Archive for 2012
Marriage and language skills
From Nikolai Leskov’s short story The Left-handed Craftsman: … Platov found it a bit hard to say what he wanted to say in French, because, to tell the truth, Platov wasn’t much interested in French and, being a married man, he thought all French talk silly and hardly worth while.
While you’re waiting for the bus
You can work for UPS if you’ve got a bad back, but not if you’re pregnant. Voter suppression scares the bejeezus out of me. Only rich white folks deserve to vote? I think overcast days are actually rather nice. My biggest obstacle to getting a job outside of academia is that most jobs are utter […]
Back in my day, people worked for a living
Randy Shore advocates for a shorter work week so we can get our hands dirty in the garden. Sounds like a lovely idea, right? Unfortunately, he prefaced those thoughts with this: I grew up in a world where every adult worked five days a week and I know that isn’t the case so much today. […]
Advice for watching the presidential debates
The last two presidential elections, I watched all of the debates in their entirety. This year I just watched the Gregory Brothers‘ versions. I think I’m just as informed as I was when I watched the real debates AND I’m much happier.
I’m not a special snowflake
When I started graduate school, I knew I didn’t want to do the tenure track professor thing. To be successful, I’d have to work harder than I think I can physically work and harder than I know I want to work [Seriously, it’s really hard to even get your foot in the door]. But I […]
E. C. Pielou is awesome
After an intro ecology class, you might think that women had nothing to do with big, historical developments in the field. If you’re lucky, your class may have mentioned Jane Lubchenko or Rachel Carson. One of the amazing ecologists left out of your textbook was E.C. Pielou. She is a mathematical ecologist and author with […]