channeling ada: catherine wolf, master communicator

Happy Ada Lovelace Day! Today is the day when the blogosphere comes to life with postings about inspiring women in technology. Now in its second year, Ada Lovelace Day was created by British software consultant and Web developer Suw Charman-Anderson as a way to highlight often overlooked women doing amazing things in the tech world. The event is named after Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, a 19th-century mathematician who is often credited with being the world's first computer programmer. You can read more about her on FindingAda.com or by watching this short animated biography!

Last year's inaugural Ada Lovelace Day generated several thousand posts worldwide. (In case you missed it, you can read mine, on planetary paparazzo Carolyn Porco, here.) This year, I've decided to profile someone that relatively few people have heard of but whose story really moved me when I first read about her. She is psychologist and researcher Catherine Wolf.

Starting in the mid 1970s and spanning some three decades, Wolf's career has focused on trying to get computers to understand how we humans communicate. As a research psychologist at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, she designed and tested various interfaces between people and machines: speech-to-data, handwriting-to-type, and more. She spent much of her time thinking about how verbal cues translate into meaningful information, and she helped IBM develop new technologies like an automated audio teller program that would allow users to do their banking over the phone. In all, Wolf holds the title to six patents and more than 100 journal articles and textbook chapters on the subject of human-computer interaction.

Since 2003, however, Wolf has had an entirely different relationship with the technologies she helped develop. In the late 1990s she was diagnosed with the progressive motor neuron disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS—more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS is a heartbreaking illness; it causes progressive loss of motor functions until, one by one, the body's systems shut down. But instead of tuning the world out in the face of such a devastating fate, Wolf has challenged her disease head-on and even used it to uncover new ways for ALS sufferers to communicate long after they've lost the ability to speak.

These days, Wolf counts herself lucky to still have the use of her eyes and some of the surrounding muscles, for it's her eyebrows that help her connect with the outside world. Bound to a wheelchair with almost no volunteer muscle movement and no ability to speak, swallow, or even breathe on her own, Wolf is nevertheless able to type, talk, go online, and even check her Facebook status with the help of various computer programs and a headband that senses when her eyebrows move.

Writing out a single word may take several laborious minutes, but Wolf is grateful that she can still write poetry and connect with her family and with others who struggle with ALS. In fact, last spring, in what she considers her proudest professional publication, Wolf co-authored a paper introducing a new scale of abilities in people with ALS that described finer-scale skill sets than doctors had previously recognized in ALS sufferers. Is that impressive, or what?!

In our everyday lives, most of us have a hard enough time expressing our thoughts and feelings even with our full set of faculties. But to learn about someone like Catherine Wolf is to know what it means to be a part of the interactive human world. On this Ada Lovelace Day, I applaud Wolf's contributions to the field of communication technology, and I stand in awe of her unyielding efforts to reach out in the face of such trying physical circumstances. I urge you all to read more about her in this stirring profile by Beth Schwartzapfel in the Brown Alumni Magazine. ∞

pink stinks

I don't really hate pink. As colors go, it's brilliant when leaning toward magenta and, well, pretty in its paler form. I own (among other things) a hot pink rain slicker and myriad writing implements in various shades of fuchsia and rose. But I have to say that I see red when I think about the pinkification of anything and everything related to the female gender.

It might surprise you to learn that pink didn't always conjure images of princesses and other precious playthings; the truth is, until the late 20th century blue was actually considered the daintier, more girly color, while regal pink was considered stronger and more masculine. Today, of course, we've done a complete 180, and then some. Consider, if you will:

Exhibit A: Toys! Step into any major toyshop—or chain store featuring a toy section—and it'll be painfully obvious which toys are intended for girls and which are for boys. I won't even go into how horrible it is that we're socializing our children to assume that certain skills/pastimes/careers are more masculine or feminine, but I will share with you one example of mind-blowing pink stupidity. A recent Toys "R" Us catalogue featured simple telescopes and microscopes for budding young scientists. The 'scopes were available in different colors and with different levels of magnification. Sickeningly, the lowest-resolution options for both microscopes and telescopes were (wait for it...) the pink ones. How idiotic is that?! Even the newly announced Computer Engineer Barbie, one of very few toys portraying women in technical fields, has to come with a pink laptop, pink cell phone, and pink accessories like shoes, glasses, and wristwatch. Yeesh!

Exhibit B: Electronics! When you offer a product in a rainbow of colors—think candy-colored earbuds or iPod Nanos—pink is a perfectly good option to add to the mix. But when you throw pink in as a second color simply to try to woo certain female customers, the outcome is often just ridiculous. Let's see...pink SLRs? Check. Pink PSPs? Check. Pink Wii remotes? Check. And then there's this monstrosity. Excuse me while I find somewhere to throw up. But seriously, who buys this stuff? I am genuinely curious to know.

Exhibit C: Team sports apparel! So apparently the people who own major sports franchises have decided that instead of offering items for their female fans in, say, their team's colors (a logical choice, right?), they'll instead provide only one option: pink or pink. No joke, most of the time it's either pink jerseys and caps or black t-shirts with pink rhinestone studs. This isn't a fashion show, folks, it's a sporting event. Oh, and have you ever been to a ladies' giveaway day at the ballpark? Nothing screams "Let's beat the Evil Empire!!" like a pale pink visor, ya know? (Small consolation: The Evil Empire gives away pink visors, too.) Mind you, it's not exactly rocket science to figure out why no professional sports team that I can think of—male or female—has pink as it's primary color; even women's teams would be seen as too feminine or girly for that. Unless, of course, they're dressing up for a special occasion...which leads me to my next point!

Exhibit D: Breast cancer awareness! Yup, even the pink cancer ribbon (and the pinkification of anything in the name of breast cancer awareness) bothers me. Now obviously, cancer of any type is a very serious matter. But I completely agree with social activist Barbara Ehrenreich, who recently wrote in the LA Times of her frustration with the fact that pink has become a symbol for what I'll call "feminism lite":

"To some extent, pink-ribbon culture has replaced feminism as a focus of female identity and solidarity. When a corporation wants to signal that it's 'woman friendly,' what does it do? It stamps a pink ribbon on its widget and proclaims that some minuscule portion of the profits will go to breast cancer research....Instead of embracing the full spectrum of human colors—black, brown, red, yellow and white—we stick to princess pink. While we used to march in protest against sexist laws and practices, now we race or walk 'for the cure.'"

I must say, I'm happy to know I'm not the only one truly bothered by the pinkification of the female gender. While the marketers of the world continue to do their damnedest to make sure pink = girl/woman, I've seen more articles in the last several months examining the role of pink in modern society than I have in many years of caring about this. There's even a new book about the subject, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America by University of Maryland professor Jo B. Paoletti, due out later this year.


I was especially happy—dare I say tickled pink?—to read about a new campaign out of the UK that hopes to "challenge the culture of pink which invades every aspect of girls' lives." Called Pink Stinks, the organization aims not only to encourage girls to think in other shades of the electromagnetic spectrum (okay, truth be told pink isn't even cool enough to be in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum...), it also strives to reverse gender stereotyping by providing positive role models for girls in all walks of life—especially those traditionally closed to women.

Sadly, the two sisters who started Pink Stinks, Abi and Emma Moore, have already been branded by naysayers as "dour and humorless feminists," "communist loonies," and worse. I find it amazing how strongly these Defenders of Pink can come out against what seems like such an egalitarian agenda! Well, I, for one, support Pink Stinks and everyone else who's raised awareness about this issue of late. To be clear, I don't think pink should be demonized as a color, but niether should it be the only color associated with feminity. Why not start on day one? If we could get to the point where babies come home from the hospital dressed not in pink or blue but in something a little more gender-neutral (chartreuse, anyone?), I think we'd all begin to see the world through slightly more rose-colored glasses. ∞

Photographs by JeongMee Yoon

score one for the girls: sylvia pressler (1934 - 2010)

It was a bright afternoon in May of 1992, and I was two strikes down. Sixty feet away, the opposing pitcher, a scruffy kid of 14 or 15, stared intently into his catcher's mitt and tried to remember that I was just another batter before hurling a fastball in my direction. As soon as I caught the ball in my sights, I knew it was going places.

Before long I was on second base, having knocked in the go-ahead run for my team. It would be one of two run-scoring hits I'd have that day, my best as a member of the local Babe Ruth Little League that I was the first girl to ever play in. My mother would later recall how she'd overheard several parents complaining that I was trying to show up their sons, that I was embarrassing them, that I didn't belong there. They wondered, a little too loudly for my mom's taste, what I was trying to prove.

Thing is, I wasn't trying to prove anything; I just wanted to play baseball. And I might never have had the opportunity to help my team that day had it not been for a woman named Sylvia Pressler, who died on Monday at the age of 75.

I was but a glimmer in my parents' eyes back in 1973, but that year a 12-year-old girl named Maria Pepe pitched three games for her Little League team in Hoboken, New Jersey. Unfortunately, while women had participated in our national pastime since the very birth of the game in the mid-1800s, and had even boasted their own professional baseball league during the 1940s and 50s, girls growing up in the 60s and 70s were generally not welcome in the game of baseball. So when the national Little League Baseball organization heard about Pepe, they threatened to revoke the charter of her local league. In response, the National Organization for Women stepped in and filed a lawsuit on Pepe's behalf.

The case was heard by New York City native Sylvia Pressler, who in 1973 was a lawyer for New Jersey's Division on Civil Rights, the state body set up to hear such cases at the time. A legal trailblazer, Pressler had earned a law degree from Rutgers School of Law thirteen years earlier at a time when female lawyers were virtually unheard of.

In her decision on the Little League case, Pressler ruled in favor of Pepe and the National Organization for Women, arguing that Little League's no-girls policy violated state and federal anti-discrimination laws. "The institution of Little League is as American as the hot dog and apple pie," she stated in her opinion. "There is no reason why that part of Americana should be withheld from girls."

After losing an appeal, Little League Baseball amended its rules the following year and in fact decided to create an entire program for girls. Sadly, though, the girls' program was not for baseball but for softball—which, as anyone who's ever played the two knows all too well, is a very different game. Today, although it's still illegal to disallow girls from playing on Little League baseball teams, the reality is that most girls don't even consider baseball as an option anymore. This has been a bitter twist of fate for someone who thought for sure progress would have spun in the other direction—more girls playing baseball—in the 18 years since her last season of Little League!

Pressler made national headlines following the Little League decision but would go on to hear much more challenging cases after she became a judge. Four years after her landmark ruling, she became only the second woman appointed to judge on the Appellate Division for the state of New Jersey. And in 1997, she was the first woman to be named as the division's presiding judge, a position she held until her retirement in 2004.

In case you were wondering, we won the game that spring afternoon in '92. And in his victory speech to the team, our coach presented me with the game ball for my achievements at the plate and in the field. It was one of my proudest baseball moments, and I still cherish that worn-out ball—as well as the shiny blue trophy I earned after our team went on to win the league championship that season. Baseball has always been in my blood, but thanks to Sylvia Pressler, I've known what it's like to play the most American of sports. I thank her for that. ∞

we are all made of corn

Last summer, a friend and I took two weeks to drive a 6,000-mile loop around the United States. We saw all sorts of terrain, from the rolling wooded hills of the Appalachians to the eroded badlands of the Dakotas to the majestic mountains of Montana and Wyoming. But there was one thing about the lay of the land that hit home above all else: corn is everywhere.

As I've mentioned in the past, I've been trying of late to educate myself about what I eat so that, when confronted with the many food options available to me, I can make healthier and environmentally friendlier choices. In the process, I've continued to learn quite a bit about the food industry and its role in our country's economic, medical, political, and environmental history. I regret to report that with every new article or book I read, and with every documentary film or television program I see on the subject, the picture only gets worse. Still, the fact that food production is even a topic of discussion at all these days gives me some semblance of hope. To that end, I wanted to give kudos to a film I recently saw that deftly gets to the root of one of the biggest problems with what we eat today: the fact that almost everything we consume comes in some way from industrial corn.

I first learned about this idea when reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, in which author Michael Pollan describes (among other things) just how ubiquitous the giant grass Zea mays has become in our food system. And it certainly hit home last summer when I experienced for the first time what thousands of miles of corn and more corn really looks and feels like. But the 2007 documentary King Corn breaks the story down even further, bringing viewers not only into the homes and offices of the people who produce all this grain and the livestock that feed on it, but into the lives of some of the people, far removed from the corn belt, who've been affected by our glut of the yellow stuff.

The film starts out with two recent college graduates, Ian and Curtis, undergoing a chemical analysis of their hair. The results indicate that the majority of the carbon in their bodies originates from corn; you are what you eat, indeed! So the duo decides to take a year out of their lives, move to a farming town in central Iowa, and try to find out how this came to be. To understand the process, they plant one acre of corn on a small patch of a willing farmer's land and interview everyone who'll talk about the life of their corn, from its planting to its harvest to the various channels it may go through after that.

One of the reasons I really liked this film is that it shows you the state of the corn industry without being preachy: This is where we're at, this is how we got here, and we'll let you draw your own conclusions. As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of watching the grass grow during the making of the film, so aside from talking to the locals and playing a lot of wiffleball, Ian and Curtis also took some time to create fun stop-motion animations as a way to explain the basic economic and political trends behind the corn industry in the United States. The film definitely misses an opportunity to discuss some of the major environmental effects that farms have had on the country since World War II. But I'd say that's probably one of the reasons why the movie doesn't feel (as others I've seen have) as though you're being clubbed over the head by an insurmountable sensation of doom and gloom.

In any case, I highly recommend putting King Corn on your Netflix queue or going out and buying it on iTunes or DVD. There are no concrete solutions offered here other than being aware of what you're eating and of how the government plays a major role in keeping the status quo. But if understanding the problem is the first step in solving it, then this film should serve as an entertaining primer. ∞

earning her stripes

I'd like to send a hearty congratulations to Sarah Thomas, who yesterday afternoon became the first woman to referee in a college football bowl championship game. Thomas took the field as a line judge during the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl between Ohio and Marshall universities. I dare say, I couldn't have cared less about the game itself, but it was grand to see Thomas out there making her calls! And appropriately enough, one of the announcers for the national telecast was Pam Ward, who in 2000 became the first female sportscaster to call play-by-play for a college bowl game.

As I wrote back in March, the world of professional sports officiating has remained largely impervious to women. But in Thomas, who was the subject of a supportive New York Times profile earlier this fall, we might be witnessing the first legitimate female candidate for a refereeing position in the almighty National Football League. A mother to two young boys, Thomas, 36, became the first woman to ref in Division I in 2007. Today, she's the only woman officiating at the highest level of college football. Here she is in a recent interview:

Of course, the only frustrating thing about the news of Thomas's feat is that it highlights the fact that there's still a long way to go as far as allowing women officials to follow their dreams of making it to the pros. It's particularly disheartening for me, a serious baseball fan, to know that even in the über-macho NFL, a woman right now has a better chance of breaking the stained grass barrier to pro officiating than any current female umpire with her sights set on calling games in the MLB. Still, it's obviously a step in the right direction, and I wish Thomas nothing but the best! ∞

2009 cassini all-stars

2009 was a spectacular year for the Cassini spacecraft, which in July celebrated five years in orbit around Saturn. I've been following the mission pretty closely since then, and the results cease to amaze me. So to wrap up the year, I decided to join in on all the "best-of-09" blog action with my very own 2009 Cassini All-Star Team! The following are, in my mind, the 12 most captivating images to have hurdled a billion miles through space this year, from the eyes of Cassini's cameras to a few desktops in Colorado, and then out onto the World Wide Web for all to enjoy. Kudos to Carolyn Porco and the rest of her CICLOPS team for a job well done. Can't wait to see what's in store for 2010! &infin

12. View From Down Under
A lovely natural-color view taken from roughly 48 degrees below the plane of Saturn's rings. The dark stripe across Saturn is actually the shadow created by the sun shining on the rings edge-on.

11. Ring Around Titan
Not the most detailed image ever taken of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, but this eerie view won me over nevertheless. Look closely and you'll see a very thin ring around the moon's outer edge, demarcating the boundary of Titan's thick atmosphere. This shot is best viewed enlarged.

10. Slopes of Enceladus
In November, Cassini performed two flybys of Saturn's sixth-largest moon, Enceladus. One of the most intriguing moons in the entire solar system, Enceladus features rare geological activity at its southern pole. This close-up of the "tiger stripe" region, taken from only about 1,000 miles above the surface, highlights icy ridges that seem ripe for ripping up on skis or snowboard!

9. Shades of Gray
While I of course enjoy the color views that Cassini's cameras occasionally capture, there's something stark and haunting about a scene like this one, with the planet's rings shown in various shades of gray. Simply stunning.

8. Prometheus Streaming
This one really surprised me. On the lower left you'll notice the 53-mile-wide potato-shaped moon Prometheus making its way through Saturn's ribbony F ring. But also cool are the dark trails to the right, which Prometheus left previously on the ring!

7. Into the Darkness
Taken as the coming winter approached Saturn's southern pole and prepared to cloak it in darkness, this image bespoke to me the enormity of the jeweled planet; the stormy vortex seen here is roughly as large as the Earth! Looking closely at the whorls and eddys within, you can't help but be humbled by the scale of it all.

6. Spouting Plumes
Down is up in this shot of Enceladus, taken during one of the November flybys. Spouting from the moon's active southern pole are jets of water and other volatiles, which are believed to spew out like water geysers here on Earth. I love that the image is so off-center; though likely done to make sure Cassini captured the full extent of the plumes, to me it just makes the composition that much more compelling.

5. ...Now You Don't
I love, love, love this image...so much going on! For one thing, you have Saturn's shadow making the rings seem to disappear, which is spooky and awesome. The fact that Saturn's night side is visible at all here is a result of "ringshine," an effect in which the light bouncing off the lit part of the rings scatters and hits the planet's surface, faintly illuminating it. You'll also notice the long shadow of Saturn's moon Tethys on the rings at the upper right. And last but not least, the small moon Janus can be seen hovering above the top ring. Amazing!

4. Pock-marked Moon
Sure, Saturn has many small, cratered moons, and yes, a lot of them look alike. But in my mind, this shot of the 660-mile-wide Tethys belongs in an art gallery. Gouging the surface at right is the large crater Penelope.

3. Titanic Shadow
What a beautiful shot of Saturn, its thin ring plane, and that ginormous shadow cast by the Saturnian system's largest moon, Titan. Wow.

2. Akimbo
I don't even want to spoil this one with words. If it weren't for the next shot, this would be my winner for 2009. Don't miss the closeup.

1. The Rite of Spring
I have to say, it was pretty difficult to sort through Cassini's cache of images to pick my favorite dozen from this year. But there was never any doubt as to which one would top the list. My photographic Cassini All-Star of 2009 is this truly mesmerizing view of Saturn during the planet's equinox this past August. In the interest of keeping this post to a manageable length, I'll say no more, but I urge you to visit the image's description page to read about how the shot was taken and what, exactly, is going on. You can also check out this brief summary from Time Magazine, which named the photo to its 2009 Year In Pictures.

Honorable Mention: The Seven Sisters
Okay, I had to add one more to the list, for personal reasons! This photo of the Pleiades cluster was actually taken in 2008, but it was released to the public back in April. As you might have noticed, these familiar stars (especially one in particular) are near to my heart, so it was wonderful for me to find out that Cassini would take a moment give them a look-see :)

the sounds of xmas

With just a week to go before Christmas, I figured it was time I started thinking about doing another holiday mix. So, on the heels of my original Brooklyn Xmas mix—which won rave reviews from the people for whom I actually printed the playlist onto CD (remember those?)—I give you the second in the series, aptly titled "Brooklyn Holiday." As before, the flavor is mainly indie pop/rock with shades of blues, old-school country, and 80s hip-hop. This year I've also thrown in a Hanukkah song and a little lullaby for those of you who, like myself, celebrate Christmas in a secular way. Hope you enjoy it!

Brooklyn Holiday mix | Listen on Spotify
Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses
Come On Santa - The Ravonettes
Christmas - Rogue Wave
Are You Coming Over For Christmas? - Belle & Sebastian
White Wine in the Sun - Tim Minchin
Silent Night - Priscilla Ahn
Christmas Is - Run-DMC
Santa Claus Is Back In Town - Elvis Presley
Little Christmas Tree - Michael Jackson
Don't Shoot Me Santa - The Killers
Back Door Santa - JET
Hanukkah Dance - Woodie Guthrie
Carol of the Bells - The Bird and the Bee
Maybe Next Year (X-mas Song) - Meiko
All I Want For Christmas - Matt Costa
The Heartache Can Wait - Brandi Carlile
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon

godless gaining ground

As an unapologetic atheist, I've been pleased to hear so much in the last several months about what appears to be a very real growth of public support for the godless life. Helped along by the likes of Twitter and a few good blogs, I've become convinced that despite what you may hear, there are actually quite a few ladies and germs out there who don't need some guy in the sky to make their world go 'round!

But don't just take my word for it; let's look at the evidence! A couple of weeks ago, the Atheist Alliance International held their annual meeting in California, and they reported record attendance. The term "no god" was the most tweeted term on Twitter for a short while this week, while this gem of a Twitter offshoot was created to replace the word "science" in any tweet that mentions the words "God" or "Jesus." And just two days ago, it was announced that the New York City subway system will soon carry a new advertisement proclaiming (apparently with statistics to back it) that more than 1 million New Yorkers—that's about 15 percent of the city's population—are "good without God."

By the way, don't forget that earlier this year, Barack Obama gave a shout-out to atheists during his inaugural speech, the first time any incoming president has done so. And on top of all this, I recently found out about a wonderful Internet show called Mr. Deity, which is beyond cool. The segments are short, they're all available online, and while some could use a little more direction, their overall impact is priceless. All I can say is: God FSM bless the nonbelievers. ∞