Here is a totally awesome letter from Steve Adler, the Mayor of Austin, TX. This is a great read.

[StevieM]

LETTER: WONDER WOMAN
On May 26, 2017, the Mayor received this email:

I hope every man will boycott Austin and do what he can to diminish Austin and to cause damage to the city’s image. The theater that pandered to the sexism typical of women will, I hope, regret it’s decision. The notion of a woman hero is a fine example of women’s eagerness to accept the appearance of achievement without actual achievement. Women learn from an early age to value make-up, that it’s OK to pretend that you are greater than you actually are. Women pretend they do not know that only men serve in combat because they are content to have an easier ride. Women gladly accept gold medals at the Olympics for coming in 10th and competing only against the second class of athletes. Name something invented by a woman! Achievements by the second rate gender pale in comparison to virtually everything great in human history was accomplished by men, not women. If Austin does not host a men only counter event, I will never visit Austin and will welcome it’s deteriorati on. And I will not forget that Austin is best known for Charles Whitman. Does Austin stand for gender equality or for kissing up to women? Don’t bother to respond. I already know the answer. I do not hate women. I hate their rampant hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of the “women’s movement.” Women do not want gender equality; they want more for women. Don’t bother to respond because I am sure your cowardice will generate nothing worth reading.

Richard A. Ameduri


Today he responded:

Dear Mr. Ameduri,

I am writing to alert you that your email account has been hacked by an unfortunate and unusually hostile individual. Please remedy your account’s security right away, lest this person’s uninformed and sexist rantings give you a bad name. After all, we men have to look out for each other!

Can you imagine if someone thought that you didn’t know women could serve in our combat units now without exclusion? What if someone thought you didn’t know that women invented medical syringes, life rafts, fire escapes, central and solar heating, a war-time communications system for radio-controlling torpedoes that laid the technological foundations for everything from Wi-Fi to GPS, and beer? And I hesitate to imagine how embarrassed you’d be if someone thought you were upset that a private business was realizing a business opportunity by reserving one screening this weekend for women to see a superhero movie.

You and I are serious men of substance with little time for the delicate sensitivities displayed by the pitiful creature who maligned your good name and sterling character by writing that abysmal email. I trust the news that your email account has been hacked does not cause you undue alarm and wish you well in securing your account. And in the future, should your travels take you to Austin, please know that everyone is welcome here, even people like those who wrote that email whose views are an embarrassment to modernity, decency, and common sense.

Yours sincerely,

Steve Adler


http://www.mayoradler.com/letter-wonder-woman/

[TomSlick]

1. Brilliant!

I hope we hear more of Mayor Adler.

[StevieM]

2. Welcome to DU!! I wouldn't mind Mayor Adler as our party's VP nominee in 2020. (eom)

[Squinch]

3. Fabulous!

And... Richard doesn't seem like a good bet for a blind date...

[PatrickforO]

36. Still laughing.

Indeed he does not.

[Phoenix61]

4. Awesome!!!

Didn't know about a lot of the inventions but did know about the torpedo. Saw a special about the female inventor.

[Pluvious]

17. MARGARET HAMILTON got us to the moon !

In the 60's she got a programming job to help support her husband through Harvard, and ended up writing much of the code NASA used for the Apollo Program.

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/

[PatrickforO]

37. Yes, this was depicted brilliantly in the movie

'Hidden Figures.' That was a great movie, and those were great women.

[trof]

5. An Alabama WOMAN invented the windshield wiper.

As a woman from the South (where cars were not all that common at the turn of the 20th century), Mary Anderson was hardly a likely candidate to invent the windshield wiper -- especially considering she filed her patent before Henry Ford even started manufacturing cars. And unfortunately, Anderson failed to reap financial benefits from her invention during her lifetime, and she's sadly been relegated to a footnote in the history of automobiles.

Aside from the date and location of her birth (1866, in Alabama), Anderson life’s is largely a series of question marks—the names and occupations of her parents are unknown, for example—until around 1889, when she helped build the Fairmont Apartments in Birmingham on Highland Avenue. Other detours for Anderson include a period of time spent in Fresno, California, where she ran a cattle ranch and vineyard until 1898.

Around 1900, it is said that Anderson came into a large inheritance from an aunt. Eager to make exciting use of the money, she took a trip to New York City during the thick of winter in 1903.

The "Window Cleaning Device"
It was during this trip that inspiration struck. While riding a streetcar during a particularly snowy day, Anderson observed the agitated and uncomfortable behavior of the vehicle’s cold driver, who had to rely on all sorts of tricks—sticking his head out of the window, stopping the vehicle to clean the windshield—to see where he was driving.

Following the trip, Anderson returned to Alabama and, in response to the problem she witnessed, drew up a practical solution: a design for a windshield blade that would connect itself to the interior of the car, allowing the driver to operate the windshield wiper from inside the vehicle.
https://www.thoughtco.com/mary-anderson-inventor-of-the-windshield-wiper-1992654

[StevieM]

9. That's a terrific story. Thanks for sharing it!! (eom)

[erronis]

13. It's easy to invent. It takes a REAL man

To capitalize on the works of others and make them profitable and make sure no one else can use them without paying a fee.

I think that has been the hallmark of rapacious individuals and corporations from before Edison to after Microsoft.

[csziggy]

21. Hedy Lamarr invented frequency hopping - the basis for wi-fi

And other modern communications. She proved that women can be glamorous and brilliant!

Just heard an interview yesterday on NPR - there is a movie and a documentary coming out about her soon.

[Lonestarblue]

6. My fantastic mayor!

Mayor Adler and all 10 members of City Council are Democrats. Now if only we could expand those numbers to our state legislature and members of Congress, Texas might lose its reputation as the home of the crazies!

[StevieM]

7. You have a great mayor. Maybe he can be our party's VP nominee in 2020. (eom)

[ananda]

8. Adler is one of ours!

I like him. He's a strong advocate for immigrants too.

[StevieM]

11. I also heard that he is good on climate change. The mayors may wind up being on the front lines

of this battle with Trump.

[ladym55]

10. This is great

I'm just concerned that Mayor Adler used too many big words. The original emailer doesn't appear to be too well educated, so could find some of the mayor's multiple syllable words confusing.

[mountain grammy]

12. Great response!

[catbyte]

14. Brilliant response! I'm gonna hazard a guess & say that with an abysmal attitude

towards women like Mr. Ameduri exhibits, the only date he's able to get is with his right hand, if you catch my drift.

Whatta putz.

[progressoid]

15. Holy Shit. That's brilliant!

[mnhtnbb]

16. The only person to ever win TWO Nobel Prizes in DIFFERENT sciences was a woman

AND she was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes (Chemistry and Physics)

Ever heard of Marie Curie, Mr. Ameduri?

She also discovered the elements polonium and radium and is responsible for development of the theory of
radioactivity.

What an ignoramus.

[athena]

31. And many women have made discoveries

for which others have won the Nobel prize.

Jocelyn Bell discovered the pulsar, but her advisor was given the Nobel prize for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell

Rosalind Franklin did the X-ray diffraction studies work that led to the discovery of DNA, but the Nobel prize was given to three men, two of whom used her results and claimed all the credit for themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin

The fact that relatively few women have won the Nobel prize doesn't mean few women have made important contributions to science.

The funniest part of this is that the men who are loudest about how superior men supposedly are to women in technical fields are always technically clueless themselves. Whenever a man declares that women are less mathematical than men, I know that he's not mathematical himself. Indeed, any man who is in a technical field knows that while these fields are still male-dominated, there are many, many women in them making important contributions.

(Not disagreeing with your point, just adding to it.)

[mnhtnbb]

33. And as was told in the movie Hidden Figures, it was a WOMAN--a black woman--who verified

the trajectory for John Glenn's first orbital flight--at HIS request.

Katherine Johnson was one of a team of black women mathematicians that made our early space flight possible.

The real story of "Hidden Figures"

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a24429/hidden-figures-real-story-nasa-women-computers/

[DefenseLawyer]

18. Hedy Lamarr invented the torpedo guidance system

[HAB911]

29. Frequency hopping is the basis of our cell phone network too

The technology was far ahead of its time. Although her ideas were at first ignored, the technology (which she and Antheil patented in 1942) was later used by the military—during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, for example—and more recently, it has been employed in wireless technologies like cell phones. It was eventually recognized in 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation honored Lamarr with a special Pioneer Award and she became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention's BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award.

[DDySiegs]

19. Mayor Adler's Response is Brilliant!

Congratulations to Mayor Adler for a supremely well thought out and completely appropriate and devastating response!

[StevieM]

20. I am thinking he deserves some consideration for VP in 2020.

Right now I am liking Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, for the presidency.

Inslee/Adler. That may be my first choice for our ticket.

[melman]

22. Steve Adler is great

None of his replacements have ever been able to play Mr. Brownstone quite right.

[StevieM]

23. As I wrote above, I am thinking that maybe our ticket in 2020 should be

Governor Jay Inslee of Washington for president and Steve Adler for vice-president.

[Scurrilous]

24. K&R

[trentwestcott]

25. This is probably the classiest thing I've seen in a while from an elected official. Nice.

[Warpy]

26. I've always been a fan of the oblique insult

and this one is a real beauty. If I lived in Austin, Adler would get my vote.

[Honeycombe8]

27. Wow..the 1st email - what a woman hater! Over a MOVIE? Geez. That guy has serious issues.

Great email response, though!

[HAB911]

28. K&R

[Honeycombe8]

30. Inventions by women!!!!

Little known inventions by women....who invented these things in between grocery shopping, preparing meals, making beds, cleaning house, feeding babies, giving birth, dressing kids, working on homework with kids, spending companion time with husbands:

Alphabet blocks Adeline D. T. Whitney 1882
Apgar tests, which evaluate a baby’s health upon birth Virginia Apgar 1952
Chocolate-chip cookies Ruth Wakefield 1930
Circular saw Tabitha Babbitt 1812
Dishwasher Josephine Cochran 1872
Disposable diaper Marion Donovan 1950
Electric hot water heater Ida Forbes 1917
Elevated railway Mary Walton 1881
Engine muffler El Dorado Jones 1917
Fire escape Anna Connelly 1887
Globes Ellen Fitz 1875
Ironing board Sarah Boone 1892
Kevlar, a steel-like fiber used in radial tires, crash helmets, and bulletproof vests Stephanie Kwolek 1966
Life raft Maria Beaseley 1882
Liquid Paper®, a quick-drying liquid used to correct mistakes printed on paper Bessie Nesmith 1951
Locomotive chimney Mary Walton 1879
Medical syringe Letitia Geer 1899
Paper-bag-making machine Margaret Knight 1871
Rolling pin Catherine Deiner 1891
Rotary engine Margaret Knight 1904
Scotchgard™ fabric protector Patsy O. Sherman 1956
Snugli® baby carrier Ann Moore 1965
Street-cleaning machine Florence Parpart 1900
Submarine lamp and telescope Sarah Mather 1845
Windshield wiper Mary Anderson 1903

Inventions By Women
The following is a partial list of the many ingenious inventions by women.

INVENTION INVENTOR YEAR
Alphabet blocks Adeline D. T. Whitney 1882
Apgar tests, which evaluate a baby’s health upon birth Virginia Apgar 1952
Chocolate-chip cookies Ruth Wakefield 1930
Circular saw Tabitha Babbitt 1812
Dishwasher Josephine Cochran 1872
Disposable diaper Marion Donovan 1950
Electric hot water heater Ida Forbes 1917
Elevated railway Mary Walton 1881
Engine muffler El Dorado Jones 1917
Fire escape Anna Connelly 1887
Globes Ellen Fitz 1875
Ironing board Sarah Boone 1892
Kevlar, a steel-like fiber used in radial tires, crash helmets, and bulletproof vests Stephanie Kwolek 1966
Life raft Maria Beaseley 1882
Liquid Paper®, a quick-drying liquid used to correct mistakes printed on paper Bessie Nesmith 1951
Locomotive chimney Mary Walton 1879
Medical syringe Letitia Geer 1899
Paper-bag-making machine Margaret Knight 1871
Rolling pin Catherine Deiner 1891
Rotary engine Margaret Knight 1904
Scotchgard™ fabric protector Patsy O. Sherman 1956
Snugli® baby carrier Ann Moore 1965
Street-cleaning machine Florence Parpart 1900
Submarine lamp and telescope Sarah Mather 1845
Windshield wiper Mary Anderson 1903

We'll probably never know how many women inventors there were. That's because in the early years of the United States, a woman could not get a patent in her own name. A patent is considered a kind of property, and until the late 1800s laws forbade women in most states from owning property or entering into legal agreements in their own names. Instead, a woman's property would be in the name of her father or husband.

OTHER INVENTIONS:

Car heater
Fire escape
Monopoly, the game
The life raft
Residential solar heating
The modern electric refrigerator
Ice cream maker
The computer algorithm
Dishwasher
Wireless transmissions technology
System for closed circuit television security
The paper bag
Central heating
Kevlar fibre, used to make bulletproof vests

And consider that when Fred Astaire's dancing partners danced, they did the same things he did, only they did it backwards & in high heels!

[lark]

32. My cousin lives in Austin.

She told me they had a brilliant mayor, apparently she was right.

[orangecrush]

34. Kick

[Blue_true]

35. The Mayor forgot to mention.

Marie Curie
Golda Meir
Indira Gandhi
Helen Keller
The Founder of the American Red Cross

Numerous other women that were leaders of thought, in medicine, in literature, in law.

[brush]

38. Woohoo! That mayor is "woke".

[FuzzyRabbit]

39. Admiral Grace Hopper

made many crucial contributions to the development of computing. We might not yet have PCs or Democratic Underground without her.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper for a brief account of a few of her contributions.

A longer article here: http://www.amazingwomeninhistory.com/amazing-grace-hopper-computer-programmer/