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Showing posts from September, 2016

Why vote for Hillary?

I was recently asked why I decided to support Hillary Clinton this election. To note, I'll include a lot of links in this post, mostly to Wikipedia sites so you can get a basic overview of what I'm talking about, in case you're interested. And I'll also add a disclaimer: Look at the title of the freaking post, of course I'm biased toward her. But I try to be reasonable too. I'm among the age demographic that is by far least likely to vote, and many of my peers seem to care little about following politics/current events. So first of all, I want to address this: Why should I care about politics? I believe it’s super important to be politically informed for a number of reasons and through a number of lenses: 1. (As a person) It affects us!  Policies affect our taxes, schools, roads, and the public services available to us (among many other things). 2. (As an average, lower-middle class American) Smart, rich, powerful people (and mostly men) contr...

BYU Gender Balance Among Professors

I came across this fascinating article on gender balance of professors at the BYU's (Provo, Idaho, Hawaii). After a healthy discussion on my facebook page, I decided to summarize my thoughts on this under-utilized blog.   Some background to understand the context for this article:  I'm a BYU-Provo grad (2014) and a woman.   All BYU branches are owned and run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (I'll refer to it as the LDS Church because that's a lot faster to type and read).   The LDS Church is still very traditional in it's cultural gender roles. The article's conclusion may seem extreme to some, but the implications are important enough to consider: "But the biggest problems with the aggressively unbalanced hiring practices suggested by this data has to do with the spiritual environment that it creates for our children. It tells our daughters that their educational potential is limited. When they go through two, three, or...