I get email, too
Not only PZ Myers gets email from kooks and nutcases. Apparently, a Rodney Berry (who seems to call himself Elijah paul Moses) from adamandeveseedgatheringministry.com has been looking up email addresses of scientists and sending them some really loony emails. That website, by the way, consists to about 80% of nude couples (Adam and Eve of course, what did you think?). Here's what Rodney had to say (colors and font size are the original from the email, I apologize): ""BJOERN BREMBS ESQ; sir ""i" gathered your name an

Epic hacker/spam FAIL
This morning I get the notification of a single new comment over night on the blog. I click on it and burst out laughing! Check it out:19 Nov 09: 19:51 | IP: 209.107.204.13<script>javascript:alert("SITE HACKED BY MAGICALMAN!");javascript:alert("VISIT HACKSCENE.COM, THE BEST HACKIN' COMMUNITY");<!--window.location="http://hackscene.com";//--></script>"The best hacking community", eh? I guess the 'best' was meant for the community,

Women scientists: biological drive vs. scientific passion
Ok, the title of this post is probably more provocative than advisable for a man in a post Larry Summers world. Anyway, because my partner is both female and a scientist, this topic comes up regularly and not only at the dinner table. I was reminded of it again by this article in The Scientist. The author writes: married women with children were 35% less likely to get a tenure-track position than married men with children and 33% less likely to do so than single women without children[...]In a

Two of our posters on biosciencetechnology.com
The other day, Robert Fee from biosciencetechnology.com contacted me about out posters at the SfN meeting. He asked me if it is ok to post them over at their website. I had never heard of biosciencetechnology.com and figured it couldn't hurt. Today, Robert sent an email with the links to the posters on their site:http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/

When even Impact Factors don't help any more
"Excellence Programs" are all the rage right now, especially here in Germany. In a widely publicized nationwide competition, our university (the Freie Universität Berlin) was awarded the title "Excellence University" - one of only nine such universities in a country with 394 universities. The award entails roughly 20 million Euros (~30 million US$) for each 'excellent' university.It seems like nothing of that money is making its way down to the unive