Girly Girls vs Tomboys

Girls in my school who happily and consciously enjoy fashion, make-up, and the like, and who prefer to stick with girls, are termed girly girls. I haven’t heard anyone use a term for those who love sports like football, who tend to play Warhammer, and have many friends who happen to be boys, but perhaps if pushed to provide one I could imagine it being “tomboys.” Now I have always loved the idea of tomboys — wild, brave, and aggressive girls. All that I was not. Perhaps the one I most admired was Louisa May Alcott’s Jo. Or the various characters Haley Mills seemed to always play in the movies I enjoyed growing up. Certainly these girls were everything shy-timid-me wasn’t. All of which came to mind when reading ” Why ‘tomboy’ remains a loaded word.”

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Thinking About Numbers

According to Stanislas Dehaene, humans have an inbuilt “number sense” capable of some basic calculations and estimates. The problems start when we learn mathematics and have to perform procedures that are anything but instinctive.

The New Yorker‘s Jim Holt asks, “Are our brains wired for math?” In Holt’s article, Stanislas Dehaene says no and more. Very good news to mathematically-challenged me.