Slashdot Mirror
Worst Jobs in Science: Year Three
mmoyer writes "Popular Science just published their annual rankings of the worst jobs in science. Highlights of this year's list include a human lab rat, orangutan pee collector, and, surprisingly, a NASA ballerina. Think your science job belongs on the list? You can nominate your job as well. Slashdot also covered the worst jobs in science in 2004 and in 2003."
Ha! Great story.
A few years back, I knew a fellow (he had the unfortunate name of Willie Williams) who'd been involved in the re-introduction of pergrine falcons to the canyon lands of south texas. The problem was that the birds wouldn't breed in captivity. The answer: artificial insemination.
This dude's job was to collect the sperm from the male falcons. He'd go in to their enclosures wearing a special hat with a very-anatomically-correct model of a female falcon on it.
every time they run this thing, it takes me back to this crap job I had years ago entering data from documentation in huge class action court cases into searchable databases for teams of attorneys. Lab results from animal fertility experiments crossed my desk and I must have looked at the phrase a dozen times before it occured to me what it meant to extract semen from dogs via "digital manipulation."
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries