So what HAVE women invented?

Why is it that there's so much automatic offense-taking at the suggestion that women are worse at doing anything, but apparent smugness whenever it's suggested that women are better at doing everything? There's an awful lot of semantic game-playing around this point not to mention denial that the tendency exists, but this is the pattern on Broadsheet, not to mention a hell of a lot of feminst blogs that Broadsheet links to.

Why the denial, Broadsheet? Why is it necessary to put the most positive possible spin on whatever it is a woman does while putting a negative spin on men doing the same thing? Is your self-esteem really that fragile that it needs constant shoring-up?

If you honestly believe that women are no better than men, why all the spin and dishonest language and behavior to suggest that women are superior in the realms of morality, fairness or intelligence?

Still, without discussing which sex may be better at it, multi-tasking is largely overrated.

It's amazing people ask about multi-tasking on interviews. It's like a beat your wife question. How are you at multi-tasking? Oh, just great! I can IM, and play solitaire and surf FARK, and perform surgery and pilot an aircraft while disarming a bomb and all at the same time!

But the story of Philo Farnsworth is amazingly cool. And for you Salon girls, you can still visit his original SF lab and a small plaque if you take a walk over to 202 Green Street.)

These days, we must remember, Farnsworth would be medicated for his ADHD.

she seems stupid and creepy and uses weak logic to shore up her prejudices.

but this statement bothered me..

how women should adapt to men's sexism.

Men have to adapt to women's sexism ALL THE TIME. But, unlike women, we men collectively do not have the power or the tools in place to change or overcome this sexism. YET.

Agriculture, polonium, humanity...

Why, we women have invented Feminist discourse, a Very Serious realm of thought larded with the kinds of logical fallacies, empirically-untenable research and backwards reasoning you'd expect to find in freshman composition papers.

Apart from that... um.. women have invented.. um... Kevlar, windshield wipers and, um... well, science is all phallocentric garbage anyway. Who needs it?

Yes, men made science boring on purpose so that female scientists would be turned-off by it! The lack of female inventions is a result of male conspiracy, much in the same way that any female failure is a male conspiracy.

"Men have to adapt to women's sexism ALL THE TIME. But, unlike women, we men collectively do not have the power or the tools in place to change or overcome this sexism. YET."

It's not sexism, it's called experientialism. Get used to it.

with this multitasking women, single tasking men crap.

Can we stop with the generalizations?

Men might single task because they prefer dealing with one subject rather than rolling between multiple subjects. It is a preference, not some sort of mental shortcoming.

The idea of multitasking is itself queer. When you write a sentence such as this one, for instance, you multitask.

You are running with the idea, checking for spelling errors, using proper language and semantics, pecking at the keyboard keys, looking out for the boss, unconsciously listening in case someone yells "tora tora", noting the hunger in your stomach because it is not lunch yet.

ALL AT THE SAME TIME (!!) imagine that.

Really -- BO-RING, fallacious, tedious.

At taking credit for the inventions and discoveries of women...see the story Watson and Crick and their discovery of Rosalind Franklin's discovery of the structure of DNA.

http://www.ba-education.demon.co.uk/for/science/dnamain.html

This is crap, as a man and a fan of real science, I'm really offended by these ridiculous generalizations. I married my wife because she is smarter than I am. Only stupid men prefer dumber women (maybe there are too many stupid men).

Lots of things - when you consider how few female inventors, scientists and engineers there have been until very recently.

For example:

Hedy Lamarr (yes, the movie star) co-invented frequency-hopping spread-spectrum radio and got a patent on it - during WW2.

In the same time period, a team of women at the University of Pennsylvania essentially invented/developed computer programming (for ENIAC).

There's also the many accomplishments of Marie Curie, more than 100 years ago.

Those are just the ones that come to mind without doing any research.

There are probably all sorts of gender differences in how people think when you look at large groups of them and make sweeping generalizations. That doesn't say anything about what an individual can do.

btw, Pem Farnsworth worked closely with Philo T. to invent high-definition electronic television. Her face was the first image he transmitted using it.

So what HAVE women invented?

Agriculture,

unproven, and ridiculous anyway. Ants 'farm' molds for food.

polonium,

sure, I'll gladly grant that one.

humanity...

uh, it takes two. Probably, the initial unisexual cell that spawned two sexes 3.7 billion years ago split apart, with the male cell and the female cell standing next to each other like dumbasses. Of course, even back then, it TOO took the boy cell to make the FIRST MOVE on the girl cell. You think this stuff ever changes?

Women invented "agita" (is that how its spelled). They invented grief and simmering resentment. They invented ad hominem attacks. They invented blaming men. They invented brooding. They invented making excuses that they are too weak or girly to do something.

That is a lot to invent-- I am sure I missed many things. and to think, no Women's Invention Hall of Fame to document all of this.

Medicinal compounds, nursing, Mother's Day, the Cardibra: "With that thought in mind Carolyn Naismith set about translating her idea into a practical application to help women recovering from cardiac surgery. The end result was the Cardibra."(2007)

... how about the circular saw and the rotery engine. both invented by women.

Here's a list from Women Inventor History:

1843: Ada Augusta Lovelace, laid some of the early conceptual and technical groundwork for high technology by helping develop an early computer.

1903 Marie Curie was the first female recipient of a Nobel Prize, for the discovery of radioactive elements.

Mary Anderson was awarded a patent in 1903 for a window cleaning device, a foreruuner to the windshield wiper.

1904: Lizzie Magie invents a game called The Landlords Game a forerunner of the Monopoly game.

1946: Marion Donovan sold her disposable diaper invention for about $1 million "in order to devote more time to developing other inventions".

1952: Grace Hopper was credited with devising the first compiler, a program that translates instructions for a computer from English to machine language.

1959: Ruth Handler invented an anatomically improbable molded plastic statuette named Barbie. Since its debut in 1959, the Barbie doll has become an American icon that functions as both a steady outlet for girls' dreams and an ever changing reflection of American society.

1965: Stephanie Kwolek invented one of the modern world's most readily recognized and widely used materials: Kevlar. Her name appears on 16 patents; she is sole patent holder on seven.

1991: Naomi Nakao, is a practicing gastroenterologist, founder of Granit Medical Innovations in 1989 and inventor of the Nakao Snare in 1991. She has 54 patents or patent pending in her name.

1993: One Saturday morning in 1993, when she was eight years old, Abigail M. Fleck and her father, Jonathan, were cooking bacon in their St. Paul, Minnesota home. Inspired by an offhand comment from her father,. Abbey Fleck invented a new, quicker and healthier way to cook bacon, then founded a company to sell her product, The Makin' BaconŒ.

2002: Under Helen Greiner's leadership, iRobot Corporation is delivering robots into the industrial, consumer, academic, and military markets. In 2002, the ROOMBA robot vacuum was introduced to the consumer products marketplace.

2006: Jennifer Tuttle submitted a short essay to the Live Your Dream contest. Tuttle created a game, Multiplication Madness. In February, 2006 she was selected as the winner and won over $250,000 in cash, products and training for her effort.