Random old news of awesomeness. 2 February 2010 5:50 pm
Posted by Tracy in : diet stress is a health hazard,eating,geekery,Harold McGee,health,health at every size,nutrition,pictures,random,reading,science,weird,whoops , trackbackSometimes it’s especially good to celebrate good things, and today’s post is dedicated to just that. I am supposed to be reading about the role of women in the invention of food science during MIT’s early years, which makes thinking good thoughts all the more important. Sample bit o’grumpy-making:
In his autobiography… Ellen [Henrietta Swallow Richards]‘s husband, Robert H. Richards, stated that “Ellen Swallow wanted a Doctor’s Degree, but although she worked hard for two years, she had to give up the idea. This was probably one of her greatest disappointments in life. It seems to me possible that some of the difficulties may have arisen from the fact that the heads of the department did not wish a woman to receive the first D.S. in chemistry.”
—Richards, R.S., His Mark, cited in Goldblith, S.A., Of Microbes and Molecules: Food Technology, Nutrition, and Applied Biology at M.I.T., 1873-1988, pp. 20-1
Graaaar! (Also, way to write about your partner like she’s a stranger, dude.) As far as I can tell, Ellen H. Swallow Richards was a stupendous badass and entirely too awesome for the jerks at MIT who wouldn’t admit her to the faculty (she was the Institute’s first female student—a Special Student category seems to have been made up entirely for her—and the first female member of its Instructing Staff), let alone let her complete a Ph.D. Also, if I read one more “Ms. X married Prof. Y, so he was probably her thesis advisor,” I may have to go into hysterics or something. Sigh. Hence my need to write about some good news!
Most of the stuff in this post isn’t particularly new, because I’ve been behind on all kinds of news for basically a year now, but if you’re like me, and have trouble keeping up with stuff, or just want to read about stuff that’s happy once in a while, then you’re in luck. Geekery ahoy!
Science rules!
So it was super old news when Meloukhia wrote about it a month ago, but I still love this comment by one of the authors of a UC Davis study that led to some seriously bad science reporting of the classic “oh noes we are all going to eat ourselves to death” scaremongering sort. The comment is on a Grist blog post whose author, Tom Laskawy, later updated it to call attention to the author’s participation in the discussion and join in the schmack-talking about the Times of London‘s truly terrible misinterpretation of the study’s results. So awesome, you guys, so awesome.
Linda Bacon rules!
You know what’s the very opposite of grumpy-making reading? This awesome two-part interview with Linda “Health at Every Size” Bacon. Really, I can’t say enough good things about it.
Mystery picture from my iPod
So I’m trying (with limited success) to set up my iPod as my calendar/planner thingy, and in the process of many synchronizations I ran across this random picture:
Huh?
and I mean, it looks delicious and all, but I have absolutely no idea what it’s about or where it came from or anything. My best guess is it’s something I accidentally downloaded while browsing the web, but… huh?
Science rules, part the next!
Some of you may remember the Alton Brown episode where he disproved the conventional wisdom that you should never, ever wash mushrooms with water, but some geeks at FCI took that orthodoxy-busting to the next level (shout outs to a certain twisty wurm of my acquaintance, and his delicious, delicious bookmarks). Also, I can’t believe I am only just now finding out about the Harold McGee lectures at FCI. I wonder if I can get a scholarship to those or something.
