Women vs. Men In Science

Unfortunately, this was a disappointing read! Most of the women in science/engineering/technology would consider this article a challenge to their womanhood. It`s like questioning a woman if she is a woman. This is an annoying article for those who have never considered a man better than a woman in any regard. Well, they may have appreciated the underlying humor in ``The Diary of Adam - by Twain`` but that`s it. I do not know why we don`t look ahead and keep on going backwards to justify our existence.

Irfan,

Sorry. Bored already with the predictable direction of this exchange.

Re: # 38 (Amrita),

Trust me, I`d rather see two sets of sweaty women run around a field. I even applied as head coach of the Swedish Bikini Mud-Wrestling Team, but they didn`t accept me. And why didn`t anyone tell me clean socks were a prerequisite to success in the mating game?

Irfan.

Re: # 37
Right! Coz it`s sooo intelligent of you lot to regularly spend five days of your life watching two sets of sweaty men run around a field! And pay for it too! :)) The arguments are endless....

Dots and Irfan - you mean the grand theory of Bird mating isnt valid? Disillusionment stalks me everywhere.

Samina - I`ll take sissies any day - red hatted, black feathered, scrubbed behind the ears, clean socks and ferrari. :))

Women folk please don`t get offended but I can prove that men have superior rational capabilities than women. How?

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because NOT many men like Star Plus dramas, the limit the stupidity will ever reach :)

35 - forget it mate. Is this theory writen up by a feminist scientist? If not then you have to wait till hell freezes over before it is accepted as being valid ;-) till then this is a male conspiracy ;-)

Saminasha,

Interesting that you should mention birds, since for a long time it was thought that birds, like humans, were `pair bonding` species (needless to say both those theories got booted out by the scientific community upon detailed study). Where do you think the word `cuckold` comes from? It comes from cuckoo, because that bird`s female has two tendencies; a) mating behind its partner`s back, and b) Laying its eggs in another`s nest for the target pair to raise.

Also, the red hat theory is just another facet of the big plume theory. Among plumed birds, females tend to choose the one with the largest and most colorful plume (maybe it is related to social rank, maybe not, I don`t really know).

As for the metrosexual argument, that WAS my point! Women of today value grooming and money over genetic health, whereas their subconscious tells them the opposite, so; haywired intuition :) Things should get really interesting in a million years or so when this choice mechanism descends to the level of instinct.

Irfan.

PS: These posts are just for fun, don`t take them too seriously. And yes, I know that there are millions of women out there for whom money is not an object, I know and respect more than a few of them.

Males recognise this...some women who are overly critical miss out on this fact - thats rules for alphaness have changed......

32 - Missy Sammy you seem to be forgetting one thing here.....the white bird with the red hat is the new Alpha male. The old alpha male can longer compete and is hence not the alpha male. Similarly for a particular class of women, metrosexuals are alpha males. The old ones are out.
The concept of the alpha male is precisely this. Rules change. Old alphas are put out to graze and new ones make hay while the sunshines.
You are making a fantastic assumption that the nature of alpha_male_dom is static when it is not.

Irfan, Amrita,

The theory of the Alpha Male is very nice and all, but lets be honest-as Natalie Angier pointed out in one her books on sex among the species, very specific bird life is more accurate. The study cited observed that if a white bird wore a red hat, the female bird chose him over his red hatless peers. Hence, the Alpha Male theory is being challenged by the Red Hatted White Male Bird Theory....another argument for metrosexuality (what Urs, atif, etc code as ``sissies``) or at least men who know how to dress themselves and clip their toenails.

Re: # 25 Hamidm -

Quality not quantity! It`s been pretty entertaining so far....

Irfan - I love that theory. The revenge of the geekoid forsooth! I bet a geek came up with that - he`d have to be if he was working for discovery. I`m all for modern girlie men turning traditional hardy men into gigolos - makes everyone happy. :)

............ i really shouldn`t say anything about women and science because i live rather precariously with three women ......... however, sometimes i do wonder why it is my job to change light bulbs, put gas in the cars, fix leaky faucets and operate complicated machinery like the can opener ...........

Re: # 24 (Amrita),

Spoiler: Wildly inflammatory and politically incorrect post.

The decline of the male breed can be attributed to the fact that millions of years of accumulated feminine wisdom on choosing a mate has been rendered rather useless in the past couple of hundred years or so. Allow me to explain; until very very recently (around 10,000 years ago) humanity was based on a rather simple hunter-gatherer society. He who hunted best was at the top of the social pecking order, thus, he had a high mate-value in the eyes of women, who saw him as having the best genes. Also, it was most probable that he would pass on these positive genetic traits to his offspring. All this calculation was done not conciously, but on a subliminal level, it was the `wisdom of the ages` passed on, there is a whole field called evolutionary psychology dedicated to this. Another way of stating this (much more scientifically) is that women who found the strong and rugged men attractive mated mostly with them, had children with them, who were protected and had a better chance of survival then the children of a weaker man and thus this preference was propagated generation to generation. What complicates matters here is that the percieved `alpha` male had a very undesirable trait, he was not amenable to attachment or to sticking around for the rearing of his young (he was the very first badboy). There are many many details I am skimming over, including the fact that women have an innate tendency to attach themselves to a man who is the `just right` mixture of dependable/nice guy (enter the sweet, sensitive guy who manages to finish last, and you`ll find out why soon enough) and then go behind his back and mate with a male of higher social standing while letting their partner believe all the while that it is his child that they are rearing. This way women ensured a moderate amount of support during the rather long rearing period of their young (12-15 years, longest among animals) while also making sure that their offspring had the best possible genes.

Here are some interesting facts:
- 66% of all married women who are unfaithful commit adultery while they are ovulating
- When presented with a collection of photographs of males with varying levels of testosterone content in their blood (more testosterone -> more `masculine`) women invariably chose males with testosterone levels in the range of slightly above average (the sensitive/nice guy)
- 3 men with different testosterone levels were each given a t-shirt and told to wear it continuously for 3 days. These 3 t-shirts were then given to 3 women who were ovulating, and they were asked to decide on the basis of smell alone which of the three men they would prefer to mate with. All 3 opted for the man with the highest testosterone count

Unfortunately, during the past few centuries, social dominance is decided more by material wealth and intelligence than by brawn. Today`s women value a Ferrari much more than the ability to run down a wild animal and kill it, similarly, most women would rather be seen with a fat guy in an Armani suit then with a sinewy Masai tribesman wearing an original bearskin loincloth (unless the loincloth comes from a designer outlet). So women`s legendary intuition is going haywire. To quote atif2`s post, the `hard men` are now no longer seen as having a high mate value. Thus, the sissies are reproducing like bunnies and diluting the gene pool, whereas the `real men` are either sitting idle or playing the left-handed tango with their schlongs. A sad state of affairs if there ever was one.

Irfan.

PS: This titillitating little tale of tantalizing transgressions is of makings not my own. I learned about this from a program on the Discovery Channel called The Science of Beauty, and then did some googling. By the way, compared to what men are historically capable of doing, this account reads like Mother Teresa`s biography.

Here`s what I think:

Pakistanis are incapable of understanding democracy. Ergo, there will and should never be a Pakistani American President of the United States of America, Inshallah.

Now, lets put billions and billions of dollars behind this so that we can actually ``prove`` this within the scientific community. We may begin with measure the head and brain sizes of all Pakistani-Americans, their capacity for making peace with India and Kashmir and their willingness to accept ``minority`` communities within Pakistan.

Hamid, here is your cue to begin a spiel about the donkey descending from the sky, the goat who ate our religious homework, why it is important to support Darwinism, etc, etc. etc. We in turn will lap your posts up like the Pavlovian dogs that we are, and you will once again be championed as the heir apparent ot Carlindom.

Next!

Some more facts:

1. ``Fields Medal`` is considered as the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. There are no women recipients
2. ``Turing Award`` is considered the Nobel Prize`` in Computer Science. There are no women recipients.
3. Another example is that of ``Shannon Award`` by IEEE. Again there are no women recipients.

[Note: Both Turing and Shannon were epoch-making (male) mathematicians]

I personally think that in the days to come there will be more and more women in medicine, biology, chemistry, engineering, IT, business, law etc but there will be always acute shortage of women in the rarefied fields of hardcore mathematics. Excellence in abstract mathematics has little to do with the amount of time you devote. You either get it or you don`t. Newton invented the field of ``Variational Calculus`` in one evening. Einstein did a lot of his outstanding work when he was a glorified clerk at a patent department.
My point is that theoretical work can be done in minimal amount of time with minimal assistance and institutional set-up. There is only one catch: you have to have it in you. Few men have it and I guess even fewer women have it. I will be happy to be proven wrong but I strongly suspect that I am right.

Speaking of controversial remarks on college campuses, here is one that is interesting:

``Bill O`Reilly on Fox News has stated his argument that Ward Churchill should be tried for treason or sedition. He states Churchill wants the government to be overthrown and is helping with his hate speech.``

Here is what a Univ. of Colorado professor, said in a article. I wonder what is going to happen to him.....

``In the quote below, Churchill asserts that some of the victims of the attack were not innocent:

As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let`s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America`s global financial empire – the ``mighty engine of profit`` to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly.[15] (http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html)

Perhaps the most controversial passage of all was the following, in which he is accused of justifying the attacks as an appropriate ``penalty``:

If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I`d really be interested in hearing about it.

In January 2005, attention was drawn to the essay after he was invited to speak at Hamilton College as a member of a panel titled ``Limits of Dissent``. In response to what he calls ``grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning [his] analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks``, Churchill clarified his views:

I am not a ``defender`` of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people ``should`` engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, ``Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.`` http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

Apparently, Churchill has resigned (or been forced to resign) his position as chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department. He continues to hold a position as professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado.

Bill Moyer lost his popular show, ``Politically Incorrect,`` after saying that it took a lot of courage for the hijackers to hit the WTC (or something similar). No company was willing to put their ads on his show.............

Wonder what will happen to Summers....................Freedom of speech is allowed legally, but does have boundaries when it starts affecting finances of a school, TV show, etc........