Amazing how this topic is still going pretty strong in the usually short-attention-spanned mainstream media. Personally, I'm thoroughly bored myself with the Harvard soap opera, but then that was never the bit about this that really caught my attention anyway.
I've been reading a lot of the other articles that have cropped up, though, and appreciate getting to see some more thorough explanations of the various research studies from which some people's remarks have allegedly been extrapolated. Also, some of the peripheral articles and opinion pieces spurred by this topic have been pretty entertaining at times.
I've seen, in some of these arguments, mention made of the renowned geniuses of history where the fact is pointed out how these were almost always male. Retorts to that usually point out something along the the line that until relatively recently in history most females received little or no real education and usually were not allowed by cultural standards to actively pursue or involve themselves with any sort of advanced scholarship, so all of this obviously made it unlikely that if there had been any potential female geniuses that they would have been in a position where they might have ever been noticed, let alone cultivated.
However, I haven't seen anyone point out (lately) that there are quite a few famous male geniuses in history who did abysmally in school and on tests. Einstein, for example.
Funny thing about geniuses. Some of them have been known to not do well with orthodoxy, and the upper echelons of academia are certainly an orthodoxy unto themselves.
So .... Maybe standardized testing in elementary and high schools isn't always the best way to ferret out those precious geniuses, eh? Just a thought.
Academia is a hierarchy, and it doesn't seem too likely a genius (of either gender) who can't or won't get the hang of the protocols, such as excelling at standard tests, would have any chance of breaking into, let alone rising in the academic hierarchy these days. Would someone like Einstein, who had a poor formative academic record and wasn't part of the university establishment when he came up with his breakthrough early theories, have much of a chance to be heard and recognized in the current day? I don't think there are such things as self-educated or "freelance" physicists these days, are there? Don't physicists today have to be anointed in some way by the established orthodoxy to even get a paper read?
I think it'd be interesting to see someone informed in such areas address something like that in some depth ....
Here's a piece of San Francisco movie trivia I never knew before. The skyscraper building they used for some of the outside (pre-flambé) shots in "The Towering Inferno" was San Francisco's Bank of America Building.
Just found that out from this article about the filming of the movie.
"The Bank of America plaza on California Street stands in for the entrance to the movie's glass skyscraper -- a landlocked vertical Titanic headed for a spectacular demise. Dignitaries, including a U.S. senator played by Robert Vaughn, walk a red carpet, passing the massive black sculpture known locally as the Banker's Heart on their way to celebrate the building's opening."
I like that the author threw in a mention of the "Banker's Heart" sculpture, as that also happens to be a spiffy little piece of San Francisco trivia, one that's long amused me.
Why did it come to have that nickname? Because this abstract sculpture -- that the bank commissioned to grace the entrance to the new corporation headquarters back when it was built in 1969-- is a heart-shaped chunk of black granite. So, it's a stone cold heart, as hard and black as bankers' hearts are sometimes said to be. I'm not sure who coined the nickname -- as I'm pretty sure that's not what the statue was really named -- but it was given that name back in the day when people had a sense of humor.
Not that I'm implying they don't now .... no, really.
Speaking of humor, across the street from the B of A building happens to be my personal favorite SF highrise of all-time. This building at 580 California is a respectable enough looking building for the Financial District unless one happens to look up at its roof. The mansard-style roof seems certainly some sort of architectual homage to (or parody of) some pretty ornate version of gothic revival. But that's not all! Situated around the roof are these 12 huge statues of wraiths (3 on each side), all posing in wretched and sublime torment.
Subtle, it's not.
But the building is tall enough and surrounded by other highrises that the roof and its wraiths actually can get lost and overlooked in the cacophony of that corner. Unless, of course, you know where to stand to see it best.
One of the places where the wraiths become fairly noticeable is from Portsmouth Square, which is a few blocks away, just on the edge of Chinatown. From that vantage point, a gap between the nearby tall buildings provides an unobstructed view of part of 580 California's roof where the wraiths from that side can be seen taunting and haunting from their not-too-distant perch.
I just love it.
I've heard that the roof was the architect's joke about the tradition of putting statues on buildings, but that's all I've ever heard. There's GOT to be more to THAT story, and I promise if I find it, I'll share it here.
I don't happen to have a good photo of this roof. I've been meaning to go take one for eons. So, one of these days, I'll get a few snapshots of this building because it should be seen to be believed.
For a picture of the "Banker's Heart" sculpture, though, this site has a Virtual Reality Panorama of the Banker's Heart if you want to see what it looks like.
My front window is open a crack this evening, and there's a drunk (or something) guy out there who's been walking up and down the alley for the last hour or two, talking mostly gibberish to himself.
But as he passed by my open window just now, I heard him ask this (of no one) loudly and clearly: "Have you ever seen a leprechaun?"
Okaaaaay.
Why, no, good sir. But how many do you happen to be seeing at the moment?
