Open Thread

If you just can’t wait for us to get our Scientopia domain back in action…..

The phones are open. (As they used to say, kids. GOML)

The end of an era

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Repost: Tribal Celebrations

Sadly, I am not cooking today. This was originally posted March 15, 2009.

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Step One: Make sure at least one of the Spawn is napping, visiting a friend or otherwise out of your hair.

Why, whatever do you think we are celebrating today, Dear Reader?
Step Two: Make final check on materials and reagents. Run to store to get the remaining critical items. Sing loudly to your favorite ethnic folksongs to get in the mood.

stay tuned, Dear Reader, stay tuned…

Fellowship awards, timing, academic credit and moving on

We live in interesting times, those of us in NIH-funded science careers, do we not? I’m sure there has always been change that looked dramatic but still. There is a lot on our plates.

• Historic low paylines, verging down below 10%ile in a sustained way
• Endless churning of revised grant applications
• A fight between local Universities, desperate to support themselves on Federal funds, and the NIH, hapless to respond to the unilateral abandonment of the old “shared cost” collaborative arrangement.
• The closing of three multi-decade Institutes/Centers of the NIH to make way for two new ones
• A halving of the length of the research grant application
• A sudden realization on the part of the NIH that postdoctoral wheelspinning prior to independent positions simply must be shortened

There are other factors, many of them with far reaching implications.
The one on my list for today is the individual postdoctoral fellowship, the NIH’s NRSA / F32 award.

Bleh

Idle thought of the day:

The science blogs really lose their hilarity for awhile after that damn meeting of Bora’s and Anton’s in NC. It’s all that kumbayah bonoboing and taking themselves seriously crap.

On polite discourse in mixed company

There are certain things I have recently been informed that it is improper to discuss in mixed company.
So I’ll put the rest of the discussion after the jump.

Why yes, I was on the Nice list, thankyouveddymuch.

The DM Blog iPad Case
How did those good folks at CafePress know? Look what they’ve come up with the protect my latest technological obsession. Awww.
And never fear, there are cases for the 3G and 4 iPhones as well.

What’s cookin’?

Since we’re in the holiday season between Thanksgiving to Christmas, I’m thinking a little more than usual about cooking. So I posted a couple of recipes for people that don’t have time for recipe war extravaganzas like Dr. Isis* and PhysioProf** did. Thought you all that haven’t made it over to Scientopia yet might want a look.
If I have any talents in the kitchen, I describe them as being a cook. I’m not a gourmet chef like MarkCC of Good Math, Bad Math (I mean seriously? get out!) and the two aforementioned recipe warriors. I mean, I can handle a complicated recipe and all and I do like that style of food smithing now and again. But where I really come alive is in opening the fridge, finding whatever is in there and trying to make something tasty based around the basic starches. Pasta. Rice. Potatoes. Or from a hunk of insert-meat-here. Or even from “There’s nothing to eat in here honeee!”
My spouse bakes. Oh, this is fantastic because if there is one thing I really don’t do in the kitchen it is bake. I can manage to not screw up a cheesecake too badly but… yeah, the oven and I do not get along. The range is my friend.
My spouse, OTOH, isn’t much of a cook. Recipe’d meals, no problem, and it all comes out tasty. Some of the signature work from that part of the household is awesome. But there just isn’t the same love there that I have for cooking. For having a basic knowledge of how you cook particular ingredients and throwing them together as variations on the basic themes for decidedly unfancy meal preparation.
I wonder how many of you all have this division of talent when it comes to food preparation? It isn’t like we did this by design but for the most part this balance of preferences works out well.
Hey, how ’bout a little poll? Select all that apply…

In the kitchen, I describe myself asonline surveys

Whoa, that was a diversion. Anyway, back to the point. Recipes for the rest of us.
Cranberry-orange bread
Slow cooker split pea soup
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*mmmmm, carnitas. another recipe from Namnezia.
**credit where due, this recipe single handedly put me back on brussel sprouts. I hadn’t eaten them in probably two decades or more.

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.

This is just pathetic and sad

Scienceblogs.com was the entity that got me hooked on reading scientific blogging. Truth be told, the entity that got me reading blogs at all. I somehow missed the ascendancy of the tech blog and the political blog.

Now, they are dying. Swirling the drain, just waiting for the plug to be pulled.

and by “they”, I mean “we”. Yeah, I’m still blogging there. More or less to-rule, but I’m there.

By my count they’ve lost about half of the traditional blogs over the summer. Nothing has emerged to replace that content. I click on my old favorite, the last-24 hrs feed and all I see is Pharyngula, Ed Brayton and Greg Laden. Not that I don’t still enjoy the content they provide now and again but…it has become tedious.

I don’t really understand why. I’m sure they can still find new creative meat happy to join the collective. Sb is still a big driver of traffic after all. Newbs would be happy to sign up even, as I suggested before, if they have to offer a new non-paying model to match the other collectives that emerged over the summer months.

The editorial office overseeing blogging operations has gone from useless occasional communication to radio silence. I haven’t seen a check from them in the past four months, I doubt any of the other bloggers have either. I say this not to complain, the money really doesn’t affect my bottom daily line. I say this to observe that even after losing half the blog talent (albeit not half the traffic, thus not half the payroll), things are no better financially for this operation. It simply cannot meet its financial obligations and refuses to so much as admit or address that fact.

Damn. It is painful to watch such clusterborkery.

Socio- versus Economic Privilege in Academic Careers

As might suspect, Dear Reader, I am one who is entirely unable to hold back from drenching trainees in career-relevant advice whenever there is the slightest opportunity. As you also know, I am not in a job category that require regular instruction of general populations of undergraduate students so most of my interactions with them come under the general heading of “lab experience”. One of the things that I tend to blurt out very early in my discussions with a student who wants to work in my group is “You know being a graduate student is a job that pays, right?”.
It turns out that many of them are unaware of this fact.

Open Comment Thread

We’re having a leetle trouble with server load over at Scientopia.

See Christina, see DrSkySkull.

So if there’s anything you have a pressing need to discuss you can do it here.

Sadly, a much needed reminder

Ethan Siegel has a highly topical observation up over at his blog, Starts with a Bang. It is as simple as this:

But we do not let fear dictate what we are free to do. Syed, Atiyah, Freida, and all the other Muslims I grew up with are no more or less American than any of us, and it is the right of every Muslim-American to expect the exact same freedoms that we have.

Glenn Beck’s little #Whitestock rally for racist #teabaggers at the Lincoln Memorial may have fizzled in terms of numbers but it really should be a wake up call for RealAmericans. You know, the ones who actually believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the ensuing body of Constitutional jurisprudence. The ones who actually believe in what has always made the United States special, democratic and progressive, rather than longing for the worst of our past.
The theme of the idiots from Glennbeckistan was “Restoring Honor”. What, you might wonder, in the hell is that supposed to mean?
There’s a nice explanation over here at Balloon Juice.

The zomg! grad school carnival is up at 49 percent

Go Read.
I’m not huge blog carnival reader but, wow, this is one of the biggest ones I’ve seen.
I guess people have a lot to talk about with respect to graduate school.
Naturally, I can’t possibly remember graduate school so that’s my excuse for not contributing.
Actually, I do have one thought. In the midst of some rather dismal dissertation writing months, a friend of mine (grad student, different department) was apparently tired of my moaning. He said “Why are you doing this if you hate it so much? No, really, why?“
This was, as it happened, a really good question to pose. The sucky didn’t end with grad school. I’ve had plenty more episodes of work annoyance since then.
It wasn’t a panacea then, and it isn’t now, but my friend’s remark really helped me to focus on one thing.
I like this stuff. I like doing science, I like my research models, I like being half-way decent at certain parts of my job.
They do make it worthwhile plowing through the times in which things suck ass.

Scientopia: A new science blogging network

crossposting from DrugMonkey on Scienceblogs.com….

A brand new science blogging collective has launched itself today. I encourage you to stroll on over to http://scientopia.org/blogs and take a look-see. You may even want to save a bookmark or two.

The vision statement reads as follows:

Scientopia is a collective of people who write about science because they love to do so. It is a community, held together by mutual respect and operated by consensus, in which people can write, educate, discuss, and learn about science and the process of doing science. In this we explore the interplay between scientific issues and other parts of our lives with the shared goal of making science more accessible.

As a community, we strive to be welcoming of anyone with an interest in science and its place in our world, regardless of any feature, whether extrinsic or intrinsic, which may act or have historically acted as a barrier to full participation in science or discourses about science.

Hippie statements aside, I think you will find that Scientopia has some interesting voices lined up for your reading pleasure. So go take a look.