botany, shoes, books, and justice
Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Ivan Kramskoi
From Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy:
He began to think of her, of what she was thinking and feeling. For the first time he pictured vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the idea that she could and should have a separate life of her own seemed to him so alarming that he made haste to dispel it.
One of many very cool lichens on EOL
With Republicans and Tea Partiers in power in the House and some serious financial problems in the country, things look really bad for a lot of science funding. I was talking about some of the frustrations of getting research funded with a friend last night. Her response surprised me. She works in education and she says it’s pretty easy to get money to fund STEM education right now. So we’re pouring money into training people for jobs that we’re destroying?
Hope you’ve got someone to be silly with!
Today I will finish up my application to Big Northern University, my last grad school app. After my sad rejection from a program I thought would be ideal for me, BNU has become my first choice. Three years ago, I never would have thought I would be working with someone in BNU prof’s particular subfield. But paper after paper out of her lab has grabbed my attention due to nuanced synthesis or clever modeling of old data. My work has slowly come to incorporate more and more of the modeling techniques and her work has driven my interests toward the interface of ecology and evolution. After meeting BNU prof earlier this week, I’m even more excited about the science – and the culture of the lab.
Writing about why I want to work with BNU prof is a particularly appropriate way to spend Darwin Day (and a wonderful excuse to bake one of my favorite cakes).
by Carmen
From Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy:
And the celebrated doctor expounded his plan of treatment with Soden waters, a remedy obviously prescribed primarily on the ground that they could do no harm.
Sketch by Gruau
From Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy:
Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball had cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this moment she walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a moment’s attention, as though she had been born in that tulle and lace, with her hair done up high on her head, and a rose and two leaves on the top of it.