Back to the Sixties.

Next time you're looking for inspiration, watch the Obamas' graduation day speeches. These two could have been very successful as televangelists for education if we hadn't given them their current jobs.

Michelle Obama spoke at University of California at Merced and you can read the text of her speech online.

I thought it was interesting to note, too, that Michelle's speech was mostly about other people. She mentioned a lot of names of students, those who apparently pushed hard for her to visit there. I thought that was interesting, especially given that our President uses his own experiences as examples, and he talks about his mother quite frequently in his speeches.

The text of the President's speech at Notre Dame is here and I watched it live on, of all places, Fox. I really enjoyed learning about how the civil rights negotiations almost broke down. I never learned the history of the 1960's in school.

Of course as soon as the speech ended, despite the standing ovation, Fox brought out our favorite chump, Michael Steele, who immediately started criticizing the President. If you don't know who Michael Steele is (and I was surprised to learn recently that some of my friends had never heard of him), go to Rachel Maddow's show online and type his name in the search box. I particularly like the way she highlights what a joke he is. So I turned the tv off when he started saying the same old things he always says.

Overall, I was hugely impressed with the Notre Dame speech, with only perhaps a very minor quibble over a point at the end- the last analogy to "fishermen." It's stupid that semantics matters, but I think it would have been better to say "they discovered that they all enjoyed fishing." Why re-emphasize that no women were included on the original civil rights commission? In the same speech where you want to make a claim for women's equal rights? Come on, who edited that?

(And I'm not even going to mention what some of my hippie-ish vegan, animal-rights activist friends say about fishing.)

In the end, we're not all fishermen. The point is supposed to be that we're all human beings.

Speaking of human beings, I guess I was thinking about these "little" slights we all take for granted, because like a lot of geeks I saw the new Star Trek movie.

I liked it well enough, but one thing stood out to me. By keeping basically the same characters as the original show, and the same miniskirts, the people who made this movie are helping (inadvertently or otherwise ) to perpetuate some of the same old stereotypes.

The original show had almost no women, and the new movie was the same in that regard.

Why? Just a total lack of originality? Because of Pepsi throwback, we have to be all nostalgic for the 1960s?

Perhaps the blackest humor of these filmmakers' choices is that the story is set a couple hundred years into the future, and yet childbirth still appears to be the same medical mystery (just like in the Star Wars movies). How depressing is that. Here's hoping that in the future, someone will at least have figured out some better solutions for PMS.

I always liked how the Star Trek franchise promoted technology, the spirit of exploration, and diversity: celebrating the differences and commonalities among races, and (at least among the imaginary space varieties) species.

I can only wonder how much watching these shows as a child must have influenced me to want a career as a scientist. They were some of the only shows I remember watching that promoted women in roles other than the traditional mom, girlfriend, daughter or housekeeper (unlike watching reruns of The Brady Bunch from the same era).

And although it was too late to help me choose a major, I rejoiced when they created a woman character who excelled at engineering.

Yet here we are, more than 40 years later (the original show first aired in 1966), and girls are only recently starting to be allowed to command space missions, both on tv and in real life. While some shows are attempting to put women in other interesting science-related careers, like CSI, what still gets the most attention? Their cleavage.

So I can't help feeling like the uproar over Obama's speech with regard to the abortion debate highlights how in the real-life year 2009, women are still pretty far from "equal".

Even our President doesn't have a solution to bridge that particular divide, but I like that he wants to try.

Forecast: not fair.

One of my activities this week was reading a book on avoiding self-sabotage. From that, I have only a couple of thoughts worth mentioning.

One main point had to do with knowing what you stand for. What is your main belief that defines you.

I believe that things should be fair. I want honesty and equality. It's an ideal, not realistic given human nature. But it seems an ideal worth striving for.

I'm just not sure how best to strive for it.

Another main point was to be aware of when you are in conflict with yourself.

My central conflict, as you all know from reading this blog, is that part of me really wants a faculty position, and part of me wants to quit science altogether.

I realize that wanting to quit anything is a combination of immaturity and a genuine need for re-evaluation.

So yes, I am in conflict. Big conflict. But the book did not get me any closer to resolving it.

One thing that amused me about this book is how the author defines reality (I am paraphrasing here): the only real things are those which are tangible, for which we have scientific proof.

If there is one thing I've learned in science, it's that very little can really ever be proved. And a lot of science is intangible in a very real sense.

And there is so much more to getting an idea accepted than just having proof!

And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with science.

Hypocrisy.

...

So I had this daydream that I wish I could run for President of Science (if there were such an office) on a platform of Change.

Not that I would ever win a popularity contest, I'm too divisive (like Hillary).

But if we had to vote on a theme for science, I would vote Change.

We don't really have a President of Science, but maybe we should. I was talking to someone the other day about what a joke it is that the head of NIH is a presidential appointee.

Let's say that's the highest scientific office in the nation (it is in my field, in terms of funding).

Let's pretend we elect that person, and everyone is required to vote.

I'd like to daydream that things would have to change, since there are so many more postdocs and grad students than there are faculty.

But I am just letting my imagination run away from me. This would never happen, since the average demographic now is that about half of US Scientists (maybe even a majority, depends on how you count) are not Americans.

And then we would have to have a big debate about whether or not to let non-citizens vote. And that question always brings everything to a screeching halt.

...

In other news, Hillary is slipping and I find it depressing.

A friend who lives in a caucus state said he attended the caucus, and that it was a complete joke.

Apparently Barack tends to do better at caucuses than Hillary does.

But the way they are conducted- in a totally informal manner- means that if someone wanted to rig a caucus, it would be a whole lot easier than tipping a vote.

I'm not saying Barack would do that. But there's something fishy about the argument that Super Delegates are just a bunch of people in a room, when that's basically all a caucus is.

The only difference is which people, and how much does it count for. And nobody can seem to agree on that.

I've been saying since the days of Al Gore that I don't understand why we don't get rid of the whole delegate system and just decide based on popular vote.

The delegate system made sense when you had to have a man (women rode side-saddle by then!) ride a pony to get information across the country.

It just doesn't make sense anymore.

We have the technology, why don't we use it?

I think the primary should be national, all on the same day.

This crap about whether or not to count Florida or Michigan is just crap.

We need to cut the crap.

You want change? FAIRNESS would be a big change.