Raytheon Red is soooo last year

So I was manning my employer's table at a career fair during a regional meeting of the Society for Women Engineers this afternoon. As a participant in the meeting I was entitled to one of the gift tote bags that were handed out. Along with the standard crappy pen, notepad and lens cleaner, I was dismayed? amused? bemused? to find this:

For those of you who are slightly confused, it's a pretty silver gift bag with sparkly bead dangles and, inside, nail polish and lipstick. Both in "Raytheon Red."

It seems to me that if we are to be taken seriously as female scientists and engineers, possibly our organizations should arrange for other gifts? My employer had me handing out small computer tool kits that the women who stopped by to talk with me were thrilled to get. Just saying.

Random internet stuff

Random stuff from the internets:

• "Scientists for better PCR" music video
• The next board game I'm going to buy
• PBS is showing all of the movie versions of Jane Austen's books, and we get to vote on which leading man is our favorite! Ah, PBS, educational as always. Now who will I choose...Hot Guy from MI-5? Or Ye Olde Classic, Mr. Darcy? Decisions, decisions.
  
• Shannon Hale interviews Libba Bray
• If you liked the idea of Buffy Season 8 in comic book form, you'll be thrilled to know that the same thing is happening with Angel
• Friend C found this for me, and I have to say, she was dead on that I want to do this to a future room in my future house
  

Boltzmann's brain

This is why I love physics so much.

Conversation with a three year old

I loved this little exchange.

Internet roundup

Just a few neat-o articles/websites to tickle your fancy on this Thursday night:

1. Great/poignant comic/social commentary
2. Extra emptiness in space
3. Diamonds nearly as old as the earth
4. More new creatures discovered in the ocean

And I have a new blogging idea. It has recently come to my attention that I take the stories a friend of mine tells me of her life and consistently embellish them wildly in my mind, only to regurgitate them to her later in some sort of uncrecognizable form. I'm thinking of actually writing out a biography of her life as I have remembered it (ok, and possibly with the addition of some blatant and vastly-more-conscious-embellishments) as a serial. Let me know what you guys think. I can already tell you what the first line of the biography would be, if it helps sway you in either direction:

"X was born on March 11th, the 15th child of a 15th child, already an aunt and already a grandmother."