When Is Technology Transfer Okay?

During the 18th century, Sweden gave cash to its “spies” in England so they could buy copper and iron production secrets. Meanwhile, England issued a patent to a chemist who just returned from Russia with a new brewing method. Moving in the other…

Gender Issues: The Invention of Wings

Our Monday gender issues focus Combine 1 great read, 2 crucial issues and 3 memorable women (2 who really existed) and you get The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. Through a lens that focuses on slavery and women’s rights, The…

Gender Issues: Literate Women

For millennia, men have tried to stop women from learning to read. Before we look back, I wanted to share these World Bank maps that let us see the status of female literacy, 2009-2013 Female Literacy in Developing Nations: Worldwide ratios of female…

Why Do We Need More King Peggys?

Our Monday Gender Issue: Having a woman as the king of an African fishing village can make a big difference. During 2008, a secretary who works at Ghana’s Washington DC embassy  got a middle of the night call at her…

The Robot Milkers That Cows Like

It appears that cows prefer robot milkers. Rather than following a human schedule of pre-dawn mornings and late afternoons, the robots respond to what the cows want. Perhaps 5 or 6 times a day, the cows line up in front…

The Best Reason For Women to be on Corporate Boards

Our Monday Gender Issue: Last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had long opposed female quotas on corporate boards, capitulated. Ms. Merkel’s labor minister, a physician and mother of 6, held firm to demands that her boss accept quotas. Merkel…

How To Cope With (Water) Stress

Being water stressed means you are unusually vulnerable to a water shortage. Sort of like a household where one emergency can push it over the edge because it spends all it earns, so too with most water stressed nations. That one drought…

Gender Issues: What If We No Longer Said “He” and “She”?

Our Monday Gender Issue: In the February 10th issue of the New Yorker, I read “Pronoun Envy” by Anne Carson. Here is the beginning: Pronoun Envy “is a phrase coined by Cal Watkins of the Harvard Linguistics Department in November…

Should Kids Get Paid for Grades?

What happens when you combine a $100 student payment with a teacher bonus for high A.P. grades, better lab equipment, free tutoring, Saturday classes and extra teacher training? At one Boston school, the results for the A.P. Statistics exam were:…

How is March Madness About Women?

Our Monday Gender Issue: “A woman’s place is on home, first, second, and third.” A League of Their Own, 1992 45 years ago, cheerleading and square dancing were the sports we associated with young women while only 1 in 27…