30 October 2013

Quick Updates on a Thursday

It has been a busy week with lots of good news, some of which is impossible to convey in 140 character tweets, so
  1. I wrote an article as part of a series on Canada's science policy that Sarah Boon organized and coordinated to have published by iPolitics.
    1. The Friction Between Politics and Pure Science
      1. There are no comments, not even from trolls, on iPolitics, but quite a few people are thinking and talking about it on Twitter. Yeah!
      2. You can see links for the entire collection on John Dupuis' blog.
  2. Since that piece in iPolitics contains almost none of the nuance or exciting minutiae, some of you might be interested in a longer academic article that I published a year ago in Scientia Canadensis.
    1. Politics and Defence Research in the Cold War (you'll need a subscription or institutional access, but if you can't access it, send me an email).
      1. When I wrote that paper 2 years ago I hadn't quite sorted out Robert Uffen's role in the end of the DRB, so take that bit of the article with a grain of salt.
      2. What's that? You want even more minutiae than the article contains? I'm plugging away on the book manuscript, so you've got a year or more to wait for the thrilling sleep aid ... I mean institutional history.
  3. Speaking of the Defence Research Board, when I visited all the establishments across the country I noticed they had a few artifacts and pieces of material history lying around. Some of the establishments had created nice displays to show off to visitors, but other things were simply stored. It sounds like my attempts to connect the museum professionals I know with the DRDC people I met may result in the preservation of some important material history in the coming years. Given how poorly things are going at Library and Archives Canada with the preservation of archival and documentary records (that I used almost exclusively), it's nice to know something might be collected and made available to historians and the public.
  4. And finally, I have been at the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre for a couple of days short of a year now, and I will be there until the end of May next year, at the very least. With free agency opening today in my favourite sport of lacrosse, I feel like I probably should have held out for a franchise player designation, or at the very least a handsome signing bonus. Sports analogies aside, I'm happy to be continuing my work at the RGASC.
    1. Aside from the ongoing workshops and courses I'm organizing, I'm excited about an upcoming event. Since I'm one of those people with a PhD who is employed outside the tenure track, who also happens to help graduate students prepare for a variety of careers, it's fitting that I get to talk to graduate students about the layers of my experience at the School of Graduate Studies' Opening Doors event.

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