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."

Comments

Worst Science Job, EVER

[ackthpt]

6. Volcanologist When the earth heats up, they head in

Volcanologist? Can't take the heat, get out of the crater? Sounds like a dream job, just get my Indiana Jones get-up on and grow a good 5 o'clock shadow and the babes will be swarming like deerflies! w00. "Danger is my middle name. Unfortunately my first name is Melvin and my last name is Blortman."

3. Kansas Biology Teacher On the front lines of science's devolution

*snort* This has initiated so many flame-wars on USENET lately, yeah, that's gotta suck having to face extremists and dum-dum board members. The irony is 'Intelligent Design' is an Evolution of Creationism :)

2. Manure Inspector The smell is just the start of the nastiness

Reminds me of Farley Mowat in his cabin in Never Cry Wolf. All those wolf turds and then the water came in...

1. Human Lab Rat Must read slashdot for research lab. aaiiiieeeee!!!

Re:Worst Science Job, EVER

[sedyn]

"3. Kansas Biology Teacher On the front lines of science's devolution

*snort* This has initiated so many flame-wars on USENET lately, yeah, that's gotta suck having to face extremists and dum-dum board members. The irony is 'Intelligent Design' is an Evolution of Creationism :)"

What ever happened to the good ol' days when a teacher was apethic towards their job? They just went in, did whatever the board told 'em to, and used the Nuremberg defence to ease any ethical issues. Or was that prozac?

I want to return to the time when this noble profession was all about the money.

Yeesh, if people can democratically decide what the facts are, then I move for a petition to strike down gravity, because it just keeps bringing people down.

Re:Worst Science Job, EVER

[Anonymous Coward]

whoah, people still talk on usenet?

here i thought it was all binaries!

Re:Worst Science Job, EVER

[Ced_Ex]

On that note, how easy would it be to score 100% on the Intelligent Design tests?

Question 1: Identify and describe the method in which humans obtained stereoscopic sight.

a) With binoculars.
b) God, the designer himself.
c) Crazy Theory of Evolution.
d) All of the above.

Question 2: Identify and describe the method in which humans obtained opposable thumbs.

a) Double jointed.
b) God, the designer himself.
c) Crazy Theory of Evolution.
d) None of the above.

How About Avian Sex Partner?

[conJunk]

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.

Re:How About Avian Sex Partner?

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Is this funny, or informative?

Re:How About Avian Sex Partner?

[ackthpt]

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.

Ha! There was something like this in the news earlier this year.

My sister had a job for a while cleaning cages of lab animals. She didn't like it much.

Re:How About Avian Sex Partner?

[DrEldarion]

It's funformative!

Re:How About Avian Sex Partner?

[moviepig.com]

This dude's job was to collect the sperm from the male falcons [via] wearing a special hat...

Anyone would have to be f**ked up in the head to do that...

Wow

[jandrese]

Have you watched the NASA ballerina video yet? It's hot.

Re:Wow

[anandpur]

NASA Ballerina link if www.popsci.com give up

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/mpeg/115084mai n_ballerina.mpeg

Re:Wow

[frank_adrian314159]

It's hot.

Yeah! And the ballerina ain't bad, either!

Re:Wow

[Overzeetop]

So, if she would have encircled the "sensor" with her arms and moved them from the base to the tip, would it have jerked back and forth rapidly? Aside from the obvious imagry, I'm guessing the result would have been about what we expect. It was clearly a bit "confused" and the motions erratic (two "r"s and an "a", keep your mind out of the gutter) is serveral areas where the dancer was close to multiple sensor areas.

It is quite difficult to believe that the scientist didn't manage to see the problem with the form of his "sensor".

Re:Wow

[Alejo]

This is for the new website. They expect to fund a new shuttle program with registrations from geek pr0n seekers.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to object. That was most certainly not ballet. It was modern dance. Someone at Popular Science needs to spend 2 seconds doing some research!

can you hear me now? YES!!

[krelyk]

I nominate this dude for the worst job in the world - the guy that replies 'yes' to verizon's (tm) 'can you hear me now?'
movie url -
http://www.compfused.com/directlink/950

Maybe network admin for a site being /.ed

[neologee]

That's gotta be pretty rough.
Pop. science's holding up !

Question for biologists...

[LeonGeeste]

(would have said evolutionists there, but that would have started a tangential flame war).

This is a quote from the "Kansas Biology Teacher" article:

"At the heart of ID is the idea that certain elements of the natural world--the human eye, say--are "irreducibly complex" and have not and cannot be explained by evolutionary theory. Therefore, IDers say, they must be the work of an intelligent designer (that is, God).

The problem for teachers is that ID can't be tested using the scientific method, the system of making, testing and retesting hypotheses that is the bedrock of science."

Now, if someone tells you that the eye cannot be explained through evolutionary mechanisms, do you respond that, well, ID can't be tested through the scientific method, so you're wrong? Because that's exactly what this article makes it sound like. If there's a response to the argument that the eye could not have arisen through the incremental changes posited by evolutionary theory, this article sure doesn't give it.

Is there a response? What incremental, random changes produced an eye such that each step conferred an evolutionary advantage? Or did it happen all at once? Can scientists reconstruct the formation for an eye through an accidental interference with the DNA? And, most importantly, does even asking these questions imply that I'm an anti-science ignorant hick?

Re:Question for biologists...

[bowronch]

From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_0 11_01.html

Evolution of the Eye:

When evolution skeptics want to attack Darwin's theory, they often point to the human eye. How could something so complex, they argue, have developed through random mutations and natural selection, even over millions of years?

If evolution occurs through gradations, the critics say, how could it have created the separate parts of the eye -- the lens, the retina, the pupil, and so forth -- since none of these structures by themselves would make vision possible? In other words, what good is five percent of an eye?

Darwin acknowledged from the start that the eye would be a difficult case for his new theory to explain. Difficult, but not impossible. Scientists have come up with scenarios through which the first eye-like structure, a light-sensitive pigmented spot on the skin, could have gone through changes and complexities to form the human eye, with its many parts and astounding abilities.

Through natural selection, different types of eyes have emerged in evolutionary history -- and the human eye isn't even the best one, from some standpoints. Because blood vessels run across the surface of the retina instead of beneath it, it's easy for the vessels to proliferate or leak and impair vision. So, the evolution theorists say, the anti-evolution argument that life was created by an "intelligent designer" doesn't hold water: If God or some other omnipotent force was responsible for the human eye, it was something of a botched design.

Bilogists use the range of less complex light sensitive structures that exist in living species today to hypothesize the various evolutionary stages eyes may have gone through.

Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

Re:Question for biologists...

[Buzz_Litebeer]

Its not falsifiable, you can never prove it wrong, its faith. You cant PROVE it either.

The fact that you cannot prove something, does not make another thing you cannot prove true.

Evolution deals more in generalities, it is postulated that humans evolved through a series of events because genetics and bones etc... help us come to that conclusion.

How evolution created the eye, or even a cell for that matter, is still a part of the mystery, and if someone could make an example cell from parts then that would help on the way of showing that some random event could have as well.

The main difference is that if someone did come up with a theory for the development of eye cones in humans, then other scientists could take that model, scrutinize it, and determine whether it would or would not work.

Even if it was accepted for 20 years, scientists could come back at a later time and with new information find out that i was wrong using new techniques and knowledge.

Since ID is a non falsifiable, and non provable philosphy (without a time machine, or the ability to meet God) it simply cannot hold up, since you cannot assume something is irreducibly complex, or meets any of the other ID specific buzz words.

Because all of the buzzwords are subjective. If we wanted to find out if something was "irreducibly complex" 100 years ago, then many of the things we know of now would be moot.

Go back further predicting how the sun and such moves accross the sky accurately may have been irreducibily complex, with the knowledge of the time.

Of course, intelligent design must have been popular because of that, because people beleived in a SUN God back then.

So, even though ID has been popular since the dawn of man, doesnt make it science.

Re:Question for biologists...

[idlake]

Is there a response? What incremental, random changes produced an eye such that each step conferred an evolutionary advantage?

It's well understood; the progression is roughly: light sensitive cell, opaque pigment in back, retreat into concavity, formation of pinhole camera, transparent covering, fixed lens, adaptable lens. Each of those has distinct and individual evolutionary advantages, sometimes related to improved predator evasion and sometimes merely related to improved protection of the existing structure. It seems to have happened several times in evolution, so it's not even anything unusual; if we ever encounter aliens, they probably have eyes, too.

The problem for teachers is that ID can't be tested using the scientific method, the system of making, testing and retesting hypotheses that is the bedrock of science.

That's false. ID can be tested (in the same way astronomy can be), and the answer is: there is not a shred of evidence to support ID. Every single test of evolution has come down on the side of evolution (mutation and selection) and against intelligent design (interference of an intelligent agent in the development of different life forms on earth). ID has the form of a scientific theory, but it happens to be an incorrect scientific theory according to overwhelming evidence.

Re:Question for biologists...

[TCQuad]

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight.

I'd be careful with this point, because it is not as simple as it first sounds. A change should, but does not have to, confer an advantage. It could be a neutral move, with no selection for or against it. However, these neutral moves could result in the availability of new potential advantages. So, when arguing the point, it is not the thinner openings were greater than the larger openings, but rather they were at least as efficient for the task they were used for and provided the potential for further development (cemented by the actual eye development).

Re:Question for biologists...

[dgatwood]

If so, I'd like an example-- because I've never heard of a creature with a deep, light-sensitive pit in its body.

Google search terms: "light-sensitive pit bacteria".
First entry: http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/02/15/ey es_part_one_opening_up_the_russian_doll.php

The closest invertebrate relatives of vertebrates fit nicely into Darwin's predictions. Amphioxus, which looks like a sardine with its head cut off, lacks a true brain or camera eyes. But the front end of its nerve cord is slightly swollen, and is built by many of the same genes that build a human brain. What's more, they grow a pit lined with light-sensitive cells which they seem to use to navigate through the water. The genes that build this pit are nearly identical to the ones that build our own.

The fact that Aphioxus has such a simple precursor to the vertebrate eye might suggest that this organ evolved from scratch. Yet eyes can be found on many other animals--which was how Darwin first figured out what a precursor to the vertebrate eye might have looked like. Eyes can found in insects, squid, and many other animals. Did they evolve independently?

Next?

Re:Question for biologists...

[Zathrus]

Being as most creatures don't come with light-emitting organs as standard equipment, this speculation falls short of an explanation.

Ah, so being able to see the shadow of a predator wouldn't be advantageous? Or, inversely, the shadow of prey?

Although, frankly, the more likely explanation is that the organism wasn't trying to avoid a predator, it was trying to increase its energy intake by moving toward the light (or, in the case of a predator, move to an area that's more likely to have prey because of the light). We know cyanobacteria have been around for billions of years and they can do this.

No, just narrower. A disadvantage, like tunnel vision.

Um, no. Being able to refine your visual capabilities is generally an advantage. The previous mutation just said "light/dark". Now you can say "light/dark in THAT direction". You don't think that's an advantage?

Oh, and tunnel vision isn't necessarily a disadvantage. In humans it literally focuses your vision on the threat at hand (and yes, I've had it before). In other animals, such as birds of prey, it's an evolutionary advantage that allows them to concentrate on finding and killing prey.

Re:Question for biologists...

[bombadillo]

Surely you must be trolling....

Only if the predator has a FRICKIN LASER BEAM on its head! Being as most creatures don't come with light-emitting organs as standard equipment, this speculation falls short of an explanation. Maybe there were large populations of electroluminescent bacteria a hojillion years ago.

Iguanas have a rudimentery third eye on the top of their head. It can sense changes to light and not much else. It's also known as parietal eye. This is pretty basic stuff. Didn't you pay attention in biology/anatomy. I guess not since you believe in ID and creationism.

Re:Question for biologists...

[hublan]

Only if the predator has a FRICKIN LASER BEAM on its head! Being as most creatures don't come with light-emitting organs as standard equipment, this speculation falls short of an explanation.

Eh? I'm assuming you studied physics in Kansas too. Here's a simplified version of how it works:

1. Sun emits photons (within the correct energy range, also known as light). Photons enter earth's atmosphere.
   
2. Photons bounce off of creature.
   
3. Bounced photons land on other creature's light sensitive patch.
   

See? That wasn't so hard. No lasers involved, just a gigantic nuclear furnace. Already accepted by most major religions.

If so, I'd like an example-- because I've never heard of a creature with a deep, light-sensitive pit in its body.

They're called flatworms.

Re:Question for biologists...

[VJ42]

Don't tar all religion with the same brush; I happen to be a hindu, I believe in evolution, there's nothing in my religion that goes against any science that I know of (even if there was I would probably come down on the side of science). This is probably because hinduism is such a flexable religion that it accomodates almost anything. However I have many christian friends who believe in evolution, they, as I, rationalise their religion as a metaphor. Take genisis for exaample, if you don't take the word 'day' literally, but take it to mean a period of time most things happen in the correct order, first light, then water, then animals, then humans. Think of religion this way:

Early man: how did light start?
god: About 5 billion years ago I gathered dust and particles of hydrogen and helium
Early man: (interupting): huh? What's a billion, and what are hydrogen and helium?
god: A billion is a big number hydrogen and helium are elements
Early man: can you show me some hydrogen and helium, the only elements i know are fire, water air and earth
god: *sigh* light happened because I just put it there, OK?
Early man: sounds good, I'll write that down.

Re:Question for biologists...

[greg_barton]

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight.

This is a common misconception about evolution. The only thing "necessary" is for the organism displaying the trait to reproduce. Nothing else. The trait can confer absolutely no advantage, and even cause disadvantage, as long as enough organisms with the genes for that trait reproduce. The trait need not even be expressed, as long as a gene that creates it is passed on. (Big example: recessive genes.)

So, to recap, every change did not have to conver advantage. The gene for that trait merely had to be passed on.

Re:Question for biologists...

[greg_barton]

If so, I'd like an example-- because I've never heard of a creature with a deep, light-sensitive pit in its body.

Don't know about light sensisive, but pit vipers have heat sensitive pits. (Heat being another form of electromagnetic energy...) These pits tell the snake about direction and intensity of a heat source.

Re:Question for biologists...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

There's nothing magic about a light sensitive cell. Many chemicals have photovoltaic properties which can be directly sensed by a nerve cell. Those chemicals even have other uses besides just light sensing in an organism.

Behe's arguments are a failure of imagination. He can't imagine how something could come to be, so he says that it's impossible. Then later, we figure out that it was possible, and Behe was wrong.

The latest example is Behe's flagellum motor. Turns out that a very slightly different protein is a potent toxin that some bacteria produce. Behe's flagellum motor turns out not to be composed of useless component parts (like his mousetrap) at all. It was simply a failure of his imagination.

All of Behe's arguments will fall to increased understanding eventually. The biochemical components of a light sensitive cell are no different.

Re:Question for biologists...

[elmartinos]

Here I present you The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject

Moderator: We're here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des---

(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)

Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?

(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate's kneecap.)

Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!

Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn't mean anything. Perhaps your
kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.

Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!

Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible --- it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!

Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!

Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can't rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn't prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let's not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this
sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.

Intelligent Design advocate: That's a load of bullshit sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we'll see how that plays in court!

Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it's so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical
evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.

Hold on a second...

[Pichu0102]

A NASA ballerina? Looks like our tax dollars are going to work in the right places!

Warning: not work safe!

[Flying pig]

Before you look it up, you should know it shows a half naked woman writhing around what looks like an enormous yellow penis. You couldn't make it up. But what the heck? The researcher has just got more publicity than he probably ever imagined. And his next funding offer might come from highly unexpected sources - the sort of people who need huge server farms and wide pipes to, ah, service their clients.

Here's one.

[scholzie]

I'm an Intel Engineer. How's that?

Misquote me thinks

[It doesn't come easy]

1. Human Lab Rat [...] Dudes, I was in a double-blind Viagra trial! And I got paid!

I would have thought the emphasis would have been on laid ...

Re:Does programmer count?

[Tiger4]

They say Political Science is science too. Lets go experiment on some politicians...

i am a NASA ballerina!

[Anonymous Coward]

and i find my placement in this poll to be very insulting. it is a job which is rewarding on MANY LEVELS, both personal and professional!

Re:Quality Assurance

[jferris]

If you work at a company that releases code that is knowingly "broken", the problem is in management and has nothing to do with either the developers or QA.

Additionally, if you don't have the say to fail a release that has critical and known errors, it is time to find a job with a company that actually knows what they are doing.

Mod mistake here!

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

I read the parent three times and I can't fathom why it was mod'ed as "Troll". I found it to be quite informative and helpful for me when I have to deal with the ID folks.

This country (US) is drifting more and more away from science and more towards superstition (It's not only the ID folks, there's other equally unscientific view too) and magical thinking. We're headed for trouble economically, culturally, and politically if we don't stop this nonsense.

Re:Mod mistake here!

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

Carl Sagan's responses "Demon Haunted World"

In that book, folks would ask him about "healing crystals" and many other things both religious and "New Age". His response was something to the affect of "...there's no data that supports that belief." I found that response to be respectful to the person asking and at the same time putting forth that idea that maybe they should question their own beliefs. Of course, there's always going to be people who are completely happy relying on faith. I have no problem with that as long as they don't legislate their beliefs on everyone else.

Re:Mod mistake here!

[ChuckleBug]

I read the parent three times and I can't fathom why it was mod'ed as "Troll". I found it to be quite informative and helpful for me when I have to deal with the ID folks.

There are creationists here who I think go looking for articles that criticize creationism/ID and rate them Troll. A while back, I wrote a testy but not uninformative article that got the same treatment:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=70547&cid=6407 629

I admit I was kind of pissy when I wrote it, but it wasn't a troll. It had good information in it. I've seen this in every creationism/evolution debate I've read here. But we've got evidence and reason on our side, while all they have is: "I can't figure out/imagine how this happened, so god did it." That really is the sum total of what they want us to teach as science. They add a lot of verbiage to make it sound like more, but they always come down to:

1. Honest mistakes
2. Lies
3. More lies (I want to believe these guys are sincere, but there are so many wrong statements from creationists that have been clearly shown wrong, yet they keep repeating them.)
4. Nonsense - often a subset of 1. (e.g. "If we came from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?" That question is such a tangled morass of wrongness, I don't know where to begin.)

It does get discouraging at times, which is why I get cranky about this.

YIAAST.

declared troll -- little bill gates

[middlemen]

Q: Name the worst jobs in science ?
Little Bill: Steve Jobs ?!
</Troll>

What no "Grad Student?"

[forand]

Almost every one of the top 10 has one thing in common, if there is an even crappier aspect of the job it is being done by the grad student on the project!

I just want recognition for something! I will have to be happy with getting my Phd if I can't get on the crappiest job list.

Re:can you hear me now? YES!!

[langelgjm]

Insightful?! WTF!

true story

[nanojath]

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."

collector of waste water

[Cmdr-Absurd]

When in college, I worked in a lab analyzing waste water produced by local industry. part of the job involved collection of samples. Some of the man-holes were nice (like at the brand-new CD ROM manufacturing plant.) Others..... One was at a plant that made pet food. The waste from that process was mixed with the normal sewage one would find coming out of a building with lots of humans. Need I say more?

Snake Pits

[ReverendLoki]

If so, I'd like an example-- because I've never heard of a creature with a deep, light-sensitive pit in its body.

The example that comes immediately to mind are the heat-sensitive "pits" found on pit-vipers and pythons. They detect infra-red light in almost this exact way.

Continental Drift?

[mr100percent]

First, a history lesson. In 1999 a group of religious fundamentalists won election to the Kansas State Board of Education and tried to introduce creationism into the state's classrooms. They wanted to delete references to radiocarbon dating, continental drift and the fossil record from the education standards. In 2001 more-temperate forces prevailed in elections, but the anti-evolutionists garnered a 6-4 majority again last November.

Radiocarbon dating and fossils, I suppose they thought it contradicted the bible. Continental Drift? Who would dispute that?

Re:Continental Drift?

[Control Group]

Anybody who wants to cling to a young earth.

Continental drift, after all, presupposes a time line about four orders of magnitude greater than that of young earth "theory." Hence, if you believe continental drift, you have a very hard time simultaneously buying into young earth.

Probably not a ballerina

[Animats]

Ballerina? She moves more like a modern dancer.

Actually, that's not a bad dance job. Pay, benefits, reasonable hours. Ask any working dancer. It's a tough life, and you burn out young. At the higher levels, the injury rate is very high. New York City Ballet used to have the highest workmens's compensation premium in the state.

The "robot touch avoidance" demo has been done before, several times, both with mechanical switches and a short-range microwave system. The IR distance measurement system came from a Stanford project in the 1970s.

Re:Awesome...

[Gilmoure]

While on the topic of vestigial: male nipples. No known use.

They server to break up the monotony of the mail chest.

Peh, this is the REAL worst science job!

[lasmith05]

Animal Sperm Collector: http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid=22 5 Choice Quote: "I never thought I'd be giving an orangutan a hand job every morning," he said somewhat ruefully. "And Ah Meng is the worst. He expects to be kissed first."

You do get some stories

[dptalia]

From number 7, Semen washer:
"The hardest part is explaining it to friends," Schillinger says. "But we do have stories." Like what? "Like the donor who was in the room for the longest time. We had a big discussion about who was going to check on him. Turns out he thought he had to fill up the entire specimen cup."

Oh I want him to father my kids!!!!!!

Digtal Stimulation Jobs

[SeanDuggan]

One of my friends does this job with cows. She once shared with me the story of the time she got back from lunch and was shoulder-deep before she realized she'd forgotten to put back on her glove. That was one shirt she never wore again...

Re:NASA ballet

[Dj Superfly]

What is that, the dance of the friendly phallus? It moves so expressively!

Maybe eyes HAVEN'T evolved multiple times

[smellsofbikes]

There's a good Science News article about eye evolution that indicates that there have been many independent developments of the physical hardware supporting an initial light-sensitive patch, but the patch itself might be fairly unique. (Including some groovy stuff about a gene that stimulates spontaneous eye generation all over insect bodies: at the tips of their feet and such.)

This guy agrees, claiming that the light-sensitive patch genes are pretty conserved.

However, this crowd seems to think that although opsins are remarkably well-conserved across different phyla, the controlling genes that the abovementioned people were obsessed by control many other gene families, besides eye development, so it's still possible that there are different complete eye evolution families.

They talk a bit about fish and squid eyes: I didn't know that squids and octopi have inverted (compared to mammals) retinal structures. They must be *very* good at low-light conditions.

Dolphin semen collector

[Abies Bracteata]

I know of someone who worked at a marine-mammal research facility. One of his tasks was to obtain semen samples from the male dolphins. (I won't go into the gory details).

As it turns out, dolphins are quick learners, and he quickly became *very* popular with the male dolphins. Any time he would show up at the dolphin tanks, the dolphins would immediately begin splashing around and chattering with excitement!

So next time you go to Sea World and take in a dolphin show, don't assume that the dolphins are performing all those neat tricks just for fish!

Re:The New Kansas Cirriculum

[sumdumass]

Well, gravity probably isn't a myth but is what we think that causes gravity a myth?