By Chronicle Vitae. Questions …
I’m First Author, But I Always Get Last Billing. Q (from zmartine): More than a third of my first-author papers are co-authored, either with one or two other people. Unfortunately, my last name begins with a Z, and the convention is to list co-first authors alphabetically, so I am always listed last among the first authors. My solution thus far has been to list authors on my CV in the order in which they are listed on the paper and include an asterisk by each listing leading to an italicized comment that says "Authors contributed equally." More...

By Jennifer Polk - Chronicle Vitae. I value the independence I have as a self-employed person. It was one of my favorite things about being a Ph.D. student, and later about being a freelancer. Although I considered working full-time for an employer, the closest I ever came to that was when I took on as many shifts as I could at the bookstore during my summers as an undergrad.
I love having the freedom to arrange my own life and labor. As long as the work gets done, the details are largely left up to me, always. When I work, where I work, how I structure my workday are all things I can control, and this has been true for me for many years. More...

By Justin E.H. Smith. There is a great die-off under way, one that may justly be compared to the disappearance of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, or the sudden downfall of so many great mammals at the beginning of the Holocene. But how far can such a comparison really take us in assessing the present moment?
The hard data tell us that what is happening to animals right now is part of the same broad historical process that has swept up humans: We are all being homogenized, subjected to uniform standards, domesticated. More...