thusspakezuska | January 20, 2009I'm watching the inauguration on tv...all the bigwigs are walking in...and here comes Malia and Sasha. Could those girls possibly be any cuter?
Every time they show a shot of the sea of humanity on the Mall I am just overwhelmed.
I've never had a sense of living through anything so momentous before.*
Yay for us! The Bush years are over!
*except the election, of course. Well, and 9/11. But that was a very different sense of momentous.
UPDATE: Feinstein just gave her speech and tears are rolling down my cheeks. That line about the dream begun at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial…
thusspakezuska | December 27, 2008It drives me nuts that there are so many great articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education - behind a paywall, where you can't see them unless you have a subscription. The December 19th issue had a great essay, In Search of New Frontiers: How Scholars Generate Ideas. If you have a subscription, that link will be useful for you. If not, try to rustle up a print copy somewhere on your campus.
The author, Robert L. Hampel, talked about how one selects a Good Topic for Future Research (GTFR). He came to question the advice he'd been giving to first year PhD students:
Fill a gap in the…
thusspakezuska | December 27, 2008I wasn't able to blog this when I first saw it in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Dec. 19, but it annoyed me so much I hung onto the paper and saved it for a time when I could.
The typical traffic light is roughly the size of a large table fan.
The hardware necessary to switch a signal from green to amber to red in a fail-safe way can probably fit into the space of an old desktop computer.
So why does Philadelphia need to install control boxes as big as refrigerators to operate its traffic lights?
Thank you, Department of Homeland Security. Requirements for specific kinds of surveillance…
thusspakezuska | December 23, 2008Via the Chronicle Review New Scholarly Books section:
I haven't read either of these but both look good and I thought they would be of interest to readers of this blog.
The first is Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women's Reproduction in America, by Jeanne Flavin.
In Our Bodies, Our Crimes, Jeanne Flavin argues that, not only has the state's control of womens bodies become more intrusive and more pervasive, it has also become invisible and taken for granted. This important work is framed around several vivid case studies, each taking place at a different time in the reproductive…
thusspakezuska | December 23, 2008Last winter it was not uncommon for me to go to bed wearing two flannel nightgowns. I would hunker down under our thickest comforter, pressed up against Mr. Zuska for warmth. Mr. Zuska, like many men, is an astonishing heat source, for which I have been grateful on many a chilly night.
This winter, things are different. I wear a short-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts to bed. We haven't broken out the heavy comforter. Sometimes I can't tolerate being too close to Mr. Zuska's blast furnace body.
What changed? It's menopause!
The mid-forties seem a little young to me for…
thusspakezuska | December 23, 2008By request of the domestic and laboratory goddess, I am posting here a picture of my recent acquisition, a pair of ankle boots, as mentioned in my last post. It's no shoe of the week, but it's the best this hairy-legged feminazi can offer.
The adorable cat next to the boots is Bodhi, who often behaves as if he were a dog, so it's appropriate to have him posed next to the Hush Puppies boots. The style is Windermere, almost sans heel as is appropriate for my arthritic toe joints. I did NOT pay $94.95 for my boots, however. $69.95 on sale at Macy's, plus 15% off for using my Macy's card…
thusspakezuska | December 22, 2008I don't particularly enjoy having needles poked into my scalp and neck and shoulders and temples and I especially don't like having them poked into my forehead just above my eyebrows. Yet I allow my neurologist to turn me into a pincushion every three months because regular botox treatments subdue my migraines, and nothing else does. I like my neurologist; I trust him, and we have a good doctor-patient relationship. On this last visit we discussed my current medications and how they're working, and agreed that I could probably start scaling back one of them. My neurologist is at a…
thusspakezuska | December 18, 2008Over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, Janet Stemwedel has written a fabulously complex post about ethics and population, which I highly recommend for your reading pleasure and contemplation. It was inspired by a post by Martin on the ethics of overpopulation, in which he offered a grand and simple three-point manifesto:
It is unethical for anyone to produce more than two children. (Adoption of orphans, on the other hand, is highly commendable.)
It is unethical to limit the availability of contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and adoption.
It is unethical to use public money…
thusspakezuska | November 30, 2008Tomorrow I'm off to western Pennsylvania, for a week with mom. Taking her to some doctor appointments, but more importantly, finishing up the planning and preparation for her 80th birthday party, which we will celebrate on Saturday the 6th. After the party I'll be back home for just a few days and then off on a long-anticipated vacation with Mr. Z.
The upshot, of course, is there won't be much happening around this blog for the next two-three weeks. I should be back and ready to blog again just about the time all of you are winding up your academic terms and ready to take off and not…
thusspakezuska | November 26, 2008Tonight I watched the Barbara Walters interview with Barack and Michelle Obama. They were talking about their daughters' reactions to the White House, and shared a story about Malia. She said that she had thought that the White House would be an untouchable place, where you would be afraid to touch anything, but it wasn't like that. And that when she had some long papers to write for her classes, she thought she might work on them at the desk with that thing signed by Lincoln - meaning, the draft of the Gettysburg address. She said she thought it would inspire her to think big thoughts…
thusspakezuska | November 25, 2008Mr. Z and I went to see "Quantum of Solace" last Friday night. The cineplex was packed and teeming with Twi-hards. I went into the bathroom and found three of them before the mirror, primping and fixing their carefully coiffed hairdos.
And what hair they had! Long hair, thick hair, shiny hair, healthy hair. It was almost painful for me to watch them, knowing full well how they must take for granted their luxurious heads of hair. Because it never occurred to me in the past that my hair would change in any substantive manner - at least not until I got really old and gray.
When I was…
thusspakezuska | November 23, 2008I've been essentially caffeine-free for about five years now. After my stroke, when the migraines got progressively worse, all sorts of things that never bothered me before suddenly began serving as migraine triggers. Peanut butter. Bananas. Yoghurt. Onions.
And caffeine.
Now, caffeinated soft drinks I can do without. In fact, I can do without soft drinks altogether. But I love, love, love coffee. So, I switched to decaf, 'cause I couldn't go without. Over the past five years - no regular coffee, no caffeinated soft drinks, very rarely here and there a cup of tea. I know there…
thusspakezuska | November 19, 2008I haven't done a meme in forever. I was going to spend time today writing something substantive in response to the many thoughtful comments on my blog post on the proper way to be a woman in science. Or on some new topic. But instead I'm producing a response to this meme. Blame PhysioProf.
5 Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago:
Graduating with my 3rd advanced degree, an M.Ed. in secondary ed, mathematics
Moving to Kansas
Buying my first house
Starting my first job in Big Pharma (as opposed to the contract research world)
Becoming a gardener
5 Things On My To-Do List Today:
Do my stretching…
thusspakezuska | November 19, 2008These may be of interest to readers of this blog:
A new web resource, that's really a catalog of many resources:
[Ruta Sevo has] posted about 100 recommended resources on women in science and engineering, organized into small chunks, calling it "10 x 10 List." When you use Google to find things, or a large database, you have to decide, "Is it any good?" These are short lists of selected resources for people who are entering the field. There is much more out there, of course.
And the WAMC Radio Series on the Role of Women in Science and Engineering is now available online. The program is…
thusspakezuska | November 14, 2008Though university administrators seem to be widely reviled among faculty members, one of the best jobs I ever had was in administration. Many wonderful opportunities came my way; possibly the most mind-stretching, exhilarating, and rewarding of these was the chance to spend four weeks attending the Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration, held at Bryn Mawr College. Just imagine spending four weeks with several dozen intelligent, interesting women from colleges and universities all over the U.S., from a range of administrative areas (including faculty members looking to…
thusspakezuska | November 11, 2008Late last month the Chronicle ran a neat piece in its Careers section, titled Mothers in the Field. It's not behind a paywall - yay! Joan Ramage Macdonald, assistant professor of geology at Lehigh University, and Maura E. Sullivan, PhD candidate in ecology at the same university, write about their experiences taking their young children with them into the field.
And I do mean into the field! Joan took her infant with her into the Yukon Territory to do her research on the evolving snowpack. Maura does research in permanently saturated wetland environments, and first took her daughter with…
thusspakezuska | November 11, 2008At this point in the fall, most things in my garden have closed up shop till next spring. Oh, there are some chrysanthemums blooming, and the Virginia sweetspire and chokeberry tree have put on their fiery fall colors, but there's not much in the way of growth going on.
Except for the evil invasives. Sunday I went out to take a closer look at my beauty bush, which is currently sporting a heavy crop of bright purple berries, and discovered to my dismay about ten or more tree seedlings springing up all around it. Three of them had already grown quite thick little trunks and were threatening…
thusspakezuska | November 7, 2008According to the Chronicle Newsblog
Female professors at the University of Texas at Austin earned an average of $9,028 less than their male counterparts in 2007, and senior female faculty members there feel more isolated and less recognized for their work than do their male colleagues.
You can find the full report here and a press release from the university here.
The comments section at the Chronicle post is full of the usual dismissive commentary that arises whenever the issue of gender inequities in salary is broached. I liked this response from Meshiko:
It amazes me that despite the…
thusspakezuska | November 7, 2008Zuska is thrilled to announce that Dr. Isis the Scientist, Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, has joined ScienceBlogs! Yay! Another kick-ass woman blogger in the neighborhood! And a well-shod one, too! Stop on over and say hi as she gets settled in to her new digs. Welcome, Dr. Isis!