Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for January 06, 2025

It’s unusual for the speech bubbles to be colored, but not the rest of the comic strip.

Perhaps Mr. Wiley thought color might help us to pay closer attention to the words that are in them.

After four decades as an engineer, I’ve always felt that women should be better at engineering than men. The two qualities you need most are persistence and near fanatical attention to detail, and women, in general, are better at that then men, in general.

While Danae’s comment was largely (and sadly) true in former times, it is far less true now. Still far from fair, but getting there.

One wag said that science advances one dead old scientist at a time. Kind of the same for societal advancement, too.

But Danae will have to learn that if she continues to try to make the rules to suit herself, she’ll have to do things which impress others —not just Danae.

Socialization comes early. I was overhauling an engine in my garage and the neighbor’s kids dropped in. The boys volunteered to help and wanted to grab wrenches and didn’t mind the grease and oil. The little girls all wrinkled their noses and would not touch anything. In engineering college (60s) we had one lady who graduated with my class. She was very smart and outspoken. She was recruited by IBM. She was fired a year later for swearing too much.

This is false (at least for the last decade or so)

Cue the discovery of women in science.

BS in Engineering, 20 years IT sys admin. My experience, there is no difference between men and women in STEM.

Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood actress and inventor, developed frequency hopping, the technology behind WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS

Why hasn’t anyone made a biopic about her?

The next Leslie Winkle.

See Ada Lovelace ( 1815-52 ). Generally considered the first computer programmer.

Maybe stinky boys colored the speech bubbles.

See the film, “Hidden Figures.”

My granddaughter is a sophomore at Oregon State University (Go Beavers!). She is studying Biomedical Engineering.

I am an Electrical Engineer. Her other grandfather was a Mechanical Engineer and her father. my son, is a Civil Engineer. It’s in the blood.

The other two occupations in the family are nursing and teaching. We have two more granddaughters to go.

Lillian Moller Gilbreth, the mother in the book “Cheaper by the Dozen” was a PhD, industrial engineer, and a pioneer of industrial psychology in the early 20th century. She ran the business after her husband died. She invented the triangular workspace, foot pedals on wastebaskets, and light switches on walls. And bore 12 children, seeing 11 of them through college.

Surprised you didn’t hit on this long ago.

Danae the victim.

Hedy Lamarr, Ada Lovelace, Mary Anderson, Grace Hopper, Margaret E Knight, Sally Dominguez, Temple Grandin, Ann Tsukamoto

Well, this boy has never said girls couldn’t do engineering stuff. And after a career working for and with women engineers, I’d dispute it.

I got my BS in Information Systems management in 1985 – most of my classes were filled with boys. I was a Cobol programmer for 19 years and a business analyst for 7 years and there were a few women, but not many. There’s no reason women can’t do it, it’s just that a lot of them don’t want to. In my experience, it is a bit of a boys club, just like nursing is a bit of a girls club.

Here we go again. Danae on a rant.

No young lady Ever heard that from me as a teacher.

This topic is why internationally renowned ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) has a subdivision specifically for Women In Engineering. Women often prefer to do something caring instead of working with machines. WIE tries to convince them helping the world is worth the effort.

As a boy, I thought I would like to be an inventor, but I found out that creativity and insight are not enough — you have to be driven, pushy, good at “selling,” willing and able to risk significant amounts of money… bleagh. The success stories have always been famous, but it took Shark Tank to bring out all the poor folk who thought they invented the best thing since sliced bread and ended up broke, divorced, and homeless.

Four editorial cartoons today,and no comments allowed?

Why do I pay for this?

Jack666

I have been awarded three patents. AND I am one of the first people to receive patents in two different millennia.

STEM awaits

My doctors are, and my mentors in voice/data and design technology ere women, smart and very personable as heck. I have had women as supervisors, which were, one was great and one was horrible, however the same for my male, which some were great, and a few were horrible. To me, I believe when it comes to knowledge, it does not matter the gender.

Society shoots itself in the foot when it suppresses the potential of any of its gender and ethnic groups. Women are roughly 50% of the population – suppress them and you are suppressing half of your growth potential. Countries controlled by groups like the Taliban only regress.

I’ve worked with women engineers and never heard a word against them. My ex-wife was an engineer for CalTrans. The world is gradually accepting that one must take talent where it exists.

It was a female engineering student who figured out the Citigroup building in NYC had a fatal design flaw.

Thank goodness, finally an actually storyline, January is looking up ! ;-)

My brother was at the race tract some years ago working on his car when a young lady approached and started asking questions that my brother found surprising since all the questions were valid in that she knew how things worked. My brother does have a degree in Engine Dynamics (race engines are his specialty) and knows when people give him BS, so he asks her what do you do for work? And she answered I work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

You got this Girl. Do not let anyone ever tell you can’t do something because you are a girl.

Don’t forget Madame Curie.

Strange, whenever I see a scientist these days on video its always a woman.

When I was involved with the Computer Science Department in the late 80s, we spent far too much time discussing how we could convince more females to aim for a degree in CS. With no useful conclusions… but more recently, we find that it’s basically a perception by females that STEM courses attract unattractive males… and why would they WANT to associate with such people?

In the 1980s computers came out of the big data centers and onto the desktop. Every business needed a computer person or dozens of them. Computers were NOT a traditional business and there were no widely-known traditional gender attachment to the profession.

Yet 90% of the programmers I worked with were men.

I joined an all-boys exclusive club known as Air Force Pilots. That changes several years after I got in. Women were just getting into operational assignments when I left. I never got to fly with any.

My mom was an ace at household repairs and my wife was a mechanical designer so I have no difficulty imagining that girls can do it.

Yeah Danae, I was told that industry is for boys and girls should go into teaching or nursing. Oh, and forget physical chemistry, there is too much math in that and girls can’t do math. This from a department head whose Ph.D. was in astronomy, not chemistry. Stinky, booger-brain.

Danae was ahead of the curve. Although she has since found her niche breaking the laws of man, God and reality.

Well, it IS a patriarchal, sexist world. But, women have made COUNTLESS contributions, including inventions, to the world. Nuff said.

Don’t even mention politics to her…