personal
clock | October 17, 2006A very old post (from September 04, 2004), but you may like it anyway.
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The other day, we were discussing birth order on JREG (http://www.jregrassroots.org/), and this is what I wrote about me and my brother:
My older brother and I are quite similar, actually. We were always the best friends, shared everything and agreed on almost everything. He was always a big teacher and role model for me. Any differences?
My brother had an easier time dealing with our parents through adolescence than I did. Fortunately, when I was of that age, he took me…
pharyngula | October 15, 2006You want to see a few more of my travel pictures, don't you? Yesterday, we got on the Seven Oaks line leaving Victoria Station, and ended up at Bromley South, where we were met by our faithful native guide, Robin Levett. He drove us through narrow, winding country roads to the tiny town of Downe. Downe is very picturesque and old country English, but we left it (after refreshing ourselves at the pub, which seems to be a mandatory tradition here, and after meeting Louis, another gentleman who joined us on our journey) to walk a mile or so down another narrow, tree- and hedge-lined road to end…
pharyngula | October 14, 2006We had a big crowd yesterday—20 or more people showed up at the Natural History Museum for our London Howlerfest. We spent a few hours strolling through the museum, a few more hours at a nearby pub (I don't recall the name of the pub, but I do remember London Pride, Wildcat, and Wicked Witch), and few hours at a nearby restaurant. I don't recall the names of all the people that I met there (which makes the fact that I only remember what I was drinking even more embarrassing), but I did take pictures. Browse the collection below the fold, and do me a favor—if you were there, name the people,…
drorzel | October 14, 2006No, it's not another spoof religion like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and it's not a real religion for people to get outraged over. The title refers to my college alumni organization-- Williams uses a cow as the unofficial mascot, and the school colors are purple and gold, so little purple cows are all over everything. But as Kate has noted many times, there's a certain cult-like air surrounding Williams alumni (she only married into the cult).
It's sort of hard to explain what I'm talking about, but possibly the best example is the story of the Alumni Review. Many colleges and universities…
pharyngula | October 13, 2006I was out visiting a few people yesterday.
Guess who.
Remember, I'll be at the Natural History Museum this afternoon at 2:00 for the London Howlerfest!
clock | October 12, 2006I went to Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on Monday to hear Elizabeth Edwards read from her new book, Saving Graces (I could not make it to the earlier event in Chapel Hill as I was picking up the kids from school at the time). Quail Ridge Books and the surrounding area can get quite busy when a famous person is coming in to sign books (e.g., when Al Gore and Jimmy Carter came there) so I made sure to come really early. By 6:45pm I have already dropped the kids off at grandma's yet I still had to make a couple of circles to find a parking space and the bookstore was already full. I'd say…
pharyngula | October 11, 2006Where else could I go but to the only respectable church in all of Christendom? It was most cool to step out of the Tube station and look up and recognize this rather huge, ornate building.
We walked around this elaborate pile, guarded by grim-looking fellows carrying nasty big guns.
There was another huge stone building there. We went inside and took the tour.
An awful lot of people seemed to have tried to have achieved immortality by surrounding their corpses with ornate sarcophagi. You can find Elizabeth I's stony likeness in there, for instance, atop a big stone box holding, presumably…
terrasig | October 7, 2006I'm sitting here, miserably pissed off, because a US Airways snafu has kept me from attending the 90th birthday party of Stetson Kennedy, legendary Southern author, rebel, and soldier for human rights and social justice, in Fruit Cove, Florida.
For readers who may recall my admiration of Mr. Kennedy and visit with him earlier this year, Stetson Kennedy was also a good friend and host of Woody Guthrie during the late 1940s and 1950s, during which time Guthrie wrote a lyric sheet called 'Talking Stetson Kennedy', about Stet's 1950 write-in campaign for US Senate between Claude Pepper and George…
j7uy5 | October 6, 2006I just
got back from my brother's photography exhibit at Dancing Cranes.
It was part of what they call the
href="http://www.kalamazooarts.com/calendar/pdf/Art_Hop_10_06.pdf">Art
Hop in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A bunch of artistic
types agree to exhibit their works in various upscale shops in the
area, all at
the same time. People go downtown, mill around, chat, and
spend money.
It is a win-win kind of a deal for the artists and the merchants.
And the community as a whole, which I guess makes it
win-win-win. He sold three photographs for $500 apiece.
Which is quite good.
jstemwedel | October 3, 2006Since, as I mentioned, my mom worked with data from COBE, and thus, was in a position to cross paths with newly-minted Nobel Laureates John Mather and George Smoot, I shook her down for some information about the pair.
Disclaimer: I suspect Mom exaggerates more in her anecdotes about her children than in the ones she tells about her work place, but I'm counting on her for the details here.
Here's what Mom emailed to her children upon hearing the news that Mather and Smoot won the Nobel Prize:
Your mother worked with this year's Nobel physics prize winners.
Mather was NASA PI for all of…
jstemwedel | October 3, 2006Chad broke the story, at least in the ScienceBlogs galaxy, but I wanted to add my own "Woo-hoo!" for John C. Mather and George F. Smoot, who have won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.
I didn't want this one to go unnoted, as my mom worked to analyze piles of COBE data and, during this period of her life, made the acquaintance of George Smoot, who (from what I can gather) is not only a really smart scientist but also a good and decent human being.
I'm hoping Mom will leave some good Smoot tidbits in the comments.
jstemwedel | October 2, 2006I started out thinking I was writing this as an open letter to my students, but it turns out I'm talking to you all, too.
* * * * *
I have very strong feelings about what the point of a college education should be. Maybe you do, too. It's entirely possible that we would disagree about this issue, or that you are so happy with your own picture of the point of a college education that you really have no interests in anyone else's.
That's fine. But if you're my student, certain things I get worked up about may strike you as mysterious if you don't know what I think this whole thing is aiming…
jstemwedel | October 2, 2006Disclaimer: Plagiarism is bad. A quick search for "plagiarism" on this blog will demonstrate that I've taken a clear stand against plagiarism.
That said, if one were, hypothetically, planning a little online-copy-and-paste plagiarism, and if one's instructor has earned a Ph.D., in Philosophy, from Stanford, one might reconsider using the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the source of several uncited sentences.
There is a better-than-average chance that the instructor is familiar with SEP -- indeed, even with the specific entry you (hypothetically) are tempted to plunder.
Even if she's…
jstemwedel | October 2, 2006It's Monday, it's cold and overcast, and I'm grading papers. As it turns out, these are perfect conditions to make me grumpy.
Rather than wallow in it, though, I've decided to be proactive about trying to head off future grumpiness. My philosophy of science classes are about to embark on some exercises about scientific theory choice, for which they will be considering Ptolemaic and Copernican accounts of planetary motions. Having done these kind of exercises for many semesters, I know that there's a good chance I'll end up with stacks of papers that may make me howl in despair if I don't…
oracknows | September 30, 2006Today is just the kind of day when these lyrics speak to me:
And you run, you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
From Time by Pink Floyd
drorzel | September 28, 2006I got yet another comment about how much weight I've lost today, from somebody who's only met me a half-dozen times. Apparently, I used to be quite the fat slob, or something.
Anyway, for those who care, the third-quarter weight-loss figures are below the fold, including a spiffy color graph. Because it's not science without graphs...
(Yes, I'm a huge dork... If I'd posted this during the nerd-off, I might've made the Top Five...)
Explanation of the color code: I started tracking my weight on January 5, and making a concerted attempt to lose some weight by cutting out snacks, taking the…
jstemwedel | September 28, 2006
Elder offspring: Hey, that's a cool chili pepper necklace.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you know that I've had this necklace for about ten years and you are the first person who didn't think it was a carrot?
Elder offspring: A carrot? That doesn't look like a carrot!
Dr. Free-Ride: I didn't think so, either. But I'm guessing it's because the chili is orange, and people don't recognize orange chilies as easily as red ones.
Elder offspring: Still, the shape's all wrong for a carrot.
Dr. Free-Ride: I'm really pleased with your powers of observation and your ability to distinguish different fruits…
jstemwedel | September 27, 2006I can't remember a time I have had a more severe jones for a spinach salad than the last few days. The perfect balance of crisp and earthy and creamy, whose eating would be not merely a mechanical refueling of my body, but a transcendant experience -- is that too much to ask?
Well, during a spinach-borne outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 it is. But, while I dream of spinach (and grade papers), I'm thinking of how information (or lack of information) about our foods plays a role in our ability to make choices about what to eat.
I was already hungry for spinach when I caught an update on the…
pharyngula | September 27, 2006You may be wondering where I've been. It's been a busy couple of days, and the next few weeks look even busier. The full itinerary is below the fold.
I flew into New York on Monday, and attended a book party for Chris Mooney (he was handing out copies of his book like popcorn), hosted by Adam Bly, who also presided over the next day's event. On Tuesday, I was at the Inspiration Festival, which I'm sorry to say I later learned was a fairly pricey event to get into—it was part of a series of advertising week events going on around the city. If you tried to show up and weren't let in without…