Non sono stato io

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

cheez_ball — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 18:26:30 GMT

Under a cut and on LiveJournal so that those who don't want spoilers can avoid them.

It's a good show for the most part. So far all we've seen is a pilot and usually Whedon's shows improve significantly after all the exposition gets out of the way. That's also usually when they're cancelled, but we won't get into that rant here and now.

The Good:
1. Agent Phil Coulson is back. Yes he died during the last Avengers movie. The exposition portion of the program explains how he's back. The suspension of belief is easy enough. C'mon, people, it's a show based upon a comic book in same universe as The Avengers, Spiderman, and X-Men.
2. Lola. I can't hate on a vintage Corvette like Lola. Except for the part that will be on The Bad list below. But it's so not the car's fault.
3. The ensemble cast. Ming Na is awesome, as usual. The rest of the cast is mostly awesome as well.
4. The production values are mostly good. I can see them going for a comic book-y feel to it and I get it.
5. It passes the Bechdel Test. The cast is somewhat diverse.

The Bad:
1. Here's where the first major spoiler comes in. Lola. Can fly. I pulled a muscle eye-rolling at that. Completely unnecessary and FAR too much with the exact same visual as from Back to the Future.
2. A cast member that's ~~a little~~ A LOT like Eliza Dushku's character in everything. It's one thing to see her particular style of inflection on her. In moderation. It's irritating and grating to see it on others. I see great potential for Mary Sue here and I'm hoping they go through the effort to make it not so. Time will tell. To be clear, I'm not blaming the actress. I'm blaming her direction and writing. Her character is quickly becoming a Whedon trope.
3. The cheese. That moment...in every 80s adventure TV show...when the ensemble solves the crime or completes a task...where everyone looks at each other and smiles. Yea, this show had it. Barf.
4. Scientists are magic and can do the impossible on demand. Need a cure? We can do that! In time for the episode to finish in less than an hour and before someone destroys the world...and some junk. Who needs actual scientific method? Science is magic! I would have been more satisfied if the characters were modeled more on Q from the James Bond movies. However they weren't. One was supposedly a biochemist but didn't actually do anything biochemistry related. Cal Tech and UCLA are right there - I know there are lots of people who would love to be science advisers for the show.

Minor nit-picky points:
1. Some of the special effects were a little too...special. High def TV can show production flaws with absolutely no mercy. The easy fix for this is to blur your effects. They didn't.

So there you have it. It's not a bad show and it displays great promise. I sincerely hope the writers and producers pay special attention to it to keep it from being cliche. I'm hoping they'll have some longer plot lines because wrapping everything up in an hour will become cheesy. I realize a pilot has to wrap up in an hour, but beyond that they can do what they want. It would be awesome for them to crossover with others from the Marvel Universe. It's my understanding that parts of the universe are under contracts with different production companies, making this difficult. However we know from the exposition that The Avengers are able to make appearances, even if as toys and "video flashbacks".

Public post

cheez_ball — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 22:55:49 GMT

There is a crowdsourcing project underway to assist FEMA and the CAP with image analysis in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. If you have any free time, even a few minutes, even while you're watching TV, reading facebook or doing anything else, go over there and help them out. It's not difficult and it really does help out.

"I am a princess"

cheez_ball — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:18:19 GMT

Not sure exactly how I feel about this commercial. One one hand it's brilliant advertising that answers a very specific, targeted criticism. On the other our modern vernacular refers to calling someone a princess as a bad thing. And I'm not sure Disney, who has a major financial stake in the game, is the appropriate venue to "reclaim" the word. What do you all think?

Link, in case the embed fails: http://youtu.be/qUGnu0gXtn4

This seems apropos

cheez_ball — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:07:42 GMT

This sums up the internet for the past couple of days

cheez_ball — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:50:05 GMT

cheez_ball — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 21:12:00 GMT

There was a shooting near campus today. Me and mine are fine and were not involved in any way. One was about 2 blocks away and is currently stuck in her house as emergency and investigation crews are going their thing.

The town and community are in shock. Three people are dead. Others are injured. The word is that this all started because of an eviction notice.

cheez_ball — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 17:45:02 GMT

Posting this here to maybe use later: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-berman/fertility_b_1759764.html

The title is Top 12 Things You Should Never Ask a Woman. #12 needs to be beaten into everyone's head, imo.

Deja vu all over again

cheez_ball — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 22:15:43 GMT

I don't like any of the attack ads I've been seeing. Both candidates can do much, much better than just attack each other.

Up until now I haven't considered posting about it, though. But this one made me pause. Link in case the embed doesn't work. I can't help but notice it specifically targets Catholics.

We've seen this before. And we all know how that turned out.

Link in case the embed doesn't work. Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea?

Random Gymnastics Talk

cheez_ball — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:19:38 GMT

I feel for Komova. This was supposed to be HER Olympics and it's been big ball of suck for her. Yes, she earned a silver (you don't win medals at the Olympics, you earn them). But, in her mind, she fell short. Just didn't measure up. On her other events she fell out of the medals and today on beam she came in dead last. Yes, it's a huge honor just to make it to event finals. But she demands so much better of herself. Some have called her a "brat" and "unsportsmanlike" for her reactions. Those people need to lay off. She's a teenager for crying out loud.

For this same reason I feel for Weiber. She's been playing the part of supportive team player well, but this wasn't the event where she expected to do so. Being immediately thrust into that role on an international stage is a lot to ask a 17 year old. She's done a damned fine job of it.

I'm happy for Mustafina, Douglas and Raisman. OMG Raisman! I'm so looking forward to floor ex tonight and beam tonight! After a disappointing finish outside of the medals, girl came back and shoved those routines in everyone's faces. Amazing. And I'm happy Mustafina is finally getting the recognition she deserves. She gets a lot of grief for her smile-less game-face. But under that the woman's a rock. While Komova melted Mustafina stepped into the limelight and shined brightest. Gymnastics isn't fair. It's difficult. And it takes no prisoners. Let that get to you and there's no one to drag you back. Mustafina did that herself after coming back from injury. She earned this. And Douglas is just awesome. She also earned this. Good for her! :-)

The men have been doing very well in spite of all this "disappointment" talk. I think that perhaps going into the team finals in first place bolstered expectations WAY too much. Some of the big players on the other teams had awful nights while the US men stuck routines. When those scores were dropped and the others were given a do-over things evened out. The US men are there. Leyva earned a bronze with an amazing AA showing. Orozco has not been having a good meet and, as with Komova and Wieber, I feel for him. It's that much worse when there's a billion people watching. BUT the US men did make event finals and, excluding pommel horse, had a darned good showing. Their scores are good, even if they're not on the podium.

And about the hair talk: I don't have a twitter account so I didn't see what was said over there. I do follow gymnastics blogs and news sites. Over in the gym-sites people were talking about all of the women's gymnasts' hair. Not just Douglas. Specifically they were calling the half-bun messy and unkempt.

For example, we've got Nastia Liukin at Olympic Trials (on the right - that's Martha Karolyi on the left). Her hair really did look like this during the entire course of multi-day competition (she had a horrible meet, didn't qualify for the Olympic Team and was justifiably upset):

New York Mag even made a slideshow of the hair styles from the Olympics in their style section.

The reason people are reacting to this, specifically gymnasts, is that there is something called an appearance deduction. The rules state all gymnasts must have a "neat and proper athletic appearance" [I'm not sure how to link a pdf from my laptop to here]. The idea that any elite level gymnast would risk the duduction at The Olympics is astounding to those who are familiar with the sport. If you notice they go through a lot of effort with makeup, clothing selections (each team dresses in the same clothes - even when they're not competing) and even leotard selection. They know they're being watched by a billion people. The notion that they prepped for the biggest meet of their lives and deliberately did so in a sloppy or careless manner is shocking. If anyone called Douglas, specifically, out on this without including the others, that's unacceptable. The slideshow above shows that she's hardly alone in this.

And while some might say that the women are being unfairly targeted, you should read what's being said about the Chilean men's gymnast. And his mustache (the link contains a "spoiler" and lots of ads). There's the men's gymnast for Great Britain that's gotten press over his tattoos and unusual choice in hair style. The US Men's Gymnastics team is being called the "hottest team on the planet", at the same time people are unfairly calling them "disappointments" for not achieving more medals.

The point is that there are a lot of "different" people on twitter. Spanny reports that a lot of them are talking about gymnastics as well. She only covers women's gymnastics, but I've been seeing reports of similar weirdness about the men too. Olympic athletes are on a worldwide stage so people will talk about every last little detail. Why? Because they aren't training for an Olympics themselves and have the time and boredom to do it. The hair was trending because it was the most obvious thing and applied to a number of very high profile athletes. The good news is that everyone will forget about this in a month. And the athletes involved will still be super-human, comic-book-hero-style bad asses who made history.

This isn't the Chick-fil-A post you think it is....

cheez_ball — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:30:43 GMT

So with all the hubbub about a certain fast food chicken chain I got to thinking. Why do I get sick when I eat there? It's the same symptoms I have when I eat garlic and onions, but I always avoid the items which obviously have garlic and onions in them. SO I checked their website and they list ingredients there.

Every. Fricking. Item. Contains. "Spices". And some list the spices as garlic powder and onion powder.

Now we know.

And, Eau. Em. Gee. Do they ever load up on preservatives.

This is the list of ingredients from a "heathy" chicken wrap: "Flatbread (water, enriched wheat flour [wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid], wheat gluten, corn starch, oat fiber, isolated soy protein, soy flour, soy oil, salt, sesame flour, calcium sulfate, dextrose, whole wheat flour, monoglycerides, fumaric acid, canola oil, honey, salt, whole berries, barley flakes, rolled oats, cracked wheat, flaxseeds, yeast, calcium propionate, L-Cysteine [dough conditioner]), Chargrilled chicken (100% natural whole breast filet, water, seasoning [sugar, salt, dextrose, garlic powder, onion powder, maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast extract, spice, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, flavor, paprika {color}], seasoning [salt, sugar, spices, and paprika], butter oil [soybean oil, palm kernel oil, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavor, TBHQ and citric acid added as preservatives, and artificial color], rice starch and potassium phosphate), green leaf lettuce, tomatoes, red cabbage, carrots, Monterey/Jack cheddar cheese blend (cheddar cheese [cultured pasteurized milk, salt, enzymes, annatto {color}], Monterey Jack cheese [cultured pasteurized milk, salt, enzymes], potato starch and powdered cellulose added to prevent caking, natamycin [a natural mold inhibitor])."

Along with 470 calories, 10 g fat, 1070 mg sodium and 50 g carbs.

This is a Chargrill Chicken Sandwich: "Chargrilled chicken (100% natural whole breast filet, water, contains less than 2% of sugar, butter flavored vegetable oil [soybean oil, palm kernel oil, soy lecithin, natural & artificial butter flavor, TBHQ, beta carotene], yeast extract, seasoning [sugar, spice, paprika, soybean oil], modified food starch, salt, sea salt, natural flavors, dextrose, potassium phosphate, maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast extract, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, paprika), wheat bun (enriched flour [wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid], water, sugar, wheat bran, cracked wheat, yeast, sugar cane syrup, contains less than 2% of the following: wheat gluten, rolled whole wheat, soybean oil, salt, rye meal, dough conditioners [contains one or more of the following: sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium stearoyl lactylate, monoglycerides and/or diglycerides, calcium peroxide, calcium iodate, DATEM, ethoxylated mono-and diglycerides, azodicarbonamide, enzymes], calcium sulfate, honey, molasses, monocalcium phosphate, ammonium sulfate, calcium propionate [to retard spoilage]), tomatoes, green leaf lettuce, pickle (cucumbers, water, vinegar, salt, lactic acid, calcium chloride, alum, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate [preservatives], natural flavors, polysorbate 80, yellow 5, blue 1)."

That comes with 290 calories, 4 g fat, 780 mg sodium and 36 g carbs.

Nuggets: "100% natural whole breast filet, seasoning (salt, monosodium glutamate, sugar, spices, paprika), seasoned coater (enriched bleached flour [bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid], sugar, salt, monosodium glutamate, nonfat milk, leavening [baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate], spice, soybean oil, color [paprika]), milk wash (water, egg, nonfat milk), peanut oil (fully refined peanut oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness and Dimethylpolysiloxane an anti-foaming agent added)."

These (8 count) come with 260 calories, 12 g fat, 990 mg sodium and 11 g carbs.

Also from their website: "Lots of people wonder why our food tastes so good. The secret is simple: fresh ingredients." LOL! No. Not with all those preservatives. And their allergen page only lists the most common ones. Their ingredient pages still list flavorings as "spices".

cheez_ball — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 21:53:44 GMT

Posted just because I like this gif. No other reason.

So...very...random...

cheez_ball — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:23:04 GMT

This made me LOL so I'm sharing.

J Lo parkour video

cheez_ball — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 22:32:30 GMT

Check it out.

Cult of California

cheez_ball — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 18:50:51 GMT

Anyone heard of this fitness clothing company? All USA-made. All for larger sizes. Starts at US size 8 (my size = about a medium) and goes up. They call a size 8/10 a 0. So this is probably the only place where I'd be a size 0.

I'm totally digging this shirt, which I can't figure out how to embed into this post. The jog pants look like they'd be awesome for squat day. And, yea, I wish the prices weren't so high. [At these prices they're on-par with Title Nine, who has a far better selection.]

The concept is cool, though. I like the workout wear, even if their "club wear" is very much NOT my style.

cheez_ball — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 23:09:39 GMT

Somehow this is more appropriate here than on fb.

GL Valentine attended ReaderCon as a guest. Had a terribel panel experience. Had a worse creeper experience. Blogged about it on her own blog. Then got mansplained by a different creeper about it (page 2 of comments) before she froze his comments. *facepalm*

I wish this was an isolated incident. But, no. It's sadly common. Women are now talking about it much more openly. Which is a very, very good thing. This was recently discussed by Skepchick here and here, as well as by PZ Myers (linking to Grita) of Pharyngula here. Skepchick was inspired to write quite a bit more on the subject, and it's well worth the read. Which caused her readers to respond. Also worth the read.

I've been involved one way or another in geek culture since the mid-70s. And the one refrain I hear time and again is the general masses at the con bemoaning the lack of women participating in whatever the new hotness is in geekdom. Women ARE participating. More than ever. The problem is there's still a contingent hellbent on silencing us whenever we demand to be treated like human beings. No one is asking for cons to be the safest places on the planet. We know we still live in society. But there is nothing wrong with demanding they not be inherently unsafe spaces.

Remember the Five Geek Social Fallacies? It's amazing how they're used to make excuses for behavior that threatens a large portion of the population. This attitude that "this person is a geek therefore they must be accepted" might work in a small circle of tight-knit friends but it does not work when you introduce that person to any general population. Be it a con, a work environment, or a dinner party. If that person has mannerisms and behaviors that make people feel unsafe they need to be corrected or sent home. No exceptions. No excuses.

Listen when people tell you they feel unsafe.

Report it when someone makes you feel unsafe. Even if you report it just to your best friends. Report it to someone. Talk about it.

Talk to con organizers. If you're shy ask a friend to talk to them for you. Or email them. If you are an organizer, set up a code of conduct, then enforce it. Take every report seriously. And set up an anonymous way to report this stuff, if possible.

I won't say the cons I attend are any better at this than others. But I will say that the ones where I know the organizers take this stuff seriously and will do whatever it takes to correct the situation, whether it's simply telling someone what they're doing is uncool or going as far as banning someone who's truly toxic.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for all cons. And it's frustraing as hell that this conversation keeps happening over and over again.

just seeing if this works, because omg cute.

cheez_ball — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 21:16:35 GMT

Link spam!

cheez_ball — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 19:04:31 GMT

Again, I'm posting to fb too much so the spillover is going here.

People, including athletes, are annoyed and upset that the uniforms for the US Olympic Team were made in China. I'm annoyed and upset that cheap, poor-quality clothes are the norm for my price range. I have to buy more because the crap falls apart. I'd pay a couple bucks more, but just a couple, if the clothes lasted longer.

US Olympic Weightlifter Sarah Robles, in her own words, on why she left the US Olympic Training Center. The short version: inconsistent coaching and overt gender bias. If you read the buzzfeed story on her, here are a couple updates: she now has a few sponsors (including Powerbar), not a lot, but they help. And she launched an IndieGoGo campaign that has helped tremendously.

Good news! The people at the Firefly reunion at Comic Con San Diego just announced a 10th year reunion special, being shot right now (according to Joss Whedon's facebook feed). Bad news is that it will air on the Science Channel. Hopefully it'll jump to DVD and/or Netflix quickly so that people can actually watch it.

Evidently the funtimes keep rolling on with Tosh [TWs for the links and mention of rape jokes]. His new show (he's a producer) on Comedy Central will be called Brickeberry (it's being previewed at CCSD) and spends a lot of time focusing on rape jokes. This is why he needs to be told this crap isn't funny. He escalates because he can. Here's the best response I've seen to all of this. The best comment ever came from this article: "He's a tired spewing of immature rages. He's arrogance without the intelligence to back it up. He's Dane Cook 2.0." Yes, I've read the buzzfeed story from The Laugh Factory. [Incidently, when I go to a comedy club it's not to get insulted. It's to laugh. I have friends who are successful professional comedians who do not tell rape jokes.] I found it interestingly listed next to this buzzfeed story. I'm going to assume the truth is somewhere between both stories about what happened last week, which doesn't help Tosh at all. Enough is enough.

The Daily Show will no longer be available via online streaming video. The reason: legal battles with tv providers and the show's parent company. I'm going to venture a guess that a lot of the show's viewership comes from streaming video. At least in the States.

Cracked's 7 Stupidest Things That Make People Proud. I was surprised that being bad at math wasn't on that list. It's annoying that people are proud of that. It's OK to not be an expert at it. But being proud of the fact you can't calculate a percentage of a price tag? Not so much.

cheez_ball — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:58:42 GMT

http://espn.go.com/espn/photos/gallery/_/id/8136693/image/1/carlos-bocanegra-2012-body-issue-bodies-want-espn-magazine = A slideshow of the images from this year's ESPN Magazine Body Issue. [I don't know why the link posted weird...but it's there and that's what matters]

You're welcome.

[Stolen and reposted from etcet]

Tatiana Kashirina

cheez_ball — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 00:29:58 GMT

I found this story while searching for something else. I thought you all might find it interesting. The rest of this is copied and pasted from the youtube post of the video below. You can find it here. She snatched 148 kg at Worlds last year, which is the current world record. She clean and jerks 183 kg, which is 4 kg shy of the world record. She weighs 97 kilos and is only 21 years old. Add the 2 scores together to get the total for a meet. In this case, if Kashirina performed her best two lifts in the same meet her total would be 331 kg. The US's best womens' 75+ kg lifter has a personal best of 258 kg. Hella impressive by anyone's rubric (and the person who has that record is an amazing human begin on top of it), but not in contention for a gold medal this year. Which is sad because all of these athletes deserves tv time. Anyways...on to the article and a different video that shows her in competition...

Weightlifting used to be very popular in the Soviet Union. But those halcyon days are over. Not only because the sport is no longer so popular, but also because of the many myths, prejudices and negative publicity surrounding weightlifting.

"Now, television broadcasts show weightlifting only rarely. People don't know about the sport and believe false stories. Once a mother brought her son to me and said she wanted him to start weightlifting so he wouldn't grow very tall. It doesn't work like that", says Vladimir Krasnov, weightlifting coach.

Luckily, one of Russia's brightest stars in women's weightlifting, Tatiana Kashirina, didn't listen to all the stories, and put the burden of restoring the country to its place among the sport's heavyweights on her own shoulders.

It's hard to imagine that the woman who can lift more than twice her own bodyweight got involved in the sport by accident.

As she once knocked on the wrong door in the gym - and instead of going to a dance class - she went into the weightlifting room.

"I got into the sport by accident, but I liked the sport and I'm still in it. Girls will be girls - even if our sport is weightlifting. I think that weightlifters have strong characters. That's what can scare men - that women have a much stronger personality", says Tatiana Kashirina.

"It wasn't hard to discover her talent. When she first arrived in the gym you could clearly see her potential. At the age of twelve, she could lift the weights of amateur athletes. I have never heard of young weightlifters who could do that, anywhere in the world", says Vladimir Krasnov.

Russia has never won the Olympic gold in women's weightlifting since the sport was introduced in 2000.

While four-time European champion, and 2010 World champion, Kashirina is just 21 years old.

"My main rival is a barbell - and my aim is to beat it. I give lots of respect to all my opponents. There are always many good competitors. And I don't rule them out, even if they are able to lift less than I can. But I don't compete with them", says Tatiana Kashirina.

And it seems the athlete from the Moscow Region has plenty of time to claim the "world's strongest woman" title.

cheez_ball — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:42:12 GMT

The solar eclipse was fun last night. We had way more fun than any of us expected. Outside with friends and our welding goggles trying to catch the best pict and then post it to facebook the fastest. I was, of course, smoked by all my friends. No matter. It was fun.

FTR, the following image is NOT last night's eclipse as seen from the ISS. It's lovely artwork rendered in 2009. Let's give credit where credit is due. It was created by this DA artist and you can download it from DA. You'd think it would be obvious that it wasn't real...but I'm guessing there was just enough possibility that it might be that people didn't question it. On the plus side the artist has had over 14,000 hits on this image alone today.

why it's worth continuing to support LJ

cheez_ball — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:12:10 GMT

I don't normally do these re-blog things but this is not only interesting it's important to people who still use LJ. Yea, the DDoS's are frustrating. But there's a bigger picture here.

Originally posted by etcet at why it's worth continuing to support LJ

Originally posted by the_siobhan at why it's worth continuing to support LJ

Originally posted by clari_clydeat post

I’ve been wondering what’s up with all the DDoS attacks LJ has been receiving lately. Signal boosting ingridmatthews:

Just in case anyone thinks LJ's downtime is just TPTB being incompetant, read this:

LiveJournal, Russia's blogging platform of choice, is sustaining biggest cyberattack attack in its history. Bloggers say the Kremlin wants to crack down on political discussion.

"LiveJournal, Russia’s most popular blogging platform, has been under a massive DDoS attack for the past few days. The attack has effectively wiped out Russia’s main refuge for unbridled political discussion, a hugely lively and extensive domain frequented by politicians, opposition activists and social commentators alike...

“The reason for attack is more than clear in this case — someone wants LiveJournal to disappear as a platform,” Ilya Dronov, development director at SUP, wrote in a post on his LiveJournal blog earlier this week. He said the hackers were hoping to push bloggers from LJ to social networks where “it's easier to fight individual users.”"

http://globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/bric-yard/russian-blog-site-under-attack

http://putinwatcher.blogspot.com/2011/04/cyber-war-on-russian-activist-bloggers.html

ETA, One more link, ganked from norwich36about the importance of LJ to russian bloggers:

LiveJournal's DDoS and Russian Politics

ETA, LJ Maintenance has released a map of the DDoS Botnet. And if you can’t get to the post by lj_maintenance, the map is at:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=embed&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.livejournal.com%2Fops%2Fsecond_attack.kml&sll=20.96144,-38.320312&sspn=151.943385,95.273437&ie=UTF8&ll=24.846565,-29.179687&spn=151.155869,95.273437

If your computer is on there, they ask that you consider cleaning out your computer. Actually, even if your computer isn’t on there, it’s still a good idea to make sure your computer is free of malware.

Interesting illustration of intersectionality as it relates to privilege

cheez_ball — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:11:55 GMT

Presented here without commentary. Source.

Awesome

cheez_ball — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:52:57 GMT

Whoop!

cheez_ball — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:57:51 GMT

I've been in grad school a LOOOOOOONG time. So for kicks and giggles I'm compiling a list of things that are absolute bullshit about grad school that I didn't learn until I got here. Feel free to add to it.

1. Academic Incest (going to the same school for undergrad and grad) is bad and you'll never succeed in life if you do it. No two career paths are the same and employers don't really care where you did your undergrad. They look for grad school at an accredited institution in that field and grad work that isn't total crap.

2. It's all about loving what you do. Loving the work is what keeps you going when a single damned thing isn't working and all your manuscripts have been rejected. Having funding and a stable lab situation (for lab-based work) is VERY important.

3. A PhD will earn me respect and high pay. LOL! No.

4. I will automatically get a high paying job when I get my PhD. LOL! I might get a cramp laughing at this one. You still have to work to find a job.

5. All PhDs become Professors. See #4. The job market, in general, is brutal right now. It's 100X worse in academia. Apply for the job you want, but also for every other job out there. And maybe you'll get a call back. But keep applying and keep your options open until you've received offers and have made your decisions.

6. Only the best and the brightest go to grad school. LOL! No. There are a wide variety of reasons and paths that led people to grad school. Being #1 is usually not among them. That said, it is a privilege to be able to dedicate this amount of time to what many people consider a luxury and I appreciate the opportunity.

7. Grad students are the shining stars of academia. LOL! ... LOL! ... LOL! Every once in awhile you'll see a Shining Star grad student. These are the exception, not the rule. Most of us are average.

8. All professors want their grad students to be "mini me"s. To an extent. There is an expectation that grads and post docs will follow in their mentor's steps. But as the market keeps changing more and more people in the pipeline are seeking out alternatives to the traditional grad school to academia career path. Again, no two career paths are the same. For the most part academia is adjusting to this and professors are looking for students that will be successful in any career path.

9. Academia is devoid of the politics that plague other fields. I wish! There are politics anywhere you have human beings interacting. Each department has a different culture.

10. The academic lifestyle is better than industry or government and the lower pay is worth it.
A. The pay isn't necessarily lower in academia. In some instances it is - especially with adjuncts. In many, with full-time work, it's competitive. Many of those expected salaries you see in various publication are absolute bullshit. I've seen many that state a microbiologist with a BS should start at $45K per year in 1990. I have never seen that in all my years in the field.
B. The work load is pretty much equivalent to what I've seen in government and industry. No one advertises 50-80 hour weeks but everyone expects it. The 40 hour work week appears to be vanishing across the board. Especially if you advance beyond entry level and lower level management.
C. The challenge of work-life balance and/or work-life integration, from my experience, is the same across all sectors.
D. The bias against women having children is everywhere, especially in STEM fields (where my experience is). I think the only way around this is to be CEO of your own corporation. How much of this affects an individual depends greatly on the culture of an individual workplace. And I've seen this across academia, industry, and government. IMO, the US culture needs to grow the frick up and realize that punishing people for having kids is bad for everyone, then do what it takes to truly be family friendly. Saying "this is just how things are" is unacceptable and why change is so slow.
E. Unless you're teaching a class or have meetings at set hours I have noticed that the exact timing you do stuff in academia is far more flexible than elsewhere. But not in all departments. And you're still expected to put in all those same total hours worth of work. Grad students tend to get away with this more than others.

11. Can someone please tell me what this Ivory Tower is? Sure, we're not shoveling coal here. But I hear this phrase used to demean academics and I'm not entirely sure what they [people insulting academics] think it means.

12. Grad students don't have any free time. Do you see this list? Do you think I did this why simultaneously doing 50 different things? There's lots of free time in grad school. Especially if, like me, your bacteria takes 10 days to grow. Managing efficient and effective use of free time is a huge part of grad school.

13. Grad students spend all their time in libraries. Only in certain fields where the materials pre-date digital scanning. Most of what we use these days is available on-line or via interlibrary loan.

14. Grad students are indentured servants. Depends on the relationship with the mentor. For the most part this is a joke among academics. For example, I'd watch my boss' dog if he asked but I wouldn't pick up his dry cleaning. It's a professional relationship just like any other workplace. Extra stuff like watching a dog are part of what you'd do for any other colleague or friend. I've helped out advisors that I absolutey hated with personal stuff - not because I had to as a grad student but because it was the right thing to do, as a human being, at the time.

15. All faculty are super intelligent and highly professional at all times. There is an expectation of being professional on university time and cutting loose however they cut loose at home. For many there is no break between work and home. And just like any other job you'll find people behaving outside the norms of professionalism with about equal frequency to other professions. I'd say the vast majority of faculty are more tenacious than anything. You can't get through the tenure process without it. Although there are some scary-intelligent people out there.

16. Professors are absent-minded. Just like anyone else who's doing a gazillion different things at the same time. You don't realize how many different things each faculty member does in any given day until you see it first-hand. I'm becoming increasingly absent-minded myself as I pile more stuff on.

To be continued...

Holy crap! A tornado outbreak!

cheez_ball — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:25:30 GMT

For those checking in on me the stormline starts about 1 hour's drive to the North. We've got sunny sky here. So far 7 tornados have been confirmed for the Dallas area from this storm with more being reported as time goes by. If you're in the area I hope you're somewhere safe. Remember SMS/Texting is more likely to get through than voice calls during an emergency and it might take repeated attempts if the network is clogged.

Here's where I'm getting my live updates. For video footage check any of the Dallas area news stations. WFAA has footage of tractor-trailers being picked up. Hopefully unoccupied. NBC has lots of photos and videos. 5 people have been reported injured so far and I expect the number will climb by the end of the day. DFW airport is open, according to their twitter feed.

As of right now it looks like the storm/front is East of Dallas and leaving the area. I'm still watching on radar.