[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- Girl Develop IT Takes Off With Low-Cost, Women-Only Programming Classes
- [ReadWriteWeb - Adrianne Jeffries]
The tech industry's rather extreme gender disparity…problem starts early, with math and science in grade school and computer science in college. "The problem lies at the base of the tree," …
Sara Chipps, self-styled "Girl Developer," is a freelance coder based in the New York City area and Mashable recently named her one of 15 Developer/Hacker Women to Follow … Chipps thinks the answer … is to create "rockstar women programmers." She co-founded Girl Develop IT, a series of 16 classes designed to teach women how to build their own projects with HTML/CSS, JavaScript and JQuery, and Ruby On Rails.
…The classes are $20 each, books provided, low-stress environment promised, and total beginners welcome. … There is already a Girl Develop IT chapter in Sydney, sponsored by Google, and Chipps hopes the concept will [expand.]
Girl Develop IT is seeking books and teachers assistants in the New York City area…
- How Linux Land Got Better Since Last Summer
- [LinuxInsider - Katherine Noyes]
- Caffeine & Edibles : Freakin’ Magical Unicorn Gum
- [ThinkGeek]
Gum that comes from the dreams of Unicorns.With every chew of Freakin' Magical Unicorn Gum, you get one step closer to being able to ride a unicorn. So, chew, chew, chew, and maybe you'll be granted the honor. $1.99 – $11.99
- FontPark Is a Searchable, Sortable Database of Over 70,000 Free Fonts
- [Lifehacker - Adam Dachis]
FontPark is a great big database of free fonts—for personal and/or commercial use—that'll work on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
- Organize Your Fridge Like a Grocery Store for Always-Fresh Food
- [Lifehacker - Adam Dachis]
Sometimes you meant to eat something but tucked it back so far in the fridge you forgot you bought it in the first place. Here's a refrigerator organization trick that'll help prevent those unexpected expirations.
- Blair L.M. Kelley wins the 2010 Letitia Woods Book Award for Right To Ride
- [PLoS Blogs - David Kroll ]
…my North Carolina State University history colleague, Dr. Blair Kelley, is the recipient of the 2010 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Award from the Association of Black Women Historians for her book Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson. [...]
Professor Kelley presented a fantastic original paper on attitudes toward the Black woman’s body in medical history.
…[She] is not just a scholar but is an emerging national presence on racism and African-American history, writing for Salon.com…
- Pictures: Hubble Spies Oddly "Perfect" Celestial Spiral
- [National Geographic News]
A new Hubble picture has revealed an oddly "perfect" cosmic spiral likely being created as a dying star orbits a stellar twin, astronomers say.
- Jupiter News Flash: Pictures of "Nothing" Reveal Size of Recent Impact
- [Breaking Orbit - Victoria Jaggard]
It's been tough times for Jupiter: The gas giant planet lost a belt in May, and, thanks to the diligence of amateur astronomers, we know that it has been struck by space objects at least three times in the course of a year.
…The June 3 impact event sparked several attempts by larger telescopes to look for traces of the collision, like the dark spot found in 2009. After all, the initial flash was about the size of Earth, so it must have been a whopper of a space rock that smacked into Jupiter, right?
- Coming Soon: An Obesity Panacea Series on Metabolically Healthy Obesity
- [PLoS Blogs - Travis Saunders, MSc, CEP]
Just a quick note to let everyone know that next week we are planning a series focusing on one of our favourite topics – metabolically healthy obesity. If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments on the topic before the series begins, feel free to post them here.
- Steampunk chip takes the heat
- [New Scientist]
Transistors don't work at high temperatures, but a retro take on modern technology could change the face of hot electronics
- The Science of Eavesdropping
- [Wired: Science - Jonah Lehrer]
…an apparent paradox of eavesdropping: It’s harder to not listen to a conversation when someone is talking on the phone (we only hear one side of the dialogue) than when two physically present people are talking to each other.
…the Cornell psychologists build on the “information gap” model. … subjects listening to only one side of a conversation – what they call a “halfalogue” – showed decreased performance on a range of cognitive tasks that require undivided attention. In a second experiment, the researchers confirmed that it’s the “unpredictable nature” of the halfalogue that makes it so compelling. … Our attention is sucked in by the uncertainty…
Note: I found this paper via Vaughan Bell, who has a typically insightful post on the latest peer-reviewed paper on the subject of children and technology. Hint: Google isn’t making us stoopid.
- What would happen to Earth if we stopped expanding fossil fuel use tomorrow?
- [io9 - Alasdair Wilkins]
If all the peoples of the world got together tomorrow and agreed to never build another fossil fuel power plant or gasoline-powered automobile, all the carbon-emitting structures already built would still produce 496 gigatonnes of carbon between now and 2060…
- Laying Out The Case
- [Hullabaloo - digby]
In case you were wondering what kind of fever dreams the wingnuts were planning to bring to life if they gain a majority, here's what one of my emailers sent today…
[My summary, because long email is long:
1. Impeach Obama.
2. Steal underwear.
3. Profit!
-L]
The Of interest (Fri, Sep 10th, 10am) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.