… to the elder Free-Ride offspring’s trumpet teacher.
While I am generally accepting of your choices as far as the pieces you are having my child learn how to play, I have a small bone to pick with you this evening.
Author Archives: admin
Friday Sprog Blogging: the bunny has landed.
This week, the Free-Ride family welcomed a new member.
Snowflake Free-Ride (who also goes by Notorious B.U.N.) is a 9-month old New Zealand White rabbit who we adopted on Tuesday. She is cute, fluffy, and big (nearly 5 kg). And, she seems to be adjusting to life at Casa Free-Ride.
Pack your bags: assessing young scientists’ commitment to science.
DrugMonkey has a poll up asking for reader reports of the science career advice they have gotten firsthand. Here’s the framing of the poll:
It boils down to what I see as traditional scientific career counselling to the effect that there is something wrong or inadvisable about staying in the same geographical location or University when a scientist move across the training stages. From undergrad to grad, grad to postdoc or postdoc to faculty.
First, if you’ve gotten advice on your scientific career, go respond to the poll. Then, come back and we’ll chat.
Friday Sprog Blogging: first contact with extraterrestrial life.
Despite the crush of the closing weeks of the semester, I found a little time to follow the conversation about whether Earthicans ought to welcome a meeting with whatever extraterrestrial life might be out there to meet us, or whether we’d be better off hiding under the bed.
Although the Free-Ride offspring have not followed the point and counterpoint on the best alien life action plan, they’re generally more enthusiastic futurists than I am. So, I asked them to dig deep into their imaginations and give us their visions of first contact.
It should surprise no one that the elder and younger Free-Ride offspring have very different visions of this event.
Before they started drawing, they brainstormed a bit about what forms extraterrestrial life might take. Maybe you’d find your classic Star Trek humanoids, or comic book little green men. But why couldn’t alien life be mostly plants, or fungi?
Maybe we’ll be negotiating intergalactic treaties with microbes? (I’m thinking people might be less cavalier about skipping vaccinations if that’s how things play out.)
In any case, here are the pictures of first contact they came up with.
The corresponding question for the science PIs: graduate student work hours.
From the last poll you probably guessed that this one was coming.
I expect my graduate students to be working:Market Research
I’ll be interested to see whether there’s any correspondence between the hours demanded by PIs who read this blog and the hours demanded of graduate students who read this blog.
Once again, feel free to discuss the issue of appropriate student workload and/or humane management of graduate students in the comments.
A quick question for the science graduate students: work hours.
The issue came up in my “Ethics in Science” class today, so I figured it was worth mounting a quick (and obviously unscientific) poll:
My graduate advisor expects or requires me to work:survey software
Feel free to discuss in the comments.
Question for the hivemind: where in the blogosphere do you find mentoring?
Yesterday in my “Ethics in Science” class, we were discussing mentoring. Near the end of the class meeting, I noted that scientists in training have a resource nowadays that just wasn’t available during my misspent scientific youth (back in the last millennium): the blogosphere.
What does the blogosphere have to do with mentoring?
From the annals of plagiarism: with friends like these …
As we creep toward the end of the spring semester, I noticed a story at Inside Higher Ed about a commencement address gone wrong:
A worrisome plan to make the earth move.
It has come to my attention that a number of people are risking catastrophic seismic activity today by exposing n00bs.
This so-called “n00bquake” frightens me, and not just because I live in earthquake country.
Friday Sprog Blogging: dreaming of snakes.
Dr. Free-Ride: So, you know how sometimes you have nightmares?
Younger Offspring: Yeah.
Dr. Free-Ride: I had a nightmare the other night.*
Younger Offspring: What was it?
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, I was supposed to be picking up snakes with two sticks and moving them from one place to another.
Younger Offspring: Why?