personal
pharyngula | September 25, 2010Here's the video Thunderf00t made of his visit to Morris — that's me slumped down in our very comfy sofa. It's one of the ways we torture visitors, by tossing them onto the very billowy cushions.
Uh-oh. It's a four-part series. No way am I watching all that.
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
drorzel | September 23, 2010SteelyKid has been expanding her repertoire of songs lately-- it now includes "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "The Alphabet Song" along with "Ring Around the Rosey," "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"-- so for this week's picture, she decided to get in touch with her inner Bono:
Irish shirt, check; big sunglasses, check; open mouth, check. Get a world leader or two in the picture, and nobody would be able to tell the difference.
pharyngula | September 22, 2010I was interviewed for this article about how atheists respond to signs of their own mortality. It's a little unsurprising…atheists don't expect to live forever, after all, so there's no news there.
I am very uncomfortable with the comparison between my recent experiences and what Christopher Hitchens is facing. I had a little cardio-hiccup and quick & easy surgery to correct a potential problem (and a little warning to make some life style changes); Hitchens has a serious disease that is likely to take his life. These aren't the same thing. These aren't even close.
I'm also feeling pretty…
drorzel | September 16, 2010For this week's Toddler Blogging, a shot of Family Reading Time:
SteelyKid looks very serious, because she's going about the important job of locating Goldbug in Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. Grandma and Grandpa still have the copy of this that I loved when I was little, and introduced SteelyKid to it. If you're not familiar with it, it contains lots of very busy road scenes, with lots of different types of vehicles, and each drawing includes a little gold bug somewhere-- driving a bulldozer, riding in a car, hiding in a teacup. SteelyKid has really taken to the "Where…
pharyngula | September 15, 2010I just got word that I am actually written up in, ahem, Playboy magazine, in the October issue, available 'round about now at your newsstand or via your subscription. Anyone got it? I'm curious to know if they discuss my awesome virility and elegant fashions at all, or if the discussion is confined to my teaching, as they said it would be.
There is no pictorial spread. This is a men's magazine, remember — they wouldn't want to intimidate their readers.
By the way, they are a very nice and considerate bunch. They actually sent me notification and asked if there was anything they should be…
drorzel | September 15, 2010So, I'm looking at the couple-dozen tabs I have open in Chrome for stuff that I think would be worth blogging about, and the slides for this afternoon's lecture that need revising, and the student poster that needs to be completed before tomorrow, and the committee stuff that I ought to be doing, and the laundry that needs dealing with, and it occurs to me that there's one thing I haven't had time for, which is the book I'm writing.
Thus, effective immediately, I'm putting social media on quasi-hiatus. There may still be some links dump posts here, as I will occasionally be reading stuff…
pharyngula | September 13, 2010It was very odd, to have somebody from the greater outside world appear out of the east and actually find his way to the remote and mysterious hamlet of Morris, but there he was, and he did bring cameras, and we sat down in my living room, and our conversation was recorded and will someday be edited and appear on the interwebs, and he has since moved on into the west, on his way to the Pacific Ocean and the Shangri-la of Vancouver.
You'll all have to look for a new video from Thunderf00t in a week or two.
pharyngula | September 13, 2010I will have you know that I never experienced the red pattern in the diagram.
It does remind me that I need to get a haircut this week, though.
drorzel | September 13, 2010SteelyKid returns today from her weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's, and there's going to be a surprise waiting for her:
She hadn't exactly outgrown her crib yet, but she was getting kind of big for it, so we decided to move her to a big girl bed. It's a "captain's bed" with drawers underneath the mattress, bought from the local unfinished furniture place (and finished by them, because we're not that fond of the smell of varnish). A closer look at the bedspread Kate bought to go with it:
Before you say "Why'd you buy her a bedspread from the boys section?" remember two things: 1) Kate and I…
drorzel | September 9, 2010SteelyKid goes to day care at the Jewish Community Center, which is closed today and tomorrow for Rosh Hashanah. Here we see her calling all her friends on the phone in her play house to wish them a happy new year, and let Appa offer his own greetings:
The two-day closing is, as you might imagine, kind of inconvenient for us But it's all good, because SteelyKid is going to celebrate the holiday with a few days at Grandma and Grandpa camp, so here's a special Toddler Blogging shot, with bonus grandparents for scale:
(Both of these were taken with my spiffy new telephoto lens, the Canon 55-…
drorzel | September 9, 2010Over at EphBlog, Stephen O'Grady has a post giving advice to the entering class at Williams. A bunch of this stuff is school-specific stuff that will only make sense to another member of the Cult of the Purple Cow, but there's some good general advice in there as well.
I particularly liked his story about the professor who saved his college career:
Looking back, it's borderline shocking that I recovered as much as I did academically, given how horrifying my grades were that first year. And, it must be said, my first semester as a sophomore. But while I accept full responsibility for getting…
pharyngula | September 7, 2010I'm about to enter a classroom for the first time in over a year. I feel a strange dread that I've forgotten how to teach.
OK, I'm back. I survived. No students passed out. I think it was OK, although it was made more difficult by the fact that it involved a transition from one instructor to another.
Now to do it again this afternoon.
drorzel | September 5, 2010We had a Barfy Toddler Incident yesterday, making a mess of Kate's spiffy new car seat, but that seems to have been a passing thing, perhaps caused by an excess of cranberry juice while on campus yesterday morning greeting new students. Thus, we went ahead with our plan to take SteelyKid to the zoo today:
We only went through the part you can walk through-- it didn't seem like we'd have much luck getting her to sit still for the "safari ride" through the rest of it-- and a lot of it was kind of shabby and depressing-- small chain-link enclosures, animals scrambling for food from visitors,…
drorzel | September 3, 2010Earlier this summer, I talked about the blog and the book on the phone with somebody from the APS, providing material for a profile of me that was posted yesterday on Physics Central. It's pretty good, but it's still a little strange to see my name and picture on their profile index with some of the other names there-- I don't really think of myself as being in the same category as Margaret Murnane or Mildred Dresselhaus, who are really amazing scientists.
So, it's very flattering to see this up there. It would also probably be a useful reference for anybody who would like to update my stub…
drorzel | September 2, 2010For this week's Toddler Blogging, SteelyKid demonstrates her mastery of bubble technology. Appa is not that impressed.
Her other big new trick is bossing us around in great detail-- she'll put something on her fake grill, close the lid, turn the knobs, then say, "Daddy! No touch! Hot!" pointing at the grill, followed by a very clearly enunciated "Be careful!" complete with finger-wagging. That's a little harder to get a good picture of, but I'll see what I can do for next week.
drorzel | September 1, 2010Rubber dino, you're the one,
You make bathtime lots of fun
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you
Doo-doo doo-de-doo
Rubber dino, fearsome roar,
Good thing you're a herbivore
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you
doo-doo doo-de-doo
Every day when I,
get undressed next to the sink,
I find a
Little fella who's,
cute and yellow and extinct
When I squeeze you, water squirts,
Then I giggle, 'til it hurts
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you
Doo-doo doo-de-doo
You're my favorite bathtime toy,
Watch out for that asteroid!
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of,
Rubber dino…
drorzel | August 29, 2010We're trying not to let SteelyKid watch a whole lot of tv, but we've taken to showing her YouTube videos of old Sesame Street and Muppet Show skits as a way to wind her down before bedtime. this, of course, has let to her demanding to watch videos any time one of us is anywhere near a computer.
One of her current favorites is this clip of Viking pigs from the Muppet Show:
I've been horribly earwormed with this for days, now, and since misery has bosonic character, I thought I'd share it with you all.
pharyngula | August 29, 2010Can a guy get some privacy? I just learned that some snoop crashed my hospital room to get a picture of me in distress.
There may be worse to come. I've lost some weight lately (low fat diets and all that, don't you know), and because of the uncomfortable soreness of the area where doctors popped into my femoral artery, I don't like to wear a belt just yet…so I'm ambling about the house, holding up my pants with one hand, because if I let go, they'll be down around my ankles. This is not dignified.
And then, of course, there are the revelations about my political leanings and future plans.
pharyngula | August 27, 2010The Chronicle of Higher Ed interviewed me a while back, and asked me about my daily read. It's a bit strange, though…lately my reading has dried up and been replaced by typing. Gotta fix that.
One really troubling thing, though, is the portrait they included — I presume it was made from some photo floating about the web. When did I get that old?