Category: Follies of the Human Condition

Science vs getting a life

That seismic rumble you feel is 100,000 postdocs and grad students nodding their heads:

Goodbye academia, I get a life:

The ones I’ve seen thriving in Cambridge, apart from geniuses (there are a few), are the guys who cling to a simple ecological tenet: Find your niche, where you are indispensable, and keep it in your claws at all costs. This means basically that these people do always the same thing, over and over again, simply because it’s the lowest-risk option. I could have done the same (I was pretty skilled during my Ph.D. in a quite obscure but interesting biophysics experimental technique) but I thought that doing science properly was also about learning and broadening your expertise. How wrong I was.

You can imagine yourself what does it mean also for research in general: Nobody takes risks anymore. Nobody young jumps and tries totally new things, because it’s almost surely a noble way to suicide your career. Continue reading “Science vs getting a life”

Touché par la Douche

If you haven’t read about the dust-up between the science writing community (on behalf of the much beloved Ed Yong) and (now contrite) University of Manchester PIO, Aeron Haworth, go just about anywhere on the science blogging internets. The twitter rhetoric surrounding this event brought into clear focus the dominant position of “douche/douche bag/douchey” as an insult has taken in our modern culture. Continue reading “Touché par la Douche”

Whither Dweebery?

Oh, he’s very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads — they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.
-Grace in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Lost in the endless arguments over the definition of “geek” and “nerd” – let alone the competition for superiority – is what happened to the “dweebs” and “dorks”? Are they still out there? Have we misclassified them in the geek/nerd hegemony? Are “dweebs” and “dorks” just the juvenile form of “geeks” or “nerds”? If so, which nomenclature came first? Did they go extinct with no one to morn their passing? Did global warming get them?

The Theatre and The Tube

Pet Peeve: Faux-superiority from publicly announcing that you do not do something that most other people do. In my circles, this usually involves not watching television, following sports, or consuming alcohol.

For example:

I do not[1] watch television. I do not even own a television.

Bully for you. Apparently, you are better than I. I watch television. I follow sports. And, I consume alcohol. Continue reading “The Theatre and The Tube”

Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth

From Melville’s under-appreciated Mardi:

On a quest for his missing love Yillah, an AWOL sailor pretending to be a demi-god travels the (imaginary) Mardi chain of Polynesian islands via canoe fleet, in the company of fellow demi-god King Media and his entourage. After viewing some fossils, the group’s resident philosopher, Babbalanja is asked how the islands were created. A scientific explanation being unsatisfactory to the group, Babbalanja presents an alternate hypothesis:

Media said:—”Babbalanja, you love all mysteries; here’s a fitting theme. You have given us the history of the rock; can your sapience tell the origin of all the isles? how Mardi came to be?” Continue reading “Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth”