Conspiracy Factory: lab life

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

And you thought the post-docs in your lab were old...

Not to make any grad students cry, or anything, but...

This is an advertisement for the AAAS and the National Post-doc Association. They're actually trying to appeal to post-docs to join their organization. Check out how old they look. That woman in the back left? She could be 50. The woman in the center is at least 40. The guy in the red shirt is the only one who looks remotely the right age, and he's 30 if he's a day. And this is the organization that's supposed to be watching out for post-docs. Yowza. They're a little tone-deaf, if you ask me...

A Note About Google Ads

Google Ads seems to place the most obnoxious ads at the top of my blog. When I write a few posts about how acupuncture has been demonstrated not to work, it places an advertisement for acupuncture. When I write about creationist frauds, it puts up ads for creationist books (or more recently, for creationist movies).

I don't endorse these products. In many cases, I think it likely that the marketers are not only mistaken, but frauds.

I thought about taking these ads down, but instead, I'm leaving them there. I'm considering them an anthropology experiment for me, and my readers. It's a fascinating world out there. Feel free to comment on the ads and the products they are selling in the relevant posts.

I enjoy the irony that people like Ben Stein and Gary Null will be paying me to take Mrs. Factician out for a nice dinner (at current click rates, about once every 18 months).