A cool job description by the one running APOD (Astronomy picture of the day). Copied from http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=23066

APOD Graduate Student Research Assistantship

Post by RJN » Thu Mar 03, 2011 4:12 pm

Applicants are sought for a graduate student research assistantship opening in the Department of Physics at Michigan Technological University. The successful applicant will be expected to complete courses and research for a Ph D. in astrophysics while supporting the production of the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) website. Key attributes sought in applicants include a desire to produce original research and to effectively communicate astronomy and astrophysics to the public.

Interested potential applicants should send an initial email to Prof. Robert Nemiroff (nemiroff at mtu dot edu) mentioning their interest and background. Dr. Nemiroff’s research interests include the investigation of gamma-ray bursts, cosmology, sky monitoring, and gravitational lensing. If encouraged to proceed, applicants should complete all of the application requirements found at the Michigan Tech’s Dept. of Physics website found here: http://www.phy.mtu.edu/physicsgradprog.html . Additionally, applicants should submit an original science or science-fiction writing sample. Preference will be given to applicants with research interests in common with Prof. Nemiroff. For background on Prof. Nemiroff’s research interests, please see http://www.phy.mtu.edu/faculty/Nemiroff.html and http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-a … &version=1 . Applications completed before March 30 may also be given preference. – RJN

Recently there was a joke on xkcd on ways to die. The idea is that one types in ‘died in a skydving accident’, or ‘died in a snorkling accident’ and then counts the number of hits Google returns. So _of course_ I entered the >first< line of that list ‘died in a skydiving accident’ and surprisingly enough Google was so kind to directly jump to the end of the list and return an entry on ‘died in a blogging accident’. Jezz, verry funny indeed 🙂