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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Thursday, January 16, 2014
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BAR helps reveal Biblical archaeology’s gender gap Biblical Archaeology Review’s annual dig issue has long directed readers to excavation opportunities in Israel and beyond. To help readers decide which dig is for them, we provide a list of sites, together with the dates of the excavation seasons and the name of each dig’s director. Jennie Ebeling, associate professor of archaeology at the University of Evansville in Indiana, however, used our 2011 list of dig opportunities for a different purpose: to highlight the growing gender gap between male and female archaeologists in Biblical archaeology. In an article for The Bible and Interpretation Web site (www.bibleinterp.com), Ebeling found that only six of the 22 excavations listed for Israel for the summer of 2011 were either directed or codirected by women, including famous female archaeologists like Jodi Magness and Suzanne Richard. The gender gap among dig directors held steady when she added the handful of other excavations listed on the Web sites of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) and the Archaeological Institute of America. Ebeling also found that fewer than a third of the licenses granted by the Israel Antiquities Authority for 2011 were issued to female archaeologists. "[A dig’s] director provides the ‘face’—and often, in our field, the personality—of a dig,” wrote Ebeling. "The [statistics suggest] that there are many fewer female than male ‘faces’ representing the field of Syro-Palestinian archaeology.” Given that Biblical archaeology has such a strong tradition of famous female archaeologists, from Kathleen Kenyon to Trude Dothan, why, asks Ebeling, are so few famous female archaeologists now at the forefront of the field? From surveys she conducted with both men and women who direct excavations in Israel, Ebeling found that while many believe starting a family or having children can often delay a woman’s archaeological career, such factors alone cannot account for the relatively small number of women who lead excavations. Many archaeologists believe pervasive and longstanding cultural factors within the discipline are to blame. Despite the pioneering achievements of famous female archaeologists such as Kenyon and Dothan—and others like Ruth Amiran and Claire Epstein, as well as current directors like Sharon Zuckerman and Jodi Magness—Biblical archaeology, particularly in Israel, has long been dominated by male dig directors, while women have frequently been "shuffled off into specialist studies,” like pottery and small finds analysis. And even though female dig directors and codirectors, including Jodi Magness at Huqoq and Eilat Mazar at the City of David, are now more common, Ebeling notes that almost all of the "big digs” focusing on major Biblical sites—Ashkelon, Megiddo, Gezer, Rehov and others—are still run primarily by men. Others point to an academic and professional environment, both in Israel and the U.S., that tends to favor men over women. Despite the fact that women tend to outnumber men in archaeology graduate programs, far fewer women ultimately complete their programs and earn Ph.Ds. As a result, women fill just over a third of the tenure or tenure-track faculty positions in institutes and departments of archaeology at major Israeli universities; Ebeling says a similar number likely exists for U.S. institutions. And even though women regularly deliver 40 percent of the papers at ASOR’s annual conference, and also serve on the body’s board of trustees and numerous committees, the organization has never elected a female president in its 110-year history. So will there be more female dig directors on Biblical Archaeology Review’s 2012 list of dig opportunities? Probably not. Ebeling’s survey found that many archaeologists, both male and female, believe that the gender gap in Biblical archaeology has widened in the past 25 years and will only continue to grow.
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Archaeology
gender gap
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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
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"If ideas are just patterns of nerve impulses, then how can one say that any idea (including the idea of materialism itself) is superior to any other? One pattern of nerve impulses cannot be truer or less true than another pattern, any more than a toothache can be truer or less true than another toothache.”--Stephen M. Barr (From here.)
The following article is posted to stimulate conversation. The failure of the writer to define terms like "creationist" and "tradition" is problematic and provides a clue as to why many doubt journalistic claims on science. People often fail to distinguish popular science and true science and do not detect ideological bias. At the end of the blog post are links to articles that I believe provide balance to Adam Frank's perspective. -- Alice C. Linsley The Age of Denial: Our society no longer values the integrity of scientific fact New York Times By ADAM FRANK August 21, 2013
ROCHESTER — IN 1982, polls showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created human beings in their present form. Thirty years later, the fraction of the population who are creationists is 46 percent.
In 1989, when "climate change” had just entered the public lexicon, 63 percent of Americans understood it was a problem. Almost 25 years later, that proportion is actually a bit lower, at 58 percent.
The timeline of these polls defines my career in science. In 1982 I was an undergraduate physics major. In 1989 I was a graduate student. My dream was that, in a quarter-century, I would be a professor of astrophysics, introducing a new generation of students to the powerful yet delicate craft of scientific research.
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science education
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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Thursday, January 2, 2014
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My name is Bronwen. I am seven years old. I am a girl. I would like to be a Space Scientist when I grow up. I am interested in this because I am in love with science! I love science because it is very interesting and awesome. I would like to explore outer space so I can discover and name some planets. I wonder how many planets are not named yet. I bet 100’000’000’000! Well, probably more. I would like to learn how fast the earth moves. I want to learn if oxygen can be made in space. I know that the universe is super large and that it is still expanding like a balloon that you blow up. Another reason that I think it is important to study space is because we can learn about the history of the universe. My family loves science too. We read science books, watch science shows, and even tell science stories. I was talking about this report earlier to my family and they told me I should write this down. I hope that some girls my age will read this and get interested in science.
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astronomy
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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Friday, December 27, 2013
Updated: Saturday, December 21, 2013
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Nov 20, 2013 by Bill Steele (Phys.org) —Just when the nation has a need for more workers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, research at Cornell and the University of Texas, Austin, finds that women have often found those fields inhospitable, and left for other kinds of jobs. In the first study to compare women in STEM with other professional women, Sharon Sassler, professor of policy analysis and management, and colleagues found that women in STEM fields have been more likely to move out of their field of specialty than other professional women, especially early in their careers; few women in either group completely leave the labor force. Their report, "What's So Special About STEM?" will appear in the December issue of the journal Social Forces.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-stem-women.html#jCp
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STEM
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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Updated: Saturday, December 21, 2013
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The CWIS Board wishes all readers a blessed Christmas. May it be filled with joy in knowing that Christ our Savior has come among us and loves us. Hallelujah!
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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Friday, December 20, 2013
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Alice C. Linsley
I have been a blogger for eight years and I maintain six active blogs. I also serve as "blog mistress" for two other blogs. Obviously, blogging is a communication medium that I enjoy and appreciate for its versatility and potential to inform beyond my classroom.
What follows is a list of science blogs listed alphabetically by the field. I have not listed the science blogs maintained by mainstream media or science magazines as these are easy to find. This list will take the reader to lesser known blogs that deserve more traffic.
Some of the blogs listed are maintained by Christians. These are designated by † before the link. Christians in the sciences often offer a different perspective and sometimes their findings are not given much attention. I encourage readers to visit the sites in their field of interest and to participate in the discussions. Ask questions, challenge statements that you know to be false, and stir the pot! Compiling this list has confirmed my suspicion that many scientists who are Christians are not blogging. Their research is not available for the general public. It is published in peer reviewed articles in science journals. This is a necessary part of the academic life, but it would benefit Christian seekers were they to have their own blogs where they can share their insights and knowledge. We especially need Christians in biology and physics to step up!
ANTHROPOLOGY Anthropology.net † Biblical Anthropology (Alice C. Linsley) † God is in the Details (Ingie Hovland) John Hawks' Weblog (Paleoanthropology) † Just Genesis (Alice C. Linsley) † Yam Suph (Susan Burns) ARCHAEOLOGY Bad Archaeology (Keith Fitzpatrick Matthews) Elfshot: Stick and Stones (Tim Rast) Middle Savagery (Colleen Morgan) † Biblical Archaeology (Rob Bradshaw)
ASTRONOMY Astrobog (Ian Musgrave) Tom's Astronomy Blog .py in the sky (Thomas Robitaille) † Star Stryder (Dr. Pamela L. Gay)
BIOLOGY † An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution (Steve Martin) † BioLogos Blog The Biology Blog (Jordan Yaron) The Sea Blog (Kevin Nelstead)
CHEMISTRY ChemBark (Dr. Paul Bracher) The Sceptical Chymist † Daily Reactions of a Chemist (Dr. Amanda Nichols) Chemistry World Blog
GEOLOGY † Naturalis Historia † The GeoChristian Clastic Detritus (Brian Romans) LINGUISTICS Ethnoblog LanguageHat Bits of Language (Adrien Barbaresi) † Sunshine Mary The Seuren Blog (Pieter Seuren)
PSYCHOLOGY and PSYCHIATRY † Christena Cleveland (Social Psychology) † Society of Christian Psychology † Musings of a Christian Psychologist (Phil Monroe) Evolutionary Psychiatry (Emily Deans)
PHYSICS Quantum Diaries Antimatter (Cormac O’Rafferty) Nanoscale Views (Douglas Natelson) The Reference Frame (Luboš Motl Pilsen)
SCIENCE and RELIGION † Science and Belief (Ruth Bancewicz) † Emerging Scholars Blog (InterVarsity) † Rachel Held Evans † Reasons to Believe † Old Earth Creationism Homeschool † Krista Bontrager's Blog † Proslogion (Dr. Jay L. Wile) STEM (General Interest) AWIS Blog: Championing the interests of women in STEM
If you know of other blogs of interest to Christians in the sciences, please let me know. I will add to the list.
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science blogs
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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Thursday, December 19, 2013
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From New York Times, Dec. 10, 2013 A big reason America is falling behind other countries in science and math is that we have effectively written off a huge chunk of our population as uninterested in those fields or incapable of succeeding in them. Women make up nearly half the work force but have just 26 percent of science, technology, engineering or math jobs, according to the Census Bureau. Blacks make up 11 percent of the workforce but just 6 percent of such jobs and Hispanics make up nearly 15 percent of the work force but hold 7 percent of those positions. There is no question that women and minorities have made progress in science and math in the last several decades, but their gains have been slow and halting. And in the fast-growing field of computer science, women’s representation has actually declined in the last 20 years, while minorities have made relatively small gains. Read it all here.
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science education
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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
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Dr Ruth Bancewicz
As a young child I detected the cosmic microwave background
– the radiation left over from the Big Bang. That doesn’t mean I was a child
prodigy, it just shows that we had an old fashioned dial TV. About 10% of the
static in between channels is caused by the remnants of that first explosion. I
am staggered that even a five year old can detect the whisper of the universe’s
origins.
The Astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell shared this fact
during her presentation at the Wesley Methodist church as part of their Science
Meets Faith lecture series this month. It was a fascinating talk, and she was
very honest about her own faith and how her science had affected her beliefs.
In the beginning, said Bell Burnell, all of space, matter
and energy was contained in a space smaller than a grain of sand. Then time
began with bang, and space unfurled like a new leaf from its bud. As space
expanded and the radiation from the big bang cooled, energy converted into mass
and particles formed. After millions of years, those particles came together
and began to form stars: immense flaming balls of gas fuelled by nuclear fusion
reactions.
The first stars were made of hydrogen and helium, and when
they had burnt themselves out they exploded, scattering their waste products
across the universe. Those waste products included new elements, and when our
own third generation star was formed there was enough carbon, oxygen and other
elements around it to form rocky planets like Earth, and for life to develop.
These vast timescales always send my mind reeling. Bell
Burnell said there is a sense of awe when she does Astronomy but you can’t
think about the vast size and history of the Universe all the time, or you
wouldn’t be able to function normally!
Astronomers noticed a long time ago that the Universe is
still expanding. What they found more recently is that is the very distant
galaxies are now much further away than expected. The expansion of Space is
speeding up, and no one is quite sure why. When the galaxies eventually
accelerate away from each other faster than the speed of light, everything outside
of our galaxy will be invisible. So in a few billion years, we will appear to
be alone in the universe.
This is a pretty bleak picture, and it gets bleaker when you
realise that eventually all the hydrogen will be used up, having been converted
to other elements, and no new stars will be able to form. There will only be
black holes left. The long-term prospects for humanity are poor. The short-term
prospects are also poor if you step outside a space ship without the right
protective gear! The Universe is – outside of the thin atmosphere of our own
planet – a deadly place.
So where is hope? Jocelyn is a Quaker, and it was
interesting to hear how she made sense of this scenario. I didn’t agree with
everything she said, but it was good to hear someone taking the history of the
universe seriously when thinking about God’s character. She said that God
either isn’t able or chooses not to be in day-to-day control of the world, but
being present before God in worship is an encounter ‘beyond words’ that puts things
in perspective.
I am unwilling to share more of what Bell Burnell said about
her faith, partly because her lecture was not recorded and made publicly
available, and partly because she made a point of saying that her thinking is
still evolving. She did use a number of poems to explain her feelings, and I
think this one by Michael Leunig reflects the tone of what she said very well.
Love is born with a dark and troubled face
When hope is dead
And in the most unlikely place
Love is born:
Love is always born
Source: Science and Belief
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astronomy
Ruth Bancewicz
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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Friday, December 6, 2013
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New York Times, Sept. 2013 Peter Ostrander, the tireless coordinator and cheerleader for a renowned science and mathematics magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md., was not satisfied. Over the past few years, the pool of applicants had included nearly as many girls as boys, and the acceptance rate — based largely on test scores and grades — had followed suit. Yet when it came to which of the invitees ended up choosing Blair’s magnet option over other offerings in the area, the scales tilted male. In 2012, for example, 80 percent of the eligible boys said yes, but only 70 percent of the girls. In 2010, the figures had been 93 percent and 56 percent. Convinced the program could do better at pitching its product to girls, Mr. Ostrander recruited teams of upper-class girls last spring to call their hesitant young counterparts. Extol the wonders of the program, he said. Dispel the tired geek myths. "The stereotype is out there that the magnet is filled with nerdy people,” he said. "Whatever that means.” Read it all here.
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Posted By Alice C. Linsley,
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
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New York Times, September 2013
Last summer, researchers at Yale published a study proving that physicists, chemists and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favorably than a woman with the same qualifications. Presented with identical summaries of the accomplishments of two imaginary applicants, professors at six major research institutions were significantly more willing to offer the man a job. If they did hire the woman, they set her salary, on average, nearly $4,000 lower than the man’s. Surprisingly, female scientists were as biased as their male counterparts. The new study goes a long way toward providing hard evidence of a continuing bias against women in the sciences. Only one-fifth of physics Ph.D.’s in this country are awarded to women, and only about half of those women are American; of all the physics professors in the United States, only 14 percent are women. The numbers of black and Hispanic scientists are even lower; in a typical year, 13 African-Americans and 20 Latinos of either sex receive Ph.D.’s in physics. Read it all here.
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gender
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