skookumchick | July 3, 2008Gas prices keep going up, and don't kid yourself that they're going to go down again anytime soon either (enjoy those profits, ExxonMobil shareholders...). Some places in the US are looking down the road at $5/gallon, and of course Europeans have been paying vastly more than that for years. The news is rife with stories of police departments worrying about going broke because gas is too expensive, and schools that can't afford the food they cook to give kids lunch at school because food costs are going up too much (which of course hits the poor kids more than the rich kids - yeah, that…
sciencewoman | July 1, 2008
The Science family is somewhere near here...where the hills are steeper, the rocks are flatter, the green is bluer, and the weather is a good 15 degrees F cooler than Mystery City.
Our trip so far has been a bit rocky...It took us 31 hours to accomplish what should have been 8 hours door to door. Let's just say that I've been left rather unimpressed by Chicago's weather, air traffic control, and a certain airline. But at least I didn't have to deal with any currency exchanges...
Posting is going to be sporadic for the next few weeks, as my internet access and time without a clingy,…
skookumchick | June 30, 2008
Some of you may remember that my summer turned into a very busy travel and conference season. The Big Trip has now started - a trip to England, France and Switzerland (England and France to see friends and family and because we planned on doing this trip after I finished my dissertation but didn't have time then, 'cause I was starting a job or something, Switzerland for a conference).
We flew to London-Heathrow arriving about 6 am Monday morning, spent time finding out my English money is so old they don't accept it anymore and we didn't have any new money, and making our way to…
skookumchick | June 30, 2008This is another excerpt from our travel journal to Isle Royale. The first day is here; second day here; third day is here; fourth day is here. Photos by me, text by my husband.
Thursday May 29
Rock Harbour to Raspberry Island and Scoville Point, and return
It is the last full day on the island, and once again we had great hopes and plans for awaking early in order to go do much stuff. Atop the list was Raspberry Island, a one-mile canoe ride away over a not-very protected part of Rock Harbour. We had been foiled in our attempt of this trip by the wind on Wednesday, but were hoping that an…
skookumchick | June 27, 2008Some longtime readers may know I'm enormously frustrated at the corporatization of engineering, and think that if engineers say they solve problems then there are some enormous problems of housing, lack of clean water, and energy use in impoverished communities across the globe that need solving and we engineers as a profession should get cracking on them. Here are two couple of examples of people who are doing just that:
Architecture for Humanity is an organization that started after the South Asian tsunami to design buildings to help rebuild not only the structure but also the spirit and…
sciencewoman | June 26, 2008For the last two weeks, I have been utterly consumed by logistics. I've come home from a trip to Utopia and a research project there, have been in the field twice locally scouting a project here, and am preparing for field work in Midwest next month. I'm starting to have dreams about losing boxes of field equipment to the airlines. At the same time, I've been continuing to do lots of thinking about "what I want to be when I grow up" - when I go up for tenure, or go back on the job market, what will my research program have become, in which subfield will I fit or which subfields will I…
skookumchick | June 25, 2008You may have heard that honeybees in this country are dying off. You may know that scientists have called this epidemic "CCD," or colony collapse disorder, where honeybees seem to lose the ability to find the hive again, and disappear forever. Scientists think CCD may be caused by a virus, or a combination of other factors, such as the presence of pesticides or the poor nutrition and high antibiotic use of commercial bee populations. There are other theories too.
Nature on PBS reports that, if the rate of collapse continues, all honeybee populations in the US will die out by 2035.
But did…
skookumchick | June 24, 2008We've been having a couple of interesting conversations on this blog about what makes an engineer, or who becomes an engineer. The National Academy of Engineering has been facilitating a conversation about this too, and have just published a report about it.
I have just ordered my copy, so I haven't read the report yet. But I have heard a couple of presentations on it, and the rough summary is that engineering needs an image change. We need ideas other than the stories of "engineering is problem solving" or "engineering is making things" to attract those who have the talent engineering…
sciencewoman | June 24, 2008In a few days, I'm leaving Mystery City for a whole month. Wow, that's a long time. It's a trip combining visits to family with a workshop and some field work, and Minnow will be along for the whole incredible journey. Fish will be with us for a week and then he'll return home to care for the Princess Pup.
Needless to say, I've got a lot to get done before we go. In lieu of real content today, below the fold, I've got a partial to-do list for today. Maybe I'll update this as I proceed through the week, maybe not.
Set up bill pay to cover the household bills while I'm gone.
Fix the Endnote…
skookumchick | June 23, 2008This is another excerpt from our travel journal to Isle Royale. The first day is here; second day here; third day is here. Photos by me, text by my husband.
Wednesday May 28
Rock Harbour to Lookout Louise, and return
So let me digress to the future again. [What was going on again? Oh yeah.] I write today from the point of Raspberry Island, looking out over the big lake, having just practiced Alice and my Rule #1: everything tastes better outside. The writing is better outside too - a good view, a comfortable rock, and a warm sun to heat my toes, still a bit chilled from wading in the…
sciencewoman | June 22, 2008In a week when others in the blogosphere are discussing TIME magazine's coverage of a pregnancy boom in Gloucester, Massachusetts, there was something else that caught my eye (and my ire). I've sent the following letter to the editors at TIME:
I'm very disappointed in this week's illustration for "5 things you should know about.". It's got three guys and some glammed up starlet posing to show off her cleavage and heavy makeup. In a week when the only woman in the accompanying text is Abigail Breslin in the American Girl movie, the illustration sends a strong message to girls that being sultry…
skookumchick | June 22, 2008I'm finally home from my two back-to-back conferences. I confess, somewhere in the middle of the 2nd conference, I just wanted to go home. But it was good to stick it out. Of course, the lack of Internets starting Friday morning through today wasn't great, but it means I have some session blogging still to do before I leave town again on Friday for my next conference trip. In the meantime, here are some photos of a few things that caught my fancy in Cincinnati.
The house looks okay, the plants haven't died, and I have my headache back. All in time for a busy day at work tomorrow. At…
sciencewoman | June 19, 2008Katie @ Minor Revisions has decided to take the good job close to her family, rather than the dreamy job many states away. She sounds a little sad about the decision, but I am rejoicing for her.
The lack of a support network in Mystery State is one of the things that has and will continue to make my life harder over the next few years, and it is a big reason for pondering whether to go on the market again eventually. Here in Mystery City, we are 1100 miles from my parents and 1400 miles from Fish's parents. Our closest family of any sort is an aunt and uncle 200 miles away, and we have very…
skookumchick | June 19, 2008The National Women's Studies Association national conference and the American Society for Engineering Education national conference are back to back - I'm at NWSA now, and ASEE is next week.* While I want to blog about suggestions for how to work conferences, my morning of wandering 'round the conference center for NWSA has raised some stark differences between these conferences for me.
Here are a couple that are occurring to me:
ASEE
Sponsored by defense contractors like Northrup Grumman
Everyone wears business clothes
Empty women's bathrooms
No mention of labour unions
Evenings…
skookumchick | June 18, 2008Okay, so now I'm in Cincinnati (flew in from St. Paul this morning) for the National Women's Studies Association national conference (in a unionized hotel, please note). I missed the last day of Inclusive Science, but really enjoyed myself, and felt I had something to contribute. Things feel a bit different at this conference.
I arrived pretty early for this conference (the main program starts Thursday night) because the science and technology task force had a 3 hour meeting this afternoon. I'll blog more about this later, but I did feel completely out of my depth again - like when I first…
skookumchick | June 17, 2008I'm at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN at a completely fascinating (so far!) conference on feminist science studies. Because of the free Internetz, I'll try liveblogging the sessions I'm in, but may get distracted as it is (as I have mentioned) completely fascinating.
Here's some of what I'm hearing:
Marlene Zuk, talking about the problems with using males as model organisms and how the use of model organisms seem to result in making those model organisms role models for humans, and the problems with the scala natura constructing the most complicated (and therefore good)…
sciencewoman | June 17, 2008All the recent talk about engineers 'round these parts has got me feeling a bit left out. You see, back when I was a girl, my parents encouraged my interest in the natural world. And they encouraged my brother's interest in all things electrical and mechanical. Today, I'm a scientist and he's an engineer.
I'm not suggesting that my parents consciously or unconsciously steered me away from engineering because I was a girl. Rather, unlike my brother, I didn't get pushed toward it. It wasn't until after college that I realized, with my academic interests, I would have been better served by…
skookumchick | June 16, 2008I've been giving some thought about the value I as an assistant professor find in blogging in part because it's the current Ask a Blogger question, in part because I just gave this presentation on blogging at the Inclusive Science conference, and in part because I have some blogger meetups scheduled and chatting about why we blog is always part of those conversations.
So why do I blog?
I've blogged pseudonymously as well as as me, and each kind of blogging has served a different purpose. When I was blogging pseudonymously, I used my blog to find community, to keep track of my progress on…
skookumchick | June 13, 2008This is another excerpt from our travel journal to Isle Royale. The first day is here; second day here. Photos by me, text by my husband.
Tuesday May 27
Rock Harbour to Mt. Franklin and return
I write this on the night it actually happened [hah], with Alice slowly peeling the tape off her feet behind me. [What can I say? My boots tend to give me blisters. You know, perhaps I should edit these more to avoid the TMI factor...] We're both beat from a long hike today, but her foot tape was a success. Sore muscles, but no blisters. [Yay!]
We slept in this morning, I think mostly out of fear…
sciencewoman | June 13, 2008
Noted the other day when Minnow was puzzling. It's a good thing she can't read yet.