing that your potential employer has that in the back of their head (consciously or not)?
Graduate school? Right out.
Well, I don't know why, most of the people I know having babies right now *are* graduate students. But I'm guessing you mean people who would have to take a pay cut in order to go back to school.
they're saying "ugh, work is terrible, I can't wait to get married and have babies."
I don't know a single woman saying that, nor do I know a single woman planning to leave the work force even semi-permanently to have her kids. I know one woman who is on her second child who is taking a year off for it. I guess I know women with more fulfilling careers than you do.
That's exactly my point. For men, the idea that their career might someday be impacted by children isn't something they consider - or are expected to consider - until later, closer to when they have kids. For women, it's something they are forced to think about, often before they even graduate high school. Even women who don't want to have kids, they're asked about it and, of course, looked at funny when they say it won't be an issue for them. Women are working under the expectation (from themselves, their family, their employers, and/or society in general) that their career will be interrupted in one way or another, from day one, something that men don't have to deal with.
That's good, that you take these things into consideration now that you have a child. When did you start thinking about them? A year before you started trying to get pregnant? When you got married?
I guarantee you, many women start thinking about it - sometimes obsessively - the moment they enter the workforce. Even if you're not planning to have kids for another decade, it's something you KNOW from the beginning will have a major effect on your career path, and when you're thinking about what you want that career path to look like you take that into account. I have yet to meet a guy who thought to look at their career that way their entire adult life.
Btw, where do you work that gives a year off at 90% pay as maternity leave?? Most places, it's a couple months with no pay. And if you know someone who's getting enough child support they can live off it, their ex-husband must have been pretty damn rich.
That's good that they think about it and talk about it once they're coming up on baby-having time. I've been worrying about it and running through different scenarios in my head since I was about eighteen.
The responses to your comment are causing me to give up on this story/thread completely. Obviously, since men are not always treated perfectly, women must be completely overreacting to everything.
I'm just not even going to go into it... All I want to know is, have any of these guys for one second ever had to stop and consider what the impact of having a child will be on their career? Whether or not they have kids now, did it ever even cross their minds to wonder? Most guys I know, it's not even a blip on their radar, it's just not something that comes to mind when they think about having kids.
I think that your example is entirely down to your personal relationship with the other person. If you're working with a somewhat uptight guy for the first time, "Dude, you suck!" is going to alienate him just as well as a woman, although you probably won't have a sexual harrassment suit on your hands. Whereas if you're working with a woman you've worked with many times in the past, who you know well and who knows YOU well enough to know that you're not really disparaging her abilities, and whose sense of humor you know, "Dude, you suck!" will probably provoke the same response as in your male scenario.
Maybe your problem is just that you don't manage to reach the same level of rapport with your female coworkers as with the males. Or you use humor inappropriately. Or both.
Have you read the book, or are you basing that on the fact that it contains horoscopes and the word "refliprocal"?
Of course, if it IS aimed at the ditzes, and is at all successful at getting them to not hate math, isn't that an even bigger triumph? I mean, I might have read this when I was in junior high, but I already loved math. I might have learned some algebra concepts a year or so early, but that's about it. Appealing to a girl who's already started dumbing herself down and managing to turn it around even a tiny bit would be a major accomplishment.
Slashdot Mirror
While I see other students in my PhD program who struggle with basic statistics and wonder how they are ever going to interpret their data in any meaningful way. But of course, there are plenty of people using the math who don't understand it - and unfortunately, their papers get reviewed by others who don't really understand the math and accepted into journals when their statistics don't really make much sense at all. At least some of the non-math people stick to qualitative research.
CNN.com certainly hasn't picked it up yet - although they do have an article on the effects of climate change on backyard gardening. And the obviously faked/staged "Russian cat lady" video, important news there! I don't think you have to be paranoid to think the mainstream media is going to skip on something so non-sensationalized as a data correction that shows things being slightly less bad than before.
Yay, I'd LOVE to pay $20/month for what I get for free now! Sounds GREAT! I also eat a ten dollar bill every morning for breakfast, it is TASTY!
Me. I don't have $50/month lying around to pay for 8 channels I'd watch and 100+ I wouldn't. I'll get cable as soon as they offer an a la carte version for under $25/month. Until then, Netflix meets my non-broadcast needs. Sure, I can get "basic cable" for $25, but it includes nothing that's not broadcast, news, or shopping - so I'd be paying for about twenty channels I wouldn't watch, and a dozen I can get with my antenna. Woo!!
But luckily, they have entire universities full of professors (including those in computers and law) to help them out and keep them from losing touch with reality. No, college students couldn't beat the RIAA on their own. But college students plus college faculty? That's a different ballgame.
(I'm nearsighted plus astigmatism and still have several contact brands to choose from, so I'm wondering what problem would hold you down to one brand.)
In the case of professors, at least, their email addresses are usually publicly available on the school's website, so Google could at least check that it's coming from the right account. Of course, most other professionals that might be interviewed in an article, not so much; no clue how they would verify those.
Modified wikis can also be useful for learning the writing process and editing, etc. If you control who can edit which papers at any given time (which some wiki software allows), and keep track of histories, you can transform the normal "peer-editing" process.
The Best Buy on the Evanston side of Howard St carries Macs now, too. Petsmart's another few blocks north, but there's a Target and a Jewel next door.
I was surprised when I walked into a Best Buy a few weeks ago and found Macs, not just iPods, on sale there. They have a huge eye-catching display you can see from the front of the store (even though the macs are near the back), too.
I have two CRT eMacs at home, and my husband and I both use the latest (well, now second-latest) iMacs at work. We both LOVE the iMacs. I mean, the eMacs are great and all, and the price was certainly right (and the main reason for choosing it), but damn. 51 pounds, and I've moved four times since I got mine. Not fun. There's a *reason* people wanted the flat screen iMacs. Plus, I love having widescreen - I can actually put two documents side-by-side on my screen without making both incredibly narrow!
Yeah, must be judeo-christian, couldn't have anything to do with... oh, I dunno... our species (like most) evolving in such a way that favors behaviors that result in more of the species being created? Including a tendency to form social structures that support the creation of more members of the species?
"ugh, work is terrible
This is not a quote from a person with a fulfilling career, by any definition. Yes, for many people both their career and parenthood are fulfilling in different ways and in different amounts and it is a balancing act. The example you originally gave did NOT seem to be one of those cases, and I can pretty confidently say that my career is more fulfilling to me than this woman's is to her.
I'd say Numbers is the biggest news of the day, and because someone had to be OMGFIRSTTOSUBMIT, it's not even in this story.
I'd say it's probably one of the top 3 considerations for men when even _thinking_ about having a child.
I'm saying that for women, children are an automatic, up-front consideration when even thinking about having a career, not the other way around. It's admirable that you're thinking about it now, long before you plan to have kids - but in my experience, you're a rarity among men.
I know some of those people too, and they're all blessed with rich mommies and daddies (that 12k stipend definitely isn't enough to raise a child).
None of the people I know are, but our stipend is a bit higher than that. And typically only one spouse is in grad school, which helps.
Anyway, if all of these women friends of yours aren't skipping a beat in their careers while having children, doesn't that prove the opposite of your point?
Did I say none of them were skipping a beat? No, I said they're not giving up their careers. It's far more complex than "work or be a stay at home mom," and that's the whole point - women start out their careers knowing that they're going to face that complexity, knowing that society and their employers expect them to face it and will judge them based on how they navigate it. Nontraditional career paths have to be explored, balancing time off with being able to keep a job or get another job a year later, etc. Not everyone wants to be a SAHM "until they get bored with it" - many women want to specifically take a year or two off, but planning that into a career is not easy. I'm sure there are men who would love to do the same, and it is a shame that they typically get even less support than women when they do - but they generally don't think about that until, say, they get married at least. They're not worrying about it while they're still in college, trying to choose a career, as most women are. And they don't have to worry that someone won't hire them because the employer assumes they'll take time off when they have kids.
I'm not saying, and never said, that having kids doesn't affect a man's career, or that being a father is easy, or anything like that. But 90% of guys graduating from college are not thinking about kids when they decide what career path to start. I'd say more than half of women are, and have to if they want to be prepared when the time comes.
See, that is exactly the difference I mean. For women, replace the word "child" with "career." Even women who don't plan to have children are faced with the expectation from everyone around them that they will have kids eventually, and that it will impact their career. Care to go to a job interview knowing that your potential employer has that in the back of their head (consciously or not)?
Graduate school? Right out.
Well, I don't know why, most of the people I know having babies right now *are* graduate students. But I'm guessing you mean people who would have to take a pay cut in order to go back to school.
they're saying "ugh, work is terrible, I can't wait to get married and have babies."
I don't know a single woman saying that, nor do I know a single woman planning to leave the work force even semi-permanently to have her kids. I know one woman who is on her second child who is taking a year off for it. I guess I know women with more fulfilling careers than you do.
That's exactly my point. For men, the idea that their career might someday be impacted by children isn't something they consider - or are expected to consider - until later, closer to when they have kids. For women, it's something they are forced to think about, often before they even graduate high school. Even women who don't want to have kids, they're asked about it and, of course, looked at funny when they say it won't be an issue for them. Women are working under the expectation (from themselves, their family, their employers, and/or society in general) that their career will be interrupted in one way or another, from day one, something that men don't have to deal with.
I guarantee you, many women start thinking about it - sometimes obsessively - the moment they enter the workforce. Even if you're not planning to have kids for another decade, it's something you KNOW from the beginning will have a major effect on your career path, and when you're thinking about what you want that career path to look like you take that into account. I have yet to meet a guy who thought to look at their career that way their entire adult life.
Btw, where do you work that gives a year off at 90% pay as maternity leave?? Most places, it's a couple months with no pay. And if you know someone who's getting enough child support they can live off it, their ex-husband must have been pretty damn rich.
That's good that they think about it and talk about it once they're coming up on baby-having time. I've been worrying about it and running through different scenarios in my head since I was about eighteen.
I'm just not even going to go into it... All I want to know is, have any of these guys for one second ever had to stop and consider what the impact of having a child will be on their career? Whether or not they have kids now, did it ever even cross their minds to wonder? Most guys I know, it's not even a blip on their radar, it's just not something that comes to mind when they think about having kids.
Maybe your problem is just that you don't manage to reach the same level of rapport with your female coworkers as with the males. Or you use humor inappropriately. Or both.
Of course, if it IS aimed at the ditzes, and is at all successful at getting them to not hate math, isn't that an even bigger triumph? I mean, I might have read this when I was in junior high, but I already loved math. I might have learned some algebra concepts a year or so early, but that's about it. Appealing to a girl who's already started dumbing herself down and managing to turn it around even a tiny bit would be a major accomplishment.
Btw, I hear you got married. Congrats!