Free Republic

The challenges of making tech more welcoming for women are numerous, especially in the field of artificial intelligence. To get a sense of just how monumental a task the tech community faces, look no further than the marquee gathering for AI’s top scientists. Preparations for this year’s event drew controversy not only because there weren’t enough female speakers or study authors. The biggest debate was over the conference’s name. The annual Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems, formerly known as NIPS, had become a punchline symbol about just how bad the gender imbalance is for artificial intelligence. Thousands...

The problem: elk chewing the bejeebers out of Rocky Mountain National Park. One solution: adding a pack of wolves to the park. Another problem: wolves wandering into nearby Boulder and Loveland, Colo. Still, the National Park Service is slated this week to propose, as one alternative, adding a pack of wolves, outfitted with radio collars, to chase the elk herds ravaging the park's aspen and willow stands. Biologists already have warned that keeping wolves in the 226,000-acre park may be next to impossible. "I can't conceive of a way to keep wolves in the park," said University of Minnesota biologist...

PHILIP ROTH is one of America's great novelists, but you don't expect him to be barreling up the best-seller list with a book that hasn't even been published yet. "Literary fiction," as it is now stigmatized in the cultural marketplace, no longer flies off the shelves unless struck by the TV lightning of Oprah or the "Today" show. And yet there was "The Plot Against America" in the top 25 at amazon.com this week, at one point the only serious contemporary American novel on the list, sandwiched between Clay Aiken's memoir and "The South Beach Diet." It ascended without benefit...

On Saturday we traveled from our home in Lakewood to Simi Valley to visit friends and accompany them to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. They have struck up a friendship with an extraordinary person who is a docent at the Library and we couldn’t resist the promise of a private tour. The tour was wonderful. The grounds magnificent, the exhibits awe inspiring including the replica of the Oval Office. Then we got to the Lewis and Clark exhibition. There were canoes and a authentic reproduction of one of their Keel Boats, an Indian village, the supplies and trinkets they carried...