Star Stryder

Archive for May, 2008


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The First Day of Summer Not-a-Break

There is a fascinating myth that academics get their summers off to play in the Sun. While the only time most of us are allowed to take vacations is in the summer, we generally work just as hard from the last day of spring semester to the first day of fall semester, as we do […]

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Detritus of a Geeky Childhood

When my husband and I moved to Illinois we packed all our belonging in two PODS with some (but not much) room to spare. When my parent’s sold their house 3 months later, they shipped me my childhood in a PODS-sized space inside a classic moving truck. It took two months for my husband and […]

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End of Semester Carnival

I JUST FINISHED GRADING EXAMS! I JUST FINISHED GRADING EXAMS! I JUST FINISHED GRADING EXAMS!
<insert random happy dance with confused dogs>
Wheeeeee
Ok - now that I have that out of my system… Go visit this weeks carnival of space over at Space Cynic.
SUMMER HAS BEGUN! Blog writing will move to first thing in the […]

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Things man will never do 1: Rebuild the Sun

There are certain themes that arise in Astronomy Cast comments and fanmail. Most of the themes are happy, good, warm fuzzies. There are also your typical cranks. There are also, in the humorous category, a regular stream of well-meaning, highly hopeful people saying my mind isn’t open enough who accuse me of not talking to […]

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Researching Ourselves: Trends in Paper Citation

While poking through arXiv, I came across a fascinating piece of community introspection. Titled “Disentangling Visibility and Self-Promotion Bias in the arXiv:astro-ph Positional Citation Effect”, this paper by J. Deitrich (accepted into the Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific) asks why papers that appear at the top of daily arXiv listings tend […]

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Majoring in Astronomy: Like English, but more expensive

Today while gardening my iPod got stuck on “repeat” while my hands were very very dirty for several hours. This resulted in me listening to Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick, … Boom three times before I could get my hands clean enough that I dared touch my happy little white iPod. While I was (on repeat) […]

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Caring for Students: 1 in 4 need more

I have to admit that I am a long time SNL fan. There is no good reason, other then tradition, to spend most Saturdays watching, but… It’s what I do.
And sometimes their opening bit and Weekend Update give my brain something to chew on. Last night I tuned in hoping for something sharp on the […]

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Sunday, Eta Aquarids and Opposing Moons

It is a warm, crisp and clear, spring evening. The stars are bright and Sirius cast an angry  glow in in the west as I walked home from a local pub with my husband. I live in a historic neighborhood filled with older homes and midwestern attempts at English gardens. Literally 1000s of plants are […]

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Anniversary edition of the Carnival of Space

One year later, and still going strong the Carnival of Space plays an anniversary visit to its founding blog, Why Homeschool. Check it out here.

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