scientiae carnival
terrasig | August 5, 2009
Welcome to the August 2009 edition of Scientiae, the blog carnival of "stories of and from women in science, engineering, technology, and math."
[Apologies at the outset for missing the submission from ScienceWoman, co-blogger at Sciencewomen, entitled, "Unhurried summer mornings"]
I'm honored to be the first man invited to host the carnival. The invitation means a great deal to me on a number of levels: my laboratory has run between 75% and 100% women during my years in the business, including all of my PhD students, and I have a brilliant physician-scientist wife who has given us a joyous…
thusspakezuska | May 30, 2009Scientiae wants to know what keeps us moving forward in our science, work, and life. I am not a practicing scientist right now, and I don't have a job, so I guess this will have to focus on life.
Perhaps it's not surprising that not working makes me feel, quite often, like I'm standing still, or marking time, while life marches by. Of course that's not true. I'd just become so used to understanding my life as paced and marked by the rhythms of work that even after all these years, it is still disorienting not to have a job.
Moving forward, I think, is a concept that belongs more…
thusspakezuska | May 12, 2009The next edition of Scientiae, the carnival in support of women in STEM, will be hosted by Alice and Sciencewoman on their Sciencewomen blog during the first week of June. The theme for the carnival will be Moving Forward, and you can find details about the carnival, ideas for submissions, etc. by checking out this post. Deadline is midnight UTC on May 31.
I hope I can get my act together this month and contribute. I have not been very good about this the last several months...too much going on IRL. I didn't even manage to get up an announcement about May's Scientiae, but you can find it…
thusspakezuska | April 7, 2009Darn it, another Scientiae missed by me. But you don't have to miss reading it! Head on over to Candid Engineer and check it out! Topic is We Rise Up: Overcoming Challenges. Jane's contribution is heartrending at the same time it is inspiring.
And if you want to volunteer to host May's carnival, let them know with an email to scientiaecarnival [a] gmail [dt] com.
thusspakezuska | February 22, 2009Very often in my life I find myself in the situation my dad used to describe as "a day late and a dollar short". So it is once more. This past month I have allowed preoccupation with a number of issues, some familiar some not, to get squarely in the way of blogging. And out of the past 22 days, eight of them came with migraines. So what with one thing and another, I find myself arrived at nearly the end of February, and not only have I not managed to write my post for Danielle Lee's exciting new blog carnival, I haven't even managed to post an announcement about it. I am pathetic.…
thusspakezuska | August 15, 2008Lab Cat is hosting the next Scientiae, and her theme is My Summer Vacation!
Even for those not in education or with children, September means the end of summer so this Scientiae gives one more chance to look back over the summer to relive some enjoyable experiences, or assess how well we achieved our goals. Did we get everything done we had hoped? Did we have fun? Did any one go some where exotic or exciting?
You can write about anything to do with summer - for example, pick your best experience this year or talk about what summers and vacations mean to you in general. Feel free to use a…
thusspakezuska | July 29, 2008The theme for August's Scientiae is transitions. All month long I thought I would write something about the transition that was forced on me some time ago, to which I am still not quite adapted: from happy participant in the paid workforce to migraineur on disability. But as it happens, I've got other things on my mind.
The major transition in my life this past year has been helping my mother move from the house she lived in all her life to an assisted living facility. It's not just been a transition for her; it's affected the whole family. The very notion of a stable "home place" has…
thusspakezuska | June 11, 2008Hey folks, over at the carnival I missed one entry that got caught in my spam filter.
JaneB at Now, What Was I Doing? muses on how traditional success criteria lead to uneven weight distributions:
The lesson I'm trying to learn this year and next is that when I try to 'play the game' using externally set values for the things I do and am, I will be off balance - the weights of the different parts of my life will be wrongly distributed. It is up to me to recognise the true weight of things, and to distribute them appropriately for efficient and enjoyable carrying.
This is a really excellent…
thusspakezuska | June 7, 2008UPDATE: I missed one entry because it got caught in my spam filter. JaneB at Now, What Was I Doing? muses on how traditional success criteria lead to uneven weight distributions:
The lesson I'm trying to learn this year and next is that when I try to 'play the game' using externally set values for the things I do and am, I will be off balance - the weights of the different parts of my life will be wrongly distributed. It is up to me to recognise the true weight of things, and to distribute them appropriately for efficient and enjoyable carrying.
This is a really excellent entry, do go read…
thusspakezuska | May 19, 2008I missed contributing to the last Scientiae, which is up over at Flicka Mawa's pad, and deals with Career Paths, Perspective, and Changing Self Image. Scientiae is always great; go and read.
I am the host of the June carnival, and finally got my call for posts up at Scientiae. The call is reproduced here after the jump. Posts aren't due till June 6.
Hi folks, Zuska here. I suppose I should start with an apology for getting the next Scientiae topic out so late. But hey, the good news is you don't have to turn in your submission until June 6!
The new topic is: Added Weight. "Huh?" I hear…
thusspakezuska | April 7, 2008Scientiae's April Carnival is now up - actually has been up for a few days while I've been off having migraines. Peggy has done an excellent job with many thought-provoking submissions. I particularly like Mrs. Whatsit's ponderings on what it what it means to "have the balls". And I positively swooned on reading Liz Henry's submission. That's some writing after Zuska's own heart! Here's a delicious excerpt:
You can see two assumptions set up here:
Women who like computers are ugly.
It fucking matters.
and
It's tokenizing; it's like suggesting women are only in tech because of…
thusspakezuska | February 28, 2008Skookumchick wants me to talk about renewal for the March Scientiae. I will try, though I'm sure this would be much easier for me if I had already undergone some form of said renewal.
What do I find compelling about the work I do? What do I hope for?
I would say I hope for a day when I have no reason to continue writing this blog. I'm not expecting that to happen anytime soon, however. So, instead I will hope for the strength to continue writing. You can't believe how enervating it is sometimes to think about gender and science on a sustained basis. I think I said on this blog…
thusspakezuska | November 1, 2007Yes, it's November 1, and that means Scientiae time! Over at Yami's place, Green Gabbro.
I begged and begged my fellow male Sciblings to take up Yami's challenge and participate in this Scientiae, and two - count 'em, two! - of them responded! Kudos to Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata and Chris Rowan at Highly Allochthonous. Which is better than none, and I am sure the others were preoccupied with many pressing tasks, and will find time on some other day to ponder gender issues. I should also note the two posts that Bill Hooker at Open Reading Frame contributed.
Yami's version of the…
thusspakezuska | October 29, 2007When I was a postdoctoral student my supervisor sent me for three or four days to what we participants called "cancer camp". It was a mini-course on the histopathbiology of cancer. We learned to interpret pathology slides, how to look at them, read them, identify cancer in all its various forms and stages. We were taught the vocabulary that pathologists use. Just as importantly, we were taught how to see. How to understand what it was we were looking at, to tease the meaning out of the brightly colored and oddly shaped masses we were looking at in the microscope. Without being taught…
thusspakezuska | October 11, 2007I completely blanked out on Scientiae for October, so I really don't want to do that again for November. Yami is hosting, and you can find her call for post here. The theme is talking to yourself which god knows I do enough of, sitting home all day with the cats. I mean, don't get me wrong, China and Bodhi are great, but they don't talk back. Except for the occasionally meow-y demand for More Food, Plz.
Yami includes this very reasonable request to all you dude bloggers:
Finally... the past few Scientiae carnivals have been composed entirely of women's voices. While I think it's…
thusspakezuska | October 4, 2007Geez, 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 announcement. But indeed, the new Scientiae is up, at Wayfarer Scientista, and the topic is mentoring.
Skookumchick offers up a devastating dissection of a mentoring workshop she was required to attend, but which offered zero useful information as to how she could actually acquire or improve…
thusspakezuska | September 2, 2007It'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 by moi. I wrote about furious women the other day, which will tell you a little about where "unleashed" came from (and just how long it's been fermenting in my brain). But I have to give a hat tip to Karmen at Chaotic Utopia for inspiring me to make it the theme of the carnival, in the course of…