In high school there were just as many girls as guys in my AP Biology and Organic Chemistry classes, but fewer hanging out and talking BBS smack at Computer Club. In college the Intro to Computer Science class was pretty balanced, but CS II showed the first signs of a noticeable gender imbalance, skewing toward guys having the majority. I’d go home after classes and log a few hours on Quake, and noticed that my opponents tended to be all men. Usenet newsgroups that focused on cryptography, open source computing, and similar subjects also seemed to have a higher number of male names than female. These days, I show up at electronic music workshops or log into similar forums and am usually one of two or three other girls there. And there’s only a handful of recognized women electronic musicians in the field as opposed to the countless men. Seeing as we’re supposed to be a pretty egalitarian culture, that’s weird, right?

Girls and young women are less likely than boys and young men to agree with the statements “I like mathematics” and “I like science,” in a national survey:

• 40% of girls and 31% of boys said that math is their least favorite subject
• 21% of girls and 17% of boys said that science is their least favorite subject *

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After I came back from living in France for a few months, I had a bit of a culture shock upon returning to the states. At the time I was living with my parents in the suburbs of Chicago and it dawned on me that most US cities (apart from the big ones with an extensive public transit system) are only possible because its inhabitants own cars. Pretty much every simple activity in my daily teenage life required a car: getting to school, going to the supermarket, visiting friends, going shopping, dining out, going to the movies, etc. In France I would walk to school and grab a bite to eat at a coffee shop on the way. On the way home I’d pass cafes and see classmates and I’d find out about an event happening later in the evening. Sometimes I’d join them and we’d watch and comment on other pedestrians. Or I could detour and go through the open air market and score some fresh fruit from the countryside. If I needed an audio component, some socks, a bathing suit, or more comfortable shoes, I could find them by walking 2-10 minutes away from my host’s house. I missed all of that when I returned home.

What’s great about Chicago is its neighborhoods, and that you don’t need a car just to go about your life. Of course some locations are more walkable than others, and now there’s a great tool to figure out where to live if you like to walk, Walk Score.

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Here’s a list I’ve compiled of the best websites, blogs, and forums:

Best geek, gadget, and gaming blogs & websites (click!)

he page will be updated constantly. If I’ve missed something worthwhile, drop me a note and let me know: Contact.

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Liz featured on the cover of the RedEye

Ties and Father’s Day seem to be intrinsically connected, but why settle for getting dad a fugly one that matches all the other fugly ones he owns? Help his style quotient increase and get him one of these super trendy designer ties from Cyberoptix, a Detroit-based design studio who makes some really wicked ties. These over here are based on the Synth-E, one of the very first portable synthesizers that fit in a suitcase and was battery powered, forging the way for the modern laptop musicians of today. It’d be a perfect gift for an electronic musician, or a retro-synth enthusiast. They come in a staggering array of color combinations, and you can choose from either a synthetic microfiber or silk. And, if you’ll notice, the favicon for the Cyberoptix is a red Speak-N-Spell with horns, which makes them even more cooler in my book.

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Remember the Quizno’s Coyote? On an ordinary April afternoon, the patrons of the downtown Chicago sandwich shop were treated to a surprise visit by a wild coyote who attempted to jump the counter but decided to settle into the beverage cooler instead. Animal control took him away, named him Adrian and set him back into the wild, but not before he captured a bit of fame and made for a new addition to the “IM IN UR” photo-chop internet meme.

While coyotes aren’t on the endangered species list, Adrian wandered into human territory because his natural environment has been increasingly encroached upon by the relentless human transformation of the wild into single family homes and strip malls. Endangered Species Day was created to celebrate the animals that have been lifted offthe endangered list as well as raise awareness of those animals whose existence is threatened by the reckless actions of humans in their treatment of the environment.

So check out one of the ESD events in your town, and then maybe skip the Quizno’s for a week and use the extra cash to make a donation to The Endangered Species Coalition.

PS: He actually really was chillin’ his feets–one of his legs was injured and he found the cold to be soothing.

[via]

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So you’re a minimalist who will only invest in a simple money clip? Or, let’s say your credit cards outweigh your current wallet and you need a better way to manage them? No worries–check out these six geek wallets that will help you organize your “plasticash” and avoid looking like a dork while doing so.

read more | digg story

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The tragedy of suburbia

*UPDATE* There is a city hall meeting on Thursday in Chicago to propose landmarking a certain part of Milwaukee Avenue. Details are here.

**UPDATE** I have taken pictures of the interior so people can see what a jewel this building really is. It’s not “falling apart” or decaying due to lack of maintenance.

A few months ago the building where my office is was bought, but they assured us it would remain an office building. Then last week I noticed a zoning-change notice over the door, saying they wanted 8 floors of residential plus commercial, and parking for 250 cars. Uh oh. Then I see this article in the Chicago Journal: ‘Mega project’ set for Tower:Eight-story mixed-use condo would replace three historic buildings.

Yep, more condos.

The final nail in the coffin can be surmised from this insightful bit of investigative journalism:

Norris and others are concerned that Matlak will try to push the project through without community review before his term ends on May 21. The contact name on the public notice sends neighbors to Frederick E. Agustin, an attorney for the Law Offices of Samuel V.P. Banks. Banks is the nephew of 36th Ward Alderman James Banks, who serves as head of the City Zoning Committee.

And the local-hangout Filter and neighbor Swank Frank are getting kicked out so a Bank of America can move in:

http://www.chicagoist.com/archives/2007/03/24/wicker_park_getting_another_place_to_hold_all_our_money.php.

Looks like Wicker Park is about to become Lincoln Park 2. Great.

(PS: The photo is based on this hilarious photo)

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I voted on a Sequoia today

f • bx • rd [fuh bux erd] -adjective:

My old host, eBoundHost got hax0rd and the fx0rs erased all my databases for all my sites. Supposedly the host does weekly backups, but they only had backups from a month ago, but it was corrupt. The best version they could find was from February. So all my posts since the day after my birthday are gone forever, not to mention all the other sites I had built since then (houseofpenis.com, frequencity.net, modsquare.com, subvariant.com).

I got an account over at mediatemple.com on a recommendation from a friend. Apparently they have a distributed server arrangement that allows sites to withstand the digg / slashdot / fark / boing-boing effect without going down. From TechCrunch:

Customer sites are not hosted on a single (dedicated, shared or virtual) machine. Instead, they are managed by hundreds of clustered servers, and Media Temple monitors the health of the entire grid as well as individual sites. If a site spikes in traffic, performance is unaffected and the site owner will simple be charged for overage on bandwidth and CPU usage. If the grid begins to get stressed, Media Temple simply adds more machines.

Sounds pretty awesome. This time I’ll set up a cron to backup everything and then download it to one of my drives.

The upside is that the whole debacle inspired me to do a line of fbxrd gear over at Fractalspin, including t-shirts and stickers
(The shirts will be great to wear when you have a hangover. Or in my case, when you get all but one of your websites hax0rd into the ground). So that’s something.

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