But first, a quick request for information for anyone who happens by: where you live, what is the job market like for Ph.D. Geologists (with a background in stratigraphy, mining, and petroleum, among other things) and what kind of opportunities for non-medical biotechnology graduate programs are in your local colleges?<\/p>\n
(And a quick side-question: is it obvious to most people that you get extra information if you hover over or click on things that look like this<\/span>? I’ve never formally checked the usability of this trick for normal people…)<\/p>\n No login required to answer – they’ll appear as soon as I’ve filtered out any spam. Okay, on with the meat of this post.<\/p>\n In case anyone’s wondering what the “Epicanis” handle is all about: it’s a pun on the concept of “Dog Philosophy”, based on the name of the famous Greek philosopher “Epicurus” and the word “Canis”. Yes, I know, “Canis” is Latin, not Greek, but I figured “Epicanis” would be more a more recognizeable pun to most people than “Epicynus”.<\/p>\n Properly defining “Dog Philosophy” involves a joke which necessarily incorporates mild profanity and adult situations. In case any of the readers are of more delicate sensibilities, I present instead a more matter-of-fact (but sadly less funny) version.<\/p>\n Plato once famously wrote that dogs were philosophers. Like all philosophers that I know of, dogs consider the nature of what is real (metaphysics). To the dog, everything that exists external to the dog can be assigned to one of four categories:<\/p>\n and<\/p>\n You may wonder what that has to do with “Applied Empirical Naturalism” or science blogging.<\/p>\n The explanation is simple: science is fundamentally a method for examining the natural world to determine how and why it works. That’s what I like about science. One can find novel or unexpected applications of any system or thing by learning how and why they work<\/span>, or in other words, it’s a method for, among other things, taking things from the “useless” category to one of the “useful” categories. Finding ways to make otherwise-useless things beneficially useful for people strikes me as a particularly rewarding purpose in life.<\/p>\n In addition to wanting to make the world a better place, I’m also kind to puppies and kittens and I think people should be nicer to one another.<\/span><\/p>\n (This shameless display of sympathy-solicitation has been brought to you by my participation in the following competition:)<\/p>\n\n