nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

University Challenge questions made more difficult so as not to offend anyone

Irish Guitarist

University Challenge is apparently going to change their questions so it won't be possible to tell whether they were written by a man or a woman.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/08/27/university-challenge-introduce-gender-neutral-questionsfollowing/

Have you ever watched a quiz and thought "that question was definitely written by a man"? I know I haven't.

It's getting more difficult too because they're throwing in questions about women that no one has heard of.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/25/university-challenge-gender-balances-questions-amid-suggestions/

I used to watch University Challenge and on a good night I'd get maybe three answers correct. I think they should make the questions easier. What about my rights as a stupid person to not be offended?

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

Wibbs

There is most certainly a blindspot to the role of women in history and for various reasons. As Seamus pointed out history tends to be written from a cultural and societal viewpoint and still is. For most of history women were seen and not heard, if they were seen at all. Even so there were a number of prominent women in even the classical world that made waves and in their own time too. Hypatia an obvious one, but there were quite a few others. I' sure there's a list somewhere. And it would be an incomplete list at that, as even the world famous men of that era have large gaps in what has come down to us.

Gender was obviously a large factor, but so was wealth. Thinkers of all stripes almost always came from money, from the top percentage of society. Time to think is expensive. The number of wealthy were always small and the number of wealthy women was smaller again.

In an equal world would the top movers and shakers be split 50/50? I would reckon not. That it would still be skewed towards men at the very top end. This has long been reflected in the various tests into intelligence. They're narrow in focus as tests and don't account for a helluva lot of factors that can lead to truly world class geniuses, but imperfect as they are, what they do show is that the spread of "intelligence" has some gender differences. Namely that more men are represented at the very top and the very bottom of the curve, whereas women tend to have a flatter curve. Fewer complete morons, fewer complete geniuses. Other factors like there are nearly double the number of men with OCD and general obsessiveness can drive this too. Something that can be debilitating, but obsessions have often been behind great leaps forward in human thought. Men also have an advantage in that they can be complete workaholics for decades while still having time to have kids and a family, whereas women can't afford to do that if they want a family. They face an either/or choice that men don't to nearly the same degree.

Could a woman have come up with the general theory of relativity? Of course, no doubt in my mind. Was it more likely a man did? Yes.

Wibbs

Shenshen wrote: »

Rosalind Franklin springs to mind

In a big way. That she didn't get a Nobel prize for chemistry was a major mistake.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Wibbs wrote: »

In a big way. That she didn't get a Nobel prize for chemistry was a major mistake.

Nobel prizes aren’t awarded posthumously. At least that’s how it used to be.

Wibbs

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts wrote: »

Nobel prizes aren’t awarded posthumously. At least that’s how it used to be.

She should have gotten that gong within her lifetime. Her contribution to the discovery of the DNA double helix just one example.

seamus

Lorenzo Bumpy Rake wrote: »

It's this silly pretense that women of equivalent stature must have existed

Nobody is claiming that. Except you.

Pull up your trousers my dear, your manhood is on display.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Wibbs wrote: »

She should have gotten that gong within her lifetime. Her contribution to the discovery of the DNA double helix just one example.

It doesn’t really work that way. Prizes are usually given out years after the work was done, presumably to ascertain its true importance.

xi5yvm0owc1s2b

What Wibbs says is true. Numerous studies confirm that the impact of sex differences in IQ is largest at the extremes of intelligence -- both extremes, so that while there are more extremely intelligent men, there are also more extremely stupid men.

The problem for those who want to blame women's historical lack of high-level achievement entirely on bias, oppression, patriarchy, etc., is that many of the highest achievers -- those who win Nobel Prizes and get their names in the history books -- are associated with genius-level IQ. Fewer women are found at the tail ends of the bell curve.

That makes it likely that extremely high achievers will continue to be male, even after adjusting for social and cultural factors. So when we look at winners of the Fields Medal (ofter regarded as the Nobel of mathematics) and find that only one winner out of 60 is female, something more than "bias" is at play.

xi5yvm0owc1s2b

Wibbs wrote: »

That she didn't get a Nobel prize for chemistry was a major mistake.

Possibly -- but then they do make mistakes. Neither James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, nor Robert Frost won the Nobel for literature, for instance, when many lesser writers have received it.

The problem is that when a woman didn't win something she arguably deserved, we jump to the conclusion that she didn't win because she was a woman -- overlooking the fact that many deserving men also didn't win.

xi5yvm0owc1s2b

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts wrote: »

Nobel prizes aren’t awarded posthumously. At least that’s how it used to be.

That is still the case. The only exception is when the person's death occurs after the announcement but before the awards ceremony.

Danzy

The Middle Class people who 50 years ago would have joined the Clergy and lectured, preached and controlled from the Pulpit.

Today they have joined the modern Left and Liberal movements and they are lecturing, preaching and just as f'ing sanctimonious.

It can never be stressed how sanctimonious the modern Left and progressives are and I agree with the broad gist of their arguments but, grrr ... ...

valoren

Speaking of Nobel Prizes. Here's a good UC question.

Discovered in 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a post graduate student observed a repeating pattern of 1.33 seconds from the same point in the sky. Antony Hewish and Martin Ryle would go on to win the nobel prize in Physics for Bell's discovery. The name of her discovery?

Shenshen

valoren wrote: »

Speaking of Nobel Prizes. Here's a good UC question.

Discovered in 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a post graduate student under supervisor Antony Hewish, observed a repeating pattern of 1.33 seconds from the same point in the sky. Hewish and the astronomer Martin Ryle would win the nobel prize in Physics for Bell's discovery. The name of her discovery?

Pulsar!

Good thing you asked the question that way round, cause I can never for the life of me remember her name when asked.
It's a really cool story, first assumptions were that due to the extreme regularity of the pulses, she'd stumbled upon actual extra-terrestial intelligent life.

Dave0301

valoren wrote: »

Speaking of Nobel Prizes. Here's a good UC question.

Discovered in 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a post graduate student under supervisor Antony Hewish, observed a repeating pattern of 1.33 seconds from the same point in the sky. Hewish and the astronomer Martin Ryle would win the nobel prize in Physics for Bell's discovery. The name of her discovery?

Pulsars.

That was a question from a few weeks ago I think? A good example of a women not getting the recognition she deserved.

Grayson

Wibbs wrote: »

Could a woman have come up with the general theory of relativity? Of course, no doubt in my mind. Was it more likely a man did? Yes.

There's a possibility that a woman did come up with it first.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-forgotten-life-of-einsteins-first-wife/

Einsteins wife was a physicist in her own right however papers she wrote were submitted by him, because as a woman she would have been ignored. And she worked with him on the theory of relativity. Was it her inspiration? No-one can say. It can be assumed however that it was a joint effort.

Edit to add: Einstein was a bit of a dick to her.

xi5yvm0owc1s2b

Yep, Elizabeth I wrote Shakespeare's plays as well. :rolleyes:

But don't dare suggest that Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Frankenstein, despite compelling textual evidence to support that.

Wibbs

Grayson wrote: »

There's a possibility that a woman did come up with it first.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-forgotten-life-of-einsteins-first-wife/

Einsteins wife was a physicist in her own right however papers she wrote were submitted by him, because as a woman she would have been ignored. And she worked with him on the theory of relativity. Was it her inspiration? No-one can say. It can be assumed however that it was a joint effort.

Doesn't surprise me at all. The greatest leaps forward are nearly always collaborative, whether that be a close one or more spread out(the above mentioned Shakespeare almost certainly drew inspiration and lifted lines from his fellow actors and playwrights). She was just as good a student as him, better in some areas and that back and forth dialogue they had almost certainly drove the work. How much of it was hers and how much his? Nobody can say and I would also suggest a fair amount of supposition in that piece. I would strongly suspect that while she was vital in the process it was more his. He continued to operate at the very highest levels of physics after they split up without her input.

I would consider their relationship along the lines of the Curies. Pierre Curie most certainly drove Marie to the heights she attained and was a renowned brain of his own, but her work was much more hers. Though the obvious difference between the two couples is Pierre is and was recognised for his vital input and they received the Noble gong as a couple(though that IMHO was a bit off, as I would see her as the driving force behind it).

s7ryf3925pivug

Dave0301 wrote: »

Pulsars.

That was a question from a few weeks ago I think? A good example of a women not getting the recognition she deserved.

She and Mary Anning are two of seven scientists in Graphic Science. It is a collection of graphical biographies of scientists who were marginalised. It is really good.

Both were marginalised in part due to their gender. Retroactively giving recognition to women who should have already received it is good. Nominal inclusion of women just because they're women is bad.

Dave0301

Hamza Calm Seance wrote: »

She and Mary Anning are two of seven scientists in Graphic Science. It is a collection of graphical biographies of scientists who were marginalised. It is really good.

Both were marginalised in part due to their gender. Retroactively giving recognition to women who should have already received it is good. Nominal inclusion of women just because they're women is bad.

Speaking of recognition, this is well put together...or I am just easily amused

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35FwmiPE9tI

Shenshen

Hamza Calm Seance wrote: »

She and Mary Anning are two of seven scientists in Graphic Science. It is a collection of graphical biographies of scientists who were marginalised. It is really good.

Both were marginalised in part due to their gender. Retroactively giving recognition to women who should have already received it is good. Nominal inclusion of women just because they're women is bad.

Would that include Ada Lovelace as well? I've always been fascinated by her, ever since I found out she pretty much invented software and coding.

[Deleted User]

Shenshen wrote: »

Would that include Ada Lovelace as well? I've always been fascinated by her, ever since I found out she pretty much invented software and coding.

Speaking of coding... margaret hamilton and her handwritten apollo code https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist)

I think Katherine Johnson was used to handcheck calcs even after machine computers came into use
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_kjohnson.html

Wibbs

Shenshen wrote: »

Would that include Ada Lovelace as well? I've always been fascinated by her, ever since I found out she pretty much invented software and coding.

There's some debate about that SS. Babbage had written up similar notes on what we might call coding for his difference/analytical engine well before they met. She was the first to publish them. What she certainly did do is consider the potential of this type of coding, something others including Babbage hadn't. And she was able and did condense it in "simple" terms. That's a helluva talent, right there.

As far as women in computing goes I'd rate someone like Grace Hopper far higher. There's another woman whose name sadly escapes who worked in the 1960's in NASA and who was a major trailblazer of computing and one of the very few front of house women engineers/programmers. There's the well known story of the African American women who worked in the background at NASA doing computation.

As an aside; mathematics was quite the popular subject for well heeled ladies in the 19th century. It was considered an "appropriate subject" for ladies. Ada Lovelace was one such lady. It remained a popular college subject and hobby up until the 1930's but then the uptake dropped right off a cliff. In the early days of personal computing there were more female faces as a percentage in the mix too. And it was at the hard coding coalface too. These days while quite the percentage of women are in the business, they tend not to be in the hardcore coding end, more the front end design stuff. It is odd to consider that in the days of "there there dear, make me a cup of tea" *pats arse* there were many more women at the sharp end of computing and doing maths than there are today where there's far more equality going on.

One woman that always fascinated me was Hedy Lamarr

Ms Lamarr. Having an oul brainstorm.

Hollywood actress was her main gig, but she was also an inventor. Howard Hughes(before he started peeing in jugs) being of the inventive sort himself was very taken with her mind and encouraged her and helped her with contacts in the aircraft and military industries. During the war she put her mind to coming up with different inventions to help the war effort(she even thought of jacking in the acting gig to join various think tanks. And they wanted her too). She came up with the idea of frequency hopping to make homing torpedoes un jammable. As you do. Frequency hopping has been used in all sorts of security applications since then. She was pretty much self taught too. And could speak a crap load of languages.

Wibbs

bluewolf wrote: »

Speaking of coding... margaret hamilton and her handwritten apollo code https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist)

Yes B! Maggie Hamilton. She was the lass whose name escaped(in fairness my brain has a lot of open doors so...) Serious mind going on there.

lawred2

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

University Challenge is apparently going to change their questions so it won't be possible to tell whether they were written by a man or a woman.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/08/27/university-challenge-introduce-gender-neutral-questionsfollowing/

Have you ever watched a quiz and thought "that question was definitely written by a man"? I know I haven't.

It's getting more difficult too because they're throwing in questions about women that no one has heard of.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/25/university-challenge-gender-balances-questions-amid-suggestions/

I used to watch University Challenge and on a good night I'd get maybe three answers correct. I think they should make the questions easier. What about my rights as a stupid person to not be offended?

I'll still presume that the questions were written by men :pac:

[Deleted User]

Wibbs wrote: »

Yes B! Maggie Hamilton. She was the lass whose name escaped(in fairness my brain has a lot of open doors so...) Serious mind going on there.

It says katherine johnson got her degree at 18,serious minds both.
I think a lot of those nasa women did

Wibbs

bluewolf wrote: »

It says katherine johnson got her degree at 18,serious minds both.
I think a lot of those nasa women did

Yep. It's easy to forget that the men and women who were working at the sharp end of 1960's NASA were on average mostly young people, barely out of college, well under 30.

Capt'n Midnight

sliabh 1956 wrote: »

Love watching UC some amazing brains on display though I feel much more at home watching Eggheads It would be gas to see if the BBC could arrange a challenge between the Eggs and the winners of UC

I hate eggheads. It's not just the smugness it's that every time I've seen it the questions seem to be biased in their favour. Not that the questions are harder more that they match their demographics more.

Capt'n Midnight

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts wrote: »

It doesn’t really work that way. Prizes are usually given out years after the work was done, presumably to ascertain its true importance.

I suppose the point here and with Bell is that the men got the prize based on the work of others.

Linus Pauling was also chasing down DNA and had already proposed a triple helix structure. Roslyn had better pictures.

All Watson and Crick had to do was join the dots.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

One woman that always fascinated me was Hedy Lamarr

Blazing Saddles was a great film.

Governor Lepetomane: Thank you, Hedy, thank you
Hedley Lamarr: It's not *Hedy*, it's *Hedley*. Hedley Lamarr.
Governor Lepetomane: What the hell are you worried about? This is 1874. You'll be able to sue *her*.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/BlazingSaddles

The famous Running Gag regarding Hedley Lamarr's name is lampshaded by the governor when he points out that it's 1874, meaning that "You'll be able to sue her!" Made even funnier by the fact that she did in fact sue Brooks (they settled out of court; Brooks' view on the lawsuit was, "It's HEDY LAMARR! Just give her whatever she wants!").

paleoperson

Lorenzo Bumpy Rake wrote: »

Yep, Elizabeth I wrote Shakespeare's plays as well. :rolleyes:

But don't dare suggest that Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Frankenstein, despite compelling textual evidence to support that.

I love Frankenstein, easily my favourite classical novel, but I always felt it was strange that it was written by not only a girl but when she was 18-21 years old and also that she never produced anything else noteworthy for the rest of her life. That makes a LOT more sense - a notable writer husband at 26 years old who then passed away three years later meaning there would be no reason for it to ever be uncovered. I don't mean to commit confirmation bias but sometimes the odd-sounding thing really is not what happened. Considering that according to wikipedia she apparently failed to credit him for the preface or 4,000-5,000 words of the novel it's hardly a major jump on the face of it, but the politics of our time likely means it won't see the light of day.

goose2005

Lorenzo Bumpy Rake wrote: »

I genuinely don't think it's the case that university courses systematically ignore all of the prominent female philosophers and mathematicians throughout history. The blunt reality is that there just haven't been many influential women in some fields. Certainly we can debate why that's the case -- but it's just not true that universities are ignoring all of the prominent and important women. Quite the opposite, in many instances, where relatively minor achievements are elevated to an almost absurd level of importance because of the person's gender or race in a university system obsessed with identity politics. You'd think Ada Lovelace singlehandedly invented the entire discipline of computer science the way some people talk about her in the interest of "celebrating women's contributions." In reality, she's a relatively minor historical footnote.

I'd imagine that 95% of those mentioned in these questions come from middle- or upper-class backgrounds. Why is there not fair representation for working-class people?

CrabRevolution wrote: »

I noticed something similar during the 1916 Rising commemorations. In the name of "balance" they had to play up the female participants of the rising, which is fine and well, I doubt anyone has much of a problem with that.

What did seem ridiculous though was how many of these pieces contained lines about "the forgotten women of the rising" and how "Ireland shamefully didn't remember them as they did Pearse and Connolly". This ignored the obvious reason that these women were just grunts in the Rising, and history doesn't remember the names of grunts whether they be male or female. Random female footsoldiers were being made out to be just as notable as the leaders.

I wouldn't call it rewriting history, but it's certainly a twisting of the truth.

they weren't even footsoldiers, they were auxiliaries like nurses and messengers for the most part. On the rebel side, 66 died and 16 were executed, all of them men. Only one woman (Margaret Skinnider) is known to have been wounded in action.