Academics juggle a lot of balls. The absent-minded professor stereotype is, for some of us, an apt one. Because our jobs involve multiple independent demands on our time, we’re often tossed (or hold on to) more balls than we can handle. Balls get dropped, neglected, or stay in the air […]
I love words. I’ve been an avid reader since I was a kid, and I worked in bookstores throughout my late teens and early 20’s to pay for my habit. I play Scrabble, and I collect vocabulary the way some of my colleagues collect bird sightings or rocks. I married […]
As a general rule, I care much more about the consequences of extinction than the causes. Even though I work on past landscapes, my mind is firmly rooted in the present, and I strive for my work to be relevant to. We know what’s causing extinctions today, for the most […]
Five weeks ago, I completely severed both tendons in my left pinky. I was just about to start working in the lab, training my PhD student on the initial processing of a peat column from our Falkland Islands trip in December. We had bought a large serrated kitchen knife specifically to slice through 1 […]
I’m writing this post one-handed. Last week, I cut my finger badly in the lab, and I’m wearing a splint to protect the tendon from further damage. This marks the second time in my academic career that I’ve had an injury that involved some form of modified work or accommodation (the first was a […]
Dear Gov. Walker, Last week, you told professors at the University of Wisconsin that they needed to “work harder.” You were making a case that the Wisconsin state budget crisis could be ameliorated by increasing employee efficiency, and you suggested having faculty teach at least one more class. I’m not going to talk about […]
I’ve spent the last month pushing our Experiment.com crowd-funding campaign, to support my lab’s upcoming research in the Falkland Islands. After successfully hitting our $10,000 goal with four days to go, I feel like I have a few thoughts about the process (and a lot of you have asked), so here goes: […]
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 […]
Live-tweeting, whether a department seminar or a conference talk, is one of the most powerful aspects of academic Twitter I’ve witnessed. It’s not an easy skill, but it’s worth cultivating, because it has tremendous value in bringing exciting research to a broad audience. Instead of the twenty to two hundred people […]
The Contemplative Mammoth 