Thank you, Philip Kelly of Ottawa, who I can only assume is either a reader of this blog or one of the 17 people who regularly tuned in to watch me on CBC's Project X. The recent publication of your letter to Esquire magazine's editors nominating me for the title "semifamous, sexy, supersmart babe" (and the editors' subsequent decision to award me said title, given that no other nominations for this possibly fictional category were received) has brought much pride to this household.  It is proof that a Young Nerd can overcome buck teeth and a terrible habit of eschewing hair-brushing in favour of book-reading to see the day when a tiny photo of her head occupies 2 square centimetres of men's magazine real estate, in the section after the masthead and before the real magazine that people tend to read while using the bathroom. Next stop, an inch-high body shot hidden behind a subscription card in Maxim.

This is not my first foray into the realm of sexy geekdom.  Indeed, readers of Wired.com might have noticed my presence on their Sexiest Geeks 2008 poll. If, that is, they scrolled very, very far down. When I was first made aware of my presence on the list, I was occupying something like 361st position. I seem to have worked my way up to around 120th since then, but I am still well behind Richard Stallman, Subcomandante Marcos, and a dude that built himself a robot girlfriend.

I am bemused by the honours, if only for the fact that it means my 8th grade decision to begin brushing my hair on a more regular basis eventually paid off.  Inclusion into the ranks of hot nerddom, however, does raise a point that I think merits discussion - is the "sexy geek" label a help or a hindrance?

In my eyes - my big, brown soulful eyes, rimmed with dewy lashes and batting coquettishly in your general direction, Dear Reader  (I jest. I just had a cat hair stuck in my eye) - it depends.

Take the women that placed 2nd and 4th in the official Wired.com 2008 contest - Marina Orlova and Jade Raymond. Orlova is an attractive Russian-born philologist (sorry Philip Kelly and other Pips, this does not mean she studies Phils - her interest is in historical linguistics) who sports two degrees and two perfectly-formed breasts, which are accented with lingerie and displayed to great prominence on her website, hotforwords.com. Raymond is a stunning Canadian computer programmer and occasional television host best known for her role as lead producer of one of the most popular video game titles of recent years, and has yet to appear online in anything less modest than a tank top and cardigan.

Popular opinion would hold that the bustier-clad videoblogging vixen who releases daily videos of her lolling about on her bed, purring words like codswallop and pecksniffian, would be the one whose reputation would suffer (the validity of this assumption is a debate in and of itself, of course). Instead, it's been the polished, polite and professional producer whose good looks have led to controversy.

While Orlova's dedicated efforts at self-promotion have parlayed sexy wordsmithery into a cottage industry and built an internet-wide legion of admirers, Raymond's mere existence has sparked a wave of backlash. Her detractors - let me rephrase that, her pecksniffian detractors -  have long claimed she's nothing more than a pretty face who has very little input into the games she produces (this, of course, is sheer codswallop), and in 2007 this culminated with Raymond as the subject of a vile, offensive and graphic comic that was widely circulated around the web.

Teasing apart the myriad reasons why the internet has reacted so differently to these two strong, intelligent, and beautiful women is a PhD thesis unto itself. Does it have to do with how much "sex" you inject into "sexy"? Is it a matter of self-promotion? Or is it the simple fact that philology fans are a much more affable crowd than gamers ? I don't know.  

What I do know is that this sexy geek is taking the Jade Raymond route and sticking to modest clothing. I'm supremely ill-suited for sex kitten nerditude. The only cleavage I have is enzymatic in nature, gartered stockings look more like fishing waders on me, and after all of these years, I'm still not all that great with the hairbrush.

I have just become a Twit.

Well, technically I've become a "Tweep" - one of those people on Twitter - but I can barely bring myself to type a word as twee as Tweep, let alone vocalize it. So a Twit I shall be.

I'd previously thought of myself as a reasonably early adopter of technology .  My favourite plaything when I was 4 was our family's Commodore 64 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64), at which I'd spend long hours playing Space Taxi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Taxi). By kindergarten I had become an ace Logo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)) programmer, able to guide my trusty turtle into drawing any regular polygon, and throughout school we had a series of Macs, in front of whose monochromatic glow I would sit for hours, trying to find Carmen Sandiego or making dot-matrix greeting cards in Print Shop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Print_Shop).  I was on the internet in 1994, had my first website by 1996, joined Friendster before "to Friendster" became a verb, left Friendster for MySpace at the first sign of a sinking ship, and left MySpace for Facebook when all the blinking pink sparkle graphics became too much.

But Twitter? I couldn't quite see the point of broadcasting 140-character status updates about the minutiae of my life to what I assumed would be an uninterested audience: 5:02 a.m. - Awoken by cat attempting to make love to the duster. 8:34 a.m. - Wonder how husband can pack a band's worth of gear into a van but can only manage to fit two dishes and a pot in the dishwasher. 9:02 a.m. - Prolonged work stoppage due to cat's placement of its butt between my face and the monitor and cat's refusal to move.
I finally caved this week, though, and became a Twit. It was partially my editor's fault - after having what seemed like the majority of my social circle badgering me to join Twitter for the last few years, his just happened to be the request that pushed me over the edge. Probably because he issues me paycheques whilst the rest of my social circle does not.

Mostly, however, I joined as a preventative measure. I live in fear of becoming a technodinosaur, and any web or gadget trend I fail to embrace, or at least half-heartedly attempt, brings me one step closer to being That Person. The one who types hunt-and-peck style.  The one who refers to their own computer as "the internet". The one who actually believed Ted Stevens when he said "the internet is a series of a tubes" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes).
Just before my editor's plea for me to join the Twitter Army arrived in my inbox (or before it "downloaded to my internet screen" for any technodinosaurs that might be reading this), I was guest lecturing to a group of 4th-year microbiology students and it was there that I realized that even tech-savvy me is in real danger of being trampled by the next generation and their aptitude for computers, gadgets and Web 2.0 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0).

When I started my B.Sc. over a decade ago, taking notes in a 4-colour clicky pen and having a small ruler handy was considered the very height of technological sophistication. Professors lectured using markers and an overhead projector, and we checked our campus e-mail on Unix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix)  terminals in the library basement, using Pine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(e-mail_client)) for e-mail and the text-only Lynx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)) for web browsing (yes, children, once upon a time the internet did not have pictures.)

These days, all but the most reluctant lecturers use PowerPoint or other slideware to deliver their lectures, while their students listen in what may or may not be rapt attention. It's hard to tell when you're up there, because the students' faces are all obscured by their laptops and, for all you know, they're probably on Facebook. Or Twitter (11:42 a.m. - OMG am in lecture with Gardy. She has a LOLcat in her slides! LOL! Kawai! ^_^ )

They share their notes electronically, organize virtual study groups, and use their social networking sites to organize and promote parties and other campus events. They hack their iPhones to capture video and record lecture snippets, which can then be shared with anyone who overslept and missed class, and next they'll probably be using their phone's GPS to track which campus pub their friends are at.

It's a different era now, and if you don't jump in and participate in all this Web 2.0 stuff, you and the other Facebook deniers, Twitter haters, and Flickr phobes risk being left behind, as was nicely pointed out by a recent slate.com article (http://www.slate.com/id/2208678/). Keeping abreast of these trends is especially important for anyone involved in teaching today's kids, as the last thing you want to see on your RateMyProfessors.com (http://ratemyprofessors.com/) entry is a review uploaded (probably by iPhone) by one of your students... "LMFAO. Dude is such a n00b. Overheads? tl;dr. WTF?"   And while you're translating that, I'm off to tweet 140 characters about wrapping up another column for the week.

It's a postdoc bloodbath around here.

No, the university did not read my last entry and send a covert strike force to pick us off one by one, lest we foment a postdoc revolution led by an angry Boris the Zoo Bear. Rather, it's just the circle of life. Cue Lion King soundtrack.

There are, by my count, 13 postdocs/research associates in my lab (the geography nerd in me wants to point out that those 13 come from ten different countries - our lab is like "It's a Small World" without the boats and singing). It so happens that six will be departing in the coming months. This mass exodus has nothing to do with circumstances at the lab - the beer fridge is still full, the endless stream of cakes keeps coming, and the money keeps rolling in*. It's just that for about half the crowd, it's time to move on.

A postdoctoral fellowship is meant to allow freshly-minted PhDs the chance to pursue pure research, generally unencumbered by teaching duties or other bureaucratic obligations. It is a learning experience as much as a PhD is - you're expected to focus on a topic at least slightly different from your PhD work and to develop the skills required to be an independent investigator - forming and managing collaborations, writing grants, supervising people, and so forth. After N years of this, where N varies according to your field (in the biological sciences, it's typically 3-5), you're considered to be a mature enough scientist that you can be trusted to carry out your own research without doing something untoward, like diverting the funds from your equipment grant to set up a grow-up or using your lab's resources to clone people's dead pets as a side business. Given that an individual postdoctoral fellowship can last anywhere from a few months up to about three years, it usually takes about two fellowships to truly develop as a researcher (and to extirpate any desire to copy Fluffy and Fido for profit).

So where does one go once you're a mature researcher who's left their dog-duplicating days behind them?

Most people assume - incorrectly, I might add - that most science PhDs go on to set up labs at universities or related research institutes, where they spend the remainder of their days trying to obtain funding for their research projects, lecturing the odd undergraduate, and cultivating some sort of odd behaviour to differentiate themselves from the department's other boffins. In the biological sciences, at least, only about 25% of PhDs follow this route (a figure which is decreasing as the number of us who end up with PhDs because we refuse to get off campus steadily rises).

The other 75% of expired postdocs go ply their talents in some other area. Many go to industry, where they exchange their freedom to pursue any line of inquiry they desire for a steady job, nice benefits package and occasionally a company car. Some opt for the government route, while others choose to work in "science infrastructure" -  working as journal editors, managing funding agencies, or handling any of the other non-research tasks that are necessary to keep scientific progress plodding steadily forward.

Does opting for one of these other tracks make one a failure as a scientist? Hardly. There is a common misconception that anyone interested in science must surely want to run their own lab someday and do research all day long. In fact, there are many postdocs that are passionate scientists, but find other scientific career options to be more appealing - running a science centre, editing a high-profile journal, setting government science policy, or banging out columns on what academics do all day for newspapers.

There's a place for everyone in the sciences, and where you ultimately end up after your training depends upon your interests. If you do have your eye on the Principal Investigator route, however, I suggest you start developing that one unusual habit that will set you apart from your coworkers now. Have some absurdly high-waisted pants made up, take to changing out of your gym clothes in front of your office window, or insist that you be addressed as Dr. Fluffypants von Sciencehead.

And with that, I'll leave you for this week. Our lab is about to throw a send-off for Dr. Rainbowbutt McSupercloner and there's free beer.

*In case any concerned readers were wondering about the effect of the federal budget's Genome Canada-sized hole on my lab, which is partially funded by GC, this fiscal oversight does not mean that our lab staff is packing our belongings into cardboard boxes and turning in our keys as we shuffle sadly out the negative pressure doors for the last time, with only their "whooooosh" and "thump" to mark our departure. My boss and leading genomics researchers are not descending upon Ottawa looking for a bailout, and food bank lines across the country are not going to see a sudden rise in lab-coated techs looking for a box of KD. We're doing all right, but thanks for asking.

I was watching a program the other night called "Escape-Proof Zoos", something about how engineers are designing habitats that provide enriching environments for zoo animals whilst implementing enough safety features to avoid any unfortunate tiger versus tourist conflagrations. (In a completely gratuitous sidebar, not unlike this one, the program also featured a segment on rambunctious mink sex, which made me thankful I am a bioinformatician and not a mink sexologist).

Partway through the program, it dawned on me that "escape-proof zoo" was a rather fitting description for the life of a grad student or postdoc at the lab. We commit ourselves to spending a specified number of years in a sort of academic indentured servitude, from which there are very few ways out. During those years, there are more than a few parallels we can draw between our lives and that of Boris the Zoo Bear. Boris performs for his trainers on command; we perform for our supervisors on command. Boris is expected to loll about his enclosure, looking industriously beary for visitors and offering up the occasional snarl; we are expected to loll about our enclosure, busily working, analyzing and writing, lest the department head or any of our funders stop by unexpectedly. Boris's pen smells; our workbenches are a little ripe, too. Boris's keepers give him raw meat to keep him interested; ours toss the odd free pizza in our direction in an effort to do them same.

Boris, I would argue, probably has it a lot better than the average postdoc. Sure, his enclosure designers put up a big moat to keep him in forever - he'll never see the Eiffel Tower at night, never cheer on his team at a football game waving a big paw-sized foam finger, never munch on a delectable overfed tourist - but at least while he's in there he gets regular meals, vet checkups and fang-cleanings, and a large ball with treats hidden inside.

We get squat.

Most freshly-minted PhDs are excited to begin their first postdoc as it means a jump in salary - on the order of a $15,000-30,000/year increase over what a grad student is paid - and, at least at my university, you're now considered the F-word: faculty. The excitement of more money and a faculty parking pass is short-lived, however.  

As with grad school, postdocs are expected to apply for funding from external agencies to cover the majority of our salary, rather than relying on university-administered grants our supervisor already holds. Virtually every postdoc is successful in obtaining a sizeable amount of external money, which is often topped up slightly - maybe $5,000/year or so - by one's supervisor. These funds are then disbursed by the university's payroll department in the form of biweekly paycheques. Don't think that the fact that the university pays you means that you're an employee, though!

In fact, many universities have a policy stating that unless a postdoc's salary includes at least $X,000/year (at UBC, it's just over $15,000) from university-administered funding - not external funding that the postdoc found themselves - they are not a "true employee" and are thus not entitled to any benefits - no health care, no dental, no access to employee services, no maternity leave.   

This is tremendously unfair for a number of reasons, but perhaps you've already picked up on the two most significant. First, what postdocs want and what supervisors want are mutually exclusive. The postdoc wants enough university money to cross the magical $15k threshold, whilst the supervisor wants to keep that money for other purposes and have the postdoc fund themselves.  Both desires are valid, but guess who comes out on the losing end?

Second, this system hurts the best postdocs the most. Pretend for a moment that Doc and Dopey are both new postdocs. Doc had fantastic grades in grad school, is great at writing funding proposals, and was assigned a cutting-edge research project to work on. Dopey, on the other hand, had good grades, writes good enough proposals, and is working on something a little less glamorous. Their supervisor decides that Doc will be paid $35,000/year and Dopey will receive $30,000. Doc obtains an external fellowship worth $30,000, and the supervisor tops her up with $5,000 of lab money. Poor Dopey's fellowship application is rejected, though, so her entire $30,000 salary is paid out of lab money. This, however, puts her over the "true employee" threshold, so Dopey gets her $30k/year, full benefits for her and her family, and keeps getting paid while she goes off and gives birth to little Dopey Jr. Doc, meanwhile, ends up spending her extra $5k in salary to subscribe to a private health-care plan for her and her family and decides to put off having a baby until she gets a job in the real world.

A postdoctoral fellowship is a necessary evil in most areas of academia, something you're obliged to do if you want to work in research, so most postdocs grudgingly accept the fact that for the next few years of their life, they'll be stuck envying Boris the Zoo Bear, with his free vet checkups, maternity leave, and regular meat deliveries. At least we can take consolation in the fact that we can eventually escape from the zoo (more on that next week) and that, while Boris may have a relaxed and carefree lifestyle, his big fuzzy butt doesn't have a faculty parking pass.