personal
clock | December 19, 2006This is my favourite album of all times. The best holiday present I can get. It is not available on tape, CD or mp3 - only an LP. But I can find a way to make a copy somewhere around here.
Also, does anyone know if she has ever recorded anything else?
clock | December 19, 2006I can't wait for Night at the Museum! What a perfect movie to take the kids to during the holidays. My son is quite hyped about it - he only nees to decide if he'll go with me or ask a girl out.
pharyngula | December 18, 2006
The latest Ask a Science Blogger question is one I've already answered, so I thought I'd just repost this unpleasant little vignette to answer this question:
What's a time in your career when you were criticized extremely harshly by someone you respect? Did it help you or set your career back?
But first, I have to mention that every scientist must have a nemesis or two, as has been recently documented in the pages of Narbonic.
Thinking about graduate school? Here’s a little story, all true, about my very most unpleasant experiences as a graduate student—and they all revolve around one…
j7uy5 | December 17, 2006We were asked to describe the most notable instance of harsh criticism
experienced in our professional careers, and to say whether it was
helpful or harmful.
Naturally, most of us are our own harshest critics, so my harshest
criticism came from myself.
What is odd, is the way this came about and affected me.
During one of the first rotations in my second year of residency, at
the end, the attending gave me an assessment form. It
appeared to be a form for me to use to describe my experience in the
rotation.
I dutifully filled it out, have gotten used to doing paperwork that
seemed…
jstemwedel | December 15, 2006I'm sure I'm not the only academic who receives final exams with doodles (as well as "thank you for the class" and "please don't fail me!" messages). But I need to share a piece of exam artwork that transcends the bounds of doodling.
Indeed, it is a cartoon illustration that demonstrates good mastery of the concept about which the student was asked on that exam page. (In addition to the drawing, the student presented a perfectly correct and crystal clear written answer to the question. The drawing was an added bonus.)
Let me set up the cartoon with a brief explanation of the question so…
clock | December 15, 2006Well, it's starting tonight, so I better get back to cleaning the house (actually, all posts today are pre-scheduled). Kids are excited (hey, eight days of presents instead of just one and nobody mentions any Invisible Friends in the Sky all evening!). Posting will resume tomorrow early morning.
terrasig | December 15, 2006I specifically launched Terra Sigillata on my sister's birthday last year so that my aging brain wouldn't have to remember (or forget) yet another important date.
The original post and ad hoc mission statement holds up pretty well after a year. I've also moved my second post, "Why Terra Sigillata?," over here so that folks can appreciate why a name most commonly encountered by ceramics craftspersons is a perfect metaphor for medicines from the Earth.
For those who don't know my background or never read the About section, I'm a displaced pharmacy and pharmacology professor working in an odd…
terrasig | December 15, 2006A number of years ago today, with the number ending in a zero, my parents blessed me with a little sister. I was not the nicest little brother, we fought and I was frustrated that she couldn't read immediately upon coming home.
However, she grew to be one of my very best friends and remains the one soul who has experienced everything with me, joyous and painful. In fact, among her many gifts is to be there and mindfully present during the worst times of ones life.
When I was in grad school and she a struggling undergrad, it was PharmSis who would send me a few extra dollars she had saved…
pharyngula | December 14, 2006Time to go get a beer at Drinking Liberally, 'cause the Fall semester of 2006 is all over but for the final exams and the grading and the tears. The last of the written work was turned in today, and now it's just grading until my eyeballs evulse.
Here is a prime bit of end of term suckage, too: it is mid-December in Minnesota, and it is raining. Raining! If I wanted to live in a place with cool wet winters, I'd move back to Seattle.
jstemwedel | December 14, 2006I suppose I should have seen this coming. You provide a nice, quite room for the final exam, so why should it be surprising that a student takes this as an invitation to nap? Especially given that this is a student who attended -- slept through -- just about every class meeting of the term?
At least there was no audible snoring.
clock | December 13, 2006
I am not sure about their real names, but I call my Mother-in-law's cats Maximilian (right) and Minimilian (left). They are brothers.
jstemwedel | December 13, 2006On my last post, Kristine commented:
My favorite "finals week activity" was defending to two students why they couldn't take the lab exams three weeks after all of their classmates took it, just because they realized now that they never showed up for class that week. Whew. Ten minutes each, and as emotionally draining as grading 100 exams.
I feel Kristine's pain. And, I think this raises the larger question of what the problem is that keeps these students from understanding that "course requirements" are things that are required for them to do.
Seriously, given all the time we academics…
jstemwedel | December 13, 2006It's finals week here. My brain hurts, and I'm on what is reputed to be the easier side of the student-professor divide, so I have great empathy for my students at the moment. (At least, for the ones who aren't trying to put one over on me.)
In the last week, I have:
Conducted the last class meeting of the term for each of my courses.
Been presented with a pair of foosballs (because the canonical billiard balls are pricy) by my graduate seminar on causation.
Marked a whole mess of research assignments.
Noticed that a non-negligible number of students simply didn't do the research…
clock | December 12, 2006
This neighborhood tomcat is very friendly and sometimes comes by to say Hello to our cats and the dog.
clock | December 10, 2006
In Memoriam
Louie adopted my mother-in-law. He lived outside and roamed that small block of houses. He was killed by a car about a month ago. This is the only picture of him, which my daugther took last summer.
pharyngula | December 10, 2006In a few weeks, on January 3-7, I'm going to be attending the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Phoenix. I'm going to be part of a panel in a Media Workshop, along with a few other names you might recognize:
Blogs are online "diaries" that are growing in popularity. Popular political and social commentary blogs are making the news, but is there more out there than chatty gossip and collections of links? How about some science? Can this trendy technology be useful for scientists? Come to the Media Workshop and find out! Experienced science…
clock | December 9, 2006Yes, you read that right. Our soldiers in Iraq will run the marathon at the same time as the Honolulu race and will be considered to be contestants in the Honolulu marathon. But the whole thing is not just for fun - there is something much more inportant going on here and something you can help with. All the proceeds from the donations for the race go, through TAPS, to the families of the soldiers we lost in Iraq and other military conflicts. So, if you can, please donate for a good cause.
Mike has the background and can answer any questions you may have about the details.
My SciBlings…