Conference Spam

I get several emails a week like this:

The organizing committee is pleased to announce that the 2nd Annual World Congress of Nano-S&T (Nano S&T-2012), which will be held from October 26 to 28, 2012 in Qingdao, China. The congress will consist of 12 streamlines covering topics including: Nanosciences and Technologies, Nanomaterials, Analytical tools for Nanotech, Nano-electronics, Nano IT, Nanocoating, etc. This conference will bring together over 1000 experts and specialists from all over the world.

Based upon your contribution to the field of Nanotechnology, we invite you to give an oral presentation at Section 4-4: Etching Process about your recent work. Certainly, you can look through the program and select a session at your priority. We will be honored if you can deliver a speech during this event. Your involvement in this congress will be invaluable for the development of the program.

The full program with speakers’ profile and presentation’s titles will be released at the conference website in a few weeks so that you can know what specific subjects will be covered by the other speakers. You may log on: http://www.bitconferences.com/nano2012/program.asp.

I am pleased to send you a conference brochure about Nano-S&T2011 in the attachment.

We would be honored if you could attend the Nano S&T-2012 Conference.

I will appreciate it if you could forward this invitation letter to the experts who may be interested in us.

Sincerely yours,

Ms. Selina

Most of the "congresses" are in China or India and they are all on topics that have are totally unrelated to my work. I think most but not all of these conferences are intended as actual events, but the point of all of them is to collect registration fees.

Places where I may post postdoc ads

As a public service, here is the list I have assembled so far of places where post-doc ads may be placed (given of course the particular types of specialists I am looking for):

http://www.evolutionsociety.org/jobs.asp
http://www.sdbonline.org/archive/SDBNews/JobsIndexPostdoc.html
http://www.newscientistjobs.com/jobs/browse/biology.htm
http://www.sicb.org/jobs.php3
http://www.benthos.org/Classified-Ads/Jobs-offered.aspx
http://www.eseb2011.de/sponsoring.htm
http://www.evolution2011.ou.edu/sponsor_exhibition.html
http://www.thesciencejobs.com/category/fellowships
https://careers.chronicle.com/webbase/index.jsp
http://www.smb.org/jobs/index.shtml
http://www.math-jobs.com/?nav=employers&nav_sub=post_a_job
http://botany.org/newsite/employment/index.asp
http://www.postdocjobs.com/jobs/jobs2.php?subcatid=37&catid=2
http://evol.mcmaster.ca/cgi-bin/my_wrap/brian/evoldir/PostDocs/
https://listserv.umd.edu/archives/ecolog-l.html

Advertising

While I am sure there are Americans who consume fewer advertisements than I do, I'm sure there aren't too many. I don't watch TV or listen to commercial radio, I don't get the print versions of any magazines or newspapers and when I use the internet I use AdBlock, which pretty much means I see no online ads. I walk past a couple of billboards on my way to work, but they are in German, and generally for products or services I don't recognize, so I'm not sure I could be said to have consumed. Further, my opinion of the advertising industry hovers between my opinions of the fashion industry (inherently ridiculous and basically harmful) and the tobacco industry (murder for profit).

It therefore strikes me as somewhat ironic that most of my time this week seems to be consumed with advertising. I am advertising positions available and a summer course in evolutionary demography we will teach here at the Institute. So I write ads, consider how best to appeal to my target audiences, edit them, figure out where to place them, and so forth. Granted, these are very different kinds of ads than the one calibrated to make young women feel bad about wearing any shoes that don't draw blood, but it is still somewhat outside my core competency.