This afternoon we had the first formal meeting for product planning of the Science 2.0 television pilot.  

As you can imagine, there was talk of technical details, how the creative guys will set up the shot lists and storyboard the segments, what segments we will use, and then some of the philosophical stuff.

Like, what will make Science 2.0 a science show for the next century?

I told the agency and the producer what a fond recollection U.S. scientists of today have for shows like "Nova" and Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" - but noted that at the time, those were not regarded as stodgy, traditional ways of doing science on television, they were cutting edge.

Proofiness, slightly different than Stephen Colbert's truthiness, is basically finding statistics you want to believe to enhance your confirmation bias.  It was coined by Charles Seife, a long-time science writer who teaches journalism at New York University, because he was outraged at skewed representation on both sides of the aisle, like Al Gore for cherry-picking data about global warming and George Bush for cherry-picking data about how tax refunds would save poor people money.   He wrote a book on it called "Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception" to clobber everyone he found doing it.

My wife and I once saw a rainbow and we discussed how it happened. She listened somewhat patiently for the first few sentences and then told me I was spoiling the magic of the rainbow, like it was somehow less romantic if she knew how it happened.(1)

Men, you are with me on this; she has a man who can make a rainbow for her any time she wants - and will. That's a higher order of romantic, I think you will agree. Plus, I have to defend all rainbow-making men and note that because my rainbow is a special distribution of colors whose reference point is her eyes, no one else will ever see it. Is it literally for her eyes only.

Some stereotypes are self-reinforcing.   If someone tells you over and over that you are oppressed, if you hit an obstacle and fail, like all of us do at some point in our lives, a convenient excuse is that you are discriminated against.(1)

There is zero data showing women are discriminated against in science, math or engineering - none.   But because there used to be far more men and those men were not lined up against the wall and shot to make room for women in faculty, the claim is that science academia is still prejudiced against women.