Pop Quiz!

Quickly, off the cuff: How many of the 100 US Senators are women?

Write down your best guess in the comments. (Then you may check the wikipedia.)
Remember, if you copy off your neighbor, you're only hurting yourself.

New book from the Female Science Professor

Yesterday while my CPUs churned, I downloaded the new e-book "Academeology: Random Musings, Strong Opinions & Somewhat Bizarre Anecdotes From An Academic Life" by the blogger Female Science Professor. 286 pages, $5.75 to buy the PDF download.

After a quick read, it looks great -- there are sections on the academic job search, time management, grad school admissions, interpersonal research relations, grant-writing, scientific talks, and more. And a few "Oh no he didn't" war stories that we women-in-science sometimes swap to keep ourselves sane in a sometimes-hostile environment. Sprinked throughout are amusing mini-rants, as you'd expect from an edited, sorted compilation of blog posts.

Result: I've added "Academeology" to my academic career advice bookshelf, next to Richard Reis's "Tomorrow's Professor" and a few others.

Don't miss the Perseid meteor shower tonight!

Advice on how to see the Perseids can be found at Sky and Telescope.

Slackers: the shower lasts several days (I saw some great Perseids last week), so if you miss Monday night, try Tuesday.

Cool astro videos?

Can anyone recommend favorite astronomy videos? So far I've got this one below, from RXTE (via youtube), which beautifully illustrates how the X-ray sky changes from night to night.



What other videos are out there? Of course "Powers of 10" and "Cosmos" are famous, but what undiscovered viral treasures are out there? All you have to do is beat the video of the inside of a TSA X-ray machine.