(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Cush Copeland, a high-school science teacher.) 1) What is your non-academic job? I teach high school science in a public school in Central Florida. Over twenty years, I have taught mostly earth/space science (…

(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Lucy Rogers, a writer in the UK.) 1) What is your non-academic job? I have managed to combine my interest in all things space with parts of my portfolio career. For example, I am the author of the book 'It's…

I'm going to be off at Worldcon for the next several days, but fear not, the blog will still be active. I have scheduled non-academic scientist interviews to post every weekday while I'm gone. There are two posts each for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, so you'll have plenty of non-traditional career paths to consider. This taps out my stock of interview responses. I am happy to continue doing these, though, as long as people are willing to volunteer. So, if you've got a science degree and an interesting job, drop me a line.

Large Hadron Collider Struggles, Adding to the Mysteries of Life - NYTimes.com "Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies. Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine across the ocean. After 15 years and $9 billion, and a showy "switch-on" ceremony last September, the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, has to yet collide any particles at all. " (tags: science…

The Worldcon program has been posted, but only as a giant, confusing PDF. I was getting cross-eyed trying to figure things out, so I ended up creating my own blank grid sheets, and making notes on those. The following is a by-no-means comprehensive list of things I think look interesting enough to attend. There are only a handful of thing that I'll definitely be at (I'll mark those in bold), but I'll probably choose many of the rest from this list: Thursday 15:30: Re-reading Graham Sleight, Jo Walton, Kate Nepveu, Larry Niven There is a school of thought that re-reading is a juvenile habit,…

Last week, Sean raised the critical academic question of when to serve food associated with a seminar talk. He did not, however, address the more important question, namely what to serve at a seminar talk. So I'll do it, scientific-like: Which of the following items should be served at an event associated with an academic talk (check all that apply):(answers) And, just in case you feel left out of Sean's original discussion: The food at an academic seminar talk should be served:(polling) The posting of this has nothing to do with the fact that I've been organizing the summer student…

Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch - NYTimes.com Some decent points, but as with all NY Times Magazine articles, it's crawling with annoying class assumptions. There's a passing acknowledgment that the decline in cooking is related to the increase in hours worked, and then it's back to somewhat over-written laments for idyllic days gone by, with no real consideration given to how we might help make time for people who work for a living to cook. (tags: food culture society class-war) The Omnivore's Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals -- The American, A Magazine of Ideas "I'm so tired…

I'm a late addition to a Sunday panel at Worldcon: Science Blogging - The New Science Journalism? Touted as a new way of reaching the public, has science blogging matched its initial promise? Has it caused more problems than it solves? Well? What do you all think?

Last weekend, I was talking with Ethan Zuckerman at a party, and we talked a little bit about the TED conferences and similar things. A few days later, there was an editorial in Nature suggesting that scientists could learn a lot from TED: [P]erhaps the most critical key to success is the style of the talks. And here, those scientists wishing to inspire public audiences could take a few tips from the speakers in Oxford who addressed themes as various as biomimicry (Janine Benyus), the neuroscience of other people's rational and moral judgements (Rebecca Saxe) and supermassive black holes (…

We don't have SteelyKid watching any kind of baby-oriented tv, because I'd rather be stabbed with a fork than have to listen to the Tellytubbies. We do frequently have the tv on while she's playing in the living room, though, as we try to catch up on DVR'ed programs. This has led directly to SteelyKid having a favorite show: That's right, our baby is part of the Colbert Nation. Whenever the credits sequence for the Report plays, she claps at the bit where the eagle swoops in. This is very repeatable (Kate re-played the opening a few times, and SteelyKid always clapped), and especially…

It's critically important to be on your guard when exploring our living room at the moment. The wily SteelyKid can strike without warning: Of course, not all of her attacks are quite so violent: Awwwwwww.....

These aren't really SteelyKid's first steps, just the first ones I got on video: She routinely goes farther than that, more confidently than that, but the big lunge at the end is awfully cute. It's hard to get her really good walks on video, because she always seems to be on the verge of disaster, either by falling and hitting herself, or by walking toward the dog while she's chewing a bone, or heading some other place where she shouldn't be.... From what I understand, the terrifying phase should only last another twenty years or so.

CHART ATTACK!: 8/1/92 | Popdose "I just read the following in their Wikipedia entry: "In 2009, Boyz II Men announced plans for a new cover album, that covers 'artists I don't think people would expect us to cover!' according to Shawn Stockman." Can Popdose get in on this? Can we make a list of songs for Boyz II Men to cover? Because I want to start with "Detachable Penis" and just go downhill from there." (tags: music silly nostalgia culture) Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / The Perennial Hugos Ballyhoo "There's also a lot of weird disrespect going on every which way,…

I should queue up some more PNAS posts, but I think I'm going to save a bunch of them for when we're at Worldcon. And I do have more serious science-related stuff that I've marked to talk about, but it's Friday, and everybody could use a break. So here's a silly pop-music thing instead. As with past editions, the following two-word phrases are taken from pop songs, and (I think) uniquely identify a single song. At least, I can only think of one song in my collection for each of them. The twist this time around is the each of the two-word phrases is a person's name. If you think you know the…

Yesterday's historical physics poll was about precision measurements. Who were those people, and why are they worth knowing about? As usual, we'll do these in reverse order of popularity... First up is Ole Rømer, a Danish astronomer who is no stranger to this blog, having been profiled as part of the Top Eleven series back in the early days of ScienceBlogs. Rømer's big accomplishment was the first really good measurement of the speed of light, which he did by timing the eclipses of Jupiter's moon Io. These are seen to occur slightly sooner when Earth and Jupiter are on the same side of the…

I had a bit of a discussion via Twitter with Eric Weinstein yesterday, starting with his statement: Ed Witten has no Nobel Prize. Now tell me again how this era's physics just feels different because we are too close to it. Basically, he appears to feel that Witten is sufficiently smart that he ought to have a Nobel. My feeling is that if you look at the list of Nobel laureates in physics, you won't find any theorists who won before their theory had experimental confirmation. It's not an official rule, but it seems to be well established practice. My attempt at an analogy was the late John…

Guided By Voices | Music | A.V. Club "Dozens of people can say they were members of indie-rock institution Guided By Voices during its 21-year run, but the Dayton, Ohio-based band was chiefly a creative outlet for a music-obsessed former schoolteacher named Robert Pollard. And Pollard was very creative, capable of writing an album's worth of songs in a single day, and recording and releasing them almost as quickly. " (tags: music avclub culture) K-State researchers study how children view and treat their peers with undesirable characteristics Not as badly as you might think. But not well…

It's really getting difficult to get good Baby Blogging pictures, now that SteelyKid is mobile. We've had to resort to trying to sneak Appa into the background when she pauses to regroup by chewing on an outgrown outfit: That's not the best Appa-for-scale picture, I know, but it's tough. This one is better, but you can't see her face: Of course, you can see Kate, which makes up for a lot...

Keeping up the string of poll questions about less-well-known physicists (started here), here's a list of physicists who are known for having made very precise measurements of physical quanitites. Which of them is the best? Which of these physicists who made precision measurements is the best?(poll) (Note: I have deliberately limited this to physicists who are no longer alive, which is why some recent names are missing.)

Yesterday, I posted a silly poll about optical physicists. Who are those people, and why should you care about them? In inverse order of popularity: Bringing up the rear in this race is John William Strutt, who, even more than Lord Kelvin in the thermodynamics poll, is hurt by the fact that people know him by his title, Lord Rayleigh. His notable achievements in optics include a formalization of the resolution limits for optical devices, and the phenomenon known as "Rayleigh Scattering," which is the short answer to the question "Why is the sky blue?" (The long answer requires a whole book.)…