Some fun recent stuff:

• A WebInsecurity post on a Christmas-related privacy policy
  
• A quick post about a girl who discovered a supernova (she's the youngest ever!)
  
• A longer piece about a class of 8 year olds who got their scientific bee study published
  

And then some more sad stuff in the form of a round-up of the links I've seen lately about women leaving academia. Poignant for me given that I've got a contract that'll take me away from academia... although I'm actually leaving mostly for the "work that has impact" reason and not so much for the others.

And then one thing that I didn't write (but I wish I had):

Let's say that fighting sexism is like a chorus of people singing a continuous tone. If enough people sing, the tone will be continuous even though each of the singers will be stopping singing to take a breath every now and then. The way to change things is for more people to sing rather than for the same small group of people to try to sing louder and never breathe.

Isn't that just the way of it? Thanks Mary for sharing that one.

Tuesday's post on Geek Feminism entitled : "Quick Hit: Men, Medicine, and Meritocracy vs Affirmative Action" has some interesting discussion going on in the comments. The article is about how med schools in Canada are seeing more female applicants than male ones (and are accepting a lot of women) and some of the "stealth" affirmative action that's been taken to keep medicine from getting very disbalanced.

Wednesday's post on Web Insecurity is about firesheep. Nothing too insightful, just lauding the cleverness of it in a social hacking sense, and thinking, "why didn't we ever bother to build this in university?" (We did similar hacks for fun and education of our peers.)

Wednesday's CU-WISE blog post is on the subject of Dot Diva: The Webisode. (You can also see an extended version of the dot diva post on Geek Feminism.) We see a lot of outreach aimed at teaching girls computer science, but this is a project that tries to tackle the image of computer science. Their inspirations included the changed attitudes towards forensics thanks to shows like CSI. I'm torn because I found parts of the webisode awkward, but others fun, and I really think they've got some good brains and ideas behind this project.

Thursday's Web Insecurity post Why 12 year olds may be our best bug hunters is about this cool 12 year old boy named Alex Miller who collected on one of the Mozilla bug bounties. I always find adult reactions to smart kids can be a bit strange and sometimes condescending, so this is me musing on how the 12 year olds I've worked with are actually pretty awesome.

In non-blogging news, I'm working on some stuff about web standards vs attacks and vulnerabilities that I'll probably be posting privately soon for comments and ideas before I start putting together more comprehensive ideas for the IETF websec group. Their current discussion on dnssec irks me because it seems... mildly irrelevant to some of the real problems I assumed the group was destined to solve. I'm biased on the subject of DNSSec (see The Futility of DNSSec), but surely websec should be talking about more broad initiatives?

I know, I know, I don't really need to be writing for another blog; I need to be writing my thesis. But my friend Cate and her friend Maggie started this cool project trying to make it easier for women to find real women in computer science when they hit up google trying to get a sense for what things are like. Their subject for Sept/Oct is "how I got into computer science" and I joined the group by sending in my story.

I suspect many readers of this blog have heard this story (some of you lived through it with me!) but here's a teaser anyhow:

How I Quit Computer Science (And What Drew Me Back)

To explain how I ended up in computer science, you have to understand the story of how I quit.

(…)

First year computer science was geared towards students who had little to no experience with computers, and I realised that I’d be wasting several years of my life waiting for my peers to catch up. On top of that, it was boom times and CS was being viewed a shorter path to a 6-figure salary than the more education-intensive med school or law school. The people who were there weren’t really in love with the discipline; many were just in love with the idea of being rich. I wasn’t interested in paying thousands of dollars per term to waste my time with peers I didn’t respect in a program that was boring me to tears.

I was disappointed, disillusioned, and wanted a challenge that was clearly going to be a long time coming in CS. So I dropped out.

Read the rest here.


(Those of you who are women in computer science are also welcome to join! the bottom of this page has more details.)

I saw Hilary Mason's post, "Stop talking, start coding" and realized she had put in 4 words what I'd been debating taking as a personal philosophy.

Theory: The more time we spend on women in computing initiatives, the less time we have to actually get stuff done.

I've been turning down a lot of opportunities lately, and most of them have been in relation to women in $foo initiatives. Where $foo can be all manner of male-dominated geekdom. I've turned down chances at serving on a board of directors, recruiting, mentoring, speaking, giving campus tours, or running new women in $foo groups.

Why? Because I sat down and looked at my time a few years ago, and decided that I wanted to be the sort of person who gets stuff done, much like Sarah Mei articulates the answer in her post, "Why I don't work at Google." I like groups of smart people, but smart people like the GNU Mailman team who were working on version 3 held a lot more appeal that the Linuxchix folk who were just talking.

It'd be easy to blame women's groups as the problem, but then you'd miss the thing that I love most about women's groups:

The best women's groups aren't about separation and segregation: they're about providing an incubator for people who need a leg up to be part of the wider community.

That pretty much sounds like a recipe for making change and getting stuff done, and means the wider communities I care about are getting more awesome people. I love teaching. It's such a rewarding part of my job that I never feel that my time in the classroom working with my students is a waste. So why had I begun to feel guilty about my involvement with incubator organizations?

I recently went to a talk by Jane Goodall. She didn't talk about being a woman at all: she talked about the positive changes she's seen in the world, and how talking about these positive changes helps to inspire people more than shaking her finger seemed to. She believes this so strongly that she spends 300 days a year travelling and talking. But she says she's very careful to choose the right initiatives: Sometimes people are so desperate to Do Something that they sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture. This isn't a problem exclusive to women in computing groups.

So I'm working on a checklist for choosing the right things for me:

1. Do I want to do this?
2. Am I the best person for this? (Or can I refer them to someone else?)
3. Can I do it without negatively impacting my other commitments? (Will it take up too much of my time? Does it happen at a time when I'm busy?)
4. Am I reasonably sure this will result in getting stuff done, so I'll be able to look back and be proud of what I accomplished?

I still answer my email and occasionally post a blurb from an organization that doesn't otherwise know how to reach women. It takes minimal energy to be polite and provide basic help, and I know I appreciate it when people do the same for me.  But the initiatives that get the bulk of my energy are going to be the ones where I feel like I'm really making change.

Continuing Mary's brilliant idea of having a GF classifieds article for GSoC projects, I decided to provide a second thread with tips and questions in hopes to encourage more GSoC applicants from the GF community:

Showing your awesomeness for Google Summer of Code

The short tips:

1. Get involved with the community early.
   
2. Spend some time doing research on your proposed project.
   
3. Ask smart questions.
   
4. Contribute to the project in advance.
   
5. Don’t be afraid to apply!

See the article for more details, including a short story about how lots of women think they aren't awesome enough to do GSoC... but they really are!

Those of you involved in GSoC as mentors, we'd love some more tips if you can think of any! I'm new to this, and while I polled a couple of mentors and a former student for the ideas that made up my list, I'm sure there are more ideas worth mentioning.

Latest draft is off. To celebrate, I went out for dinner, practiced clarinet, and watched Dr. Who with Ken. Life is good.

And then, after saying I wouldn't be able to do any writing for GF for a bit, I got inspired by a twitter link and wrote this:

Quick Hit: Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women

Everyone knows Hollywood isn't so good at depicting women, especially in blockbuster films. This is why we have the Bechdel test. But while I've seen a lot of good articles on the subject, Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women not only makes some great points, but it makes some of them with hilariously snarky photos:



It's tempting to link more, but seriously, just go over there and look. Don't miss the one with the queen. And if you're as busy as I am lately, don't feel guilty if you're reading the article just for the pictures. ;)

So, um. Now you know.

And while I'm all link-happy, doesn't this look delicious? Plus, I've been wanting to get a copy of Fat since I heard about it. Basic premise seems to be that fat is tasty, and by having some we'll feel more satisfied by our food and thus wind up eating less in total. Sounds both fascinating and tasty.