23 and me update
they got rid of the ancestry painting and replaced it with a more expanded ancestry composition.
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Tags: science
Diversity in Technology Industry
Learnings
Last night I went to a Black History Month Celebration/ diversity panel put on by a Blacks in Tech group at the local Googleplex where everyone-- with the exception of five people and the hosts of the event-- in a room of at least 80 people was black. A few were within a couple of generations from the African continent or the UK. Used to being one of a few POC and often the only WOC in professional technology spaces I was stunned.
Stunned in a "Wow, who knew there were so many black professionals this space?" way. Topically the panel's conversation wasn't so much focused on specific technology. The panel focused on careers in tech entrepreneurship and promoting the values of Science, Tech, Engineering, Math (STEM) endeavors to the youth. The message was 'This is where we are. Blacks are overwhelmingly consumers of tech products but there are not many involved the creation and building of technology and their applications. We need to do better at helping each other grow in STEM careers, and building STEM awareness should start in the home, ideally to youth before they reach the 3rd grade.'
I am glad that discussions like that are happening. However I also feel that they tend to lead to obvious conclusions with no actionable plan to improve the numbers of black professionals in these fields. See the example below.
Parents make the extra effort to educate your kids!
The problem with this edict is that this completely ignores the fact that the parents themselves don't have the STEM education, along with socioeconomic factors in play which lead to parents not being there in the first place.
With exceptions of course, these kids are predominantly raised in working class or lower middle class households headed by single parents or a guardian. Those parents need to work constantly just to make ends meet and cannot afford tutors and tech camps while they are working and so kids are left to their own devices... unless there's some kind of accessible after school community program to engage in to 'keep the kids off the streets'. Many of these community programs available only offer basic activities like sports or games with the option to do homework or whatever until the parents get done with work.
Going above and beyond is not stressed to these programs by the parents and not stressed to the parents by those running the programs, due to funds, limited time, or interest. That's something that needs to shift before any growth can truly occur.
What are your thoughts?
Last night I went to a Black History Month Celebration/ diversity panel put on by a Blacks in Tech group at the local Googleplex where everyone-- with the exception of five people and the hosts of the event-- in a room of at least 80 people was black. A few were within a couple of generations from the African continent or the UK. Used to being one of a few POC and often the only WOC in professional technology spaces I was stunned.
Stunned in a "Wow, who knew there were so many black professionals this space?" way. Topically the panel's conversation wasn't so much focused on specific technology. The panel focused on careers in tech entrepreneurship and promoting the values of Science, Tech, Engineering, Math (STEM) endeavors to the youth. The message was 'This is where we are. Blacks are overwhelmingly consumers of tech products but there are not many involved the creation and building of technology and their applications. We need to do better at helping each other grow in STEM careers, and building STEM awareness should start in the home, ideally to youth before they reach the 3rd grade.'
I am glad that discussions like that are happening. However I also feel that they tend to lead to obvious conclusions with no actionable plan to improve the numbers of black professionals in these fields. See the example below.
Parents make the extra effort to educate your kids!
The problem with this edict is that this completely ignores the fact that the parents themselves don't have the STEM education, along with socioeconomic factors in play which lead to parents not being there in the first place.
With exceptions of course, these kids are predominantly raised in working class or lower middle class households headed by single parents or a guardian. Those parents need to work constantly just to make ends meet and cannot afford tutors and tech camps while they are working and so kids are left to their own devices... unless there's some kind of accessible after school community program to engage in to 'keep the kids off the streets'. Many of these community programs available only offer basic activities like sports or games with the option to do homework or whatever until the parents get done with work.
Going above and beyond is not stressed to these programs by the parents and not stressed to the parents by those running the programs, due to funds, limited time, or interest. That's something that needs to shift before any growth can truly occur.
What are your thoughts?
23 and me kit results
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cranky
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Sexist or not?
Lazar Greenfield's 'Semengate' Stuns Scientific Community
Lazar Greenfield discovered something interesting:
Dr. Greenfield noted the therapeutic effects of semen, citing research from the Archives of Sexual Behavior which found that female college students practicing unprotected sex were less likely to suffer from depression than those whose partners used condoms (as well as those who remained abstinent).
The end of his paper read:
So there's a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there's a better gift for that day than chocolates.
He's been forced to resign from the American College of Surgeons and the paper he edits. He explained:
The editorial was a review of what I thought was some fascinating new findings related to semen, and the way in which nature is trying to promote a stronger bond between men and women. It impressed me. It seemed as though it was a gift from nature. And so that was the reason for my lighthearted comments.
Should he have been forced to lose his posts?
Lazar Greenfield discovered something interesting:
Dr. Greenfield noted the therapeutic effects of semen, citing research from the Archives of Sexual Behavior which found that female college students practicing unprotected sex were less likely to suffer from depression than those whose partners used condoms (as well as those who remained abstinent).
The end of his paper read:
So there's a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there's a better gift for that day than chocolates.
He's been forced to resign from the American College of Surgeons and the paper he edits. He explained:
The editorial was a review of what I thought was some fascinating new findings related to semen, and the way in which nature is trying to promote a stronger bond between men and women. It impressed me. It seemed as though it was a gift from nature. And so that was the reason for my lighthearted comments.
Should he have been forced to lose his posts?
Professor William M. Jackson Is My Hero
Usually, when I get a call from an emeritus faculty member, I wince. Most of the guys--and they are overwhelmingly guys--are nice, especially to me, but troubleshooting their technical issues can be an exercise in frustration. Trying to walk someone on dial-up through migrating his email from Eudora to Thunderbird, or explaining why he has to change the password he's used for 10 years, just isn't easy to do over the phone.
The call I just got was a little different. The emeritus professor was resetting his password, and he had it figured out except for an error that turned out to be on our end. The combination of his voice and his name made me curious, so I looked him up, and wow.
This is a black man who's my mother's age who got his PhD in chemistry in the late 1950's, who worked as a researcher in Maryland in the '60's, who worked at freaking NASA during the timeframe of the Apollo program and eventually became a faculty member at a school that would be overwhelmingly white if it weren't for the international students, located on the edge of the Central Valley of California which is as red as any part of the Bible Belt. This guy's doing research on shit I can't even spell, let alone understand.
I kind of want to email him and tell him, "You are awesome," but he'd probably think I was some kind of crazy stalker. He's totally my hero now, though: he is a fucking rocket scientist.
The call I just got was a little different. The emeritus professor was resetting his password, and he had it figured out except for an error that turned out to be on our end. The combination of his voice and his name made me curious, so I looked him up, and wow.
This is a black man who's my mother's age who got his PhD in chemistry in the late 1950's, who worked as a researcher in Maryland in the '60's, who worked at freaking NASA during the timeframe of the Apollo program and eventually became a faculty member at a school that would be overwhelmingly white if it weren't for the international students, located on the edge of the Central Valley of California which is as red as any part of the Bible Belt. This guy's doing research on shit I can't even spell, let alone understand.
I kind of want to email him and tell him, "You are awesome," but he'd probably think I was some kind of crazy stalker. He's totally my hero now, though: he is a fucking rocket scientist.
Origin of AIDs
So I saw this documentary called " The Origin of AIDS". It hypothesizes that AIDS was spread to humans by a polio vaccine given to the Congo in the late 50's. I posted about vaccines in general in another community using this documentary as a segway and got my ass handed to me. So I thought I'd see where blackfolk sit on this subject. Maybe its been talked about before and I missed it. but do you think it is more plausible that AIDS began by the cut hunter theory or the polio vaccine theory?
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curious
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