Ignore it.

Said beauteous belle is the co-inventor of frequency hopping, which helped build torpedoes that were harder to detect or jam, and forms the basis of modern CDMA and WiFi technology. Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but they unkindly suggested she’d be more help to the war effort by trying to raise dollars instead.

She raised seven million in a single event.

Lamarr was understandably pained at the media’s obsession with her bod and neglect of her more significant assets. She died in 2000, missing the 2003 Boeing commercial which pitched her scientific achievement and did not mention her acting at all. Sadly, the attitude that shunts women away from careers in science and engineering and into more ‘glamorous’ fields is still around.

Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid. – Hedy Lamarr

]]> http://aminorityofone.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/pretty-woman/feed/ 0 ερως hedy_boeing http://aminorityofone.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/munna/ http://aminorityofone.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/munna/#comments Sun, 30 May 2010 23:42:42 +0000 MM http://aminorityofone.wordpress.com/?p=1819 ]]> The New York Times ran a blog post decrying student indebtedness in the United States, but the example it chose to illustrate its point elicits disgust rather than sympathy.

Exhibit A is Cortney Munna, an NYU graduate who ‘somehow’ ended up with a hundred thousand dollars in debt. Yes, that’s $100,000. She has since been deferring loan payments, which continues to feed the amount she will someday need to face. The article opines “It is utterly depressing that there are so many people like her facing decades of payments, limited capacity to buy a home and a debt burden that can repel potential life partners.”

Yes, it is an utterly depressing tale, but one of parental ineptitude, personal irresponsibility and, as one commentator put it, ‘simple stupidity’. Cortney lives in San Franciso – the second-most expensive city in the country. She makes $2,300 a month. After rent ($750), this leaves her with $700 for her loan repayment and $850 for herself. This latter amount, on a monthly basis for a single person, the N.Y. Times has the gall to call “enough to barely scrape by”. Then they wonder why the newspaper is accused of being out of touch with the common man.

Of course, Ms. Munna is entitled to better, because don’t we run the country all for little Cortney’s benefit? “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back,” she said. “It feels wrong to me.” Of course not. Hard work and sacrifice like the sweaty masses? Not for our precious little princess. If you aren’t smart enough to plan how you’re going to pay for your university education, perhaps you shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Suck it up, girl, many people have it much, much worse, and most not because they burnt a hundred thousand good American dollars on — yes, this is the punchline — a degree in Religious and Women’s Studies. I believe this comment needs to be sent out with every university prospectus in the country —

I have two female friends who perform beautiful music on multiple instruments. One writes beautiful poetry and the other performs with a capoeira dance troupe.

However, both of them also have Ph.D.s in engineering (one aerospace, the other chemical). Guess where their mortgage and rent money comes from?

Young people today should be steered into taking the most quantitative course of study possible. Yeah, when I was a teenager and did not have the perspective of years, I wanted to sit around all day and write poetry and essays. However, life is long enough that many people can find opportunities to read books, draw, paint, make short films, join a band, go on an Earthwatch Institute archaeological dig, etc. etc. AFTER they establish a realistic career that pays the freight.

Observer, Maryland, 28 May, 4.11 pm