Random Stuff

Last month I went to see a talk by David Orr, Professor and Chair of Environmental Studies at Oberlin College, called "The End of Education" which was really cool. Click the link if you are interested in checking out the podcast of it.

As part of the same speaker series, I'm going to see Stephen Lewis, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, tomorrow. I've heard he's an awesome speaker, so I'm really looking foreward to it. Next month is Dr. David Suzuki, who, although he is a Professor Emeritus at UBC, I have never seen at any UBC event in my 5+ years here. I'm really looking forward to that one too.

In unrelated, and depressing, news, I just read that "between 17-20% of postdoctoral fellows obtain a permanent faculty position." Boo-urns!

Oh yeah, we had the Let's Talk Science Western Regional Conference this weekend. It was good times! We got loads accomplished in 1.5 days of conferencing, plus we got to watch the Canucks beat the Flames (woo hoo!). We weren't so lucky against Edmonton, but the Edmonton fans were gracious about it. It was also kind of sad, because I realized that it will be the last LTS Western Conference I'll get to go to =( We've had four of them (we came up with the idea back in my first year, worked our butts off to fundraise for and run the conference and it was such a big success that we now have permenant funding for both a western and an eastern conference every year). I really enjoy getting to meet people from all across western Canada who are excited about making science fun for kids, reaching kids who may not have any exposure to scientists (and to post-secondary education in general) to open their eyes to the possibilities before them. It's a truly inspiring bunch of people and I'm really going to miss them!