Two for one, and, how cool is your job?

This morning, snow was falling as I walked across campus to my building. It was a light and powdery snow with fairly large flakes -- the perfect type of snow for a morning walk. It fell onto green grass and brightly colored trees, creating a light white dusting on the gold, orange, and maroon leaves. Apparently winter has come to visit, but autumn is still going strong. It felt like we were getting the best of both seasons.

Here's an amusing side note: one of my compsci friends has a theory that I thought some of you might enjoy. The theory is that any academic discipline can be rated along a "coolness" scale where a discipline receives a higher ranking as the potential for that discipline to be the career choice of an evil villian in a movie/comic book rises. This scale shifts over the years as people adjust their fears about the future.

So, for example, computer scientist? Definite potential for a villian's career...if you're going the robotics/AI route. Geologist? Not so much...at least yet. Nuclear physicist? Uh, yeah. According to this scale, nuclear physics is currently cooler than computer science, which is cooler than geology. To my librarian friends, I apologize on behalf of this ranking system.

For now at least, the scale doesn't allow for my discipline to be ranked at its full potential. But just wait until I obtain funding to train killer bees...:)