Job Interviews

This advice on how to interview for jobs at a big--professional society meeting, in this case for historians, is surprisingly relevant to professional astronomers looking to stay employed.

Gifty book recommendation

Can you peeps recommend a non-technical book that summarizes the last 20 years of Cosmology results? Basically, an update on the current state of our ignorance vis a vis this absurd dark energy, dark matter Universe.

Smoking guns!

This week's "This Modern World" is particularly brilliant:



At least, for those of us whose mammas gave Ray Bradbury short story collections to their babies for bedtime reading...

(click for the fullsized image.)

Let no one say that Science does not serve mankind

This is one of the first pictures ever of the long-eared jerboa. (via BBC News.) Cute overload!

Science Fair News

(Belated) News Flash: Young women swept this year's national high school Science Fair. *

Two high school seniors shared first prize in the team category (cooperation in science, how novel!) for creating a molecule that fights drug-resistant tuberculosis. A 16-year-old senior won first prize in the individual category for studying zebra fish, and another senior took second place for a project on Lou Gehrig's disease. Only shame: there aren't any astronomy projects among the winners, like last year.


* Now named "The Siemens Competition". Formerly Intel. Formerly Westinghouse. We old farts cannot keep up with the heady pace of high school science sponsorship.

On Proposal Season

"I’m telling you, if a giant asteroid were going to hit the earth in a week, the first question academics would ask would be how to beat out competing proposals for the $50-million “Deflection of Space-Based Objects” initiative at NSF."

From Scott Aaronson, via Angry Physics.

Post-post-doc

Six years has become the standard duration spent post-doc-ing in Astronomy. Is this too long? Please discuss.

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