Please welcome Dean’s Corner to Scienceblogs.com

The latest recruit to Scienceblogs.com is Dr. Jeffrey H. Toney . His blurb says he

…is an educator and a scientist whose career has spanned academia and the pharmaceutical industry. He serves as the dean of the College of Natural, Applied and Health Sciences at Kean University. He is dedicated to strengthening public appreciation of the beauty and impact of science in our daily lives.

Sounds pretty good to me.
His background is overviewed in an early entry, entitled “Why ScienceBlogs is So Important“
You can find him on Twitter as @jefftoney

Harvard and Yale undergrad, professional and graduate school alums look like gangbangers

Oh, not ALL y’all. Oh no. Just the black ones.

BikeMonkey Guest PostJezebel reports:

At approximately 10:30PM club management called the owner to say that they saw individuals on line whom they recognized as “local gang bangers” (their words not mine). In response to this, the club owner directed the bouncers to only let individuals with a Harvard or Yale ID in to the club. At this point Kwame and I argued that no alumnus would have his or her expired college ID with them and reiterated that the reason we did the party on a pre-sold basis with strict admittance based solely on the guest list was to guarantee that the only attendees were Harvard and Yale alumni, grad students and their close friends and to ensure that no “bad seeds” could contaminate our party. However, given that this was the club’s opening weekend, the owner was particularly sensitive to anything going wrong.

Oh, something went wrong all right, you done outed yourself as a stupid bigot.
The Hah-vah Crimson verifies the account:

Natalia N. Pearson-Farrer, a second-year Harvard Law School student, said she arrived at the club at 10:30 p.m. to see a crowd of predominantly black Harvard and Yale students and alumni dressed in cocktail attire. By the time she got in, she said she was surprised to see the bouncers had let very few people in, and soon after, the club told patrons it was shutting down because of technical difficulties. After the truth was circulated, though, she said she felt frustrated and embarrassed.

You know, while you all are entertaining yourself complaining about the TSA body scans and crotch grabbing and laughing along with @TSAgov and all. Might want to think about that a little bit…

When PI narcissism jumps the shark

Genomic Repairman relates the not-uncommon tale of a lab head who negotiates for a new job and then springs his decision on his trainees and technicians with ~ 2 months notice.
The PI was then wondering why his staff was not jumping for joy at the opportunity to join him in his move to a new city and new University.

Don’t forget to spend your HP matching funds for Donors Choose!

This year’s edition of the science blogosphere’s drive to raise money to support classroom projects with Donors Choose has ended. However, if you were a donor this year, we need you to do one more thing. HP has donated matching funds which will be translated into a gift-code sent to the email address you used to originally register.
To expend these funds, you need to check the value on the gift-code and then go to Donors Choose and donate this value to one or more remaining projects.
Please consider these fine remaining challenges from the DrugMonkey blog giving page.

A project for High School frog dissection requires only $278, we could reach the finish line on this one easily with the matching funds from those of you that already gave to the DM challenge.
A middle school pig dissection project is also probably within reach at $478 remaining.
Thanks for participating this year, donors!

Animals in Research: Groupthink?

My email box overfloweth with references to an article in the Chronicle for Higher Education penned by Lawrence Hansen, M.D., a pathologist at the UCSD Medical School.
Dr. Hansen is an animal rights extremist who came to national attention with a fight to eliminate dog physiology lab classes from the UCSD medical education program. Since that era, he has penned a number of editorials and opinion bits that make it clear he has a more general interest in stopping the use of animals in research.
or…some animals, anyway.

SfN 2010: The BlogTwittup

Dr Becca and Tideliar, both of LabSpaces.net, have organized a social event for the online folks during the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting. Details are on this banner and you can visit Fumbling Toward Tenure Track or Some Lies to see who you might find attending.

Mentoring advice….for the greybearded and bluehaired

Yes, my friends, mentoring goes up as well as down when you are a mid career scientist. Sometimes even the extremely well established named-chair University Professor of blah-de-blah needs a little reality check.
Fortunately, the good Comrade PhysioProf is here to help.