skookumchick | December 6, 2008I send this information around every year on December 6 because, while the Montreal Massacre is a big deal still in Canada, fewer people know about it in the States, and we should know about it.
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On December 6, 1989, an armed gunman named Marc Lepine entered an engineering classroom at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec. He demanded all 48 men in the class leave the room, lined up all 9 women against a wall, and, shouting "You are all a bunch of [expletive] feminists!", proceeded to shoot them. He went into the hall and shot 18 more people, mostly at random. He finally shot himself.…
skookumchick | December 5, 2008Prepare for an entertaining read over at Isis's place! And get your typing fingers ready for the Jan 2009 Scientiae, to be hosted by acmegirl! More info coming soon.
Thanks for hosting, Isis!
sciencewoman | December 4, 2008For those of you who liked my footwear selection, you may be interested in knowing about Red Ants Pants. They claim to be "the first ever company dedicated to manufacturing workwear for women" and it is a small woman owned and operated business in Montana. The pants are not cheap, but they are durable and they offer both a straight and curvy cut. The next time I'm off on a major field adventure, I might give these pants a try.
h/t ScienceBrother, but ScienceGrandma points out that Carhartt also makes a line of women's clothing.
skookumchick | December 3, 2008I know this is an "old" story (last Friday) but I cannot express how appalled I was when I found out that stampeding Walmart shoppers on Long Island actually killed the Walmart employee who was opening the doors for Black Friday. Black Friday indeed. A person was killed so all those shoppers could get slightly cheaper Walmart crap slightly faster. Horrifying. Despicable.
Only slightly worse than all the sweatshop and child labour that went in to making the crap in the first place.
NPR had a really good commentary on the stampede by Poet on Call Andrei Codrescu. You can read it here.
sciencewoman | December 2, 2008You've got a blog. You've developed a comfortable voice. Your writing has found a receptive audience, with thoughtful and supportive commenters. Things are going well.
Then, WHAM! You defend your thesis. Or you get a new job. You have a baby. Or get a divorce. You move to a new continent. Your blog gets assimilated by a Borg. Or you decide to come out of the pseudonymous closet.
Suddenly, you find you've lost some confidence in your writing. Maybe your usual stream of topics has been cut off. Maybe you worry about the appropriateness of your blogging in your new professional capacity.Maybe…
sciencewoman | December 1, 2008I'm no longer the most junior member of the department, so I'm not quite as sheltered from service obligations as I was last year. That means that when a faculty position opened up unexpectedly, I got tapped to serve on the search committee. As the woman on the committee, I'm finding myself tasked with making sure that we have a diverse applicant pool. I'm glad that our university is genuine about their support for diversity (at least in applicant pools), and I'm happy to do what I can to make sure this pool is diverse, but ... no one has told me how to go about doing so.
So far, the things…
skookumchick | December 1, 2008Amidst existing signs of global economic and imminent environmental disaster, please remember it is World AIDS Day. There are huge steps still to be made in terms of prevention and treatment, particularly for women across the world. More information about World AIDS Day events in North America can be found here.
sciencewoman | December 1, 2008Dr. Isis has issued quite the challenge with her prompt for the December Scientiae. I knew exactly how I wanted to respond.
My science is hotter than Dr. Isis's Naughty Monkeys, because I wear better shoes [when I do my science]. To demonstrate, I present a sampling of actual shoes I have worn while collecting my hot, hot science data.
The field assistant is bonus. She doesn't wear shoes...although we tried once with a pair of these. They lasted all of about 4 minutes in the field. The Princess Pup prefers to do her science in the buff.
sciencewoman | November 30, 2008The month of November has but 11 hours left, and with it, I bid farewell to InaDWriMo, the month in which I (and many other brave souls) pledged to make significant progress in our academic writing. I set before myself three goals: complete and submit a grant application; complete major revisions to a paper; and do the majority of data analysis for a poster.
I got the grant submitted.
I worked really really hard on the revisions, but I still need to revise the conclusions, abstract, and one figure, and send the revised paper off to the co-authors before resubmitting it.
The poster data…
sciencewoman | November 27, 2008It's nice that Thanksgiving is here, and not just because I need a wee break from teaching. It's also a very good reminder to me to look beyond the challenges and annoyances that seem to appear daily, and see instead the big good things in my life. And when I squint my eyes just right, I can see that many of those challenges and annoyances stem from an over-abundance of good things. So this year, I am most thankful for:
A bright, inquisitive, spirited, enthusiastic little girl who loves to climb and swing and read books and cuddle with her mommy.
An incredible bond among my mom, brother and…
skookumchick | November 26, 2008Well, my data collecting trip could have gone better. Besides the 2" of snow, and the fact one participant had to bow out (hopefully to be rescheduled soon), I discovered that one of my participants was not actually at the company I was visiting, but at a competitor's company. In another state. Needless to say, I didn't make that interview, and had to embarrassedly confess and reschedule, and then somehow pull myself together to carry through on the remaining meeting and interview. In the end, I learned a lot about how companies work and how I might be able to investigate various things,…
skookumchick | November 23, 2008I'm back at the ranch of the Aged Parents, and preparing to COLLECT REAL DATA tomorrow. It may be that it is supposed to snow 1.5" tomorrow and I have to drive 4 hours, it may be that one of my participants canceled on me at the last minute, but by tomorrow, I really really should have DATA.
I hope this works out...
sciencewoman | November 22, 2008Having worked on my writing every day for the first two weeks of November, I concluded last week feeling rather optimistic about InaDWriMo's success in getting me to increase my productivity. But I was also very tired. And in order to make time for writing every single day, I was working longer hours (i.e., seeing less of Minnow) and letting lots of other things slide (i.e., my lectures were terrible and let us not even describe the house). What I didn't realize last Saturday was how close I was to the tipping point...
But by Monday morning I was a stressed out wreck, and then a logistical…
sciencewoman | November 20, 2008
Mountain streams erode
but isostatic uplift
keeps relief the same
A humble contribution to the geological haiku meme, originated by survat, with a listing of contributions by Chris R.
skookumchick | November 19, 2008Jumping into the breech, Isis has called for posts on, "My Science is Hotter than Dr. Isis's Naughty Monkeys Because..." by midnight on December 1. So get your posts in to Isis for what I'm sure will be an excellent carnival (although of course they are always excellent... :-) ).
In addition, skookumchick has called for volunteers for 2009's carnivals. Want to help out? Volunteering directions are here.
PS - can someone fix my grammar in the title? Pleeese?
skookumchick | November 19, 2008Since my public confession, I kind of have gotten my writing groove on. I think I'm ready to turn revision-paper #1 around (at least, send it to my mom to see what she thinks), and I've made progress on the gender-diss paper. Yay me! Now moving on to class prep, and meeting prep...
sciencewoman | November 17, 2008 Isis tagged me for the five things meme that's making the rounds (again, actually, I know I've done this one at least once before.) But this time I borrowed Abel's idea and added a cool graphic that I got from takoma-bibelot on flickr.
5 things I was doing 10 years ago.
working towards my undergraduate degree
trying to decide whether to be a scientist, doctor, or lawyer
using ICQ to chat with my now-husband
living in my first apartment with a good friend and a third
falling in love with the Princess Pup
5 things on my to do list today
work on paper revisions
write tomorrow's lecture…
skookumchick | November 17, 2008As Science Woman has noted, we're moving into week 3 for InaDWriMo and my progress has been lamentable at best. I found no word count thingies, I am way behind on my gender dissertation paper, and I'm avoiding the resubmit paper. In good news, I've asked my graduate student for help on the gender theory and literature paper (hi student!) and am hopeful we're moving forward on that a bit, but I could be writing the beginnings of the paper and have not yet started.
However, I have some time today -- no meetings until 1 -- so I'm sitting at my writing space and... blogging apparently. I'd…
sciencewoman | November 17, 2008Open Lab 2008 is a printed anthology of the best science blogging of the year. We're now only two weeks from the deadline (December 1) for nominating posts for inclusion in this year's anthology. The fifty best posts, plus one poem and one cartoon, will be chosen by a panel of judges, and the winners will be printed in a book published by Lulu.com. That's right, time spent frittered away on blogging could earn you the right to (truthfully) say "I'm a published author." As usual, Bora's got all the details.
Open Lab is now in it's third year, and the last two years had wonderful writing about…
sciencewoman | November 15, 2008It's Saturday again, time for another update of my progress towards this month's InaDWriMo goals.
I've been sending myself little daily progress report details, but sometimes it's useful to take stock of the larger picture. For instance, until I sat down to write this post, I'd forgotten that I submitted my latest grant proposal on Monday - that's less than a week ago, and already I've made lots more progress on the next task.
So, to review. My goals were to submit a grant proposal (check!), complete major revisions to a paper (in progress!), and get the bulk of data analysis done for my AGU…