So I'm swamped at work again and have 15 projects going on and 3 papers in the queue to work on and 3 students who need tasks and I have to help give a paper on Friday, but do you know what the highlight of my day was? I voted. :-) Yay early voting in Indiana!
It's late. I've been working on this piece of writing all evening, and I've got one more meaty sentence to finish. But I feel like Cinderella over-staying her curfew at the ball, because every time I try to write that last sentence, it turns into a pumpkin. "A comparison of A & B would be interesting." Interesting? Yes, I'd find it completely fascinating and I'd love to do the work. But a hanging "interesting" is hardly going to move the reviewers, so I know I need to come up with a more compelling argument for the work. But all I can muster is: "A comparison of A & B would be…
It seems to me that sending off a big grant proposal should occasion a sigh of relief, a glass of wine, and a few minutes away from work. But when I submitted my proposal this afternoon, I barely even got up from my computer. Instead, I dove right into the next item on my to-do list. I'm seriously over-extended right now, and the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be receding into the distance. I'd been holding today in my mind for the past few weeks, but now when I realistically evaluate things, I won't have a moment of rest until after the end of the semester. Hurried hallway…
Did you know the Association for Women in Science and the Society for Women Engineers asked both presidential campaigns for responses to questions about science and engineering and women's roles in each. Download the pdf here to see the questions and the candidates responses. Read them through and be edified. (I tried to copy and paste them here, but it turned into a formatting nightmare - even all the spaces were screwed up...) What do you think of their responses?
So the t-shirts mockups are being drafted, and the numbers of kids who are being helped are increasing based on your generosity, and I'm so psyched about our high number of donors compared to blogs with many more readers. Y'all rock! Therefore, it is high time for me to kick in my incentive. I will match ScienceWoman's 10% donation pledge. Based on the final amount of donations, which I hope will make at least $2000 from our blog readers and friends but not including SW's donation, I will add in 10% of the total, which I will add to whatever projects are closest to being funded. In…
While the October Scientiae still may happen albeit much delayed (host Jen has been dealing with some personal concerns, give her a supportive shout-out, will you?), next host Jane of Sb's See Jane Compute will be hosting the November Scientiae. She's posted the theme of TRICK OR TREAT! and you should contribute something to the candy pot! Posts are due Oct 30, just in time for Halloween. Yay! I've missed reading Scientiae... get those posts in!
When you hear the word "poverty," what do you think of? Starving children in Africa? Subsistence farmers in Asia? Is poverty some distant concept? Something terrible, but far off? Yes, and no. Because, while poverty is terrible, it can also be close to home. Maybe as close as the public school down the street. Poverty is the vexation of the junior high school science teacher with no budget to buy paper to print worksheets, tests, and notes. She teaches in a "low-income, rural district in southwest Mississippi" and $243 would give her a year's supply of paper for 120 students. Poverty is the…
We've just heard from the Sb overlords: Seed has agreed to do prize drawings again this year for donors who give to DonorsChoose, beginning this Friday. We'll be giving away 50 Seed Magazine subscriptions and about 15 or so other prizes from an assortment of mugs, laptop covers and USB drives. Each Friday we'll choose winners for a third of the prizes. In addition, there will be one 'grand prize' at the end of the drive, of an iPod Touch. To enter the drawing, all you need to do is forward your donation confirmation emails to scienceblogs@gmail.com. Now, the bad news is you have to forward…
I'm still sequestered somewhere away from Mystery City, working madly on grant proposals and spending some quality time with my family. How are these things co-existing? Not so well. But at least it's pretty here. But anyways, I wanted to offer to send my dear blog readers a postcard from our mystery destination. Anyone who wants a postcard from our scenic destination just needs to drop me an email (science dot woman at google's mail service) by the end of the day on Monday. I can't promise that postcards will actually be postmarked from the vacation (and they may even postdate the submittal…
Isis and Physioprof aren't the only ones who can cook, you know. I don't get to cook on a regular basis, but every couple of weeks there's some piece of produce just begging to be cooked into deliciousness. This past week, it was a batch of organic Italian plums that came with our produce delivery (my one indulgence). I wasn't quite sure what to do with so many plums, so I consulted my shelf of cookbooks and decided upon a recipe from a 1950's book on freezing and canning for farm wives. I updated the techniques and downgraded the quantities a bit, and methods and results are below the fold…
Remember my friend Moreena, and her kids Anni and Frankie? It's Moreena's birthday. And Anni is getting a new liver today. As she put it, Please please please keep her safe. Please please please send peace to this donor family. Please please do. I'm not a prayer, but I'm praying. We're waiting to hear. Update at 8:34 am 10/9/08: Anni is doing okay. Update from Moreena below the fold. And it's Frankie's birthday today. Moreena writes: Dr. Superina just came to talk to us. The new liver is all hooked up, and is making bile already. Surprisingly, they ended up using the entire liver. Her…
Okay, I need to confess. I usually peg myself as an indie/alternative/progressive/folkie music person. But I am really finding myself working well when I start playing the following playlist (care of the new Genius playlist on iTunes): Online - Brad Paisley Landslide - Dixie Chicks I Feel Lucky - Mary Chapin Carpenter If I had a boat - Lyle Lovett Rambler's Anthem - Yonder Mountain String Band There's Your Trouble - Dixie Chicks Baby, Now That I've Found You - Alison Krauss & Union Station Long Time Gone - Dixie Chicks That's Right (You're Not From Texas) - Lyle Lovett The Fox -…
This afternoon the Science family loaded up our car and headed off on an adventure. We'll be out of town for 8 (!) days, but I may have sporadic internet access, as this is a working vacation for me. Below the fold, I've posted a photo of my packing list (and progress so far). Feel free to guess where we're going in the comments. Who knows, I may even tell you if you're right. Click the link to go to Flickr page to embiggen. It's actually a good thing I took the photo and posted it to Flickr, because Minnow decided to scribble all over the list partway through the packing process. I had to…
We got off to a strong start in the Sciencewomen Reader Challenge 2008. In the first 48 hours, we attracted 9 donors who gave a total of almost $400 to our DonorsChoose projects that fund impoverished public school science classrooms. And then we plateaued and our ticker hasn't budged a milimeter in the last few days. Maybe you gave to other DonorsChoose challenges or maybe you thought you'd do it later. But we'd love to see you give a little bit of money to help out our handpicked projects, too. So in order to provide a little extra incentive, Alice, I and the good folks at Yellow Ibis have…
The PBS News Hour reports out on the Barefoot College in India. The reporter talks with grandmothers learning to make solar lights, and with the founder who believes educating men is a lost cause because they're lazy. He argues that women use their education to get good jobs, and then use the money they earn to support their families, bringing it back to their villages, while men use it to get the worst jobs they can. It's a compelling story, and one that reminds us of the value of microlending, particularly for women's education and businesses. See photos of the Barefoot College students…
Both SW and I are trying to make/find/take back extra time outside of our jobs to support "the rest of life," with SW trying to support both Minnow and Spouse as well as herself. (Has anyone else noticed that, when women academics talk about balance, they tend to mean "work and the rest of life," and when men academics do, it's between teaching and research? Not all men... but it seems a pattern...) Sometimes for me this means giving up on getting work stuff done, and prioritizing other things. This weekend, this meant finding time to visit my young friend Annika, who is rapidly heading…
A few days later, but my story today bears some similarities to Alice's tale of reviewer requested revisions. I too just got back reviews on a paper derived from my dissertation. The reviews ranged from minor revisions to reject with the editors landing in the middle. Mostly it looks like major rewriting and some rethinking of our arguments, but they'd also like to see some more data collection and analysis. Only one problem. My field sites are >2500 miles away and about to be covered by snow for the next 7 months. So I suddenly find myself scrambling to make arrangements with co-authors…
Steve Higgins of Of Two Minds and I got together with some Midwestern friends at Jupiter's Pizza in Champaign last Saturday to celebrate the millionth comment on Scienceblogs. We ate pizza, drank draft cider (okay, Lisa and I did), discussed what it meant to be an engineer, and stuck the Sb stickers on our shirts. I think a good time was had by all, but certainly by me. Thanks to those who came out to celebrate with us! Photos below the fold... Lisa and Sarah The happy crew, mugging for Sb Intense scientific discussion.
There's an interesting commentary in the current Chronicle of Higher Education about how men and women experience college differently. The author is Linda Sax, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. Here's the part that first caught my eye: Second, men who work with faculty members on research or receive advice, encouragement, and support from them hold more-egalitarian views on gender roles. They become less supportive of the notion that "the activities of married women are best confined to the home…
For the last two Octobers, Janet of Scienceblogs' Adventures in Ethics and Science has organized Sciencebloggers into participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. We're doing it again this October, yay! DonorsChoose collects requests for materials, supplies, equipment, money for field trips and so on from public school teachers who are trying to do great things for their students, and then faciliates matching them to people who want to help. ScienceWoman and I have chosen some projects we think would be great to fund, for kids who really need it. And while we realize that the…