night time slows

whiptails are cool

Tue, 09 May 2006 22:56:35 GMT

A certain JK has charged me with thinking up a quote for the Wellesley news in the next 42 minutes re: Regionals. So what is there to say?

It was awesome, for one thing. I spent the week before being nervous about being upset in the first two rounds by Smith or Northeastern, to the point where, as our coach so kindly put out in another public forum, I felt rather ill before the Northeastern game. And then we got steamrolled by Tufts. And I know that all doesn't sound awesome, but it really was. I probably shouldn't give that to the newspaper.

I was proud with how we played though, especially on day 2. And I wasn't even really sad to be knocked out by MIT, to get 4th. It would've been cool to play in the game to go to nationals, sure (and really cool to win it, though lets not get ahead too much). But realistically, after that game, Tufts just would've flattened us again. I know I had nothing left, and I'm pretty sure no one else on the field was doing much better. We achieved our season goals as a team, and I think everyone left feeling happy with how Regionals went for us.

And for my personal feelings, getting 3 handblocks on that handler from MIT over the course of two points, especially when she'd been breaking me a lot at Sectionals and Yale Cup, definitely didn't hurt.

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:42:33 GMT

So for once I'm having a wonderful wonderful time with my life. I spent the weekend at Dartmouth playing ultimate and staying far longer than I intended to doing fun stuff like layouts off of a dock into the river (which, by the way, I am not so good at, mainly because I forget to actually dive and instead focused more on the layout part, which results in a bellyflop for anyone who's interested) and watching supertroopers for the first time. And tonight is the much awaited reciprical visit, which, I am told, is already being referred to as 'epic' and 'worth telling stories about for years to come'. So it should be a good time... a very good time. And it'll make me clean my room, which'll probably lead to me packing up half my stuff instead of putting it away, because I need to put my life into my car in 2 days anyways. But yeah. Life is good here. I miss my whips though. And Happy Birthday Julia, have an awesome day hon.

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 01:59:50 GMT

I wear colored lenses
And clear plastic raincoats.
Though I see you in green and blue and purple,
I don't have all the colors yet
To get the full picture.
But I'm starting to like getting my feet wet,
Even with my raincoat still keeping me mostly dry.
And I'm learning to live with the music.
I'm learning to let myself move to the changing rhythms,
So I start to see the colors spin together,
Beautiful vibrant puddles to splash in,
Or fall through.
As the shimmered whirls evolve,
Flow with the improv-
Sacred midnight vibrations
Set against the deep dark sky
Littered with little sparkles,
Droplets of another life I could've had
With other lenses or raincoats.
But I'm here now;
They're lifetimes away.
And you can still see through me,
No matter what lenses I wear.

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 17:22:49 GMT

Summers' remarks on women draw fire
By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff | January 17, 2005

CAMBRIDGE -- The president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, sparked an uproar at an academic conference Friday when he said that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers. Summers also questioned how much of a role discrimination plays in the dearth of female professors in science and engineering at elite universities.

Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out on Summers' talk, saying later that if she hadn't left, ''I would've either blacked out or thrown up." Five other participants reached by the Globe, including Denice D. Denton, chancellor designate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, also said they were deeply offended, while four other attendees said they were not.

Summers said he was only putting forward hypotheses based on the scholarly work assembled for the conference, not expressing his own judgments -- in fact, he said, more research needs to be done on these issues. The organizer of the conference at the National Bureau of Economic Research said Summers was asked to be provocative, and that he was invited as a top economist, not as a Harvard official.

However, the problem of women in academia is one that Summers is confronting in his role as university president. The percentage of tenured job offers made to women by the university's Faculty of Arts and Sciences has dropped dramatically since Summers took office, prompting vigorous complaints from many of Harvard's senior female professors.

Summers has called last year's results, when only four of 32 tenured job offers went to women, unacceptable and promised to work on the problem. However, some Harvard professors have questioned his commitment to the issue.

The setting was a two-day conference at the economic research bureau, a group in Cambridge whose members include economists from all over the country. The conference, on women and minorities in the science and engineering workforce, was a private, invitation-only event, with about 50 attendees.

Summers spoke during a working lunch. He declined to provide a tape or transcript of his remarks, but the description he gave in an interview was generally in keeping with what 10 participants recalled. He said he was synthesizing the scholarship that the organizers had asked him to discuss, and that in his talk he repeated several times: ''I'm going to provoke you."

He offered three possible explanations, in declining order of importance, for the small number of women in high-level positions in science and engineering. The first was the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks.

The second point was that fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. ''I said no one really understands why this is, and it's an area of ferment in social science," Summers said in an interview Saturday. ''Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren't" due to socialization after all.

This was the point that most angered some of the listeners, several of whom said Summers said that women do not have the same ''innate ability" or ''natural ability" as men in some fields.

Asked about this, Summers said, ''It's possible I made some reference to innate differences. . . I did say that you have to be careful in attributing things to socialization. . . That's what we would prefer to believe, but these are things that need to be studied."

Summers said cutting-edge research has shown that genetics are more important than previously thought, compared with environment or upbringing. As an example, he mentioned autism, once believed to be a result of parenting but now widely seen to have a genetic basis.

In his talk, according to several participants, Summers also used as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral parenting. Yet she treated them almost like dolls, naming one of them ''daddy truck," and one ''baby truck."

It was during his comments on ability that Hopkins, sitting only 10 feet from Summers, closed her computer, put on her coat, and walked out. ''It is so upsetting that all these brilliant young women [at Harvard] are being led by a man who views them this way," she said later in an interview.

Hopkins was the main force behind an influential study documenting inequalities for women at MIT, which led that school's former president, Charles M. Vest, to acknowledge the pattern of bias in 1999. A member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, she is also a Harvard graduate.

She doesn't argue that there can't be any differences between the abilities of men and women, but she said there is vast evidence that social factors do affect women's performance. For example, she mentioned studies that indicate that women score higher on math tests if there are fewer men in the room while they are taking the test.

The five other women who were offended by Summers' speech also argued that their objections were based on research that indicates women do perform at the highest levels when given the same opportunities and encouragement as men.

''Here was this economist lecturing pompously [to] this room full of the country's most accomplished scholars on women's issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day," said Denton, the outgoing dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. Next month, Denton will become the new head of UC Santa Cruz.

Besides Hopkins and Denton, the participants who criticized Summers to a Globe reporter were Anne C. Petersen, former deputy director of the National Science Foundation; Catherine Didion, former executive director of the Association for Women in Science; Donna J. Nelson, chemistry professor at the University of Oklahoma; and Sheila Tobias, a feminist author and proponent of women in science.

The organizer of the conference, Harvard economist Richard B. Freeman, described Summers' critics as activists whose sensibilities might be at odds with intellectual debate.

Summers is known for being confrontational and has stirred up numerous controversies before, most famously when he questioned African-American studies professor Cornel West's scholarship and teaching. West subsequently took a job at Princeton.

''We are lucky enough to have a president who is capable and willing to have these discussions rather than talk in bureaucratese," Freeman said. ''I predict he will get more things done on women and faculty issues because he's a straight-talking, no-baloney president."

Three other participants reached by the Globe also said they were not offended by Summers' comments, which they felt reflected mainstream economic theories. They were Sarah Turner, an economist at the University of Virginia; Paula Stephan, an economist at Georgia State University; and David Goldston, chief of staff for the US House Committee on Science.

Summers' third point was about discrimination. Referencing a well-known concept in economics, he said that if discrimination was the main factor limiting the advancement of women in science and engineering, then a school that does not discriminate would gain an advantage by hiring away the top women who were discriminated against elsewhere.

Because that doesn't seem to be a widespread phenomenon, Summers said, ''the real issue is the overall size of the pool, and it's less clear how much the size of the pool was held down by discrimination."

Summers ended his talk by describing some of the efforts Harvard is making to improve its hiring record and help women balance work and family.

''I believe that it's an important part of what I do to encourage frank scientific discussion," he said. ''I would hope and trust that no one could [doubt] that we are absolutely committed to promoting the diversity of the faculty."

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.

/

Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:06:55 GMT

im back from the ct weekend (well the ct day and a half)
reel big fish was most awesome
i have developed a new affection for the show seaquest, after staying up until 430am with brenton watching olds tapes of it. (and besides the seaquest it was so so so good to finally see him again after 3 months)
then thanksgiving dinner, which we had saturday instead of thursday because my grandma felt guilty about going to madison for thanksgiving again this year.
and seeing west side story at ghs, because steph was pit master. and seeing a lot of people there who i used to see and be able to at least hold a conversation with. not so anymore.
and then waking up at 6am to drive back here to study for (the last) midterm tomorrow. which i haven't started doing yet. that's another oops.

i was talking with rae friday, about school stuff. it was one of those depressing, what are we doing here conversations. what is it worth to be taking orgo (which i'm not) or multivariable calc (which i am) or econ or anything else here instead of somewhere else? it's not like we get some super secret extra knowledge that they'll only tell us because we go to wellesley. i always wonder why i'm happy here. and if i would be just as happy if i had actually put effort into looking for and applying to college.
well it'll be done with in another 2.5 years. and then it won't really matter anymore. i'll go somewhere and get a job and start a new life by myself again.

Wed, 01 Sep 2004 20:31:28 GMT

i'll be back in CT thursday night. possible friday too. is there any life left there?

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 03:00:34 GMT

i have missed
wearing skirts to work every day
living off carbs and inhaling pasta every meal
6 glasses of orange juice a day
having people nearly next door all the time to toss with
constant first class checking
high speed internet
my plant
hot chocolate and copy center-el table
team dinners in beebe
never turning off the laptop
walks to cvs
waking up before 7 on weekends to leave for tournaments
how happy being here makes me

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 03:29:26 GMT

its time to leave
i don't want to be here anymore. i don't even care about packing anymore, i just want to be in my car driving to wellesley and in my dorm even if it's only with the clothes i have on right now. when it gets to be so you're not eating and not sleeping and crying every time you open your mouth something is very wrong. i've lost the ties that have kept me here. they were strong enough to make me happy even through the rest of life, but they aren't anymore. there is no reason for me to stay, no reason to come back. [unless it's a drive through to go play ultimate in nyc] i am suffocating here even when i'm all alone. always alone. i need to go.

Sun, 08 Aug 2004 21:25:55 GMT

so i went to a party last night, and in addition to learning some interesting frisbee games, i also witnessed beer pong for the first time ever. i also made my first shot ever playing beer pong, which i was rather surprised at given my complete lack of hand-eye coordination/throwing skills. don't let the ultimate fool you. just think back to any softball game i've ever played in.

Sat, 07 Aug 2004 16:17:40 GMT

so getting home was fun last night. what with almost running out of gas, and hebron ave being closed down [which, for anyone who doesnt know glastonbury hebron ave is the only way to get to my house] so i had a lovely detour through the rest of glastonbury.
and a fun fact: the misalignment of my tires mirrors hebron ave, that section between keeney street and manchester road they just redid. so when i drive home there, i don't need to steer at all.

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 22:41:36 GMT

my new favorite phrase is "she's so rich she ovulates Faberge eggs"

last night was really good, beginning to end. it made me happy; gives me hope.

i'm trying to get back to school early. and by early i mean moving in august 30 with the first-years, or even sometime the week before, as opposed to september 4th like i'm supposed to.

and someone should really volunteer to give me a back massage. seriously. i could use one.