meta
Blogging silence
I said blogging would resume, but I haven't posted in weeks. It's not because I haven't been writing. It's just that so many of the words I've written have been sad and angry. And overall I have not been sad
Beth Haas
reflection
Back from Vacation
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] An afternoon in Tuscany [https://www.bethhaas.me/caption] Last month I went to the Single Molecule Approaches to Biology GRC in Italy and had a wonderful time meeting delightful people and learning about cool developments in the
books
Book Review: Culinary Reactions
The Book Culinary Reactions: The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking by Simon Quellen Field The Premise This books purports to explain the hows and whys of cooking in terms of the chemistry going on. It's geared toward non-scientists as an "easy-to-follow primer." The Naming of Things It
numeracy
Book Review: The Joy of x
The Book The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity, by Steven Strogatz The Premise Steven Strogatz, a mathematics professor at Cornell, had a math blog (On the Elements of Math) at the New York Times for a while in 2010. This is a collection
womenInScience
More on career breaks
I have a few more things to say about how taking a break from science/academia could kill a woman's career. First, the Executive Director of the Elsevier Foundation wrote a letter to the New York Times about retaining women in STEM (emphasis mine): The work-life balance challenge
gradLife
What's next
I defended my thesis in April, and turned in my dissertation at the end of May, but I haven't left my grad lab yet. Here's what I've been up to, and what's coming up next. Wrapping up First I'm wrapping
soapbox
Career brakes
From SciLogs: When Adam Spencer asked if female scientists should consider taking an extended break of two or three years, the answer was a resounding “No.” “Science is really a fast-moving world,” [Suzanne] Cory said. “If you get out, even for three years, it becomes very difficult to get back
matlab
MATLAB Tip of the Day: Counting in the Command Window
This is actually a two-fer: padding a number with a variable number of leading zeros or spaces and updating text in the Command Window without creating a bunch of new lines. Variable number padding The sprintf function includes in its documentation the instructions for padding a number with leading zeros.
scientists
The best scientist I know
Joe Palca asked me on Twitter this morning,1 Who is the best scientist you know, and what qualities make her/him the best? I had to think a moment about this. I'm sure many people who love science have a favorite historical scientist. My shortlist is mostly
fun&games
Swift
I got an iPod Touch in 20091 and wished from the start that I could write my own apps for it.2 I knew approximately nothing about coding, though, so it was a rather far-away sort of wish. In grad school I learned to code in Matlab. It was a
reflection
Many kinds of good scientist
I saw this article by Adam Ruben make the rounds on Twitter a few days ago. Then I saw the article spreading on Facebook, with friends from grad school saying things like "So true!" and "That's totally me!" so I took a look. He
gradLife
They call me Dr. Haas
Good morning. How are you? I'm Dr. Worm Haas. I'm interested in things. As of today, I've officially completed all the requirements for my PhD. So I'm not a real worm, but I am a real doctor.1 Dr. Worm has been