A while ago there was a bit of discussion around the academic blogosphere recently regarding the importance of developing a digital presence and what the best form of that presence might be. Recently as I’ve been looking around at academics’ websites as part of faculty, postdoc and graduate student searchers going on in my department/lab I’ve been reminded of the importance of having a digital presence.

I just restumbled over the Daily Routines blog. The blog is about “how writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days” and is basically just excerpts from interviews with famous creative folks. The blog appears to be “on hold” pending an upcoming book, but I definitely recommend pulling it up some lazy afternoon and working your way through how some of the most creative people around structure their days.

The Ecological Database Toolkit Large amounts of ecological and environmental data are becoming increasingly available due to initiatives sponsoring the collection of large-scale data and efforts to increase the publication of already collected datasets. As a result, ecology is entering an era where progress will be increasingly limited by the speed at which we can organize and analyze data.

Some days I really wonder whether the bureaucratic infrastructure at institutions of higher education has any idea whatsoever that their job is to support the research and teaching missions of the university.

Successfully doing creative science is hard. The further along you get in a research career the more things are competing for your time and energy and the more distracted you are from your primary goals. This distraction becomes increasingly problematic when it distracts your subconscious as well as your conscious mind.

If we embrace the fact that no one can or should ever care about the health of our passions as much as we do, the practical decisions that help ensure Our Good Thing stays alive can become as “simple” as a handful of proven patterns—work hard, stay awake, fail well, hang with smart people, shed […]

Transient Theorist is planning on doing something with his Spring Break that most of us don’t do often enough – take a week to think. In the rush to do all of the things that have to be done, we often lose track of doing the things that are really important to our core mission – advancing scientific knowledge as quickly as possible.

In a couple of days I’m participating in a panel to help young faculty be ready for their 3rd year review (the halfway step to tenure, which is kind of a big deal at my institution). This is the sort of thing that I normally say no to, but I’ve been to a couple of these things and I just couldn’t bear the thought of another group of young faculty being told that what they really needed to do to get tenure is to have a really spiffy tenure

Some years ago, someone wrote a book called “The Seven Laws of Money.” One of the “laws” went something like this: “Do good work and don’t worry about money;

A couple of weeks ago we made it possible for folks to subscribe to JE using email. We did this because we realized that many scientists, even those who are otherwise computationally savvy, really haven’t embraced feed readers as a method of tracking information.