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When we all wake up by the Onion. Spam: I wrote a website for a friend who does English/German translation. This is my attempt to push it up the google rankings and maybe even get her some business: http://baumgarten-translations.com/. ScruffyDan on the incoherent septic response to Siddall et al. Daniel: stronger than 3/4 of a sausage. We were going to the Head of the Trent tomorrow (well, today now, cos I delayed this post) but the forecast is looking awful: Div 2 and the novices are already cancelled (for some mad reason we were entered as IM2). Since that means I don't have to get up at…

Climate scientists: it's time for 'Plan B'?

So says the Independent. The substance seems to be Just over half - 54 per cent - of the 80 international specialists in climate science who took part in our survey agreed that the situation is now so dire that we need a backup plan that involves the artificial manipulation of the global climate to counter the effects of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. About 35 per cent of respondents disagreed with the need for a "plan B", arguing that it would distract from the main objective of cutting CO2 emissions, with the remaining 11 per cent saying that they did not know whether a…

Monckton again

Naturally enough, there is a wiki article [[Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley]]. And of course what to say about his views on GW is a source of controversy: being wiki, it can't just say he is talkin' tosh, it has to be more polite. Unlike certain anons, who make comments like Removed POV contributions by a failed Green Party candidate in the pay of a convicted internet-gaming fraudster and money-launderer who now spends his time rewriting "deniers'" Wiki-biogs - my my, who could that be and who could he have in mind? Its a complete mystery [update: well maybe not so…

New 2012 Record Low Arctic Ice Extent Smashes Previous 2007 Record

NSIDC has (preliminarily) announced the new record low ice extent for 2012. On September 16, 2012 sea ice extent dropped to 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest extent of the year. In response to the setting sun and falling temperatures, ice extent will now climb through autumn and winter. However, a shift in wind patterns or a period of late season melt could still push the ice extent lower. The minimum extent was reached three days later than the 1979 to 2000 average minimum date of September 13. This year’s minimum was 760,000…

Just a few decades left for coral reefs

Further to my mention of Ken Caldiera's recent Scientific American article "The Great Climate Experiment" the other day, I wanted to call attention to this passages as well: the vast oceans resist change, but change they will. At no time in Earth’s past—with the possible exception of mass-extinction events—has ocean chemistry changed as much and as rapidly as scientists expect it to over the coming decades. When CO2 enters the oceans, it reacts with seawater to become carbonic acid. In high enough concentrations, this carbonic acid can cause the shells and skeletons of many marine organisms…

Meet Charlie

It's been a couple of years since we lost the Queen of Niskayuna, and we've held off getting a dog until now because we were planning a big home renovation-- adding on to the mud room, creating a new bedroom on the second floor, and gutting and replacing the kitchen. This was quite the undertaking, and we would not have wanted to put a dog through that. It was bad enough putting us through that... Withe the renovation complete, we started looking for a dog a month or so back, and eventually ended up working with a local rescue group with the brilliantly unsubtle name Help Orphan Puppies. This…

Physics Blogging Round-Up: ARPES, Optics, Band Gaps, Radiation Pressure, Home Science, and Catastrophe

It's been a while since I last rounded up physics posts from Forbes, so there's a good bunch of stuff on this list: -- How Do Physicists Know What Electrons Are Doing Inside Matter?: An explanation of Angle-Resolved Photo-Electron Spectroscopy (ARPES), one of the major experimental techniques in condensed matter. I'm trying to figure out a way to list "got 1,800 people to read a blog post about ARPES" as one of my professional accomplishments on my CV. -- The Optics Of Superman's X-Ray Vision: Spinning off a post of Rhett's, a look at why humanoid eyes just aren't set up to work with x-rays…

Brian Angliss takes on Tom Harris

Regular readers of this blog will know Tom Harris, as he is an occasional commenter here. Tom is a climate science denier who wears an Invisibility Cloak of Concern. However, this particular Invisibilty Cloak was never worn by Ignotus Peverell; you can see right though it. "Demanding and unreasonable and absurd level of proof from scientists is not Harris’ only dishonest expectation ... Harris is trying to make science appear to be mere opinion, presumably no better or worse than any other opinion. [But] some opinions matter more than others, and opinions based on knowledge matter more…

"Few things threaten America’s future prosperity more than climate change."

The title of this post is the beginning of a more extensive comment, as follows: Few things threaten America’s future prosperity more than climate change. But there is growing hope. Every 2.5 minutes of every single day, the U.S. solar industry is helping to fight this battle by flipping the switch on another completed solar project. According to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the United States installed an estimated 7.4 gigawatts (GW) of solar last year — a 42 percent increase over 2013 — making it the best year ever for solar installations in America. What’…

Mom did good work

On the old site, I had a little tradition of occasionally showing off embarrassing baby pictures of the kids (here's Alaric, Connlann, and Skatje, for instance). Today is Mother's Day, and it would be cool to show off old pictures of Mom, but wouldn't you know it — mothers are much too clever for that. She just sent me a collection of baby pictures of Little PZ, so I'll turn the magic time-machine on myself, instead. This is pure treacle, self-obsession, vanity, and nostalgia. Don't look below the fold. My first mug shot. Those are my vital stats on there: 3/09/57, 7:07am, Dr Hogan, Head 14,…

FS608R Digital Camera Binoculars FHD 1080P: Review

The FS608R Digital Camera Binoculars FHD 1080P from Gear Best is a low-end binocular with a built in camera that takes up to 2592 x 1944 (defaults to 2,048 x 1,536, and can go lower) pixel photos or avi movies (no sound). Really good binoculars cost hundreds of dollars, but there is a range of inexpensive binoculars that everybody who uses binoculars (especially bird watchers) and/or has kids owns a few of. This is the extra set of binocs you keep in your car, near back yard window, let your kids play around with, or if you are a biology teacher, bring to school for the trip down to the…

Weekend Diversion: Fighting on the Internet

"When you roll around in the mud with a pig, you both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it." -Old Folk Wisdom One of the things I've learned over the time I've been blogging is that, no matter what position you take on any issue, whether it's science, politics, religion, morality, or anything else, is that there will be no shortage of people willing to argue against it. Perhaps it's for the best that Jeff Tweedy didn't think of that when he wrote his most excellent song, How to Fight Loneliness.Because while many issues really are mere differences of opinion, it stirs up intense feelings of…

Weekend Diversion: Looking down instead of up

"And all your future lies beneath your hat." -John Oldham Yes, with all the space, astronomy and astrophysics I do here, I can still recognize that there are things of great beauty and importance happening here on the lower 50% of our gaze. For this weekend, I've got a sweet song by Railroad Earth: Neath The Stars.(Railroad Earth is great live, by the way. Don't miss your chance to see them if you get one!) Well, beneath the ground, in many places across the world, lie a series of underground caves. The most spectacular one I've ever been to is Kartchner Caverns in Arizona, spectacular…

Weekend Diversion: Running Through the Universe

"You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back." -Steve Prefontaine But there are lots of amazing ways to propel yourself forward, indeed. Listen to one of the greatest musical groups of our times, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, as they perform Victor Wooten's song, Sex In A Pan,off their album UFO Tofu. Last week, I told you about a runaway galaxy, speeding through the Universe and leaving a tail behind it. Image credit: GALEX. Of course, this is a composite image in visible and ultra-violet light. We saw here that the galaxy looks normal in visible light; only in the…

The Real Fake Reason Trump Fired Comey: Lock her up

As you know, President Trump sacked FBI Director James Comey yesterday. The firing involved a letter written by Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, complaining about Comey, to Jeff Sessons. (The three relevant letters by Rosenstein, Sessons, and Trump are here.) Jeff Sessons had recused himself of matters related to the Russia-Trump Scandal, so it was necessary for the DOJ and White House to make up a reason Comey was being fired, apparently, and that letter from Rosenstein included the excuse. In the letter, Rosenstein said, "The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General's…

Safety Pins

OK, lets start out with the assumption that it does not matter who you or anyone else supported in the last election or what your politics are. If it happens, hypothetically, to be the case that a vulnerable person feels threatened by some sort of bully, wouldn't you like that vulnerable person to know that you are an upstanding citizen of good character who is willing to stand up for that person? This is especially true if you are a teacher, or you work in a retail business, or any place where there might be bullies and victims. One way to convey your willingness to stand up against…

Enough Is Enough

Steve Schmidt, bless his pointy Republican head, makes a very important point here. And to underscore the point, let me ask you this: How do we go from having an "election" to having a "president elect"? The process is actually a bit subtle and somewhat more complicated than one might think. Election day happens, but there is no "president elect" in any official, constitutional, way, for a very long time thereafter. Though this can vary, the first possible date that we will have a "president elect" in the current election cycle is on January 6th, 2017. Not before. Of course, what really…

The Outdoor Science Lab for Kids

The Outdoor Science Lab for Kids: 52 Family-Friendly Experiments for the Yard, Garden, Playground, and Park is a good guide to home science experiments for kids, usually with adult involvement, ranging across a fairly wide range of age but mainly, I'd say, middle school for unsupervised work, or pretty much any age if supervised. All of the experiments can be done by adults with younger kids watching or being involved to varying degrees. Most of he experiments cost little or nothing, depending on where you live (like, do you live near a pond?) and what the phrase "common household…

Climate Signals: Excellent new resource

Weather is climate here and now, and climate is weather over the long term. Climate is the large scale process of movement of air and water, and changes in the properties of air and water, on and near the surface of the Earth, the atmosphere, oceans, and ice fields respond to the imbalance of heat -- with more of it near the equator and less of it at the poles -- as the world literally turns. Weather is the local, temporal, and personally observable sign of that climate system. Climate is meaning and weather is the semiotic process by which we understand that meaning. OK, perhaps I've gone…

The Ares I-X Rocket Special

My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb, And all I remember is thinking, "I want to be like them!" --Gnarls Barkley And here's a new discovery (to me): the Violent Femmes version to help you through your post-Halloween Monday: The Ares I-X rocket has been all over the news recently. I'm not sure that the news coverage sufficiently showcases how impressive this rocket actually is. Sure, you've all seen a picture of the rocket on the launchpad. Yes, the rocket has a long history. Yes, it's nearly twice as high as the space shuttle (at a whopping 327 feet, or 99.7 meters).…

How to clean coal

It suddenly became apparent, just a couple of days ago when President Trump was ranting and raving at a political rally, that the man does not know what clean coal is. This is a concern because his entire energy policy stems from the assumption that we can mine lots of coal in West Virginia and use that for energy, that this is OK because it will be clean coal. The term clean coal has been used in three ways, but really, is correctly used in only one way (number 2 of the three below), and when used that way, it is still bogus. 1) The term clean coal, or phrases very close to it, have been…

Stealing Daylight

Ever wonder how much daylight you can gain or lose just by getting in your car and driving either West or East? Here's how to figure it out. The Earth's circumference is about 25,000 miles (40,000 km) at the equator. So if you start out at sunrise and drive 1,000 miles (1,600 km) Westward during the daylight hours, you'll get almost an extra hour of daylight. On the other hand, if you go East, you'll lose that much. 1,000 miles is pretty much the maximum you can go in about 12 hours, and that's going pretty fast (about 80 mph, or 130 kph). But there's a trick to stealing extra daylight. Get…

Making Fire with Physics

In celebration of April 20th, I thought I'd show you a method for making fire that's so neat it will work -- without fuel or chemicals -- both on Earth (left) and in space (right). We're going to do it without a match, without a lighter, and without friction. That's right, the next time someone needs a light, I'll show you a way to make one that even beats rubbing two sticks together! Image credit: Gideon Mendel/CORBIS. Have you ever read the book Fahrenheit 451? The title refers to the temperature -- 451 degrees Fahrenheit (233 Celsius) -- at which paper will spontaneously, in the…

The Arrow of Time

The laws of physics are the same forwards in time as they are backwards, right? At least, that's what some physicists will tell you. They have (some) good reasons for saying this. After all, if you watch the planets orbit the Sun, they look like they obey the same laws of physics whether you watch them orbit clockwise (forwards in time) or counterclockwise (backwards in time): But is everything time symmetrical? Well, no, of course not. There are certain things that are easy to do moving forwards in time, like to take a raw egg or two (left) and fry them (right). Well, that's pretty easy.…

Why Bible Courses Can't Work

I'm one of those folks who thinks that courses in comparative religion, or about the bible as literature, can be a valuable thing. Unfortunately, they just don't work in the real world. There's really only two ways to teach such a course. You either teach that the Bible is absolutely true (in which case you violate the first amendment's establishment clause) or you teach about the Bible as you would any other book, by examining the historical context, the archaeological evidence concerning the events discussed, the accuracy of its descriptions, and so forth (and there you run into objections…

What Am I Missing?

I'm afraid I just don't get the Bush administration's position on turning the control of our major ports over to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. It's just obviously a bad idea, obvious enough that even the Congressional leadership of both parties seem to be able to recognize it. And yet on this issue, of all places, Bush is drawing a line in the sand: Brushing aside objections from Republicans and Democrats alike, President Bush endorsed the takeover of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports by a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates. He pledged to veto any…

Cnidarian molecular/genetic Entwicklungsmechanik

Since I was asked what a cnidarian "head" is in reference to this work on multi-headed cnidarians, I'll answer. In short, they don't have one. Longer answer: the paper in PLoS describes a procedure for generating homeotic mutations in cnidarians by manipulating the expression of Cnox genes in hydrozoans. Knock outs of various cnidarian Hox-like genes and the medusae develop extra manubriae, or the tentacled part at the oral end of the animal, which the authors colloquially call "heads" (and they do usually put the word in quotes). These structures aren't homologous to the things we consider…

Mencken on Liberty

A conversation I had this weekend reminded me of a wonderful quote from Mencken. I first cited it nearly 2 years ago in a post and I want to reprint it again because it describes my views so perfectly. In this essay, Mencken was actually commenting on what he, the arch-cynic who seemingly believed in nothing, really held out as true. Many critics had bashed him as one who merely casts aspersions on the views of others, a man with no positive beliefs. His reply could well have been written about me as well: What do I primarily believe in, as a Puritan believes in Hell? I believe in liberty.…

Really Bad ABC Story on Supreme Court

Brian Ross of ABC News is usually one of the better investigative journalists in the mainstream media. I generally like the fact that he digs hard for information and doesn't let go of a legitimate story even if the 24 hour news cycle has forgotten about it in favor of covering the latest J-Lo breakup. But this article alleging a Supreme Court ethics scandal is not just bad, it's laughable. I'm not exactly the biggest Scalia fan in the world, but I can recognize a bad hatchet job when I see one. At the historic swearing-in of John Roberts as the 17th chief justice of the United States last…

Speech Report

Last night, Genie Scott of the NCSE spoke at Michigan State and about half of the board of Michigan Citizens for Science was there. The subject of her speech was, essentially, the evolution of creationism, how creationism has evolved over the last 80 years in the United States. It was, as expected, an excellent and information packed presentation. One of my fellow board members, who had never had the opportunity to meet Genie in person, commented that she was very impressed by how personable and charming she was as a speaker. After Rob Pennock gave her a glowing introduction, she took to the…

Judge Moore's Contradictions

On Wednesday, Judge Moore's attorneys tried to convince a special session of the Alabama State Supreme Court to overturn his removal from office and return him to his position as Chief Justice. He was removed for malfeasance after refusing to follow a federal court order that he remove the 5000 pound monument that he had moved in to the Supreme Court building in the middle of the night of his own accord. In the process, his attorney seems to have invented an entirely new reason to justify Moore's flouting of the court order: Phillip Jauregui (Moore's attorney - ed. note) agreed Thompson had…

A Brief Return to Testability

As a brief follow up on the claims made by Rusty Lopez concerning the "testable creation model" that is advocated by Hugh Ross and Fuz Rana of Reasons to Believe, I'd like to quote something on the subject of testability written by Doug Theobald, one of the folks who has contributed so much to the Talk.Origins Archive. A biochemist from the Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, Doug wrote one of the primary FAQs in the archive entitled 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent. It is at his suggestion that I am posting this, because it really does help explain why the…

Astronomy’s ‘Rosetta Stone’: Merging Neutron Stars Seen With Both Gravitational Waves And Light

"It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new ideas on particle physics. The energies in the Big Bang were far higher than we can ever achieve on Earth. So by looking at evidence for the Big Bang, and by studying things like neutron stars, we are in effect learning something about fundamental physics." -Martin Rees When the Advanced LIGO detectors turned on in 2015, it shook up the world when they detected their first event: the merger of two quite massive black holes. Since that time, they’ve…

Dr. Donald R. Prothero has been awarded the 2013 James Shea Award by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers

Hey, check this out: Dr. Donald R. Prothero recently retired from his professorship at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA after 27 years of teaching in order to concentrate on his writing and consulting. Dr. Prothero is an indefatigable advocate for geology and paleontology, which he combines with a passion for communicating science to the public. Notably, he has served as a consultant for Discovery Channel, History Channel and National Geographic specials. He frequently gives public talks and presentations to groups interested in Earth science, including presentations to the NYC Skeptics…

The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania

There is a book called "The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania" produced by the Heartland Institute. The Heartland Institute is famous for doing all that work to prove that smoking is not bad for you, and more recently, that climate change is not real or is not important or is not human-caused etc. etc. Heartland is a libertarian "think" tank that receives money form big corporate interests like Tobacco and Petroleum and then uses that money to advance the interests of those corporate entities, regardless of the actual truth of the situation. They also use…

Insect Wings Can Shred Bacteria To Pieces

The "clanger cicada" can physically kill bacteria by poking and shredding them with tiny pointy structures that seem to look a little like an old fashioned cheese grater. Keep in mind that this happens at a very small spacial scale, so the relationship between objects is different than in normal human experience. Essentially, the membrane of a bacterium spreads itself over the pointy nano-spikes of the insect wing. This is a little like a failed "laying on the bed of nails" attempt, but where the force involved with the bed of nails is gravity, gravity has nothing to do with the bacterium…

How to live trap mice and squirrels

Before reading any further, you need to know that the transport and release of trapped animals, such as mice or squirrels, is regulated and may be illegal in your community. Having said that, there are times when people want to live trap a mouse or squirrel, and this is one of the two times of year when people's interest in doing so seems to increase, based on google search terms that bring people to my site. The short version for mice: Mice are granivores, so a wheat germ is to a mouse what bacon is to a human. Yumm. People often think peanut butter is great mouse bait, and it can be, but…

Disaster! Earthquakes, Floods, Plagues, and Other Catastrophes

I'm reading Disaster!: A History of Earthquakes, Floods, Plagues, and Other Catastrophes by John Withington, who also wrote about other disastrous things such as disasters specific to London. It is a couple of years old (and thus does not include the recent Japan earthquake and tsunami). This is more of a reference book than a sit-down-and-read-it book, and it lacks detailed presentation or critical analysis of sources, but if you want to know about a particular past major disaster or category of major disasters (volcanoes, floods, tsunamis, etc.) this is a good starting point. Reading…

Why isn't there a malaria vaccine, and could there be one soon?

There are several reasons why there is no vaccine for malaria, but the thing you might want to know is that malaria is not a virus, and it is not even a bacterium. It's a protist. Generally speaking, there are not really vaccines for such organisms. One metastudy that looked specifically at Malaria had this to report: We identify and evaluate 1916 immunization studies between 1965-February 2010, and exclude partially or nonprotective results to find 177 completely protective immunization experiments. Detailed reexamination reveals an unexpectedly mundane basis for selective vaccine…

Feral Cats as Invasive Species

The ranger stood on the dirt road, facing south, and the rest of us, scattered about the parked safari truck, facing north and paying close attention to what she was saying. The sun was slipping quickly below the red sand dunes to our west, and the day’s warm breeze was rapidly changing to a chill wind. She talked about what we might see after we remounted the safari truck, which we had just driven out of the campground at the southern end of Kgalgadi Transfrontier Park, where we were staying in the South African camp, just across from the Botswana camp. This would be a night drive, cold,…

Climate Change Things: Two items of interest

First, as I've mentioned before, there is a Reddit "As Me Anything" (AMA) going on right now with Stephan Lewandowsky, and if you are into Reddit AMA's and climate change related issues you should check it out. Lewandowsky is a co-author of the famous Frontiers Retracted paper, though the subjects being discussed at the AMA range far beyond that particular issue. Second, there is new paper out that looks very interesting. I'm still trying to absorb it and I've asked the author for some clarifications on some issues, but already the Global Warming Deialosphere is all over it, so it must have…

Pro Tip for James Dellingpole, Eric Owens, Anthony Watts, and Other Science Denialists.

STFU. Seriously. For your own good. Every time you make a move you seem to create your own pile of dog do and step in it. The latest own-goal for those who deny climate science was scored after an unreasonable and obnoxious attack on Professor Lawrence Torcello, of RIT. Details here and here. Those mentioned above, and others such as the Drudge and Infowars, lied. They lied knowingly, blatantly, obnoxiously. They willfully misconstrued Lawrence Torcello's word and his research in order to make climate scientists look like Hitler. This is not a new tactic and it didn't work before. And…

Talk on Evolutionary Psychology, Sunday, March 2nd

I will be giving a talk in Saint Paul, at the Best Western Kelly Inn, on Evolutionary Psychology. The original plan was to get two people to debate the topic, but it was hard to find two people in town to do that. One idea was to get PZ Myers over here, and then he and I would debate the topic. Problem with that is that we probably agree a lot more than we disagree so that would be boring. Well, I'm sure we'd make it interesting but we'd have to switch topics. So it ended up being me. There will be a debate. I'll handle both sides. Seriously. I'd love to give you a working link to…

More Than Men

The More than Men Project is an effort initiated by the Women Thinking Free Foundation to develop a space where men, often white and/or straight and/or Of Priv, could spend a little time and energy telling their fellow Hetero-occidentaloid-Y-chromosomists something useful or interesting about diversity, and to encourage the promotion of said diversity. When I was asked to contribute to this project (which was being cooked up last July) I had some concerns. I wasn't sure if I needed a space to do this, since I have a widely read blog in which I am constantly telling my fellow Hetero-…

Retrospective: What we talked about in March, 2011

March was a particularly important month for this blog, and for everybody in the world, really, because it is when the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, and Fukushima meltdown started. Although I blogged early on about the quake and tsunami, my colleague and friend Analiese Miller and I eventually focused on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and to date we've produced 41 numbered updates, part of a larger set of over 60 posts. And we shall continue. We were able to identify, from the very beginning, a problem in the skeptical community's reaction to Fukushima. For historical reasons, most…

Japan Quake: Effects and Side Effects

The quake, which was centered under the sea, did considerable damage to undersea communications cables. Originally the damage was thought to be minimal but it is apparently rather significant. At least five major cables have been damaged. Details here. Meanwhile, the US military has blocked several websites that are eating up bandwidth that is needed to facilitate Japan recovery efforts. These blockages affect users accessing the Internet from military facilities. "The sites -- including YouTube, ESPN, Amazon, eBay and MTV -- were chosen not because of the content but because their…

300 million dead

Last night, I attended a talk by Sherman Alexie, who was hilarious and at times, biting. One of the curious things he noted, though, was that he had said something about the disastrous conduct of the wasteful war in Iraq, and despite this being an audience of collegiate liberals, no one applauded. He noted that this is his common experience — it used to be that voicing your objections to an unjust war got clapped, but nowadays, it's old hat. Even people who once supported the war are backing away from it (although it's rare for them to plainly say "I was wrong"), and the futility of the war…

Stockholm Film Festival 2015

It's been a busy movie-going month for me with the Monsters of Film festival, where I saw six films, and now the Stockholm International Film Festival where I've seen eight. Last year I saw ten films at the latter festival, and I enjoyed most of them, but overall I liked this year's crop even better. All but two get my special recommendation: As I Open My Eyes. A late-teen girl discovers love and experiences political repression while singing in a band in pre-revolution Tunis -- five years ago. Dope. By happenstance three geeky straightlaced ghetto kids find themselves in possession of a…

October Pieces Of My Mind #2

Birger Jarlsgatan 11, Stockholm Nice ad here on my blog for once. It does have a pretty woman in it, but she's not a white Russian mail-order girlfriend. She's a black potential student on the course "Swedish for programmers". Movie: Taikon. Documentary about Swedish novelist and Roma activist Katarina Taikon. Grade: Pass With Distinction. The guy who installed the wiring for our new kitchen appliances wasn't forced on us by some dictatorial decree. He was an elect rician. Dad brag: guess whose kid teaches HTML pro bono to disadvantaged 11-y-os in his spare time! Dropped off this year's…

May Pieces Of My Mind #1

After some instruction I've given Jrette & buddy free range with the little row/motorboat. They're having lots of fun, learning lots and are clearly pleased with themselves. Eider males swimming around in a little posse going "woo-OOO, woo-OOO". The villain in the endless Neal Stephenson novel I'm reading is named Abdallah Jones. This causes the Counting Crows song "Mr. Jones" to play on repeat in my head. Jrette and her buddy are filling out a questionnaire about bullying for a Master student. Jrette keeps saying stuff like "but that's a different category" and "proofing error". Buddy,…