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.

Well, the problem is that people have been trying for years to make standard vaccines against Dengue, and failing. If I remember properly, there are several different subtypes of the virus, and protecting against all is difficult, while protecting against only some has turned out to do more harm than good (Dengue is a disease that is more likely to have serious consequences the second time you get it, and an incomplete vaccine was found to function like a first infection in this regard).

Yet Dengue is a very painful disease and one that causes a lot of harm in the regions of the world in which it is endemic. So a new approach is worth looking into.

I have read plenty of advice on baby sleep, believe me.

My now 2 year old sleeps through most nights.

I don't think anything short of narcotics was going to make her do that at 9 months old, and I know plenty of other parents with similar kids.

My point was that telling a parents of a 9 month old that they are doing something wrong by responding to their baby how they think best is just not cool. The only person I would take that level of advice from was my mother, and that was because she had dealt with me (I had very similar sleep patterns) AND she was willing to come help out in the middle of the night, whatever we decided to do.

GigG- all babies are different. You experience with YOUR kid does not translate into anyone else's experience with THEIR kid. Having successfully parented one child does not make you an expert on how everyone else should parent theirs.

Some kids cry and wind down. Others cry and just wind up further. Taking your approach with a kid with the latter temperament would probably not work out too well. Most of us choose to do whatever will get the most people in the house the most sleep. In your case, that was a little bit of crying. In my case, it was not. I've never heard of a college kid who wakes up at 2 a.m. and calls his parents to throw a fit, so I think its safe to assume all kids learn to sleep through the night at some point. Why do you need to be such an ass about how different parents choose to help their kids get there?

That said, we ran our wireless and our baby monitor at the same time with no problems whatsoever. We used the monitor so that we could go outside during naps, and so that the parent who was "on" had a reasonable chance of getting to the baby before the parent whose turn it was to sleep undisturbed was completely awake.

And I can't really believe I'm posting about this on slashdot.

There's a little company called Arctus that does something like what you asked for (tagging a directory structure), and some more. Its aimed at pharma/biotech researchers, but from what I've seen of them they'd be happy to customize for you, for a price.

I've never decided to hire someone just by looking at who they know.

BUT, I have looked to see if I know anyone they know, so that I can get an informal recommendation. The more senior the position, the more I want to hear about a candidate from people I trust who have worked with that candidate. Those positions require skills that are hard to really check for on a resume.

Also, when I applied for the job I hold right now, I did so via a connection I unearthed on LinkedIn- I saw the job posting, decided I wanted to apply for it, thenturned to my LinkedIn network to see if any of my friends knew anyone at the company. Someone did, so I submitted my resume that way rather than just responding to the job posting.

The HPV vaccine has been quite well tested. The FDA requirements for testing before approval are quite stringent. I think what you mean is that it hadn't been in general use for a long period. This is true, but no proof of anything nefarious. Based on the evidence out there now, I'd vaccinate my daughter.

Do you think antibiotics don't cure infections? There are plenty of newer antibiotics that have been developed by these evil drug companies you reference.

As for not curing cancer- that is a lot harder to do than you understand. The cancer cells are essentially your cells, with some mutations to make them escape the usual growth and migration controls. Coming up with a drug that will kill 100% of those cells without causing unacceptable damage to your other, healthy cells is not easy. There is no group of scientists somewhere who know how to do it but are being prevented from doing so by their evil corporate bosses. We just don't know how to do it.

The risk is to the children who are too young to be immunized yet.

For instance, the first MMR shot is usually given at about 1 year.

When my daughter was 11 months old, we had a measles outbreak in my neighborhood in San Diego. The outbreak originated with a family who chose not to vaccinate their kids. They went on vacation to Switzerland, where they ran into some other people who chose not to vaccinate, and were exposed to measles. The original kids came back from their vacation and exposed other kids at their charter school, some of who were also not vaccinated by parental choice. Then someone took a sick kid to a doctor's office without realizing their kid had measles and exposed a bunch more kids, some of whom were too young to be vaccinated yet. From there, the outbreak moved to a day care center and a swim school.

Luckily, my daughter was never exposed. She got her MMR shot on schedule and all was fine in our family. However, at least two other infants caught measles. They recovered, but I imagine they and their families had a really bad week or two. Also, the risk of complications up to and including death are higher in younger children. (As an aside, the death rate from measles in developed countries is about 1 in 1000 cases).

If my daughter HAD been exposed and come down with measles, I would have been very, very angry at the parents who chose not to vaccinate their kids. And if they had explained their beliefs by referencing Jenny McCarthy, I might have been tempted to violence. If you want to take medical advice from some starlet instead of a doctor, fine. But when the consequences of that advice impact MY kids, you've crossed the threshold from misguided to negligent, and I honestly think you should have to answer for your actions.