First, let me say that I hate myself for using lyrics from a song by Heart(?) in the title of this post, but it's what came to mind when I was mulling over the topic-of-the-day.If this blog has any mission or goals, and it may not, one of them might...
Spring Cleaning
A reader wrote to me with a truly disgusting tale of the unhealthy and unacceptably low level of personal hygiene of a very smart and motivated graduate student. This raises the interesting but difficult question of how much an adviser can do in these...
Plastic Brain
A major component of my research involves interacting with international colleagues and students, an aspect of my work that I enjoy very much. At some point years ago I decided that I should try to become more conversant in a particular language that...
Spotted on Sunday: Spring Fling
Outdoor Afro has initiated a new Sunday Meme - Spotted on Sunday (SOS)! These posts are a fun way to help make visible people of color outdoors enjoying all types of recreational activities.Anyone can submit a photo to Outdoor Afro via email, if you...
Choices Choices Choices
A reader asks how departments choose which advisers or research groups will get new graduate students. The reader's observation is that factors other than the apparent qualifications of the applicants seem to be involved in some of these decisions.That's...
Women Girls
An old post on the topic of referring to college-age or older female people as girls vs. women got a lot of comments back in 2006, and the topic still pops up now and again in comments and conversation. As far as I can tell, these days, girl is the more...
Lounging Students
Among the many research and data summaries, anecdotes, and recommendations in the recent AAUW report, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, is this little idea, described in a section on what some physics departments...
Selected readings 3/23/10
Interesting reading and news items.These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account.Google’s Computing Power Refines Translation ToolGoogle’s efforts to expand beyond searching the Web have met with mixed success. Its digital books project has been...
My Grandmother Was Right
Not long ago, a colleague of mine spilled an acid mixture on his clothes.He knew what to do: He immediately removed his lab coat, pants, socks, and shoes. He washed off his legs and feet, even though he didn't think the acids got to his skin. He called...
Go Ahead - Reject Me
An e-mail question from a reader:What's the best (most diplomatic?) way to reject an admission offer from a school?For most places, you don't have to do anything except click on the decline option on a webpage, but if you feel that you should send a...
Right under my nose: Dr. Rubye Torrey, Sister in Science
I met Dr. Rubye Torrey (yes, with an e) as an undergraduate student at Tennessee Technological University. I had seen in the University Center, walking along the Quad, in the Administration building and at football games. She was the Assistant Vice-President...
Changing the Rules and Raising the Bar
When a university revises its tenure and promotion code, faculty hired before the revisions should be evaluated according to the policy in place at the time they were hired. I have been indirectly involved in two such modification efforts. When the tenure...
Either/Or Proposition
The case of a disgruntled Michigan Tech professor who mailed his teaching awards back to the university (along with angry letters) raises anew questions about how universities value teaching relative to research, and whether it is reasonable to expect...
Understanding push-pull market forces and promoting science to under-served audiences
Whenever a news source or blog community claims to be a go-to source of information for African-American audiences, I take a quick look at the tabs or regular feature titles and I always find one major subject area lacking: Science. To be fair, science...
Academic Vampires
Yesterday I mentioned the recent novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Goldstein (and some of its reviews) as an example of a recent contribution to the academic satire genre. In fact, with its long discourses on faith and religious...
Orion in a New Light
Orion in a New Light (2/10/10)The Orion Nebula is a vast stellar nursery lying about 1350 light-years from Earth. Although the nebula is spectacular when seen through an ordinary telescope, what can be seen using visible light is only a small part of...
Absurdity of Current Academic Thinking?
Longtime FSP readers know that I am interested in how academia is depicted in literature and other artistic venues, and that I have a particular interest in academic satire in novels. Although I generally disapprove of attempts to make academia and academics...
Diversity Help Wanted
Said FSP's daughter's middle school Science teacher to FSP when he saw her in the corridor of the school:Hey, it's the famous woman scientist.I was taken aback at first, wondering why he used adjectives, one of which was strange and the other implied...
The Stars behind the Curtain
The Stars behind the Curtain (2/3/10)ESO is releasing a magnificent VLT image of the giant stellar nursery surrounding NGC 3603, in which stars are continuously being born. Embedded in this scenic nebula is one of the most luminous and most compact clusters...
Galaxies are slowly running out of gas
Galaxies are made of stars, and stars are made of... gas. So a large part of understanding how galaxies evolve and grow is understanding how much "gas" (literally, not "gasoline") is present in galaxies – but has not yet been incorporated in stars –...
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