Over at The Scientist, there’s a fruitful discussion about women in science.
I have very mixed feelings about wading into this, because it is fraught with issues.
But I’m not the timid sort, so I’m going to – in order to help you.
I get a bit tired of the rehashing of “its harder for women,” because, frankly, that conversation is not going to help you in your career.
Yes, it is harder for us women in science. My own life experiences have ...(read more)
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The headlines are in: “Craig Venter creates synthetic life form” (from the Guardian)
One would look at the comments and think that humans are playing “God”.
Sorry folks, we’re not there yet.
The genome is just a blueprint.
The genome itself isn’t “life”.
If you happen to think that a genome = life, try this experiment (it is simple): extract DNA from a cell, and go put it in a test tube, and see what happens.
Does it create cells that grow?
Nope. It does nothing.
What ...(read more)
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I was recently speaking to an entrepeneurial fellow, and he made a comment that stuck in my mind: “people like you and I are unemployable.”
It didn’t take me long to realize that he was right.
He was referring, overall, to the entrepeneur personality.
The “problem” with entrepreneurs is that they can’t just accept the way things are – they have to go around always trying to make things “better”.
That’s great if you’re starting a new business, or running a certain kind of ...(read more)
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What is the cost of Open Source publishing?
Recently the International Society for Computational Biology put out a request for feedback on their draft Literature Open Public Access Policy Statement.
The goal is laudable: encourage all computational biology researchers to publish their work where it can be openly accessed by all.
This goal makes sense as long as the public is paying for the research being done. When the public pays, the work should be open access.
Right now, in the ...(read more)
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If you don’t buy my argument from Episode V about the idea that to be truly successful, you need to think “proactive” rather than “reactive”, let’s consider one more idea from Covey’s book.
At the beginning he talks about “production” (P) versus “production capacity” (PC).
Let’s use the analogy of an automobile. The product (P) of an automobile is high speed movement – traveling miles quickly.
The ...(read more)
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