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Links for 2010-06-20

Jason Sanford: Why science fiction predictions hold back the genre "In many ways, the idea that science fiction is about predicting the future is a remnant of the genre's past. During the 1940s and '50s, genre promoters pitched SF as a way to inspire and teach people about science and technology. And during the era of Sputnik and atomic bomb beauty pageants, perhaps this was the correct thing to do. But that time is long past. And while few writers and readers within the genre give more than lip service to science fiction being solely about predicting the future, the problem is that outside…

On the Fragile Suspension of Disbelief

I've already read three of this year's six Hugo-nominated novels, and am highly unlikely to read two of the remaining three, but since I have voting rights, and want to be as responsible as I can about this, I started on Palimpsest by Cat Valente last night. The language is very rich, and I'm not far enough in yet to tell if it will eventually develop a plot, but I was jarred very badly by one early section, in which a Japanese character visits a Kyoto landmark, the Silver Pavilion: The temple grounds were deserted. She settled onto the grass a ways off from the great silver temple. She…

Other people get mail

It's not just me! Other people get strange messages, like the one forwarded to me below. Have fun with it. The author, Don Pribor, is a member of the biology faculty at the University of Toledo. You really must read his research statement. Many Scientific Thinkers Reject Evolution (not published) By Don Pribor There has been much public discussion of fundamentalist, literal interpretations of Christianity that deny evolution. I have not seen any public discussion of how many scientific thinkers believe in a literal…

Humes on the talk-radio version of evolution

Edward Humes, the author of Monkey Girl, has an excellent op-ed in the Lawrence Journal-World. The talk-radio version had a packed town hall up in arms at the "Why Evolution Is Stupid" lecture. In this version of the theory, scientists supposedly believe that all life is accidental, a random crash of molecules that magically produced flowers, horses and humans — a scenario as unlikely as a tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747. Humans come from monkeys in this theory, just popping into existence one day. The evidence against Darwin is overwhelming, the purveyors of talk-radio evolution rail…

Just be sure to put Jesus in the list of authors!

Our old pal Kazmer Ujvarosy of the American Chronicle has a long and boring rant against the whole system of peer review. There's nothing really new in it; we know peer review is flawed, and practically every scientist can give you gripes about cronyism and bad reviewers and yadda yadda yadda, but at the same time, no system is ever going to be perfect, and we work within the bounds of what is effective. Ujvarosy, of course, is peeved because creationism doesn't get any respect in the science journals. Changes to the policies of review, however, won't change the fact that Intelligent Design…

Hiaasen For Kids

I very recently reviewed Carl Hiaasen's novels. Among his fiction are two books that are written explicitly for kids. Looking just at Hiaasen's titles it may be hard to pick them out from the pack, so I'm making a special reference to them here. They are called "Hoot" and "Flush." Details follow: Hoot Roy Eberhardt is the new kid--again. This time around it's Trace Middle School in humid Coconut Grove, Florida. But it's still the same old routine: table by himself at lunch, no real friends, and thick-headed bullies like Dana Matherson pushing him around. But if it wasn't for Dana…

New Global Warming Predictions: Bad news and really bad news.

One item is just published in the Journal of Climate. Simply put, the use of some very sophisticated and probably quite trustworthy models suggests that extratropical cyclones (so this means winter storms and such, mainly) will have a good deal more precipitation in them. In the model ... ... There is a small reduction in the number of cyclones but no significant changes in the extremes of wind and vorticity in both hemispheres. ... The largest changes are in the total precipitation, where a significant increase is seen. Cumulative precipitation along the tracks of the cyclones increases by…

Birding Binoculars

I am not an expert on binoculars, but that is not going to stop me from giving you some excellent advice. Wildlife watching requires binoculars, and although I'm focusing on birding here, everything we're talking about applies generally. So this advice may be useful for your Safari to Africa where birds will be only one component of your viewing. Here are a few guidelines that I've found to be useful. I'd love to see people add comments. 1) The person in the store knows crap. 2) Bigger binoculars will always be optically better all else being equal. In other words, whatever you are…

An important deduction regarding the Minnesota Senate recount

Eric Black of MinnPost Dot Com has made an interesting observation. Last week the three judge panel charged with hearing Norm Coleman's "Election Contest" (that's a thing ... an election contest is a kind of suit claiming that an election did not go properly) finished their job. They ruled against some of Coleman's claims, but they did count extra ballots as Colman had insisted. That addition of new ballots -- all absentee ballots -- resulted in Franken's lead growing. From that ruling, the plaintiff has ten days to file an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. The appeal itself is a…

Example of Bad Science News Deployment: Caffeine - Leukemia Link

In an astonishing demonstration of the evils of Marketing in a Research University Context, the University of Leicester today announced that an upcoming research project would find a link between coffee consumption by pregnant women and leukemia to develop later in their offspring. This is a statement made by scientists involved in the Research That Has Not Yet Been Done: Although there's no evidence at all of a link between caffeine and cancer, we're putting two and two together and saying: caffeine can induce these changes and it has been shown that these changes are elevated in leukaemia…

The Minnesota Recount is Over

As many of you have already heard, the recount process in Minnesota to determine the outcome of the Senatorial race is over, and Al Franken has been certified as winner. There is now a review period of seven days during which any voter in the state of Minnesota. Including me, Al Franken, whomever, can sue for an Election Challenge. Although both Secretary of State Ritchie and I have expressed the opinion that Norm Coleman, who lost the race, is unlikely to issue such a challenge, the press and even Coleman's lawyers have suggested that a challenge will in fact be filed by three o'clock…

Franken-Coleman Recount: The count, what's next, and what you need to do ...

I have a little more information and some exact numbers for you. First, some of the numbers. The number of votes per candidate not counting Minneapolis 3-1, which has a packet of missing votes currently being searched for: Franken: 1,210,285 Coleman: 1,210,995 The number of votes per candidate including Minneapolis 31's results from the machine count: Franken: 1,211,375 Coleman: 1,211,590 Regardless of anything you've heard or read, this second set of numbers is exactly how this recount started ... with Franken behind by 215 votes. Then we have the number of votes per candidate after the…

Snow, Loons, Eagles, Otters bloody with fish

The lake is icy-green and in the distance almost blends into the sky through a fast moving fog bank. The bald eagles (a pair and one offspring) are up to something in the back, one of them making swings over the bay and then back into the yard where they are vocalizing quite a bit. The pair of loons that always nests on the point a few hundred meters across the bay have changed to their winter plumage and are actively feeding just outside the cabin, and have been for two days. This year, they did not successfully raise an offspring, which is unusual. so we didn't get to see the cute baby…

A poem for Open Access Day

Open Access Day They said: "if you publish in an open forum your paper'd be rubbish and clearly hokum" "pub's commercial know how to review with the peerage, how to make data flow and hurdles clearage" "limited space on the page with every new edition so few make the passage, it's editorial selection!" "we have always done and it's never been changed the readers we dunn and the paper's in chains" "what is ought to be why change it now it is so plain to see must limit the flow" But in, PLoS chimed, and challenged that dragon everyone joined and the boycott was on "The authors we'll dunn when…

Happy Anniversary, Newt Gingrich's Contract on America!

It was fourteen years ago today that New Gingrich, then Leader of the Republican Delegation to the United States House of Represented initiated the absurd stunt known as the Contract on America (or something close to that, anyway). The Contract was originally circulated as a joke internet meme that was accidentally picked up by congressional staffers and converted into policy. Well, that's not really true, but that is what it looked like. Those of you who are not Americans, were not Americans at the time or who are too young, and thus have no memory of this travesty: Don't let this into…

EU Fisheries Policy and Seabird Slaughter

A dead Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans drowned on a longline. Photo by Graham Robertson/Australian Antarctic Division From Birdlife International: BirdLife International presented the European Parliament with alarming data about the extent of seabird bycatch globally and in Europe yesterday. At the same time, BirdLife welcomed the long awaited first steps of the European Commission to tackle the problem by developing a Community Plan of Action on seabirds with the intention of completing it next year. "With 300,000 seabirds, including about 100,000 albatrosses, dying annually as…

Some News of Africa

Do you have any idea of what is going on in Zimbabwe? And has been for quite some time? I've not chosen to make any effort to note the African news that I semi-regularly follow, but I think it is time for that to change. Expect a bit more. I don't know how much insightful commentary I can add, but I can at least point to goings on of interest. In ZImbabwe, we have a situation of a long term leader who won't seem to go away even though many people seem to want him to. There was an election recently, and that may have been co-opted by the ruling party. And this, today: The bodies of four…

Sunday Chess Problem

The last two installments of this series have seen some pretty heavy problems. So, this week I'd like to lighten the mood. The problem below calls for selfmate in two, and it was composed by me! It was published in the May 2014 issue of The Problemist. Recall that white is always moving up the board and black is always moving down. So, black's pawns on the second rank are poised to promote (though that fact is not relevant to the problem). Also recall that in a selfmate, white plays first and forces black to give checkmate in no more than the stipulated number of moves. Black, for…

The Antarctica Files: Whales make me sick.

A Midwesterner on the Drake Passage, some of the most notoriously rough waters on the planet. Yeah. I was pretty much planning on barfing all the way there and all the way back, only daring to hope that I would have a few days of non-barfing while we were at Antarctica. So I slapped on a patch and downed a few different kinds of anti-nausea meds, and I actually did okay for most of the trip! For real guys, I had the video camera ready to blog about my barfing, but it just never happened. But it almost did. Okay, so one day we were cruising around an area we affectionately nicknamed the '…

Teh Pope reads ERV.

Huh. ERV, August 5, 2009-- Maybe we just need to fr*me things differently-- Condoms arent 'birth control', theyre 'HIV/AIDS control, with unavoidable (but reversible) pregnancy reduction as a side-effect, like chemotherapy for cancer'. Teh Pope, November 20, 2010-- While he will restate the Catholic Church's staunch objections to contraception because it believes it interferes with the creation of life, he will argue that using a condom to preserve life and avoid death can be a responsible act - even outside marriage. ..."In certain cases, where the intention is to reduce the risk of…

Religion. Iz so elegants. JUDGMENT HOUSE

A group of OKC Atheists went to one of those 'Hell Houses' last night. I didnt go, but I can only assume from their summary of the event, that the parishioners of Wilmont Place Baptist Church in OKC have absolutely no social grace or even basic, common decency. You see, we have had a little 'spat' of young people committing suicide recently. Young people killing themselves after enduring constant bullying and tormenting by their peers. Not just in 'LA' or 'NYC', but right at home, here in OKC. What was the 'plot' of Wilmont Place Baptist Churchs 'Judgment House'? Why, a young girl who has…

Random

Im writing a couple papers right now. Which means when I get home, Im like 'YAY BLOGGIE TIME!... ugh, writing... ugh... gonna watch TV...' It doesnt help Ive gotten all excited about a few papers I wanted to blog about, only to subsequently realize they werent as cool as I thought they were, so I get all annoyed and not wanting to bloggie. So heres a few random things: 1. I saw 'Bad Universe'. Every time Sydney blew up/was going to blow up my brain screamed 'OH MY GOD! They killed SYDNEY! Those BASTARDS!' So now when Sydney does get demolished by an asteroid in real life, Im going to be…

The Vaccine War... on the internet

I almost didnt watch FRONTLINEs 'Vaccine War' last night. I made it to ~5 minutes in, but then they showed a clip of this dumb woman (Jennifer Margulis? Ya I read her papers in Journal of Immunology all the time. Oh wait, shes not an immunologist? Shes just some random nutbar? Ya, lets interview her about the 'science' of vaccines.) and I blew a fuse... but I decided to stick it out, and Im glad I did. You can go over to Oracs place for a... Oracian break-down of the show. I just want to put my two cents in. My main take-away message is, contrary to Chris Mooneys baseless, evidence-less…

Welcome Obesity Panacea! NOW EARN YOUR KEEP!

LOL! We finally got Obesity Panacea on ScienceBlogs! YAY! Now. *squints eyes* I gotta question for Travis and Peter as a blogwarming gift :P Whats the deal with BMI? Weve talked about it a lot on SciBlogs, but now weve got some Real Life obesity/exercise professionals in the house, so I wanna get the usefulness of BMI clarified. I am under the impression that BMI is a useful tool for Average Joes/Janes to monitor their weight. Is 150 lbs healthy? Is that weight okay if you are 5 feet tall? What if youre 6 feet tall? How is Average Joe/Jane supposed to know? BMI. Certainly regular body…

ERVs superpower prevails again!

Thanks to the numerous vaccines I have received over the years, I have superpowers. 100% serious, here. I mean, I cant fly. Cant see through walls. Nothing cliche like that. No, my superpower is, I can predict what Creationists are going to say/do before they say/do it. You might think this is a pointless superpower and hardly worth exposure to the DANGEROUS TOXINS in vaccines, but the fact is, I would do anything for the lulz my superpower provides me with. So, lets get to my latest prediction: Abbies Facebook status, Saturday 8.50 am: *HUG* to University of Alabama Huntsville grad…

Real Christianity: A $10,000 Idol

If you were a True Christian, how would you spend $10,000? True Christians like to talk about how much Jesus liked kids. OK has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country, maybe contribute to that in some way? Hey, maybe donate it to an organization that helps victims of child abuse, considering what the Catholic Church does to children. Hell if I were a True Protestant Id totally do that to give The Finger to the Mary-worshipers! True Christians also like to talk about how Jesus commands them to help the homeless and downtrodden. The homeless that wander the streets of…

Kasparov Appears on Bill Maher's Show

Former World Chess Champion and current political activist Garry Kasparov appeared on Bill Maher's program the other night. The entire, seven minute interview is worth watching, but I especially liked this part: MAHER: But if you look at what's going on in Russia, Putin has a very high approval rating. I mean there is something... KASPAROV: How do you know? (Laughter) Are you seriously, are you relying on the polling results from a police state? I think with the same tight control of media and a pervasive security force, Bush and Cheney could enjoy the same approval rating here. MAHER:…

Let's have a presidential science debate!

As Sheril hinted earlier, there is now a formal call for a science debate by the presidential candidates. A CALL FOR A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment,…

Dawkins Attracts Bugs

I only have time for a quick blog post (Prison Break comes on in twenty minutes!), but do have a quick look at this post over at Richard Dawkins' site. (Hat tip to Larry Moran for directing me to it). It's a diagram showing all of the book length responses that have been inspired by the recent books by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Two things struck me about this. The first is simply that there are quite a lot of books out there responding to Dawkins and Harris that I didn't know about. Some of them even seem to have been written by reputable people and published by serious houses. I'll…

ASM Statement on Evolution

American Society for Microbiology has now issued this statement in support of evolution and against intelligent design: Knowledge of the microbial world is essential to understanding the evolution of life on Earth. The characteristics of microorganisms--small size, rapid reproduction, mobility, and facility in exchanging genetic information--allow them to adapt rapidly to environmental influences. In microbiology, the validity of evolutionary principles is supported by [1] readily demonstrated mutation, recombination and selection, which are the fundamental mechanisms of evolution; [2]…

Global Warming Primer

The New York Times offers this brief, but useful summary of some of the evidence for human-caused glboal warming. Since it now seems incontrovertible that the planet is, indeed, warming up, the right-wing line has shifted to a rejection of humanity's role in the trend. I suspect as more data comes in, this line will prove untenable as well: In the panel's last report, issued in 2001, and in more recent studies reviewed for the coming report, various trends provide clues that human activity, rather than natural phenomena, probably caused most of the recent warming. A number of trends have…

What I'm Doing This August: Nordita Workshop for Science Writers

I've been setting up schedules with my summer research students lately, and the main constraint we're facing with that is that I'm going to spend most of August in Europe. Part of this is pure vacation-- Kate and I are going to the UK for a couple of weeks. Part of it is the World Science Fiction Convention in London, in the middle of that trip, where both Kate and I expect to be on programming (though there aren't any set items this far out). And the last bit has just been officially announced: I'm speaking at the Nordita Workshop for Science Writers organized by Sabine Hossenfelder from…

Guardian Emmy

"DAAAAADDDDDYYYYY!!!!" "What's the matter, honey?" "I don't like being alone." "Well, I'm sorry, honey, but I have work to do, and it's time for you to go to sleep." "But when I'm alone I get scared." "Well, I can put on some music if you like. You can listen to that, and it might give you something else to think about." "Yeah, put the music on." "I don't know if you've noticed, but when I sleep, I always put music on, because it helps me feel less lonely." "The music helps, but I still worry about things. Like bad guys. And the evil snakes from Lego Ninjago. I worry that they might be around…

A Billion's Not That Much

The local sports-talk radio station is running a bunch of commercials from a tax prep service in which a loud announcer declares that "People who did their own taxes left one billion dollars on the table last year. That's billion with a 'b.'" and urges people to "Get your billion back!" by paying for their tax-return service. Which, you know, sounds like quite a bit. Only, there are upwards of 300 million people in the US. So, a billion dollars is about $3 per person. So, it's maybe not as impressive as they want you to think. Of course, a lot of those people are too young or too old to be…

"Up to Their Tricks Again": My New Favorite Physicist Story

From The Fly in the Cathedral, Brian Cathcart's history of the experiments that led up to the splitting of lithium nuclei by accelerated protons in the Cavendish Laboratory in 1932. One of the incidents along the way was the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick, also in 1932. In describing Chadwick, who was Ernest Rutherford's assistant director in the years in question, Cathcart writes: Chadwick's diffidence was familiar to all the students. [Thomas] Allibone was only one of several to describe taking a problem to the assistant director, explaining it at length and then leaving his…

Physics Blogging Request Thread

Having said that I want to focus more on positive stuff, and talking up cool things in science, I'm going to make an effort to do more write-ups of research papers. I've got a few ideas along those lines, and of course I get regular emails from journals and press offices bringing other papers to my attention. But I don't want to neglect my audience, here... So, I'll throw this open as a place to request discussions of particular topics or papers. If there's some topic in physics that you'd like me to write up an explanation of, or a paper or preprint that you'd like me to do the detailed Q…

Ruse States it Plain

I certainly have my disagreements with Michael Ruse on questions related to science and religion, but sometimes he really comes through: There are days when, I swear to God, I am all set to enroll under the banner of Richard Dawkins and anathematize all religions and those who subscribe to them. I take a lot of criticism from my fellow atheists, including my fellow Brainstormers, for arguing that science and religion are compatible. I still think that, but increasingly I cannot for the life of me see why any decent human being would want to be religious, and increasingly I think one should…

Monday Math: The Uniqueness of Prime Factorizations

The big number theory class has moved on to prime factorizations and the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. As it happens, though, I've already done a post on that subject. Looking back at what I wrote then I see that I left out one important detail. I asserted without proof (though I did provide a link) that if a prime divides the product of two other numbers then it had to divide one of the two factors already. The proof of that result requires something that we estblished last week. So let's have a look. Last week we mentioned that it is a consequence of the Euclidean algorithm that if…

Anne Rice Abandons Christianity, But Not Christ

Novelist Anne Rice, best known for her series of novels about vampires, has some choice words for institutional Christianity: For those who care, and I understand if you don't. Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. Later she added: As I said below, I quit being a…

Tarnishing the Brand?

Have a look at this interview with Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero. It contains a number of interesting nuggets, but this is the part that jumped out at me: Baer: Proselytizing atheists like Dawkins have carved out a niche within a largely religious public sphere. Would a less emotional, less evangelistic atheism be capable of maintaining even this degree of influence? Prothero: I feel quite certain that a less emotional and less evangelistic atheism would garner far more influence. Atheism has a brand problem. Lots of the people who do not believe in God refuse to…

Does the World Really Need Another Book on Evolution and Creationism?

Probably not, but it's going to get one. I have just signed a contract with Oxford University Press for a book based on my experiences at creationist conferences. It's not going to be an easy book to write, but it should be a fun project. The basic outline looks like this: Section one will be based on my experiences at the Creation MegaConference at Liberty University in 2005. Section two will use the Darwin and Design conference I attended in Knoxville in 2007 to introduce ID. Generally speaking, the emphasis in these two sections will be on the scientific aspects of the issue.…

Computers Learn to Play Go

We chess players have had to put up with taunts from our Go playing counterparts for quite some time. First there was the jibe that Go is so much easier to learn than chess. Then the dubious charge that Go is actually more complex than chess. Some have argued that the superiority of Go over chess represents he difference between Eastern and Western values. (In Go you start with an empty board and gradually build up structures that control territory. Chess is just a bloodbath where rival armies try to slaughter the other guy's leader.) And then there was the undeniable fact that chess-…

Worldcon Miscellany

The "Philosophy of Science" panel I moderated was surprisingly well-attended, and got some decent discussion going. Kate took notes, at least for a while, and I'll post a link if she writes it up on LiveJournal. The "Knights who Say Fuck" panel was in a very remote room that was much too small to contain a panel with Guy Gavriel Kay, David Anthony Durham, and Patrick Rothfuss on it. Well, ok, it contained them just fine, but there wasn't really room for the hundred-odd people who showed up to see them. I was one of about a dozen people who went to thie "Cross-Genre Hard SF" panel, probably…

links for 2009-07-03

Setshot: Basketball for the Aging and Infirm: Rosters: Managing the list "Overall, I like administering the list because I can virtually guarantee that any time I want to play, there will be others to play with. I also like the fact that I have some control over who gets on the list, and more importantly, who is excluded from it. Now don't get me wrongâthis isn't some velvet rope thing, and it certainly isn't as exclusive as this basketball list. I invited almost all the regular players at the gym. However, I was also able to subtly exclude a few bad apples by intentionally failing to…

Obama is vexing me

Perhaps Barack Obama really wants to make sure I won't vote for him. At least, that's how I'm interpreting his attempts to couple environmentalism and religion. Meeting the threat of global climate change will take hard work and faith, Obama said. "Not a blind faith, not a faith of mere words, not a faith that ignores science, but an active searching faith," said Obama, a member of the United Church of Christ. "It's a faith that does not look at the hardship and pain and suffering in the world and use it all as an excuse for inaction or cynicism, but one that accepts the fact that although we…

links for 2009-06-08

Who Underestimates Their Systematic Uncertainties ? "It is a well-known fact that it is much easier to measure a physical quantity than to correctly assess the magnitude of the uncertainty on the measurement: the uncertainty is everything! " (tags: physics particles experiment statistics blogs dorigo science) Acephalous: Photo reference at the National Review "The logicâsuch that it isâof the National Review editorial board seems to be that since everyone knows Asians are better than Latinos, no one can call them racist if they compare Sotomayor to an Asian. That argumentâsuch that it…

Dorky Poll: How Do You Like Your Waves?

I made it to Charlottesville, and am all checked in to the Econo Lodge, which is a little more Econo than I was expecting. It's an old-school motel, with rooms that open right into the parking lot, the sort of place where the towels are tiny and scratchy, the pillows and mattresses are thin, and the tap water tastes like cigarette smoke. Still, it's not like I'm going to be doing much more than sleeping here. I promised some entertainment in my absence, so this seems like a good time for a Dorky Poll. I'm going to be spending a lot of time over the next few days listening to talks about the…

links for 2009-05-16

The Trouble with Double X | The American Prospect "In the site's introductory video, one of the editors, Hanna Rosin, says, "If you take something like Slate and you have it edited by three women, instead of the people it's edited by, well that's the kind of magazine that we want to turn out." She goes on to say that the articles they publish "don't have to be 'women's issues'" -- she bends her fingers to make air-quotes -- "in the way that people have always defined women's issues. There can be a whole range of issues and you just put them through a slightly different lens." Color me…

links for 2009-05-07

'Columbine,' by Dave Cullen -- New York Magazine Book Review Most of what you think you know about the Columbine school shooting is wrong. (tags: society books review history media) The Laptop in the Classroom « Easily Distracted "I am sure there are students in my classes who have multitasked during a lecture or discussion. Iâll be honest with you. Iâve done the same on my laptop when Iâve been in the audience during conferences or lectures, usually email. Iâve done that in response to being bored, but Iâve also done it as a kind of thoughtful doodling while feeling quite engaged and…

Thursday Toddler Blogging 030311

When I told her it was Thursday, and thus time for a picture with Appa, SteelyKid sprang into action with a very definite idea of what she wanted. As a result, there's a lot going on in this week's Toddler Blogging photos: This is my favorite, which was an intermediate step on the way to her final vision. To unpack it a little for you, though, we have: First and foremost, we have a big collection of stuffed toys being carefully arranged. This is all SteelyKid-- when I said I wanted a picture with Appa, she said "No, all my friends!" Then she started arranging them. You can also see a remnant…