Hi, my name is Kimberly Blessing. I'm a computer scientist, Web developer, standards evangelist, feminist, and geek. This is where I write about life, the Web, technology, women's issues, and whatever else comes to mind.
Geeky news stories you might have missed
Some of these stories are a few weeks old — sorry, that’s what happens when you go to SXSW!
- ACM Names Barbara Liskov Recipient of the 2008 ACM A.M. Turing Award You had to know I’d be excited about this one! Barbara Liskov is the second female recipient of the award (Fran Allen was the first, in 2006). Dr. Liskov was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in Computer Science in the United States, and she is given the award “for contributions to practical and theoretical foundations of programming language and system design, especially related to data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing.” Congratulations, Barbara!
- Computer Science Majors Increase at Most Significant Rate Since Dot Com Boom Good news for the field of computing, however, if you look at the data, the percentage of women has remained the same.
- Psychology of nerding and the joy of reckless tech The topic of taking stuff apart without regard for whether or not it will work when put back together has come up in my life a lot, recently. For example, Mat Schaffer and I gave career day talks to young women last week, and we spoke about doing just this, to see if they have a knack for technology. My recommendation: spend $5 on an old VCR at Goodwill and pull the thing to pieces.
- Code cracker remade Bletchley Park scientists and makers have rebuilt The Bombe — the code cracking machines used to break the Enigma cipher in WWII! Plus, Bletchley Park is in need of saving, so please contribute, if you can.
- Students tie £56 camera to balloon and send it to edge of space to capture stunning images of Earth Now these are the types of projects that high schoolers ought to be doing! (The full set of photos are here.)
- Is Genius Born or Can It Be Learned No answers, but some interesting facts are mentioned.
