Yeah the bit about not being able to cite your own work is just wrong. In fact, journals compete partially on impact scores, which are based on how many citations their papers get. The would have no motive to go after people citing papers they published, even if they had some legal basis to do so- which I don't think they do.

Copyright on academic papers is to provide some financial reward for those who edit and publish the paper, not the person who created the paper. There are other models emerging to pay for this work (e.g., PLoS), but it is real work and it won't get done for free. Just abolishing copyright is unlikely to be a productive approach.

I doubt absolute height is really important for whether a man is considered attractive or not. I suspect it is relative height- as in, he's a little taller than most of the women living in the same time period.

The difference in height between medieval times and now is largely due to better nutrition now. Pretty much everyone was shorter then.

I agree, and have been trying to get my company to use some reporting methods vs. doing everything in meetings. There are too many meetings that could have been replaced by a halfway decent status report.

The problem is, a lot of people can't be bothered to read emails.

I am in charge of IT at a small company. If I want to get a message out, I have to (1) send an email, (2) show up at a couple of big meetings and tell people in person, and (3) post an announcement on our intranet. For really important things, I even post a sign in the break room.

Despite all of this, I find that I have to tell some people the same information in a personal one-on-one conversation within a few days.

Some people won't read. Some people won't listen.

Actually, they published the work in Science.

I think you can read the abstract there without a subscription. If you can't, you can go to PubMed and search for 18403709 (that's the PMID).

You can't really call publishing in Science not publishing in a real scientific journal.

That's not what I'm talking about.I'm not talking about letting the identity of your advertisers influence your content. I'm talking about being paid directly to produce content- which is what a lot of bloggers are doing. In the old school media, that is called advertising. On blogs, it is not even disclosed.

I think, but I am not sure (and don't care enough to go look it up), that if a magazine takes money to include content, it is required by law to label that content advertising. This is why many articles in scientific journals are labeled "advertising"- the authors pay page fees.

Are you sure that old media isn't legally required to disclose when they have been paid to put up certain content? I am not. In fact, I think they probably are- why else would news magazines label those "infomercial" sections they sometimes print as advertising?

If you take money or free product to produce a blog post, you should disclose that fact. I hang out on some mommyblogs from time to time, and there was a big uproar on one blog over the fact that another blogger took money from 23andMe to post about her experiences with their community aimed at pregnant women and new moms. In her post, the second blogger included some statements of questionable scientific validity that, if made directly by 23andMe in their advertising, probably would have brought the FDA and the FTC down on them. But it is fine to spread this disinformation in a blogpost- reader beware, etc. The problem was, the second blogger did NOT disclose her relationship with 23andMe in the post itself, although apparently most of her regular readers were aware of the relationship.

So- should that be legal? What if someone read her scientifically questionable opinions and acted on them, resulting in injury or even death (the opinions dealt with preeclampsia, which can be quite serious)? Sure, they shouldn't have taken medical advice from a blog. But do the blog writer and her sponsors have some sort of legal requirement not to spread false/unproven info? Are you ready for pharma companies to use blogs as a way to make an end run around direct to consumer marketing restrictions?

I'm not saying that the FTC's proposed rule is perfect, or even right. But I do think there is more to it than you imply. Ethical breaches in the marketing of computers is maybe not a big deal worth of laws. Ethical breaches in the marketing of drugs and diagnostics are a different story.

I actually think there is some utility in making the brightest kids learn how to coexist with the kids who aren't so bright. Out in the real world (you know, the place the education system is preparing kids to live and work), you don't get to avoid interacting with people who aren't as bright as you are. Where are you going to learn how to do it if not in school?

I did my share of grunt work in school, and I remember hating it. I also remember rushing through it once, getting a crap grade and learning the important lesson that even grunt work needs to be done properly. That lesson has served me well in my working life. I've met people who have never learned it. They are often "stuck" in their career- they can't suck it up and do the grunt work that is needed to advance to the next level. That is fine if they are happy with the situation, but they often aren't. Personally, I'm glad I learned my lesson in the 6th grade, when the penalty was not coming first in math class, and not in the workplace, when the penalty is a hefty difference in pay and workplace satisfaction.

Now, our public schools might not be doing the best job of juggling all the competing requirements put on them. We ask them to educate kids with a wide range of capabilities. We can and should try to fix that. But I don't buy your statement, put forth without argument, that stratifying kids is the way to do it.

This isn't really true. The parenting-blogosphere is alive and well. I think it is because parents find it helpful to have a place to share their impressions of parenthood, stories about their kids, and other random things. People self-select into little communities based on their parenting styles, their kids' traits, and other things, but not necessarily geography. I have "friends" who live on the other side of the country or even in different countries. We may never meet, but we have enough in common that we keep up with each others' blogs, posting supportive comments and benefiting from finding other parents like ourselves.

A lot of the people keep their blogs anonymous but have Facebook accounts linked to their real names. The anonymity (or pseudo-anonymity) of the blog makes it possible to share things you'd never put on Facebook.

A lot of us also post things we've learned that might be helpful to others. In my case, this is mostly about being a working mother. Some of those posts get found fairly frequently via searches, and that makes me happy. Why should we all have to learn everything the hard way? I don't really see using Facebook in that way. Also, even if I abandon my blog, those old posts might be useful to someone- I don't necessarily consider abandoned content to be "dead" content. Some of it is. But some of it will live on due to its utility.

There are parenting bloggers who are professional writers, and there are some who make money from their blogs. Personally, I have never really tried to make money from my blog, and I don't intend to start. That's not why I blog. It is just a hobby.

I seriously doubt that the parenting blogosphere is the only community of its kind. I suspect their are other blog communities with a similar make up of "pros" and "amateurs" out there.

A big problem with your argument is that you are assuming that math professors are all "at the very top" of the math field. I am not qualified to assess mathematical genius, but I don't think this is true- certainly in fields in which I can assess ability, not all professors are at the very top of their field.

Since none of you seem to actually know what's involved....

40 weeks of pregnancy, give or take a couple of weeks. Usually, you can work through most of that- although some complications will dictate bedrest and some occupations are less suited for working during pregnancy than others. I'd say "academic mathematician" wouldn't involve any work place hazards that would preclude pregnant women, though.

Breastfeeding is extremely variable. The current "official" US recommendation is exclusively breastfed for 6 months, breastfed + solid foods until a year, and then breastfeeding after that as long as both child and mother want. The WHO recommends 2 years of breastfeeding.

I breastfed for 23 months. I went back to work after 3 months. As you say, we now have breast pumps. The limit on using a pump is mostly time and space- you need 15-20 minutes 2-3 times a day, in a private space.

I'll also point out that throughout most of human history, women have worked while caring for children. They just haven't worked outside the home. Working in the home on non-childcare related things used to be a lot more time consuming than it is now. Have you ever read a description about how to make soap, for instance?

I won't argue with you about whether or not a lonely female TA might choose to extract sex from one of her students in exchange for a grade. I'll just take your statement as written and say: propose a reasonable way in which anti-male discrimination in Vet school might manifest itself.

Frankly, I'm at a loss.

Which supports my initial point.

Your statement that I was designed to have children and not be a breadwinner is insulting. These two things are by no means mutually exclusive.

I have a PhD in a science field. I work at the intersection of science and IT. Through a combination of luck, work, and ability I have done pretty well in my field, and have a good career that pays well. If you define breadwinner as the person bringing home the majority of the household income, that would be me.

I also have a daughter and am pregnant with my second child. I breastfed my daughter for almost two years- I've done pretty much all that biology requires of me as a mother as opposed to a gender neutral parent. I categorically do not want to be a stay at home mom. I have a lot of respect for those who do. It is a hard, under-appreciated job, and one that I readily admit I am not well suited for.

Sure, some women will be stay at home moms. Some men will be stay at home dads- and more and more are choosing to do so as our society becomes more equal. The personality traits that make one a good stay at home parent are not uniquely female. In my family, it happens that my husband would make the better stay at home parent. It also happens that he does not want to do that, and we can afford to pay for excellent day care, thereby allowing us both to continue in the careers we enjoy. Some families decide to have one parent stay home. Some families decide to use day care. The latest research shows no real difference in outcomes for the children, provided it is high quality day care.

If you're worried about birth rates, you can work to make our society more supportive of working parents. If you insist that the only way society can work is if one parent stays home with the kids... you're pretty much guaranteeing that some percentage of families will choose not to have kids because neither partner wants to stay home.

The problem is, whenever someone does a rigorous study looking for these innate differences they find... not much, or in fact, evidence to the contrary. This being slashdot, I doubt you went and read the article in the post. Had you done so, you'd find that the research being reported did NOT support the hypothesis that the reason for the differences in the number of women in academic math departments is an innate biological difference. They did not see that difference in different cultures, even in different cultures with exceptionally similar gene pools. If there is an innate biological reason for the difference, you would expect that difference to be demonstrated across cultures.

I'd love to see the studies you claim make this a well understood fact.

I suspect the truth of the matter is that this is a possible explanation that has become popular, but without any rigorous work being done to see if this is true- and if it IS true, whether women choose certain fields because of some innate difference in preferences determined by biology or for some other reason, like the fact that being discriminated against and subjected to insulting comments at every step of your career is enough to drive many reasonable people to choose a different career.

No one is decrying the disparity in number of women and men in Vet school because there is no evidence that men are being kept out of Vet school due to discrimination. Show me some evidence of discrimination, and I'll be right behind you in arguing that this should be corrected. Heck- I'll even take you seriously if you can find me a male Vet student who has heard things like "it must be nice to be a man so that you can win scholarships" or "I'm sorry, I just don't think men make as good vets as women" or "I'll bet he slept with the TA to get that grade." Yes- I have heard comments similar to both of those as a woman in science. The few women who stick it out in math probably have even worse stories. Thankfully, my experience with the overt sexism displayed in those comments has declined as I have advanced in my career- but there is plenty of less obvious sexism still out there.