Mama PhD

The media has supported an outpouring of grief and anguish for the victims of the Aurora, Colorado massacre at the midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

As I've written before, we're on the cusp of a cross-country move. Because of our usual summer research routine, in which we work at a west-coast research biology station for two months, we've been in transition for a long time now: living not at our old home, but not in our new home either (although I must admit, the biology station is familiar, welcoming, like a second home).

I didn't write about Colorado last week. It was too recent, too raw. I didn't think I had anything to add. I saw memorials on FaceBook, Op-eds about gun violence and violent movies, and all I could do was nod my head. There didn't seem to be anything else to say.

Since he first learned to walk, Ben has been passionate about any any activity that involves a ball and running around. He loves playing, watching, and talking about baseball, basketball, football (both kinds, but especially the one we used to call soccer), and, more recently, cricket and rugby. Bill shares many of these interests, and for the most part, I am happy to leave them to it.

There is a concept in statistics called “expected value.” This is the expected outcome of any situation that involves probability, and is found by multiplying the possible outcomes by the probability that each will occur and then adding these products together. Expected value calculations are why it is generally thought that one should not play the lottery, as some claim that the lottery is a “tax on people who did not do well in math

Summer is the time when many faculty members vacate our shared campus space and retreat to home offices (or travel)...

During a rare stretch of warm, sunny weather in our waterlogged Vancouver region, I look for every excuse to be...

When I think of summer, I think of reading. Not of assigned "summer reading," though I'm sure I did my share of that, but of long, lazy days spent moving from one spot to another, nose in book, immersed.