Feh. Another screed about raising children from someone who has, apparently, never met one.
Every parent I know has had the same experience: hand some infant female a truck, and she rejects it. I'm carefully choosing my words to avoid claiming that this is universal, as opposed to extremely common. My daughters were no exception. Attracted like magnets, initially, to dolls -- and later interested in a variety of subjects. The ballet dancer will probably not write the next Linux, but the jury is still out the younger one. The author just retypes the same old tired stuff about kids and toys, when reality is much more complicated. People are born, it seems, with a complicated set of predispositions, some of which are more or less strongly related to gender. Toy stores sell what people buy, and some of what people buy is what their kids pop out wanting. On the other hand, the claim that pre-age-seven play habits are causative of later decisions and preferences is supported in this piece only by quoting a Jesuit. Even by the low standards of social science, that's weak. It's also stupid, thoughless, determinism. It never ceases to amaze me that any suggestion of generic influence rejects to the point of offense, but the same writers assert that environmental effects are cast into immutable stone. Maybe women are just smarter and have figured out that they can get more money for less work in marketing? On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 12:36 PM, Joe Schaefer <joe_schae...@yahoo.com>wrote: > Indeed, and on my birthday no less. Good read. > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > > From: Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacre...@apache.org> > > To: dev@community.apache.org > > Sent: Thu, September 16, 2010 12:31:56 PM > > Subject: Re: [proposal] integrating wo...@a.o into an Apache code of > practice > > > > On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 6:10 PM, Joe Schaefer <joe_schae...@yahoo.com> > wrote: > > > ...I think > > > we should remain open to future initiatives, even those that > > > present potential "corrective" biases which favor underrepresented > > > groups.... > > > > I agree with that. > > > > About women, I found this article very interesting: > > http://jolieodell.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/women-in-tech/ > > > > -Bertrand > > > > > >
