SIT006: Banned Book Week Podcast

September 30: Calvin and friends read from banned books.

Listen: sitp0006.mp3

September 30 is the first day of the American Library Association's annual pubic awareness campaign called Banned Book Week which raises awareness of attempts to ban books from public libraries.
Calvin and friends exercise their First Amendment Rights by reading from books that have been banned by various groups in the past.

Pictures of the readers can be found here.

Legal:

The theme music for SIT is by Derek K. Miller and is used with permission.

The podcast is copyright 2007 by Calvin powers and all rights are reserved.

Let's See How Many Ways Calvin Can Be Snarky In A Single Post.....

Tim Berners-Lee, "inventor" of the world wide web, is on a new mission to rid the computer field of "stupid male geek culture." From the news article:

The inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has called for an end to the "stupid" male geek culture that disregards the work of capable female engineers, and puts others off entering the profession.

Berners-Lee said that a culture that avoided alienating women would attract more female programmers, which could lead to greater harmony of systems design. "If there were more women involved we could move towards interoperability. We have to change at every level," he said.

According to Berners-Lee, a culture exists where women can be put off a career in technology both by "stupid" behaviour by some male "geeks", and by the reactions of other women.

"It's a complex problem — we find bias against women by women. There are bits of male geek culture and engineer culture that are stupid. They should realise that they could be alienating people who are smarter and better engineers," said Berners-Lee.

Engineering research facilities that interview candidates based only on how many papers they have had published also risk adding to the problem, according to Berners-Lee, because of an apparent in-built bias against women.

One academic went through a sex change, submitted the same papers under both identities, and found that papers were accepted from a man but were rejected when they came from a woman, said the web inventor. This bias is unaccountable, but adds to institutional bias, he said.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Tim Berners-Lee is sincerely trying to make his world a better place. I honestly do not doubt his intentions one iota. In general, I admire him. But I really think he's put his foot in his mouth on this one and I have to make a few snarky comments:

1) Does the second paragraph seem just, i dunno, a tad chauvinistic?

2) Doesn't "move towards interoperability" sound like a euphemism? :-)

3) The one and only "example" he cites, in the last paragraph is in fact easily explainable without resorting to sex-bias. Papers are accepted for publication not only on their merits, but on their merits relative to the other papers that are also under submission. And besides, one data point does not make a trend.

4) Selecting candidates solely on how many papers they've published does sound like a problem to me, but that's a completely independent problem from sex bias. (And, for the record, having never staffed and Engineering Research Facility, I can't say for certainty that judging number of papers published is NOT a good way to select candidates.)

5) I thought the whole point of geek culture was to judge people on their mastery of the domain of geekiness and their contribution to the the geek community of that domain. By definition, it's a merit based culture. And while it's true that geeks get involved in their petty drama games by refusing to acknowledge each other's geek creds, etc. Such activities in themselves are not so much examples of sexual bias as they are of being petty and insecure.

and finally.....

6) I guess that whole semantic web thing didn't quite work out.