Well, here's an interesting piece of news from the tech world:
"The best city for women in tech, according to the research, is Washington, D.C. In the nation's capital, about 37 percent of tech jobs are filled by women—compared with a national average of about 25 percent—and women in tech, on average, earn 93.3 percent of what men do. Perhaps that's not hugely surprising, given that an analysis of the Inc. 5000 showed Washington, D.C., to be the best city for women entrepreneurs."
Granted, that comes from the middle of this Slate.com article, but still, the overall article is a pretty good (and hopeful) read.
So who needs Silicon Valley anyway?
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An old friend of more than 30 years does SQL Server consulting in the DC area. I go to Bethesda annually to NIH, and we stayed with Phil and his wife for a couple of days. We were talking, and he said that I could easily make $120k there just doing DBA consulting. If I were younger and not married, I’d go for it but I knew when I got married and moved to Southern NM that the good jobs would be few and far between. An astronomer’s job just isn’t that portable.
Haven’t you heard? Light pollution is a myth. @=)
What type of work does the SO do?
She’s the head astronomer/observing specialist for the 3.5 meter at Apache Point Observatory. She also runs a program called APOLLO, where she shoots a laser through the telescope and bounces it off of five retroreflectors on the moon. And she was the final segment of a 2008 episode of Mythbusters where they debunked claims that man never landed on the moon.
She’s lots of different kinds of awesome.
I saw that segment! That was her? WONDERFUL.
She has the BEST job EVAH! Only thing that would make it more awesome is being able to go up to the moon itself whenever she wanted to.
Teleport, anyone?
Teleport, phah! TARDIS!
It was shot in the spring of ’08 and unfortunately I couldn’t be there, I had to go to Phoenix to get some work done for an upcoming surgery. She said they were a hoot to work with, though Adam had problems with the altitude: it’s at 9,200′. He apparently was doing magic tricks during down time to entertain people.
Originally they were thinking about building their own lunar laser ranging operation, then they found out what all was involved and decided to find an active operation, and not to brag, but the one my wife runs is the best.
The Big Bang Theory ep where they do lunar laser ranging? Either their writers or scientist attended a talk by the head scientist of the program who teaches at UCSD, thus the ep segment and lots of jokes for us.
I made a ten minute documentary on it at my photography web site, waynewestphotography dot com, it’s on YouTube and linked on my index page. There’s also lots of observatory photos in the gallery.