People are generally gross.

ION I had an awesome dream last night. I had come into money some how and wasn't working, but had just stayed in a small house and kept that aspect of life the same. What I had done that was ridiculously fabulous was buy up small rental properties and kept them FOR MY STAFF. I had a cook and a hair/makeup person and a gardner in this older middle income suburban home.

I have to admit I thought that wasn't real. Cause when it first launched there were a few "Ooh, terrible things on theINTERNET!" stories about it. They missed an opportunity not naming it meandmrsjones.com

I think the real number 1 for both is "International Secret Agent", but, of course, they have to make up some other profession to actually write down.

Waste management(wink...because you don't post about Our Thing) Ad executives

Doesn't that list just seem like professions than women and men are most likely to hold?

Either way, watch out for those real estate agents!

ION, today's xkcd made me snort my coffee and now my sinuses are caffeinated: [link].

Teppy beat me to it. I was just catching up to post a link to that. And, yeah, the mouseover text FTW as smonster said.

Sad about Corey. I'm not surprised, but I thought it would have been Feldman first, not him.

Mom worked in title in the '80s...her assessment matches "Ashley's" It sounds like that business was fairly often like Sterling-Cooper without the cachet.

Watch a dissertation defense...LIVE

Do you like prairie voles? Are you curious about the process of earning a Ph.D.? Possibly just a touch of both?

Then tune in today, starting at 10 central, for what Science magazine's Science Careers Blog is calling the first live-streamed dissertation defense (at least, that they've ever heard of).

The adventurous academic is Danielle Lee of the University of Missouri, St. Louis. The dissertation is entitled: An Investigation of Behavioral Syndromes and Individual Differences in Exploratory Behavior of Prairie Voles, Microtus ochrogaster. There was some talk of live Tweets as well. However, Lee says she won't be Tweeting, herself, during the defense (that would be just a little crazy multi-tasky, wouldn't it?), but she is up for answering your questions once everything has been successfully defended. Just Tweet them with the hashtag #LeeDefense. Good luck, Danielle!

Sad about Corey. I'm not surprised, but I thought it would have been Feldman first, not him.

I watched a little bit of "The Two Coreys" when it aired and Corey F. seemed to have pulled his shit together very well and was genuinely frustrated at his inability to help Cory H. There are clips on YouTube.

I think I have to buy this book....

Better Than Apollo: The Space Program We Almost Had

SAN FRANCISCO — In the late 1950s, American space companies jumped into a headlong race to build an aerospace industry that could launch missiles across the world and rockets above it.

In her new book Another Science Fiction, archivist Megan Prelinger delves into the hyperbolic, whimsical world of the advertisements these early aerospace companies created to sell themselves.

Far from the dry, technical ads you might imagine, companies like Northrup, Ex-Cell-O, and National tried to lure the most talented young engineers into their cubicles by drawing on the mystique of science fiction. Ball-bearing, engine-part, and guidance-system companies didn’t sell themselves, but rather the grand vision of space exploration as the next step in mankind’s destiny.

The book is lovingly crafted and exhaustively researched. Unlike so many “big idea” tomes that skip over the details to deliver the PowerPoint version of reality, Another Science Fiction glories in the details, providing a complex portrait of the nation’s spacefaring ambitions. Prelinger’s analysis reaches outside the narrow confines of space boosterism to reveal the neural connections in the American psyche between the final frontier, the Soviet menace, and good, old industrial engineering.

We caught up with Prelinger at the wonderfully strange library she runs with her husband, Rick, to ogle old space stuff and discuss countercultural space utopias, alternatives to Apollo, and her hopes for a human spaceflight renaissance.

Sometimes I think I'd be happiest if I had been born 25 years earlier, and had worked for NASA in the '60s....