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  1. #1
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    wow! Color me impressed.

    I knocked off work a little early today to attend the Fermilab Colloquium, which has become a semi-regular wednesday actividy for me. Todays speakers (actually it was two of them giving a joint presentation instead of one today) were two high school science teachers from phoenix. They were there to talk about the way they have helped promote science and technology amongst their students, and some of the reasons that it is so hard to draw students into science and technology in the first place. Anyway, they did this by creating an after-school 'robotics club' that would compete in national robotics competitions. (how I wish that these existed when I was in school). Anyway, most of the talk was more about how their club operates, and the frameworks of the competitions.....But the impressive part was something that I was a little surprised had slipped under my radar. A small group of their kids had been covered by Wired Magazine (which I read regularly, and thus my surprise that I had missed it) because they had entered an underwater-remote-control-vehicle competition at the college level (the teachers made that decision because they reasoned that if they lose to a bunch of college kids, it would be much less disheartening than if they were to lose to a bunch of high school kids). They were going up the likes of MIT and other technical schools in this competition, with their ugly *** robot named stinky....their only goal was to not finish last.



    and they won.
    the whole.
    f'in.
    thing.

    anyway, check out the article yourself. its a pretty impressive story.

    even though its a year-old story, it's one worth reading.
    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html

  2. #2
    SoonerFans.com Elite Member Okla-homey's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    And of course no girls on the team. See, that Harvard president was right. You gotta have a y chromosome to be good at science. Its nature and stuff.
    "Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever they can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser; in fees, expenses and waste of time." -- Abraham Lincoln, (1809-1865) Lawyer and President who saved the United States.

    "Without opportunities on the part of the poor to obtain expert legal advice, it is idle to talk of equality before the law"-- Justice Chas. Evans Hughes

  3. #3
    Junice Groupie Howzit's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Holy crap, that is impressive.

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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Okla-homey
    And of course no girls on the team. See, that Harvard president was right. You gotta have a y chromosome to be good at science. Its nature and stuff.
    actually, they addressed that perception in their presentation during the Q&A today.

    heres how it worked.
    a) the robotics club actually has ~50 members, about half of which are women (including the president)
    b) they usually compete in high school only events through a 'league' known as FIRST founded by segway inventor Dean Kamen, and the female members regularly compete in those.
    c) the underwater competition was a june (summer) event, and not a part of their regularly scheduled 'competitions'
    d) there actually was a girl on the underwater team, but had to withdraw prior to the competition due to the inability to make the trip to Santa Barbara for family reasons.


    so while the story does indeed feature an all-male cast, the underlying effort is far from being in an all male environment.

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    SoonerFans.com Elite Member Okla-homey's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ike
    actually, they addressed that perception in their presentation during the Q&A today.

    heres how it worked.
    a) the robotics club actually has ~50 members, about half of which are women (including the president)
    b) they usually compete in high school only events through a 'league' known as FIRST founded by segway inventor Dean Kamen, and the female members regularly compete in those.
    c) the underwater competition was a june (summer) event, and not a part of their regularly scheduled 'competitions'
    d) there actually was a girl on the underwater team, but had to withdraw prior to the competition due to the inability to make the trip to Santa Barbara for family reasons.


    so while the story does indeed feature an all-male cast, the underlying effort is far from being in an all male environment.
    I am not convinced. name one hella good chick scientist besides Madam Curie, and don't be dredging up some broad no one's ever heard of.
    "Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever they can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser; in fees, expenses and waste of time." -- Abraham Lincoln, (1809-1865) Lawyer and President who saved the United States.

    "Without opportunities on the part of the poor to obtain expert legal advice, it is idle to talk of equality before the law"-- Justice Chas. Evans Hughes

  6. #6
    SoonerFans.com Elite Member achiro's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    They did a news story on them a while back. Seeing the students and where they came from makes it even more impressive.
    I would agree with you but then we'd both be wrong.

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    SoonerFans.com Elite Member Okla-homey's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    725 male Nobel prize winners to 33 women*. QED



    *27 of which were lesbians
    "Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever they can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser; in fees, expenses and waste of time." -- Abraham Lincoln, (1809-1865) Lawyer and President who saved the United States.

    "Without opportunities on the part of the poor to obtain expert legal advice, it is idle to talk of equality before the law"-- Justice Chas. Evans Hughes

  8. #8
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Okla-homey
    I am not convinced. name one hella good chick scientist besides Madam Curie, and don't be dredging up some broad no one's ever heard of.
    see, thats a trick question, mainly because there aren't any scientists (male or female) that people have heard of who are still alive (or precious few anyways).


    But I could name several hella good chick scientists that I work with directly on a near daily basis. (and a couplea real hotties too)

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    SoonerFans.com Elite Member Okla-homey's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ike
    see, thats a trick question, mainly because there aren't any scientists (male or female) that people have heard of who are still alive (or precious few anyways).


    But I could name several hella good chick scientists that I work with directly on a near daily basis. (and a couplea real hotties too)
    pics?...of the hotties. Not the ones who look like Marie Curie please.
    "Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever they can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser; in fees, expenses and waste of time." -- Abraham Lincoln, (1809-1865) Lawyer and President who saved the United States.

    "Without opportunities on the part of the poor to obtain expert legal advice, it is idle to talk of equality before the law"-- Justice Chas. Evans Hughes

  10. #10
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    I ain't got any pics handy. I suppose I could take some, but really, you'd rather wait until the weather warms up a bit.

  11. #11
    SoonerFans.com Elite Member proud gonzo's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    there was a robotics club at our school doing the same sort of project. i went to a few meetings, got ticked off at the boys (including the engineer from Boeing who was supposed to be teaching us stuff) who wouldn't listen to me even though they all had horribly stupid ideas. so i quit.

    their "robot" ended up sucking. a lot.
    "I'm a mother****ing party all by myself."

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    Older Clique Member OUinFLA's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Okla-homey
    *27 of which were lesbians
    I have a video of lesbians. There are no men in that video.

    oh, no scientists either.
    An Education is what you get when you Read the Instructions,
    Experience is what you get if you don't...

  13. #13
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by proud gonzo
    there was a robotics club at our school doing the same sort of project. i went to a few meetings, got ticked off at the boys (including the engineer from Boeing who was supposed to be teaching us stuff) who wouldn't listen to me even though they all had horribly stupid ideas. so i quit.

    their "robot" ended up sucking. a lot.
    I can understand that. see the problem is, when you tell teenage boys to build a robot, if the purpose of the robot is not to destroy something, well, then there's automatically a problem, and soon destroying things will get tacked on at the least as a secondary function of said robot. Girls (the smart ones anyway) on the other hand tend to be way more pragmatic in their approach to solving a problem...at least in the teenage years...as they get older, I think their pragmatism tends to wane a little.

  14. #14
    SoonerFans.com Elite Member proud gonzo's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ike
    I can understand that. see the problem is, when you tell teenage boys to build a robot, if the purpose of the robot is not to destroy something, well, then there's automatically a problem, and soon destroying things will get tacked on at the least as a secondary function of said robot. Girls (the smart ones anyway) on the other hand tend to be way more pragmatic in their approach to solving a problem...at least in the teenage years...as they get older, I think their pragmatism tends to wane a little.
    hey, if they'd been wanting to destroy things I would have been all for it. I just wanted the robot to be able to do SOMETHING.


    I bet it would have burned really well...
    "I'm a mother****ing party all by myself."

  15. #15
    Stayatworkdad yermom's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ike
    see, thats a trick question, mainly because there aren't any scientists (male or female) that people have heard of who are still alive (or precious few anyways).


    But I could name several hella good chick scientists that I work with directly on a near daily basis. (and a couplea real hotties too)
    was it you that was saying that none of them were American?

  16. #16
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by yermom
    was it you that was saying that none of them were American?
    that is true. or at least very few of them are American.

  17. #17
    Sooner All-Big XII-2-1+1-1+1 skycat's Avatar
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    I read that article a while back. I really liiked it when the kid says something like "Powerpoint presentations are for people that don't know what they're talking about."

    I got to build a few autonomous mobile robots in college. Worked with the inverse kinematics on a robotic arm too. Robotics was what I wanted to do for a living, but then I got sidetracked. <sigh>



    My buddy's dating a Brazilian physics pHD student right now. She's pretty cute, but I don't know that I'd call her smokin'.

    He's got a couple of other fellow students that are American chicks too. But, like you'd expect, the majority are goofy looking dudes.

    As to engineers, my anecdotal experience shows that the majority of women, cute and not, seemed to gravitate toward chemical and industrial/manufacting fields. There seem to be fewer mechanicals, and even less electricals.

  18. #18
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    Re: wow! Color me impressed.

    Quote Originally Posted by skycat
    My buddy's dating a Brazilian physics pHD student right now. She's pretty cute, but I don't know that I'd call her smokin'.

    He's got a couple of other fellow students that are American chicks too. But, like you'd expect, the majority are goofy looking dudes.

    As to engineers, my anecdotal experience shows that the majority of women, cute and not, seemed to gravitate toward chemical and industrial/manufacting fields. There seem to be fewer mechanicals, and even less electricals.

    heh. there's at least one brazillian physicist here who is smokin'. as well as one frenchie, and one korean. there are several others that would be just 'above average.'

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