Niki: Competitive cheerleader and future medical doctor, by Darlene Cavalier

Howdy, Science Cheerleader fans! Allow me to introduce you to a fellow Illinoisan, Nicole (Niki), a competitive cheerleader pursuing a science career.

You’re studying Interdisciplinary Health with minors in Spanish and Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. What got you interested in that collection of subjects?

Nicole:

As a junior in high school, I took Introduction to Sports Medicine, and from there the rest is history! After having seen and had numerous injuries myself, everything fell into place. From that point on, I knew Orthopedics and Sports Medicine was going to be my goal, it was just a matter of choosing the degree. I-Health offers a wide variety of courses that intrigued me. It gave me the opportunity to not just study 1 field, but many aspects that can relate to athletics, science, and medicine!

You’re in the process of studying for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT)?

The MCAT is a standardized test that is a combination of physical sciences, verbal reasoning, writing samples, and biological sciences. Sitting for the exam takes about 6 hours, and requires extensive preparation. To help prepare, I have been taking all the courses that are recommended and tested on the exam. I will also be taking a preparation course and doing lots of practice exams and problems. The best form of preparation for the test is to just keep practicing, sound familiar? My goal is to become a doctor and work with athletes to bring them back to health after injuries to continue competing and playing in the sports they love.

Best part of your studies?

The best part of my studies is the constant learning and expanding of knowledge. I love being able to have study groups with friends and building relationships with my professors. My day job is a full time student, but I am also an intern and volunteer with the athletic trainers of my high school and the Chicago Rush, an Arena Football Team. Working with these programs allows me the opportunity to continuously learn from real life experiences and continue to develop my skills. I appreciate these opportunities and my education because I know in the future I can make a difference in someone’s life.

You’re a serious cheerleader and dancer—15 years of activity—doing everything from high school cheerleading to Illinois Stunt and Tumble. What do you find the most rewarding about all those activities?

The most rewarding part of being involved in cheerleading for 15 years would have to be getting to know my teammates and all the ups and downs along the way. Working hard for 15 to 20 hours a week is worth every minute when the team steps on the mat and does the best routine possible. I have also loved being able to break the stereotypes. This is something that has kept me motivated because I can be an example of being the complete opposite of the “cheerleader” stereotype by being a dedicated student and a cheerleader!

Which came first, your interest in science or cheerleading?

Since my cheerleading career began before I started school, I would have to say that my love of cheerleading came first; however, I have always enjoyed school. My dad, Tom, and I used to have “Tommy School,” and I can still remember my dad telling me that if you understand Math, everything else comes easy. We used to do math flashcards until I could get through the entire deck without a mistake! As much as I did not understand why he insisted so much then, I could not be happier now. Understanding math really did make everything else easier for me, including me getting a serious interest in science at a young age!

How do the qualities that made you a great cheerleader benefit you in your science studies?

I have learned through the competitiveness of cheerleading that you can never give up. No matter how difficult something is, if you try your best, you never fail. I also dedicate myself to everything I do to my best ability. No matter if I have three exams in one week or my flyer is falling to the ground, I will fight to do my best to do make sure everything ends up right. These qualities have shaped me to be the strong headed and driven student I am today. I want to be able to show others that concepts learned in a sport can relay to real life experiences.

There are stereotypes about cheerleaders in our society that make it seem unlikely that a cheerleader could be a scientist.  Obviously these stereotypes are untrue, and you are a great example of that.  How do you feel about breaking down negative stereotypes about cheerleaders? Have you faced a situation where you had to challenge a stereotype about cheerleaders [or scientists]?

I think that it is extremely important for these stereotypes to be broken down. These are simply negative connotations that are coming from people who do not understand or know cheerleaders or people in the science field. My opinion is that you have to love what you are doing, so if you love cheerleading/dance find a way to bring something you have learned or gained to your academics and future. Majority of my life I have been stereotyped as the “smarty,” but at the same time people would call me the loud cheerleader. People never knew how to connect the two, so they went to both extremes. In 8^th grade, everyone voted for what profession each student in the class would be when they grew up, although I had great grades and could have been voted anything, I was voted the professional cheerleader. This is just one reason I hope that this sport we all love soon becomes recognized and people no longer stereotype those involved because there is so much more to the athletes who pour their heart and souls into each performance just like any other athlete. Who is to say that you can’t be bubbly and have brains too?!

Best cheerleading experience?

After 15 years of traveling the country from Las Vegas, Nevada to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, I have had some amazing experiences. After thinking about it, I would have to say my 2 years in Daytona Beach, Florida with Illinois Competitive Stunt and Tumble was my best experience. Stepping on the mat felt incredible, and to place 5^th in 2011 and 2^nd in 2012 was the icing on the cake! It was a culmination of years of hard work to reach the ultimate goal of NCA Collegiate National Championships!

Best science-related experience?

Ironically, my best science related experience actually incorporates my athletic background. At my high school graduation, I received the Senior Spirit Award. This award was given to the student that best represented the athletic department through academics, pride in the school, participation, and support of the athletic department. You may ask yourself, well how does that relate to science? If I had not taken Sports Medicine, I might not be in the field I am today.  That course guided me to find a passion in the medical field further than what I had ever thought before. It was one of the most rewarding moments to experience knowing how much of an impact I made on others, when many of them do not know how much of an impact they made on me.

What advice would you give your 12-year-old self?

Walter Payton once said, “Tomorrow is not promised to anyone.” This is a piece of advice I have heard my whole life and would give back to my 12-year-old self. You have to have the courage to be strong and know that if you do what you love, you will never fail. You can never let the fair of striking out keep you from playing the game, never give up, and be yourself. My final piece of advice would be to never let other people change the way you think about yourself.  You are you and nobody can change that, so embrace the brainy cheerleader within you and never stop trying to do your best.

Apart from work and cheering, what are some of your favorite activities?

When it comes down to it, my whole life has been academics and school, but there are many other things in my life outside of those too. I absolutely love spending time with my family, whether we are going to the Chicago Bears’ games or to the dog park with our Rhodesian Ridgeback, Staley. Something very close to my heart is my family’s volunteer work with the Walter and Connie Payton Foundation. The WCPF is an amazing organization that helps underprivileged families supply their children with school supplies, holiday gifts, and much more. It is rewarding to be able to give back to those who I know appreciate the assistance in any way possible.

What are your plans for the future?

In the future, I hope to be able to make a difference as a Sports Medicine Doctor after attending medical school. I would like to work with sports teams as their team physician. I have always loved being on the sidelines as a cheerleader, dancer, and athletic trainer. I want to continue that and be present to help athletes who love their sport as much as I love mine. Furthermore, I would like to work with young children to show them that there is more than one way to be yourself and being passionate about anything is never a negative thing, it is you being you.

Why do you want to be a Science Cheerleader?

To me, being a Science Cheerleader is so much more than a name. It is about showing people of all ages that there are more to the girls on the sidelines once you look past the poms and the cheers. I want to be a science cheerleader because I want young girls to know that it is okay to have multiple passions. There is always a way to combine academics with outside interests, whether that be sports or hobbies. I want to be a role model for the girls who experienced the same stereotypes that I did growing up.. Be who you want to be!

Q&A: Lean on me  by Dale McGowan

Q: I saw a note on Pinterest recently that really grabbed me, and I’ve not been able to shake it. It was a list of suggestions for parents. One of the entries was “give your children something to believe in – because there will come a time when they are alone and scared or sad, and they’re going to need something to believe in.”

My husband and I are, at the least, agnostic….But I do want to know that if something really shakes the lives of my children, they will have some way of comforting themselves, some way of (eventually) coming to know that everything will be all right. How is this accomplished?

A: How I love this question. It cuts right to the core of the ultimate reprieve that religion offers from fear and vulnerability. Life may be incredibly hard and unfair at times, but believing that Someone Somewhere who is all-powerful and all-good has a handle on things and will see to it that justice prevails in the end… I can easily see how that idea can make life bearable, especially for those who are in much closer touch with the raw human condition than I am.

It brings to mind the Russell quote I’ve written about before: “Ever since puberty I have believed in the value of two things: kindness and clear thinking….When I felt triumphant I believed most in clear thinking, and in the opposite mood I believed most in kindness.” And there’s the key to the question. If I can’t offer them the kindness of God to lean on, what can I give my kids to help them through the inevitable times they will feel the opposite of triumphant?

You may have heard the Christian acronym J-O-Y, which stands for “Jesus, then Others, then Yourself” — the supposed formula for true happiness. Take away Jesus and you have the real-world resources I hope to build in my kids: the support of other people, and a strong self-concept.

Kids need to develop the ability to connect emotionally and meaningfully with others, and that’s a skill that starts at home when they are young. You care for your child and encourage their natural empathy for others. They become the kind of people who attract others to them in mutually supportive relationships.

As they get older, peers overtake family as the leaning posts. It’s no coincidence that teenagers often become obsessively centered on their peer group for identity and support as they are pulled through a period of rapid change, and that they focus more on those who are going through the same transition than on the all-too-familiar family they are transitioning away from.

They’ll also make connections based on interests and passions. In addition to a really tight group of friends, my daughter Erin (15) is passionately involved in photography, volunteering, volleyball, animal rescue, and acting. She’s in specific clubs that connect her to others with the same interests, and if those interests continue, she can continue to be connected to those larger passion communities throughout her life.

Those interests won’t all continue, of course, nor will all of her current friendships. Some will fall away as she grows older and her circumstances change, but she’ll retain the ability to connect. It’s not a static belief she needs, but that ability, that skill. Those mutually supportive connections with other human beings, connections she has built herself, will get her through hard times, as well as the strong self-concept on which those relationships are based.

And, when she’s 21 or 31, if we’ve built the right kinds of connections between us and earned it ourselves, her family will be that ultimate connection she can always lean on. To paraphrase Tim Minchin, we are the people who’ll make her feel safe in this world.

But I’m not headed into White Wine in the Sun here. There’s another song that captures this humanistic idea of people caring for each other better than any other.

R&B legend Bill Withers wrote it after he moved to LA in the lates 1960s following a stint in the Navy. He was really alone for the first time in his life, feeling vulnerable, away from the personal connections that had made him feel safe growing up in a small coal mining town in West Virginia. He sat down and wrote one of the great songs of all time about what he was missing. Not a particular belief, not God, but somebody to lean on. And unlike God, that human relationship can be mutual — which to my mind is SO much more satisfying and meaningful.

CREATe: a trade fiction author's perspectiveBy Charlie Stross

Quantified-self Experimentation Platforms by Melanie Swan

In the burgeoning Quantified Self (QS) movement, one recent trend is the emergence of tools explicitly for the conduct of QS experiments, either individually or in groups. These tools offer the rapid design and launch of experiments, and usually some degree of automated operation, data analysis, and recruitment.



On the mobile platform, there is PACO, the Personal Analytics Companion for the design and operation of private or shared personal science experiments. Another tool is studycure, an online platform that allows users to create and run interactive experiments using simple if/then logic to help users design experiments.



Community self-experimentation networks also exist, such the health collaboration community Genomera where professional researchers, non-profit groups, and individuals run studies examining a range of issues such as sleep quality, vitamin deficiency, microbiomic profiling, empathy-building, and how the memory works.

Alan Simpson’s the lead pitchman for a billionaire- and corporate-funded initiative to slash Social Security that has subjected the public to years of nonstop haranguing and lecturing.

The lecturing’s gotten crude, too, as when Simpson insisted that anyone who disagrees with him is shoveling “bullsh*t.”

That’s tough talk, but it’s a funny thing: When the public makes tough decisions, as it did in a new National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) survey, the tough-talking Mr. Simpson is nowhere to be found.

Three-Card Monte

Much of this verbal abuse has been funded by right-wing billionaire Pete Peterson. Peterson tried to amplify the impression of an anti-deficit groundswell through a kind of three-card monte in which he funds many different shell organizations staffed by the same people and delivering the same message. They include the Concord Coalition, which may have been the first to trot out the phrase “we must make the hard choices on Social Security.”

That statement’s almost always conjoined with another Peterson-funded theme: that their harsh, right-wing benefit-cutting proposals are based on “arithmetic, not ideology.”

President Obama picked the Peterson-backed team of Simpson and hedge funder Erskine Bowles to run a deficit commission, which ended in deadlock and failure. But with generous funding, the deficit duo went on to tell us that we need to face a “moment of truth” on deficits and Social Security.

(They placed in on the defunct Fiscal Commission’s website, which misleadingly suggested it includes official recommendations from the Commission.)

The Amen Corner

It’s true that Republicans had the most radical idea of all: privatizing Social Security. But well-funded politicians and ex-pols in both parties are used to create an impression of “bipartisan consensus.”The Democratic contingent is led by Bill Clinton, who’s become extremely wealthy in the hedge fund world since leaving the Presidency.

And while Republicans like Mitt Romney slandered the “47 percent” as irresponsible “takers,” Democrats like President Obama unfortunately repeated the “hard choices” mantra while others, like Nancy Pelosi, expressed a disturbing willingness to cut our already-inadequate Social Security benefits.

The underlying theme was always: The American people want it both ways. They demand Social Security, but they don’t want to pay for it.

“There is no free lunch,” the Concord Coalition writes mockingly.  With the NASI survey, the public just offered to cover its tab.

Canned Music

Simpson slandered older Americans as “greedy geezers” in a nasty outburst and condescended to younger ones in a silly video.

A Peterson-funded group called “The Can Kicks Back” tried and failed to popularize their deficit deceptions among Generations X and Y. The rich CEOs of “Fix the Debt,” another Peterson shell organization, asked others to sacrifice for their benefit.

They asked slanted questions in a series of AmericaSpeaks “town hall meetings,” which we attended – and which turned out to be “a mind control experiment gone horribly right.”  But the stacked deck of cards dealt by the Peterson crowd at AmericaSpeaks prevented the kind of comprehensive choices and solutions offered in the NASI survey.

They even created a deficit-reduction “game” called “Budgetball,” which we preferred to describe as “The Fountainhead” meets Deathrace 2000.

Meanwhile they and their media collaborators kept repeating one phrase like a mantra: Hard choices. Hard choices. Hard choices.

Now the public is making hard choices – and the deficit hypocrites are nowhere to be found.

Milk Cow Blues

Simpson’s vituperation toward America’s seniors was most evident in his “BS”/”greedy geezer” rant, and it was extended to all generations in his misogynistic note to  female activist and organizer Ashley Carson. He compared Social Security to “a cow with 300 million tits.” Note to faux-folksy Simpson: It’s “teats,” if you’re a farmer – unless you get off on using crude language to a woman.

Simpson abuses to a lot of people who disagree with him, including Max Richtman, the civil and courteous head of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. But he never addresses the substance of their arguments.

In Ms. Carson’s case, Simpson wasn’t just being abusive. He was also arguing that lazy Americans were trying to “milk the system.”

He was wrong. Americans are willing to pay for their Social Security.

Hard Choices: Made

A new survey from the National Academy of Social Insurance reinforces previous polling which showed Americans across the political spectrum oppose benefit cuts to Social Security and want wealthy Americans to pay more.

But the NASI study did something new: It presented respondents with a range of options and allowed them to select among them. The results were striking, and revealed a rock-solid consensus which spanned generations and political persuasions: Americans want wealthy people to pay their fair share, but they’re willing to chip in more themselves – so much so, in fact, that Social Security benefits could be increased.

That’s a very good idea, since Social Security’s benefits are among the lowest in the developed world.

“Greedy Geezers” = Selfless Seniors

That includes seniors, as can be seen if you delve into the NASI survey’s findings. Older people’s activism in defense of Social Security has always been primarily selfless. After all, only the “chained CPI” proposal would cut their benefits, and it hadn’t been introduced yet when Simpson called them “greedy geezers.” They were fighting for the generations that follow them, not themselves.

That selflessness is borne out by the NASI survey, which showed that 88 percent of “Silent Generation” respondents – the youngest of whom is 70 – were willing to pay more in taxes to protect the program.

Everybody get together, learn to love one another right now …

That spirit of generosity extends to Baby Boomers, too. 86 percent of them said they “didn’t mind” paying more in taxes to protect the program, even though most benefit-cut proposals would affect Boomers less than the generations that follow them.

The Baby Boom generation lost most of its wealth in the Wall Street financial crisis. Yet it’s still willing to pay up to keep the program solvent – especially for their children’s generation.

The Kids Are Al-Right

Younger Americans are willing to make the hard decisions, too.  87 percent of Gen X-ers and 85 percent of Gen Y-ers were also willing to pay more in taxes in order to protect the program.

Solid majorities of young people were willing to share in the sacrifice, across all income levels.

Consensus At Last

Did you think Republicans never want to pay more taxes? Not true, at least when it comes to Social Security. Three out of four Republicans said they’d be willing to pay more to protect the program. So did 86 percent of independents – and 91 percent of Democrats.

What’s more, 62 percent of Republicans thought we should consider increasing the program’s benefits. So did 71 percent of independents and 84 percent of Democrats.

The President’s vision of bipartisan consensus can be achieved – around strengthening Social Security.

Having Their Cake – And Eating Yours, Too

Guess who isn’t willing to step up and pitch in?  The millionaires, billionaires, and corporations behind the deficit hysteria. Their pampered pitchpeople are hiding, too.

After all, the NASI survey’s been out for a week and we haven’t heard a peep from any of them. Not one of them has congratulated the American people for making those “hard choices.” Not one of them has signed on to promote the NASI survey’s common-sense, fiscally responsible agenda for Social Security.

Not even straight-shootin’ Alan Simpson.

You can run but you can’t hide

“If you have some better suggestions about how to stabilize Social Security instead of just babbling into the vapors,” Simpson wrote in his “310 million tits” email, “let me know.” Now the public has let him know.

Where’s Alan?

“If there’s no pain,” says the Concord Coalition, “there’s no gain.” Now we know that they’re talking about your pain and their gain.

Where’s Alan?

And the public’s still being lectured. One lecture came from Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein who, thanks to the Wall Street bailout, benefited rom the largest free lunch in history.

Pack it in, guys. In fact, you should be celebrating: The public’s made those hard choices you’ve been talking about. If you’re not hypocrites you’ll fight for their Social Security agenda, not yours.

If you’re not hypocrites.

It’s time to step up and take a lesson in responsibility from the American people. Anything else is, in as one of you once said, “bullsh*t.”

Second child syndrome by Carol Lloyd