So I had another weekend jaunt for healthcare, and I am covering a chaotic inpatient service today.
I did manage to add a new widget to the right-hand column so that you can donate to Scientopia via PayPal.
You will also notice some ads around here in the near future.
So feel free to donate, click, or otherwise generate income to keep Scientopia running.
And I will try to get my act together and provide some real content.
I keep seeing these articles in which members of government (henceforth MOG) suggest that faculty in higher education are underworked and overpaid. They keep suggesting ways we can be leaner and more efficient, invariably turning to technology and the internet.
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Here's a a thought: Let's harness technology to make our government more efficient. All MOGs do all day is talk; to each other, to their constituents, to lobbyists, and to advocates. Surely they can do that via email or Skype. Constituents and advocates try to persuade MOGs by educating them about their issues; education no longer requires face-to-face interaction, right? And lobbyists? Just add a Paypal button and the bucks can still flow in.
Think of how much we could save on buildings and government employees. Seems like those "smaller government" MOGs should jump at the chance to cut their staffs and costs. They would no longer have to pay for those DC residences and clubs since they could stay in their home districts.
What's that, you say? You need that personal connection? There is value in meeting face-to-face? Government requires that human interaction?
As I browse the long-term San Diego forecast, I see the possibility of a bit of rain. Yes, I always keep a tiny umbrella in my bag, but sometimes you need a bit more. If it can be stashed in my day bag, even better! Of course, I also want to look good, even in the rain.
I really like RainRaps:
I will be sporting the navy/turquoise one for now (others may be in my future). I love how much lighter it feels than my trench coat, especially for spring and summer showers in the warmer climate I now inhabit.
I travel the skies a fair amount, enough to get me 30+ "segments" each year for the lowest elite status on United. Recent flights have pointed out an issue that seems "fixable" on some level.
Living in Oklahoma City, the first leg of every trip is from Will Rogers World Airport (yup, named after a guy who died in a plan crash) to a hub. From the hub airport, after 1+ hours, I then board a plane to where-I-really-want-to-go. When booking each trip, I have to make a bet, a game I call hub roulette. In December or January, Houston generally has better odds than O'Hare or Denver. In the spring, you never know which way to go. On vacation in March, I bet on Houston, and we damn near spent the night there because of thunderstorms in Texas that grounded our flight from OKC for 3 hours (but not the one we connected to in Texas which flew in from Seattle and got to take off on time). Had I chosen a Chicago connection we would have been better off, but you cannot know that 2 or 3 months in advance.
What I really want to do is tell the airlines that I want to travel from my home to a final destination on a given date and have them get me there. I can specify a time frame for departure or arrival and then let them pick the actual route the day before! I don't care if I'm spending a couple of hours in Houston or Chicago; I'm only there because they make me!
Now, there are no complete guarantees. The plane I need to get on may be coming from a location with bad weather or other issues. But I hate rolling the dice on which hub city will have clear weather on a given date months down the line.
Is the future finally here? As reported on NPR, two companies have announced successful prototypes for flying cars.
Unlike the cars in The Jetsons, this vehicle transforms from car to plane. No flying over traffic jams if the commute gets rocky.
If I still have to drive the roads for work, how about a real miracle from that cartoon? Push a button and your vehicle folds up into a briefcase, no parking space required.
Imagine what you could sell those for in urban areas.
This time of year, I usually glue myself to a television to watch college basketball. Disillusioned after the first-round loss by my Missouri Tigers, I have just lost interest. This leaves me tie to get some stuff done, like preparation for Experimental Biology. More about sessions and science later; this weekend I will prepare my wardrobe.
When I accepted the panel invitation, I knew which dress I would wear. It is pretty and comfortable and it makes me feel great.
But it needs shoes.
I have multiple DSW coupons in my bag, and I am heading for the store tomorrow morning. Of course, our DSW lies in the same shopping center as Beauty Brands, so my first pedicure of 2012 is scheduled as well (I may lose a pound or two after they trim cuticles and callus). Then more shopping may occur.
At some point, I have to put together a few slides for the social media outreach panel. I can always do that on the plane.
I have finally recovered officially from my stomach bug, tested at a local Mexican eating establishment last night with salsa and margaritas. I have done actual science in the last 24 hours, and I have caught up on some other stuff.
The big news today is over at Academic Women for Equality Now, my Vision2020 project. I finally have the Female Faculty Friendliness Grade Cards for every US College of Medicine compiled into a single document, along with a bunch of the supporting data and analyses. This material originally appeared as a series of posts over 4 months. Now, you can more easily compare medical colleges by region, by type of position, you name it.
Unfortunately, the size of the document exceeds that of the upload capacity of my site (for now). I have a work-around, as you will see on the site.
Go ahead, click on over and get the PDF...you know you want it...
I am still looking for collaborators on the site: guest posts, people with other data sets to analyze, etc. If it deals even remotely with gender in the Ivory Tower, I will welcome your participation. Drop me a line!
Last night's Academy Awards featured stars in glittery gowns and lint-free tuxedos. My husband has a low tolerance for the show, so after I got my fill of red-carpet gowns and shoes, we watched a best-picture nominee and followed the prizes via twitter. Yes, my husband wanted to watch The Help.
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I read it, loved it, and blogged it last summer. As the movie gained traction, I have heard more stories about my life in 1960's Houston, TX, including the day my mom took me to the "colored" toilet in a shopping mall. She had a toddler who had to pee, and she saw a restroom marked for women. When she came out, apologetic store clerks told her the error of her ways. My own kids hear these stories and cannot believe that we ever allowed such stupidity.
I was really routing for both Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis to take home statuettes last night for their performances in the movie adaptation of this book (although Meryl Streep is fantastic in everything she does). Both women brought such depth and grace to these roles that even my husband was impressed by the movie. However, the twitter feed eventually lit up with complaints about these women playing maids in this day and age.
I wonder if these same folks bitch about those playing maids and footmen in Downton Abbey "in this day and age?"
My disclaimer follows:
If you have seen my photo, you know I am not African American; I have a proud insect ethnicity (WASP). I have felt like "the other" on occasion in my life. When I started out in medicine, everyone immediately assumed that any woman was a nurse. Now, when every medical show on television has multiple female physicians, this happens far less often. The nurses in these shows remain overwhelmingly women, though, reflecting the current reality. D00ds are still doctors till proven otherwise.
However, I may not be as sensitive to racial stereotypes since that has not been part of my experience.
The Help is a period piece, a story of a misguided time that we must not forget. It's the story of invisible women whose story becomes part of the record. I do not remember this sort of issue with Morgan Freeman playing a chauffeur in Driving Miss Daisy, another flick set in 1960's Mississippi (although that film came out during my fellowship when I had a two-year-old child and may have missed the controversy).
What do those who complain about these actresses playing maids want? Better roles for actresses of color? Hell, I would like to just say better roles for actresses in general (that could be another whole post). Do they not want this story told? Because the world is better if we pretend this period never happened?
Or could this be another example of African American women being ignored? There's a museum for the men who waited on white people as Pullman porters and a book on the same. Should this work be adapted into a movie starring male actors, would they get put down for taking demeaning roles in a movie set in segregated US?
As I said in my original post:
The bottom line seems to be that housekeeping and childrearing remain undervalued. These chores require no specialized training, but they remain essential to our lives.
They are "women's work."
A male actor playing someone who takes on a demeaning job to support a family seems heroic. A woman playing a part where she cooks, scrubs floors, and raises others' children to achieve the same end...not so much. At least, for some. For me, the real value of The Help was making those women more than cardboard characters in the background. They were as brave and courageous as the men depicted during those same period dramas.
This week following the Oscars, we transition from Black History Month to Women's History Month. It's a great time to explore the contributions of black women to our world. And what a greater way to honor two amazing movie performances!
Even Meryl would approve as chair of the effort for the National Women's History Museum.
Somewhere back east, a long-suffering groundhog has been dragged out to assess the state of his shadow in a completely useless weather prediction. In OKC, the predicted high today is 70. If we have 6 more weeks of this winter, I am all for it.
As I have mused about this holiday, a number of random thoughts crossed in my brain, leading to this post.
First, I have always dreamed of winning an Oscar. Never mind that I came out of the womb with a scientific bent, or that I never pursued the dramatic arts or anything vaguely related to film (unless you count that Star Trek spoof a bunch of us filmed with a super 8 camera when we were 10 or 11 years old). I have long dreamed of standing on that stage thanking the many who made my triumph possible. I would be impeccably dressed and accessorized. They would let me keep the shoes.
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If I ever get around to making that movie, I have decided that this holiday, Groundhog Day, will feature prominently in it.
To understand why, I will point you to the Vanity Fair post from one year ago, The Top 10 Groundhog Day Movies.
Breaking into that list looks possible, even probable. Sometimes you have to aim low.
Compared to the other stories posting via this meme, I feel almost traditional.
I do not remember a time when science was not part of my life. I recall fondly reading and re-reading All About Dinosaurs. I had a tiny kit containing most of the minerals in Moh's scale. Mom refused to complete my set with her jewelry, so I had to imagine the upper levels of hardness. Biology clearly won my heart, though. How things could be alive fascinated me to no end.
Unlike many scientists, I was not the outdoorsy type. I read fashion magazines, did a bit of modeling, and entered some teen-queen pageants. I often joke that a hotel without 24-hour room service is my idea of camping. I love air conditioning and indoor plumbing; I fail to see how doing without these conveniences constitutes "fun." This quirk effectively ruled-out a career in paleontology or biological field work. I do love people. Having a father in academia, and coming of age during the 1970's PhD glut, teachers suggested aiming for an MD which guaranteed employment.
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Admission to medical school was fiercely competitive in that era, and I aimed my sights on a relatively new program at the University of Missouri - Kansas City. The medical curriculum began on day 1 out of high school and went 11 months each year for 6 years. Getting in meant avoiding the cut-throat competition among pre-med students on many campus. Its goal when pitched to the legislature was producing primary care physicians for under-served areas of Missouri, not academic physician-scientists. My second year there, I got a work-study job as a lab assistant for a fresh-out-of-post-doc carcinogenesis researcher needing cheap labor. This year provided my first experience with real science as I worked with the doctoral student and another lab to set up our efforts. Everyone, including this 19-year-old part-timer, needed to generate data. I learned to do short-term lymphocyte cultures, murine surgery, and a number of assays. The principal investigators of these labs strongly suggested that I figure out a way to pick up a PhD to go with my MD, since I loved the science so much.
The next few years brought more intensive courses and clinical work with overnight call, making meaningful lab time improbable if not impossible. I love science, but another kind of love intervened, along with a big princess wedding. By the time I graduated with my BA and MD, the idea of getting another advanced degree sounded exhausting and unnecessary. I headed off to pediatric residency with the intention of becoming a hematologist-oncologist, building on my background in carcinogenesis. Of course, I met a whole bunch of nephrologists and their patients who convinced me to take my talents elsewhere. After all, urine is golden!
My first 6 months of fellowship were a gray blur. Post-partum depression plus a prolonged period of call without a break left me feeling bleak. January in Minnesota is not exactly rosy, but I entered a lab and felt alive again. More than 100 patients with diabetes of various stages had kidney biopsy material stored for study. I began to ask questions about diabetic kidney disease, learning to do electron microscopy along the way. I published papers, completed my training, and landed a faculty position. National funding followed, along with a better position in Omaha, a great place to live and raise our offspring.
Eventually, my science hit the wall. One project just would not work, no matter what we tried. Another project got shot down by reviewer 3 at the same time the NIH budget tanked. I realized that I could not write a better grant than what I had submitted. The probability of getting the funding expected at my professional level was incredibly close to zero. Even efforts with smaller agencies to get funding for pilot data failed, as these foundations cut back support to established investigators during the recession.
The kids left the nest, and my hubby had an amazing job offer in a warmer town. We moved on last year, and I am turning my problem solving skills back to the clinic and to research in faculty development. I still have a grad student back in Nebraska (who is proving reviewer 3 wrong; take that!), and I love the chance to talk science on a regular basis. I do not miss the grant pressure or knowing that several other people will be out of a job if I fail.
Am I still science? When I see a patient, I gather data through a history and physical exam. I create a hypothesis as to what I believe is wrong, and I test that diagnosis through laboratory studies or treatment. If I am wrong, I go back, readjust my hypothetical diagnosis, and test again. Sounds like the scientific method to me.
I may not have a full-time lab. I may not be a funded PI. I still believe that I am science - with incredible fashion sense, of course.
WhizBANG! presents my thoughts on whatever shiny thing catches my attention. Posts may include science, medicine, politics, academia, fashion or lack thereof, and urine. Lots of urine.
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