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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..."
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.
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And you thought YOUR job sucked...
"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.
Actually, the humans have it much worse than the monkeys ever did. From the article:
"Thagard also had the distinction of being the first person ever to clean out animal cages in orbit, on the Spacelab 3 in 1985. Engineers promised him that the cages would be at negative pressure, so none of the weightless waste of 24 rats and 2 squirrel monkeys would escape. But when Thagard opened the cages, air rushed outward, leading to a frantic floating-feces chase scene."
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
It's no longer slashdotted, but here's the complete list. 1. Flatus Odor Judge (smelling real fart samples) 2. Dysentery Stool-Sample Analyzer (studying diarrhea) 3. Barnyard Masturbator (go figure) 4. Brazil Mosquito Researcher 5. Hot-Zone Superintendent (ebola and anthrax outbreaks) 6. Isolation Chamber Tester 7. Fistula Feeder (why not call him a feces specialist?) 8. Prison Rape Researcher 9. Carcass Cleaner 10. Postdoc (anything you do after getting a PHD) 11. Metric System Advocate 12. Corpse-Flower Grower (it's a stench, not a smell) 13. Endanged Species Ecologist 14. Astronaut 15. Fish Counter 16. US Stem Cell Researcher 17. Planetary Protection Officer (prevents microbes from travelling from Earth to the solar system) 18. Fusion Researcher
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!"
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
But without prison rape, why would people fear the DMCA?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
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!
Here is a link with some good information. Prison Rape must suck and I pity most people that have to deal with it
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 was definitely a "make you sick" job.
John
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).
you mean I can get PAID for that?!!
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Ie. He's a racist trying to appeal to the educated masses.
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.
Ok Sigmund Freud, how many years of studying the physchology of the incarcerated did it take you to come to this conclusion? Or did you managed to get all the emperical evidence you needed without having to leave your mother's basement?
And the prison environment is certainly not the kind to foster increased understanding of other races.
And why not? Prison may be the best place to start.
The persons who tested out preparation A, B, C, D, E, F and G
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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 --
Mohd. Binatang bin Goncang
This story is a fake. The name translates literally to: Mohammed Animal son of Masturbate.
Notice that it is only the male animals who receive the stimulation.
It's a sexist world out there.
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!
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
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
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.
Yeah, but anybody answering phones at Verisign is already used to being called a cow-felching pig masturbator for eight hours a day.