First, some backstory: On November 12, the Rosetta space probe’s Philae lander was the first spacecraft to land on a comet. During a televised broadcast of the event, ESA project scientist Matt Taylor wore #thatshirt, creating an internet #shirtstorm. I was sympathetic in that I get what Taylor was trying to […]
For those of you following along at home, there’s been a big kerfuffle on the internet about #ThatShirt (or #ShirtGate, #ShirtStorm). Lots of really smart folks have posted great commentary on the situation, and so I’m not going to do that here. What I will say, is that I understand […]
It’s no secret that science funding rates are, in a word, abysmal*. As a pre-tenure faculty member, this has been weighing heavily on my mind, and I’ve devoted a substantial portion of my year to grant writing (fingers crossed!). There’s a running joke that you typically get funded to do […]
I recently returned from ScienceOnline, a meeting for journalists, scientists, artists, teachers, and others who discuss (and do!) science on the internet. This was my second time at the conference and, like last year, I came home with a mind full of ideas about effective outreach, open science, and teaching […]
Happy Ada Lovelace Day! Today, we honor women in science, technology, engineering, and math, in the hopes of increasing visibility and diversity in the STEM fields. This year, Ada Lovelace Day lands in the beginning of the Donors Choose Science Bloggers for Students Challenge, where science bloggers raise funds to […]
This is a quick update to say: I defend my dissertation tomorrow! I have a lot of thoughts about this, most of which I am unable to articulate because I am literally eating, breathing, and dreaming my dissertation, which means I’m finding it difficult to articulate anything that isn’t about […]
I’ve been following a number of scientist-journalist discussions in the last year in various places, including ScienceOnline2012, in the blogosphere, and on Twitter. Increasingly, I’ve come to suspect that there is often a profound lack of understanding of the respective professional cultures of scientists and journalists, which has important relevance to the […]
I notice it all the time– on Facebook, in the comments of a science blog, over family gatherings, or listening to a radio talk show. Someone, maybe you, is patiently trying to explain how vaccines cause autism, perhaps, or why so-called “anthropogenic” global warming is really just due to sunspots […]
A few weeks ago, Florida governor Rick Scott made a few statements about wanting to divert education funding from some university programs in order to support science and technology fields. Let’s ignore the fact that the humanities and social sciences are just as deserving of funding and public support as […]
The Contemplative Mammoth 