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Worst Jobs In Science
FortKnox writes "Popular science has the worst jobs in science. Some are silly, some are sick, some make you angry, and some just flat-out suck." And some of them sound fun :)
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Hope there's not too much "hands-on" experience involved with that.....the scientific method could really start to be a "pain in the ass..."
Besides, he's in marketing not science....(despite what he thinks)
Its slasdotted. Is Charnybol Inspector on the list?
Table-ized A.I.
The worst? That'd got to be scatology
Barnyard Masturbator doesnt seem like that bad of a job. Im sure it wouldnt be alot of fun, but I can think of worse things then getting a elephant off. Running windows for one, thats not really a science, more of an art.
+-+-+-The folowing statement is true. The previous statement is false.-+-+-+
the worst job of all is the guy that has to find out what's in the person stool sample.
the worst job would not be the one doing the disecting, but the one being disected. It would suck having yur ass poked and prodded at by some sharp knife, all the while being pinned to some table and not being able to move.
i think they meant "cosmanaut".
2 1337 4 u!
Would be the guy who tests to see if cloned bull semen was as viscous as normal bull semen.
Either that or the guy who wipes Stephen Hawking's drool from his face.
Article here. Its a step up from jizz mopper though.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
And you thought YOUR job sucked...
It's one of the few jobs that doesn't involve killing animals, though I'm sure such an act is somehow entailed in it.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The worst would have to be the stool taste tester. Gotta make sure that stool sample is to the clients liking.
So what did they do with Mr. Ed?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
"They're grown by the thousands just for the purpose of dying in nasty ways."
Does PETA have a hissy-fit, or are they not cute and fuzzy enough to garner their attention?
Here's the printable page.
Hee hee, barnyard masturbator...
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Steve Jobs
Just kidding- hey at least there's a link for you to open in a new tab.
I love you. You love me. We're a happy family. Pick up the soap, bitch.
I have a M.Sc. I'm under 30, with no family yet. I see lots of my elders, with ~4-5 years more post-grad education and subsequent lab experience than me, making THE SAME $$ THAT I DO. Now, while this isn't a problem for ME, it's really bad for them. Post-doc'ing has devolved from a training ground for future tenure-track academics to being slave labor with a possible carrot dangled years in your future. There is less tenure-track hiring these days due to budgetary constraints, and a glut of existing faculty who are not very close to retirement. so the odds of any one of these hardworking, bitter and impoverished post-docs "finishing their training" are pretty small. But in the meantime, hey, there's lots of work to be done, for somebody else's research program, for a tech's salary (but not a tech's 9-5 hours: most post-docs keep grad student hours and are around much more than 40 h/week!). So what if your spouse has to work in another city doing THEIR post-doc, so what if you can't afford a car? Boy, that Ph.D. sure paid off!
Freedom: "I won't!"
What about the dude who smells people's armpits to test deodorant? I know it's overdone, but it's surely not overrated...
Need I say more?
I had a friend who worked at Plimoth Plantation in the animal husbandry program. He was actually an actor, and had played Governor Bradford for quite awhile, but was bored with it, and wanted to try something different.
So his first day in the new job comes and goes, and I call him to see how it went.
"Not so good", he says.
Why not? I ask.
"I had to draw the bull today" he tells me with loathing. Draw the bull? WTF? What's so bad about that? And what does art have to do with animal husbandry/
Not "draw" he tells me.... Draw the bull... you know...
There's a moral somewhere to that story, something about choosing between Governor and stroking off a large animal, but I'm not quite seeing it.
Maybe Gray Davis can enlighten me.
I HAVE CUBIC WISDOM THAT TRANSCENDS AND CONTRADICTS ONE DAY GODS
Isn't it cute that Barney the purple dinosaur doubles as "psychological torture" and mimes as "inspires hatred"? It's just so, counter-counter-culture.
But what the hell is depicted in the "physical torture" icon?
And does anyone know if there's a drug with the nickname "William"? The article's author would probably like to know.
In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
--VonNeumann
Every hamster has his day!
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Eloctro-ejaculation?
So when Saddam Hussein hooks up a car battery to some dudes schlong the guy actually has an orgasm?
Fucking bizarre man.
5. iMac mouse designer
One of the more serious issues about prison rape is the racial component. Prison gangs are almost entirely racial--usually Black or Hispanic. They do not protect their own from each other a great deal, but they do protect fellow gang members from outsiders. This leaves the White and Asian jail populations who tend to be less likely to form gangs at the highest risk of being targeted for rape.
It is very hard to find any serious discussion of this side of the problem--not to mention any discussion of the problem at all. Jared Taylor is one of the few writers courageous enough to detail the racial side to prison rape: http://www.amren.com/hardtime.htm
I would rather pick a writer more mainstream than Jared Taylor to quote on this issue. Taylor is an advocate of a white ethnic consciousness to be modeled after the ethnic consciousnesses of other minorities. He feels that this is an important counterbalance to maintain equal rights in our democratic political system. That makes Jared Taylor a racist in a lot of people's books. On the other hand, he is the only writer I know of who writes about this sort of thing, so I think it is important to at least give him a chance to say his peace. And, distressingly to me, his proposal of racial separation at prisons is probably a good idea. Prisoners are not, and will never beb tolerant members of our society. Even if we can eliminate racism from our communities, we will never be able to do so from our prisons. And the prison environment is certainly not the kind to foster increased understanding of other races. As a protective matter for all prisoners, Taylor may be right.
Yes, and I'm *pissed* to find out that I could have been getting paid for it all along!
3. BARNYARD MASTURBATOR Researchers who want animal sperm --to study fertility or for artificial insemination--have a suite of attractive options: They can ram an electric probe up an animal's rectum, shove an artificial vagina onto the animal's penis, or simply do it the old-fashioned way--manual stimulation. The first option, electroejaculation, uses a priapic rectal probe to send electricity pulsing through the animal's nether regions. "All the normal excitatory signals that stimulate ejaculation, like touch, sight, sound and smell, can be replaced with the current from the probe," says Trish Berger, professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis. "It's fascinating. Of course, this is a woman talking." You mean I could be getting paid all this time?
When I was in high school I worked in the Clorox R&D center in Pleasanton, CA. Clorox makes (among other things) bleach, Hidden Valley Ranch (hint: it doesn't start out white) and Fresh Step kitty litter.
I was in AP Chemistry at the time, and I had a friend whose mother worked at Clorox. I volunteered to work there as part of a work study program for credit.
Of course, the only way to test and improve kitty litter is to test it with actual kitty byproducts. Both solid and liquid. I can fondly remember the days of placing stir bars in liters of cat urine to mix them up, then pipette-ing samples to coat the litter.
And, of course, there was only one way to test its effectiveness--lean in and take a hearty whiff. Yes, of kitty poo, as well. The labs' job was to come up with combinations of surfactactants and clays that would, ideally, eliminate the smell altogether, or at least replace it with a pleasant smell. We even had "a professional nose" who would come in and sniff the samples, assigning each sample with descriptions like "kiwi" or "slight fruity scent".
To be quite honest, however, it was pretty fascinating. Not smelling cat feces, of course. But when you think about it, it's one of the few products that must satisfy the sensitivities of two species, including the sense of smell, as well as the cat's sense of touch. It must absorb odor as well as liquid; clump, and surround the kitty waste; and not disintegrate into too mush dust. Oh, and it also has to be biodegradable.
I was sold.
I signed up for a (paid) internship during the summer and made big money. And I always washed my hands before dinner.
In Soviet Russia, cosmonauts dreamed about becoming Slashdotters!
Geez! Talk about a shitty job!
That #18 is Fusion Researcher - only because the results aren't expected immediately.
God bless Instant Gratification!
Not that GNAA crapflood shit.
Bravo, my friend, maybe you will start the comeback of old-school trolls.
nuff said.
Download my free songs!
6. *BSD Administrator.
I love the choice of the "clenched fist" icon for the pig masterbators. :-D
Now if only there was such thing as an artificial vagina icon, I could replace all my message board emoticons with this article. Good stuff.
PETA---People for the Eating of Tasty Animals...Right?
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
I dont' know, about four hours ago we had a Proff that was telling us about her research into some random gene (nhlh2 or something) and how the Grads got to watch the resulatant mice Knockout and Wild Type mice sit around and either have or not have sex for two hours.
On top of that they were genetically engineering the poor mice to have low energy levels and small genitals, forever making them the fat and unattractive ones (the mice).
A mate of mine was studying Agriculture Science at University, and for whatever reason they were involved in the collection of pig sperm. So here's my mate, on his haunches holding a container of sorts (I believe the animal is riding a man-made pig's rear), and just before the pig lets the cheese fly, a fellow student knocks the container to the ground. The pig lets rip with what he termed "a staggering amount of spunk" all over his face. My memory is hazy as to this guy's post-blow relationship with the fellow prankster.
It's important to have a job that makes a difference, boys. That's why I manually masturbate caged animals for artificial insemination.
It was definitely a "make you sick" job.
John
(that video of the zoo worker getting his head stuck up the elephant's ass as it sat down)
Slashdot Meta-moderator.
Futility. Political Quagmire. Inspires Hatred.
Not that he's all that bad or anything, I just don't know of any other Jobses in CS (so he would also win the "Best CS Jobs" award).
From the worst hall of fame.
Now who would even think of doing such things????
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
They have Barney representing psychological torture!
Quite appopriate. Ever channel surf with a 3 year old in the room and accidentally hit a channel with Barney showing?
Mr. President it's noo-KLEE-er not nuke-YA-ler.
And do we ever like eating the tasty animals!
Wait a minute did someone say stupid?
7. Internet virus/worm scapegoat
Am I right folks?
"As for the hours, yeah. Science is hard dude, what were you expecting? So I guess you need to ask yourself why you are interested?"
Well, personally, grad school taught me that working long hours is usually pointless (as the evening wears on you become less productive) and that to be honest, I'm not the sort of person who gets serious jollies from being in the lab. I can enjoy the work but only if it's balanced with time to socialize, rest and relax. Otherwise it becomes a grim grind, bitter and joyless. I've seen too many post-docs in the lab all weekend when they had a spouse and kids they should have been with.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I work in a diagnostics lab that deals with enteric parasites for one of its mainstay products. The in-house testing is done with fecal samples that are from known positive or negative individuals. The samples must be homogenized in a diluent before they are used with the kit. It is one person's unfortunate job to request, and process the samples into a 2 litre specimen master lot. It involves asking our in-house negative patient to crap in a collection container and bring it back to the lab, then taking said sample and placing it in a laboratory mixer (industrial blender) with the diluent, then filtering that mess into a 2L bottle. I'm just glad I work in the isolation lab, where I don't have to smell it.
5. Thinkgeek.com Customer Fortune Maintainer.
Support Israeli punk bands. Man Alive.
1.) Assistant Crack Whore
Apparently bull semen has a lot of industrial applications. I remember reading somewhere about how this was done in the 19th century by hand and that there was actually a repetitive stress injury that afflicted many bull-whackers. Can anyone provide further information?
"England's Student Magazine [Note: site is dead] has a article each week telling students about different jobs, so that readers can get an idea about what different jobs are like. The most recently has to be in the running for the Worst Job Ever award. [Article #213] Zoo worker Mohd. Binatang bin Goncang of Singagore certainly wins the "Worst Job in Singapore", for his job as a Zoo Sperm Bank worker. The Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS), which runs the Singapore Zoo, has set up a bank of sperm and animal tissue in order to help preserve endangered species. And someone has to collect the samples. Daily."
But thanks to the magic of the internet we have these reprints
One, Two
;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'd say working in a certain 'lil Aussie proteomics company might be one of the worst science jobs out there. What a massive pile of horse shit this place is.
How about doing marketing research for MS or the RIAA???
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
While your points are correct, I find that many (including myself) really enjoyed their postdoc experiences. It is alot like graduate school without the deadlines. It is up to you to succeed. There is no pressure, at least in my experience, generally my only drive to get up in the morning is imposed by me. BTW - I think it is clear that this was written by someone bitter about being a postdoc, because the other items on the list are (mostly) bogus.
-Sean
I'm glad someone brought up the crybabyish attitude that write-up displayed. Why is it so hard to understand that Bush only limited stem-cell research that the government funds? Private research institutes can research any new stem-cell line they want to. As long as they don't live off tax money, they are in no way restricted in the source of their research.
Stop whining, and find some rich Democrat who hates Bush, and ask for a grant. They should be more than happy to give their personal money, just to spite him. In fact it should be far easier to get private funding, as long as you ask the right people, like Barbara Streisand and Alec Baldwin. They ought to give you any money you ask for, since they hate Bush so much.
I'll get off my soapbox now. Thank you.
Many of the 'jobs' listed are a one-time sort of thing, they aren't full-time positions. I don't even know why they were included in the list.
If those sorts of things were included, I would contend that those who were part of the scientific experiments during the Holocaust fared far, far worse than any on the list (and should be included as well). Sniffing people's farts? People in the concentration camps would have lined up for the opportunity to do that over being subjected to some of the experiments that were performed on them.
--SONET
The metric advocates: U.S. people simply won't change. This is beyond them. Because:
a) They still think this unit change thing is just to rob their tea and
b) They are obsessive thinking about "decagrams" of hamburger (it's grams, nobody uses decagrams for anything) and
c) They think they always use perfectly round numbers and metric numbers are always broken like 243cm and
d) They expect metric numbers to be always 100 or 1,00 or 10... if someone says 1,20m they cry foul and
e) They like doing weird arithmetic even when ity would be easier to do decimal point shift conversions; perhaps they believe it's good for their brains and
f) They say they can change whenever they want, like a cigarrette smoker... bummers! and
g) They're stupid. This being the real reason, of course.
you mean I can get PAID for that?!!
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Jared Taylor is the worst type of racist.
He doesn't present extreme views like the Nazis. Just the "thoughtful" and "intellectual" separation of races, all for a good cause.
Slashdotters, don't buy into this, just look at Jared's articles at amren.com for more info on this joker. In no time you'll see what this intolerant bastard is all about.
Should we separate men and women because of sexual harassment at the office? Should we separate the young and elderly due to age discrimination?
Choice quote from Jared...
From http://www.commonsenseclub.com/jaredint.html. Don't take my word for it, check it out.
Jared may be writing about a serious topic, but that does not make him any less of the absolute loser that he is. Prison rape is a terrible, terrible crime that shouldn't happen to anyone other than bigots like Jared Taylor. They, on the other hand, should be passed around the cell block like a peace pipes.
That is all.
Wait.. you mean to tell me some people are getting paid to smell farts?
If we could only get a penny for every fart we smell whenever we take public transportation (planes and trains probably being the worst), work, university, etc... Most of us would probably never have to work... I sure wouldn't...
I suppose it's worth asking, are they any good to eat? (don't go eewwwww... worms and grubs can be fine sources of protein and are eaten all over the world. And if they SMELL good cooked, that's usually a sign that they're edible...)
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Prison Rape Researcher, I nominate our friend Darl, it should be a step up for him. Get going, biatch!
The first option, electroejaculation, uses a priapic rectal probe to send electricity pulsing through the animal's nether regions. "All the normal excitatory signals that stimulate ejaculation, like touch, sight, sound and smell, can be replaced with the current from the probe," says Trish Berger, professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis. "It's fascinating. Of course, this is a woman talking."
Porn and lube is so yesterday! Time for electroejactulation and opiates!
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
I'm currently in a genetics class at college and most of us in the class would have to agree that these are definitely not cute or fuzzy enough to garner any bleeding heart attention. After staring at these flies through microscopes for hours checking mutations, even my vegetarian friends were dumping them in the quik-kill with some certain gusto.
I had a friend at [a large university] who had a summer job at the Department of Neuroscience. Neuroscience! How glamorous and cutting-edge! Then he showed me where he worked and what he did. His job -- day in and day out -- was to remove mouse and rat brains. He worked in a barren room whose centerpiece was a steel table that had gutters.
* shiver *
- rabs
If horses could talk about hteir jobs......It is not uncommon with horse breeding to have a stallion locked in a stall while a mare in heat is presented in front of him. HE picks up the scent starts ot bang, kick, foamat the mouth and try to dig his way out of his said locked stall. after a while the mare picks up the tempo and when she is pretty darned set on what she wants to do is lead away to make baby horses with another stud. This ensures no three day weekend following ma and pa around to see if they even like each other. Don't know what else to say.....
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
Old joke: what do you do when an elephant comes in your window? SWIM!
IAAS (a particle physicist, in fact), and it is not in fact that common to work a lifetime on something without seeing tangible results. Most scientists are able to make consist progress on a subject throughout their career, slowly adding to the knowledge base. It is only highly intractable problems (like the cure for cancer, or the validity of string theory) that can potentially frustrate for so long, and frankly, there aren't many such problems. String theory is one, but when results from LHC begin to come in in 6 or 7 years, much should be cleared up. (I am of the opinion that it will not, but what does that matter?) Cancer, too, will be settled before too long, I am confident. But the fusion people - God help them!
I wonder what its like without the drugs? Volunteers, anyone?
Oh, wait, I just looked it up:
"# [adj] resembling or being a phallus; "a phallic symbol"; "phallic eroticism"; "priapic figurines"
Ummm, I'll pass, thanks.
-cp-
And i have a friend who is complaining about being an intern at hp.
> RIP, the astronauts of Challenger and the other plane.
Riight, the Colombia was nothing but a vertically inclined Virgin Atlantic jumbo-jet.
May the souls of all economy-class ast^H^H^H fliers rest in peace.
The persons who tested out preparation A, B, C, D, E, F and G
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
5. slashdot moderator
gravity is a myth, earth sucks
actually, I'm quite enjoying my postdoc right now, I am lucky to have a supportive P.I. I just know a lot of people who have had horrible experiences; not necessarily due to the nature of the work itself, but because of some of the reasons I list above.
NO CARRIER
For the life of me, I couldn't figure it out. I actually gave up wondering.
testing out my trending skills
I see a lot of postdocs more or less staying on the postdoc track: work on someone else's stuff, maybe squeezing in a little bit of creativity here or there, and then move on to the next postdoc. You could do that for a decade.
The key is to start thinking like an independent researcher -- something you were supposed to do by the end of graduate school. Work on getting your own grants, start building your own network. If you focus on escape from postdoc limbo, you'll get out before you burn out.
I've heard that picking fly shit out of pepper with boxing gloves on can be extremely frustrating.
Sounds like the mare was trained by a former wife of mine =(
db
Cig:
ôô
5. Burger King Flipper
Another important job listed in there that will eventually lead to savings of billions per annum is the metric system advocate. However, I do not consider that a science job, it is a political job to comply with international agreements. It may take another 100 years to convert the US, but it will happen and the savings will be huge.
My wife has had a somewhat poor job in science, too. She worked for her Ph.D. by killing rats (by injecting cold salt water to their hearts and chopping their heads off), and sliced their brains to 400 um slices, inserted some rather toxic neuromodulators and measured the responses of the brain slices for long hours. Once her Ph.D. was getting completed, his boss left the university to work in the medical industry, and the research unit was finished -- and she never got her degree, just spent several years killing rats in rather obnoxious way and working with poisoneous chemicals.
-- Imperial units must die --
One of my friends in college had a lab job working for Martha McClintock. Primarily, Professor McClintock focuses on the evolutionary function of hormone-behavior interactions, particularly their role in sexual selection. If you look at her c.v., she's done a lot of work with rats.
This was my friend's fabulous job at her lab. He would introduce a female rat into a cage with a male rat. He would watch while the two rats did or did not have sex. He would photograph them immediately after the act, particularly the female's fur (I can't remember why). Then he would take the female rat and douche it. Yes, all day long he would douche and watch rats fornicate.
Worst. Job. Ever.
"...you can steal my woman, but you ain't done nuthin' smart."
When my mom got out of college (in 1960) she got a job doing research at some drug company that I struggled in vain to remember the name of. Anyway, at one point, she had a job which basically consisted of putting mice into a bowl of water and documenting how long it took before they could not swim any longer and drowned. In the end, it appeared to be dependent on the mouse and its will to live, some would last hours and some only minutes.
If you want to avoid the racist connotations of the chap you quoted, you might want to check out the ACLU website, or google for ACLU and prison rape. They've campaigned a lot about prison conditions.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
>there are quite a few intangible
n th.html among other places. It's about 4MB. I think it's the one at the very bottom of the page called "Responses to the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Survey as of 3 December 2002".
One will probably get the clearest international picture with the "Sorted by variable, rates" file.
>benefits, like social services
>and less violent crime.
Just a side note... I had a look at the ICVS last year and Canada appears to have a slightly higher rate of violent crime than the US. The most violent countries are Australia and the UK--that's been the trend for the past several years but most people (even Australians & Brits) have grew up with America's violent 1980's reputation and carried that with them since.
The UN has been publishing the ICVS (International Crime Victim Survey) every so often. You can download it in PDF format from http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_survey_seve
Yes, I was lead technician of Reproductive Assesment at Bill's Dairy Homogenizer for 7 years. I was jac^H^H^H Layed-off for health reasons.
5. Student who will be looking for a job in a couple of years
Back in the early days of the US space program, when rockets ran on Hydrazine, there was a poor fellow who's job was to go up to the rocket, stick his head in a vent port and sniff to see if any of this horribly Hyrdrazine was leaking. If not, the launch proceded. If it was leaking, he was _that_ close to dying.
But there's even worse: how would you like to be the poor sap who has to go pull the dead crew out of a malfuntioning nuclear reactor that has already exploded and thrown fatal amounts of radiation. Somebody's got to get the bodies out.
Oh yeah, sign me up.
That's got to be one of the most gruesome ways to die I've ever heard of... impaled to the ceiling by reactor control rods and irradiated. Hopefully he died quickly.
I was on a farm in South Africa and watched an arm going up a cow's rectum without a glove on. Of course they made the kaffir do the dirty job and he was no scientist either.
5. CowboyNeal
Isn't that the same as 4. Commander Taco's Perl Monkey?
$ make work
make: *** No rule to make target `work'. Stop.
During my first year in college, I had the dubious honor of working as a home health-care aid for a quadriplegic man. As part of my job, every morning I was required to slip on a single Latex glove. I'd then insert my right index finger into the rectum of the man I worked for.
Why was this necessary you ask? He needed to take a dump.
With no control over any body function below the shoulders my 'stimulation' was the only way he could defecate. I'd swirl my finger around and around until my employer would reward me with a lovely brown turd. Imagine doing that for a living.
As a dirt-poor student, I held that job for eight months as I worked my way through college. But wait, it gets better. What was the final indignity you wonder? I made minimum wage at the time:
$3.35 an hour.
Or you could go undercover as a car salesman for months at a time and find out that they get screwed over at their jobs too.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
GRADUATE STUDENT.
(I mean, Jeez... they're possible treated worst than postdocs and get paid less.)
"(I mean, Jeez... they're possible treated worst than postdocs and get paid less.)"
OK, that looked illiterate.
possible --> possibly
worst --> worse
See the benefits that my 4+ years of Ph.D. study have gotten me?
some just flat-out suck
...I nearly died laughing when I saw the icon next to job # 8. The juxtaposition of Barney with that job....well, check it out for yourself here.
We got to chatting about bad jobs at work a few years ago. There were some doozies (orderly at an asylum, cleaning out cement trucks), but the most memorable was beheading rats.
One of my coworkers, when he was in college, worker for a research project in the biology department (I believe that was the department). They were doing research on rats. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I seem to recall that it involved cutting part of some organ out, exposing them to potential carcinogens, waiting a while for the organ to regrow, then examining the organ for cancer.
The highlight was killing the rats for the final examination. Apparently there was a little rat guillotine. My coworkers said that the first few rats were easy, but after that the rats started smelling the blood and would panic.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I was amused to see "fish counter" in the list, because I was asked just a week or so ago if I'd like to volunteer for that one. It, uh, didn't match my schedule...
No Laughing Allowed!
They're just attracted to the part about having probes up their rectums.
The only problem is that burning fruitfly maggots smell not entirely unlike barbecue or popcorn, so she invariably leaves the lab hungry.
Sounds like she can kill two birds with one stone by eating (and killing in yet another way) the fruit flies.
6. Mouse ball cleaner
Suitless sewage diver. That job really sucks!!
Oh, you mean in science...
No shit.
Fuck You! That's NOT Funny! Asshole!
db
Cig:
ôô
7-11 (new comp sci grad job)
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
The best part of the article is theyre using an icon with Barney to depict "Psychological Torture" :)
mod this up...he beat me to it.
Feeding trolls.
Like what I said? You might like my music
i agree with you... that's why i got out and went to med school instead. now i earn almost as much as a plumber (per hour). Residency sucked big time though. i got paid less than minimum wage to get yelled at everyday.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Notice that it is only the male animals who receive the stimulation.
It's a sexist world out there.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Golly. Makes you wonder why there isn't a device that can make meat cold, so it lasts longer.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Hey, I liked being a postdoc too -- in fact I recently left an industrial job to become a Staff Scientist at TIGR, which is sort of like going back to being a postdoc (but long term).
On the other hand I can see what the complainers are talking about. Not having a lot of spare money is fine if you live alone, as I do (it just means you eat out less), but people who have families often have really horrible times trying to make ends meet.
Read this-
"Pre-med student Stubbins Ffirth (1784-1820) ate, drank, and breathed the blood, urine and vomit of yellow-fever victims (he also dropped the fluids into his eyes and worked them into cuts on his skin). He didn't get sick--the patients were in a late, uncontagious stage--so he erroneously decided the disease's cause lurked elsewhere."
Reading that is material enough to make you puke. Ugh!
Friedrich Miescher, extracting DNA from pus-soaked surgical bandages in 1868.
Australian Researcher Barry Marshall, drinking Helicobacter Pylori infected gastric fluids from an ulcer patient to prove the hypothesis that said bacterium was the source of stomach ulcers instead of stress.
Those are two researchers that got famous for what they were doing, countless others remain unsung hereoes that have not made their way into the books of science history.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
I like the icons they made up for this story. Maybe Slashdot could use some of them with their permission? At least seven icons would qualify for any SCO-related story:
- "Inspires reflexive ridicule"
- "Psychological torture"
- "Risk of physical violence"
- "Futility"
- "Inspires hatred"
- "Political quagmire"
"Olfactory overload", "Involves digestive product" and "Zzzzzzzzzzzz" are also worthy of consideration in my opinion.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
I still say that the worst job ever in science and technology would have to be the photographer for goatse.cx. I mean, think about it. It's bad enough on a computer screen; imagine the poor photographer who had to set that shot up.
You'd have to sit all day measuring length and curvature of particle tracks
Nowadays the task is (of course) left to computers but back then it was done by female office workers, many of them now married to particle physicists...
Actually "computer" used to mean a person, not a machine. Pretty boring I guess - read "Bridge over River Kwai" for an example.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
The few months I was a laminar flow technician -- moving my arms in a limited range all day in a consciencious and methodical imitation of a bad mime imitating a robot (which you do because if you get your germs in the patient's anti-immune serum he might DIE) -- I would have given my right testicle for the opportunity to kick back and count some fish!
Guess it's all relative.
A vet student friend of mine told me that at her university, some tasks are assigned by gender. The girls job is to maturbate the bulls. The guys get to castrate pigs. It's not without a sense of humor..
Alex
Heisenberg may have been here
Besides tossing-off animals for artificial insemination purposes, it is apparently quite a common practice for humans to relieve stress (police dogs), make them loyal (sheepdogs) or just to stop them getting too frisky (horses etc.).
Apparently the latest logical extension of this is doting japanese mothers taking upon themselves to help out their stressed-out sons during the exam period*
* This is undoubtedly total bull, but worth repeating
=#= Man, you are such a loser! Why can't you be an individual, like the rest of us?
Riiiight, Colombia is nothing more than an air vehicle. I wonder if the Colombians will rest in peace. Hey idjit, before correcting someone else, make sure *you* know your rectum from your cerebellum.
Don't you think that has a certaing ring to it as a band name?
Day 1:
: Uhh... hello. So what are you in for?
: Shut up! I'll ask the fucking questions. Do you want to be my boyfriend or girlfriend?
: Oh Shit. Umm... I'll be the boyfriend I guess...
: Well then get over here and suck your girlfriend's dick!
Jared
Big Hairy Cellmate
Jared
Big Hairy Cellmate
Anyway, we already have such a device. Here in Minnesota, it's called "outside". But our thermostat isn't very well regulated, and the regulator we do have is tied to a 24 hour cycle, causing the temperatures to swing wildly. Carcasses eventually spoil under these conditions.
There are no government-meat-locker-vans, standing by the woods just waiting to take away the freshly decapitated heads of deer. The DNR doesn't have walk-in freezers available to hold the thousands of heads they need to autopsy. And even if they thought about it in these times of budget crises, why would they? Onerous refrigeration requirements, outlandish electrical bills, all just to make my friend's job a little less disgusting?
John
Meant to donate +1 funny, clicked on -1 overrated instead, my bad, kill me now...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Besides tossing-off animals for artificial insemination purposes, it is apparently quite a common practice for humans to relieve stress (police dogs), make them loyal (sheepdogs) or just to stop them getting too frisky (horses etc.).
I think I'm going to go vomit now...
Even once it's legalized, it'll still be subject to the same type of violence as abortion doctors face.
Cowboy Neal's pants!
ZING
I like the little icons that they use to categorize the jobs in the story. I think that we should adopt a standard of using those icons on our resume job listings. Then the interviewer can see at a glance that your last job involved futility and psychological torture.
Whacha gonna do, write an essay?
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
I'm going AC on this one ;)
I used to work in the MIS department of London International Group (now Seaton Scholl) who make all sorts of rubber products, including Durex condoms.
It was one MAN's job to taste the flavoured condoms from the production lines every 30 minutes.
He seemed a bit worried that a 2:1 from Cambridge in Biology only got him this far. Still, you have to laugh.
>They're grown by the thousands just for the purpose of dying in nasty ways.
In a superhero universe, a fraction of those fruit flies would spontaneously manifest super powers and escape!
"Escape, Flame-Fly, go! And someday be strong enough to rescue my 45th generation!"
(ref: "Elementals", "Planetary", and "DC Invasion" all used this gimmick to make new supes)
A.
What I find interesting is the same people who have been accused of being the largest source of violent behaviour within the United States are the same people whose jobs are dependant on that violent behaviour. Assuming all have university degrees in media courses (which psychology plays a large role), might lead one to believe that there is intent (I bet one could find a paper or two proving intent). Practiced facial expressions, slang, and selective wording are all valid forms of communication and reconized. Most liberal reporters prey obsessive/compulsive behaviour, irrational fears, and out right hatred.
heheh,...greedy capitalist wearing liberal tails.
Welcome to AOL/Time Warner, profiting off of your dead children since 1991.
6. Slashdot Meta-Moderator
[ridicule icon] [futility icon]
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
now here's when somebody has to replace "Artificial Inseminator" with "UNIX sys admin" and write something satirical like "I've done the UNIX sysadmin thing too. When you get into restoring some luser's trashing of their data and demanding to see your backup tapes..." and ending with something about rolling blackouts, constant attacks by script kiddies and getting punched, kicked and bitten by the various nutcases that depend on your system...
what's so bad IT?
Yeah, but anybody answering phones at Verisign is already used to being called a cow-felching pig masturbator for eight hours a day.
I think so, Brain, but isn't Slashdot more fun without an editor?
NARF!
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
It's ok, it was deleted when you posted to the forum.
Dammit, we made the list!
IUTBAFR (I Used to be a Fusion Researcher), and frankly, I never felt it was even close to the worst job in science. But I always worried about becoming a Richard Post. You see, fusion research is full of old-timers who've been working on it since Project Sherwood days, who have always been thinking "just a few more years and we'll have it". I suppose it's kind of like being a Red Sox fan. When they started work on Fusion for Peace in the 50's, it was 20-30 years away. When I started working on fusion in 1995 it was 20-30 years away. Now its 2003 and it's 20-30 years away...
A little bit of info about Richard Post. He was the primary proponent of "open" systems, basically magnetic cylinders which were either very long, had magnetic "mirrors" or had some sort of electromagnetic "endcap". It was a rival to the Tokamak method of plasma containment. A few were built, but the vast majority of the magnetic confinement money and attention went to Tokamaks. Whether it should have is a matter of debate. Basically, Richard Post spent much of his career trying to get research funds for a design which was not the favorite. There was still enough money for a decent research program, and the research basically showed that the mirrors (which were easy to do) caused too many problems (hence the term "mirror instability"), and nobody ever came up with a good enough endcap. Last I heard, Post was doing some work on flywheel technology.
I put in my tour of duty. Maybe sometime I will go back to working on fusion, but I'd like to get ~something~ done before then. I fear not accomplishing anything with my life.
FYI, my personal opinion (warning: rant) is that the primary reason fusion is such a slow business is that it takes years to simulate a design, raise money for it, build it, then test it and see how it performs. Imagine how long it would have taken to create the airplane if you had to spend 20 years every time you went back to the drawing board. I feel that as long as bigger = better in fusion, sustainable fusion will never happen. If you have to build it that big to make it work, the design is wrong.
That why brown M&Ms are tossed!
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
This author is really named "William Speed Weed"? What is he, a marathon smoker?
You know, your old roommate COULD have poked a small hole in the lid of the stool jars before opening them, to release the pressure... I guess he liked doing things the quick 'n' dirty way though.
One in ten inmates in the survey had been the victim of a sexual assault, many repeatedly.
Yeah, those pot pushers and tax evaders had it coming. Give'em what they deserve. </sarcasm>
BTW, someone recently had an "insightful" comment about the eye-for-an-eye reasonable punishment as described in the bible. Doesn't the prison system violate this idea of proportionality?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
From the article regarding stem cell research: "...as an American, I'm not going to be a part of it."
Thank you for imposing your arbitrary ethical idealism upon us all!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Heaven forbid a thread go by without some political diatribe. Do some of you people just walk around FILLED WITH HATE for people of different political beliefs?
You know, the world is full of people with whom you probably disagree. Doesn't that make the anger part pretty much futile?
-Styopa
futility, psychological torture, political quagmire
FREEEDOM! HORRIBLE FREEDOM!
Just raise the taxes on crack.
As long as they don't live off tax money, they are in no way restricted in the source of their research. ... reason being, Bush's constituency resents embryos being used for productive science rather than just rotting in medical waste containers.
Read this.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Hours on end of executing mice.
At least that's easier than having to figure out how to jerk off the mice!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Does PETA have a hissy-fit, or are they not cute and fuzzy enough to garner their attention?
One person's pet is another person's livestock. Oh well.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
my sister-in-law actually was a barnyard ejaculator.
Wow, good looks must not run in your family!
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
i just read one of those long posts about cow masturbation when iTunes randomly played "Also Sprach Zaratustra" by Richard Wagner.
:)
Well - I let it play and read on
I'm sorry which one is the SCO exec?
The barnyard animal or the mastrubator?
Time flys like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Ah yes, fish counters. The ones they mentioned had it easy. The real fun comes in when you're drag-netting a lake, and have to jump in to get the net out of the water. This lake had a lot of leeches. Remember that scene in African Queen? I bet you never really considered that if you had leeches all over you, they'd end up on your unit, too.
Been there. But my coworker had it worse...he stumbled into what must have been a hatch of them, and ended up with about 40 tiny leeches on his Triangle of Death.
It really was a lot of fun. For that one summer. I'm in IT now (-:
You are right. And it seems to be a rumor in many countries too. Moreover you see that profs retiring leave a post open ... but the salary post is gone! Nice one.
Some ruthless profs (not just in the US) split one postdoc salary into 2 and hire 2 (often Chinese) postdocs in what is practically slavery under threat of deportation. I really love this civilisation.
Especially in a public high school! I don't know how my wife does it...
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
It wasn't PETA, but the ASPCA had a problem with feeding live maggots to Brooks' crow during the filming of Shawshank Redemption. They insisted the crew use maggots that had died of natural causes.
7 %7 C483%7C%7C%7C~~~,00.html
http://www.tnt.tv/Title/View4/0,5878,20338%7C47
let's get this straight:
you tried to stop an inanimate object from being irritating.
your wife responded to your efforts by yelling at you.
i think you're fine, and your wife needs therapy for stockholm syndrome or something. in all fairness, there are easier ways to silence talking dolls, i would have held it by the neck underwater for ten minutes, vigorously shaking it from time to time, asking the kids to wipe my brow for me because i'm afraid to let go just yet.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
At least that's easier than having to figure out how to jerk off the mice!
It's easy. Kill the mice and extract the semen surgically.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I wont kill you if you promise not to mod this stupid joke up again. Please, stick to -1 Redundant for these lame joke fads.
Hunter? I figured she worked at a lab. You said her load was big so it took weeks and they went bad. I guess I'm really confused. You never said she was a hunter.
Seriously
I'v had enough of seeing articles that want me to click through x-amount of links just so that I see all of their advertisments.
I can live without this; I don't even care.
I would have to agree with you point about having an enjoyable postdoc period. I'm currently entering the 2nd year of my postdoc (by choice), and I have had a good experience.
Granted, I've had to provide my own motivation sometimes, but I've been given a high degree of freedom. I sometimes think people don't take enough care in choosing a postdoc. It's similar to choosing an advisor, one mistake could mean a lot of heartache and trouble.
I just left a job that is the worst job I can imagine, the worst place I've worked in thirty years, and not because of the type of work but because of the incompetent and abusive management. I am the fifth person in as many years to quit in disgust from that job. My offtopic question is - is there a website somewhere that I can post a warning about this employer? A newsgroup? Nobody should have to endure that place, except maybe as punishment.
Truth is an absolute defense to charges of libel.
Is it so hard to believe that there is a sizeable portion of the population that thinks that embryonic stem cell research is just a Bad Idea? And that maybe just because it has "potential" does not make it a good idea? Blaming Bush is a cop out; it is parroting the party line, not "insightful."
Actually, the Solomonic comment is quite appropriate. Solomon's judgement on the baby was calculated to goad the plaintiffs into revealing their true relationship with the child. By Bush saying "Sure you can do it - just not with Gov.t money", it showed who really cares about the research and those who only care as far as their government money will takes them.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
What happens to people of mixed race, though? Chances are, they'll be targeted (if they're obviously mixed) by members of both/all the races they belong to, and if you have a separation for mixtures (Can I use the word mulatto, or is that racist? I honestly don't know, and I realize it doesn't apply to all mixtures.) will more common ones gang up on less? Once you've made these divisions, will the problem clear up somewhat, or will racial distictions become finer (Irish-Americans gang up on German-Americans, etc.)? The trouble with starting this kind of thing is that once you begin making divisions, it's difficult to stop.
~~~~~
Pet Peeve: Perscription drug advertising to the general public.
Are you sure it's up the rectum? I suppose you could do this if the cow is pregnant enough that you could feel the calf through the walls of the intestine and the uterus, but it seems to me that it'd be a lot faster (in terms of the point in the pregnancy you could do this at) and more effective to stick your arm in the vagina. Or would this trigger miscarriage? Any comments, vets?
Nasty.
John
Yeah, those silly Limeys & Aussies, they must get all their facts from watching Starsky & Hutch.
[1] No figures for the US for 2000. Presumably, they're still counting them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You now have not only a semen sample, you've got the happiest male mouse in the lab and, if you're sick enough, the grossest palm-sized squirt gun in history.
You're welcome.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Try fuckthatjob.com
where did u read that? I looked at the table and the US homicide rate is 2.5 times higher than Canada's. The US Attempted homicide rate is not even presented. If you think that you are "safer" in the US than in Canada with respect to crime,especially violent crime, then you are a fool. I live in a city with about 1 million people, and we just recorded our 9th homicide of the year (yes, that is right 9TH). What is the count in an average US city of the same size, 9 last weekend? I have a cousin who works as a pediatric trauma nurse in N.C., and he has had over 9 fatal cases this year, in pediatrics!
That's ironic; I grew up dreaming of becoming a Fish Counter.
I think OSHA would have something to say about this. It cant be sanitary by any measure.
Ophidian P Jones stole your post and reposted it under Microwave Fun
he does this to lots of people (including me), and i'm letting everyone know. sorry to bug ya.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Then tell your big friend to stop wacking you.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.