It’s shocking. I’m overwhelmed with dumbfounded bafflement. How can this be? They went and published an anthology of science writing, and all but three of the authors are of the male persuasion. Is that even possible? Hold on! I’m thinking.

I think yes, there’s a staggeringly high chance that this could have occurred. There’s many a female science badass out there, but I can guarantee she’s spending a large portion of her time and energy trying to hold her ground in a man’s world.

It’s almost Christmas, and we’re all supposed to love each other even more because the country is littered with sparkly dead trees and overtly cheerful Muzak, so I’ll spare us all the rant. Let’s just say I’m a huge fan of DNA and its structure. It’s beautiful, it’s poetry, it actually chokes me up. I’m not kidding. I also think Watson, Crick and Wilkins were amazing. But that doesn’t change the fact that Rosalind Franklin was treated like sh*t despite her ability to kick DNA-structure ass.

I’m well aware of the fact that the Nobel folks don’t hand over the prize to dead people, and that they only allow sharing between a total of three recipients. Three living ones. So Franklin wouldn’t have been eligible regardless. However, it would be fascinating to know whether she would have been chosen to receive the 1962 Nobel Prize for physiology/medicine instead of one of the men had she been alive at the time.

It’s been almost fifty years. I would have hoped for some improvement on the equality front.

And there they went—all the diplomatic words just left my building. I will stop short of explaining exactly how much people suck. Happy holidays. Go forth and treat people fairly.

Further Reading:

The Rosalind Franklin Papers

The Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology 1962

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Have I mentioned the awesomeness that is Flat World Knowledge? I’m fairly certain that I have. They were doing good things in the textbook world back in September of 2008, and now they’re teaming up with Bookshare to provide alternative textbook options to students requiring non-traditional textbook modalities.

Students who are blind, have low vision, or have a learning disability that requires computer-generated speech and highlighted text soon will have more resources after publisher Flat World Knowledge announced Dec. 14 that it will make its content available to Bookshare, the largest web-based library for people with print disabilities.

Bookshare, which has 75,000 members worldwide, will add 11 new digital textbooks to its online library, which has been bolstered in the past year by contributions from colleges and universities hoping to bring reading material to students who can’t see standard print or can’t turn a page. More…

Further Reading:

Partnership a Boon for Alternative Textbooks
Bookshare.org: Books Without Barriers
FlatWorldKnowledge.com
Flat World Knowledge
Buying Textbooks: New, Used, Rented or Digital
Custom: Cool for Sneakers, Not for Textbooks

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Kids who grow up with no television in their homes either (a) make friends quick with a kid whose family worships the ‘mote, or (b) they read a lot. My utter lack of pop culture references from the mid-seventies through the mid-nineties should do all the explaining as to which path I took.

The outcome being, I ended up with a stellar vocabulary, full of words I’d only ever seen in print and therefore usually couldn’t pronounce correctly. Whatever. At least I knew what they meant.

And there were some I knew how to say. (With feeling). When I was eight my 18-year-old babysitter burned the chicken pot pies that were to be our dinner. My mother never bought us crappy processed food, which meant my brother and I were infatuated with all sugary, well-preserved, and insanely processed foodstuffs.

I was understandably pissed when the sitter burned my only shot at packaged food for the month and filled the kitchen with smoke. To vent my anger I hollered, “What are you trying to do, asphyxiate us?!” She had no idea what that meant, and almost sent me to my room because she thought I’d called her something so horrible, not even teenager her had ever heard that particular obscenity before.

There is also the common problem, among adults and too-smart-for-their-own-good children, of only ever hearing a word or a phrase and never figuring out the correct spelling. There are so many words that sound alike but are spelled differently, and each version of the stupidly exact-sounding word means something completely different. I’ve got their, there, and they’re down cold, but it took a while for me to get affect and effect straight. The English language, in my bitchy opinion, has some definite asinine qualities.

Or perhaps I should ask more questions. Until I was in college and saw this phrase written on the board as a common mistake college sophomores made when writing papers for the professor, I had always thought “For all intents and purposes” was “For all intensive purposes.”

According to Paul Brians, author of Common Errors in English Usage, I’m not the only native English-speaker to screw that phrase up. Which made me feel better for about point seven seconds until I saw the bit where he describes the phrase as “Another example of the oral transformation of language by people who don’t read much.” Ouch, Professor Brians. That was totally uncalled for.

I read plenty, thank you. The books I read (fine literature and lots of science-y non-fiction) just haven’t ever contained that exact phrase. I am still very smart and am an excellent reader. And clearly I have nary a hang-up about the whole intents/intensive blunder.

Further Reading:

Common Errors in English Usage
Confusing Words
Grammar and Punctuation Resources

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Ian Ayres is a gentleman and a scholar (and a lawyer and an economist). He’s a professor at Yale, and since 2005 has been handing out cash to his students whenever he assigns one of his own books as a required text. That way, he hopes, people will understand that he wants to use his own material because it’s necessary, not because he wants some royalties action.

In addition to explaining the motivation for royalty “disgorgement,” Ayres points out that any college student who’s assigned a text written by their professor is justified in requesting a rebate on the royalties the prof is generating. One more way to decrease the feelings of impotent rage which textbook purchasing tends to bring forth.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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I come from a family of intense readers and researchers who are constantly looking crap up in books. They love and worship the printed word and have a difficult time fathoming why anyone would want to part with a book. When my grandfather retired and was breaking down his lab, he parked in a clearly marked No Parking zone (he lived by his own set of rules), stole a lab cart labeled in large letters with the angry phrasing: Lab Use Only! Do Not Remove!

He took me to his office, commanded me to climb up on his desk and read out to him the titles of every one of his reference texts. Some he had had since the 1930s, when he was a student, and some he had acquired over years of teaching and research. He’d kept everything he deemed useful and “not full of sh*t.” He left the less than brilliant volumes for other researchers, and gifted me with a few dozen gorgeous reference texts and old textbooks. I still have them, and they have their own beautiful book shelf (I do not allow them to mingle with novels, no matter how high the literature content).

I have an abundance of higher education under my belt, and the stacks of textbooks to go along with all that learning. If I kept every book, we’d all be killed under piles of books the next time Seattle has an earthquake. I’m perhaps a little more reasonable than my family, and can be fairly harsh when weeding out unnecessary objects from my home. Any book I have never opened as a reference past the term I read it as a required text gets donated to the nearest college or university.

I bought all new textbooks as a freshman because it was all so new and I felt that every moment had to be crisp and perfect in the fall light. After the first year of school, I only bought new books if they were fully related to my major, and I was certain I would be using them as references later on down the line. Everything else I bought used and then sold back or donated. You don’t need new textbooks unless you plan on keeping them as part of your permanent library.

If it will help you to decide, you can stand there in the bookstore and hold the pile of this term’s books straight out in front of you. It will weigh a lot and it will start to hurt pretty quickly. Think about how many times you will move between the ages of eighteen, when you’re a freshman, and thirty, when you’re ready to buy a house and settle down. Between my freshman year and when I moved into my current house at the age of 26, I moved 14 times. Only rocks and weights are heavier than books, people.

If a required book is something you feel sure you won’t ever need to crack again once this term is over, then you might want to consider renting your books or going with the digital textbook wave of the future.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I was never good at taking advice in my teen years, but grown-up me wants to go back to the 1990s, tie teenager me to a chair, and wait while the pain-in-the-ass younger version of myself reads the above book. I also would have liked to have known of its existence yesterday, when I wrote this post about an eerily familiar topic.

It looks to be an excellent resource for any community college newbie. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Bookstore shelves are crowded with books offering advice to college students, yet—astonishingly—none of these books offer needed advice to the majority of college students in the United States … those attending community college. Of the approximately 21 million full- and part-time college students, 11 million attend community colleges.

The Community College Guide aims to help fill this huge gap. The authors of this book have decades of experience between them as professors and administrators in both two-year and four-year colleges, have written numerous books for a general readership and thoroughly understand what community college students need to know to succeed in their college careers.

From how to apply to community colleges to what to expect from your courses, from the truth about what you’ll pay to actual financial aid opportunities, The Community College Guide offers a wealth of information for the millions of American students who desire higher education at the community level.

They make a good point: Why aren’t there any good guides available for community college students? A two-year institution isn’t as capable of drowning unsuspecting freshmen, but I’m sure those brand spanking new college students would appreciate some guidance and advice.

Further Reading:

Community College vs. University

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Sometimes it’s hard to change your ways so as to avoid evilness. I love books (have I mentioned that before?) and am probably the last human on Earth who would buy a damn Kindle thingy and start reading my “books” on a screen. However (here comes the part where I clear my throat and mumble about how sometimes change is good and it’s possible I was wrong), in light of the unavoidable fact that textbook publishers are vile bastards with severely bankrupt karma, digital textbooks may be the way to go. Cheaper, lighter, easier on the back, healthier for the trees, etc.

Digital textbook company, iChapters, is currently running a series of campaigns highlighting how the lives of students have been changed by technology (good changes, one hopes). Part of their campaign strategy involves a $1,000-for-textbooks sweepstakes, which is good for you if you’re an under-funded college student and would just pee your pants if someone gave you that much money for books.

I read all the fine print. You have to be 18 and live in the U.S. Five students will win, and apparently all you have to do is sign up here. According to the rules, you don’t have to buy anything to win, just sign up by filling out the little entry form. Also, you can sign up once every day during the promotion period (July 15th 2009 through August 29th 2009) and it will count as a valid entry. Good luck, people.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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I am a reader. I was raised by three voracious readers: Mom, Dad, Stepmom. I come from a long line of book addicts. My parents read to my brother and me a LOT. I remember desperately wanting to learn to read and it seemingly taking forever to get to the part in school where the teachers taught us the secret code. The first book I ever read (cobbled together slowly as I added new words to my list) was Puppies Are Like That. I read it on the floor of my bedroom, up past my bedtime, crouched next to the feeble glow of my nightlight.

Finally achieving reading independence was such a good day for me. My parents were not huge fans of television; there was little or no TV watching at either house. Being able to read meant I would not be dying of boredom as I had feared.

This was a legitimate concern, as the most entertaining bits of real estate in my tiny hometown were the library, the high school football field, and the bike-trailed grassy fields behind the middle school where we jumped our bikes and tried to avoid rattlesnakes. There were no video game arcades. When I was in the fourth grade, we did get a (as in singular, one) Pac Man video game. Then we (and by ‘we’ I mean the whole damn town) had two pinball machines and the Pac Man. Score.

Almost equaling my nightlight reading moment was my first solo trip to the one-room cinder block cube that was the town library. I asked the librarian how many books I was allowed to check out at a time. She said, “As many as you can carry,” and I just about pissed myself with happy-shock.

I grabbed about 15 picture books from the kid section before she changed her mind, and as soon as she checked them out for me I ran out the doors to my phat pink Schwinn (flowered banana seat, flowered basket, BMX knobby tires that my Mom had had put on as a nod to my tomboyish nature) and pedaled furiously home. I ran to my room, sat on my floor and read the whole stack, one book after another. Fifteen minutes later, I hopped back on my bike and rode my little way back across town to the library. I shoved the books into the return slot, and checked out a whole new stack.

Seeing that I was not understanding the complex workings of the public library system and worrying that I would collapse from exhaustion, the librarian explained the way most people use the library—sitting around at the tables, reading what they want to on the premises, and then taking everything else home and keeping it for a while. It was thoughtful of her to illustrate the big picture for me. Thus began my lifelong obsession with libraries. Which goes along well with my addiction to the printed and bound word.

I still crave books more than most things. My earthquake preparedness kit has more books than cans of food (in the event of an earthquake the library would be shut down along with the rest of the city, and what would I do then? Am I the only one who thinks of these things?). Along with my jumper cables, my spare tire and some blankets, I have two books in my trunk in case I break down or there’s some kind of roadside reading emergency. I fully admit to being a total spaz.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Given everything in the previous post, it will shock no one to learn that I started to read to my kids when they were in utero. They both have impressive personal libraries, but we supplement their kiddie-lit collections with twice-weekly trips to the library. We frequently discover new authors and check out every book he or she has written. Our most recent find is Jon Scieszka (rhymes with ‘fresca’).

My daughter thinks The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales is hilarious. We are also enamored of Baloney (Henry P.), an alien who’s late for school and has the best excuse ever. I, of course, love Science Verse and Math Curse, and my son thinks the Trucktown book Smash! Crash! is loud and shiny. My daughter and I are starting on the Time Warp Trio series next.

In the midst of our Jon Scieszka streak I was reminded that he was recently appointed by the Librarian of Congress as the first ever National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. I’d heard the interview about it on NPR and was stoked that someone so happy, excited and humorous had been given this responsibility. He sounds very enthusiastic in all of his interviews (see below) and has a list of the stuff he thinks he should ask for as the Ambassador: cape, sash, bejeweled goblet, jetpack, Popemobile, Ambassador underwear, epaulets and a red phone.

Part of why Scieszka is such a vastly entertaining author is that he’s trying to get kids interested in reading. Boys have proven more difficult to convince. To remedy that, Scieszka started Guys Read, a site that promotes the following ideas to get boys to read:

–Letting them choose what they read
–Expanding our definition of “reading” to include:
–nonfiction
–graphic novels, comics, comic strips
–humor
–magazines, newspapers, online text

Anyway, it’s a cool site, Jon Scieszka’s a cool guy, and I think he’s a perfect choice for National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

Further Reading:

Stinky Cheese! Ambassador for Children’s Literature
‘Stinky’ Jon Scieszka has a read on kids
Here Comes Jon Scieszka to Make Reading Fun!
Reading Rockets Interview

Posted by Alexa Harrington

When reading the previous post, it should be noted that I just finished reading Nickel and Dimed: On (Not ) Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich, and am understandably really effing pissed about the inequalities present in higher education and the earning potential for the haves and the have-nots. In the interest of educating oneself before making a major life decision—like whether or not to matriculate—I would advise reading that short but informative non-fiction number.

I have never been a lay-about and no couch has ever been imprinted with the shape of my heinie for long, but after reading Nickel and Dimed I’ve been avoiding even walking past my couch. Now all I want to do is get ahead and get ahead and get ahead until there’s no more ahead to get to. I never want to be at the mercy of any backwards and impossible-to-get-out-of financial system. Fortunately for me, there’s little chance of that. And here is the why: Because my awesome parents (who were not loaded, by any stretch of the imagination) saved their asses off for 18 years so I could go to college.

I realize that my situation is a lucky one, and that most young adults are either on their own to pay for college, or, if their parents tried to save, were ultimately unable to save enough to compensate for the recession and/or the staggering increase in tuition rates. Everyone seems to be in agreement that paying for college bites. But if you can at all manage it, in any way, then for god’s sake, go to school. Because I cannot live in a world where going to college is a mistake.

Posted by Alexa Harrington