DrugMonkey’s Google calendar must have told him that it’s time for the meme in which bloggers ask their readers what they’re doing here, a meme whose originator is the esteemed Ed Yong.
Having played along myself in 2008 and 2009, I’m on-board to mount the 2010 version of this blog-reader census. Please respond to at least some of these questions in the comments so we can avoid the expense of sending people with clipboards to your front door:
Friday Sprog Blogging: Antarctica: Land of Endless Water.
Last week, I noted that the Free-Ride offspring are off kicking it with The Grandparents Who Lurk But Seldom Comment, and that, to ensure that you would not have to endure a Friday without a Sprog Blog, I gave each of the sprogs a book to read during their visit with their grandparents and asked them to report back on their books via email. At the conclusion of the elder Free-Ride offspring’s book report, emailed to me last Thursday night, I wrote:
Major props to the elder offspring for doing blog-homework without any prodding. This sets the bar pretty high for the younger offspring next week.
Want to guess how the sibling rivalry played out here?
With no prodding whatsoever, I received an email report from the younger Free-Ride offspring this past Sunday night on this book:
Workplace safety: use your BRAAAINNS!!
I’ve just gotten back from a conference, and I was blaming the travel and time zones for the fact that I feel like this:
However, from the looks of things, it seems there is some kind of zombie epidemic on ScienceBlogs today. (I suppose this means I need to talk to the IT guys about internet security issues, if I got zombified through my browsing. Assuming they’re still taking help tickets from zombies. I wonder if being a zombie with tenure makes a difference …)
Anyway, in the meantime I thought it might be useful to break out the workplace safety talk for new students. While I can’t find the original filmstrip* to link to it, mine skews heavily towards what chemistry students need to know. However, you should feel free to shamble into the comments with that tasty brain of yours and add additional tips for safe conduct in your own field of study.
Drag your lazy ass back to the lab! Don’t you know postdocs are a dime a dozen?
Via Abi, I learn that Chemistry Blog has posted an interesting letter from a PI to his postdoc dated July 27, 1996. The letter, on official Caltech Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering letterhead, suggests that not all the stories one hears about the unreasonable work hours demanded of postdocs are exaggerated. Indeed, the most surprising thing about the letter is that it puts the PI’s expectations in writing.
The letter reads:
Necessity is the mother of longer text messages?
Recently, I traded up from my nowhere-near-smart phone to a slightly more advanced (but still nearly obsolete) phone — one maybe about a year newer (in terms of technological endowment) than the old one.
Practically, what this means is that I am now able not only to receive text messages, but also to send them. And, tremendous Luddite though I am, I have discovered contexts in which sending a text message actually seem reasonable (e.g., to contact a fellow conference-goer in the morning after a night of conference-carousing, when a phone call might interrupt sleep or networking or something else important).
However, I’ve run into an unforeseen complication:
IGERT meeting: what do grown-up interdisciplinary scientists do for a living?
One of the most interesting sessions at the NSF IGERT 2010 Project Meeting was a panel of men and women who participated in the IGERT program as students and are now working in a variety of different careers. The point of the panel was to hear about the ways that they felt their experiences as IGERT trainees prepared them for their current positions, as well as to identify aspects of their current jobs where more preparation might have been helpful.
The session was moderated by Judy Giordan (President and Co-Founder, Visions in Education, Inc.). The IGERT alums who participated in the panel were:
Fabrisia Ambrosio (University of Pittsburgh)
Abigail Anthony (Environment Northeast, a non-profit)
Edward Hederick (Congressional Fellow)
Lisa Kemp (Co-founder, Ablitech, Inc.)
Henry Lin (Amgen, Inc.)
Yaniria Sanchez de Leon (University of Puerto Rico)
Andrew Todd (U.S. Geological Survey)
Marie Tripp (Intel)
What helped you prepare for your current role?
Corrupting the youth at freshman orientation.
The funding situation in the California State University system being what it is (scary-bad), departments at my fair university are also scrambling to adjust to a shift in the logic governing resource distribution. It used to be that resources followed enrollments — that the more students you could pack into your classes, the more money your department would be given to educate students.
Now, in the era of enrollment caps (because the state can’t put up its share of the cost for as many students as it used to), it’s looking like resources will be driven by how many majors a department can enroll (without violating caps on total enrollment for that department’s course offerings — this is a seriously complicated optimization problem).
Plus, because we (i.e., the bean-counters and the tax-payers) don’t want students frittering away tax-payer subsidized coursework (i.e., taking a single unit in excess of the minimum number of units needed to earn a degree), there is an imperative for incoming frosh to declare a major within two semesters, and for incoming transfer students to declare a major within one semester — and then, once the major has been declared, it is permanent. Like a tattoo. (Because, see, changing majors often requires doubling back to complete the requirements of the new major to which you have switched, which pushed you beyond the minimum number of units needed to earn a degree.)
Among other things, this means my department is working hard at this summer’s weekly freshman orientation events to drum up prospective majors. To that end, my colleagues Anand Vaidya and Jim Lindahl put together something of a top 10 list:
Friday Sprog Blogging: Mummies, Bones, and Body Parts.
The Free-Ride offspring are currently summering (for a couple weeks, anyway) with The Grandparents Who Lurk But Seldom Comment. Practically, this means the conversations between Free-Ride offspring and parents over the past week have been brief and focused on how awesome day camp is.
I have, however, taken steps to ensure that while I am deprived of the physical presence of my offspring, you will not be deprived of the weekly installment of sprog blogging. To this end, I gave each of the sprogs a book to read during their visit with their grandparents and asked them to report back on their books via email.
Of course, I forgot to issue a mid-week reminder.
Nonetheless, the elder Free-Ride offspring was prepared to deliver a report on this book:
IGERT meeting: the Digital Science panel.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I was recently part of a panel on Digital Science at the NSF IGERT 2010 Project Meeting in Washington, D.C. The meeting itself brought together PIs, trainees, and project coordinators who are involved in a stunning array of interdisciplinary research programs. Since the IGERT program embraces mottos like “get out of the silos” and “think outside the box”, my sense is that the Digital Science panel was meant to offer up some new-ish tools for accomplishing tasks that scientists might want to accomplish.
Friday Sprog Blogging: I scream, you scream.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you remember what [Dr. Free-Ride’s better half] said we were going to do at some point this summer? Using the machine in our garage that Uncle Fishy and RMD left for us?
Younger offspring: That ice cream machine?
Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah.
Younger offspring: Oh, I love that!
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, what are we going to do with it?
Younger offspring: Make ice cream.