Category Archives: science

Lab-fab abs and post-lab flab

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

And bend and stretch and rack those tips and run to the water bath to rescue your samples and walk to the fridge to put them away and lift that big heavy bottle of isopropanol onto your bench and run … Continue reading →

Posted in career, exercise, food glorious food, personal, science, silliness | 18 Comments

Geeky Grossness Gauntlet

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Long-time readers may remember my friend Kyrsten’s famous guest post about Bob the bot fly. Commenters’ reactions on the original post ranged from mild (“kinda icky”) to ambivalent (“horrible. but very cool” / “utterly revolting, but sort of fascinating” / … Continue reading →

Posted in blog wars, career, freakishness, medicine, meta, monkeys, nature, personal, photos, science, silliness, TMI | 17 Comments

Visual cymbal

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Here’s an astounding slo-mo video of a cymbal strike: Isn’t that amazing?! I mean, you know at some intellectual level that sound is a wave caused by the vibration of a solid object… but actually seeing that? So cool. (H/T … Continue reading →

Posted in music, science, videos | 5 Comments

It’s the xkcd Wikipedia meme!

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

(via DrugMonkey, who got it from WhizBANG). “Click on the first link not in parentheses  in any Wikipedia entry. Keep doing this and eventually, you end up at Philosophy”. Who would ever have guessed that my favourite team and my … Continue reading →

Posted in food glorious food, meme, science, silliness, sport, technology | 8 Comments

Geek tourism

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I’m back, and ready to lightly and cheerily distract people from their woes! We had a great time in England – in fact, it was our most fun visit EVAH! I’m not quite sure why it was better than previous … Continue reading →

Posted in blog buddies, book review, drunkenness, embarrassing fan girl, family, food glorious food, medicine, nature, personal, photos, science, silliness, travel, UK | 21 Comments

Repost: finding the alternatives within academia

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

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 →

Posted in career, communication, personal, science | 17 Comments

Weekend fun: my next tweet

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

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 →

Posted in Canada, communication, current affairs, cycling, English language, politics, science, silliness, technology | 35 Comments

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

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

…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 →

Posted in bad people, current affairs, grant wrangling, science | 13 Comments

Paging Doctor Clueless!

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

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 →

Posted in career, communication, English language, idiocy, science | 11 Comments

Lunchtime Linkfest

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Cath@VWXYNot?

A quick round-up of what I’ve been reading and listening to! There’s a great article in Current Biology (my all-time favourite journal) this week, titled “Why should biomedical scientists care about biodiversity?”. The authors argue that working on the standard … Continue reading →

Posted in current affairs, cycling, environment, music, nature, science, silliness, technology | 6 Comments