Where you go to college matters...

Barry Leiba (a fellow Indy Science Blogger) has an interesting discussion on whether it matters where you go to college. If you are a good student, does the success of your future career really depend on where you go?

Barry makes some good points about this issue from the persepctive of someone working as a computer scientist for a tech company. I think much of what he says applies to academia as well - if you browse through the faculty pages of top university science departments, you'll see most people in those departments got their PhDs in top schools. I think a good student from just about any serious 4-year college could get into a good graduate science program, but where you do your graduate work has a big impact on your career prosepcts.

For another take on this issue, looking at law schools, check out Balkanization.

One thing I hate is top ten lists. Barry links to one he takes issue with. I take issue with the idea that ten is some magical number - that ten schools are somehow in a different league from the rest. I think a better number would be twenty - there are so many very good universities in the US and Canada, and a prosepctive student should take a broader look at what's out there.

Introducing Indy Science Blogs Part 2

I didn't get a chance earlier to introduce all of the fascinating blogs on the newly launched Indy Science blogs. So here are the rest of the introductions:

If you like robots, astronomy and rocketry, check out Ed at Robot Guy.

Barry Leiba is a researcher at IBM, and he writes about life, politics, and technology issues at Staring at Emtpy Pages.

Emily DeVoto is an epidemiologist who writes about health care and its relationship to the media at The Antidote - check out her recent post on evidence based medicine.

And The Rational Fool writes about...well...er, a whole lot of things - India, bioethics, economice, science, and Richard Dawkins - go check it out.

It's a diverse group, so you're guaranteed to find something you're interested in. Subscribe to the RSS feed and keep up with what's going on in the world of health and science.

Introducing Indy Science Blogs

This blog is part of the newly launched Indy Science Blogs - a group of science bloggers that coalesced in the wake of a mass rejection email from Science Blogs. Science Blogs didn't have the courtesy to blind cc the addresses of all the recipients, exposing our email addresses to dozens of strangers. Some of us strangers got together and formed the brand new Indy Science Blogs.

There are some great blogs at Indy Science Blogs. Visit the site, or check out some of my links to the right to see all the blogs. I'm just going to highlight a few:

The Beauty Brains has fascinating articles on the science of beauty products - if, like me, you like the intersection health and chemistry, or if, unlike me, you use many beauty products, check out this great blog.


Susan, a science writer over at Hug the Monkey writes about how "a single hormone called oxytocin is responsible for life's most fulfilling emotions: love, trust and commitment." Amazingly enough, it is possible to write a blog about a single hormone. Susan has some fascinating material on how the biology of the brain shapes who we are.

Trisha at Women's Health Research News writes about research relating to birth control, pregnancy, osteoporosis, and just about any other health issue that concerns women.

And Sibin at Context Switch is a PhD student in computer science who writes about whatever strikes his fancy, and happens to like Thomas Pynchon as well.

There are more blogs I haven't mentioned - head on over to Indy Science Blogs to see the rest.

And for you newcomers here - what's this blog about? You should know two things about me:

- I am almost completely HTML illiterate, which is why this blog doesn't have any fancy bells and whistles.

- Infant twins + seven-year old = not enough time left for blogging. It's been a hectic year, but now that sleep is more available in our house as the twins get older, I will pick up the pace here at Adaptive Complexity.

Here I write about my interests in the hope that some of those interests overlap with your interests:

- the future of basic research in biology - what do we want to learn now? Is systems biology any good?
- conveying the latest research in genomics to the public who should know about the exciting things that are being done with their tax money.
- science in the media
- science in literature - not science fiction necessarily, but usually the kind of stuff you find in books by Thomas Pynchon or Richard Powers
- book reviews of popular science books
- defending science against absurd claims by anti-evolutionists and other cranks.

So have a look around, and come back for more if you like what you see. And go check out Indy Science Blogs!