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pharyngula | January 9, 2007Let's see…what did I do today? I met with a whole bunch of people at Seed. They were cool, but they won't notice that I mentioned them because they never read my blog.
I also had dinner with Niles Eldredge, James Watson, Adam Bly, and Laura McNeil (big guns at Seed).
It was an engrossing evening, but now you're all going to really hate me: I can drop names, but I'm not going to reveal private conversations…other than to mention that I was honored by a toast from that distinguished crowd, which means I can either die smug, or I've got a heck of a lot to do to live up to it now. I fear the…
pharyngula | January 8, 2007I think I had a better day than any of you readers out there, and I have to gloat somewhere.
So…lunch with John Brockman. An afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art. A conversation with Niles Eldredge. Dinner with Benoit Mandelbrot. I should do this kind of thing every day.
By the way, I really recommend dinner with Mandelbrot. That guy has more stories…
jstemwedel | January 8, 2007As some of you will have noticed, I'm scheduled to give a talk at the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference in just under two weeks. This morning, I finished (kind of) working out that talk.
A few things worth noting:
This is not a completely drafted speech or anything like that. It's a talk, and one that's meant to set up a discussion among conference participants. However, given that it covers terrain I think about quite regularly, I have a very good sense of what I'm going to say.
Indeed, the real labor here wasn't in hammering out the logical structure of my remarks, but in…
jstemwedel | January 7, 2007
I've been wanting to blog all weekend, but instead I've been making (and canning) lemon curd and lemon marmalade. It was either that or the Free-Ride family was going to have to face down an Exodus-scale plague of lemons.
The batch of lemon marmalade consumed 12 lemons (plus 6 cups of sugar and 24 hours), while the batch of lemon curd used up a mere 4 lemons (and a cup of sugar, 5 eggs, and a stick of butter). After the labor involved in this round of lemon processing, I can give a detailed account of the location of every tiny cut and scrape on either of my hands.
Notice all those not-…
pharyngula | January 7, 2007To my great relief, I've made it to the big city without a hitch (last time I came out here, I spent more time sitting on a runway in Allentown). Now it's just a busy, busy couple of days visiting with some very cool people—this time I'll actually get to visit Seed Central—and then back home on Wednesday.
pharyngula | January 7, 2007I've got to work on my image. Here's another report about meeting me that says I "turned out to be a more low-key guy than I expected". Maybe I've got to try and reverse expectations.
It's true. I make Mr Rogers look like a bomb-throwing anarchist. I walk into a room and people fall asleep. If I start talking, catatonia and death ensue. I've got the personality and verve of a cheap mannequin.
Everyone will testify to the truth of what I say.
pharyngula | January 6, 2007A few of us infamous bloggers met at a pleasant party at the home of Jim and Kat Lippard, and here we are:
From left to right, the hospitable Jim Lippard, inscrutable Brent Rasmussen, elusive GrrlScientist, me, and that strange Irish guy.
At last, someone has accurately reported on my awe-inspiring personal presence:
P.Z. Myers was a towering giant of a man, with a bristling piratical mustache, a rakish beard, fangs, and little sucker-tipped tentacles instead of fingers. His booming, gravelly voice took over every conversation and ranted at us until we all finally agreed with him about…
pharyngula | January 5, 2007Yes, I did, although it was tough going. Grrl Scientist was more personable than I was, and Lynch was always sniping at me cruelly. I had to be the cranky old guy up there. Oh, well...we did get lots of questions, and it went smoothly enough; Diane Kelly, the moderator, had the easiest job in the world since she she just had to prime the pump with a few questions, and everyone just went along with it.
Tonight—Seamus McCaffreys Irish Pub around 6. I guess some of us will meet in the lobby of the Hyatt at 6 before walking over, or you can just meet us there at 18 W Monroe. Just look for the…
pharyngula | January 4, 2007I see that the temperatures back home are hovering around freezing—unseasonably warm for Minnesota, but still, I get to post this picture taken outside my hotel here in Phoenix.
What's that? Palm trees, blue skies, and it's warm enough that I could run around naked (they're comparative biologists, they're used to seeing weird organisms, but I think I'll spare them that particular sight.)
Hi, Mary! Hi, Skatje! Hi, Connlann! Hi, Alaric! How's January in the frozen North treating you all?
jstemwedel | January 4, 2007Don't update your blog for a few days.
Seriously, the fact that I left a message on the machine to let her know that the Free-Ride family made it home safely was apparently not persuasive in the absence of new blog entries since our return.
I was totally offline for a few days. I got some groceries, took the kids for haircuts and doctors appointments, did a little gardening, did a little reading. I promise I'm still alive and everyone is reasonably healthy.
The prospects are even pretty good for a post on ethics and/or science in the next 24 hours.
pharyngula | January 4, 2007While I'm off absorbing knowledge, entertain yourself with this video of drug-treated spiders. I'm going to be the one on caffeine, I think.
SICB update: last night was a social evening, and I got to meet John Lynch for the first time. In person, he's actually exactly like he is on the blog: friendly and talkative, and he paid for my beer. Definitely an appeaser, in other words. Grrl Scientist was mysterious and prettier than the two of us put together (again just like her blog). Me? I was just surly and hateful, standing up every once in a while to deliver a ranty denunciation, just like…
oracknows | January 4, 2007You know, like the namesake of my nom de blog, I'm not immune to a little vanity. Indeed, I daresay that no human is. What differs among humans are two things: the level of vanity and what we're vain about. Given that I don't have all that much in the looks department going on, it's fortunate that I'm probably not as vain as my blog namesake. Even so, I like to think that I'm pretty intelligent and that possess close to the proper level of skepticism, being neither so credulous that I'm easily fooled nor so skeptical that it devolves into cynicism. Consequently, when someone apparently thinks…
pharyngula | January 3, 2007In the race to SICB, GrrlScientist has beat me here to Phoenix, and she had so much further to fly. Now we're just waiting for that slacker, John Lynch, to show up.
Tired now. Must drink beer.
pharyngula | January 2, 2007
Prepare yourselves, Arizona! John Lynch, GrrlScientist, and I will be wafting into Phoenix tomorrow, and here's a short version of our busy calendar:
All week: Science! I'll plan on posting updates about various cool things I learn, as I'm sure my SciBlogs colleagues will also do.
Friday, 6ish: we'll be at some place called Seamus McCaffrey's Irish Pub. That Lynch fellow is making us go, and he's probably going to force us to drink Guinness. I think he's buying, though, so it's OK. Anyone can show up for this one.
Saturday, 5:30-8:00pm: Jim Lippard is hosting a social at his place. Limited…
drorzel | January 2, 2007The 2007 World Science Fiction Convention will be held in Yokohama, Japan this year, and Kate and I are going. It's a bit of a delayed celebration for my tenure-- I'll be on sabbatical in the Fall, so I won't need to worry about prepping a class for September, and we can make it a nice vacation.
We're planning to spend about three weeks there, and have most of the itinerary sketched out (details below the fold), but there's a little time left unaccounted for. I'm pretty sure there are people reading this from Japan, and I know there are lots of people who have more knowledge of the country…
drorzel | January 1, 2007I lost a lot of weight, read a lot of books, taught a lot of classes, did a bit of research, and oh, yeah, I got tenure. I think that last outweighs the miserable stomach problems by, oh, quite a bit.
And now, that's officially last year, at least for those using the Western calendar system. Happy New Year, unless you're on some lunar calendar thing, in which case, um, have a good Monday.
It's traditional to wish that the New Year be better than the last, but 2006 is going to be a hard one to top, for me at least. Still, it's not just about me, so may your 2007 be better than 2006, or at the…
pharyngula | December 31, 2006I don't believe in New Year's resolutions—they're always so narrow and boring. I'd rather advance some bigger goals.
When I was a young fellow, and my father was teaching me how to swing a bat, he'd tell me I shouldn't aim to hit the ball, I should try to swing through it. When he was teaching me how to play football, he'd tell me I shouldn't aim for the lineman's chest, I should set the goal of running straight through the guy and a hundred yards downfield. (Of course, there were other words of wisdom from my father, like "you're a born nerd, boy, and I don't know why we're wastin' time with…
clock | December 31, 2006Happy New Year to all my readers!!! I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2007, a paper published, a grant funded, a tenure achieved, and all other goals reached.
Some blog stats:
1721 posts
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Technorati Rank: 3,847 (which is more than a 200 slide down over the past month or so), which I did not think to compare to others, but Martin did and found out is the second best ranking of the Scienceblogs universe.
pharyngula | December 29, 2006Attention, Phoenixians (Phoenicians? Phoenotypes? What do they call residents of Phoenix, anyway?). (John Lynch, GrrlScientist, and I are going to be in your area next week for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) meetings, and we are all unanimous in our expectation that this will be an excellent opportunity to cadge free drinks from meet all of our fans out Arizona way. We're all going to be taking advantage of the meetings to learn us some new science, but there will be a few opportunities to socialize, too.
Jim Lippard is hosting a get-together at his home on…
j7uy5 | December 29, 2006This is my sister's bulldog, doing what it loves the most.
You've got to be careful when doing this, though.
It took a while to get this shot, to get one that was not blurry.
The dog kept jerking his head back and forth.