My Take on Pink Lego

I was reminded of this very old draft post I started today as Twitter lit up with discussion over the Pink Astronaut Barbie. Is it bad because it's pink, or good because it's an astronaut. Maybe it's a bit of both.... 

Once in a while online, a discussion will start over Lego Friends. I think almost all pros and cons of a pink astronaut Barbie can be applied to this toy too.... For anyone not familiar with this, here they are.

It's Lego, but with slightly more anatomically correct little dolls. The girl on the left above (Olivia) looks like this in the toy.

And there's some little animals. And the bricks are more likely to be pink. I have to confess here that my daughter loves it. We have several sets at home, and she would like to save up for Olivia's House (it comes up a lot). We once swapped a blond pink princess (Barbie esk) doll for a Lego Friends set (blond dolls are banned in our household until we have more non-blond dolls).

So Lego Friends has been around for a while, and caused enough controversy that there's a section on the Wikipedia page about it : Lego Friends Controversy.

I'm going to have to confess that I actually quite like Lego Friends. Olivia likes science (according to wikipedia), and has a workshop with a tool set, microscope and a robot (this was one of the first sets we got).

Some people have grumbled about her wearing flip flops in the lab, which probably is a Health and Safety issue, but I'm wearing flip flops at work today..... She's dressed quite girly - but it's OK to be girly and be a scientists, just as it's OK to not be girly and be a scientist....

 We also have the tree house set, which includes a telescope. Obviously I like that.

 The sets are mostly interchangeable with every other lego set, and in our house are now totally mixed in. Most complaints focus on the figures - which I admit are a bit annoying in that they can't sit down (particularly an issue for the Cafe set), and are not as interchangeable with the standard lego (you can swap the hair, but that's it, and they can only wear some of the hats). But my daughter loves them. I asked her why - and she said it's because they look more real. They have a special place on her dresser. She'd like more boys to match though.




All in all I think Lego Friends is a sensible response from Lego to Toy Store Pink Aisles. I am annoyed the toy store separates toys by gender, but if they do I would rather have lego in both sections than only in the boys section.

Lego somehow is a bit of a special toy. The Guardian has a whole Life & Style section on Lego.  There was recently a piece of research published on The Psychology of Lego. There's a website called Brikipedia. I love the idea behind Custom MiniFigs, and I keep thinking about how we should commission them to make some women scientists). But who wouldn't want Chris Hadfield in lego:

I do think the standard lego figures have some gender issues - and some issues about the portrayal of scientists. If you search Brikipedia for "scientist" the results aren't too encouraging. There's a scientist in the batman set (white hair and a lab coat). There's the Scientist in the Space Port, and in the Shuttle Launch Command - both men with glasses (one beard, one moustache). The SpiderMan Scientist (grey hair male), and the Crazy Scientist. However maybe Lego are listening. Since I last looked this MiniFigure Scientist (to launch in 2013) was added: She (that's right) has a lab coat, and oddly blue hands, but it's something...

New MiniFigure Scientist (via Brickipedia)

Lego Spaceport Scientist (via Brickipedia)

I should not neglect this series of Awesome tributes to famous scientists in lego (but lets do some women!).

Carl Zeiss Lego Tribute

This group from the Festival of the Mind is doing much better.

Finally no random collection of thoughts on lego online would be complete without linking to this Amazing Lego Contraption. Take a watch - you won't regret it.





Other links:



The Conundrum of Lego Friends, an interesting set of objections to Lego Friends at the Achilles Effect (a blog on boys, masculinity and gender stereotypes).


The Gift of Pink (by Athene Donald), also on why pink toys and gender stereotyping is undesirable.

Astronomy for medium children - paper models

Just a quick post to point out these awesome paper models put out by Canon (yes - the printer people - I guess this encourages you to use more printer ink or something!).

I made one weekend (with some success) the solar system model. It's not to scale at all, which is a bit annoying, but it's sort of nice.

Mobile solar system by Canon.

If you don't that, how about a model of a Subaru telescope, the structure of the Sun, a sundial, or a moving model illustrating the difference between the Copernican and Ptolemic models of the solar system?

Copernican and Ptolemic Solar System models

Perfect Christmas holiday activity for older children I would say. My two are still a bit young though. :)

Just a comment that the title of this post was a reference to my post "Astronomy for Young Children - Colour the Solar System", which is actually my most read article on this blog!

Photos from the IAU in China

Here are some of the photos I took of stuff (related to astronomy!) at the IAU in China.

Here's the giant IAU 2012 sign outside the convention centre. Plus some SKA balloons (and someone's children!). ;) It was a busy meeting with the children accompanying us (my husband is also an astronomer) and attending an UNAWE run workshop during the first week (article about the workshop is online here) and also in the 8th Edition of the IAU Daily Newspaper.

Since my daughter was "quoted" here's the article. 

I enjoyed the Daily Newspaper, I admit partly because my talk (and me) were featured on the front page of the first one:

But also because I had been given the task to collect a newspaper for every day to share with someone special who has a collection of all such newspapers from every IAU GA since the meetings began. The 2012 addition to the collection I admit is still sitting on my desk, but will get sent off very soon. 

This was the Newspaper stand where you could collect the print editions: 

So I gave this big talk on the evening of the first day. Here's me by the sign which advertised the talk (which didn't come out). 

The (almost) empty hall before people started coming in. This is apparently the location of the 2008 Olympic Badminton Events. It seats 3000 - but a long stretch the largest room I've ever spoken in (as people seemed to want to point out to me often in the run up to my talk!). 

Here's my lovely title slide (with credit to Zooniverse designed David Miller) displayed on the  big screen. 

Bryan Gaensler (@SciBry) snapped (and tweeted) this shot of me talking to Brian Schmidt (@cosmicpinot) before the talk. Brian gave one of the other Invited Discourses. 

Finally, with credit to my husband Wynn Ho (for taking the video - and he apologise for the poor camera work which was related to him also watching the children at the same time), here's a short video of the introduction to the talk (given my my former thesis advisor Prof. Martha Haynes) and my 

Chinese welcome words. 

The day after my talk, the hall was rather more full for the Opening Ceremony of the IAU meeting, at which Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (a potential sucessor to Hu Jintao) addressed us. The full text of his speech can be read in the 3rd Daily Edition of the IAU Newspaper. 

Following this speech, the award of the 2012 Gruber Prize and Fellowship, and a lovely public lecutre by Jocelyn Bell, was a display of Chinese culture (various dances, acrobatics, music etc). At the end of this the staff and students of the Chinese National Astronomy Observatory treated us to a dance display with an astronmical theme. 

Here are some pictures I took of this, which was a bit cutesy, but I enjoyed! 

I particularly enjoyed the silver umbrellas making a variety of radio telescope shapes. 

And the finale. 

The exhibition area at an IAU meeting is always fun, and I particularly enjoyed several of the models on display. Oddly given my interest in the project I didn't take a picture of the lovely LOFAR LBA models, but I was happy to finally see them in person. 

The ALMA booth had some great lego models. This one of the transporter which moves the dishes. 

And this model of an ALMA dish. 

This was a nice model of the Giant Magellan Telescope I think. 

The Korean Astronomy booth had the best takeaway models. You (well I) can build the below from a flat packed kit. My kids made during the day camp the moveable models of Magellan (which we also had fun destroying to pack to bring back to the UK). These were really impressive.

I also liked this model (and the setting of it) of a Cerenkov Array Telescope. These are designed to detect light flashes from Cerenkov radiation when gamma rays enter our upper atmosphere. 

In one corner of the main lobby was a collection of what looked like bad astronomy art. On closer inspection though you could discover, that these were actually silk embroidered versions of astronomical images - a craft typical of the Suzhou area (near Shanghai) which I had visited on a previous trip to China.

Here some of the artists are at work embroidering the Earth, and a map of the cosmic web. These were really impressive. 

I enjoyed the displays (and a lunchtime lecture) on Chinese Ancient Astronomy. The below panel is a list of predictions of solar eclipses. The Chinese in around the 10th century made astronomical observations and records comparable to those westeners used in the 16th/17th century to develop our models of gravity. The lunchtime lecture included an interesting discussion on the lack of a Chinese version of Kepler. 

There was also the below, full working replica (on a slightly smaller scale than the original) of an ancient Chinese water clock. This was the first clock in the world able to keep accurate time. And it was also beautifully carved.

Finally, the whole event had reminders of the previous use of the building. As is typical for most large conferences (AAS excepted) the poster sessions were in an out of the way corner of the event. I managed a visit while trying to walk my son to sleep one afternoon, and snapped the below shot of the floor of the room. 

What Does a Scientist Look Like?

One of my favourite things about doing school visits, is just that by showing up I demonstrate that scientists don't all fit the usual stereotype. I try to always say "I am an astronomer." "An astronomer is a scientist" and "I am a scientist" (or some mixture) during my presentation.

So I was interested in the below resources on a similar theme which have both appeared in my Twitter stream this week.

To start with something I've seen before, but always fun. Images of scientists drawn by American 7th graders (12 and 13 year olds) before and after a visit to Fermilab. They also include written description of what they think a scientist is before and after. It's great.

Who's the Scientist

This one by Amy is my favourite:

Images of scientists before and after a visit to Fermilab. 

And then there is this fantastic idea to bring such images to the internet - an image stream of (self submitted) images of scientists.

This is What a Scientist Looks Like

I want to support this new idea by submitting an image of myself, so I've been thinking about what to submit and come up with the below options. Opinions in the comments below (or on Twitter) will be listened to! ;)

1. That's me observing at Magellan in Chile.

2. Pregnant on a beach.

3. Visiting Arecibo Radio Telescope when my daughter was 10 months old. 

4. Pregnant and dressed up at the UK Women of the Future 2010 Awards (I came second in the science and technology category). David Cameron gave a speech and made me stand up for ages with all the other nominees (before he was Prime Minister).

5. Bit of a theme: here I am massively pregnant again! 

6. Two children! Also I like reading apparently...

7. Geeking it out with Darth Vader (who was very scary) and Luke Skywalker at Intech!