Where are my mittens?

Well there hasn't been much blogging lately because I have been spending a lot of time looking for my mittens. Today here at home I am wearing sandals and a t-shirt. In just few hours and a million miles from here, I will need mittens. And I just don't know where they are. So, I go to find them.

Those Pesky Letters of Recommendation

Today I sent off 3 more requests for letters of recommendation for post-doc fellowships. Each time I do this I feel like a needy, greedy, over-reaching self-centered begger. But I have always wondered in the back of my mind what the letters say. Although, after seeing this letter below from Angry Professor, I am not so curious anymore.

Good news though, these endless letters and applications have paid off with another interview in Very Cold Midatlantic State in late January. So I suppose my profs haven't called me a sycophant....yet.

clipped from gentlemansc.blogspot.com Dear Admissions Committee, Mr. Bronze Malheur has asked me to write a letter in support of his application to your graduate program. I am dumbfounded: not only am I astonished that he has asked me to write this letter, but also that he has any intention of going to graduate school or that he believes he could possibly be successful. He is a groveling toady, a sycophant. In sum, I can think of no one with a college diploma less qualified for graduate work than Mr. Malheur. I suggest you burn his application materials and return his application fee. If you admit him to your program, you will curse the day you were born. Sincerely, Angry Professor

Question of the Day

Question of the day:

"What if the fetus you were going to abort would grow up to be a soldier bringing democracy to a godless dictatorship?"

Wow, I never thought of it like that before.

Support Our Troops! Hang to show your support during the holiday season!

There is data, and there is DATA

Why oh why if you have produced a excel database for public consumption, comprised of thousands and thousands and thousands of observations and hundreds of variables would you randomly put asterisks and footnotes into the fields?

I was having so much fun cleaning this thing that I decided to make it yellow, for a little extra enjoyment.*

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*On the plus side, now I at least have some numbers to, uh...play with.

I Love the Onion

clipped from www.theonion.com Man Finally Put In Charge Of Struggling Feminist Movement "All the feminist movement needed to do was bring on someone who had the balls to do something about this glass ceiling business," said McGowan, who quickly closed the 23.5 percent gender wage gap by "making a few calls to the big boys upstairs."

World AIDS Day

I was pretty pleased to see a decent
Houston Chronicle editorial today, World AIDS day, calling for an end of requirements that a third of U.S. HIV prevention dollars be spent on abstinence-until-marriage programs. Their other recommendations, for once, I also support: increased attention to the comorbidity of TB and AIDS and a call to end the mandate that funded groups sign anti-prostitution pledges.

Yes, it's no joke. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) announced with such fanfare by Bush four years ago at his State of the Union address, requires all grantees who wish to receive money to have comply with what has been called “The Prostitution Pledge. Hopefully my 2-3 loyal readers will immediately understand why this is a bad thing.

Of course it immediately brings to mind the
Mexico City Policy,
the policy that prevents global health organizations receiving USAID funding from providing or counseling for abortion or even advocating for abortion law reform in their home countries. While it's been rolled back a little recently relative to PEPFAR, the question now is: will it stay or will it go?


On the lighter side today, let's be thankful that there are people out there, that while honestly trying to change risky behaviors and reduce the incidence of HIV without the use of bullshit mandates, can still remind us that ultimately, those little latex things are actually....well, just funny.

This Should Happen More Often

A remarkable feat, a brave computer, a safer world.

clipped from www.theonion.com Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master's Thesis WALTHAM, MA—A courageous young notebook computer committed a fatal, self-inflicted execution error late Sunday night, selflessly giving its own life so that professors, academic advisors, classmates, and even future generations of college students would never have to read Jill Samoskevich's 227-page master's thesis, sources close to the Brandeis University English graduate student reported Monday.