'struth!

How the hell are you being funded?

I'm a research scientist working on UAV systems - something that is arguably useful and a hot topic right now, and I'm finding it brutal to get access to funding. The money just isn't there, especially when you're competing with people who are developing vaccines and novel methods of leveraging social networks to sell tchotchkies. Unless you can show a serious payoff for your research within 5 years or so, nobody is interested in funding you, government or otherwise.

The caffeine extends life. The caffeine expands consciousness. The caffeine is vital to space travel.

The caffeine must flow!

That's something completely fascinating that I never knew before! It's days like this that remind me what it was like to be young - when everything was new and exciting. Thanks, internet!

They call it "Skynet".

Pilots like to attack with the sun behind them; that means that if you are expecting attack, you need to be looking at the sun because that's where the attack is likely to come from.

It's a planet!

Obvious troll is obvious. The moment you used "patriarchy" I knew you weren't earnest (or at least not a modern feminist). I've been involved with feminist advocacy in the workplace, and nobody uses 'patriarchy' as an excuse anymore... at least, not without irony. The GP didn't say females weren't smart enough to get in male-dominated programs - he said they didn't want to. And he's absolutely right.

Women in Engineering (the local Australian female advocacy group at the university I'm at) recognises that the problem isn't that women are some how barred from getting into engineering. They know how many women apply to the courses, how many are admitted and how many leave before completing. Simply, females apply to engineering programs in far fewer numbers; it's ridiculous to suggest they're being barred or forced out by the existing engineering populace, before their uni applications even arrive. It will be four years at least before those women even experience the current work force.

Women in Engineering goes to great length to get female undergrads in engineering. In fact, in my undergrad there were 7 scholarships females could apply for (compared to the three who actually enrolled) vs 2 scholarships males could apply for. The gates were wide open. Double the number of students could take the course, with full financial support. Nothing is stopping them from signing up, they simply don't want to.

The problem is that young women finish their high school certificates, look deep within and don't see engineering there. It simply isn't 'them'. Engineering has an image problem amongst women. It is often seen (perhaps rightly) as a competitive, technically-focussed bandsaws-and-soldering-irons sort of job that alienates you from other people, best suited to career introverts. Few woman wants to work in an environment that they feel is isolating - especially not one which does have a reputation of being 'not for women'.

The sad truth is that there are lots of opportunities for working with other people, and for having growing experiences outside of simple technophile interest. The women I work with in my job enjoy the collaborative parts of coming up with a solution, getting it to work and then getting it out the door. They enjoy what they do. But how do you communicate that to the women looking at career choices just now?

And if you don't believe me, then I urge you to sign up for an engineering program at your local university and find out for yourself - see if anyone tells you "Sorry you can't do engineering: you're a woman". I'm sure they won't. We'd love to have you.

It's fortunate, then, that that's neither what I said, nor what I think.

A nuclear weapon is a deterrent - a political bargaining tool to stop people invading you - that's what it does. As long as you have a couple lying around, your Bomb (capital B) needs are met. You never expect to actually use them, and so long as the ones you have are reliable enough to credibly be expected to work if actually called upon to (and after 40 years of development, we can be sure they are), there really isn't much point in spending lots of money modernising them.

A better way to spend those funds is in developing stealth smart weapons that -can- be used at low political cost, and be used to influence the policy of those who do not have The Bomb.

Or, to put it another way "Nuclear fission is just like fire: the secret is to bang the rocks together."