remembering columbia

Ten years ago today, I was at home, still half asleep, when I received word of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. My mom rang, but as I was wont to do in those days, I let the machine pick up. Clearly upset, she began to leave a message explaining the heartbreaking news. I eventually picked up and turned on the television... I could never bring myself to erase that message; it died along with my phone system in 2011.

In the years since then, there have been plenty of remembrances, many of them artistic in nature. I remember walking in Brooklyn past a street mural, painted by school children, depicting the Columbia crew. There is, of course, a memorial at the Kennedy Space Center, which I visited a few years ago. More recently, I discovered a lovely, if haunting, song called "The Commander Thinks Aloud," by the Long Winters...

Just three days before the accident, John Lennon's "Imagine" was the wake-up song for the Columbia crew. I recommend you listen to the clip in its entirety, as it includes not only the song as it was played in low earth orbit that day, but the inspirational, timeless, and, at least to me, tear-inducing comments of astronauts Willie McCool and Ilan Ramon.

RIP to the Columbia seven. You will not be forgotten. ∞

seeing is believing

"I watch Bill O'Reilly every day. I love Bill O'Reilly. I'm proud to be an American. But I saw this movie, Chasing Ice, today. And it hasn't just changed me about global warming. It has changed me as a person."

And that's where I'll begin my review of the marvelous new Chasing Ice, a feature-length documentary from director Jeff Orlowski about a scientist-cum-environmental photographer who's out to change the world, one snapshot at a time. The quote is from an anonymous woman caught in the iPhone crosshairs of one Justin Kanew, a reality-TV star who recently walked out of a screening alongside this visibly moved mystery lady...

"I did not believe in global warming," she explains. "Every time someone mentioned global warming to me, I told them if they wanted to remain in my home they needed to step out. I said it was bullshit. I didn't believe it. And that is because I listened and I—this is the truth—I believed Bill O'Reilly. And I saw this movie, and I apologize to anyone I ever talked into believing there was no global warming. I have talked every friend, every person I know into believing there was no global warming. And now I have to undo my damage. And I will."

I recommend you take a moment to watch the rest of her soliloquy below.



To be sure, many global warming deniers are so deeply brainwashed entrenched on this issue that nothing save an abrupt about-face by the Faux News pundits would allow them consider otherwise. And of course, there are plenty of climate change skeptics who don't deny the existence of global warming or its effects, but who refuse to believe that the current warming trend is human-caused or that there's anything we can or should do about it. For a more comprehensive look at this cohort, you'd be better served watching Climate of Doubt, a recent Frontline documentary that deals head-on with the modern politics of climate change. In that film, viewers come to understand the anatomy of one of the biggest scientific smear campaigns of our time. It's at once eye-opening and maddening, but not surprising in the least; as with many things in life, just follow the money...

Chasing Ice takes an entirely different—and, in many ways, more powerful—appeal-to-your-gut approach. It does little to communicate the nuts-and-bolts science of our planet's rapid warming, other than to borrow a key graph from 2006's An Inconvenient Truth—the one with a carbon spike at the present day that leaves previous "natural cyclical rhythms" of atmospheric CO2 in the dust. Perhaps this is because the film's lead subject, James Balog, admits that he, too, was once skeptical about climate change's human origins...until he began to see things for himself.

At its heart, Changing Ice is a love story. It projects the passion and dedication of a small army of scientists and engineers with Balog's Extreme Ice Survey, an "arts meets science" project aimed at conveying the reality of global climate change with cold, hard, breathtaking visual evidence. The painstaking lengths this team goes to to mount and check their time-lapse cameras, to fight the often blistering elements, and to overcome severe technical and personal challenges hints at the urgency of the tale Balog and his colleagues are trying to tell.

And then there's the imagery. Jaw-dropping deep blue crevasses that seem to lead straight into the center of the Earth. A bright green aurora dancing wildly in the starry night sky above a stunningly beautiful icy scene below. A gigantic ice slab, miles long and hundreds of feet high, eviscerated in an instant as it calves off and crashes thunderously into the choppy Arctic sea.

All of which led me to ponder a familiar phrase: If a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? The old adage kept popping into my mind as these incredible scenes filled the screen before me. It is clearly Balog's mission to make sure someone is present to witness and record for humanity what is happening in these glacial forests. And now, thanks to his work, a once doubting woman is starting to hear the reverberating din that these disappearing ice sheets have begun to make.

"There must be something I can do to help this, to help our children, to help my grandkids," she says, almost pleadingly, to Kanew and the phone camera in his hand. "I don't know what I can do ... But I'm gonna change it, because this movie was fantastic. Every human being in this world should watch this movie. Every one."

I could not agree more. ∞

CHASING ICE: OFFICIAL TRAILER

honoring tip

For much of the past year, Cambridge has been awash in banners celebrating 100 years since the birth of the late Democratic congressman and former speaker of the House, Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, who was born and raised in the northwest part of the city. Tip was an extremely influential politician who served more than 30 years in the United States Congress. He began his career campaigning for FDR and ended up as the second-longest-serving House speaker in history!

Cambridge is holding a number of events to honor Tip's 100th birthday today, but I'll be marking the occasion in my own way. In 2008, a bakery called Verna's renamed one of their most popular donuts after Tip, as he had grown up just blocks away and was apparently fond of the local establishment. So of course I'll be ordering half a dozen of their Honey "Tip" Donuts in his honor. Happy birthday, Congressman!

alt-indie holiday tunes

'Tis the holiday season once again, and as per recent tradition, that means a new mix! As usual, I've tried to include a collection of oddities and oldies that you probably won't get to enjoy as you go about your Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa in-store shopping... If you like what you hear, check out my previous holiday mixes, or plug in the full five-year playlist (of available songs) on Spotify. ∞

Cambridge Holiday mix | Listen on Spotify | YouTube Playlist
Christmas is Coming Soon! - Blitzen Trapper
Christmas Treat (I Wish It Was Christmas Today) - Julian Casablancas
It Must Be Hannukah - Jason Fickel
Christmas Unicorn - Sufjan Stevens
Frosty the Snowman - Cocteau Twins
Gee Whiz, It's Christmas - Carla Thomas
The First Noel - Weezer
Green Grows The Holly - Calexico
All I Ever Get For Christmas Is Blue - Over The Rhine
My First Christmas (As A Woman) - Vandals
Space Christmas - Allo Darlin'
Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas - Eels
It's Christmas Time - Sammy Timberg
Santa's Drunk - Fathead
Christmas For Cowboys - John Denver
Drummer Boy - Matthew Bryan Beck
Christmas Song - Stars
Someday At Christmas - Stevie Wonder
Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis - Tom Waits
Auld Lang Syne - Andrew Bird

not even playing one on tv

Since 2004, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media has worked tirelessly to study issues of gender in children's entertainment, and to spread their knowledge so that others might use it to affect change. This week, the Institute issued a sobering new report [PDF] on the state of gender in today's family programming. Consistent with past studies, the new research found that girls and women are vastly underrepresented; stereotyped; and sexualized in popular entertainment aimed at pre-teens. But this paper hit me particularly hard because it expanded on some unsettling trends in Hollywood's portrayal of women in various high-powered, high-valued careers, including those in the STEM fields.

In a section titled, "Females Still Slam Into a Glass Ceiling," study authors Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, Ashley Prescott, and Katherine Pieper reported that in their survey of recent family programming, female characters were portrayed in positions of power at alarmingly low rates. For example, of 129 family films rated G, PG, or PG-13, female politicians were all but nonexistant. "[N]ot one speaking character plays a powerful American female political figure across 5,839 speaking characters in 129 family films," the authors write. "Men, however, hold over 45 different prestigious U.S. political positions."

Here are the sad stats for surveyed family films:

Employed Characters Within Sector By Highest Clout Position

Industry: Males / Females
Corporate executives: 96.6% / 3.4%
Investors, developers: 100% / 0%
High-level politicians: 95.5% / 4.5%
Chief justices, DA's: 100% / 0%
Doctors, healthcare managers: 78.1% / 21.9%
Editors in chief: 100% / 0%
Academic administrators: 61.5 / 38.5
Media content creators: 65.8 / 34.2

The analogous numbers for female characters working in the STEM fields were similarly problematic:

"Males and females are most likely to be depicted working in the life/physical sciences than in other STEM careers in family films ... Yet computer science and mathematics comprise the largest percentage of the U.S. STEM workforce. Even though female characters infiltrate the life/physical sciences, males are almost four times as likely as females to be shown on screen in this line of work in family films. ... Summing across computer science and engineering, the ratio of males to females in these arenas is 14.25 to 1."

STEM Characters by Gender and Job Type

Industry: Males / Females
All STEM fields: 83.8% / 16.3%
Life/physical sciences: 49.3% / 65.4%
Computer sciences: 23.1% / 7.7%
Engineering: 19.4% / 7.7%
Other STEM jobs: 8.2% / 19.2%

As I've written previously, it's just about impossible these days for girls and boys not to be bombarded with sometimes subtle, oftentimes blatant cues about stereotypical gender norms. Unfortunately, it's becoming ever more clear that even before children enter school, they're being exposed to imagery that reflects the idea that certain jobs or careers are for men and not for women. If there's a bright note here, it's that the Geena Davis Institute continues to push for education about just how badly the entertainment industry as a whole is doing on this front. ∞

Source for all stats: Smith, Stacy L. et al. "Gender Roles & Occupations:
A Look at Character Attributes and Job-Related Aspirations in Film and Television. 2012."

shiny toy guns

Sometimes you just need to rock out. I'd been waiting years for the chance to see Shiny Toy Guns perform, so I wasn't gonna let a little hurricane stop me from catching them at the Brighton Music Hall in Allston on October 28th.

The skinny: STG hails from LA. You might've seen them in a car commercial; that's how I discovered them several years ago, with their epic remake of Peter Schilling's 80s hit, "Major Tom (Coming Home)." Their tunes span in style from classic pop to electro dance to ethereal Peter Gabrielesque to wannabe Fleetwood Mac to 90s wall of sound to hardcore, no-holds-barred rokkk.

The band has gone through some significant lineup changes in its 10-year history, which is probably one of the reasons they didn't play some of my favorites at the show. Still, it was a truly energetic and gratifying night. Enjoy the pics (more on Flickr), and here's my Shiny Toy Guns supermix, if you'd like to give 'em a listen. ∞

channeling ada: a wikithon in honor of lady lovelace

This post was originally published on the Ada Initiative blog.

It's hard for me to believe that we're approaching the fourth annual Ada Lovelace Day (ALD), a worldwide blogathon celebrating women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). I don't even remember how I heard about the first one, but I do remember making a pledge: In honor of Ada Lovelace, the 19th-century mathematician who many credit with being the first computer programmer, I would write about a woman of my choosing who had made an important impact on some field of technology. That year, and each year since then, I've taken time to pick a person, learn more about her contributions, and explain why she was my choice for that year's ALD annals. (In case you're curious...my posts from 2009, 2010, and 2011, plus a BrainPOP cartoon bio I wrote and co-produced on Lady Lovelace.)

This year, however, things will be a little different...and all thanks to a couple of tweets.

Back in June, my friend Kendra tweeted that she was set to attend something called AdaCamp. "Yay women in open technology and culture!" she added as a brief descriptor. The sponsoring organization was the Ada Initiative, which I hadn't heard of at the time. But there were two Ada Lovelace references in one tweet, so my geek radar was off the charts! I had to check it out.

I now know that the Ada Initiative is a wonderful organization aimed at supporting women in open technology and culture—and in encouraging more ladies to join in these often male-dominated arenas. The group's definition of "open technology and culture" is pretty broad, by the way; it includes anything from open-source programming and other computer stuff (LINUX, etc.) to open education and publishing (MOOCs, TEDEx, etc.) to open or common creative works (Wikipedia, Creative Commons) to open or remix culture projects (mashups, vidding, and about a zillion web memes). This all sounded great to me, so I applied to AdaCamp, and in July I had the pleasure of joining Kendra at the two-day event in Washington D.C. It was the first "unconference" I'd ever been to. In a nutshell, that meant the participants came up with the session topics pretty much on the spot. It was a refreshing way to do things, and the energy and support from everyone in attendance was remarkable. Of course, there is something undeniably uplifting that happens when you bring close to 100 women together in one room...but to learn from and share experiences with ladies of such interesting and diverse backgrounds made the event that much more special.

Fast forward a few months to last week, when I happened upon another (re)tweet, this time from fellow AdaCamper Sarah Stierch (who, I might add, was one of the most delightful cheerleaders in all of AdaCamp). This tweet told of an event being held in London within a few days of Ada Lovelace Day (Oct 16th), an edit-a-thon of Wikipedia articles on women in the STEM fields. This wasn't the first I'd heard of Wikipedia edit-a-thons, where people gather to update and add to Wikipedia articles, usually on some particular topic. But it was certainly the first that I'd heard where the focus would be on lady STEMmers.

So my only question was...was there one happening in the States? I did a little digging, but couldn't come up with anything. And that's when I decided I'd just have to host one myself! Fortunately, I live in a major college town (Cambridge/Boston, MA) and I have friends who work at a number of local universities. Kendra, the woman whose tweet first alerted me to AdaCamp, is currently a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and she assured me she could find me a room at Harvard University, where Berkman is housed. So with her help, and with guidance from Sarah, a Community Fellow for the Wikimedia Foundation, a U.S. Ada Lovelace Day women-in-STEM edit-a-thon is officially happening!

So far we've put together a great lineup of volunteers to help us add to and create new pages on women who have been left off of the world's premiere online encyclopedia. And believe me, there are many important women missing from the pages of Wikipedia—or who are not included in Wiki lists of important contributors to the various STEM fields. This is, perhaps, not so surprising when you consider that only about 10 percent of Wikipedia editors are female. In fact, in addition to bringing attention to the plight of women STEMmers this Ada Lovelace Day, I hope very much to encourage women in particular to attend our gathering so that they can learn how to contribute more regularly to Wikipedia. This will be a key step in helping ensure that the world's most popular encyclopedia is written with a more representative voice for the millions who use it every day. To help me with this goal, I've gotten some excellent suggestions from local and regional Wikipedians, some of whom will be on hand to provide tutoring and guidance to newbie editors!

Anyway, there are a few spaces left for our Ada Lovelace Day Wikipedia edit-a-thon, so if you live in the Boston area and would like to stop by, check out our event page and register! For anyone else who'd like to participate remotely, we would love to have your help. I anticipate this will be an amazing way to celebrate Ada Lovelace and the pioneering legacy she left behind!

Thanks again to Sarah Stierch and the Ada Initiative for inspiration; Kendra Albert for helping me get things going; and the folks at Ada Lovelace Day (especially Suw), who got this whole thing started 4+ years ago. I look forward to seeing some of the rest of you on the 16th, either in person or online! ∞

Ada Lovelace skill badge available from AdaFruit Industries.
Infographic by KnockTwice.

sally k. ride (1951 - 2012)

The world mourns today after learning the fate of one of America’s brightest stars. Sally Ride, the eminent physicist, astronaut, educator, writer, and champion of girls everywhere, died yesterday at her home after a private 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 61.

To say I was floored by the news of Sally’s death would be a profound understatement. To be perfectly honest, I’m still reeling a bit from the shock and have been taken aback at how hard the news has hit me . . .

Like many young girls growing up in the 1980s, I had wide eyes to the future and counted “astronaut” as a legitimate career path. I was too young to remember the day in 1983 that Sally Kristen Ride made history as the first American woman to rocket into outer space. But as I’ve recounted previously, it didn’t take long for me to internalize that there was no stopping girls from exploring the cosmos in person, if that’s what we wanted to do. And as the first of my gender to do that here in the States, it was impossible for Sally Ride not to become a role model.

Little could I guess that some 15 years later I’d get the chance to work directly with that role model. I was a budding science journalist when I was presented with the opportunity to work for Sally at a little startup called Space.com. At the time, she was the president of the fledgling company, whose mission was to be the go-to Web portal for all things space and astronomy. Being offered a job there was as much of a dream come true as I could have imagined at that stage in my life, and I’ll never forget the day we first met, shortly after I had accepted a staff writer position . . . Sally was warm and cheerful and welcoming, and I couldn’t wait to get to work explaining to our readers all that scientists were uncovering about the universe. It eventually became clear, however, that Sally was struggling through some significant ideological differences with the other managers at Space.com. And after about six months, she left for greener pastures. I was sad to see her go, but knew she’d find success in her next adventure.

Back in her home state of California, Sally turned her attention toward teaching the next generation of youngsters about the wonders of science and technology. This had actually been a priority for her well before her Space.com days. Among other things, Sally had penned a couple of educational science books, and she’d initiated an ingenious program known as EarthKAM, which allowed middle schoolers to request specific photos of the Earth to be taken by cameras aboard the space shuttle and International Space Station. So it was no surprise when she decided to form a company, Sally Ride Science, which would focus its efforts on helping nurture students’—especially girls’—interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

In the years since then, Sally had become an outspoken advocate for increased funding for STEM education. She was friendly with President Obama and had made a number of trips to the White House in an effort to make science and engineering cool to kids and important to parents. She also stressed the vital role of teachers and mentors in nurturing interest in the STEM areas, especially in our youngest students. It was heartbreaking for me to read a blog post she wrote just a couple of months ago, knowing now that she probably understood it would be one of her last opportunities to publicly voice her passion:

"Getting more students—girls and minorities in particular—excited about and engaged in STEM studies starts with inspirational teachers. When I was a girl, I had a teacher who realized that I had an affinity for science. She encouraged me and challenged me to pursue that interest, helping to give me the confidence to achieve and do the hard work required to become a scientist and an astronaut. My hope is that each of the teachers trained at the [Sally Ride Science] Academy will create that spark in other children, helping them to dream big and then have the courage and conviction to follow those dreams."

* * *
When news of Sally’s passing entered my synapses, I had been listening to—of all things—the Mozart Requiem in D Minor. I was actually scheduled to sing just a couple of hours later in a performance of the Requiem at a composer conference in Wellesley, MA. I think if it had been just about any other piece, I would have cancelled . . . My heart was heavy, and I wasn't in the mood for a cheerful gathering of singers and musicians. But the fact that it was the Requiem, a moving, sacred piece commemorating the death of an 18th century countess that was left famously incomplete after the premature death of Mozart himself, convinced me to go through with it. It was a strange evening; at times I felt myself drifting from the libretto in front of me deep into the melancholy of the music. At the same time, the experience was cathartic to say the least. Things really hit home, though, when I returned to an email confirming that BrainPOP, the educational company I work for, would be featuring her movie the following day. We usually give a reason for featuring public figures—it’s their birthday, or the anniversary of some big accomplishment. The reason we were giving for featuring the animation I had conceived of just a few years earlier? “In Memory of Sally Ride, 1951 – 2012.”

In the end, I certainly respect Sally’s choice to keep her illness hidden from the public, but I have to say I wish I’d had the opportunity to express my appreciation one last time. As I continue on in my journey, I can only hope to have even a fraction of the impact that Sally had in terms of inspiring kids to “reach for the stars.” Sally, thank you for blessing this planet with your grace, courage, and fortitude. You will be in our hearts and minds for a long, long time to come. ∞