evolgen

This post is part of a series documenting Professor Steve Steve's recent visit to Philadelphia for the Drosophila Research Conference (aka, the Fly Meeting).

Professor Steve Steve had a wild Saturday night. He was quite happy to have met leaders in the fields of evo-devo, population genetics, and genomics. Of course, Steve Steve is a pioneer in popula-devo-geno-metrics, so everything that came up in discussion was old-hat to him. That said, it was definitely a night to remember. And a morning to forget.

Pictures of Steve Steve at the Sunday plenary session and on the drive home can be found below the fold.

Steve Steve and I returned to the hotel room very late Saturday night (or early Sunday morning depending on your perspective). That, coupled with the time change, got both of our clocks really screwed up. Thankfully, we did not have to drive the next day. But we did need to wake up in time to see Mohamed Noor give a talk at 9:00 AM -- Steve Steve tells me that the field of speciation genetics is "flat dope" (his words, not mine). It also didn't help that Prof. Steve's sleeping arrangements were far from spectacular.

According to Steve Steve, the last time he slept that poorly was at a conference on circadian existentialism while he was pursuing his PhD in philosophy (one of five doctorates he holds). To make it up to him, I told Steve Steve he could make a phone call to his department chair to request a longer sabbatical and charge it to my room account.

After a quick shower (separately, I may add), Steve Steve and I headed down to the auditorium for Mohamed Noor's talk. As you can see by all the empty seats in the picture below, not many people make it to the talks at 9:00 AM on Sunday morning. Steve was especially excited to be sitting in front of Michael Ashburner, but when Prof. Steve asked to be photographed with the Drosophila geneticists, Ashburner replied, "You've got to be kidding. No way."

Despite Ashburner's cold response, Steve Steve was unfazed. You can even see him waving at Michael in the photo above. Mohamed Noor was not nearly as standoffish. Here is Steve Steve posing with Dr. Noor after his presentation on chromosomal rearrangements and speciation in Drosophila pseudoobscura.

We bid Mohamed fairwell (he had to run off and find a McDonald's) and packed up our stuff into the car. It was a highly productive conference, but Steve Steve and I were worn out -- you'd be too if you had spend three days in the lobby of a Marriott hotel being treated like crap by the staff. We picked up some gas along the PA Turnpike, and, to pay us back for our hospitality, Steve Steve offered to run the pump.

When we got back to Central PA, Steve Steve was eager to do some fly pushing, but we didn't have much time. The life of an in-demand panda trained in evolutionary biology causes one to travel quite a bit. Steve Steve was able to hang around Central PA for a couple of days before he had to head to Iowa to meet back up with Tara.

Up next: Steve Steve in the fly room.