### Latex in Blogger

Let's see here...

\int x dx = \frac{1}{2} x^2 + C

Sweet! Blogger understands more LaTeX than I gave it credit for. The line above is created with:

Here are instructions on how to set up Blogger to do this (just drop snippet of code into the Template's HTML code after the <head> line).

I've been meaning to tell you that I got inspired by your class blogging experiments and am trying my own. This coincidence just iced it: check out today's post on my class's group blog, And There Was Light!

### An annual note to all the (NSF) haters

It's that time of year again: students have recently been notified about whether they received the prestigious NSF Graduate Student Research Fellowship. Known in the STEM community as "The NSF," the fellowship provides a student with three years of graduate school tuition and stipend, with the latter typically 5-10% above the standard institutional support for first- and second-year students. It's a sweet deal, and a real accellerant for young students to get their research career humming along smoothly because they don't need to restrict themselves to only advisors who have funding: the students fund themselves!
This is also the time of year that many a white dude executes what I call the "academic soccer flop." It looks kinda like this:

It typically sounds like this: "Congrats! Of course it's easier for you to win the NSF because you're, you know, the right demographic." Or worse: "She only won because she's Hispanic."…