Author Archives: Cath@VWXYNot?

About Cath@VWXYNot?

"one of the sillier science bloggers [...] I thought I should give a warning to the more staid members of the community." - Bob O'Hara, December 2010

Repost: finding the alternatives within academia

This is a re-post of some career advice I wrote lo these many years ago for the Alternative Scientist blog, which is/was written by a group of bloggers for researchers considering careers other than traditional tenure-track research and/or teaching. The … Continue reading

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Are left-wingers more creative? Are multi-party systems superior to two-party systems? Do provocative titles attract more readers and comments?

Let’s see: a Canadian federal election, an electoral reform referendum in the UK, a new opposition leader and talk of an early provincial election in British Columbia, and lots of coverage of the likely US Republican party presidential candidates, all … Continue reading

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Weekend fun: my next tweet

Many, many thanks to Kimli for alerting me to “That Can Be My Next Tweet!“, a tool that creates mash-ups of bits and pieces of your most recent tweets to create much hilarity. My twitter stream is kinda schizophrenic at … Continue reading

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Mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits

I went to Whistler last weekend and it was awesome. More on that later, but today I wanted to share some photos of a remarkable mural we saw in an underpass as we walked back to the car from the … Continue reading

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Hockey pool: final results!

Let’s start with an overview of the whole season’s results, NOT INCLUDING the final week’s: Weeks 1 – 27 Lavaland led the pool from week 13 onwards, but could she fend off a strong challenge from Ricardipus? And did anything … Continue reading

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Next time you’re ranting about your latest grant review…

…spare a thought for your colleagues in Bulgaria. I had to read the fifth paragraph of this Nature News piece two or three times to make sure I’d fully understood the depth of the (alleged) problems at the Bulgarian National … Continue reading

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Paging Doctor Clueless!

A story from way back in the mists of time… ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A good friend of mine had an absolutely terrible time during her PhD, worse than anyone I know: her two co-supervisors had a fight and stopped talking to each … Continue reading

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Hockey pool: penultimate update!

Just one week to go until we crown a winner, and things are looking pretty tight at the top! Ricardipus made up some ground on first-placed Lavaland, and if I were them I’d be choosing this week’s players veeeeeery carefully … Continue reading

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Cat on a hot tin MacBook

Things are ramping up to crazy levels again, at work and elsewhere. Deadlines, side-projects, taxes (I actually managed to file weeks before the actual Canada Revenue deadline, for once!), unconference organisation, blogging, and trying to keep up with the twists … Continue reading

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Priorities

This is a fantastic way to kick off a general election: Checking the CBC website for the latest campaign news this morning, I noticed that sport (and hockey in particular) is apparently less important than potential nuclear meltdowns, but much … Continue reading

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