Sexy Tattoo Back Women: March 2009

Nubia Munoz wins Canada Gairdner Global Health Award

The Gairdner Foundation is a Canadian organization that recognizes achievement in the biomedical sciences. Their 2009 awards were announced today. The Gairdner Foundation International Award, "traditionally considered a precursor to winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine", is going to three men: Shinya Yamanaka, Richard Losick, and Kazutoshi Mori. However this year's Global Health Award is going to a woman: Dr. Nubia Muñoz, Emeritus Professor of the National Cancer Institute of Columbia.

The Global Health Award "recognizes those who have made major scientific advances in any one of four areas' namely; basic science, clinical science or population or environmental health. These advances must have, or have potential to make a significant impact on health outcomes in the developing world." And Muñoz's work showing the role of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) in the etiology of cervical cancer fits those requirements nicely.

Muñoz also won the 2008 Sir Richard Doll Prize in Epidemiology. The award site gives a nice explanation of the significance of her research :

First, she conducted an international series of case-control studies using modern laboratory techniques that ended up demonstrating that HPV infection by certain genotypes of HPV is unequivocally one the strongest cancer risk factors ever found. Her subsequent work also produced precise estimates of relative risks that permitted defining the HPV genotypes that had to be targeted for prevention. Likewise, it was from this enormous and persuasive series of case-control studies and from collaborative work that she had led as part of the International Biological Study of Cervical Cancer (IBSCC) that came the realization that HPV infection was not only the unequivocal central cause of cervical cancer but it should also be viewed as a necessary one No other cancer prevention paradigms (e.g., smoking-lung cancer, HBV-liver cancer) have this distinction.
[I've removed the footnote citations, click the link above to see the references.]

Her work helped persuade pharmaceutical companies that developing a vaccine for HPV was a worthwhile project.

And the role of HPV in cervical cancer has international importance: cervical cancer is the most common cancer in women in large parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia, and the third most frequent cancer in women worldwide. In spite of its prevalence, until the recent announcement of a vaccine against the strains of HPV that cause most cervical cancers, it got little media attention. Hopefully the vaccine will be made available - and affordable - to women in the countries where most of the 250,000 or so annual deaths from cervical cancer occur.The epidemiological studies lead by Muñoz are ultimately the reason why there is that hope of that at all.

Most of the information about Muñoz is in Spanish, so I haven't found anything about her background that I could actually understand. She received her decgree as a Doctor of Medicine and Surgery from the Faculy of Medicine at the University of Valle in Cali, Columbia in 1964. She was a fellow at the National Cancer Institute at NIH for two years in the late 1960s and did post graduate work in the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. She has been studying the epidemiology of cervical cancer for more than 30 years. I think her work pretty well speaks for itself.

More information:

Tags: Nubia Muñoz, Gairdner Global Health Award, epidemiology

Why Science is Important

Alom Shaha, a science teacher at Camden School for Girls, asked scientists and educators to explain why they think science is important. He got a great range of responses, which he has compiled into a documentary. Many of the contributors seem to have moved from research to writing and teaching - I'm not sure that's indicative of anything other than the fact that educators are more likely to have both heard about the project and be comfortable with talking on video.

Some of the women in science who contributed:

Kat Arney, "ex-scientist" working as a Science Information Officer at Cancer Research UK
Robin Bell, Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.
Susan Blackmore, frelance writer and Visiting Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Blackmore is best known for her theory of memetics.
Rosie Coates, PhD student in chemistry at University College London.
Beulah Garner, natural history curator at the Horniman Museum and Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society.
Elaine Greaney, rocket scientist.
Maya Hawes: a 12-year-old student
Ann Lingard, novelist, former scientist, and founder of SciTalk - a site that helps writers connect with scientists.
Becky Parker, Head of Physics at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys. She's a former lecturer in physics, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and has been awarded an MBE for her services to science.
Jennifer Rohn, cell biologist and founder of LabLit.com.
Rhian Salmon, PhD in Atmospheric Chemistry. She currently works as Education and Outreach Coordinator for the International Polar Year
Tara Shears, particle physicist.
Anna Smajdor, lecturer in Ethics at the University of East Anglia. She is particularly interested in the ethical aspects of science, medicine and technology.

Here's the final film (if you don't see it embedded below, click the link):

Why is Science Important? from Alom Shaha on Vimeo.

Tags: Why Science is Important, education

New Diversity in Science Carnival Posted

The latest Diversity in Science Carnival has been posted at Thus Spake Zuska. This edition's theme is women in science, and she's linked to some excellent posts.

The next carnival will be hosted by DN Lee at Urban Science Adventures! on the topic "Dealing With Diversity - what have you done with it, what obstacles have you faced, what success stories do you have". The deadline is May 20, so I should have time to actually post something for it.

Tags: Diversity in Science Carnival, women in science

Visit Dr. Isis to Help a Young Woman Scientist

Dr. Isis, hot science and fabulous shoe blogger extraordinaire, is putting the money where her mouth is (so to speak), and using revenue from her blog to fund an award for a budding young woman scientist. She says:

Since joining ScienceBlogs I have been in contact and discussion with the executive director of the American Physiological Society, discussing ways I might use my blog powers for good instead of solely evil. The APS has very kindly agreed to allow us (hang tight, I'm not asking for money, seriously) to fund an award at this year's Experimental Biology meeting for the undergraduate woman who submits the best abstract. Each year the APS awards seven David Bruce Awards for undergraduate research excellence and, within the structure of this program, the APS will be adding an eighth award specifically from me and my lovely readers (but I'm not asking for money. I promise). I really loved the idea of using my blog to encourage and reward a more junior scientist who had done excellent work and visiting these undergraduate poster presentations are really a highlight for me each year.

You can help fund the award by simply visiting On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess. So far the fundraising is apparently going very well, and Dr. Isis says "If you keep visiting the way you are now (or maybe one extra click more a day to help a sister out? or maybe you would tell one friend about the blog?) we're going to be able to do something much bigger than I initially anticipated we would. Much." So go and read!

If you need somewhere to start, you might want to begin with her post about Marion Diamond, then continue on from there. You won't regret it.

Tags: David Bruce Awards, women in science

Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day: Women Excelling in Technology

In case you've forgotten, today - March 24 - is Ada Lovelace Day. I and over 1500 other bloggers have pledged to post about "women excelling in technology". I had a hard time deciding whether I should profile someone who works on the business end of tech, or if someone in academia would be more interesting. In the end, I took the easy way out by including one of each: Silicon Valley CEO Carol Bartz on the business side, and Georgia Tech professor Amy Bruckman on the academic side. They are from two different generations, and are involved very different aspects of the technology world. Both demonstrate that women can be - and are - successful in technology.

Technology Business: Carol Bartz

In January of this year Carol Bartz was thrust into the international limelight when she was named the new Chief Executive Officer of internet giant Yahoo! While many people outside of tech world may not have heard her name before then, she is certainly not new to the industry; from 1992-2006 she was CEO of Autodesk, the giant software company that produces AutoCAD and other design software, and she served as their Chairman of the Board until this year. Before heading up Autodesk she was CFO at Sun Microsystems. She's clearly no stranger to Silicon Valley.

But her career trajectory could have been very different. In high school she was a cheerleader and the homecoming queen - and one of only two girls taking physics and advanced math classes. She originally intended to major in math in college, but took a computer class and fell in love. She told More.com:

Well, the first time I wrote a program, I just loved it," she says, sighing at the memory. "I absolutely loved it. We had to write a program that would add up all of the license plate numbers in the state of Missouri. Ah! I remember that so clearly."

This was 1966 and she the small college she was attending didn't offer the courses she was interesting in taking. She transferred to the University of Wisconsin at Madison to major in computer science, paying her way through school working as a cocktail waitress (a detail that all the articles about her like to emphasize). Her first major job after graduation was at 3M, where she ran into a big wall: she had entered an industry where women weren't particularly welcome.

"3M was where I first realized that this corporate thing against women really existed," she says. "I was definitely singled out." In her first week, Bartz, the only woman professional in a division of 300 men, was sent to an out-of-town business meeting where everyone was assigned to share a room. When "C. Bartz" saw her room assignment, she quietly had the hotel switch her to a single room. The next morning she was met by a manager who had just, apparently, had a good look at the list. "We're going to have to let you go," he said. "You slept with somebody last night."
Bartz can laugh about it now. "They were so whacked out just because there was actually a female there," she says. "I told them I didn't sleep with anybody last night, and that I didn't know anyone there. Even so, for the next several hours, I was fired."

Bartz spent four years at 3M. But in 1976, when she requested a transfer to headquarters, "They told me to my face, 'Women don't do these jobs.' It was the first time I actually heard that," she recalls. "I'm out of here," she told them. She packed up her desk and left.

At that point Bartz could have found an industry that was more friendly to women, but she instead decided to stick it out in the high-tech business world. In retrospect, that was clearly the right choice. But even now, after decades in the industry, she is one of the few women to hold a top position. Back in 1997 she wrote:

In the country's biggest companies, there aren't many women CEOs. But more are coming up. Some are starting their own companies. It's better to be a woman in technology than in other industries, but there definitely still is a gap or a glass ceiling. It's there in a lot of subtle and some not-so-subtle ways. It starts with venture funding. It's present in the fact that there are not that many women technologists. It goes back to the fact that young girls still aren't encouraged in the math and science arena. It goes to the fact that white males are still more comfortable with white males.

And she sees the situation as largely the same today.

I wonder how many women in technology who had similar experiences to Bartz's in the early days of their careers simply decided to leave for friendlier climes. I believe that Bartz would have likely been just as successful if she had done just that. She could have been one more statistic used to show that women "chose" alternative career paths. But she persisted despite the road blocks thrown up in front of her, and has clearly demonstrated that women can be successful in the high tech business world.

More about Carol Bartz:

Forbes: In Her Own Words: Carl Bartz: No Time to Change Others (originally published Dec. 1997)
Business 2.0: The Survivor: She fought off cancer, then turned a struggling maker of design software into an industry giant. Is there anything that tough-talking Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz can't do? (Dec. 1, 2004)
More: The World According to Carol Bartz (June 2006)
(This is a very detailed profile)
Valleywag: Carol Bartz, the Woman Everyone but Yahoo Forgot (Jan. 15, 2009)
(I know it's essentially a gossip blog, but it's depressing that the second comment on a post that talks about her accomplishments and management style is noting that she recently lost weight. Why does that matter?)
The Economist: One tough Yahoo! Life has tested Carol Bartz far more than even running Yahoo! will (Jan. 15, 2009)
Business Week: Yahoo's Bartz Shows Who's Boss (Feb. 26, 2009)

Technology as an Educational Tool: Amy Bruckman

Just two years after earning her Ph.D. from the Epistemology and Learning Group at the MIT Media Lab, Amy Bruckman's work at Georgia Tech caught the eye of Technology Review, which named her a "1999 Young Innovator". In their profile of her research, they described how she was developing online communities as a tool for education.

As a graduate student, Bruckman founded an online community for new-media researchers called MediaMOO,as well as a MOO for children called MOOSE Crossing. Bruckman has undertaken "the most notable MOO research in education," says Aaron Tornberg, an educational technology researcher at the University of Cincinnati.

To make this possible, Bruckman had to design a new interface, as well as a new programming language. Once she creates virtual communities, Bruckman doffs her engineer’s cap, puts on her anthropologist hat, and studies how the online environment influences the interactions of its participants.

Online communities have blossomed (exploded?) over the past decade, and her research has followed their progress. One of her current projects is "exploring how Wikipedia actually works, conducting empirical studies of regular contributors, administrators, participants in WikiProject subgroups, and people banned from Wikipedia."

Bruckman is also helping develop new online communities, such as Science Online, which helps students learn science by writing about it, and Georgia Computes!, which aims to increase diversity in computing. She believes that such communities can be an important tool in education:

Dr. Bruckman's research applies the "constructionist" philosophy of education--learning through design and construction activities on personally meaningful projects--to the design of online communities. The Internet, she asserts, has a unique potential to make constructionist learning scalable and sustainable in real-world settings because it makes it easy to provide social support for learning and teaching. In electronic learning communities, participants can help motivate and support one-another's activities, "thereby scaffolding the project-based learning process."

I very much like the idea, mostly because I think that's how I learn best.

Bruckman's approach to technology is very different from that of Bartz, but I think that both clearly illustrate that women and technology go together quite well.

More about Amy Bruckman:

Wikipedia: Amy S. Bruckman
Center for Children & Technology: Georgia Tech University Professor, Bruckman, Wins 2002 Jan Hawkins Award
Technology Review TR100: Amy Bruckman (1999)
Wired: Bringing Society to Cyberspace (2002)

Depictions of 20th Century Women in Science: The Smithsonian Collection

There's an interesting post on the National Museum of American History's blog by Arthur Molella about the way women are portrayed interacting with technology and science in 20th century photographs. Molella has focused on the images in the Smithsonian's Science Service Historical Image Collection, which distributed photographs to mainstream media outlets such as newspapers and magazines. One thing he noticed was that the women rarely appeared to be actively involved in scientific pursuits:

While there are literally hundreds of photographs of white-coated male researchers making or using scientific instruments, there are almost none of women doing comparable things. Rather, women are invariably passive or admiring observers. In other words, females are shown dominated by rather than in charge of technology.
Science Service images were typical of those presented by other contemporary media, save for the occasional movie about Madame Curie. None of this means, of course, that women did not play active roles in science and technology over the last two centuries. On the contrary, at the Lemelson Center we have uncovered ample evidence of significant female contributions. But, given the skewed nature of the visual record, we have had to work very hard to find this evidence. While image isn’t everything, it counts for a lot in today’s visual culture.

But that's not the end of the story. At The Bigger Picture, the Smithsonian's photography blog, Effie Kapsalis of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative was a bit surprised by Molella's observations, so did a little digging and discovered that the :

After giving a call over to [Smithsonian Institution Archives], I found out that when the Science Service records were transferred to the Smithsonian during the 1970s (over 500 boxes!), records were distributed throughout SI depending on their relevancy to a museum’s expertise and mission. So, for example, any material dealing with the history electrical innovation and invention went to the Division of Electricity and Modern Physics at what was then named the National Museum of History and Technology (now NMAH). Other parts of the Science Service records followed, going to other NMAH curatorial divisions, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of Natural History, National Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution Archives. The women in the photos at the Lemelson Center indeed look more like early 20th century Vanna White’s then the women in the SIA records.

So the photos of actual women scientists were there in the initial collection. It does make me curious as to which images media outlets chose to run, but at least they had the option of choosing photos of women who weren't just admiring their reflections in the shiny equipment. (And as a side note, I think this exchange really exemplifies one of the advantages that news on the web has over news in the print media. If Molella's post had been a sidebar in a magazine, I likely wouldn't have seen the rest of the story.)

Kapsalis was familiar with the full extent of the Smithsonian's photo collection because they've been posting some amazing images of women in science on Flickr in honor of Women's History Month. Here's the collection's description:

Throughout March 2009, SIA will post groups of photographs showing women scientists and engineers at work; women trained in science and engineering who worked outside the laboratory as librarians, writers, political activists, or in other areas where their work informed or was informed by science; family research collaborators who assisted their scientist husbands and fathers; and several images for which we have little descriptive information to which we invite you to contribute!

There are images of physcist Katharine Burr Bodgett (1989-1979), botanist Mary Agnes Chase (1869-1963), herpetologist Doris Mable Cochran (1898-1968), neuroanatomist Elizabeth Caroline Crosby (1888-1983), astronomer Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941), biologist Muriel A. Case (1901-1981), geneticist Estrella Eleanor Carothers (1883-1957), biochemist Mary Van Renssalaer Buell (1893-1969), physiologist Elizabeth M. Bright (at Harvard Medical School in the 1920s), and physicist Maria Goeppert-Meyer dressed to the nines and being escorted by King Gustav Adolf of Sweden at the 1963 Nobel Prize banquet (she looks understandably a bit stunned). As the description of the set suggests, not every photo is of a scientist, there's also test pilot Jacqueline Cochran, nurse Josephine Fountain (inventor of the "Direct Suction Tracheotomy Tube"), and science journalist Marjorie MacDill Breit, among many others.

It's so nice to see that the set is not at all dominated by the most well-known women scientists, like Marie Curie. It is interesting, though, that few of the women are wearing white lab coats or other "typical" laboratory or field gear. I've seen scientists having their photos taken for publicity shots and I know the photographer often ends up making the setting quite artificial (PI in pristine lab coat holding up a sequencing gel or other film while artfully arranged reagent bottles sparkle in the background seemed to be a popular one), so it's hard to know how representative they are of what these women usually dressed when they were working. Most look like they are enjoying themselves, though, and I think that's all natural.

Here are a few I especially liked - some as much for their descriptions as the images.

Image: Wanda Margarite Kirkbride Farr (b. 1895) sitting lab with microscope

Description: Wanda Margarite Kirkbride (b. 1895) was completing graduate work in chemistry at Columbia University when she met and married Clifford Harrison Farr. When Clifford died in 1928, while they were living in St. Louis, Wanda Farr carried on with her research and eventually became Director of the Cellulose Laboratories at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research in Yonkers, New York, doing pioneering work on cellulose synthesis and plastids.

(I wonder if the spiffy hat was part of her usual lab attire. I suspect not.)

Image: Mary Blade, standing at blackboard

Description: In 1946, when this photograph was taken, Mary Blade was the only woman on the Cooper Union engineering faculty (where she initially taught drawing, mathematics and design) and one of few women on any engineering faculty in the United States. Blade was an avid and accomplished mountain climber.

Image: Cornelia Maria Clapp (1849-1934), sitting at desk

Description: Ichthyologist Cornelia Maria Clapp (1849-1934) earned both the first (Syracuse, 1889) and second (Chicago, 1896) biology doctorates awarded to women in the United States. She spent most of her career as professor of biology at Mount Holyoke College and, every summer, continued her research on fish development at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

Go browse the whole set. And also check out the posts at The Bigger Picture by a couple of the archivists who helped assemble the Flickr collection: Mary Markey on "Adventures in the Morgue" and Ellen Alers on "Formidable: Women in Science".

(via ScienceWoman)

Tags: women in science, photographs, Smithsonian

Barbara Liskov wins the 2008 Turing Award

So, finally, back to regular blogging with an excellent award story.

Earlier this month MIT Ford Professor of Engineering Barbara Liskov has been named the winner of the 2008 A.M. Turing Award. The award is presented by the Association for the Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. And "the contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field." It's often called the Nobel Prize in computing, which gives you a sense of the award's prestige.

In 1968 Liskov defended her dissertation - "A Program to Play Chess Endgames” - at Stanford University, becoming the first U.S. woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science. She told the web site "Engineer Girl" that the expectation that she, as a woman, wasn't really pursuing a career allowed to to focus on research that interested her:

I didn't have a plan for where I was going; instead I reacted to obstacles and opportunities. I believe that some of this was due to being a woman. When I was young, it was uncommon for women to think about having a career. The effect on me was that I just focused on doing work that was interesting but expected to stop working when I had a family. I got into research in software systems and I realized that I was really committed to my work and would not give it up. Later when my husband and I had a family, I continued to work full time.

Listen to her interview on Talk of the Nation for more about how she ended up in computer science. She tells Ira Flatow that she didn't feel particularly lonely as the only woman in her (very small) Ph.D. program, and felt like she was accepted like everyone else when she joined the faculty at MIT.

She ended up doing pioneering research "creating and implementing programming languages, operating systems, and innovative systems designs that have advanced the state of the art of data abstraction, modularity, fault tolerance, persistence, and distributed computing systems." The Boston Globe explained the significance of her achievements in slightly less technical terms:

In particular, Liskov developed two programming languages, CLU in the 1970s and Argus in the 1980s, that formed the underpinnings for languages like Java and C++, commonly used to write software applications for personal computers and the Internet. As such, her work helped to form society's information infrastructure.
[. . .]
In the early days of computing, programs were written as long strings of numbers and characters known as code, sometimes broken up by chunks. Liskov's work helped pioneer what is known as object-oriented programming, now the most common approach to software development. She is credited for laying the groundwork for development of sophisticated programs tailored to financial, medical, and other consumer and business applications.

I especially like the idea that her work formed the underpinnings of the software that makes my laptop run and lets my post this very post.

Her current research focuses on distributed computer systems like the internet and security of online storage. In more technical terms:

Her most recent research focuses on techniques that enable a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of some of its components. Her work on practical Byzantine fault tolerance demonstrated that there were more efficient ways of dealing with arbitrary (Byzantine) failures than had been previously known. Her insights have helped build robust, fault-tolerant distributed systems that are resistant to errors and hacking. This research is likely to change the way distributed system designers think about providing reliable service on today's modern, vulnerable Internet.

Liskov is only the second woman to win the Turing award. Two years ago IBM Fellow Emerita Fraces E. Allen was the first.

More reading:

IEEE Global History Network: Barbara Liskov Oral History (1991)
Discover Magazone: The 50 Most Important Women in Science (2002)
CSAIL News: Prof. Barbara Liskov Wins the 2004 IEEE John Von Neumann Medal
IEEE DS Interview: Barbara Liskov on Programming, Career, and the Future (2005)
NPR Talk of the Nation: Computer Whiz Barbara Liskov Wins Turing Award
MIT news: Q&A with Institute Professor Barbara Liskov (2009)
MIT News: Barbara Liskov wins Turing Award (2009)

Tags: Barbara Liskov, Turing Award, computer science

Encouragement and Inspiration

The March scientiae carnival focused on role models for women scientists. There are a lot of great stories, so you should definitely go follow the links from Liberal Arts Lady's post. While I missed the deadline for the March carnival, I'd like to talk a bit about my dad, who always encouraged my own study of science.

Dad received his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from UC Berkeley in January of 1958. He worked at the same public water agency for 32 years, working his way up from Junior Engineer to Assistant Chief Engineer in the planning department, the position he held when he retired in 1990.

He was always supportive of whatever my brother and I were interested in, and that, for me, was science, particularly biology. He helped me with homework if I asked (although that wasn't very often) and with any class project that required assembly or engineering. I always felt like he found the topics I was interested in interesting too, and that there was no reason why I couldn't pursue any field I wanted to. When I was in high school he talked about his own college days; about how much he disliked taking organic chemistry (if I remember correctly, was eliminated as a general engineering requirement after he had already taken the class, which is how he ended up in water-related engineering), and using slide rules, and the fun times he had there. Some of that we probably talked about when I was actually in college - after almost 25 years, it's kind of hard for me to remember. He was always there encouraging me through both college and grad school.

And he was a great role model - he worked hard, always made sure what needed to be done was done well, made sure that he had time to spend with his family, and was happy to lend a hand to friends. He took an early retirement, and the last 18 years he and mom have traveled all over the world, spent time on his hobbies, did a bit of consulting at his old job and generally enjoyed life. I think that's hard to beat.

Dad passed away on on February 28th. At his memorial service several people came up to me and told me how proud he was when I got my Ph.D. For some reason that brought on tears more than any other comment. I'm having a hard time even writing this now. I also learned that he was welcome to women entering both his male-dominated engineering department, and more recently, his male-dominated hobby. I'm not at all surprised.

I miss him very much.

(If you are interested, you can read what I said at dad's memorial service and see more photos on my personal blog.)

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

I had plans to dress up as a cheerleader or perhaps a bagpiper and march down the main street, around the roundabout at the pier and back up to the main square where I'd get atrociously drunk on green Guinness and throw up. Alas it's not to be, the trials of celebrating Patrick's Day as an expat.

There are several flaws in this almost-perfect plan; no bagpipes or short skirt, no Guinness (makes me wish I'd bought those out-of-date cans I found in the local supermarket at Christmas), no green food colouring, no other paraders and a three-year old likely to be none to happy with the whole process. But I could perhaps have worked around these minor problems.

It's the thunder clouds, rising wind and steady rain that transformed a wonderful spring morning into a dull afternoon and killed the perfect plan dead. It must be all these years of living in a warm climate that's made me a Paddy's Day wimp...

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

"Son, be a de-entist..."

Many, many years ago I spent a summer visiting my dentist, having made an initial appointment about a month in advance. Every Wednesday, my day off, I would bus or walk into Fairview and usually walk home afterwards. His waiting room would have maybe one other person there, usually waiting for the patient he was with rather than the dentist. I'd be brought into the room quickly and then the ordeal began.

He was a severe, older man, probably nearing retirement and he did everything slowly, deliberately. The anasthetic would take an age to work and then he'd prod, push and drill into my poor teeth. At times I thought he was drilling directly into my brain. One root canal took about four weeks and three temporary fills. I don't know how long each session was but it felt like about three years.

On Tuesday I rang the dentist to make an appointment for myself and the Handyman. It took three repeats for the girl to catch either name. Somehow when people hear 'Catherine' it throws them, and they lose it completely when it's followed by a Turkish surname. Anyway eventually she says 'We're very busy. Come whenever you like.' This time I had to ask her to repeat what she said. It may sound like an oxymoron but it neatly sums up the Turkish Way of Doing Things.

So we arrived that afternoon to a cramped waiting room, filled completely. You could tell by the blank stares directed at the Chinese historical soap opera on the television that they'd been waiting for a long time. Again the girl took several repeats to figure out that I had called and what our names were.

After waiting about an hour we were called in. When we first went to this dentist many years ago he'd newly set up the practice and was young, enthusiastic and chatty. Now his eyes were sunken in great grey hollows, his hair had receded to his collar and his feeble attempt at welcoming us was grim. You would swear he had spent years only exposed to misery, pain and strife, forced to witness the most horrific sights, the most gruesome rot and terrible decay.

Within two minutes of sitting in the chair he'd X-ray'ed and numbed my jaw. What followed was a quick succession of drilling and cleaning with a variety of implements. He began filling the cavity at once, filling, moulding and hardening with a neat UV light several times before declaring that I could now chew with abandon. It was all over in about ten minutes and the most painful part was that the suction stuck to the inside of my cheek for the length of it.

Sometimes the Turkish Way is the way to go!

"Son, be a de-entist..."

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative...

Coming across a discussion about positive thinking, I thought it was exactly what I needed (you don’t say!). I really believe positive thinking can be very powerful and that changing our attitude can create real effects in our lives so when ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne was recommended, I managed to get my hands on a copy and thought I’d increase my positivity by reading it.

How wrong I was!

The Secret is the Law of Attraction that like attracts like. The idea is that if you think good thoughts, good things come to you. So far so good. And to be fair the book does mention things like becoming aware of your thoughts and feelings, gratitude for what you have, loving yourself, visualization of goals, all standard ways to change your attitude; the problem is that they are hidden deep in a web of pseudo-science and tenuous logic.

You see the reason good things come to you is that your thoughts are send out into the ‘Universe’ which very kindly reflects you positive things back. If you think negative thoughts, you will get negative things back. You may think your feelings are your own but they’re not, that’s the ‘Universe’ affirming whether your thoughts are positive or negative. If you feel good, the ‘Universe’ is confirming that you’re sending out good thoughts and vice versa.

The Secret is the reason for success. If you are successful you must know the Secret. Therefore Plato, Galileo, Beethoven, Edison, Carnegie, Einstein and Henry Ford all knew the Secret. QED.

Here are a few choice quotes:

The explanation:
“You are a human transmission tower, and you are more powerful than any television tower created on earth. You are the most powerful transmission tower in the Universe. Your transmission creates your life and it creates the world. The frequency you transmit reaches beyond cities, beyond countries, beyond the world. It reverberates throughout the entire Universe. And you are transmitting that frequency with your thoughts!”

The ‘scientific’:
“The law of attraction is the law of creation. Quantum physicists tell us that the entire Universe emerged from thought!”

“I never studied science or physics at school, and yet when I read complex books on quantum physics I understood them perfectly because I wanted to understand them.”

The obvious:
“If you're not sure how you're feeling, just ask yourself, "How am I feeling?"”

The bizarre:
“So when you think a sustained thought it is immediately sent out into the Universe. That thought magnetically attaches itself to the like frequency and then within seconds sends the reading of that frequency back to you through your feelings. Put another way, your feelings are communication back to you from the Universe, telling you what frequency you are currently on.”

The downright wishful:
“Illness cannot exist in a body that has harmonious thoughts.”

“The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts.”

I would have hurled ‘The Secret’ across the room several times if I wasn’t reading it on my phone. Positive thinking surely shouldn’t mean that I should lie to myself! Another thing that’s repeated is that you can’t think positive things and feel bad at the same time. So what about me? I’m writing a negative review and feeling very good about it! I guess the ‘Universe’ will come and get me for it at some stage.

They never revealed the real secret. I should probably write it as an e-book and sell it for a packet but I’ll let you in on it.

The real secret is……

Are you ready?…..

WORK!

You can think all the positive thoughts you want, but if you’re not prepared to get off your behind and work to make them reality, those thoughts are in vain. But I guess it’s easier to just imagine large cheques arriving in the mail…

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative...

Dear readers, I won't be posting for the next week or so. I hope you come back around then.