(Long post alert! Sorry!)
Regular readers will know all about my passion for politics, a passion that was dampened only slightly by seven years of voteless pre-citizenship residence in Canada and that has ramped up again recently thanks to a federal election and Harper’s ongoing shenanigans. I vowed on May 2nd that I would put my money where Continue reading
Anyone with any relationship to science will tell you horror stories about bureaucracy and regulatory issues hindering science. One classic example of how ridiculously out-of-touch bureaucrats have become was described here by Jenny Rohn fairly recently, with rules mandating that scientists need to wear safety glasses at all times.
Now despite the Continue reading
Recently there has been some discussion about ‘what do professors do?’ in the press, with comments from fellow OT blogger Stephen Curry (and on my own blog here), with a major emphasis on leadership, mentoring, teaching and the desirability of not putting oneself first. Another key function, which intersects with those attributes but that was not h Continue reading
This was just a draft; I've since changed it to "novel, high-profile findings"
This photo comes from the collection of esoterica maintained by my friend Professor Trellis of North Wales, and is used by permission.
No, we don’t know either. We suspect it might be a device used to irradiate frogs so that they turn into princes. Professor Trellis thinks there’s something deeply suspect about the jack socket. Answers Continue reading
Champagne in plastic cups after a successful PhD viva is still a classic, but you don’t often see labmates getting together to recreate one of your prettiest thesis figures in cake format.
Congratulations, James!
Continue readingThe British Medical Association has called for a ban on people smoking in cars. Not other peoples’ cars – their own cars.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s an outrageous idea. What business do doctors have telling us what to do in our own spaces? Continue reading
It’s a strange thing how giving essentially the same talk at different venues/to different audiences can lead to such variable responses. The reasons for this are many and complex, and not always under one’s control; sometimes it is far from clear why a talk has failed to stir interest. As a young researcher that may be troubling, but my experience Continue reading
From an automatic pre-send spell check of an email I sent today, asking a PI for guidance on some subfield-specific terminology:
Apparently they're are too equivalent forms, butt won is preferable two the other
Very helpful.
In other news, I learned today that my online life is benefiting my career: years of experience in choosing cheesy pun-l Continue reading
