This morning I interviewed artist Kate Kretz who has a cameo in my next book. After a very interesting discussion on topic, our conversation shifted to motherhood. Kate’s a new mom and as I recently mentioned here, many of my friends are now pregnant and/or first time parents. I’m always looking for great reading recommendations to pass along.
Kate suggested The Mask Of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes Our Lives and Why We Never Talk About It by Susan Maushart. I haven’t read it, but here is Amazon’s review:
Everything changes when a woman becomes a mother, but society–particularly women themselves–often colludes to deny this simple truism. In The Mask of Motherhood, author Susan Maushart (a nationally syndicated columnist in Australia and the mother of three children) explores the effect childbearing has upon women. In the process, she removes the veils of serenity and satisfaction to reveal what she holds to be the truth: the early years of motherhood are physically difficult and can be emotionally devastating. New mothers increasingly enter full-scale identity crises, few women have sufficient information about child-rearing realities, and, as Maushart writes, “the realities of parenthood and especially motherhood are kept carefully shrouded in silence, misinformation, and outright lies.” The book comprises seven essay-style chapters. In “Falling: The Experience of Pregnancy,” Maushart discusses wrongful notions about morning sickness, the mixed messages about pregnancy weight gain, and the “mask” of stoicism pregnant women feel compelled to wear. In “Laboring Under Delusions,” Maushart exposes the changes 30 years have brought in childbirth, and the contemporary woman’s need for self-control in all things, including birth. In “Superwoman and Stuporman,” Maushart disabuses readers of the myth of what she calls, “pseudo-egalitarian family life.” The Mask of Motherhood is extensively researched, convincing, and deeply insightful. –Ericka Lutz
Does sound interesting and I’m curious if readers have come across the title. Further, what else might you recommend in terms of terrific books for first time parents? Let’s get a list going. Comment thread is open to your suggestions…
After posting the table of contents and pages 1 and 2, we’re now on to the next:
…in the first place? Didn’t the scientists involved foresee such a public outcry? Did they simply not care? Was the Pluto decision really scientifically necessary?
Such questions implicate far more than our current conception of the solar system or which planets babies will see in the mobiles overhanging their cribs. The furor over Pluto is just one particularly colorful example of the rift today between the world of science and the rest of society. The divide is especially pronounced in the United States, which is simultaneously the world’s scientific leader–at least for the moment–and home to an overarching culture that often barely seems to know or care. (Unless scientists mess with Pluto, that is.) (more…)
On Tuesday I composed this letter to my blog BFF Isis, forwarding her a troubling inquiry that hit my inbox on Memorial Day:
Can I ask, from your perspective, what you think of this study suggesting that men are smarter than women?
First, thanks to readers for so many terrific responses (I especially enjoyed this comment from Zen Faulkes). And today Sb’s resident Goddess has provided her take on Rushton’s so-called ‘study‘. Here’s an excerpt:
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Chris has already posted the table of contents and introductory passages from Unscientific America. Here’s a glimpse at what comes next:
strong enough to have “cleared the neighborhood around its orbit” of other significant objects and debris; and so forth.
People were aghast. Not only did they recoil at having to unlearn a childhood science lesson, and perhaps the chief thing they remembered about astronomy. On some fundamental level their sense of fair play had been violated, their love of the underdog provoked. Why suddenly kick Pluto out of the planet fraternity after letting it stay in for nearly a century, ever since its 1930 discovery? “No do-overs,” wrote one cartoonist.
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I’m off to Michigan State University this morning, for one last bite from the C.P. Snow apple. The conference, being hosted by the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy, the Lyman Briggs College, and others, features some great folks including Dover trial veterans Robert Pennock and Barbara Forrest. You can see the full event roster here. My talk title is “Unscientific America: A 50 Year Transatlantic Updating of C.P. Snow.”
I’m sure Sheril will keep the blogging happening when I’m in the air. More soon….
As you’ve already surmised from the opening pages of Unscientific America, our sympathies tend in her direction…
As promised, in anticipation of the book release, we’re now going to dribble out part of the first chapter of Unscientific America, entitled “Why Pluto Matters”:
Why Pluto Matters
“Viva Pluto!”
“Stop Planetary Discrimination!”
“Pluto Was Framed!”
Dear Earth: You Suck. Love, Pluto.”
“Pluto is still a planet. Bitches.”
(more…)
My latest Science Progress column sings the praises of Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science Education, or NCSE–who has been winning a lot of accolades lately, so I just wanted to pile on. Here’s an excerpt:
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Want to be frightened? Read this blog post, then this longer New Scientist feature that it partly draws upon. There, you will learn that a threat we barely even bother to discuss–space weather, and more specifically, solar storms–has the capacity to quite literally shut down modern society, to throw us almost back to the Stone Age. To quote:
It is hard to conceive of the sun wiping out a large amount of our hard-earned progress. Nevertheless, it is possible. The surface of the sun is a roiling mass of plasma – charged high-energy particles – some of which escape the surface and travel through space as the solar wind. From time to time, that wind carries a billion-tonne glob of plasma, a fireball known as a coronal mass ejection (see “When hell comes to Earth”). If one should hit the Earth’s magnetic shield, the result could be truly devastating.
The incursion of the plasma into our atmosphere causes rapid changes in the configuration of Earth’s magnetic field which, in turn, induce currents in the long wires of the power grids. The grids were not built to handle this sort of direct current electricity. The greatest danger is at the step-up and step-down transformers used to convert power from its transport voltage to domestically useful voltage. The increased DC current creates strong magnetic fields that saturate a transformer’s magnetic core. The result is runaway current in the transformer’s copper wiring, which rapidly heats up and melts….
According to the NAS report, a severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people. From that moment, the clock is ticking for America.
One has to wonder: Are President Obama’s science advisers reading this? I sure as hell hope so. (more…)
For obvious reasons, I adore the art of Kei Acedera.
Unexpected Visitor, 2006
More of her spectacular work here…
