All CWIT Affiliates are invited to the annual end of year picnic sponsored by the CWIT Affiliates Program and the CWIT Parents organization (PWIT). This year's picnic will feature food from QDoba, games, and a chance to meet up with other Affiliates, Scholars, and CWIT alumni. FREE, all Affiliates are welcome! Just RSVP by hitting the green "I can attend" button on the event page below.

UMBC will host three events as part of the CRA-W Distinguished Lecture Series on Monday, 16 April 2012. CRA-W, the Computer Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research, is an action-oriented organization dedicated to increasing the number of women participating in Computer Science and Engineering research and education at all levels.

The visiting speaker is Dr. Ellen Zegura, Professor and Chair of
the School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech.  Dr. Jeff Forbes
of NSF and Duke University will also be on campus as part of
the Distinguished Lecture Series to participate on a panel about
grad school (aimed at graduate students and undergraduates).
The events are open to the public and UMBC visitors are welcome
to attend.

PANEL DISCUSSION: GRADUATE SCHOOL: BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER
10:00-11:00am, Monday 16 April, 2012, UC 310
Dr. Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech
Dr. Jeffrey Forbes, National Science Foundation
Mr. James MacGlashan (UMBC CSEE Ph.D. Candidate)
Ms. Alyson Young (UMBC HCC Ph.D. student)

COMPUTING IN CIRRUS CLOUDS: THE CHALLENGE OF INTERMITTENT CONNECTIVITY
Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech
1:00-2:00pm, Monday 16 April 2012, ITE 325B

COMPUTING FOR GOOD: EXPERIENCES IN HUMANITARIAN COMPUTING
Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech
4:00-5:00pm, Monday 16 April, 2012, Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Details of these events can be found at http://csee.umbc.edu/talks and
in the attached flyer.

These events are jointly sponsored by CRA-W, UMBC’s Center for Women in
Technology (CWIT), CSEE and IS Departments, and the Graduate School.

We encourage you to attend these events.

Yun Peng and Marie desJardins
Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)

Galatians 2:20 (NIV)

²⁰I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)

¹⁷Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

Reflection

The goal of genetic studies is to tell us what our DNA has programmed us to be and to do, in other words what the outcome is. Some outcomes are more visible and obvious such as whether we are male or female, or what color hair and eyes we have. Other outcomes are more subtle, affecting what habits we form, and making us prone to sin in certain ways. Maybe we’re more defensive, easily angered, or quick to judge. We might want to say “that’s who I am” or even that my DNA said so and that’s my outcome. But what these verses say is that in Christ, our outcome has completely changed. In some sense, we have new DNA, where our program is in Christ and our outcome is the newness in Christ. Our old sinful way of living has been crucified with Christ.

Responding to the Transmission

In Christ, our lives are not stuck. If we feel like we have certain sins repeating in our lives as if we’ve been programmed that way, may we declare today that the old is gone and the new has come. Christ loved us and gave Himself for us through the cross, and we can now live in incredible freedom. Let’s pray and believe that our old sinful way of living has been crucified with Christ, and we are new creations who live by faith in the Son of God.

photo credit: CNN.com

At this point in the Republican primary race, we may be witnessing a moment similar to what happens in movies (like Chariots of Fire, or the pre-bobsled part of Cool Runnings) when the runners on a track are in the final, slow-motion sprint to the end. The cameras are flashing, the crowd is holding its breath, and the soundtrack is suitably grand and dramatic.

Except that what we’ve been hearing over the past week has made it seem more like something out of Gladiator or a Japanese game show. There’s Mitt Romney, chained at the ankles to the collapsed bodies of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, shuffling with gritted teeth… toward a finish line… that continues to move.

Such is the Triple-A battery-strength excitement generated by Romney within the GOP. He won’t so much burst through the ribbon of victory in a triumphant display. Instead his party will guide him by the hand across the finish line, the ribbon having been politely snipped ahead of time. The Republican Party isn’t ready to douse him with champagne and lift him up onto their shoulders, but they will probably give him some money for pizza and their business cards, with the instruction to call them if he needs anything.

And he will be making some calls: he needs a running mate. Writing on CNN.com, Julian Zelizer says that the Romney camp should resist the temptation to choose someone daring to compensate for his lukewarm appeal.

Just because Romney isn’t a Tea Party candidate doesn’t mean he should move “Hat, Two Corners Minimum” to the top of his VP checklist. In 2008, John McCain picked someone who got behind the wheel of his general election campaign and drove it into some neighborhoods where he didn’t feel very safe, and in the end he suffered for it:

It is difficult for a candidate to pick someone as a running mate who is far to the right but still maintains credibility with centrist voters. . . . Many loyal Republicans privately admitted that they couldn’t vote for their candidate with Palin on the ticket. One of McCain’s biggest potential virtues — his appeal to moderates — was gone.

Vice Presidents are meant to be boring, Zelizer reminds us, and the safe choice is usually the best one. Look at Joe Biden: He has a penchant for saying embarrassing things and he needlessly denigrates Republicans, but has he ever really upstaged the President? Maybe when he said the F-word that time, but who knows what messages Vice President Howard Dean could be primal-screaming in our direction if things had been different. . . .

Anyway: the VP decision probably won’t make or break Romney’s campaign.  The voters in the general election are going to take him seriously or they’re not.

He has a line of suitors waiting to try on the glass slipper, though, and with any luck he’ll find someone who fits with an extra pair of socks on:

New Jersey governor Chris Christie (”the Jabba the Hutt of Trenton”) is a frequently-cited possibility; he has been going steady with Romney since he offered his endorsement back in October. He has been reported saying that he would go further if Romney agreed to meet his parents.

Florida representative and celebrated Hispanic Marco Rubio is a hot item these days, though he indicated recently that while he is flattered by Romney’s gentlemanly willingness to pay for his meal at dinner, he would prefer to split the bill fifty-fifty so Romney doesn’t, you know, expect anything.

And there’s Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the famed “architect” of House Republicans’ budget proposals whose blueprints correspond, some say, to a building without carpeting, insulation, or walls. The conservative columnist George Will wrote in support of both these men in Sunday’s Washington Post — but George Will also has a reputation for wearing bow ties a lot, so ask yourself how willing you are to take him seriously.

Then there’s other people, too, like Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Rob Portman of Ohio, Jeb Bush and Allen West of Florida, and even the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, about whom little is known.

(Actually, Governor Palin promoted Allen West and John McCain, that old devil, suggested Sarah Palin. Those two!)

No matter who Romney tags-in, his campaign is sure to get stronger and more compelling to those unsatisfied with BHO. USDemocrazy withholds its endorsement of a VP candidate as yet, but there are certain well-coiffed ex-governors of certain mid-Atlantic states whose capitols may include Annapolis that we strongly wish the Romney campaign would consider for the virtually limitless appeal of their combined haircuts, if nothing else.