Despite a male's best efforts to impress, female strawberry poison frogs simply chose the closest mate

A list of small, useful things (links):John has a great explainer on how to drill a well the right way.Lisa Balbes talks about how most people don't know what to expect in their first job.Andre the Chemist thinks you should move for your first job.Ken Hanson posts on proposals in his great series on how to get a faculty position. This Dow Lab Safety Academy is interesting; I think it deserves a closer, more critical look than it's gotten so far. Andrew Bisette's 9th #chemclub […]

This week on the podcast I chat with Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, a physicist at West Virginia University and the author of The Physics of NASCAR. What on earth does NASCAR have to do with physics? Everything. From the banking of the turns to the design of the rear-view mirrors, physics is what makes NASCAR possible. And NASCAR has also proved to be a laboratory for new physics insights. Take the phenomenon of drafting, in which one car driving behind another can get a boost in speed from the […]

My sincere apologies with the relatively quiet posting recently. I do indeed have a Process Wednesday post in the works, but I found this to be such an interesting framing of the issue by Alyssa Rosenberg, commenting on Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In and her approach to looking at childcare costs that I had to post it:Similarly, Sandberg suggests a different way to look at the cost of child care. Rather than considering nannying or preschool costs as a dilemma, something that wipes out a woman’s […]

Today’s Guest Post is from Dena Roth about NECSS 2013 and the importance of safe spaces for underrepresented groups within the skeptic/secular community. It’s important to have empathy for another’s experience, especially when you don’t regularly experience being the “other” in the room (with regards to age, gender, color, etc.) and equally important to give them the space so that they feel like their needs are being addressed. […]