Some links I found interesting since the last time… partly older stuff, though.
- already in 2010, Mitch from the Chemistry-Blog posted the Carreira letter
- On the way to tenure… or not:
- Sean Carrol for Cosmic Variance on How To Get Tenure at a Major Research University
- Terran Lane On Leaving Academia
- Radhika Nagpal on The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life
- I also liked the book A PhD is not enough: A guide to survival in Science by Peter Feibelman on how to succeed staying permanently in science
- Publishing:
- Brian Doyle for Kenyon Review on Rejection letters
- Roy F. Baumeister’s very useful Sample Cover Letter for Journal Manuscript Resubmissions ;-)
- Nature on Authorship: Who’s on first?
- Michael Nielsen on Three myths about scientific peer review. I like the Einstein quotation a lot!
- Joesph Esposito from the scholarly kitchen on Help! I’ve Been Plagiarized. I know how it is.
- Scientific paper on Big Science vs. Little Science: How Scientific Impact Scales with Funding by Fortin and Curry in PLOS one. Answer: little.
- Jeff Bezos on 37signals says that people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds.
- jasonya on Scientific paper easter eggs;-)
- This Is How Your Brain Becomes Addicted to Caffeine by Joseph Stromberg. In any case, if you are at it also read Michael Haft and Harrison Suarez on How to Make Perfect Coffee (in the “Health” section of The Atlantic:)
- If you are into Lifehacks etc, Cal Newport on how to Drastically Reduce Stress with a Work Shutdown Ritual
Notes on Disordered Matter 
Carsten, what are you doing to me! I’m getting ready to apply for junior faculty positions, and I just spent the morning reading about the shit show that is the tenure promotion process from one of your posts. Now it’s still morning, and I’m already terrified. :)
Jokes aside, thanks for posting. There are some real gems in there.
Hope all is well at home with the little ones and in lab with the bigger ones. Take care.
Alex, excellent news! The little ones are very happy so all is well:) The bigger ones mostly also! All the best for you and your science career, makes my day! Carsten
“How to Make Perfect Coffee” is extremly interesting. On a sidenote: What do you think of these Perovskite based solar cells? From 3.5% to 14% efficency from 2009 to end 2012 sounds like a good start. And they also mention the cheap prices of these cells. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517811/a-material-that-could-make-solar-power-dirt-cheap/#comments
Perovskite solar cells sound very interesting to me as well. I’d like to see a paper on their stability, though, as I heard (from someone I trust) they may not be so stable. I do not know any details, though, and therefore this rather vague point should not deter anybody at present;-)