personal
pharyngula | May 2, 2007My next Seed column was just sent off to the overlords. I love this time of year! Everything is coming to tidy conclusions, so I can focus on one thing at once instead of 10, get it done, and unlike the usual Lernaean Hydra-like state of affairs, it doesn't bloom into two new tasks.
Then, tomorrow … no classes, so I'm going to be able to just rip through all my grading without interruption. And then Friday and this weekend I'll be free to tear through a major administrative chore that's been dogging me for the last few months.
Freedom!
pharyngula | May 2, 2007I just gave the last exam of my last class of this semester. No more lecture prep, no more lectures, just a stack of grading that I have to finish by Friday (I do have one final exam to give, but it's optional—the score they get on it replaces the lowest exam score of the term—and I expect only about a quarter of the class will bother to take it). I'm sure the students are even more relieved than I am at this point.
The end is in sight!
pharyngula | April 30, 2007A colleague just let me know that I'm mentioned in the "Best of the Web" section of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. Yay! It's a positive review!
It's in the April 15 issue for all you subscribers.
jstemwedel | April 30, 2007This Friday, as part of my university's sesquicentennial celebration, there's going to be a two hour session on "The Future of Higher Education". The keynote speaker will be Margaret Spellings, the U.S. Secrtetary of Education. There will also be a "panel discussion with national experts", after which they will entertain questions from the audience.
So, what questions about the future of higher education would you like me to ask?
In case you're stuck for ideas, here's a potential prompt: Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education has been hailed as a way to bring No Child Left…
pharyngula | April 29, 2007Too much traveling lately. Today Skatje and I hit the big city for a couple of events.
We attended the Minnesota Atheists fundraiser in the morning. Somehow, I ended up volunteering to give a talk to the Minnesota Atheists sometime this summer, and I also volunteered to speak at Lee Salisbury's Critical Thinking Club. Then I talked to some of the leaders of CASH, and volunteered to be their faculty advisor. I've heard that there is this word called "no" in the English language — could someone define it for me please? (Nah, these will all be fun, so it's OK.)
Skatje forced me to take her…
jstemwedel | April 29, 2007I've been dawdling on this. I was tagged by not one but two of my blog pals for the Thinking Blogger meme. Here are the official rules of the meme:
If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).
Needless to say, I'm flummoxed by the fact that Zuska and Bill would have been in my list -- but they tagged me…
oracknows | April 29, 2007I don't often do this, but every so often I come across a question that I need help deciding. What's the use of having a moderately popular blog (alas, 3,000 visits a day do not constitute an "immensely popular" blog) if I can't sometimes use it for my own nefarious purposes, right?
The question is simple, and, I expect, one that many of my readers have experience with.
My wife and I have been contemplating getting rid of our land line telephone and going just with our mobile phones. One of the reasons we're contemplating this is that Verizon just keeps increasing the price for basic service…
jstemwedel | April 27, 2007I haven't mentioned it here before, but I'm currently working on a project to launch an online dialogue at my university (using a weblog, of course) to engage different members of the campus community with the question of what they think the college experience here ought to be, and how we can make that happen. The project team has a bunch of great people on it, and we thought we had anticipated all the "stake holders" at the university from whom we ought to seek "buy-in".
As we were poised to execute the project, we discovered that we had forgotten one:
The Institutional Review Board.
Yes…
pharyngula | April 26, 2007Hey, I'm home again! To Boston and back again in 30 hours is a bit much, I'm afraid—I need a nap, but work awaits me.
We did have a brief gathering of science blog fans at Darwin's this morning: Mark (whose last name I didn't get…he can 'fess up in a comment),
Revere (why isn't everyone reading his blog?),
Blake Stacey, OM, and
Denis Castaing (Proud Atheist — he even gave me a big bold button that said "Atheist and Proud") showed up and we chatted for about an hour and a half. Good people: only the smartest read Pharyngula, of course.
That button Denis gave me actually came in very handy.…
cmooney | April 26, 2007
I spent about 24 straight hours traveling yesterday, crossing the Pacific and such--so I've been a bit out of it. But what do I come back to?
Fellow Sciencebloggers John Wilkins and Tim Lambert have both done posts--with lotsa cool pics--about our recent adventures, intellectual as well as alcoholic, in Sydney. Go check them both out. I stole one picture for this post but there are lots more.
Meanwhile while traveling I also had an article come out on framing and science communication in the Sydney Morning Herald. It's a written summary of much of what I'd been saying publicly during my…
pharyngula | April 25, 2007OK, I've decided: I'm going to be at Darwin's on Thursday morning, around 8ish. If you're in the area, stop on by — no obligation, though, if you're all busy I'll just check my mail and guzzle some coffee before heading off to the airport.
There were lots of good suggestions, but really … how could I resist a place called Darwin's?
pharyngula | April 25, 2007I'm on my way to Boston for a day. A few people have written wondering if there'd be any free time to get together, and I'm afraid today is booked solid. The one possibility is tomorrow morning (Thursday), my plane leaves at 11:20, and I'll probably just hang about in the coffeeshop nearest my hotel for a while, and if anyone wanted to join me, please do. I'm staying in the Charles Hotel on Harvard Square in Cambridge — if any Bostonians can recommend a decent coffee house with wireless access near there, I'll be grateful, and I'll also probably be there at 8 am on Thursday.
jstemwedel | April 24, 2007This tool uses an algorithm to guess whether the chunk of text you enter into the text box was written by a male or a female. What do you suppose it thought about my writing?
It depends on the post. For example this post got:
Female Score: 1616
Male Score: 1380
which is to say, "FEMALE", while this post got:
Female Score: 3271
Male Score: 4308
which is to say, "MALE".
Who knew I was so versatile?
The algorithm seems to be based on tracking frequencies of words that, apparently, are more commonly used by females (with, if, not, where, be, when, your, her, we, should, she, and, me, myself…
pharyngula | April 23, 2007I'm back! I had a long, busy day at a teaching conference, and got persuaded about a few things — I'm designing a new course for freshmen biology majors for the fall term ("Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development", or FunGenEvoDevo for short), and I've been following the pedagogical ideas of Eric Mazur for a while, and this was my chance to go hear him. He said what I wanted to hear about getting basic concepts across to students, which is going to help a great deal in my summer project.
I got back too late to catch Dawkins on the O'Lielly show, though. My wife saw it, said it…
pharyngula | April 22, 2007We're coming into the home stretch for the semester here—this will be the second to the last week of classes, and just as I'm panicking about everything I have to cram into the last few lectures, what do I do? Disappear! Flit about from place to place! It would be a great way to dodge assassins if I weren't also making my travel plans public.
Tonight and Monday, I'm going to be at a Teaching and Learning Conference at the UMTC. I'm not driving for a change, so this trip shouldn't be too bad.
Tuesday is Café Scientifique here in Morris, with Tracey Anderson of the biology discipline telling…
oracknows | April 22, 2007There is a monster living in our house.
Black and sleek, with nasty, pointy, teeth, it lurks, waiting to deal out death and carnage. Indeed, evidence of its implacable thirst for death was left for me when I returned from Los Angeles late Wednesday night, perhaps left in tribute.
Behold, the face of death!
Fear her! Do not rouse her slumber!
Oh, no! Too late! (Note the eyes glowing with Satanic evil!)
Actually, as you probably figured out, that's our dog. She's the sweetest, lovingest dog in the world, gentle and, as you can see, greatly appreciative of a comfortable spot to take…
pharyngula | April 21, 2007To my surprise, I opened this week's edition of the university newspaper, and there was an article about me (it's near the end, on page 18). It's complimentary, if you think words like "scathing" and "godless" are high compliments, as I do, and it's also good to see what some of the students think. However! Yes, I say, However!
Those who know the mild-mannered Myers must surely
wonder where the fire comes
from in his blog. He is perhaps
best summarized as a writer
who demands an empiricist
understanding of truth, disdains
misrepresentation of his views,
and insists on a fair shake for…
drorzel | April 21, 2007I went to school with a crazy person.
Well, OK, that in and of itself is not surprising, given the amount of schooling I have, and the subject I majored in. I almost certainly went to school with a lot of crazy people, and I can easily come up with several people who probably count as crazy in one way or another.
I can only think of one guy who was crazy in the manner that's on everybody's mind this week, though. He was a couple of years ahead of me in school, back in the mid-80's.
For a little while in seventh and eight grade, there was a group of kids in my school who used to regularly get…
j7uy5 | April 18, 2007
href="http://www.salon.com/ent/audiofile/?last_story=/ent/audiofile/2007/04/19/patti_smith/">This
is my second music-related post in one week.
Salon has
an
href="http://www.salon.com/ent/audiofile/?last_story=/ent/audiofile/2007/04/19/patti_smith/">article
with podcast, with
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patti_Smith">Patti Smith.
The occasion is the forthcoming release of her new album,
href="http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/03/29/075948.php">Twelve.
The interview is not so much about the album; it's more about
her political views, and a little bit of rock and…
jstemwedel | April 16, 2007Today was fully scheduled for me. Prepping for class, participating in a phone interview, teaching, midday meeting with my department chair and a dean to discuss developing an ethics module for an intro class in another department, more teaching, power-photocopying for this week's Socrates Cafe, then a dash to the car to get the sprogs in time for elder offspring's soccer practice.
It wasn't until about 20 minutes into my drive home that I heard the news about the shootings at Virginia Tech.
I'm still having trouble getting words to really wrap themselves around the immediate feeling of…