Science News: Another Incredibly Smart And Driven Woman Who Discovered Really Important Things Just Died

Such a cool apartment, I like the mini-window between the bedroom and sitting area.

The best squad. [ Via @awkwardyeti]

Watch: President Obama redefines black excellence in Congressional Black Caucus event speech 

Happy Ada Lovelace day - here's why we should all remember her

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. Who's that? Just the first computer programmer. Ever.

Lovelace’s friend Charles Babbage designed a concept for a machine he called the “Analytical Engine” – essentially a mechanical computer that would have relied on punch cards to run programs. He recruited Lovelace to translate some notes from one of his lectures, but while Lovelace was translating she added to the notes herself.

The notes grew to three times their original length, as Lovelace described what many call the first computer program. Because of funding issues, the machine was not built during her and Babbage’s lifetimes.

But Lovelace’s published article on the Analytical Engine later became a source of inspiration for Alan Turing’s work to build the first modern computers in the 1940s.

Women are sometimes considered outsiders in the science and technology fields, but Lovelace and many of the female computer programmers who followed her are proof that this paucity is a function of society, not capability. We forget or never learn about the female “computers” who programmed early mechanical machines in World War II, or that the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan once ran articles suggesting that women were perfectly suited for programming.

If the lack of acknowledgement of women’s contributions to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields grinds your gears, then Ada Lovelace should be one of the first names you go to right that wrong.

Further reading:

Wikipedia profile

10 Things You May Not Know About Ada Lovelace

What if there were more women in tech?

Why we ALL need to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day

Yes

Let's elect politicians who could pass a high school science class

I’m re-posting this comic because I live in America.

Here, the places I love most in the world are gripped by drought. I’m thinking of giving away my winter tracking guides because there’s never enough snow. Climate change is knocking on our door, and the fact that it’s already so evident is a bad sign: it means that we’re headed for a lot more warming.

But we can deal with this, people. We’re brilliant. We’re brave. What we need - besides some kinda magical cooling ray - is a batch of elected officials who are ready to be brave alongside us.

If climate change bums you out, don’t lose heart: it means you’re strong. You’ve personally confronted a huge issue. Why let yourself be governed by scared people who can’t face it, who equivocate and attack scientists and hide their heads in the sand?

My brave dear friends: let’s get our climate vote on.

All the vampire superstitions! Except sunlight

Nice, old-timey church in a sleepy town in Slovakia. What could possibly be interesting about this place?

A Single Book Can Alter The Strongest Of Foundations

Installation artist Jorge Mendez Blake creates a powerful brick sculpture titled “The Castle”. The intimidating wall, formidable and erect, loses its symmetry and forms a rift at the point where a book it inserted at its root. 

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