education & careers teaching, learning, and doing science
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May 12, 2008
See Jane Compute
Things I've learned by virtue of being a mom In honor of Mother's Day, and in honor of the one-year anniversary of Baby Jane's appearance on Planet Earth, here, in no particular order, are the top five things I've learned from being a mom this past year. And, as...
May 11, 2008
A Blog Around The Clock
Ettiquette for blogging a scientific meeting - a question I will be going to a scientific conference next week. Believe it or not, this will be the first purely scientific meeting I'll attend since I quit grad school and started blogging (all the others had to do with science...
erv
How not to blog anonymously: Robert Marks The last 'respectable' IDer shows his true colors
Greg Laden's Blog
Why Crashing Internet Polls is Neither Boring nor Stupid ... in fact, it is kind of an ethico-moral responsibility and a virtual obligation of PZ Myers and his vast readership. There have been a number of cases recently where an internet (meaning, on a web page) poll regarding a politically charged topic usually linked...
May 10, 2008
The Quantum Pontiff
Teacher of the Year For a second straight year, the winner of the U.S. Teacher of the Year, is a University of Washington graduate. Of course I'm not supposed to say that, as not bragging is an sacred northwest tradition. (Did you know that...
Greg Laden's Blog
Online Poll: Pledge of Allegiance in Small Town Minnesota How should public school administrators react to students who sit through the pledge of allegiance in the US? This issue came up recently in a small town in western Minnesota, where kids were suspended and possibly humiliated because they failed to stand (in once case...
DrugMonkey
OpenConFooBlogSciWeb ELEVENTY POINT BAJILLION I have some brilliant and enthusiastic friends in the science blogosphere who are putting substantial effort into building on-line venues where working scientists will create scholarly communities to engage in vibrant scientific discussion and commentary, as well as disseminate novel...
May 9, 2008
DrugMonkey
Lose NIH Funding, Lose Lab? Abel Pharmboy pointed to a piece in The Scientist entitled "Losing Your Lab" which discusses the plight of the soft-money researcher who has run out of funding. Actually, the plight of one researcher in particular. The commentary is, however, getting...
Greg Laden's Blog
Pledge of Allegiance Suspension: Maybe homeschooling is the better choice in Yahooland, Minnesota Dilworth Minnesota is not far from Fargo. On Thursday, three eighth graders in this small town have been suspended from school because they sat down during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance....
Pure Pedantry
Daniel Drezner on the Benefits of Full Professor This is funny. Daniel Drezner, having received the full professor status, lists the benefits: 6) Something better than that stupid f@#%ing pen ceremony. As this site observes, "The scene in the movie A Beautiful Mind in which mathematics professors ritualistically...
Adventures in Ethics and Science
Friday Sprog Blogging: can we dissolve an avocado? As promised last Friday, today we report the results of our investigation of the solubility properties of an avocado. To get the disappointment out of the way up front, we will not be reporting Ks.p. values. Since we had some...
Page 3.14
What's your workbench? Photos of where you do science could be featured in the next issue of Seed Magazine.
Uncertain Principles
Interdisciplinarity Timothy Burke has some interesting thoughts about the College of the Atlantic, which represents a real effort to build interdisciplinarity on an institutional level. "Interdisciplinary" is the buzzword of the moment in large swathes of academia, and the College of...
A Blog Around The Clock
New UNC Chancellor is a scientist. w00t! Holden Thorp is a chemist and an overall great guy. Good news for NC science and education....
A Blog Around The Clock
Colleges should not discriminate against Martians and Tralfamadorians Our governor agrees. At least in the print version of this article which has a somehwat different title: "Easley supports college for aliens". I wonder why they changed it for the Web version - is the editorial position that having...
Discovering Biology in a Digital World
Workforce shortages in biotechnology, part I. Why is this a problem? Workforce shortages are a growing problem in the biotech industry. Communities are concerned that a lack of trained workers will either keep companies away or cause companies to move. If companies do have to move, it's likely those jobs might be lost forever, never to return. According to Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, now a professor at UC-Berkeley,...
May 8, 2008
A Blog Around The Clock
Open Access in Italy Recordings from the Open Access panel in Trieste are now available online. The order was a little different - I went last....
Evolving Thoughts
Podblack Cat ... is a blogger on the paranormal and skeptical stuff. She has some nice posts on Women and superstition (parts one and two) and Skeptical Books for Children (parts one, two, three and four). Go check them and her...
A Blog Around The Clock
The Impact Factor Folly The latest issue of Epidemiology features a (only somewhat tongue-in-cheek) article by Miguel A. Hernan: Epidemiologists (of All People) Should Question Journal Impact Factors. Well worth reading and thinking about: Developing a good impact factor is a nontrivial methodologic undertaking...
Terra Sigillata
Soft money research faculty on the chopping block The increasing number of failed competing renewal applications for NIH funding is now coming home to roost for those lucky enough to have gotten a non-tenure track research faculty position.
The Scientific Activist
Video Primer on Animal Research A good introduction to and defense of animal research--all in a five-and-a-half-minute video from Tom Holder.
Discovering Biology in a Digital World
You tell 'em Arnold! Arnold Schwarzenegger on community colleges
Uncertain Principles
Digital Is Not Infallible I've been grading lab reports in two different classes, and I've been struck once again by the way that students attach mystical properties to anything with a digital readout. The uncertainty used in calculations is invariably put down as half...
Adventures in Ethics and Science
Busy. I have at least six things I really want to write blog posts about at the moment, but the day job is a harsh mistress. So instead of a content-laden post, you get a list so you can play along...
Uncertain Principles
Non-Dorky Poll: Beer Pong Paddles or no?
“The holding steady thing is a problem. Someone should make a GYROSCOPIC laser pointer!” dr. dave on Put Down the Laser Pointer
