The sexism of not being able to fake it

Today I’ve been noticing that there are faculty members, in all departments, who drop the ball a lot by letting things slide, and there are other faculty who pick up the slack and keep those balls in the air. I don’t think anyone’s going to argue that that’s unfair. There’s no good excuse for it: [...]

wow

I love looking at the search terms by which people find my blog. “Republicans suck” is the biggest one by far, followed closely by a series of searches along the lines of “rainforest fluff balls.” But today’s pick is “most unnatural real ass.”
uh…
I mean, the disconnect there (“real” vs. “most unnatural”) is kind of amazing. [...]

Friday fluff

This is one week late. I actually wrote it last Friday, and somehow forgot to post it. But it’s STILL TRUE.
Something that will  make me very happy: Adam Lambert as the new lead singer for Queen. OMG.

The longer I think about this, the happier I get.

Fitness requirements

Geoscience is a field that has implied fitness expectations. This is easy to handle if you are able-bodied and already love exercising. But it at times feels really pressuring if, like me, you like the outdoors and like moving your body but are not terribly fond of fitness routines and regimens. I don’t get much [...]

Moving

This month’s Scientiae topic is “moving forward”: how our lives, work, and science are moving forward.
In my case, this topic is most easily addressed in list form:

Designing some new classes and new lessons for old classes for next year
Writing a grant proposal to fund a brand new project
Working with a new student
Trying out new activities [...]

Safety

Beryl Lieff Benderly has an editorial in Slate today about problems in academic lab safety. I have mixed feelings, particularly about this:
If Sheri Sangji’s death is to mean anything, it must be that no lab chief—and certainly no federal agency—claiming to further human welfare ever again tolerates the risk of harm to lab workers. That [...]

Experts vs. the media

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “experts,” i.e. who we consider credible and who we don’t on any given subject,* and on the roles and responsibilities of those who are widely considered to be experts. When we as scientists conduct studies and publish the results, in general those results and our interpretations of them [...]

May 18, 29 years ago

Erik Klemetti at Eruptions reminds us that today is the 29th anniversary of Mount St. Helens erupting. There are some great pictures up at Wired, and this video of the newscast following the eruption:

End of semester

Dudes and dudettes, I love the end of the term. All of a sudden I have nothing to interrupt my day at work! I got so much done on a manuscript yesterday that I was just astonished – I had gotten used to having just an hour or two a day to work on things [...]

Quick hit: Controversy

Zuska put up a fantastic post today, responding to Dr. Isis’ post about she was approached by a person from public radio interested in doing a story about her wonderful Letters To Our Daughters Project. Isis was told that the story wasn’t worth covering if she did not give up her pseudonymity, because it would [...]