tsally

A couple additional notes. If you're interested in creating things, a small CS program probably wont suit you. Those tend to be far more theoretical; what you want is a CS department with strong systems. You might also consider getting a degree in something else and minoring in CS and/or programming on the side. Finally, undergraduate research is accessible at any research focused university and I definitely recommend you participate. You'll have to knock down a ton of doors to get a position, but it's worth it.

Feel free to email me if you want to know anything else about UIUC or just have questions in general!

"Using contemporary data from the U.S. and other nations, we address 3 questions: Do gender differences in mathematics performance exist in the general population? Do gender differences exist among the mathematically talented? Do females exist who possess profound mathematical talent? In regard to the first question, contemporary data indicate that girls in the U.S. have reached parity with boys in mathematics performance, a pattern that is found in some other nations as well. Focusing on the second question, studies find more males than females scoring above the 95th or 99th percentile, but this gender gap has significantly narrowed over time in the U.S. and is not found among some ethnic groups and in some nations. Furthermore, data from several studies indicate that greater male variability with respect to mathematics is not ubiquitous. Rather, its presence correlates with several measures of gender inequality. Thus, it is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes. Responding to the third question, we document the existence of females who possess profound mathematical talent. Finally, we review mounting evidence that both the magnitude of mean math gender differences and the frequency of identification of gifted and profoundly gifted females significantly correlate with sociocultural factors, including measures of gender equality across nations."

Let's be clear here though. There are indeed be biological differences between the male and female brain. Females may be better at certain tasks than males and vice-versa. The question is, is there evidence to suggest biological factors could play a significant role in explaining the extremely low amounts of women in science? Consider the fact that even if some biological difference in mathematical ability could be demonstrated, that wouldn't even come close to explaining the disparity. We're not trying to produce Nobel Laureates here, just scientists.

And as far as your question goes "is it really that simple?" In the context I presented (effective early education versus discrimination in the workplace), I personally believe it is that simple. Women with talents in the sciences wont be ignored simply because they are too valuable to business and society. We just need to figure out a way to produce more technically skilled women. While we're at it, we should probably figure out a way to produce more technically skilled men too. Getting people to go into technical fields is already difficult, it just happens to be more difficult with women because of social factors.

Women are not being told they can't do science anymore (that's what the article seems to be suggesting). Instead they're being told they need to look pretty and live up to certain standards of beauty. Living up to these standards is a lot of work for young girls and doesn't leave much time for much else. Men on the other hand can neglect such standards and still be socially accepted. I can't even imagine what a woman would go through if she dressed like your average male engineer.

As an aside, I'll point out any battle for women in science was lost long before women med students had to put up with their misogynistic counterparts. The issue is about the women who didn't make it to med school in the first place.

In regards to your suggestion, invite only wouldn't work. All the accounts that submitted and up-voted the iPad articles are registered already, so how would switching over to invite only change anything in your scenario?

Curriculum wise UIUC actually does an excellent job of addressing this issue. I imagine other schools are similar. We basically have our three core theoretical courses and everything else involves programming. Every course that isn't a theory course involves several significant programming assignments. For example, in our networking course the final programming assignment (in C) is to implement TCP over UDP. We have a seperate course called Programming Studio that is required. The entire course just focuses on learning programming well. And students can opt to do a large software engineering project instead of a thesis their senior year (the vast majority do software engineering, not a thesis).

I think all these measures help, but despite the heavy emphasis on programming, a lot of graduates are still horrible programmers. I think the root cause is that we are still learning how to teach programming well; we've had a much larger head start on learning to teach mathematics.

Reliable and secure communication technology is what enables the military to function. Without it, all the weapons technology in the world wont do you any good. So on a moral level, if you are against war you should actually find working as a researcher on communication technology more reprehensible than working on weapons. On an intuitive level I would guess that the breakdown or compromise of military communication has resulted in a greater loss of life than advances in robotics.

The reason why I'm pointing this out is that the real world isn't as simple as "a bunch of dickheads trying to strap guns to [robots]". You're making a simplification because it's convenient, but that simplification is morally inconsistent with approving of DARPA's work on the Internet. The fact that technology has a dual use is something we all have to deal with as researchers. But I don't think it helps matters by treating the issue as a binary.

I agree, but the US doesn't hold political figures to this standard. Two wrongs don't make a right, but the principle you outline isn't universally applied in the US.

Blizzard was already incredibly successful before World of Warcraft. The foundation of World of Warcraft is the brand Blizzard started to build in 1996.

MMOs are the future of games exactly because the server component cannot be pirated.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There are tons of private World of Warcraft servers. And you can be sure the same will happen for Starcraft 2. It's the social aspect of the server, not the server itself, that can't be pirated.

The fact that American protection of the defenseless isn't completely perfect doesn't mean we don't care about it as a society. You gave two examples and then extrapolated from your small sample to claim American society doesn't actually care about the disenfranchised. I think you might need some perspective.

To present the argument again, because homosexual parenting hasn't been extensively studied, we need to avoid homosexual adoption until a foundation of research can be established in this area. Research on developmental psychology guides many of the child adoption rules currently in place. The argument is that the same standard should be applied to homosexual adoption.

Again, note my use of distancing language. This isn't my opinion; I do not hold one on this issue because I'm not qualified in this area.

EDIT: The American Psychological Association has filed an Amicus Brief that is relevant.

"Because many beliefs about lesbian and gay parents and their children are open to empirical testing, psychological research can evaluate their accuracy.... the results of existing research comparing lesbian and gay parents to heterosexual parents and children of lesbian and gay parents to children of heterosexual parents are quite clear: Common stereotypes are not supported by the data... Some areas of research, such as gender development, and some periods of life, such as adolescence, have been described by reviewers as understudied and deserving of greater attention... There is no evidence to suggest that lesbian women or gay men are unfit to be parents or that psychosocial development among children of lesbian women or gay men is compromised relative to that among offspring of heterosexual parents... although a considerable amount of information is available, additional research would further our understanding of lesbian and gay parents and their children... It should be acknowledged that research on lesbian and gay parents and their children, though no longer new, is still limited in extent. Although studies of gay fathers and their children have been conducted (Patterson, 2004), less is known about children of gay fathers than about children of lesbian mothers."

http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx

Personally, seems like a reasonable standard of proof to me, but I think the people who hold the argument I've been presenting would say that the standard of proof necessary is up to the courts. Clearly there are areas that need more research, as the research is "limited in extent".

I'm not up to date on the literature regarding child development. It may be that there are studies that suggest that homosexual families are no different than heterosexual families in terms of impact on the child. I'm just throwing this argument out there because it is one of the few non-homophobic arguments against homosexual adoption that I know of. I don't personally have an opinion on this issue because I'm not qualified.