personal
drorzel | December 2, 2010SteelyKid decided she needed to put on her Christmas outfit earlier tonight, and her day care class at the Jewish Community Center has begun celebrating Chanukah, so it seemed like a good night for a festive holiday Toddler Blogging picture, with some bonus Feats of Strength:
Look! SteelyKid can lift a sky-bison all by herself!
A second photo, with a slightly clearer view of her Christmas outfit:
Joking aside, happy holidays to everybody who's celebrating some sort of holiday at this time of year. And, you know, the rest of you just have a nice day.
drorzel | December 1, 2010The JCC, where SteelyKid goes to day care, is having a book sale, so the lobby has been full of books for sale the last few days as we've headed out. Getting SteelyKid away from the books is pretty difficult, as you would expect from our daughter.
We've mostly avoided getting anything, but yesterday, I caved and bought the Curious George board book with pull-out flaps that she latched onto. Why? This page:
The book is a collection of pages showing various places George goes to be curious, and has pull-out tabs showing a person associated with the place, and a thing associated with the place…
drorzel | November 25, 2010Today is Thanksgiving, and while we're not doing the full glutton thing until Saturday (it's more convenient for family members to travel up here then), it's still a good time to reflect on the things we're thankful for. Right at the top of the list, of course, is SteelyKid, who is bright, curious, generally cheerful, and speaking in more or less complete sentences these days, as seen here:
She's sternly instructing Kate is not to knock over the Lego blocks on the desk shelf. Emmy is saying "Dude, I can't believe you guys let this puppy boss you around like this."
Of course, after a busy…
pharyngula | November 23, 2010You probably already heard that Christie Wilcox won the $10K blogging scholarship — I helped by plugging her most excellent blog as a worthy entry.
Now she has very nicely returned the favor by sending me a large care package from Hawaii with many tropical delectables. Unfortunately, some of them, like the boxes of chocolates, are not on my diet, so I can't eat them…but there's something else I can do, and that is offer them to any of my students who drop by during my office hours today, from 9-10 and 11:30-2. What a deal: bug the prof, get a piece of candy.
And thank you, Christie!
pharyngula | November 22, 2010At last, I am safely home after an excessively long and annoying trip back from Skepticon. One of the pleasures of these trips, at least, is meeting ferocious Pharyngulistas who are otherwise just fierce pseudonyms on a page, and who usually turn out to be fun and interesting human beings. Here's one nice photo of some familiar people:
From left to right, that's:
Mattir, Tone of Death
cicely, Death's Imaginary Friend
Reality Enforcer, Spawn of Death
The Floating Cheerful Head of PZ
Blake Stacey
KOPD, Death's Chia Pet supplier
Jules, Bride of Death
Rey Fox, He who has nothing to do with…
drorzel | November 20, 2010Here's the clip from my live-via-Skype appearance on tv in Sacramento this morning. Unfortunately, the Chateau Steelypips Internet connection slowed way down for some reason, and Skype froze up then dropped the call. But we did get a few minutes of me talking about Goodnight Moon and SteelyKid.
The field of view is oddly cropped, so I keep disappearing behind their chyron, but it was still fun to talk to them. And they did show the cover of the book after we got cut off, so that's all to the good...
pharyngula | November 18, 2010Jebus, it's only the first night. Rebecca Watson, Bailey's, Amanda Marcotte, Red Stag, Vic Stenger, some random ale. I seem to have outlasted everyone else tonight, but I can't keep this up the next couple of nights.
This. Is. SKEPTICON.
I confess. It was pretty funny watching Vic Stenger trying to stagger out of the party room. And it was a wild conversation about the role of chance in physics and biology. You ought to be here.
I think I better curl up and get some sleep now. Let's see when I regain consciousness tomorrow. I might have to stand toe-to-toe with Richard Carrier and Rebecca…
drorzel | November 18, 2010Fashion's been on our minds this week, what with the whole Rock Stars of Science thing rolling out yesterday, so this week we have SteelyKid modeling the latest in toddler headgear:
This was the culmination of a game that started with her putting her napkin on her head, and declaring it a hat. We moved on to me having to wear a towel on my head, and then her getting the towel. I really like the way this one turned out.
Of course, it wouldn't be Toddler Blogging without Appa for scale:
Here, we have SteelyKid kicking back with Appa and, um, a can of tomato paste that she found in the kitchen…
pharyngula | November 16, 2010So, yay, my plane arrived safely in Minneapolis last night at 1am, and then we had to drive to Morris for three hours, in the snow. Guess how much sleep I got last night? And now I have to scurry off to teach a class about something or other, I don't know what. I've spent the last few hazy hours getting ready to teach.
You don't really expect a new post here yet, do you? I haven't even bothered with breakfast yet.
Later.
drorzel | November 15, 2010The other night at dinner, SteelyKid kept demanding that we sing. As there's only so many times you can sing the alphabet in a row, I decided to mix it up a little, and sang her the first verse and the chorus of "The Wild Rover" (these lyrics are close to the ones I know, and here's a YouTube version).
After I finished, she smiled and started babbling, and it quickly became clear that she thought it was about Grover the Muppet. We've got a bunch of old Sesame Street clips that we play for her on the computer, in which Grover waits on an angry blue Muppet.
Thanks to that, I got this idea stuck…
pharyngula | November 15, 2010Yesterday, among many other wanderings around Mexico City, I made a pilgrimage to the Lady of Guadalupe, the sacred Catholic heart of Mexico. It was not what I expected.
We left the subway station to join a trudging, milling mob on a hike to the basilica, which wended its way through a narrow tunnel lined with ramshackle booths where people tried to sell us all kinds of iconographic kitsch. That, I expected.
The surprise came when a horde dressed as Aztecs, half-naked with giant elaborate feathered headdresses, painted or wearing fierce masks of skulls or leopards, came charging through,…
drorzel | November 14, 2010We had freakishly good weather today, so I went outside to get some raking done. SteelyKid came out with me to help:
We also got some video of the Dinosaur Leaf Attack game we were playing, but YouTube is struggling with the file for some reason or another, so I can't post that. The important bits are in this picture, anyway: leaves, SteelyKid, big smiles and laughing.
I'm going to focus on this, and try to pretend that football didn't happen today.
drorzel | November 13, 2010SteelyKid and I are currently on our second pass through the Winnie-the-Pooh book my parents got her (which is identical to the one I had as a kid). We read one story every time she goes to bed, so that's one every night, and one at weekend nap times. She only sort of pays attention to the details of the stories, but she likes pointing to the occasional pictures, and waving her stuffed Pooh and Piglet around.
I wouldn't mind some more variety, though I'm not entirely sure what the options are for read-aloud books at the appropriate level (she's two-and-a-quarter). But that's what the Internet…
pharyngula | November 12, 2010I have arrived after a long, long series of flights, and have already experienced wonderful Mexican hospitality and Negro Modelo, many thanks to the gang from Masa Critica, so all is right in the world. It's not too late to show up, you can register at the door, just come on out to the Hotel Fiesta Inn Centro Histórico and join us at 8 tomorrow morning for Primer Coloquio Mexicano de Ateísmo. There will be live internet streaming of some of the talks, so let's hope more of the Spanish-speaking world takes advantage of this event, too.
La fe NO mueve montañas, la ciencia sí!
drorzel | November 11, 2010Here we see SteelyKid kicking back with Appa, among some of her many, many toys:
Navigating the living room is getting to be kind of difficult, what with all the blocks and cups and balls and other things strewn all over the place...
In other news, SteelyKid is in training to be a genius. Don't believe me? She's been practicing:
She still needs to work on the hair. And, you know, a comppletely revolutionary theory of space and time. But cut her some slack-- she's only two and a quarter...
(I couldn't resist...)
pharyngula | November 11, 2010And I'll be meeting some of them tomorrow. I'm sure I'll see a few people from Ateísmo desde México at Coloquio Mexicano de Ateísmo, and more…I actually get to spend a few days in Mexico City. I hope they'll forgive the fact that I don't have a lick of Spanish, which is a bit embarrassing nowadays…I should probably sign up for a few classes here at UMM sometime.
It's not too late to get yourself to the big city for a great meeting.
Oh, and look: there's a poll! I can guess what it's saying.
Vas a asistir al Coloquio: ¿Cómo te identificas?
Librepensador(a)
17%
Creyente
4%
Deista
2%…
pharyngula | November 11, 2010I have no idea who you are, but I know your wife likes you enough to go around asking strange men to give you birthday greetings, so you must be doing something right.
pharyngula | November 10, 2010From the depths of the endless thread, Owlmirror asks an interesting and provocative question, so I thought I'd toss it up top for everyone to take a stab at it.
At what age were you taught about Hell? Was it described as a place of eternal torture, or just being apart from God? Was it taught in a way that you thought was serious, or might there have been some skepticism in the teacher? Were you specifically told that you yourself were in danger of going there unless you met the exacting standards of your religion? Were you told that everyone who did not believe as you were taught was doomed…
oracknows | November 10, 2010I didn't feel much like blogging last night, but I felt as though I had to, even if it's brief.
Yesterday was one of those crappy days where there were a lot of problems that didn't relent, so much so that I was completely occupied and didn't check my e-mail until the evening. It was at that point that I wish I hadn't. What I found in my in box was a whole slew of e-mails informing me that a friend had died.
Mark was a friend I had never met.
One of the odd things about the Internet is that it is indeed quite possible to become virtual friends with someone, forging a friendship that lasts for…
sa smith | November 8, 2010I learned how to file a police report for 'stalking', and how to get a victim protection order in the state of Oklahoma.
:-/
Yes, I have a real-life, for real stalker.
Its something my parents have been worried about since I started this blog. They have actually been pissed at me for agreeing to do debates, and such, considering the lunacy of True Believers.
The man whos stalking me?
Just got obsessed with me since he got put in a near-by half-way house (reminder: all of my 'neighbors' are half-way houses. I do not live in a 'nice part of town'). I have no idea what his name is. I have no…