Inspiring Women Scientists

For those of you in or near New York City, the Feminist Press, the National Science Foundation and CUNY Graduate School will be hosting the Inspiring Women Scientists Forum at the CUNY Graduate Center on the 21st of March, from 9 AM to 6 PM. Among other things, one of the speakers, Jill Tarter, is from the SETI project. The forum and registration are both free.

May Edward Chinn

I have recently begun writing for Under the Microscope, a website dedicated to empowering women to pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) careers and support women already working within them. My first piece, a profile on the amazing May Edward Chinn, an African American doctor, is up today in celebration of African American History Month, which is unfortunately on its last day. I will continue writing posts for Under the Microscope, so check there often.

Let's Cera-brate!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Just to celebrate, I'd like to link you to some of my favorite fan-made, pop culture Valentine's. Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

We the People

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the infamous French philosopher, once said that “The body politic, like the body of a man, begins to die as soon as it is born. It contains the seeds of its own destruction.” Rousseau's metaphor is more spot on than he realized: biologists believe that living being are in the process of death via the shortening of their DNA. But regarding the political aspect of that statement, now seems like the time to talk apocalypse, since certainly between preachers having two miscalled apocalypses, pundits complaining about the end of capitalism, Linh Dinh writing an entire book about the twilight of America and even the release of the movie In Time, it seems obvious that suddenly, we have become obsessed with ends.
The poor economy has gone on so long now that I am terribly bored to bring it up once again, but it still stands true. Everyone feels like they are losing something if not everything and unsurprisingly, it is the least of us who are feeling it the worst.
Particularly today I find myself thinking about fallen states. When I was in college, I happened to look at the back of my roommate's copy of Margaret Atwood's beloved A Handmaid's Tale. There was a section detailing the fall of the United States written as a historical Q&A. I remember being totally shocked by this, which I realized almost immediately was because of the superiority rhetoric that Americans are so intimately familiar with. Among other things, these images and ideology lead us to believe that America will last forever. This has lead me to briefly consider other states now gone.
Which in itself is problematic, because it privileges the existence of a state, any state, over the existence of people. States encourage us, after all, to group people by national identity, even though there are many more identities out there, almost all of them being without nationalism or with only tedious ties to a nation. The study of the history of a polity or polities can easily turn into justifying the existence of governments without evidence.
And so, in turn, what we really need to be worried about, when we consider the end of the nation state or a particular country is the people. We should be worried not for the existence of the previous state or even for what possible future government that may come in but how these changes affect the people. Their history is the history that matters.

Suicide of a Superpower

Pat Buchanan has a new book coming out called Suicide of a Superpower, which explores America's future. Buchanan's view of the future is one in which the lack of white Americans destroys the nation. Several differing points of view are offered on Buchanan's ideas here, but disappointingly, few of them discuss the obvious racism inherent in this world view and none actually call him out as a racist, even though his ideas about people of color destroying America through sheer numbers is the most perfect example of how the fear of immigration is motivated by racism.
Furthermore, other ideas expressed in the above piece were problematic. Minnesota State Senator Terri Bonoff suggested that we need to quickly "enculturate" immigrants, even though this itself is an ethnocentric view, one that privileges American-born culture over that of any other non-native American culture. Hastings Wyman believes that immigrate labor should be exploited by American companies.
Unfortunately, what Ms. Bonoff and Mr. Wyman should have said was that Buchanan was motivated by a desire to inhibit the political, social and economic power of groups of people. His book is nothing more than an attempt to encourage further marginalization masked as somehow saving America.

Prose and Poetry Reading

This Wednesday, my former professor Anita Skeen will be hosting a reading for East Lansing/Michigan State's One Book, One Community program's annual writing workshop. Participants from that workshop will be reading poetry and prose. The reading is at 7 pm in the RCAH Theater (jn the basement) of Snyder-Phillips Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Pearl Jam Twenty

This summer, I decided to run my own DIY class on Seattle music (which, considering how many Seattle-area bands have DIY ethics, is totally appropriate.) Obviously, this week marked the anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind, which might be the most famous album to ever make it out of the Pacific Northwest, though Death Cab for Cutie and other indie bands are giving them a run for their money.
If you are like me and have already read ten articles on these bands, then maybe it is time to check out Pearl Jam Twenty, the new documentary out by Cameron Crowe and reviewed here. This documentary sounds like a great addition to my little DIY class.