Puppies = Awesome

I think I might be the luckiest postdoc (maybe person) on the planet - instead of sharing my office with another postdoc, I get an adorable puppy as my office mate. Meet Jake, our lab Lab:



Jake posing for the camera

Ok, so he's not really a puppy anymore, but he is quite possibly the sweetest dog ever and I can't stop calling him a puppy. Every afternoon at 3PM we have 'puppy cuddle time',

Random Culinary Awesomeness

Since this blog is supposed to be about academic things I normally wouldn't post anything about food here, but last night I made the most awesome dinner and I think it deserves sharing. As justification, I use the argument that cooking is actually science (or, as Hannelore delightfully put it in Questionable Content, "Baking is wonderful! It's like science for hungry people!").






Apron based

Random Geekiness

These plush toy statistical distributions just made me giddy when I saw them. I was all, "awww, look at the adorable little normal distribution. I  want one of my geeky friends to have a baby just so I can give them as a gift."








And then... I discovered the set of evil distributions. And now I'm thinking, "screw giving them as a gift, I want an Evil Poisson for myself!"







I mean, come

How to kill a grad student's love of research: Step 3

In two previous posts I talked about how over or under supervision and CV padding were good ways to make your grad students want to run away from academia. Today I want to rant about discuss how unreasonable expectations can totally f--k up the supervisor-student relationship. 


Frustration and disappointment arise when expectations start getting unreasonable or when the student and supervisor

Vancouver vs. Durham

I was talking to a friend yesterday and I started feeling very homesick for Vancouver (I miss you Canada!), which got me to thinking about the weird ways that things are different here in North Carolina. There was no huge culture shock, but there were lots of little differences that took some getting used to.




People laugh at me for how I pronounce words like 'sorry' and 'pasta'. However, I