skookumchick
Posts by this author
January 30, 2009
So I've said over there on the sidebar that I blog at the intersection of women's studies and engineering. I confess I bet Science Woman was hoping I'd do more of that than I have so far, and I was hoping to too. But I've been hobbled by the idea that I should publish it in the archival…
January 28, 2009
Pat of FairerScience is hosting the February Scientiae, and has posted the theme to be about imagining a fairer, more equitable society (and maybe specifically about science). She's taking submissions (via this method) until January 30, so get fingers to keyboard if you haven't already, and send…
January 27, 2009
I haven't talked much about my teaching yet this semester, and it's high time I did - at least a little, particularly to contribute a bit to the discussion about PWIs. To be clear: my institution will consider me for tenure based upon my research, and to a lesser extent based on my teaching (I…
January 26, 2009
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THE COOLEST THING CAME IN THE MAIL! LOOK LOOK LOOK!
IT IS A THANK-YOU BOOK OF DRAWINGS FROM THE KIDS WHO GOT OUR DONORS CHOOSE DONATIONS!!!!
I am SO TOTALLY excited. The book is AWESOME, and they sent photos too, but I don't want to put them up on the blog for the kids' sake…
January 24, 2009
ScienceWoman and PropterDoc coordinated a session at ScienceOnline 09 that provided space for people to talk about different transitions they have blogged through, and how they navigated or negotiated those transitions. Both coordinators have gone through some job transitions which have manifested…
January 20, 2009
Slightly less significant... Apparently both Diane Feinstein and Obama are left-handed. Let's hear it for lefties! ... forgetting that so were GHWBush and Ross Perot. ;-) Clinton (him, not her) is left-handed too.
January 20, 2009
I spent my lunchtime today watching the inauguration of our new president. (W00T!) In between screen freezes and buffering, I noticed an article to the side of my video window in the NYT titled: "Female Scientists" and the lead line was "The inauguration brings some new home for lifting women in…
January 19, 2009
Ahem. I made it back from ScienceOnline 2009 with no mishaps. And today, I turn 32.
That is all.
January 17, 2009
So the day is getting on, and the bloggers are congregating around the plugs because their laptops are running out of juice, and I need to confess I've been taking notes all the time but I need to digest the notes more, and the wireless is flaky. So liveblogging is occurring offline, to be…
January 17, 2009
So ScienceWoman and I will be sharing live-blogging duties today, at least until our batteries give out. We're both starting at the Open Access publishing session, although I was also intrigued by Peggy Kolm's session about science fiction on science blogs. I'll have to catch up with her later.…
January 17, 2009
OMG I am at ScienceOnline! In (also cold) RTP! And I've now met ScienceWoman! And let me say she is as lovely in person as she is online. And I've met a whole bunch of other folks, but am still trying to sort out the politics of pseudonymity. Hopefully I'll get to post some official blogger…
January 15, 2009
A friend of mine posted this article to his Facebook page, and I thought it well worth pointing your attention to it. Researchers at University of California, Berkley surveyed over 8,000 doctoral students from the UC System about their career, family and life plans. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they…
January 14, 2009
I just got an email from Marlene Zuk, who gave an awesome talk at last year's Inclusive Science conference that I liveblogged. She has a great postdoc opportunity that those of you who have STEM backgrounds and who study ways to improve diversity in STEM should really apply for. More below the…
January 13, 2009
So, we may have mentioned we're going to ScienceOnline 2009, which starts on Friday; ScienceWoman and I have our respective sessions on Saturday with our respective co-facilitators.
I've been snowed under with the start of classes, some papers due, some abstracts due, a meeting last week, and, of…
January 8, 2009
In case you haven't heard, Scienceblogs is upgrading to a new system over the weekend. So posting and commenting will be out of commission from 1 PM EST Friday until further notice (yikes!).
But that's okay, because SW and I are both offline a lot this weekend - I'll be driving through real snow…
January 6, 2009
Hear ye, hear ye, an official congratulations to Science Woman whose awesome post "A reckless proposal, or 'Scientists are people too, and it's time we started treating them that way'"has been included in Open Lab 2008. W00T! If you haven't already, go read her post, and give her some comment…
January 4, 2009
As I've mentioned, I'm co-organizing a session on gender and science blogging, with a particular focus on how we can be allies, as well as on the intersection of gender, race and class in blogging.
The official conversation has been a little slow, but while I've been distracted, others have been…
January 3, 2009
I've been spending the past week or two trying to get my groove on with respect to work. I scared myself quite badly with how overwhelmed I got at the end of last semester, and how quickly. I vowed to myself not to let myself get sucked into such unhealthy patterns, and then beat myself up over…
January 3, 2009
A couple of weeks ago, the Donors Choose people very nicely sent me 2 t-shirts to thank us for participating in the Scienceblogs Donors Choose challenge. I confess that I have more t-shirts than I need already, and the Sciencewomen Challenge is still live with two remaining projects. So... I'll…
January 1, 2009
Acmegirl has posted the first Scientiae for 2009 here. Enjoy your New Year's Day even more by giving it a read. Thanks, acmegirl!
December 31, 2008
I'm finding the thing I need the most is a break from my computer. A break from emails saying I should do things, a break from my overflowing calendar, a break from long-overdue papers. So I'm doing other things instead. Like reading. And cleaning up the house. And putting away Christmas gifts…
December 23, 2008
Last night on the News Hour, essayist Nancy Gibbs read another good essay about the confluence of the holiday season with the current economic collapse. Read it here; listen to it here.
December 23, 2008
I'm sitting at my desk at home, feeling the cold air blowing through the window, and watching the birds eat at the bird-feeder. I submitted the last of our grades yesterday, including one for a student who hasn't attended class since October and who I am worried about. I am now dreading the…
December 20, 2008
This semester, I co-taught a course on the history and philosophy of engineering education for graduate students. One of the students' final projects was to create an alternative vision of engineering education, in contrast with this video uploaded a short while ago about our department of…
December 15, 2008
Both ScienceWoman and I are attending ScienceOnline09 in January; ScienceWoman has already gotten your feedback about her session she's co-chairing with KH, so it is high time for me to ask your thoughts about the session I'm co-chairing with Abel Pharmboy and Zuska.
Our session is titled "Gender…
December 12, 2008
I am a total sucker for StoryCorps - I think it is a brilliant brilliant project, and wish I had brought my parents in to be interviewed when the recording trailer came to my hometown. I keep telling myself I'm going to record them - I'm planning another attempt when I go home for Christmas.
In…
December 11, 2008
One of my graduate students reminded my co-instructors and me of a fun internet tool called Wordle which takes text you give it, and makes a graphical representation of the text based on the number of times certain words appear. We used this idea to summarize the course we've just finished on the…
December 9, 2008
Bora has posted a list here of all the nominated posts to his Open Lab Anthology. While we don't yet know who will "make it" into the top 50, I was pleased to see some posts from Sciencewomen were nominated. Thanks to the nominator(s)! and go check out all the other great posts people put in the…
December 9, 2008
Linda Hirshman has a good op-ed in today's New York Times, arguing that the jobs Obama is proposing to make are in industries where men constitute the majority of workers. She writes:The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction…
December 8, 2008
I'm fried. Tired, irritated, avoiding work. Note I have not posted on my dismal failure of InaDWriMo. I was so relieved to make it to Friday evening, I was just gasping.
Mark Bittman holds a secular sabbath for himself (a term he attributes to the blogosphere), where he turns off all his…