Geekalicious
thusspakezuska | July 8, 2009
Throughout the month of June, Philadelphia-area residents had the opportunity to take advantage of an extraordinary arts festival - Hidden City Philadelphia.
This unique arts festival...brings Philadelphia's best unknown historical and architectural landmarks back to life through original works of art...There are many historical and architectural landmarks around Philadelphia that at one time were all important to the city's neighborhoods, but their significance - and in some cases their existence - has been forgotten over the years, making them hidden to the people who walk, run, or drive…
thusspakezuska | June 9, 2009When I was a young girl, I used to watch my mother at her ironing board. There was always a lot of ironing to be done. She kept a big clear plastic bag of clothes waiting their turn at the ironing board, and would sprinkle them with water - there was a special bottle for this sprinkling. I do not think we owned a steam iron when I was very young, and dampening the clothes in this manner was an attempt to help ease the wrinkles out during the ironing process.
Eventually I became old enough to assist in the never-ending ironing chores, and my mother let me practice on pillow cases, just as…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2009Question: Did you know that there are National Historic Chemical Landmarks?
Answer: Yes, there are.
Question: What did the American Chemical Society declare to be its first National Historic Chemical Landmark, and where can you find it?
Answer: "Old Faithful", a Bakelizer or steam pressure vessel, vintage 1909. Phenol and formaldehyde were hardened at 150 C and 100 psi and voila! commercial quantities of Bakelite were the product. You can find it at the museum at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia.
I spent several delightful hours there yesterday afternoon and could…
thusspakezuska | May 16, 2009Isis has a post about the secret life of scientists - an important topic, lest the young 'uns think that grown-up scientists have no lives and just sit around in their labcoats all day reading journal articles, plotting experiments, and analyzing data. Go forth, read, and be amazed by the musical stylings of one David Kroll - scientist, mentor, administrator, and guitar hero.
thusspakezuska | April 8, 2009Oh, linky blogosphere, how I love thee!
I was just starting to browse through Atoms Arranged Meaningwise by Rachel McKinney - which I found via Scientiae's blogroll - when her most recent post sent me shooting off to Threadbared. Rachel notes:
And I know we're supposed to be good little serious philosophers and clothes aren't supposed to be the sort of thing worth thinking too hard about, but that's just the kind of fucked-up masculinist logic that got us into this mess in the first place, right?
I suspect Isis would agree!
Then the pitch for Threadbared:
Threadbared is a blog by two…
thusspakezuska | April 3, 2009Scads of stuff I don't have time to blog adequately...
Johns Hopkins Provost Kristina Johnson was nominated by President Obama to be under secretary of the Department of Energy in mid-March. From the email press release:
She is a distinguished researcher, best known for pioneering work -- with widespread scientific and commercial application -- in the field of "smart pixel arrays." Last year, she was awarded the John Fritz Medal, widely considered the highest award in engineering and previously given to Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, George Westinghouse and Orville Wright. She is an…
thusspakezuska | March 14, 2009Pi Day has come and gone. Sciencebloggers have posted their pie recipes and pictures - including, of course, my fabulous Bird Pie - and now it is time to vote for your favorite. You may also enjoy checking out Janet's Pi Day pie roundup. That's one helluva lotta pies she baked! Though none of them were for the birds. I would beg you to vote for my Bird Pie, so that I could win the contest, but I am sure you will be blown away by the culinary accomplishments of my fellow Sciblings, so I'll just suggest that you go vote for someone. Personally, I think that violet custard pie kicks ass.…
thusspakezuska | March 12, 2009Some of us at Scienceblogs have been baking pies and posting pictures and recipes in anticipation of Pi Day (3.14) and in the hopes of winning the Pi Day contest. As I have previously mentioned, I am no pie baker. But why should that stop me from entering the contest? You're right, it shouldn't!
So I went ahead and made Bird Pie. And no, it's not made out of birds. Recipe and photos after the jump.
How To Make Bird Pie
First, get yourself one of those Gladware-type dinner-plate-sized leftover dishes. Take the bottom and either lose it or ruin it in your dishwasher or oven. Now, take…
thusspakezuska | March 11, 2009The Global Marathon For, By, and About Women in Engineering is going on right now! for the next 24 hours. It's part of the Eweek celebration, which was last month, which I totally missed because I was off in a haze not blogging at the time. As I write this, Maria Thompson of Motorola is doing a session on Increasing Your Innovation IQ.
2008 Global Marathon Sessions can be revisited here.
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2009Just in time for Women's History Month and the second edition of the Diversity in Science Carnival, the Association for Computing Machinery has announced that the 2008 Turing Award goes to Barbara Liskov! Here's all the info from the press release:
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named Barbara Liskov of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the winner of the 2008 ACM A.M. Turing Award. The award cites Liskov for her foundational innovations to designing and building the pervasive computer system designs that power daily life. Her achievements in programming…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2009If you've been reading the blogs of some of my Sciblings, you know there is this Pi(e) Day contest going on, till March 14. (Get it?) You are supposed to bake a pie, then post a picture and the recipe. Janet in particular has been posting some very tasty looking pies, and her violet custard pie was just astonishing. I thought briefly about submitting an entry but (1) I am no baker, (2) even when I have attempted to bake something, it's never been a pie, and (3) having seen these other entries, I'd be ashamed to even think of submitting whatever shabby thing I could probably come up with…
thusspakezuska | March 9, 2009For the second time in a week (see here and here) I've blogged about something from the Philadelphia Inquirer. You may or may not know that the Inquirer recently went into bankruptcy proceedings. I don't know what I would do without the Inquirer to read everyday. Blogging is great but it simply cannot replace, in my opinion, regular newspaper reporting. Somewhat tangentially related to that: I recently renewed my subscription to the Chronicle of Higher Education. I was given the option to receive it, for a somewhat lesser price, as only an electronic edition. It completely replicates…
thusspakezuska | March 9, 2009Ironing is women's work. And women's work, we know, has nothing to do with engineering or technology. Irons are not technology; they are domestic appliances.
Collect a bunch of them, though, and they start looking like technological art objects. Then you can write a book about them.
Which is exactly what Jay Raymond has done. For the past 25 years, he's been collecting vintage electric irons.
But not just any old electric irons. Raymond had a thing for streamlined irons, whose sleek, curvy designs make them look more like an art object than a domestic appliance.
Raymond, it turns out,…
thusspakezuska | March 5, 2009When you walk or drive by a shuttered factory or other rusting, decaying industrial hulk in your city, do you notice it? If you do, do you just think, "urban blight"? Or do you think "there goes some history in need of documenting?" If the latter, you might be an urban explorer in the making. Keep in mind your new hobby would be illegal, but that hasn't stopped a lot of intrepid souls.
Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer had an article on these determined individuals, who often risk life and limb (and ignore many a no-trespassing sign) to explore and document abandoned industrial buildings…
thusspakezuska | February 28, 2009Mr. Zuska and I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show today. It's always wonderful to enter the show on a dull winter day and be struck with the glory of a giant convention center in full bloom. The show officially opens tomorrow, but today was the preview for Pennsylvania Horticultural Society members - of which there must be a zillion, because the show floor was mobbed.
One of the biggest - certainly one of the most excited - mobs was around this exhibit:
Yes: shoes! Made out of flowers 'n' stuff! Close ups after the jump.
I liked these:
These looked like they'd tickle:
Elegant,…
thusspakezuska | February 24, 2009As a graduate student, I observed the nascent field of functional magnetic resonance imaging and thought to myself with some amusement "modern phrenology! Now with big, fancy, expensive equipment!" Count me among those who have never been terribly impressed with fMRI, and certainly not with its applications in what is known as social neuroscience.
Now we have this:
Late last year, Ed Vul, a graduate student at MIT working with neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher and UCSD psychologist Hal Pashler, prereleased "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience" on his website. The journal Perspectives…
thusspakezuska | January 29, 2009A week or so ago I finally gave in and allowed my friends to convince me that I really, really needed to go on Facebook. It has been fun - I've gotten back in touch with some old friends I'd lost track of; I've enjoyed reading tidbits about the daily goings-on of my friends' lives; I've tried to figure out what the heck L'il Green Patch is all about.
Yet it also seems to me, in some ways, like a nightmare. With email, I log on, read messages, respond, delete, I'm done. With blogging, I log on, write a blog post, post it, check comments to see if anything is languishing in moderation, I'm…
thusspakezuska | December 23, 2008By request of the domestic and laboratory goddess, I am posting here a picture of my recent acquisition, a pair of ankle boots, as mentioned in my last post. It's no shoe of the week, but it's the best this hairy-legged feminazi can offer.
The adorable cat next to the boots is Bodhi, who often behaves as if he were a dog, so it's appropriate to have him posed next to the Hush Puppies boots. The style is Windermere, almost sans heel as is appropriate for my arthritic toe joints. I did NOT pay $94.95 for my boots, however. $69.95 on sale at Macy's, plus 15% off for using my Macy's card…
thusspakezuska | October 9, 2008I found out about these two books from the Chronicle Review; haven't read either one, but they looked interesting and some of you may want to check them out.
Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing by Jane Margolis
The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in computer science is disproportionately low, according to recent surveys. And relatively few African American and Latino/a high school students receive the kind of institutional encouragement, educational opportunities, and preparation needed for them to choose computer…