it's March already?

I am a bit scared now. It's March already and the paper that I have been staring at (read; not done a thing at in a few weeks) is not nearly half done. I haven't heard word from my old PI though, but I know that I need to do the pushing. [whining]But there are some bigger things in my life coming up the next couple of weeks and I don't know how I will have the time to do it all[/whining]

I guess that means "step up and do it like when you were a post doc". This is also known as "not having weekends off to slouch, mornings to wake up slowly or time to just stare into space at work" ;)

On other news, since I am shocked it is already two months into the new year and I am not near my resolution of three months (something about exercising 4 times a week to loose the belly and get more harmonic). I woke up to this piece of news in regards to Utah women. (The first link to the New York Times is a bit more informative and the UK link is more... Independent?) In short, this may lead to that if you have a miscarriage in Utah, you might be prosecuted. It all stems from a rather sad and horrible story about a woman (teenage girl 17 years old in a rural eastern part of Utah) who paid a man to beat her up so she could get a miscarriage in the 7th month and not have the baby.... the baby was fine and was later adopted away, the man thrown in jail but as of the law today apparently they couldn't prosecute the mother ... (I find this a bit strange but sure enough, maybe it falls under the same ruling that you can't prosecute a mother to be for smoking/drinking/drug use here?!) The bill is partly written to make it illegal to seek for an [in Utah illegal] abortion in late term pregnancies.

I don't know but in my mind this suggestion aims a bit wrong - something about cutting the head of when you have a head ache!? Of course, the mother in this particular case seems to me to be in need of some psych help and that it shouldn't be applicable to "every case of a pregnant woman" but then again, I am no lawyer.... just a woman... And I haven't read the original thing just yet since lots of "opinions" are the first hits on google this morning... but as far as I can tell, we're back to the deal that Roe vs Wade does not really talk about the age of the fetus/determine the realms of the abortion since it is either ay or nay. In most European countries there are more of a "up until 12 weeks" discussion, and then in some other ones "up until 20 weeks with special consent". In the US it's different. Although, for my part - the thing that makes this bill a bit strange would be that you would have to report your miscarriage and that someone would know when you began your pregnancy. As I said, not really sure on how much is propaganda and how much is stemming from a conservative state legislature that have made some earlier decisions about individual freedom that I find less individual and more "in the name of the Father". Ah well, just wanted to point at a potential "up roar article" that's already moving through the internet with comments and misquotes etc.

And then there is this article in the Scientific American about post docs in the US. I haven't read it in full yet, since I started to get opinionated after the first paragraph and needed to go and do actual work instead. It looks interesting in any event, whether to agree or not... it's the old story about "too many post docs or not". The Chronicle has a shorted answer already here.

My bad in general is that it would probably do everyone a bit of good if we told undergraduates who are going into graduate school, or simply just telling graduate people to "have a back up plan in case you are deciding for whichever reason when you are done with your PhD/Post doc that Academia and TT isn't for you so you are not standing naked in a cold snow storm when it hits". (not to mention that your advisor may or may not help you out with a shield and a warm coat... some of them actually does that, some would rather not see you in the snow... end of ridiculous analogies for now.)

And as a final story, The Germans who are granted asylum in Tennessee since they want to home school their 5 children and since that is not allowed in Germany*, they moved to the US...

With that, I will go and try and plan my week in detail since I need to fix a lot of things in a short amount of time and if I don't get my hand on that data analysis sooner than later (since it is already way late) I will be a sad former post doc.


*You have to let your children go to a official school (it can be religious though, or public non-denominational) in Germany and not "only" home school them.