We’re hiring a biochemist!

Whoa. We were stunned when we were told we get to hire a tenure-track ecologist, but now I’m totally gobsmacked that we have been given permission to hire a tenure-track biochemist as well. Two job searches at once? So much work, so much opportunity.

Assistant Professor of Biology
University of Minnesota, Morris

The University of Minnesota, Morris seeks an individual committed to excellence in undergraduate education, to fill a tenure-track position in biology beginning August 17, 2020. Responsibilities include: Teaching undergraduate biology courses including junior/senior level biochemistry with lab, electives in the applicant’s areas of expertise, introductory biology, and other courses that support the Biology and pre-health programs; advising undergraduates; conducting research that could involve undergraduates; and sharing in the governance and advancement of the Biology program, the pre-health programs, the division, interdisciplinary programs, and the campus.

Applicants must hold or expect to receive a Ph.D. in biochemistry or a related field by August 17, 2020. Experience and evidence of excellence in teaching undergraduate biology is required (graduate TA experience is acceptable). Preference will be given to applicants who are able to develop and teach upper-level elective courses in their area of expertise that complement those offered by the current biology faculty. We strongly encourage applications from broadly trained biochemists with complementary expertise in microbiology or physiology or related fields that will support the pre-health programs.

A distinctive undergraduate campus within the University of Minnesota system, the University of Minnesota Morris combines a student- centered residential liberal arts education with access to the resources and opportunities of one of the nation’s largest universities. A founding member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC), UMN Morris provides students with a rigorous academic experience, preparing them to be global citizens who value and pursue intellectual growth, civic engagement, intercultural competence, and environmental stewardship. The student body of nearly 1600 is supported by approximately 130 faculty members with a student/faculty ratio of 13:1. UMN Morris serves one of the most diverse student bodies in Minnesota. Forty percent of UMN Morris students are Native American, persons of color, or of international origin. UMN Morris is the only federally recognized Native American Serving Non-Tribal Institution in the Upper Midwest.

UMN Morris is highly ranked by national publications – U.S. News & World Report as a top-ten public liberal arts college; Forbes as one of the best colleges and universities in the nation; and Fiske Guide to Colleges includes Morris campus in its list of “the best” and “most interesting” schools in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. Morris students are taught by a faculty with the highest per capita representation in the University of Minnesota’s Academy of Distinguished Teaching and students consistently win national awards, as demonstrated by UMN Morris’s status among the top baccalaureate institutions producing student Fulbright awards. The campus is also a national leader in sustainability, evidenced by receipt of the inaugural Excellence in Sustainability award from the National Association of College and University Business Officers and an AASHE STARS Gold rating.

This tenure-track position carries all of the privileges and responsibilities of University of Minnesota faculty appointments. A sound retirement plan, excellent fringe benefits and a collegial atmosphere are among the benefits that accompany the position. Appointment will be at the Assistant Professor level for those having the Ph.D. in hand and at the Instructor level for those whose Ph.D. is pending. The standard teaching load is twenty credit hours per year.

Applications must include a letter of application describing how working at a small liberal arts college fits into your career plan, a curriculum vitae, copies of graduate and undergraduate transcripts, a teaching statement documenting teaching effectiveness, a research statement proposing a research program that is viable at a small liberal arts college and accessible to undergraduates, and three letters of reference. To apply for this position go to the University of Minnesota Employment System. The job ID # is 333760. Please click the Apply button and follow the instructions. Attach a cover letter, curriculum vitae and as many supporting documents as are allowed. Additional supporting documents may be emailed to: Ann Kolden, Administrative Assistant, at koldenal@morris.umn.edu, (320) 589-6301, or they may be sent to:

Biochemistry Search Committee Chair Division of Science and Mathematics University of Minnesota, Morris Morris, MN 56267-2128

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Screening begins December 3, 2019. Inquiries can be made to Ann Kolden, Executive Office and Administrative Specialist, at (320) 589-6301 or koldenal@morris.umn.edu.

The University of Minnesota shall provide equal access to and opportunity in its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, age, marital status, familial status, disability, public assistance status, membership or activity in a local commission created for the purpose of dealing with discrimination, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

UMN Morris values diversity in its students, faculty, and staff. UMN Morris is especially interested in qualified candidates who can contribute to the diversity of our community through their teaching, research, and /or service because we believe that diversity enriches the University experience for everyone.

This publication/material is available in alternative formats upon request. Please contact Human Resources, 320-589-6024, Room 201, Behmler Hall, Morris, Minnesota.

A few personal hints for applicants:

  • UMM really, really likes good teaching. Your primary role in this position is teaching. You should have some solid teaching bona fides if you want to come here, but we also recognize that some biologists come out of grad school with a passion for teaching, so make your case.
  • This is a small liberal arts college, with small faculty teaching big subjects, like biology. That means everyone has to wear multiple hats. The prime requisite in research for this job is biochemistry, but it really is a major plus if you’re dual-classed in an additional subject, especially one appealing to our pre-health majors. This is a replacement appointment to fill the shoes of someone who taught biochemistry and microbiology, but anything to enrich our department is lovely.
  • Morris is isolated. Not quite Overlook Hotel isolated, but we’re a couple of hours drive away from the nearest major airport. In any interview, we’ll be asking questions about your ability to cope with the small-town rural Midwest, to make sure you don’t go all Jack Torrance on us. We had our first snow already, temperatures are hovering around freezing, and it will get much colder.
    Don’t be discouraged. The survivors all like it here very much, and it’s a great place to work.

Who is minding the store?

This is our president writing a diplomatic letter to a foreign head of state.

What’s terrifying about this, besides the obvious fact that Trump is incompetent and nuts, is that he’s operating completely unfiltered now. There are no grown-up minders anywhere. No buffers. No one to provide even a superficial illusion of restraint.

Impeach him, fire him, drag him out of office, and put him on trial. He does not belong there.

May I take a few closeups of your genitals?

Here’s another wintertime project I’ve got to work on. I’ve got all these spiders I collected, and I’m confident that they’re all of genus Parasteatoda. However, we’ve got two species in this genus here in Minnesota: P. tepidariorum, which is the darling model system in developmental biology, and P. tabulata, which is more obscure, but I suspect is fairly common around here. In the literature, P. tabulata is the one that builds nests of debris suspended in their webs; P. tepidariorum isn’t described as doing that, but who knows? I’ve collected a lot of spiders in outdoor environments with the fancy cribs made of leaves and gravel, and the ones I collect indoors don’t do that. Is this just an environmentally-induced variant?

That’s not what the taxonomic literature says. Rather, there is some contentious debate about distinguishing the two, which is made clear by close-up inspections of dissected genitalia. Their epigynes have subtly different shapes.

This is not a playing field I’m competent to contest. You should see this stuff: intricate, carefully drawn illustrations of the P. tepidariorum epigyne vs. equally detailed drawings of the P. tabulata epigyne. OK, gang, I surrender — I struggle to figure out what the heck I’m looking at there. I clearly need to work on my knowledge of spider sexual organs, not something I ever expected I’d have to do. I’m also handicapped by the fact that I’m working with live animals, and killing them and ripping out their genitals and clearing them in clove oil is kind of antithetical to breeding them. Also, I like my little spider friends.

So I’m trying to get photos of their genitals to see if I can distinguish them. Here’s one. Pretty racy, I know.

[Read more…]

You’re supposed to talk out your cool idea before you embarrass yourself publicly

So that’s how unicorns fly through space — by pooping out rainbow-colored slinkies. I’ve always wondered.

The brain-twisting image comes from a review of NASA’s “helical drive” proposal, the idea that you could get massless thrust by accelerating particles to the speed of light as they traveled forward, gaining mass, and then slowing them down as they bounce back so they’d lose mass. Presto! Net acceleration forward. Only it won’t work, because:

The problem is that, even though the author does a very nice simulation, he has left out the fields that do the accelerating. When we accelerate ions using a magnetic or electric field, the ions push back on the field. There is an equal and opposite force exerted on the electrodes and coils that produce the fields, and those just happen to be in the spaceship, too.

The concept is trivially dismissed. What’s odd about it all is that the guy who proposed it to NASA is at NASA, and even admitted in his proposal that there are a few weaknesses.

  • Basic concept is unproven
  • Has not been reviewed by subject-matter experts
  • Math errors may exist!

His proposal is full of charts and calculations, and is obviously carefully thought out and represents a substantial investment of work, yet he never rolled his office chair out into the hallway and asked an engineer in one of the cubicles nearby for a quick reality check, before going public with a crazy idea that was going to get shot down in a few seconds by some smart guy on the internet? Is this what NASA managers do all day?

This is a good example of how communication is an essential component of science. Individual minds can get led down the garden path by a tantalizing notion, but a group of minds can ferret out the problems before you make a big splashy investment of your reputation in something with a fatal flaw.

Tucker Carlson has learned at the feet of his master

The last time I mentioned Jared Taylor, I said:

he’s an unpleasant and pretentious leader of white supremacists…an unctuous, smiling glad-hander trying to sell hate as if it is pancakes. He’s a slimy, smarmy, sneering snake of a man, a slithering sibilant walking among us with little humanity in his smirking skull.

Translation: I don’t like him very much.

But you know who does? Tucker Carlson! He’s been taking racism lessons from him.

Like two worm-infested, slimy, moldy peas in a pod. I’d say that Carlson was in the business of white-washing the statements of more loudly racist folk except that he’s just as filthy as they are.

Long day, with a reward for me!

Tuesday is also a crowded schedule for me, and I just got home. That’s partly because I pushed and got my cell biology exam written and copied tonight, and that means my morning tomorrow is completely free, no prep work at all. You know what that means?

I get to play with spiders all morning long! Putting in a little extra effort today freed up a big block of time.

Just wives

For all you masochists out there who want all the details, Stephanie Zvan has published a thorough timeline of David Silverman’s firing.

I want to bring up one thing that bothers me deeply, but doesn’t get emphasized much. Silverman’s actions, even if they were consensual (and I don’t believe they were) lacked consent from one other significant person: Silverman’s wife. I don’t even know her name, but her long relationship with this man was cruelly wrecked by his actions, and that’s a betrayal that strongly affects my feelings about the guy. It was a rotten thing to do, and he did it repeatedly. Even if he were magically reprieved of everything else (again, not that I think he can be), it means that personally I would never be able to trust him again. How you treat your partners in the deepest relationships in your life matters.

Likewise, Richard Carrier cheated on his wife, another nameless person who is left out of the narrative.

I have no problems with the diverse forms of relationships human beings can have; open marriages, polyamorous relationships, no sexual relationship at all, whatever. It’s all good when all participants have mutually agreed to the terms. People who unilaterally break those terms and harm the people who trusted them…those are actions of deep shame and require greater amends than this casual dismissal of an event that broke apart families and caused lasting hurt. Yet now those women are discarded and ignored.

So no, those men can never be my real friends, and I hope for the best for those ignored women.

He seems unperturbed by his own actions.

Fuck off, Dave.

What does it take to get a victim believed?

An utterly horrible story: Aja Newman goes to the emergency room for severe shoulder pain. She’s given a sedative…then the doctor in charge gives her more drugs, despite her arguing that she doesn’t need so much. Next thing she knows, she groggily discovers the doctor groping her and masturbating on her. She has enough presence of mind to stuff the bedding into a cabinet and take it in later for forensic examination. The evidence is discovered.

Aja handed her bag full of bedding to a forensics team and watched as a technician turned the sheets over and over, spraying Luminol on them, inspecting them in darkness under UV light and spraying again. They weren’t finding anything, she could tell, and were about to wrap it up and send the bundle to another lab. It was looking like a dead end, and Aja could not tolerate that. She stopped them. “Spray that stuff on me,” she said.

Initially, the technician objected — the spray isn’t made for use on people. But Aja persisted. “I want to help,” she said. So the technician closed the door, Aja signed her consent and took off her hospital gown, and she was sprayed all over her body.

“I heard the whole room go” — here Aja sucks in her breath. “It was all over my face, all over between my breasts like I told her. I remember she started crying, and she was like, ‘Aja, don’t move.’ And she took the samples off my face. I believe that’s the only thing that caught him.” The definitive match was gathered, in the end, from a spot near Aja’s right eye.

Thus begins the downfall of Dr David Newman (no relation), who had been groping patients for years and doing who knows what else to them. He was considered a young medical superstar, giving TED talks (ugh) and publishing radical op-eds, getting rapidly promoted at Mt Sinai hospital, and praised for his novel insights. But his true nature was his slimy disregard for the patients he was treating.

It’s a long, ugly saga, where he is caught red-handed and indisputably guilty of sex crimes, followed by lots of other women stepping forward to testify against him. What really caught my eye was this little detail.

The Daily News published its first story two days later, on January 14. Support for David Newman poured in from everywhere. Friends and colleagues sent boosterish emails telling him to hang in there, that they believed in him, offering solace and help — unofficially from the American Academy of Emergency Medicine and from well-connected friends with resources and expertise. On social media and in private Facebook groups, current and former colleagues, acquaintances, students, and admirers swore their allegiance. “Dr. Newman is literally someone who has changed the ways thousands of other physicians practice medicine and by extension improved the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of patients around the world. This earns him the benefit of the doubt from me,” someone named Verjeep wrote in the comments of a news story.

Another theory went like this: Emergency rooms are notoriously difficult places to work. ER doctors regularly experience violence and harassment from patients, and half have been assaulted at work; they are frequently hit up for drugs by addicts in need. This victim was just such an addict. Or she wanted sex or money, was retaliating for an affair gone wrong, mistook him for someone else, and, when she didn’t get her way, made a false charge. “He’s the victim,” a close associate told me at the time. “I don’t believe that he would do anything like this. My routine day is getting yelled at and cursed at by patients who aren’t getting what they want. I can imagine details where something happened where she didn’t get what she wanted and maybe this is retaliation. Or maybe she received pain medicine and it made her a little loopy or she hallucinated him … ” Here he trailed off.

Every time. Every single goddamned time.