Perhaps this won't be a good day, after all

If Steinn can use an Ipod to predict the future, I can use spam. Today bodes ill:


From: massonwsvym@sabofoods.com

Good day astrodyke
get rid of that self-esteem once and for all.

How to be a bad chair?

At hypoglycemiagirl's suggestion, let's enumerate the ways to be a terrible session chair, either when chairing a session at a meeting, or introducing the colloquium speaker & then picking questions from the audience. Or a moderator in other fora (morning coffee, anyone?)

Yarrr, matey

Yarr. This day, I be lashing me astrometry to the Naval standard. Yarr.

Scarily True

How to Give a Shitty Talk

1. Read your slides to the audience.
   
2. Ramble on. Digress.
3. Camouflage your words with busy backgrounds.
4. Use four colors of fonts per page.
   
5. Use gratuitous transitions between slides. The "swoosh" effects may distract attention from your crummy talk.
   
6. Do NOT explain why anyone would care about your subject, unless you are careful to:
   
7. Tailor your explanations insultingly below the level of your audience.
8. State each declaration as a question, with a rising tone: "There are 29 stars in my sample?"
9. Speak very quietly, or competitors might hear what you're doing.
   
10. Tell racist, sexist, or anti-gay jokes. An opening crack about battered wives makes everyone pay attention.
    
11. Find out how much time you have to speak, and then pour your words in until it overflows. Hide any key points your audience should remember. Just fill the hour with words and slides, and you'll be done.

Any others to add?

NASA's roadmap: bad news for high-energy astro?

A new report's out from a National Research Council panel, which prioritizes missions in NASA's Beyond Einstein portfolio. (Beyond Einstein is "NASA's research roadmap for five proposed mission areas to study the most compelling questions at the intersection of physics and astronomy.") Such panels influence what missions get funded, and which get the scrap-heap.

The verdict: JDEM (a dark energy cosmology mission) is the highest priority. Then LISA (gravity wave detection from space). As for high-energy observational astronomy: screw any high-energy X-ray telescope mission. And Con-X is too interesting and important to all astronomy to spend Beyond Einstein money on it.

Links: the run-down from Steinn, and the text of the NRC report.

Opinions on what this means for the future of high-energy astronomy?