Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, october 21, 2014.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: The Perfect Me by Deerhoof
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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US greenhouse gas emissions rise despite Obama's new climate change push
By Suzanne Goldenberg
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America’s energy-related carbon pollution rose 2.5% last year despite President Barack Obama’s efforts to fight climate change, according to new federal data.
The rise in emissions from burning coal, oil, natural gas and other fossil fuels was one of the steepest on record in the last 25 years, according to the Energy Information Administration’s Monthly Energy Review.
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But the latest figures deepen doubts about whether America will meet its existing commitments for a 17% cut in emissions by 2020 without additional actions, or make the cuts required in the coming decades even deeper.
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Meanwhile, the pressure is on to do more. World leaders have agreed they need to keep global average temperature from rising two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to prevent the worst consequences of climate change.
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Ebola serum for Africa patients within weeks, says WHO
By Michelle Roberts
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Serum made from the blood of recovered Ebola patients could be available within weeks in Liberia, one of the countries worst hit by the virus, says the World Health Organization.
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Dr Kieny, WHO assistant director general for health system and innovation, said: "There are partnerships which are starting to be put in place to have capacity in the three countries to safely extract plasma and make preparation that can be used for the treatment of infective patients.
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The Spanish nurse who became the first person to contract Ebola outside West Africa tested negative for the virus after reportedly receiving human serum containing antibodies from Ebola survivors.
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The vaccines will be tested first to see if they are safe for humans, and if they can protect people from the Ebola virus.
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US spends $7bn but fails to stop Afghan opium poppy growth
By (BBC)
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Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan hit record levels in 2013 despite counter-narcotics efforts by Washington, a US report says.
The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction said the US had spent $7.6bn (£4.72bn) over 13 years trying to eradicate the plant.
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Profits from the trade help fund corruption within the country, maintain criminal networks and support terrorist groups such as the Taliban.
The report comes as President Ashraf Ghani, appointed at the end of September, tries to usher in a new era for Afghanistan.
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U.S. Midterm Elections Offer Little Hope for Science
By Lauren Morello and Nature magazine
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When US voters head to the polls on November 4, they are poised to set in motion a major political shift that promises to intensify partisan strife over issues such as climate change, immigration and research funding. For the first time since 2006, Republicans are likely to win full control of the US Congress — having seized the House of Representatives in 2010, they are now predicted to take control of the Senate.
The development seems inauspicious for US researchers who depend on government funding. Prominent Republicans have repeatedly questioned the veracity of biological evolution and human-induced climate change, and party leaders’ push for drastic spending cuts has resulted in across-the-board reductions known as sequestration, which slashed 5.1% from science agencies’ budgets in 2013.
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That is a double-edged sword. Congress is unlikely to approve large increases in funding. But Republicans will have a hard time pushing through bills to enact the more extreme parts of their agenda — such as blocking new federal regulations to cut carbon emissions, or a plan to require the National Science Foundation to certify that all of its grants serve the ‘national interest’. (That proposal, from the House science committee chairman Lamar Smith (Republican, Texas) is targeted mostly at funding for research in the social and behavioural sciences.) And even if such legislation were approved by the House and Senate, President Barack Obama would almost certainly exercise his veto power.
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The NIH cuts have put the squeeze on many research institutions. At the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, for example, federal grant funding fell by 14% from fiscal year 2012 to 2013, and by another 3% from 2013 to 2014. “Part of it was sequestration, part of it was the timing of some big grants expiring,” says Jennifer Lodge, the university’s vice-chancellor for research. “It sort of reeks of an atmosphere of gloom around funding.”
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International |
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Rwanda Hits Back at America's Ebola Paranoi
By Inae Oh
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Rwanda will be begin screening all Americans entering the country for Ebola, regardless if they're exhibiting symptoms or not, government officials in the East African nation announced Tuesday. Coincidence? The new measure comes just days after two Rwandan students were denied enrollment at a New Jersey school over Ebola fears, even though Rwanda has had zero cases of Ebola. The United States, on the other hand, has had three confirmed cases. Rwanda is also more than 2,500 miles from the closest Ebola outbreak in West Africa. |
DR Congo doctor Denis Mukwege wins Sakharov prize
By (BBC)
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A doctor from the Democratic Republic of Congo has won Europe's top human rights prize for helping thousands of gang rape victims in the country.
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The 59-year-old gynaecologist set up the Panzi hospital in eastern Congo in 1999 to treat women who have been subject to horrific sexual violence.
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Two years ago Dr Mukwege survived an assassination attempt after condemning the continued use of sexual violence in DR Congo by forces fighting to control the country's vast mineral wealth.
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Last year, it was awarded to Pakistani child education activist Malala Yousafzai.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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31 communities vow to create local gigabit broadband
By Andrea James
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Across the US, 31 communities have joined forces to make the dream of fast, affordable, and reliable gigabit-speed broadband a local reality. The Next Century Cities program, launched this week, hopes to defeat the forces holding broadband back. . .
Each community faces unique challenges, but they plan to collaborate on finding the best path that's tailored to their needs.
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Debt campaigners tear up student loans
By Pippa Stephens
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Rolling Jubilee has purchased and abolished $3.8m (£2.35m) of debt owed by 2,700 students, paying just over $100,000 (£62,000), or as it says, "pennies on the dollar".
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Ms Hanna says the problem lies deep within the structure of the education system and the way that selling education as a commodity reinforces inequality.
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The United States Government Accountability Office published figures last month showing there were more than 700,000 households with people aged over 65 still repaying student debt.
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John Aspray, national field director at the United States Student Association (USSA), said recent changes in law mean people in medical or gambling debt can declare themselves bankrupt - but to do so for student debt means satisfying an '"undue hardship" criteria, which is very difficult to prove.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
. . . San Francisco-based experimental pop foursome Deerhoof . . . first released through ATP (ed: All Tomorrow's Parties) back in 2005 with their sixth studio album ‘Milk Man’. Unlike other ATP acts, the band is licensed by the label rather than being signed exclusively – their US album releases are handled by Kill Rock Stars.
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What do you think the label’s reputation is, amongst the music-buying public? What does it ‘stand for’?
Many people know about ATP festivals, but I honestly don't know the label's reputation is. I don't think in 2009 people care much about the label as a tastemaker. People can download any music (or go to record stores, if you have time on weekends) and some of them turn out to be on ATP, Kill Rock Stars, P-Vine and million other labels. It's a nice surprise.
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Can you tell us about your latest release for the ATP label?
It's called ‘Offend Maggie’. It's a raw punk harmonious pop album. Ed (Rodriguez) joined us on this album and he plays like he’s John’s twin; John (Dieterich) is our other guitar player. When they play together, they sound like one person playing a double-neck guitar. I believe their heartbeat rate is the same. We haven't done a tour for ‘Offend Maggie’ in the UK yet! That’s coming soon.
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If ATP didn’t stand for All Tomorrow’s Parties, it would stand for… what?
A Totem Pole.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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How skyrocketing development in Texas could suck the state dry
By Aarian Marshall
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. . . A new report from Texas A&M’s Institute of Renewable Natural Resources indicates that Texas is losing its open spaces faster than any other state in the union: About 1.1 million acres between 1997 and 2012. And while the loss of “working lands” — privately owned farms, ranches, or forests — is a song to developers’ ears, researchers say those lands are vital to the states’ water supply. In a Republic that’s grappling with a historic drought, thirsty Texans should be paying attention.
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But when you lose working lands by developing them, you move to “basically an impermeable surface like a subdivision, a downtown city center, parking lots — a lot of concrete,” says Roel Lopez, the director of the A&M institute and a coauthor of the report. “When it rains, that water runs down drains and river channels, and you don’t have the ability to capture and store [it].”
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Still, federal, state, and local governments have long recognized the ecological significance of open lands. Voluntary conservation programs (like USDA’s ACEP) give landowners financial assistance and tax breaks for taking steps to preserve their wetlands and water resources. But those programs aren’t as popular in Texas, Lopez says.
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These conservatives make the case for vibrant cities. Most of their friends ignore them.
By Ben Adler
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. . . urbanism is actually growing in popularity among a small cadre of conservative intellectuals. They understand that the traditional town design favored by urbanists — houses that face the street, with porches and stoops, sidewalks, public parks, and shared mass transit — fosters strong communities. As Matt Lewis, a conservative blogger for the Daily Caller, wrote in a July column for The Week: “It’s … hard to quantify the spiritual and psychic cost associated with endlessly frustrating commutes, disconnection from a community, and ugly buildings.”
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The main problem for conservative urbanists isn’t the quality of their arguments, but rather that they fall on deaf ears within their own movement. Most Republicans live in low-density rural or suburban areas. And that isn’t some mere accident. According to a recent Pew poll, 75 percent of self-identified conservatives prefer to live farther from services, with greater auto dependence, in exchange for more private space. Seventy-seven percent of liberals, versus only 22 percent of conservatives, said they would prefer a smaller home in a walkable environment.
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For most conservatives, politics is about tribalism. Republicans and conservatives are the political tribal identities of older, white, Christian, suburban and rural nationalists. Their favored politicians’ rhetoric of free markets, small government, or traditional values isn’t really about any of those things. It’s about using the mythology of “welfare queens” to bash inner-city African-Americans, Latinos, and single mothers, and expressing contempt for immigrants, gays, Muslims, atheists, and any sign that American society may change as it incorporates them.
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But to care about oil dependence, you have to accept the science of what happens when we burn oil, and you can’t be on the oil companies’ payroll. And that demonstrates the difficulty conservative urbanists face. Real-world American political movements and parties aren’t a composite of ideas; they are composites of interest groups. Rank and file conservatives have adopted pro-market, small-government values as a loftier framework for their politics of resentment. Their populist anger has been fused to the money, and the money-driven agenda, of corporations and their wealthy overlords.
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Wind farms outstrip nuclear power
By Roger Harrabin
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The UK's wind farms generated more power than its nuclear power stations on Tuesday, the National Grid says.
The energy network operator said it was caused by a combination of high winds and faults in nuclear plants.
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Last week the former environment secretary Owen Paterson condemned the wind industry for soaking up subsidies, producing a "paltry" amount of power and ruining landscapes. He called instead for a new generation of mini nuclear plants dotted around the country.
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But Jennifer Webber, a spokeswoman for RenewableUK, the trade body, said: "Wind power is often used as a convenient whipping boy by political opponents and vested interests.
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Science and Health |
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Getting the salt out: Electrodialysis can provide cost-effective treatment of salty water from fracked wells
By (ScienceDaily)
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The boom in oil and gas produced through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is seen as a boon for meeting U.S. energy needs. But one byproduct of the process is millions of gallons of water that's much saltier than seawater, after leaching salts from rocks deep below the surface.
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The method they propose for treating the "produced water" that flows from oil and gas wells throughout their operation is one that has been known for decades, but had not been considered a viable candidate for extremely high-salinity water, such as that produced from oil and gas wells. The technology, electrodialysis, "has been around for at least 50 years," says Lienhard, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Food as well as director of the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM).
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Before reaching the desalination stage, the researchers envision that chemical impurities in the water would be removed using conventional filtration. One remaining uncertainty is how well the membranes used for electrodialysis would hold up following exposure to water that contains traces of oil or gas. "We need some lab-based characterization of the response," McGovern says.
If the system works as well as this analysis suggests, it could not only provide significant savings in the amount of fresh water that needs to be diverted from agriculture, drinking water, or other uses, but it would also significantly reduce the volume of contaminated water that would need to be disposed of from these drilling sites.
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Thousands of U.S. children are improperly medicated each year
By Brooks Hays
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Every eight minutes, a child in the United States is improperly medicated at home -- that according to a new study published this week in the journal Pediatrics. Double-dosing, whereby a parent or guardian accidentally gives a child the same medication twice, accounted for a quarter of all mistakes.
Thankfully, the vast majority of mismeasurements and double doses weren't fatal, but the numbers -- which many experts say are on the conservative side -- suggest moms and dads in the United States need to be much more careful when dosing out meds to their children.
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Some 82 percent of all errors involved liquid medication. The majority of improperly dosed drugs were pain relievers, followed by cough and cold medication.
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How household plastics could ruin your sex life
By Paula Cocozza
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Research into the effects of phthalates on women’s libido has yielded some strange headlines. Witness the Daily Telegraph’s “Rubber ducks can kill your sex drive”. Apparently, plastic shower curtains – the bath theme is coincidental – are also to blame. These, along with countless other household items, contain phthalates (pronounced THALates), a group of chemicals usually introduced to plastics in order to increase their flexibility. The libido problem is best not addressed with a sex toy because lots of those are thought to contain phthalates too. In fact, phthalates – there are around 25 of them – proliferate in daily life to such an extent that they are present even in the enteric coating of some pills. (Last year, the EU published a draft guideline [pdf] on phthalates in medicinal products.)
The latest study, led by Dr Emily Barrett at the University of Rochester in New York State, was presented this week to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s annual conference in Honolulu. Barrett measured the levels of phthalates in the urine of 360 pregnant women. She collected further evidence by interview, asking the same women how often they lost interest in sex in the months leading up to their pregnancy. Asking people to express publicly a memory of their feelings from several months ago may not appear to be the most watertight research method. However, each of the 360 women showed traces of phthalates in their urine. Those with the most were two and a half times as likely to have low libido as those with the least.
Barrett’s study focused only on women, although previous research by the same university (published in 2009) explored the link between phthalates and the “feminisation” of boys. Other studies have shown possible links to low sperm count, early onset of puberty (which can increase the risk of breast cancer) and diabetes. . .
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Technology |
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Yik Yak: the anonymous app taking US college campuses by storm
By Hannah Jane Parkinson
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Yik Yak’s main feature is allowing people, mostly students, to make posts – known as “yaks” – anonymously. These posts are then upvoted or downvoted (similar to Reddit), and are commented upon. Users earn reputation points, known as “yakarma”, the more upvotes they receive.
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Yik Yak has come in for a lot of criticism for being a breeding ground for rumour and bullying – and more serious content. Myriad threats of violence, sex crimes and hate crimes have been reported, including a mass shooting threat and the circulation of a sex tape. It wouldn’t be unfair to say it has gained a reputation for being a scourge among parents.
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For instance, in a bid to combat high-school taunts, Yik Yak has now geofenced all high schools in the US – making the app unusable on their campuses. The company teamed up with data provider Maponics to identify all schools, and has made the app inaccessible in those locations.
. . . the app monitors conversations and posts, and any negative or harmful behavior will result in the respective user being blocked, or altogether banned from future use.
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Genius app instantly solves math problems by using a phone's camera
By Casey Chan
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I've seen the future and it is math less and it is awesome and it is this PhotoMath app that solves math problems just by pointing your phone's camera at them. It's like a cross between a text reading camera, a supremely sophisticated calculator and well, the future. Point and solve and never do math again.
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After the math problem is instantly read and solved, the app will show you how the answer was reached too. So if you still want to learn math, the app can serve as an immensely helpful teaching tool for arithmetic expressions, fractions and decimals, powers and roots and simple linear equations. The app developers say more is coming too.
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Cultural |
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This heartbreaking UNICEF ad reminds you how much violence children face around the world
By Timothy McGrath
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Every five minutes, a child in the world dies from violence.
More than 10,000 children have been killed in three years and seven months of civil war in Syria. This summer in Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed 490 Palestinian children and wounded 3,000 others. Mexican drug cartels have targeted children and recruited young people in a drug war that's killed 100,000 people over nearly a decade.
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That's why UNICEF UK has just released a new report — and a video designed to spread word of the report — highlighting what it calls an "epidemic" of violence against children and calling on governments to take individual and collective action. One of UNICEF's key recommendations is that curbing violence against children be included in a new set of development goals that will be adopted after the expiration of the United Nations' Millenium Development Goals in 2015. That really shouldn't need to be debated.
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When Women Stopped Coding
By Steve Henn
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A lot of computing pioneers — the people who programmed the first digital computers — were women. And for decades, the number of women studying computer science was growing faster than the number of men. But in 1984, something changed. The percentage of women in computer science flattened, and then plunged, even as the share of women in other technical and professional fields kept rising.
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This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative. It became the story we told ourselves about the computing revolution. It helped define who geeks were and it created techie culture.
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In the 1990s, a researcher named Jane Margolis interviewed hundreds of computers science students at Carnegie Mellon, which had one of the top programs in the country. She found that families were much more likely to buy computers for boys than for girls — even when their girls were really interested in computers.
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So when Ordóñez got to Johns Hopkins in the '80s, she figured she would study computer science or electrical engineering. Then she took her first intro class — and found that most of her male classmates were way ahead of her because they'd grown up playing with computers.
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In the '70s, that never would have happened: Professors in intro classes assumed their students came in with no experience. But by the '80s, that had changed.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |