Category — Readable

From Smithsonian Magazine online:

When it comes to the topic of women in science, Marie Curie usually dominates the conversation. After all, she discovered two elements, was the first women to win a Nobel Prize, in 1903, and was the first person to win a second Nobel, in 1911. But Curie was not the first female scientist. Many other brilliant, dedicated and determined women have pursued science over the years.

Emilie du Chatelet (1706 – 1749)
Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, the daughter of the French court’s chief of protocol, married the marquis du Chatelet in 1725. She lived the life of a courtier and bore three children. But at age 27, she began studying mathematics seriously and then branched into physics. This interest intensified as she began an affair with the philosopher Voltaire, who also had a love of science. Their scientific collaborations—they outfitted a laboratory at du Chatelet’s home, Chateau de Cirey, and, in a bit of a competition, each entered an essay into a contest on the nature of fire (neither won)—outlasted their romance. Du Chatelet’s most lasting contribution to science was her French translation of Isaac Newton’s Principia, which is still in use today. At age 43, she fell in love with a young military officer and became pregnant; she died following complications during the birth of their child.
Read more:

By Matt Krupnick, Contra Costa Times
Updated: 08/13/2009 11:03:21 PM PDT

California State University students have asked a San Francisco judge to reverse fee hikes implemented last month after students had paid for the upcoming fall term.

The suit, filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, closely resembles a successful action against the University of California that resulted in UC paying back about $42 million to former students. The same law firms that represented UC students are involved in the Cal State case.

“I believe it’s exactly the same thing that happened” at UC, said Danielle Leonard, an attorney with the students’ San Francisco firm, Altshuler Berzon. “This option should not have even been on the table.”

The class-action suit accuses the 440,000-student state university system of unfairly raising undergraduate and graduate fees in July, the second time in three months fees were hiked. Students at some campuses had as little as a week to pay the additional money to avoid having their accounts frozen, Leonard said. [Read more →]

Rachel Maddow on the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller:

There’s an anti-abortion terrorist movement in the United States that operates relatively openly.  They advocate and their members commit acts of violence including murder against Americans who are not breaking the law, who are engaged in protected legal activity on  American soil.  These acts of violence are politically motivated.  They are designed to change American policies and to terrorize Americans.

They have succeeded in making providing abortion services to American women so dangerous, so intimidating, that there are only a handful of doctors in the entire country who provide late-term abortions, as Dr. Tiller did, abortions late in pregnancy.

In other words, this terrorism…is working.  Violence as a political strategy is working to make abortion so unsafe for doctors, that they are unwilling to bear the risk of performing it….so women can’t actually get one, regardless of whether or not it’s legal.

It’s the same outcome if abortion had been outlawed. They’re winning.  What’s the strategy to stop them?

See full commentary at Rachel Maddow website

The Honorable Sonia Sotomayor, Judge on the Federal Court of Appeals, has been mentioned as one of President Obama’s potential nominees to the Supreme Court.  Whether she is nominated or not, it’s great to learn a bit more about this amazing woman who serves on the second highest court in the country.

Here is a video interview/biography in which she reflects on her professional duties as well as her family, background, and educational experiences.

–From “Believe and Achieve: Latinos in the Law” (You must have Adobe Flash player – get it here)

Michelle stands boldly in a White House where she is mistress, not slave. Her body is for her own pleasure, her own adornment, her own vanity. She is not reduced to the mule. Her labor will not enrich white folks, it will supply her family. She is not reduced to a breeder. Her children belong to her and she is free to love and protect them. It is an act of resistance for a black woman to demand that her body belong to herself for her pleasure, her adornment, even her vanity, because in the United Sates black women’s bodies have only been valued to the extent that they produce wealth and pleasure for others.

from THE KITCHEN TABLE.

XY: men, masculinities, and gender politics.    XY is a website focused on men, masculinities, and gender politics. XY is a space for the exploration of issues of gender and sexuality, the daily issues of men’s and women’s lives, and practical discussion of personal and social change.

Check out  Glamour Magazine online; this month, they’ve done a cool photo tribute to women for Women’s History Month, with young contemporary stars posing as iconic women: See Paula Patton as Billie Holliday, Alexis Bledel as Rosie the Riveter, Chanel Iman as Althea Gibson, America Ferrara as Dolores Huerta, and more….
thanks to LatinoLikeMe for the link.

The new White House cook, Chicago chef Sam Kass, has a lot to say about the national diet, beginning with the national School Lunch program…

The government subsidizes various agricultural industries, creating overproduction in commodities such as beef, pork and dairy. This overproduction depresses prices, endangering the vitality of producers. The U.S. government purchases the overproduction it has stimulated and then disposes of the excess by giving it to schools. In return for the government donation, the schools have to ensure that the lunches reach basic nutritional requirements as set by the government.

In 2003, U.S.D.A. spent $939.5 million dollars buying surplus commodities for School Lunch. Two-thirds of that bought meat and dairy, with little more than one quarter going to vegetables that were mostly frozen; and we should not forget that potatoes are the top selling vegetable in our country. The problem that arose is that between 80 and 85 percent of schools fail the basic government standards for the percentage of fat in the lunches due to the food it supplies schools.

Continues at New York Times