Try this instead of coffee.

Log in as root, go up and down your directory tree for about half an hour, stop at some random point and confidently type "rm -rf /home."

Now that feels exhilarating, in a "I think I'm going to throw up now" kind of way.

Snapshots of a temper tantrum.

The Angry Kid started kindergarten today. We only found out on Monday that we got into the school of our choice, and she's been under a lot of stress, complete with upset tummy and reversion to the terrible twos. Yesterday we went shopping for her new bookbag. She was very good about getting her bookbag from J.C. Penney instead of the Disney store, but when we made a quick detour to Target for feminine hygiene products and I warned her we were not buying anything for her there, it was too much for her to bear.

If you followed us around, you would have thought my daugher was Veruca Salt. Here's some of what you would have heard:

• Fine. [Insert foot stamp and eye rolling.] Go and buy yourself some giant grownup diapers!
• If you just buy this for me [a giant lollipop and whirling electronic toy combination made by blind Chinese orphans] I'll be able to keep control of myself for ever.
• [Screamed: ] I can't wait until I'm older than you and then I'm going to whack you on the butt!
• [Sobbed through tears and spraying gobbets of saliva:] I'm going to move to England! I'm really serious!

Guess that department!

This beautiful building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in several phases, the earliest during World War I and the latest in 1970. Its architectural style is mostly Jacobethan Revival, while later additions are Tudor Revival. It is a low, sprawling building with lots of limestone buttresses and decorations, and stone-mullioned windows. One of the additions was built under the WPA, and it has heavy timber entries, intricate brickwork and projecting bays. It was originally set in a residential district surrounded by a botanical garden; now it is crowded between other university buildings on two busy street corners.

The building's interior is as fascinating as its exterior. It has undergone several renovations, some more successful than others. Many of the original details remain, such as terrazzo floors, the large windows and skylights, and the wall and ceiling treatments. The offices, many with antique oak doors and huge windows, are strangely cramped, while not necessarily small. The hallways curve around and about in unexpected directions, as one might expect in a building that has evolved over 70 years or more of construction and remodeling. Large stairways appear tucked into corners. While trying to find one's way from one entrance to another exit, one stumbles over strange original fixtures, such as a full-size wall safe circa 1915 set among a row of office doors. Conference rooms are below ground level and difficult to find. Ceilings seem lower than they should be.

If one looks hard enough, one can find stairways that lead down below the ground floor level and into the deeper basement. From the basement are tunnels that lead to a number of other interesting buildings on campus, some surprisingly far away. I make frequent use of these tunnels in inclement weather. It is not uncommon to see corrections officers leading shackled men wearing orange jumpsuits in the tunnels. I try not to stare.

Your task, dear reader, is to guess not only what department inhabits this wonderful building, but also why the building was constructed in the first place (its original inhabitants).

In which we demonstrate impeccable timing.

The Angry Kid begins kindergarten in two weeks. In preparation for the big day, she spent yesterday morning at the optometrist's office. She played all kinds of games with lights and letters and drew things and generally had a great time until it came time for the drops. Then she got sullen.

To make it up to her, I took her to the local pool for the afternoon. We splashed around in the cool water and practiced putting our heads under water -- something she's been having trouble with in her swimming lessons. I noticed, but only processed for its amusement value, the sign at the front gate which said, "Please do not swim if you have diarrhea."

Last night the Ellesiouville public health department closed down all the city pools for hyperchlorination. Apparently there is an outbreak of cryptosporidium they are trying (and failing) to contain.

If you don't see it, you're part of the problem.

This post by Female Science Professor and some of the comments to this post compel me to point out (quite unnecessarily) that sexism is rampant in the Academy. We females aren't just whiny and paranoid, Gentlemen. If a significant fraction of the graduate students in your field are women but only a few of your colleagues are women, then there's a problem and you are very likely contributing to it.

The worst offenders are often the nicest guys. They have no idea they are being sexist, believe, in fact, that they aren't being sexist, and so the problem persists.

Here are only a few of my recent observations:

• Men have important discussions and sometimes make administrative decisions with male colleagues while standing at the urinals. There's rarely more than one woman in the restroom at a time in my department and at my conferences; there are too few of us.
• Talks given by women are more frequently interrupted, often with irrelevant or tangential comments. At my recent conference presentation, a man interrupted my first slide to ask a procedural question about Pap smears.
• Women who attempt to ask questions about or comment on talks usually raise their hands so the moderator can call on them. Men frequently fail to do this, and even when the moderator does call on a woman, men sitting nearby assume that the moderator called on them and will talk over her. I have seen a woman fight back by being just as aggressive and rude, and even pointing out to the audience that it was her turn; she was labeled oversensitive and bitchy.
• Women are frequently not told of nor asked to contribute to special journal issues or special collections, even when the topics are directly related to their research. I am on the editorial board of a journal, and only recently found out that several special issues are in press. The decision to release these special issues was made by a subset of the men on the board without consulting the board as a whole; no work by women is represented in these issues.
  
• Seminal papers authored by women are overlooked until that line of work is cited by men. Then it is the men's papers that are cited; the original work is forgotten. I can name at least three areas in my field where this has happened, and one of the areas is mine (keep reading).
• I initiated a now important and popular line of research approximately a decade ago. A man (my post-doc advisor) decided to do research in this area, and conducted a series of federally-funded workshops here at LSU. I was not invited to participate (told, in fact, that my participation was not welcome), and was not told about them until the day before they began.

You can say that many of these instances are just examples of academics being shitty to each other. However, this crap doesn't happen to men. Give me one time that a man's talk was interrupted by a woman asking about a prostate exam, or one time that a man's seminal paper was overlooked in favor of a woman's later work.

Oh, good.

This should work.

ORLANDO, Fla. — A team of psychic detectives is assisting Orlando police in their search for missing three-year-old Florida girl Caylee Marie Anthony, according to local news reports.

The group, known as "Body Hunters" and lead by psychic detective Gale St. John, is "blind driving" around Central Florida in search for the toddler who was last seen June 16, Local6.com reported.

"We will not even look at street names," psychic detective Gale St. John told the TV station and its Web site on Monday. "We drive and go completely on feeling instinct, chasing down what we call a person signature."

I would never make it in the real world.

A publicly-traded company asked me to pass scientific judgment on research proposals requesting company funds. I read one tonight. The proposal was remarkable in its utter lack of any meaningful content. Consider, for example, my interpretation of a critical graphic, entitled "Process":


The proposal also used lots of acronyms and management-speak, vocabulary designed to violate, on purpose, every one of Grice's Conversational Maxims. (The Angry Baker just tells me that I fail to appreciate things that are really important.)

Unless this company gives my lab research funds soon, within the next month, I predict that my tenure as one of their scientific advisers will last no longer than next month.

In which I am under-appreciated.

I am one of three senior females in my professional society, the membership of which numbers around 200 academics and students. I haven't felt that my sex was a disadvantage until recently.

I worked very hard this past year to obtain external funding for our annual conference. Because our discipline is highly specialized it has been difficult to obtain such funding in the past. I wrote two proposals, one submitted to a DoD agency and the other to NSF. This took a large amount of time last winter that I didn't have, but both proposals were funded and consequently we were able to provide travel assistance for a large number of graduate students, attract some good keynote speakers, and cover the outrageous expenses incurred by the hotel conference "support" staff and the AV rental company.

I should note that, in past years, other similar proposals were submitted by other society officers to the same funding agencies, but these proposals were not funded. I had these rejected proposals available to me while I was writing the successful proposals last winter, and I can testify that they were rejected for good reason: they sucked.

The society officers met over lunch for the yearly governance meeting last week. An officer myself, I went to the meeting expecting the other members of the board to acknowledge my effort and to express their gratitude. I didn't want much, just a formal "thank you" from the board. Instead, the current society president opined that my proposals had not actually undergone panel review (except they did), that the funding agencies had picked these proposals out of all the submissions because our society was so important and they had extra money. "We can't count on getting funding like this again in the future," he warned.

No one on the board said thank you. No one. Because, you know, I just pushed the paperwork through, kind of like a secretary. Well, fuck me. And fuck you too, sirs. I will not make the same sacrifice twice.

Someone paid me for my work today.

I cleaned out my e-mail inbox, which had over 1000 messages in it. It took over five hours.

Never underestimate the importance of a folder labeled "Miscellaneous."

In which I extend some words of advice.

If you are ever called upon to give an address at a banquet, here are some pointers that may help make the evening a more enjoyable experience, both for you and for your audience (me).

1. Your audience is tired and drunk. This is not the time to trot out your favorite theorems in differential topology and pontificate about how these theorems unify all natural laws.
2. If you have chosen your topic well, the audience (remember, we're all drunk) will want to participate. Expect lots of laughter, inappropriate questions, and good-natured heckling. Your talk should not be more than 30 minutes long (remember, we're all drunk), and should include no more than 10 minutes of material.
3. If you have disregarded points 1 and 2, your talk will unfold as follows:
   
1. In the first 5-10 minutes, your audience will initiate the participation phase. Questions and comments will focus on your choice of fonts on your slides, your failure to cite irrelevant work by your friends, and the fact that your socks don't match your tie.
2. When you respond too earnestly to these questions and comments, your audience will fall silent. They don't yet believe that you are truly serious and are waiting for the punchline.
3. Around 20-30 minutes into your dissertation, your audience now realizes that you have hijacked the banquet and they will begin to rebel. Eating and drinking, having resumed around minute 10 or so, will become quite loud. There will be audible laughter; you must recognize that this laughter is in response to jokes made at your expense. At some tables in the banquet hall, food will be thrown (remember, we're drunk).
4. After 50 minutes, your audience will fall silent again. This silence signals defeat and helplessness. The deep sighs you hear should be interpreted as wordless pleas to stop, just stop.
5. After your summary and conclusions, your audience will politely applaud. This is because you finally shut up, not because anyone appreciated your insights.
6. There will be no questions.
7. You will not be invited to any hotel-room parties.

Yay!

I am not spam.

I assure my readers that I am completely recovered from my formerly uncontrollable urge to post stories about V I A G R A and how "She love you're new 8 inches!"