firehose

OED Word of the Day for the solstice: aestival | estival, adj. Of or belonging to summer

From 1973 until 2012, a total of 66 black American women earned physics doctorates—mostly PhD’s—in US colleges. During that same amount of time, 22,172 white men earned their doctorates.

These totals only include US citizens or permanent residents who earned their doctorates in the US, not Americans who received a PhD from another country or international students in the US. The vast majority—97.9%—earned PhD’s, though a small number earned other kinds of doctorates, like education.

The double minority problem

There are a lot of reasons why the numbers are so low for women of color, particularly for black, Hispanic, and Native American women.

Girls are often pushed away from math and science at a young age, and people of color, especially black and Hispanic students, have fewer resources than white students to get into college in the first place, let alone excel in the sciences. Once they reach the college or doctorate level, these biases continue.

LaNell Williams graduated with a bachelors in physics from Wesleyan University in 2015, and will start a masters/PhD bridge program in the fall. As a physics student from a middle class Memphis background, Williams told Quartz it’s hard for her to fully relate to many of her peers. While upper class white women can’t understand her experience as a middle class black student, men of color can’t understand the sexism she faces.

 “It was hard, especially as a woman of color, to sit in my classes and not have anyone look like me.” 

“It was hard … to find study groups, it was hard for me to keep up with my work with the lack of preparation and also it was hard for me to find a community.”

Put even more simply: “It was hard, especially as a woman of color, to sit in my classes and not have anyone look like me.”

Power in numbers

That’s a sentiment Jami Valentine can relate to. Valentine remembers what it felt like studying for her PhD at Johns Hopkins University in the early 2000s. “Physics grad school is very daunting,” she tells Quartz. “I just didn’t want to feel so isolated.”

Valentine started looking up female African American physicists, and seeking them out at conventions. Eventually, she and another physicist started keeping an informal count through their website, African American Women in Physics. The website is designed to be a resource for women who are in grad school or getting their bachelors, a way to show that there are other black women in the US who have succeeded in physics, and that they can too.

By their count, updated on June 19, there are at least 83 African American women in the US with physics PhD’s. This includes at least one woman who earned her degree from Canada but works in an American university now (she wouldn’t be included in the an official government count) and 14 who received their doctorates after 2012. Each time a story runs mentioning the website, more women come forward, Valentine says.

There are many benefits to being part of a community who expects you to succeed. Luz Martinez-Miranda is the president of the National Society of Hispanic Physicists, another underrepresented group in STEM. Martinez-Miranda, who grew up in Puerto Rico but earned her doctorate from MIT, says she actually felt more supported than some of her Hispanic Americans peers who grew up as minorities in their communities. “There was more support for my decision to do physics back home than in the United States,” she tells Quartz.

That’s because in Puerto Rico, the majority of people are Hispanic, and there are Hispanics visible in every profession, she noted. This means she did not have to deal with the all of preconceived notions and stereotypes prevalent in the US. Now she encourages Hispanic women to work with her during the summer, both so they can learn and become comfortable with physics, and so they can see that success is possible.

The good news is that while the number of black women with physics doctorates has remained largely stagnant over the last two decades, it has increased marginally since the 1990s—it is no longer common to see a year with 0 black women earning physics doctorates, for example.

Plus, there are now highly successful African American physicists to look up to, something that is already creating positive ripple effects for young women of color, Valentine says. As an example, Valentine points to Jedidah Isler, an astrophysicist whose recent Ted Talk has already been viewed more than 36,000 on YouTube.

NBCNews.com

Search continues for former White House chef Walter Scheib Washington Post The search is continuing for former White House head chef Walter Scheib, who was reported missing in New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo Mountains last week. Scheib, 61, set out on a four-mile hiking trail near Taos on June 13 and hasn't been heard from since ... Former White House chef missing for more than a weekfox4kc.com Ex-White House chef missing for more than a weekKOIN.com No leads in mountain search for ex-White House chefWPRI 12 Eyewitness News all 248 news articles »

An anonymous reader writes: In 2011, an anonymous person on the internet posted a comment to the Freeport Journal Standard newspaper's website implying that a local political candidate was a pedophile. The candidate, Bill Hadley, took offense to this, and tried to get Comcast to tell him who the commenter was. Comcast refused, so Hadley took it to the courts. The Illinois Supreme Court has now ruled (PDF) that Comcast must divulge the commenter's identity. "Illinois' opinion was based in large part on a pair of earlier, lower-court decisions in the state, which held that the anonymity of someone who makes comments in response to online news stories isn't guaranteed if their opinions are potentially defamatory, according to Don Craven, an attorney for the Illinois Press Association."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Heh.

dcblogs writes with these snippets from a ComputerWorld story about a study that says nearly a third of all data-center servers are are comatose ("using energy but delivering no useful information"). What's remarkable is this percentage hasn't changed since 2008, when a separate study showed the same thing. ... A server is considered comatose if it hasn't done anything for at least six months. The high number of such servers "is a massive indictment of how data centers are managed and operated," said Jonathan Koomey, a research fellow at Stanford University, who has done data center energy research for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "It's not a technical issue as much as a management issue."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fox News

ISIS reportedly lay mines at ancient Palmyra site Fox News Tourists take pictures at the ancient Palmyra theater in the historical city of Palmyra April 18, 2008. Islamic State fighters in Syria have entered the ancient ruins of Palmyra after taking complete control of the central city, but there are no reports so far of any ... Islamic State militants plant explosives, landmines in Syria's Palmyra ruinsDaily News & Analysis ISIL militants lay explosives in Syria's ancient city of Palmyraeuronews Islamic State plants land mines and explosives in ancient ruins of PalmyraSouth China Morning Post (subscription) The Hindu -DAWN.com -The Week Magazine all 139 news articles »

(Note: Hugo neepery follows. But not the usual Hugo neepery! This is entirely new Hugo neepery! However, if you’re bored with Hugo neepery in general, then avoid this.)

Every year at Worldcon, there’s a business meeting where World Science Fiction Society members may, among other things, offer up amendments to the WSFS constitution. A very active set of amendments relate to the Hugo Awards, as might be expected because the Awards are the most public-facing thing the WSFS does, arguably excepting the Worldcon convention itself. This year there are four proposed amendments relating to the Hugos, for example.

One of these proposed amendments is for “Best Saga” (You may see the proposed amendment, as well as all the other proposed amendments this year, here. The “Best Saga” proposal is “B.1.3″). The amendment proposes to create a Hugo category to award continuing series of works whose total word counts exceed 400,000 words; any series with a new installment in any particular calendar year would be eligible for consideration in that year. So, for example, if the Best Saga Hugo already existed, then the Old Man’s War series would be eligible for the 2015 calendar year award, because the whole series clocks in at over 400,000 words, and I’ll have a new installment this year (The End of All Things).

I have thoughts about the desirability and necessity of a Best Saga award, but independent of that, the creators of the “Best Saga” amendment would “make room” for the Best Saga Hugo by rejiggering the short fiction Hugo categories, notably by paring them down from the three current categories (Short Story, for stories up to 7.5k words; Novelette, for stories between 7.5k and 17.5k words; Novella, for stories between 17.5k and 40k words), to two: Short Story (up to 10k words) and Novella (10k to 40k). This snips out the novelette category entirely.

Speaking as someone who writes very little novelette-length fiction, and could very obviously personally benefit from a Best Saga Hugo category, I very definitely oppose this proposed amendment. Let me explain why.

1. It is unnecessary to get rid of the Best Novelette category in order to “make room” for the Best Saga category. I’m unaware of the need in the WSFS constitution to limit the number of Hugo Awards given out; it’s not a zero sum game. Speaking as someone who has both emceed the Hugos and sat in its audience, I understand the desirability of not having an infinite proliferation of Hugo categories, because the ceremony can be long enough as it is. But that’s not a good enough reason to give one fiction category the axe at the expense of another, nor can I think of another good reason why the inclusion of the “saga” category requires the doom of another fiction category. It is, literally, a false dichotomy.

This false dichotomy is bad in itself, but also offers knock-on badness down the road. For example:

2. It privileges novel writing over short fiction writing. Bud Sparhawk, a writer and human I admire rather a bit, complained to me once (in the context of the Nebulas) that calling the Best Novel award “the big one,” as many people often do, is an implicit disrespect of the art of short fiction writing, and of the skills of those who write to those lengths. You know what? He’s right. Speaking as someone who finds writing novels relatively easy and writing shorter lengths relatively harder — and as someone who has needed more time to write a shorter-length work than I needed to write a novel because of those native skill sets — I’m well aware that the skills required to write short are no less impressive than those required to write long.

Also, speaking as best novel Hugo award winner: Would you argue to me that I am more essential to the field of science fiction and fantasy than, say, Ted Chiang, who is inarguably one of the pre-eminent SF/F writers of the 21st century, and who has not published a novel? Am I more essential than Eugie Foster, whose all-too-short canon of work is in short fiction? Or any other of a host of brilliant contemporary writers who write to shorter lengths? Do I and my work somehow trump grandmasters like Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg, whose many Hugos come not in the novel category but in categories of shorter works?

Novels aren’t inherently better than shorter works; I’m not at all convinced they need another category at the expense of those shorter works.

3. It privileges the established writer over the newer writer. Almost by definition, the authors who are eligible for the “Best Saga” award are very likely be writers who are already successful enough to have a long-running series and the ability to publish in those series on a recurring basis. It’s theoretically possible to have someone toiling away on a series in utter obscurity and suddenly emerge with a knockout installment that would pop that writer up into “Best Saga” consideration, but as a practical matter, it’s almost certainly more likely than not that the nominees in the category would be those authors with perennially popular series — people, to be blunt, like me and a relatively few other folks, who are already more likely to have won the “genre success” lottery than others.

Meanwhile, short fiction continues to be a really good way to find new writers and new voices and new perspectives. For many of these new voices, award consideration and recognition continues to be a fine way to raise their profile in the field. Culling out a short fiction award to benefit an award for series is very much offering an advantage to the successful few at the expense of the emerging many. I think that’s wrong.

(NB: The “Best Saga” proposal points out anthology series like “Wild Cards” are eligible, but I don’t know if offering up an example edited by the current most successful novelist in all of science fiction and fantasy actually invalidates the point, especially if in those cases the Hugo goes to the anthology editor rather than the (numerous) individual authors, as I suspect it would. As a practical matter, I see this benefiting the already-successful more than the up-and-comers by a considerable margin.)

4. It ignores the fact we are living in a new golden age of sf/f short fiction. Aside from the traditional magazines that already existed for short work, think of all the venues for short fiction that have blossomed online in the last decade and a half. Think of all the anthologies Kickstarted or otherwise crowdsourced, and all the writers using Patreon or other direct-compensation systems to connect with fans. Think of all the micro- and mini- and indie publishers putting out short fiction anthologies and collections. Think of all the writers self-publishing and taking their short work directly to fans and readers. Think of the wide breadth of voices and stories and writers that have come to market in the last several years.

Now, right now, is without question one of the best eras for short fiction in the history of the science fiction and fantasy genre… and we’re proposing to cull out an award available for short fiction so we can give another award to novels? That’s not just silly, it’s almost breathtakingly short-sighted. It would be a community turning its back on one of its greatest engines of creation.

Finally, I have this problem with the proposed amendment:

5. It feels like a sneak attack on short fiction, under the cover of an unrelated proposal. I don’t suspect that those who proposed it meant it that way — I’m sure they were simply trying to craft a proposed amendment that would attract the most votes. Even if that were the case, however, as a practical matter this proposed amendment, under the guise of doing one thing (creating a new Hugo category), is in fact doing other things (disposing of a short fiction Hugo category and reorganizing the remaining short fiction categories in ways that don’t necessarily make sense for storytelling purposes) and doing so in a manner which suggests that of course it would have to be done this way in order to make space for their new Hugo.

Well, no, it doesn’t. If you want to propose a “Best Saga” Hugo, then do that. If you also wish to get rid of the “Best Novelette” category, then you can do that too. But these are two separate things, and each deserves a separate argument on their respective merits. There is no systematic reason to combine the two proposals. Moreover, as a matter of rhetoric, the way the current “Best Saga” proposal is built makes it seem like the proposers are trying slip under the table a move to hollow out the Hugo’s ability to honor short fiction, by distracting the potential voters with another issue entirely. It’s a bad way to do things.

For that reason, even if I were inclined to consider a Best Saga Hugo award, I could not and would not endorse this particular proposal for its creation. Whether it was intended to be or not, it is an attack on short fiction, on the merits of short fiction as a class of expression, and on the writers of short fiction. It’s not worth creating a Hugo to benefit the relative advantaged few, if it means taking away a Hugo from a much larger pool of people who could benefit from a nomination — or a win.

This is a bad proposed amendment, and I hope it fails.

(P.S.: If you’re interested in my thoughts on a “Best Saga” Hugo on its own theoretical merits, I’ll put those into the first comment in the comment thread.)

“Wrapped in red blooms, Dog Rose is as beautiful as the rosa canina that gives him his name! http://t.co/Qgv9dNbOPR http://t.co/60hdT8x3JM “

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Apparently, the POP emoji is coming after all #progress #ThisChangesEverything https://t.co/2Phcr7ltfw

— Roger Federer (@rogerfederer) June 19, 2015

Get the popcorn ready, Federer is about to hit the court! Oh, no scrap that, he's just busy campaigning for important worldwide issues, like the lack of popcorn emojis.

Federer clearly loves his emojis but has been struggling to make any sense without a popcorn one. It's a sad sight to see.

⏰ ☕️☀️ ❤️ ✈️ ☀️ ☕️ pic.twitter.com/6QfQ5WGE3v

— Roger Federer (@rogerfederer) June 12, 2015

@rogerfederer Hearing you, Roger. Popcorn is on the candidate list for Unicode 8. So it could be http://t.co/RfdfTNqUQk

— Emojipedia (@Emojipedia) April 11, 2015

It's just great to see someone with Fed's power putting it to good use. No word yet if he's fighting for the much-desired taco emoji.

Standing on the surface of Venus, your body would be crushed by the immense pressure, fried by the lead-melting heat, and dissolved by sulfuric acid thunderstorms. Too bad, because if you could survive on Venus, you might witness some epic volcanic eruptions.

Read more...

Sioux Falls resident Allen Lewis has been a science fiction reader all his life, and he’s now donating his 18,000 volume-strong library to the University of Iowa.

Read more...

huffingtonpost:

Artist Jim Bachor Fixes Chicago Potholes With Ice Cream Mosaics

Devouring a melty, delicious Good Humor bar on a stoop on a steamy July afternoon – does anything say “summer in the city” more perfectly?

With the hottest months fast approaching, mosaic artist Jim Bachor is bringing those frosty memories to streets in Chicago and Jyväskylä, Finland. In a series called “Treats in the Streets,” Bachor fills in potholes in city avenues not just with cement, but with bold, colorful mosaics of ice cream treats.

See more of his sweet treat artwork here.

nightcheesecake:

submitted by llama_llover [link] [36 comments]

Inside Out quickly won over the hearts and minds of moviegoers Friday, joyfully knocking Jurassic World from the top spot with an estimated $34.2 million from 3,946 theaters.

That puts the animated film on course to possibly cross $90 million for the weekend in North America — the best showing for an original Pixar title and the top opening for any Pixar title outside of Toy Story 3, which launched to $110.3 million and had the benefit of being part of a beloved franchise. (Disney is estimating $84 million-$89 million for Inside Out, while rivals have it hitting $90 million).

It's even more impressive considering the competition from Jurassic World, one of the biggest box-office sensations in history. Jurassic World, grossing $28.9 million Friday, is still expected to win the weekend overall with $103.3 million from 4,291 theaters, narrowly eclipsing The Avengers ($103 million) to score the top sophomore gross of all time. Through Sunday, Jurassic World will have earned nearly $400 million domestically for Universal and Legendary.

We’re learning more and more about Ceres with each orbit made by the Dawn spacecraft. Earlier this week, NASA released a fantastic new image of the dwarf planet’s terrain, with a resolution of 1,400 feet per pixel. The image shows some new features, including a 3 mile tall mountain.

Read more...

A fire broke out near the beautiful Chambers Bay golf course on Saturday. Early indication is that it is a warehouse fire. Let's hope this wasn't caused by people smoking weed. Because that would be illegal.

Warehouse fire about a mile up the coast north toward seattle...cloud of smoke spotted at @ChambersBayGolf #USOpen pic.twitter.com/f9rLelaZYX

— KPUG 1170 (@KPUG) June 20, 2015

Wind blowing toward the course from the fire. Lot of smoke moving this way slowly pic.twitter.com/7cWhK8wAWK

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) June 20, 2015

With stoppage time ticking away, Portland Thorns goalkeeper Miclhelle Betos fashioned an absolute screamer of a diving header off a corner kick to draw her team level with FC Kansas City.

submitted by RBlue123 [link] [35 comments]

Max Scherzer threw an unbelievable no-hitter against the Pirates.

How did his teammates celebrate his amazing performance? By giving him the biggest chocolate syrup bath anyone has ever seen.

submitted by xea123123
[link] [3 comments]

Huffington Post

1 dead, 16 injured in block party shootings in US Times of India PHILADELPHIA: A gunman opened fire on a block party in Philadelphia on Saturday night, leaving seven people injured, including two children, aged 2 and 10. In another block party shooting, the Detroit police said one person was killed and nine were ... Police seeking 2 men in shooting of 10 at W. Phila. cookoutPhilly.com Baby among 10 people shot at Philadelphia block partykplr11.com Multiple injuries, 1 fatality in block-party shootings in Philadelphia, DetroitDuluth News Tribune all 189 news articles »

The Library of Congress posted a photo:

As old as creation Syphilis is now curable :Consult your physician /

[New York] : WPA Federal Art Project, [1936 or 1937]

1 print on board (poster) : silkscreen, color.

Notes:
Town of Hempstead, W.H. Runcie M.D. Health Officer.
Date stamped on verso: Dec 1 1937.
Work Projects Administration Poster Collection (Library of Congress).
Poster promoting treatment for syphilis, showing dinosaurs.

Subjects:
Syphilis--New York (State)--Hempstead--1930-1940.
Health care--New York (State)--Hempstead--1930-1940.
Dinosaurs--1930-1940.

Format: Posters--1930-1940.
Screen prints--Color--1930-1940.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b48847

Call Number: POS - WPA - NY .D03, no. 3

A special gigantic comic for Father’s Day!

Here’s more quality parenting for the occasion.

sandandglass:

Sean McLoughlin, Russell Howard’s Stand Up Central s01e07

LOS FELIZ, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A man attempting to flag Los Angeles police officers down with his arm wrapped in a towel was shot in the head Friday in Los Feliz.