Some background: I'm a white, male, tenured faculty member at UC
Davis, and a 3rd generation academic. I work in relatively
uncontroversial areas of science (primarily bioinformatics & genomics)
at a university that is about as protective of academic freedom
as you can get these days. I also live in a …
Here are three movies that I can recommend, starting with the best.
Jiro Dreams of Sushi - a great movie about
the pursuit of perfection, one slice of fish at a time. Truly inspiring.
Software engineers and scientists will recognize and identify with
Jiro's aspirations.
I recently finished two books that really stood out in my memory of
recent reading. Lighter fare than I have recommended in the past, but
more representative of what I read day to day :)
The first book, The Martian,
is a near-future book about an astronaut who wakes up on …
Over the past year of PyCon, #sciox, and other gender
imbalance/harassment/sexism discussions that I've seen on Twitter and
blogging, I've run into a few posts on these matters that stood out to
me in terms of clarity, logic, and/or good instruction for me. I'm
sharing them below …
I just finished reading A House in the Sky, by Amanda Lindhout and
Sara Corbett. It's an excellent book about Amanda Lindhout's
kidnapping and ransom by Somalian Muslims; it's very well written,
engaging, and utterly terrifying and horrible to read. Highly
recommended.