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Probably about a decade or more ago now, I remember John Farnham went on a tour called ‘The Last Time’. I have never been a huge fan of his music, but I feel a strange, nostalgic, brotherly kind of bond with him now, because I’m up to my last chapter.
It’s a long, boring, theory chapter and needs a lot of work. It’s due at 5:30pm this Friday. I got off to a good start yesterday, but I have a lot of work to do on it if I want to get it done on time. I don’t fancy still being stuck with this next weekend. I’m running out of time and I need to get started on my editing as soon as I possibly can.
So, this is going to be a week of hell. It doesn’t help that tomorrow afternoon is going to be ‘wasted’ (at least for me) teaching undergrads, plus there’s the added nuisance of everyday life chores, like eating and sleeping and showering. I feel like I’m in a race against time and winning is against all odds.
Hiding Your Research Behind A Paywall Is Immoral
Thumbs up to Mike Taylor, a research associate at the University of Bristol who wrote this great article on the Guardian Higher Education Network this week. The gist is that many scientists publish their research in journals that require subscription payments, blocking the majority of interested readers from accessing their work. Keeping their research behind these types of ‘paywalls’ can’t be justified given that scientists’ job is to produce knowledge and make it freely available to all. The current ‘lack of prestige’ associated with open access publishing outlets must end; Scientists publishing in high-impact paywalled journals for their own career advancement must end; and we must fundamentally change academic culture to focus on free and open availability of knowledge for all people.
Nice to see a ‘women in science’ video that actually portrays female scientists realistically!
About This Video: The all-female cohort 3 of Dartmouth’s IGERT for Polar Environmental Change graduate student program take to the tundra and ice in Greenland to show that science really is a girl thing.
Related Article:Two Video Views of Science as a ‘Girl Thing’ (New York Times Dot Earth)
Thanks to WikiLeaks, US citizens are better informed about wars prosecuted in their name. We owe Manning honour, not jail time
By Desmond Tutu, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
The Guardian November 16, 2012
Last week, PFC Bradley Manning offered to accept responsibility for releasing classified documents as an act of conscience – not as charged by the US military. As people who have worked for decades against the increased militarization of societies and for international cooperation to end war, we have been deeply dismayed by his treatment. The military under the Obama administration has displayed a desire to over-prosecute whistleblowing with life-in-prison charges including espionage and “aiding the enemy”, a disturbing decision which is no doubt intended to set an example.
We have dedicated our lives to working for peace because we have seen many faces of armed conflict and violence, and we understand that no matter the…
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An amazing, thought-provoking story. That his intellect went to waste is shameful for us all.
At about 5pm on Wednesday last week, a man named Olawunmi Thorpe died on a refuse dump beside the rail line at Fagba Bus Stop in Ifako-Ijaiye Local Government Area of Lagos State. He was 59.
Many presumed him to be a deranged man judging from the fact that the refuse dump was his home. What made this homeless man diffferent from the rest is that he was a PhD holder. Thorpe had a Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Mass Communication and a PhD in English Language.
Not much was known about him or how his life degenerated to that state but two ‘good Samaritans’, Mr. Larry Happiday and Pastor Dele Olawale who rendered help to him from time to time, narrated the little they knew about him.
Olawunmi Thorpe was an Ogun State indigene. Happiday, who lived in the same Fagba neighbourhood met Thorpe one day in March, about a…
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HappySeptember 