But really, where are the women?

I was reading Eric Meyer's Blog today, because he's a smart guy and has forgotten more about Web dev than most people will ever know. And he said, among some other things, that he's speaking at SXSW Interactive. Dandy, wish I was there to hear it… until I noticed one of the topics he's speaking on:

Where Are the Women of Web Design?, an exploration of why there are so few female "leaders" in the Web design space, and how we might encourage more.

Think about that one for a moment. And then another moment.

I have immense respect for Eric Meyer as a designer. As a developer. As a writer. As an expert. But I have no respect for him as a woman, because, well, he ain't one. So wtf is he doing on a panel that's explicitly asking where are the women?

A little background for those who don't know: I've been the publisher and list mom for the Wise-Women's Web Designer and Developer community for several years now. That is where the women are, and oddly enough, nobody came around to the lists asking for representatives to speak on the panel. Nobody sent me an email asking me to forward such a request on to the lists. There are any number of women on the lists who are very qualified to speak on this topic, but they weren't asked.

So, if you're going to SXSW, and you attend this panel, could you please ask why on earth they're having a panel discussing why there aren't more women leaders but not actually bothering to invite any? I know lots of them, and I would have been happy to refer several their way. But at this point, what they're doing just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and doesn't do anyone any good. Except maybe for Eric.

Summer internships

The National Institute of Health has a Summer Internship Program in Biomedical Research that appears to accept promising high school students. Now that would be a cool thing both to do and to put on a college application. Anyone here have any experience with this program?

Mobile PC's Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

Mobile PC lists their Top 100 Gadgets of All Time. I have some quibbles with their choices and rankings, but I have to agree with their #1 pick. Of every gadget I've ever purchased or worked with, that was far and away the best.

First Impressions: UC Santa Cruz

Yesterday's college: UC Santa Cruz. This would have been written last night, but after making it through three major traffic jams (one construction-related, one accident-related, one who-the-hell-knows), we got home pretty late.

UCSC has an interesting system that mitigates the fact that it's a (moderately) large university; the school is broken up into ten "colleges," each of which has its own personality and core course. Students, interestingly, identify as much or more with their college as they do with UCSC. If Sean goes to UCSC, he's likely to want to enroll at Crown College. So far as we know, UCSD is the only other UC with a similar (although not identical) system.

Summary: it felt like a great fit, and much of that was because a number of friends and friends-of-friends turned out to be people with great UCSC connections. We got to spend time with the CAO (College Administrative Officer) for Porter and Kresge colleges; got a personal tour of the KiloKluster, a compute farm (racks of computers with a total of about 1000 processors) for bioinformatics data; and spent some quality time with a couple of Bioinformatics grad students. We even got a quick introduction to David Haussler, one of the top names in Bioinformatics and the director of the Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering. Thanks to those of you who helped set these up for us, and thanks also to Paul Hoffman who spent some time with us talking about Santa Cruz in general.

We've always been told that UCSC is one of the most beautiful campuses on the planet, and even though the day was gray and gloomy, we didn't see any reason to disagree with this opinion. The tour guides have fun with it; one showed us the stunning view of Monterey Bay from Cowell College and said that she didn't understand why anyone would want to live there. Living in the middle of a redwood forest that's just a few blocks from the beach sounded attractive to us; at one point during the tour Tom leaned over and said, "Forget Sean, can I go back to college?"

As you might guess from the above, we're strongly recommending that Sean (if he goes to UCSC) seriously consider a major in Bioinformatics. After talking to the folks there, we're even more comfortable with this idea. It's a combination of science, math, and computer programming; and given that Sean doesn't yet have a strong opinion on what he wants to do, it's simultaneously a major with a lot of future growth, but if he decides that it's not what he wants to do, it won't have limited his options — that is, he could someday decide that what he loves is pure biology, and the amount of coursework he'd also had to do up to that point in math and comp sci won't have hurt him any.

Pros: Good size (not too big, not too small). Good science/tech majors, and given that the new chancellor is an engineer, that's likely to continue. It looks as if Sean's academic background is compatible with their requirements (whew). Stunning campus, set in an interesting and fun city.

Cons: None so far.

Home again, home again

We're back from our trip, and we've completed the Sean Smith Winter College Tour. We were at UC Santa Cruz yesterday, and it was pretty great. More details later; we have to go bust the cat out of kitty jail and get caught up a bit.

First Impressions: Cal Poly SLO

Today's college: California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Pros: medium-sized school, which we like. The class sizes are kept fairly small, with most of the classes having less than 40 students (or so they tell us). Sean says he likes the male/female ratio (55/45) much better than, say, HMC. It has a lot of engineering options, which is something that Sean thinks he'd like, although he's not sure which particular flavor of engineering.

Cons: They take honors and AP classes into account when calculating GPA, and GPA is their main focus when deciding who to accept. Unfortunately, they do not take into account how many honors and AP classes a school offers (as most other schools we've talked to do), which means that Sean having gone to a small rural school counts heavily against him. For example, he'd be way behind kids who get the opportunity to take AP Physics and/or Computer Programming, which his school doesn't offer. End result: it could be harder for him to get into CPSLO than UCSC (tomorrow's school).

Also less than wonderful: you have to declare a major when you apply, and then you're competing against everyone else who's picked that major. So if you aren't sure if you want (for instance) general engineering or aerospace engineering, which one you put down on your application (and you have to pick one) could seriously impact your chances of getting in, based on how many other applicants also picked that major. And no, they don't tell you how popular each major is except for the engineering school as a whole.

WWDC 2005

Apple has announced that WWDC 2005 will be June 6-10. I've never been (except for the keynote, which has been free to press), and it looks like this year may just be the time to start.

And yeah, I suspect that those dates may give some hints about when Tiger may ship.

First impressions: UCLA and HMC

Today was about first impressions:

• UCLA: really big, too many students, lots of resources, easy for a kid to get lost in the cracks. About 30 people on the tour, which I thought seemed high for a weekday morning during a time when most kids are in school. Didn't get to see any classrooms or dorm rooms. Incredible student services, an amazing student union (with a Krispy Kreme that delivers!!), and lots of student perks such as discounted tickets on cool activities. Academically, it's clearly a top-tier school, which is not to say that we think it would be the right school for Sean. In the math and science departments, we hear that class sizes are very large, and the smaller review seminars are often taught by grad student TA's who have serious issues with the English language.
  
  
• Harvey Mudd College: I have to say, we felt loved, wanted, appreciated, etc. The three of us were the entire tour group, and the guide said that we were the largest group he'd had recently (his all-time high was five). We got 90 minutes of his time, and he walked us around everywhere, introducing us to both professors and fellow classmates. The school has only 700 students, so it's easy for students to meet just about everyone. We also liked that the school has a real sense of community; people feel like they belong there. After that, we met with HMC's director of admissions for about an hour. I have to say, I felt like HMC would be a great fit for Sean — but I don't know if he's got the grades that they want. Not to mention that I don't know if we've got the cash that they want, either.
  
  One thing we just loved is the way that undergrads get to do real research; that's not common at most schools I know of (HMC doesn't have a grad program, so undergrads get many great opportunities). One downside is that, given its location, HMC seems as if it would offer less in the way of cultural opportunities than some other college towns. Another downside is that Sean's school only offers, for example, Honors Chemistry (which he took as a sophomore), so that would put him a little behind the other kids, most of whom, it sounded like, took AP Chemistry. That is, taking every bit of math and science that his school offers (and in their most difficult versions) might not be sufficient prep.

Oh, and we got to have lunch with Lisa, which was a blast (although, having met her before, it wasn't a first impression). I just wish we'd had more time.

Missing the Point

Over on the Truer Words blog, the author takes me to task for my post, Reaping the Islamic Whirlwind. The author (the post is unsigned, but I believe that it's Seth Dillingham) accuses me of "intellectual elitism" because I don't think that it was a good idea for the United States to waste its national treasure and spill the blood of its brave soldiers in order to bring another Islamic republic to life in the Middle East. Mr. Dillingham waves the pathetic, tattered banner of cultural relativism, asking "Does Mr. Negrino have any idea just how much of the world is living under Shariah today, in the 21st century?"

I'm puzzled that he thinks this is relevant. Most of my post was an objection to post-election Iraq institituting laws that enshrine the backwards, long-discredited notion that women are second class citizens and the property of their husbands. The NYT article that sparked my post made it clear that that is one of the central tenets of Shariah. Here's a bulletin from the human rights front: belief systems that make people chattels are wrong. I don't care how many people subscribe to that belief; even if it is a majority, they are wrong. I don't have a problem saying that; yes it's my opinion, but I think that I have the weight of history on my side.

Apparently what set him off was that I referred to the Iraqis "voting themselves back into the 15th Century." This offended him for some reason, and he then gets into some nonsensical blather about how the US isn't that old, as if it makes a difference. In Mr. Dillingham's world, it seems as if it's OK to treat people as property, as long as you have centuries of tradition to fall back upon.

The rest of my post was devoted to the idiocy of the United States, a country that likes to think that it is a beacon of freedom, spending lives and resources on ushering in a system of chattel slavery for women and children. Again, I don't recall anyone making the case that the reason the US went into Iraq was that we needed to bring the rule of Islamic law to that country. If that was the intent of the neocons, I sure wish they had said that publicly before the war. If Mr. Dillingham wants to make the case that the imposition of Islamic law is a great thing in Iraq, then he should do so directly, explaining why it's a good thing for all of the Iraqi people, rather than just dismissing me as "elitist." Perhaps at the same time he can explain why he thinks that it is elitist to consider women and children to be human beings, or why he thinks that American troops should die to keep them from being treated as such.