ESA Interviews – Colin Kremer

Posted by on . 2 comments.

I interviewed awesome ecologists at the 2011 Ecological Society of America meeting in exchange for reader donations, which paid for my conference attendance. This is one in a series of posts about those interviews.

Colin, standing in the woods with flagsI met Colin Kremer several years ago at a research station in the middle of nowhere. It was a pretty idyllic summer. When we weren’t working, he taught us how to do the Charleston, and he was always up for a good conversation about ecology and math.

Now he’s a graduate student at Michigan State University. In the interview below he’s got a lot of really interesting things to say. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be an ecologist, or why scientists can get so excited about data and modeling, this interview will definitely answer a lot of your questions. A few of the things he brushed on during our conversation: the role of activism in a scientist’s life, the super cool projects he’s working on, how to choose a project for grad school, and why going to the annual ESA meeting is such a great experience.

Listen to the interview with Colin Kremer [mp3 download, ~30 min]

For more details on one of his projects, listen to this snippet [mp3 download, ~2 min], which didn’t make it into the cut-down interview above because it’s a little more technical.  You can learn even more about some of his projects by checking out a few of Colin’s collaborators: Mridul K. Thomas has a great post on some of the ocean phytoplankton work and Carrie E. Seltzer’s website has some cool info on seed predation by giant rats in Tanzania.

Another reason not to read Willpower

Posted by on . One comment.

I’ve criticized Baumeister and Tierney’s Willpower for it’s lack of substance. It’s also pretty sexist.

Sir Henry Morton Stanley is introduced as a paragon of self-control with these lines:

If self-control is partly a hereditary trait – which seems likely – then Stanley began life with the genetic odds against him. He was born in Wales to an unmarried eighteen-year-old woman who went on to have four other illegitimate children by at least two other men.

Because a woman with several children and no husband living in a time when women had almost no rights and no real control over their sexual or reproductive lives was a slutty slut slut who had no self control. Poor Stanley wouldn’t have been sent to the poorhouse if she could’ve just kept her legs closed!

Time management in grad school

Posted by on . 3 comments.

The next ESA interview I’ll post is with Colin Kremer, one of my favorite people on the planet. We talked all about why he’s an ecologist and some of the cool stuff he works on, but also spent some time catching up and talking about grad school. In the short snippet below, he turns the interview tables and gets me talking about what it’s like to switch from being really sick all the time to really sick almost none of the time.

Time Management [mp3, click to download]

Check back soon to hear all about Colin!

Some exciting talks on evolutionary rescue

Posted by on . One comment.

Last summer, the Société Française d’Ecologie held a conference on evolutionary rescue – that is, can populations evolve themselves out of an environmental pickle? Some of the talks are here and they’re awesome. I’m supposed to be working on my ESA abstract, drafting my thesis proposal, and reading the first two chapters of an evolutionary theory book today, but I can’t drag myself away from Mark Kirkpatrick’s talk.

Also, Mark Kirkpatrick’s talks are way more interesting than his papers. Also, why are so many papers about super cool science so damn boring?

// Procrastination station brought to you by Colin Kremer