Posts filed under “Uncategorized”
While you’re waiting for the bus
Why are so many women-in-science events actually about leaving science and having babies? Good science journalism can help scientists get their work done. The oldest pine cone ever found. The president of the World Bank editorializes about the need for climate change mitigation. The IEA tells us how to fix climate change, or at least […]
The poetry of leaves
A leaf is filled with chambers illuminated by gathered light. In these glowing rooms photons bump around and the leaf captures their energy, turning it into the sugar from which plants, animals, and civilizations are built. Chloroplasts, fed by sun, water, carbon dioxide, and nutrients, do the leaf’s work. They evolved about 1.6 billion years […]
Working on the weekend
My office is a difficult place for me to get work done during the week. 9 of us share a space. Between the battle over whether to keep the glaring, buzzing fluorescent lights on or off, the very warm temperature, phone calls, random chit chat, TAs having their office hours, people coming by to ask […]
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. […]
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 […]