3 for the price of 1!

The folks who organize the triennial International Symposium on Food Rheology would like you to be careful with your travel funds in 2012.  Instead of going to the Food Colloid conference in Copenhagen AND the Food Oral Proceesing Conference in Baune (France) AND the Rheology Congress in Lisbon, you can attend their conference in Zurich.

Hello Cleveland!

This year's SOR meeting will be in Cleveland, OH.  Any current or former children of Cleveland who would like to introduce their city to the readers of the blog, send me a note at rheolworldblog -at- gmail.com.  (I did some writeups for Santa Fe last year.)

Poll of the Month (July)

From the last post comes the current poll of the month.  Which is the best basic rheology book?

Jobs Report (July '11)

Keyword searches (rheolog*) conducted on July 3 found 39 jobs on Monster and 15 jobs on Careerbuilder.

The Wisdom of Crowds

A recent discussion at LinkedIn's SOR group asked which introductory rheology book was best.  This was the most popular discussion in recent memory.  People mentioned--

• The Rheology Handbook by T. Mezger (twice)
• Handbook of Elementary Rheology by H. Barnes (twice)
• Rheology: Principles, Measurements, and Applications by C.W. Macosko
• Understanding Rheology by F.A. Morrison
• An Introduction to Rheology by H.A. Barnes, J.F. Hutton, and K. Walters (twice)
• A Practical Approach to Rheology and Rheometry by G. Schramm
  (This book is self-published by ThermoFisher)
• Rheological Methods in Food Processing Engineering by J.F. Steffe and C.R. Daubert (twice)
• Bioprocessing Pipelines: Rheology and Analysis by J.F. Steffe
  (Both the Steffe books are available online for free download.)
• There was a mention of a book by K. Walters; it's either the one co-authored with Barnes listed above or Rheology: An Historical Perspective co-authored with R.I. Tanner

Breaking Radio Silence

I'm back with a some new posts over the next few days.  I haven't posted, because, to bluntly put it, there hasn't been anything I'd like to discuss.

Jobs Report (May '11)

A keyword search (rheolog*) conducted on May 7 found 36 jobs on Monster and 18 jobs on Careerbuilder.  Embedded links now go to the keyword search instead of the front page.

One position that is advertised on both sites is a senior-level food scientist position at ConAgra Foods.   A knowledge of dough rheology is included in the position qualifications.

Quotation of the Moment: Evaluation Time

At ConAgra, we are approaching the end of the fiscal year, which means performance reviews.  As I was working on mine today, I thought of this rant from Dr. Cox in the TV show Scrubs--

I wanted you to think about yourself...And I mean really think! What are you good at? What do you suck at? And write it down. Not so I could read it, or anyone else could read it. But so you could read it! You see in the end, Newbie, you don't have to answer to me, or to Kelso, or even to your patients, for God's sake! The only one you have to answer to Newbie, is you! There, you are evaluated. Now get out of here, because you truly make me so damn mad I might just hurt myself!

 (Season 1: My Fifteen Minutes)

Of Course You Can Use The Instrument

A colleague sent an email today asking if he could use instrument X to test sample Y.  For some reason, the email activated my obnoxious side.  I told my colleague that asking the testing question was similar to asking "can I sue someone?"  The answer is the same.  You can always sue someone (at least, in American courts), the better question is whether you'll win.  The same thing applies to instrument testing.  You can always put the sample on the instrument; whether you get good data is another question.

Quotation of the Moment: Dr. Jones Lectures

"Quicksand is a mixture of sand, mud, and water, and depending on the viscosity, it's not as dangerous as people sometimes think."
--Dr. Henry Jones Jr., in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

(Video can be seen here, in a Slate presentation on quicksand.)