thusspakezuska
Posts by this author
May 29, 2007
Some of you will remember the Life as a Leak series that I posted awhile back. If you were interested in that then you may want to read this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education: Conference Confidential. Annoyingly, it is behind a paywall, so you may want to look around for a print…
May 29, 2007
UPDATE: Unfortunately, this contest is only open to U.S. citizens because of laws regulating sweepstakes and contests. Apologies to any readers outside the U.S.
Seed Magazine is having a writing contest, and you're invited! It's actually the Second Annual Seed Writing Contest presented by…
May 29, 2007
Hey, I bet you thought I forgot all about this course, didn't you????
No, I didn't! Just lots of stuff going on in the personal life that has made it difficult for me to give the attention needed to the next set of readings, which are very....dense. However, now I'm ready to go!
Let's say next…
May 24, 2007
Please don't forget to nominate posts for the 2007 Science Blogging Anthology. I've added an icon to the left sidebar that you can click on (it's the blue "Open Lab 2007" bit just below "nominate posts for") to go to the very easy, very short nomination form. Let's make sure that this year there…
May 24, 2007
There's a great post over at the blog Women in Science on a resource, the Harvard Open Collections Program Women Working 1800-1930.
...a great digital database of books, photos, diaries, and trade catalogs. It covers all kinds of work, from unpaid household labor to lawyers and politicians. And,…
May 22, 2007
I don't know what is going on, but most new comments seem to be getting held for moderation and/or sent by the spam filter into my junk folder. I have just retrieved a bunch of them from the junk folder (including one of my own) and gotten them published. However, I am about to leave for an…
May 22, 2007
I would not have believed this would be possible in 2007, and yet, here it is.
CBS is bringing to your television, this fall, a series so full of stereotypes, so dazzingly stupid, so ridiculously puerile, that it must surely offend the sensibilities of everyone in science.
I am talking about "The…
May 22, 2007
Bora pointed me to a post at The Phineas Gage Fan Club about an undergraduate student in Sweden who has been rather severely punished by her university for appearing naked in the pages of a "lad mag".
The department demanded that the student attend psychotherapy with a member of faculty, and that…
May 22, 2007
Mr. Zuska and I spent a few days in Gettysburg at the Bluegrass Festival. I am a conflicted fan of bluegrass music. That is, I do love me some banjo. And hearing a good banjo, fiddle, bass, mandolin, and guitar together is, to me, a true aural delight.
The problem lies with some of the lyrics…
May 22, 2007
Dave at the World's Fair asks:
Can you show us your coffee cup?
Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?
Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary?
Can you try to get others to comment on it?
I'm a day late and a dollar short, as my dad…
May 22, 2007
I recently received a copy of Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies in the mail from the Seed offices. Although I can't say I was particularly dying to read this, free books are always a nice thing.
So I opened it up to take a look. Chapter 1 starts out this way:
For thousands of years, human beings have…
May 18, 2007
So, I just finished reading Lost Clown's tale of her entry into mathematics - from feminist theory. (Thanks to Sciencewoman's compilation for the 6th round of Scientiae for leading me to that post!) It's really inspiring, and exciting to hear how Lost Clown's physics teacher helped her find her…
May 17, 2007
Perhaps you are familiar with the 2006 Science Blogging Anthology, The Open Laboratory, that was put together by Bora Zivkovic. It is a great collection of (most) of the best of last year's science blogging, but as Bora has recently noted to me, it is lacking something important. That is, there…
May 17, 2007
The 6th Scientiae Carnival is up over at Sciencewoman's pad. The topic is "mothers and others, those who influenced us along the way" but the collected posts are not limited to this topic. Scienceowoman has put together a very interesting mix of some truly thought-provoking posts. As always, the…
May 14, 2007
I have to admit, I am an avid reader of comic strips in the daily newspaper. There's a lot of social commentary in the daily comics. Over the past year or two, I've watched as a few of the more conservative strips have slyly (or not so slyly) introduced references to intelligent design into a…
May 12, 2007
The theme of the upcoming Scientiae carnival is "Mothers and Others, women who have influenced you along the way". So here are my musings. scientiae-carnival
I am fond of saying that my mom is the reason I became an engineer. She is not, of course, the sole reason I became an engineer, nor is…
May 10, 2007
This post is for all who love plants...
I visited the Jenkins Arboretum yesterday. It's located in Devon, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, on the "Main Line". This arboretum is a real jewel of biodiversity in the midst of a region that has been developed to the ultramax. It has a special focus on…
May 10, 2007
So, according to WT, I have minions.
This would be awesome, if it were true.
Alas, I fear it is not. Mr. Zuska and I still must fetch our own food and load the dishwasher, and last night we were forced to gather the trash and wheel the container to the curb ourselves. I am pretty sure if I had…
May 7, 2007
A long-time reader tipped me off about a recent New York Times article poetically titled
Getting the Most Bang Out of Quarks and Gluons.
It's all about the really nifty guy-physics going on at Brookhaven National Lab and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC or "rick". Hah.)
I'm not sure what…
May 4, 2007
Bora notes that some people are wondering why there aren't more Indian (or Serbian) science bloggers. Bora links to an interesting post from Selva on this topic.
This is all very ironic to me because just two days ago I discovered the blog Nanopolitan (which, as it turns out, Selva has on his…
May 4, 2007
Info, resources, network, academic life - it's all good.
From the WEPAN listserv:
The National Clearinghouse on Academic Worklife combines into a single website information resources and community discussions to support those who study or participate in academic work: faculty, administrators,…
May 4, 2007
The Chronicle of Higher Education daily update reports on this year's inductees to the National Academy of Sciences. A total of 72 members and 18 foreign associates elected this year - and guess what, they managed to find 9 worthy women. Yes, NINE.
Is that not amazing?
But fear not, friends…
May 1, 2007
The Chronicle Review this week is essentially devoted to analysis of and commentary on the Virginia Tech massacre. The Chronicle asked a number of individuals what they would say if they were asked to speak to the Virginia Tech graduating class at commencement this year. Edward J. W. Park's…
May 1, 2007
The 5th Scientiae Carnival is up at Clarity. I've been so out of it most of this month that I had nothing to contribute to it this time. The carnival theme this time is why and how do you labor at what you do?
There's lots of good stuff on the carnival, as usual. You might want to check out…
May 1, 2007
I needed something to lighten up my day today. Maybe you do, too. How about this picture from my garden?
See, even my garden knows I'm a bleeding heart liberal.
April 30, 2007
Maybe it's not a bad time to repost the link to this post, and to requote this snippet from it:
When the topic at hand is men not taking an issue seriously, suggesting that the issue might not really be all that serious is not being dispassionate. It is, in fact, taking a side. And the people on…
April 27, 2007
You'll recall I posted about fellow Scibling Shelley Batts's run-in with Wiley over fair use of a figure and graph from a journal article. This incident created quite a firestorm in the blogosphere. You'll find a good summary and a nice link roundup provided by Bora over at A Blog Around The…
April 27, 2007
The last week or so, some of you may have noticed that you submit a comment and it doesn't show up in the comments thread right away. I'm assuming you get the message that the comment is being held for approval by the blog owner. At least I hope so.
Please note: you are not being singled out for…
April 26, 2007
All last week I was silent on my blog because I wasn't feeling well enough to spend much time on the computer. So I didn't post anything when many other people were writing about the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. I thought about what I might say if I were well enough to blog and I concluded…
April 25, 2007
From the Chronicle of Higher Education daily update yesterday:
The strongest source of white opposition to affirmative action today is neither racism nor a sincere conviction that any favoritism, even if compensatory, is wrong, but rather a "desire to protect fellow whites," three scholars argue in…