Author: Alice_admin

Note: You can read the peer-reviewed paper, based on this presentation and published by Human Nature, for free by clicking here. You can also read the Science magazine article about the session. A lot of people have asked what happened at my session at the AAA in Philadelphia last Wednesday, so here’s a report. First, some background:…

I am so foggy from prescription cough medicine, because I’m getting over the flu. It’s unfortunate this fog arrives near the end of the year, because I find myself contemplating how the entire year has been a bit of a fog. I have been finding myself stunned at the cold weather, because surely it’s still…

The Chronicle of Higher Education article on my AAA presentation contains a number of errors, so I’m correcting them here, pending correction by the Chronicle. You can read the Chronicle news story here, though I recommend instead reading the article by Inside Higher Ed. (And not just because I get called “demonic” in that one!) The Chronicle reports that…

Our house was built in 1923 by a fellow named Charlie Washburn. Charlie was a cheap s.o.b., but luckily for us, some of what was cheap in 1923 is dear in 2009. We’ve got some really beautiful oak floors, and a stunningly lovely maple floor in the kitchen. We’ve got wavy glass in the windows,…

The end (I hope) to the international fascination over Caster Semenya came this week, and so the New York Times’ “Lede” blog threw off a quick notice of the conclusion. The Lede blog included a long excerpt from one of my three essays in the New York Times related to this story (click for one, two, and three). It also included a quote…

I often say, honestly, if the woman I was before I had a child could see the woman I am now, there is no way she would have a kid. That woman was so intense about her work, so used to having her schedule at her control, so used to napping, eating, watching a movie,…

David Letterman’s admission of fooling around with his employees has got me thinking about sex at the academic office, and particularly about sexual relations between professors and their graduate students, or between senior and junior faculty. I don’t happen to be one of those feminists who thinks that sex between someone in a superior role…

Rarely are my “blogs” really “blogs” in the traditional sense of “web logs” (i.e., diaries). But I just feel like I have to post a true blog on this week’s hormonal trifecta: First, the New York Times calls to ask about my thoughts on “sex verification” in sports. This leads to a fantastic opportunity to place an editorial in…

Between the book I’m working on and the pro bono private historical work I do, I’ve been taking a lot of oral histories lately. They can be pretty exhausting; the way I do them (described below) typically takes nearly a day of work per history. They’re even more tiring psychologically than physically, because I try hard to listen with…

So I’m working on this book about scientific controversies over identity politics, and as I do so, I am just stunned at how many instances I am finding of people just blatantly misrepresenting the work and words of others. I mean stunned—as stunned as my pet rat was when I accidentally dropped him into my son’s bath…