on blogging

My eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a (small) change in the blog yesterday.

My miscellany tag was getting more and more prominent, and I’ve been debating adding a tag for all my musings about blogging: the writing process, my concerns about being positively identified, my word clouds...

So I finally went through and added a new tag, getting “miscellany” down to only the fourth most commonly-used tag. My tag list is getting long…if I don’t add any more posts that I can label “world studies” in the next couple of months, I’ll retire that tag.

more bad news

I just posted recently about the loss of sciencewomen, and now Brazen Hussy has announced that her blog will be ending in the near future. How depressing.

One of the things I liked about Brazen Hussy's blog was her photos of angry birds (check out her "birds" tag). I've thought in the past, "gee, those photos may be somewhat identifying...". In the post I linked to, she mentions being found out by both readers and real-life acquaintances.

I've been in some fairly interesting/amusing places for fieldwork. And I've gone as far as taking some photos (with no obvious identifying details, like road signs) of these places with the intent of posting them, but I'm afraid that they'll still be somewhat identifiable. Maybe I'll post them years from now, when everybody I've ever worked with has forgotten them...

it just walked off...

In environmental consulting, sometimes you work in dicey areas. If you do so, you’re usually hyper-aware of your equipment and keep a close eye on it. I never had anything stolen in that situation.

But if you’re working in the middle of nowhere, or you run out for a couple of minutes…that’s when you’re likely to lose something.

I’ve had various items stolen from job sites, with costs ranging from less than $10 (the odd screwdriver) to thousands of dollars (sampling/analytical equipment ain’t cheap). The worst experience, however, was when the drillers came back from lunch on a cold winter Monday to find that their duffels and suitcases stuffed with jackets, pants, spare boots, and all sorts of personal items had been taken. They were not happy.

appointment annoyances

I’m writing this post while I wait for my car to get fixed. I always go to this particular location because it’s convenient and they treat me well. But it’s not in a very, um, nice area.

The techs are chattering about a particular customer who just called. She has an appointment later today, and she just wanted some standard maintenance. But her car got “all shot up” and now it’s going to need a lot more work. Can they still fit her in the original appointment slot?

The funny thing is, the techs don’t sound that surprised. Is this such a common occurrence? Maybe I need to find another, less exciting place to get my car looked at. But my choices are severely limited when I’m traveling all the time and working 13-hour days (when I’m actually in the same region as my car). I need to find places that are open on weekends.

Don’t ask me how long I’ve gone without a dentist appointment…

Geologists+beer

Apparently the “geologists heart beer” stereotype has gotten around to wired. Link here. Note that this is an old video, but I didn't notice it on other geology blogs the last couple of months.

Why is it that geologists are famed for their love of beer?

I do have geologist friends who sort of enjoy beer but aren't beer snobs, but very few geology friends who don't like it at all. But get a bunch of geologists in a room, and they tend to go a little beer-crazy. Especially if they have access to a local microbrewery.

I admit to being a pretty big beer snob. Then again, I'm also a big fan of good tequila, fancy dark chocolate, and local cheeses. So maybe I just have expensive taste!

Eclectic coursework

FSP has a post up today on eclectic courses.

I touched on this subject back when I was in grad school. In my old post, I mentioned a common criticism of a BA with some random-looking courses: the coursework isn’t rigorous enough. The other big criticism, which was raised in the comments to FSP’s post, is that liberal arts students, with their greater freedom of courses available, take all sorts of oddball subjects and don’t learn the fundaments of whatever.

Presumably, even if a student appears to be majoring in a bunch of random stuff, their primary coursework is still organized into a concentration, under the supervision of a department that approved the graduation requirements. And if they want to apply to graduate school (therefore putting aside the straw student who takes the easiest courses available, whether they’re “creative basket-weaving” or “chemistry through true-false exams”), someone should have made it clear that they’d need more than the bare minimum of primary and supporting courses.

So what’s left after you take your recommended number of primary and secondary courses for your major and (possibly) minor? Probably not a large number of classes. If a student takes a few courses that appear to be random and/or easy, but they’ve learned something fundamental to their broader education (how to critically examine a work of art, construct a logical argument, etc), then more power to them.

Let me tell you...

I recently met an undergraduate science major who is debating going into environmental consulting. Should he go directly to grad school? Work for a few years first? And what is this environmental consulting gig really like, anyway?

I was so tempted to tell him, “Check out the blogosphere! There’s this chick who has a blog called “accidental remediation” and it’s perfect for the sorts of questions you’re asking!”

Unfortunately, the blog might be a little too applicable to his situation. I had visions of him reading it and saying, “heyy…wait a minute. Do I know this person?”

Have you run into this, my pseudonymous readers/bloggers? Would you bring up your own blog if it’s super relevant? I didn’t, but maybe I’m overly paranoid.