marginalisation

Science outreach and when glorifying heroes can alienate prospects

When science heroes have a documented history of treating some kinds of people badly, their glorification by science fans can be alienating for members of the groups those heroes treated badly.

[I]t is dangerous to rest your scientific outreach efforts on scientific heroes. […] Science outreach doesn’t just deliver messages about what science knows or about the processes by which that knowledge is built. Science outreach also delivers messages about what kind of people scientists are (and about what kinds of people can be scientists).

Quote Of The Day: Consider A Birdcage

If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere.

The words people cling to

The important point here is that we shouldn’t accept superficially casual dismissals of ‘vocabulary wars,’ ‘fetishization,’ or ‘language policing.’ We should look closely at the words people cling to with the most tenacity, even as they try to sound blas? about it..

It Gets Better: a message from Australian comedians

I’ve long made pained expressions whenever I hear that “high school is the best years of your life” pablum expressed, and I was one of those people who did actually have a pretty good time at high school…I know now how lucky I was. After high school, LIFE GETS BETTER.