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mspringer | February 3, 2009As a graduate student, you're an adult on your own. You have to find a place to live, food to eat, and a way to get around. Like most of the necessities of life, these things cost money. Where to get it?
There's three major options.
1. Teaching Assistantships. You are hired by the department in which you study to teach classes to the undergraduates. This is what I do now. In my case it requires about 9 hours of blackboard time a week, and another three or so grading and lesson planning. It's a lot of trouble and it doesn't pay all that well, but for a 12-14 hour/week job of fairly low…
cortex | February 3, 2009In the last few months, American consumers have undergone a profound shift in their shopping habits. We've transitioned from being incessant consumers - the spendthrifts of the world - to reluctant savers. Here's the Times:
American consumers and businesses are embarking on an era of thrift as the recession deepens, saving more money as they cut spending on purchases as varied as sweaters, new homes and office towers.
Department of Commerce Report on Personal Income and Spending
That was the picture painted by two government reports released on Monday. One showed that Americans cut their…
gregladen | February 2, 2009"This is a crowd that won't scatter," James Steele wrote in the pages of The Nation some seventy-five years ago. Early one morning in July 1933, the police had evicted John Sparanga and his family from a home on Cleveland's east side. Sparanga had lost his job and fallen behind on mortgage payments. The bank had foreclosed. A grassroots "home defense" organization, which had managed to forestall the eviction on three occasions, put out the call, and 10,000 people -- mainly working-class immigrants from Southern and Central Europe -- soon gathered, withstanding wave after wave of police tear…
gregladen | February 2, 2009
.... so, does this mean Amanda is actually my first wife and not my third wife?
gregladen | February 2, 2009Q Transmissions is a weekly one-hour skeptical call-in talk show based in Edmonton, Canada.
The show airs Friday, 6 pm MST on CJSR FM88.5 or here.
The Q Transmissions Facebook Page is Here.
I'll be interviewed by Desiree
grrlscientist | February 2, 2009Here's the latest blog carnival goodness for you to enjoy;
The Carnival of Evolution, edition #8, has finally been published, after the host suffered the loss of a family member. Be sure to go there and offer your condolences and support.
This blog carnival is a collection of reviews .. I sent them book reviews to include in this blog carnival, but there are a bunch of other sorts of reviews to read in the 34th edition of the Review Bloggers Carnival.
Annnd here's the thirteenth edition of the Drug and Pharmacology blog carnival. This is a small but interesting blog carnival for you to read…
stoat | February 2, 2009A blizzard strikes the UK, depositing the once-in-5-years 4" of snow, and chaos breaks loose. In this case, chaos means the school is shut. Daniel had fun in the snow all day and ended up happily exhausted, having built an igloo with friends. Miranda had a brief bit of early snow before deciding that snow is cold, and indoors is warm.
Here is the view from inside; PS provides the mood music:
To relieve the spoon gloom, there is a do-it-yourself atheist bus campaign generator, which made me:
gregladen | February 2, 2009Bora was interviewed on the radio on Sunday AM. You, presumably, were in church so you missed it. No matter, you can listen to the podcast here.
gregladen | February 2, 2009PLEASE NOTE: Unfortunately we are canceling our Big Bang Book Club, which was slotted for February 24th and March 24th at Grumpy's Bar and Grill. We apologize if this causes any inconvenience! Please still join us for our Cafe Scientifique on February 17th and Science Trivia on February 10th.
mspringer | February 2, 2009Whew! Long weekend. Unfortunately, due to work/procrastination the post I wanted to write still isn't ready. But today I'm also teaching 1d accelerated motion to my Physics 218 students, and that's interesting of itself.
One of the things I try to do is give problems that help build instinct for what an answer should look like. If an accounting students calculates that a million-dollar-per-year business owes a billion dollars in taxes, he will instantly recognize that there's an error somewhere. You've got to built up the same kind of intuition in physics. Example:
The New Horizons…
edyong | February 2, 2009Against by better judgment, I've started using Twitter. It may be fun. Alternatively, it may be a massive event horizon that swallows my time. Probably both.
If anyone wants to follow me: http://twitter.com/edyong209
Some initial thoughts:
Twitter, unlike Facebook, MySpace et al, doesn't use the word "friend" in the much looser internet sense of the word. That can only be a good thing.
Instead, of "friends", Twitter allows you to amass "followers". Don't think I haven't succumbed to noticed your feeble play to stroke my ego, Twitter.
It's really, really moreish. Like crack. Not…
cortex | February 2, 2009I came of age in the Ritalin generation, which meant that plenty of my classmates in elementary school went to the nurse's office for their little dose of drug. At the time, I remember being jealous of these kids, who not only got to miss 10 minutes of instruction but got to have a real, genuine medical affliction. (I was one of those confused children who, for a brief period, thought it would be awesome to have braces and/or a big cast on my arm.)
In retrospect, I can appreciate the complexities of the ADHD debate. On the one hand, ADHD is a real syndrome, with identifiable neural…
gregladen | February 1, 2009A bill that would have mandated that partners in civil unions be added to all state insurance laws was put on hold just as House committee was about to hold a hearing on the measure.
Rep. Edward Butler (D), the bill's sponsor, pulled the legislation, saying there were other measures dealing with same-sex couples that should be considered first.
Among those is a proposal to change New Hampshire's year old civil union law to allow for full marriage. A hearing on that bill is scheduled for Feb. 5.
Republicans have filed a bill that would start the process to amend the state constitution to ban…
cortex | February 1, 2009In the latest Seed, there's an interesting dialogue between political scientist James Fowler and physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. I was particularly intrigued by their ruminations on the network dynamics of Facebook:
JF: When we move from five friends in real life to 500 on Facebook, it's not the case that we are having a close, deep relationship with each of those 500 friends. In fact, one of the intriguing things I've noticed about these online networks is that they have a property that's different from realworld social networks. As you know, in the real world, popular people tend to be…
edyong | February 1, 2009The Reef Tank blog has published my post on whalefishes on their site. If you're keen on marine biology, go and have a look - they've got a nice little community there.
And for any Polish readers, Racjonalista occasionally translates articles of mine into Polish for their readership.
Thanks to the webmasters of both sites for pushing out my stuff to a wider audience.
grrlscientist | January 31, 2009
I just want to thank everyone again -- my readers, PZ (whom I think of as family) and his readers, and my fellow SciBlings -- for popping in to wish me a happy birthday. Your kindness has served to cheer me up since I have been having a rough time of it recently; so rough that it has been a battle just to get out of bed (one of the many perils of bipolar disorder). I am still feeling incredibly sad for reasons that completely elude me (I do have wacky brain chemistry afterall) but peeking in at my blog today and reading your comments and email (from all over the world!) has been like…
cortex | January 31, 2009Over at the Economist, a number of economists have been speculating on the possibility of an economic "placebo" that would boost consumer confidence without actually triggering a massive spike in government spending. In other words, it would be a Keynsian bump without the cash, akin to giving someone a sugar pill and telling them it's Prozac. Here's Tyler Cowen:
To the extent that the real problem is fear, this militates in favour of placebo policies. By that I mean initiatives which appear bold and have great symbolic value, but which don't necessarily cost us very much.
Sounds great, right…
grrlscientist | January 31, 2009
I have been making a lot of noise about science-y blog carnivals that were experiencing extinction events, but through our efforts, my wonderful colleague and friend, Kevin Zelnio, has stepped in to manage the Circus of the Spineless! So let's help Kevin by offering to host this blog carnival and by sending in our blog entries of "the other 95%" of earth's species: those without backbones! (Keep in mind that I am talking about species without backbones, not individual politicians, so please adjust your submissions accordingly).