thusspakezuska

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Geez, have I ever had a bad blogging month. I've not blogged much lately. I completely missed contributing to this month's Scientiae (these last two weeks with Mom took up a lot of time...) And then I completely blanked out that it was even time for Scientiae to be up, until I saw Sciencewoman's…
Probably you've already noticed that Sciencewoman has joined the gang here at ScienceBlogs! Her first post here was on Sept. 20th, which was while I was off traveling with my mom. Helping my mom navigate through her vacation absorbed nearly all my energy and time; there was not much left for…
So, I see that sly Dr. Free-Ride is bribing her readers with promises of poems and original artwork from the sprogs and writing blog entries on the topic of their choice if only they will contribute to Donors Choose. Very clever, very clever indeed. And not to be outdone, Sciencewoman is…
I wasn't a part of ScienceBlogs yet last June for the first Donors Choose fund-raiser, but I sure am glad to be able to participate this year. If you haven't heard of Donors Choose, here's a quick description: DonorsChoose.org is a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our…
Saw this over at The Chem Blog. Couldn't help offering my own spin on it. Chem Blog needs some serious shoe-puking. I recommend you read the original, then my version. It will be more fun that way. Oh god that is so freaking depressing isn't it? Reminds me of a sad story from when I was in…
The Scientist wants you to vote for your favorite life science blogs. To get the party started, they asked seven prominent science bloggers to recommend their favorite science blogs. I mean, they asked seven prominent male science bloggers for their recommendations. This is science, after all,…
From the Chronicle News Blog... ...it will be 25 years ago tomorrow that Mr. Fahlman, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, invented the digital smiley face. After a colleague joked about a contaminated elevator on an electronic bulletin board, Mr. Fahlman had his eureka…
Posting will be sparse to non-existent over the next week, as it has been the past few days. This is because I'm hanging with Mom for a week or so. Actually, I'm hanging with my mom and my sister at the beach at Cape Hatteras. Sister and I have spent months planning this undertaking. Cape…
So I'm skimming along in Google Reader, thinking it's the year 2007, when whoa! I happen upon this post by Female Science Professor. Did he actually call her "science lady"? WTF? What millennium are we living in? And this is the kind of response you get from the authorities when you are…
There's a wonderful three-part interview with Shobita Parthasarathy, author of Building Genetic Medicine: Breast Cancer, Technology, and the Comparative Politics of Health Care , over at The World's Fair. The interview is broken up into three parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Here's an excerpt from…
Lots of my Sciblings have blogged about 9.11.01 today. I particularly recommend Abel Pharmboy's post, and the video that Orac posted if you can stand to watch it. I don't feel that I have anything meaningful to add. I felt that way in the weeks after the tragedy, when K-State engineering…
Female Science Professor works with Professor Troll. Perhaps many of you have a similar colleague or acquaintance. What do you do when you constantly have to rub shoulders with Professor Troll's ilk? Like mosquitoes in summer, they buzz around strong, intelligent women, unable to stay away,…
Young Female Scientist asks her readers to rank their undergraduate and graduate institutions on a scale of 1 to 10, "10 being the most egalitarian and synergistic even with conflicting opinions from strong personality types (probably doesn't exist), 1 being the most sexist, demeaning, lawsuit-…
I found the link to this video over at She's Such a Geek! - thanks, Charlie! Listen to one female geek's response to reading the book. I particular loved her saying that the "she" in "She's Such a Geek!" should not make men feel excluded - they should just "ignore the s in front of the he as we…
Martin Rundkvist has kindly posted for us all a photo of a gender-training kit now available in stores. Don't delay! You'll want to make sure your daughter or niece learns her place in life early on. If she insists on a career, let her know that maids are in need in all hotels and many of our…
I saw this advertised in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action, by Peter Schmidt. Schmidt is a deputy editor at the Chronicle. I don't have a copy of the book but the excerpt I read on amazon.com is very well-…
You may notice I've modified the blog so that comments are now numbered. This may be helpful in responding to various comments in a thread, especially if the threads get long. Thanks to PZ Myers for sharing his nifty code!
Loathe as I am to admit it, a copy of James Watson's historical novel The Double Helix does reside on one of my bookshelves. (Though I did purchase it in a used bookstore, so he garnered no profit from me.) As you may recall, The Double Helix, based loosely on Watson's experiences in England at…
The 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference (organized by ScienceBlog's very own Bora Zivkovic) is fast approaching. Karen Ventii and I will be co-chairing a 1 hour session tentatively called "Exploring Women in Science Blogging". (This announcement also appears on her blog here.) We are…
I can barely bring myself to blog on this topic, it is so tiresome. (Thanks to Sheril at The Intersection for this link.) Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks. Men like attractive women! Women look for security and financial success…
Diane Rhoten writes in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education about the concept of networked science. The Manhattan Project, she says, brought us the era of Big Science: ambitious projects, organized in a "top-down, hierarchical, vertical" manner, requiring lots of cash, fancy equipment,…
It's almost September 17th, and you know what that means - Constitution Day! Do you have your festivities all planned out yet? No? Don't you remember there's a federal law mandating that all schools which receive federal funds have got to put on a program about the constitution for their…
Here's the problem: I've got migraines. So I take topamax. Topamax helps decrease the occurrence of daily headache and decrease the frequency of migraine. But topamax has side effects. A really bad one is cognitive confusion. This manifests itself in several ways. One is during speaking - I'…
It's late summer, and the harvest is bountiful, and so with the contributions to Scientiae. Thanks to all of you who submitted such fabulous posts. Some of you even wrote two posts! It must be that back-to-school enthusiasm. As you know, this month's theme for Scientiae is "Unleashed", chosen…
Just a very short post to tell you all that I've had migraine all day, and am still headachy. Which means no Friday Bookshelf today (maybe tomorrow) and quite possible a delay in Scientiae. I doubt I will get it posted tomorrow though I will try. Hey, I guess that gives you a narrow window of…
Alert reader Linda Carpenter has given me a heads-up about a forthcoming book that is a "take down of ev-psych style cave-masculinity". Ooh, that sounds tasty! The book is The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and Science by Martha McCaughey. Here's the book…
Perusing Google Reader tonight, and here are some items of note: Absinthe seems to be in a bad way, at least as regards blogging and the blogosphere. Doesn't seem to be much we can do to cheer her or change her mind, as she promises to delete all comments from her blog post. It's a shame to see…
As a graduate student at MIT, my daily commute took me past a construction site bordered by the sort of concrete dividers you see along highways. It was a pretty long stretch of concrete dividers, and on it someone had energetically spray-painted the following in large, excited letters: UNLEASH THE…
By way of the Chronicle news blog: The National Institutes of Health has released new guidance about its policies on diversity and on child care. One set of guidelines, or "frequently asked questions," released Friday, concerns the NIH's efforts to expand the pool of candidates eligible for its…
Maybe by now you've noticed the new box at the top of the comments, just below every post, asking you to enter the ScienceBlogs 500,000th comment contest. You have to submit your email address with your comment to be entered. Or sign up for the Sb weekly recap. Well, just click on comment below to…