Life as an Extreme Sport

The Exploratorium

...and everything else, life and living

The Palace of Fine ArtsThe first time I dissected a cow eye, I was at The Exploratorium in San Francisco, a fantastic science museum that was housed on an absolutely beautiful campus, a part of the Palace of Fine Arts. Those of you of the right age and not from San Francisco will recognize this as where Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” video was filmed – for me, it was always the fun science place.Those of you with very long memories will also note that this is where I got married, once upon a time. That was more needing a pretty outside place in January in San Francisco, though, than any particular link between that marriage and the location.

I think of the museum fondly, and somewhat frequently. It was always fun to run around the Palace (before or after playing in the museum), it’s part of one of my favourite urban fantasy novels, and it is very much one of the places that fueled my love of science, hands-on exploration, and discovery. I learned about optics and illusions and concepts of surface strength via bubbles, there. They made math fun, they made science an adventure, and they let everyone play, regardless of age. It was a fantastic, phenomenal place.

I’m talking about it in past-tense, which isn’t fair or accurate – the Exploratorium still exists. But when I was looking up information to share with Nick this morning,A conversation based on the idea of doing things you’re told not to do and the Mythbusters, of course. I had a rather surprising shock: the Exploratorium has moved.

They’re on Pier 15/17 now, or will be come mid-April. I’m so thrilled that they’ve grown enough in size and staff and exhibits to need a larger space. In an age where it seems like science isn’t valued and museums are always under threat of budget cuts and closures, that the Exploratorium can move and expand is beyond fabulous. But it’s also a little sad, at least for me – another small but seminal piece of my childhood gone. I guess it’s a sands-through-hourglass thing; changes continuing apace. And there have been a lot of changes lately.Not, mind, that I’m complaining. Especially the cleaning the house related bits, just because it’s nice to get rid of things after having done so and then had Unexpected Life Events create a somewhat untenable situation of too many items, some with memories that made dealing with difficult. But I think it’s also easier to notice change when you’re in the middle of change, especially change that runs hard with nostalgia and memory.

Sweet Potato Porter Drop Biscuits (recipe)

...and everything else

Here’s the asked-for recipe for sweet potato porter stop biscuits. I basically modified this from a drop biscuit recipe I learned from my mother. It’s wonderfully imprecise – have fun. (And sorry Aussies – you’ll have to convert!)

Heat your oven to 425-.

Ingredients
3 sweet potatoes, cooked and mashed
1.5 cups of all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 stick butter, melted
1/2 cup porter (or other beer)

Directions
Poor porter into melted butter and set aside. (This gives the butter a chance to semi-solidify with the beer.)

Mix sweet potatoes with flour, then add and thoroughly mix all other dry ingredients.

When mixed, add beer/butter and mix until dough is sticky.

Use 1/4 cup to measure biscuit size, dropping each onto a baking sheet.

Cook at 425- for 15 minutes or until done. (Start checking at 10 minutes, depending on your oven.)

Drop biscuits are typically topped with melted butter; in this case I topped with maple syrup and used a little butter when I sliced them open. They’re good – savory and sweet at the same time; definitely still has the drop biscuit texture!

First the Fake Geek Girl, Now the Philly LadyNerd

...and everything else, Tilting at Windmills

Apparently not content to let the fake geek girl meme go unchallenged, Technically Philly lowers the bar today and offers us an infographic on what a Philly LadyNerd looks like. This is apparently in response to “what your average Philly geek dude might look like.” Pay attention to the language: Technically Philly wants to show you what the average Philly geek looks like.

What do we have?

We have a thin white man and woman, each wearing skinny jeans and other fashion accessories that are currently tied to a Brooklyn hipster aesthetic: Etsy, plaid shirts on guys, bright colour-blocks for gals. Hair makes the presumption of normative straight white hair; “soft” bangs for the gal, “no style” mess for the guy. The various accessories are all high end, have particular cultural markers that indicate a specific class and association – the white iphone, the hip places to eat, the music.

As has been quickly pointed out on Twitter, this barely scratches the surface of the nerd/geek culture in Philadelphia, and while it does cross the line into defining what a “real X” is via physical description and assumption of interest (a la the fake geek girl meme), it is, most problematically, painfully and exclusionarily white.

I commented to Polianarchy that I was disappointed to see Technically Philly join in on the defining what a geek/nerd girl looks like and does, even in jest, because there has simply been so much of it lately. One of the co-founders of Technically Philly, Christopher Wink replied: it’s really sexism to playfully share common set of identities? Community happens by shared experiences.

And right there, right there, is the problem. The graphics of the Philly geek dude and LadyNerd are attempting to “playfully share a common set of identities” and “shared experiences” to create community – and in doing that, set up a broad exclusionary criteria. Are you fat? Gutterpunk? A minority? Hate soy lattes? Can’t stand the music being stereotypically associated with nerd-types? Sorry, this community isn’t for you because you don’t share the experience.

Oh sure, people – and I suspect especially Technically Philly – are going to say that I’m overreacting, that the people on Twitter who looked at these graphics and said “uh no, I’m a Philly geek/nerd/techie and I don’t identify with that” are just being sensitive and should have some fun.

You know. The same thing geek girls are told when they object to the fake geek girl meme, or resent being told that they can’t really be a geek for X exclusionary criteria. As Dr. Andrea Letamendi notes, this can be categorized as microaggression.

The theory of microaggressions was developed back in the 70”²s to denote racial stereotyping, but was expanded by psychologist Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D. in 2007 to encompass a wide variety and classifications of these subtle and seemingly harmless expressions that communicate “hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults” toward people who aren’t members of the ingroup. These outgroup members might include women, racial/ethnic minorities, LBGT members, and others historically marginalized in our community.

Why are microaggressions harmful? They seem silly, right? But these comments actually communicate messages that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person. Sure, these incidents typically appear minute, banal and trivial. Sometimes they produce a good laugh. But repeated experiences of receiving them can have a long-term psychological impact. For instance, here are the implied messages about women in the comics community:

  • “You do not belong.”
  • “You are abnormal.”
  • “You are intellectually inferior.”
  • “You cannot be trusted.”
  • “You are all the same.”

These messages can therefore be pervasive and potentially damaging to a large group of people. And the reason they are micro-aggressions, Dr. Sue explains, is that the person delivering them may be well-intentioned and non-threatening in nature, maybe not even aware of their own biases. They, too, are have their own experiences that have shaped their perspectives. In most cases, when confronted, the person will deny that they meant any harm, explain that they were joking, and tell the recipient that she is being too sensitive.

I was over the moon thrilled with how inclusive the Philadelphia Geek Awards were last year; race, gender, sexual identity—everyone seemed included, and it was really wonderful and something that I could be legitimately proud of being a part of.

Unfortunately, Technically Philly’s geek guy/LadyNerd stereotypes today are about the exact opposite of that. We need to do better, as a community, to make sure that the message we send out is one of inclusion. These posts, and the response, fail to be inclusive on multiple fronts, and that’s something we, as Philadelphia techies, geeks, and nerds, should be ashamed of and refuse to embrace.

In Which An Editor Obnoxiously Brags About Her Author

Bioethics, Philosophy

I spent much of the fall grumbling – mostly good-naturedly – about editing a dissertation on the dual-use dilemma in the life sciences. I fell into editing the project rather late,Note, fellow editors: don’t take on a large project like that with a two-month window, especially not when you have two academic conferences of your own to prepare for and attend, plus your day job. which led to some memorable crankiness on my part (I actually sent back one chapter with “no” and “rewrite”), and sleep turned into a precious commodity for a while.

Overall, though, I’m incredibly proud of the small part I had in the project, and extremely proud of the author in general. You can’t read the dis (yet), but you can see a little bit of Nick’s writing over on the Scientific American guest blog, today, where he looks at the proposed DHHS policy on gain-of-function research in the life sciences:

Yet even if we do overcome the hurdle of identifying what is beneficial, and what manifestly dangerous, the proposed actions given by the framework are somewhat alarming. The framework gives the option to transfer dangerous gain-of-function research to agencies that conduct classified research, such as the Department of Defence or the Department of Homeland Security.

Yet classified government research in the life sciences doesn’t have a great track record of being in the public interest: the Defence Intelligence Agency’s attempts to make genetically modified anthrax, the Defence Threat Reduction Agency’s milling weapons-grade anthrax in secret, or the CIA’s creation of Soviet-style “bomblets” that are used to disperse biological agents (in the name, so claimed, of assessing their effectiveness in use against the US), are all example of deeply troubling classified life sciences research purported to be in the public interest.

The possibility of taking research we’ve already ascertained is problematic, and giving it to an agency with a history of misuse of research, is frightening. We should question this new policy to the extent that it leaves open this option. If research is risky to public health, or doesn’t show merit regarding actually emerging infectious diseases, why open the way for that research to be done in secret?

You should go read it because you’re excited about the idea of a new, non-American voice in bioethics, or because you’re interested in the life sciences and dual-use research, or because you want an idea of what I was working on in the fall, or because you see the issues here for corruption, or just because I said so and you know I have fantastic taste.I do. Bias aside. And if you haven’t picked up on the bias yet, you’re just a wee bit slow now, eh? And I don’t know what this lampshade is doing on my head. Whatever the reason, go read.

End of Year Reflections – Or, Why You Can Blame Carl

...and everything else, Academics, Bioethics, Duct Tape and Prayers, life and living

In my religious tradition, the end of the year is a time for reflection and contemplation; what happened over the course of the year, how will it influence your upcoming year, what lessons did you learn, how will those be implemented, and so on. It’s generally a relatively quiet thing – and yes, should be done according to the lunar calendar, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m going cultural on this one.

And so, it was with reflection at the end of the year – admittedly done in an earlier time zone, since I actually spent NYE in Brooklyn with friends – that I tweeted a simple but very heartfelt sentiment: You know, Twitter basically changed my life, several times over, this last year.

Almost all of the opportunities I’ve had this year, I can trace directly to being on Twitter. Now, of course, there’s the Seneca quote that says luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and some could argue that my preparation was key to jumping on opportunity, but the reality feels quite different for me. What I experienced was reaching out to a new world of people who were warm and welcoming and encouraging, and gave me just the smallest pushes I needed to start pursuing dreams I didn’t realize I still had.

One of the biggest examples of this would be a random discussion with science artist Michele Banks that ended up looping in Bora Zivkovic, the blog editor at Scientific American; one thing led to another and I found myself being strong-armed, in the nicest way possible, to submitting a proposal for a Science Online. Which led to my proposal being accepted, and introduced me to my co-presenter, Judy Stone, an internal medicine and infectious disease doctor with a speciality in clinical trials who also writes the utterly marvelous SciAm blog Molecules to Medicine, where she has most recently been tackling the Dan Markingson case.

Another example would be Paul Knoepfler. Paul is a researcher at UC Davis, and he also runs the amazingly informative blog IPSCell, which is a must-read for anyone interested in stem cell research. Paul covers it all, from explaining the latest journal news in accessible terms to covering the often contentious legal issues of the field. I didn’t realize just what a rock star Paul is in the field until I was at the World Stem Cell Summit in Florida, though. He really is that guy who is always surrounded by people who just want to say hello so that they can say they’ve said hello to him. I consider myself really lucky to have such an influential person telling me you know, I should keep writing, I say interesting things.

This in and of itself – being accepted by science-y types on Twitter, talking to really interesting and fun people without feeling self-conscious – would have made the year amazing. None of this, though – talking to any of the people already mentioned, or the numerous other interesting and intelligent and engaging science and ethics and research types that I do talk with on a near-daily basis – would have been possible if not for one person: Carl Elliott.
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