Kate's parents live on the New Hampshire side of Boston, and we're down visiting for the weekend. This morning, I went downstairs with the tablet to do my morning blogroll in front of the tv while Kate slept in. I didn't really appreciate what being this close to New Hampshire meant for television. Oh. My. God. If I lived here full-time, I don't think I'd be able to watch tv at all. Every commercial break features at least one, if not two political campaign commercials. Within half an hour, I felt like I was drowning in smarm. There are advantages to living in a state with a late primary. As…

Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: The Identity Studies for Everyone The latest literary-studies fad: Age Studies. (tags: academia literature) village voice > art > Meet the East Village "It" Couple of Young-Adult Lit by Carol Cooper A profile of Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier, whose books you should go buy. (tags: books SF literature culture society writing) The 50 Most Loathsome People in America "35. Tim Russert Charges: [...] Impossible to watch him interview any woman on "Meet the Press" without fearing he'll suddenly waggle his…

I'm going to be in the Boston area this weekend, visiting Kate's family, so I will end up watching Saturday night's Giants-Patriots game with my Patriot-fan in-laws. In case you didn't know, New England is currently 15-0, and if they win this game they have the chance to be the first team to ever finish the regular season 16-0 (and the second to go undefeated in the regular season, after the 14-0 Miami Dolphins of 1972). Of course, if you don't know that, you're probably also a little hazy on the rules of football, so you probably want to give this post a miss, and go read something else. I…

In the same basic spirit as yesterday's knit cephalopod picture, here's a sign from Takayama that we really liked: I'm not sure exactly why the octopus has punched the fish to the moon, Ralph Kramden style, but Kate and I got a kick out of it. I'm also not sure what it says-- something to do with octopus (the first two characters of the top like are "ta ko" which is "octopus" in Japanese), and the first character of the third line generally means "big," but beyond that it's a mystery to me.

The Least Essential Albums Of 2007 | The A.V. Club "Every year produces great music and a nearly equal amount of terrible music. Then there's the not-so-creamy middle, the albums that have no real reason to exist, but nonetheless find their way to music-store shelves and online music stores." (tags: music review culture) The Best Books We Read In 2007 | The A.V. Club Genre fiction tops the list! (tags: books review culture) AFP: Priests brawl at Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus "Seven people were injured on Thursday when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests came to blows in a dispute over…

Here are the 22 five-star-rated songs that I added to my iTunes library in 2007 (aphabetcal by artist): "Rehab," Amy Winehouse "Antichrist Television Blues," Arcade Fire "Open All Night," Bruce Springsteen & The Sessions Band "Bottom of the Rain," Buffalo Tom "CC and Callas," Buffalo Tom "Sly," The Cat Empire "Gimme Some Motivation," Delta Spirit "Gasoline Drawers," The Holmes Brothers "Ruby," Kaiser Chiefs "Sugar Buzz," Li'l Cap'n Travis "Dashboard," Modest Mouse "The Road I Must Travel," The Nightwatchman "Lost to the Lonesome," Pela "Mr. Stupid," Richard Thompson "The Angels Hung…

One of the highlights of this year's Christmas haul: knitted cephalopods! That's an octopus and a giant squid, knitted from spun awesome by my sister's partner. The tentacles have pipe cleaners (or something) in them, so they're poseable. They're currently sitting on top of the tv, but they're not all that stable there. We'll find them a more permanent home after the holidays, when we reclaim our fireplace's mantel from the holiday cards. Thanks, Anastasia!

Changing Courses at the Food Network - New York Times No more Emeril Live, but still more Rachel Ray. (tags: food television culture society economics) Polarization technique focuses limelight Rayleigh scattering off small particles in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet produces a detectable polarization signal, and allows measurements of the size and composition of the atmosphere. (tags: astronomy physics optics science news planets) Matthew Yglesias (December 26, 2007) - Innumeracy (Media) The connection between innumeracy and bad journalism. (tags: academia math statistics…

Hey, Mike. Rough month, eh? You're doing all right in the polls at the moment, but just getting hammered from all sides in the blogosphere. You're getting blasted for denying evolution, but also for not denying it fiercely enough for Ann Coulter. People are none too happy about your ill-informed ideas about public health, or your attempts to link law and religion. And to top it all off, you got dogged by a seven-year-old girl. Dude, that's harsh. I'm here to help, though, Mike. I've got your back at ScienceBlogs. No, I don't actually agree with any of your goober-iffic views on science,…

I love getting toys for Christmas: Chateau Steelypips is now GPS-enabled. That's from our drive home last night (GIMPed to within an inch of its life, because the light level was really low)-- bonus points for anyone who can identify where it was taken. It's a Garmin c340, for those who want specs with their gadget photos. So, how does it work? Well, we've used it on exactly one drive, from my parents' house to here, and there's really only one way to go. At one point, the display said "Turn in 87 miles," which tells you just how hard it had to work on that trip... The directions it gave…

It was sort of amusing when people started doing kitsch holiday commercials in a CGI version of those old quasi-claymation holiday specials (Rodolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the like). I'm ok with hipster irony, at least to a point. It was a whole lot less amusing when somebody (I've forgotten who) did a commercial this year using the actual characters from the Rudolph special. If you want to ape the feel of the show, that's one thing, but keep your grubby hands off Yukon Cornelius. But now, they've really crossed the line-- ESPN's SportsCenter has been hyping the Patriots to the skies,…

The final installment from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! for this year: This is a Santa Claus figure walking his dog. Which, of course, is a reminder to everyone of the importance of talking to your pets about SCIENCE!!! Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it. The rest of you, have a great Tuesday.

The Muckraker's Progress: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com "[Bob Livingston] said he thought I was a bottom-feeder. So they called me for a comment and I said, 'Yeah, that's right, but look what I found when I got down there.' " --Larry Flynt (tags: politics US society stupid) scifantasy: Bimbos And Zombies, or Getting Away... He's a lot kinder to Sharyn McCrumb's fandom mysteries than I would be. (tags: SF books culture society review) YouTube - Principles of economics, translated The "stand-up economist" explains economic principles in simple language (tags: economics video…

Thanks largely to the leather canary, I've amassed a surprising number of non-sucky Christmas songs this year. There's some painful stuff in there, too, but most of the tracks on their mixes aren't likely to make you want to stab ballpoint pens through your eardrums. If you're in need of a holiday soundtrack, you could do a whole lot worse. The tracks added this year that rated four or five stars: fairytale of new york," the pogues w/ krsty maccoll "only you can bring me cheer," alison krauss "christmas comes but once a year," amos milburn w. charles brown "yeah, i know, it's christmastime…

E Y E W E A R: The Failure of Interest In Poetry In Our Time Today's nominee for Pompous Ass Comment of the Year: "The fact that poetry does not interest most people suggests most people are no longer interesting." (tags: academia culture poetry literature books) Christmas with Christopher Hitchens | The A.V. Club Speaking of pompous asses, here's an interview with one. (tags: culture society books journalism religion) Stewart and Colbert to Return Without Writers - New York Times The Good News: New episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert Report. The Bad News: It's not because the…

"Hey, dude. What's in the binder?" "Well, it's the first draft of my book. I finished it this morning, and printed it out to have a paper copy to look at." "Ooooh! The book about me?" "Well, it's a book about physics, featuring you. But yes, that's the only book I'm working on at the moment." "That's fantastic, dude. You're all done, and now I get to be famous!" "I wouldn't say I'm all done. In fact, I'd say that the work is really just getting started." "What do you mean?" "Well, for one thing, it's too long. The contract calls for 40,000 words, and this is a hair over 53,000. That's about…

Tomorrow, Kate and I will be heading off to Scenic Whitney Point to spend a few days with my family. Part of this will be the traditional Christmas Eve dinner with my father's side of the family (described in more detail below the fold). It occurred to me a little while ago that this is the one real tradition that I've never missed. At least, as far as I know-- it's possible that there was some year when I was an infant that we didn't make it to the Christmas Eve dinner, but as far back as I can remember, I've never missed one. Every year, we've gotten together with that side of the family,…

This one may not look like much, but it covers a lot of ground for the Tree of SCIENCE!!!: This ornament is built around a copper plaque, and copper is a very good conductor, which means it includes an element of solid state physics. The copper in the plaque is from the roof of the Library of Congress, which means that this stands for the publication and dissemination of scientific information. SCIENCE!!! can't function properly without wide distribution of results. Hey to Bora. Finally, the plaque is embossed with the quote "Too low they build who build beneath the stars," which again is a…

COROT surprises a year after launch Stellar seismology and a new extrasolar planet. (tags: astronomy news science planets) The quest for a new class of superconductors An article positing superconductors in which electrons pair up through something other than phonon interactions. (tags: physics science news low-temperature materials) Boston College physicists find new explanation for superconductivity's 'glue' An experiment claiming that hight-T superconductors have electrons that pair through spin interactions, not phonons. Also, hilarious self-promotion. (tags: physics news science…

It's been a rotten year for the Atlanta Falcons-- Michael Vick turned out to have even worse judgement than people had thought, and the team immediately went into a death spiral. Then, last week, their first-year head coach, Bobby Petrino (formerly of Louisville), announced that he was leaving to become the head coach at Arkansas, and basically snuck away in the middle of the night without talking to his players or the owner. Petrino, of course, is being savaged in the sports media, with William Rhoden of the New York Times going so far as to declare him worse than the steroid scandals in…