My son wrote an essay recently on the cultural antecedents to the French Revolution and declining belief in absolute monarchy. One of the elements discussed was the availability of Bible translations in languages other than Latin, reducing the role of priests as conduits of spiritual authority and raising questions about the parallel role of monarchs as conduits of civic authority. Presently, we have questions about the role of scientists and science in civic life. Do they stem from a similar shift in the public relationship to the relevant texts?
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Science Corner: A Season of Rest
By the WordPress statistics, this is my 398th post in 9 years (and 9 days). I didn’t write every word of those; they include some guest posts and conversations with coauthors. At the same time, they don’t include when my Science Corner-style posts were going directly to Facebook in between monthly posts, so things probably balance out. Over that time, we’ve tinkered in other ways as well, trying book clubs, movie reviews, and interactive live science to go with wide-ranging conversations on science and theology. In that spirit, it’s time to tinker again and try a different schedule. For the foreseeable future, I am going to switch back to the monthly pace I started with; new posts from me will go up on the second Wednesday of each month, starting in October.
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Science Corner: Cat Chat
We’ve met talking dogs and the humans who listen to them, so now it’s time to give cats a say. Instead of having the cats use buttons and recordings to express words and phrases in human languages, the humans have to figure out the nuances of feline communication. Turns out, we can do pretty well, especially if we’ve been around cats before. And for that research, Susanne Schötz, Robert Eklund, and Joost van de Weijer won this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in Biology. Arguably, the Ig Nobels are more representative of ordinary science than what makes headlines and certainly what wins Nobel Prizes. Creation is full of mysteries; they don’t all have to be flashy to be worth exploring.
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I Found a Postdoc in the Sciences: Now What? (Pt 2)
The most popular Emerging Scholars blog post is “Finding a Postdoc in the Sciences: Nailing the Interview.” It’s part of a larger series on finding a postdoc which is also frequently visited. We figured it was time for a follow-up on what to do once you’ve found the postdoc you were looking for.
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I Found a Postdoc in the Sciences: Now What? (Pt 1)
Let’s be honest: postdocs occupy a weird, liminal space in the path of the scholar. Is it a job? Are postdocs students? I was once told that my department considered postdocs students when it meant they didn’t have to provide faculty benefits, and it considered them special faculty when it meant they could withhold student benefits. We never even really bothered to give postdoctoral fellowships a real name; we basically just call them “that thing you do after you finish your doctorate but before you get a real job.” Postdoc positions are the Twenty Years After of roles.
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