Hannah Berner plays tennis for Beacon High School .  Except she competes against boys because her school doesn’t have a girl’s team.  She went 16-2 this season, helping her team sweep New York City’s 3 major high school tennis tournaments this year.  She will join the University of Wisconsin women’s tennis team in the fall.

The article.

Hacker Chick

I am a nerd and a geek.  But you can have so much fun with geekiness!  Even if you’ve never picked up a soldering iron or a circuit board.  Like the NYC 20-something who goes by the name Kellbot.  Her formal education was in jewelry and metalsmithing – that’s artsy art stuff.  A lot of people tend to think if you’re artsy, you’re less capable of doing techie stuff, and vice versa.  Not true!

The video is of Kellbot explaining her project.  The gist is there’s this video game in which you control a character who rolls a giant ball.  Normally, you use a standard video game controller to play the game, but Kellbot thought it would be neat to use an actual giant ball to play the game – to simulate what the character in the game is doing.  So even though she had no formal training in electronics, she learned what she needed to from the cool folks at NYC Resistor and successfully completed her project.  Keep in mind, this was her first project of this kind.  If she can do it, so can you.

Women Bridging Gap in Science Opportunities

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the stereotype that men are naturally better at math and science than women are.  Even if you haven’t, it’s hard to ignore the high male-to-female ratio in math and science departments at colleges, universities, and the workforce.  But the good news is that this gap seems to be narrowing.

One of the most important factors so far seems to be having female mentors in these fields.  So ladies…if you’re thinking about doing something in math and science, go for it because young women in the future could use your guidance.  Go out there and represent!

The article.

Mali Tie-Dye

Ayere, Mariam, and Sanata dye fabrics using traditional techniques in the West African nation of Mali.

And finally, here’s a slideshow about how the women of Mali use traditional methods to make beautifully dyed patterns like the ones they’re wearing in the photo above and at the top of this post.

Ooh!  And I almost forgot…Dez has been checking in with you guys – answering your questions and responding to your comments.  So check it out!  Her latest post (about Scotland) is before this one.  You can read her other posts by searching for “Trippin’ with Dez” in the search field near the upper right of this page.