Going to Alaska!
Back in two weeks.
I hope to return with pictures like these.
Snubbed by Zuska!
Congratulations to Zuska, who has moved to ScienceBlogs. Sadly, Dr. Shellie has fallen off the Blogroll. What, am I not at least as much of a "feminist-y womanist-y science and engineering blog" as Dr. Chuck and Inky Circus? (Though yami has out-feministed me with ease by being able to casually mention: "I’ve done most of my thinking about socially-foisted identity in the context of trans allyship.") Bah. Perhaps this is retaliation for accidentally sending SEVEN duplicate emails asking to be added the first time (radio blogs has a very slow response time, unfortunately)? All 25 of my loyal readers are encouraged to head on over and put in a word for me. (Or 24. I think one of them is Zuska.)
UPDATE: Case closed (see comments). No need for internal dissension in the feminist-science-and-engineering blog community! I am off to read Dr. Chuck and Inky Circus, whose blogs I somewhat unfairly employed in the obnoxious rhetorical attack above. 
Kasamba makes cheating that much easier
No need to do your problem sets anymore… just pay someone online! Kasamba "Tutoring" Services are no more than a thinly-veiled mechanism for you to pay someone to do your homework over Internet chat for a per-minute rate. I particularly enjoyed the user review for one "Algebra Math Accounting" tutor:
I used this expert and the work was so good that my professor told me that I must find out who this expert was because he is a genius. I finally found out who he was and he was offered a job at my university, Harvard University in Boston. The work was so brilliant that my own professor told me find out who this person is or you will fail the class because the work was the best he has ever seen in his lifetime.
Excellent. Now I know how to get a job at Harvard.
More previously-thought-of ideas
Once in a while, I will be sitting around with some science and engineering-y types and people will start tossing around ideas for companies. A few times we have hit upon some truly stunning ideas that seem like sure ways to make tons of cash. Invariably, typing the key words into Google reveals that someone has already done just this. Two samples:
Since it’s a big pain to sort your socks into pairs after doing the laundry, why not come up with some kind of clip to hold them together in the wash? Voila! Sock Cop has done just this (not to mention several other companies). I bought some of these in the mail and tried them out, but unfortunately, being too lazy to sort the socks after they come out of the wash is strongly correlated with being too lazy to put the clips on the socks before they go in the wash. So don’t buy stock yet.
Selling a service to parents to do real-time tracking of their kid’s location through a GPS feature on the kids’ cell phones. Oops! Accutracking (and a few other companies) got to this idea first. Oh well. I’m not sure I wanted to spark an increase in paranoid parental monitoring anyway.
How aggressive are you?
Personally, I dislike conflict, try not to start fights, and stay away from people who don’t like me. Unsurprisingly, I am also not a big fan of premptive war. Which makes me wonder: do most people’s ideas about foreign policy simply follow their everyday personality? Is Condoleezza Rice (for example) the type of person who tracks down the neighbor whose dog peed on her lawn (thus leaving a dead, yellow spot) and threatens to sue for property damage?
Well, thanks to Google (search: "personality foreign policy correlation"), I just learned that there in fact exists an entire scholarly literature on correlations between personality and American foreign policy (guess my ideas are not so original). From "Personality Effects on American Foreign Policy, 1898-1968: A Test of Interpersonal Generalization Theory" by Lloyd S. Etheredge, I learn:
In 49 cases of intraelite disagreement on force-related issues… the direction of disagreement could be predicted in over 75 percent of the cases by knowledge of individual differences in interpersonal relations […] (e.g., introverts are drawn toward impersonal principles and mechanisms like balance of power–or in an earlier period to international law).
Guess we know a few politicians who are not introverts, then. I wonder what will happen to my foreign policy ideas if I become an aggressive, space-hoarding, grant-winning junior professor…
