personal
oracknows | July 4, 2010It's nearly sundown here in the eastern time zone of the United States. That means that soon all sorts of amateur fireworks aficionados will be making a whole lot of noise and, the part that I hate, scaring the crap out of my poor dog. So, for those of you who are soon going to be reducing my poor dog to a quivering mass of fur, not to mention annoying me to no end, in the spirit of the holiday season, I have some firework safety tips for you:
laelaps | July 4, 2010
"Worker Bee" by Motion City Soundtrack
I have been writing here at ScienceBlogs.com for about two years and nine months now. Some of you have been reading my posts since I started here (thank you for sticking with me!), but readers come and go over time, and so I am jumping on board with the "Who are you?" meme recently restarted by DrugMonkey, Pal, Janet, Bora, and Jason.
Everyone is asking different questions of their readers - some more detailed ones than others - but I think I'll keep it relatively simple: who are you (feel free to comment anonymously or under a pseud, and be as…
terrasig | July 4, 2010I just walked outside my little dead-end neighborhood of 17 or so houses, almost exactly the number of my childhood neighborhood in northern New Jersey.
The houses and lots are a little bigger since money goes further in North Carolina. And yeah, sure, a state professor's salary is a bit better than that of a printing press mechanic or registered nurse in the 1970s.
But there is a huge hole in my 4th of July experience.
There are no kids riding on their bicycles with American flags taped to their handle bars, ever the risk of poking out one's eye - something that could probably get a parent…
drorzel | July 4, 2010It's Independence Day here in the US, where we spend the day playing with fire (grilling during the day, fireworks at night) to express our gratitude for not needing to give a damn about the British royal family. Or something like that.
Since I'm going to do my patriotic playing-with-fire duty (augmented by a possible trip to the zoo with SteelyKid), there won't be any deep thoughts forthcoming today, but to give those of you in need of web-based entertainment something to do, here's a question for all my readers:
Who are you, and how did you get here?
It's been a while since I did one of…
jstemwedel | July 2, 2010DrugMonkey's Google calendar must have told him that it's time for the meme in which bloggers ask their readers what they're doing here, a meme whose originator is the esteemed Ed Yong.
Having played along myself in 2008 and 2009, I'm on-board to mount the 2010 version of this blog-reader census. Please respond to at least some of these questions in the comments so we can avoid the expense of sending people with clipboards to your front door:
Who are you? (Scientist, philosopher, other? Student, parent, working stiff, blissful retiree? Given that personal identity is a matter of deep…
sb admin | July 2, 2010
I've been working for a while to develop a Frequently Asked Questions page to answers the most common reader questions about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Well, it's now online, and it addresses questions ranging from why HeLa cells are immortal to how the Lacks family is benefiting from the book. It also includes answers to commonly asked publishing questions, like, How do I break into science writing? You can read it online here. If you have burning questions not answered there, leave them in the comments section below -- I'll add to the FAQ as questions arise and time allows.
drorzel | July 1, 2010Ah, the busy life of a modern homeowner: making phone calls, dealing with the mail, and doing some washing up:
Meanwhile, outside the house, Emmy ponders whether it would be worth the effort to huff and puff, or if trying to blow the house down would just get her scolded.
This isn't the greatest Appa-for-scale picture, but as a special bonus, below the fold we have a different reference measure:
From this, we can do a little image analysis, and say that SteelyKid is now 0.60 Mommys in height. And still growing rapidly.
The change in post title reflects the other big change around Chateau…
sb admin | July 1, 2010A press release landed in my inbox today with this headline, which raised my eyebrows (as it was obviously intended to do): "First Experiment to Attempt Prevention of Homosexuality in Womb." It starts with this quote from Alice Dreger, a Northwestern University bioethicist: "This is the first we know in the history of medicine that clinicians are actively trying to prevent homosexuality." The release was announcing the publication of a piece at the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum titled, "Preventing Homosexuality (and Uppity Women) in the Womb? -- it was written by the same authors that…
clock | July 1, 2010Last week, my SciBling Jason Goldman interviewed me for his blog. The questions were not so much about blogging, journalism, Open Access and PLoS (except a little bit at the end) but more about science - how I got into it, what are my grad school experiences, what I think about doing research on animals, and such stuff. Jason posted the interview here, on his blog, on Friday, and he also let me repost it here on my blog as well, under the fold:
Here at Thoughtful Animal headquarters, we're starting a new series of seven-question interviews with people who are doing or have done animal…
drorzel | July 1, 2010Back in the uncomfortable questions post, crowther asks:
This is an excellent blog, but the volume of posts leaves me with a mixture of envy and annoyance (to be unnecessarily honest, perhaps). How in the world do you find the time to do so much blogging and reading of others' blogs? Aren't you supposed to be insanely busy trying to get tenure, changing diapers, guiding excitable but naive undergrads in research projects, etc.? Do you have time management secrets based on how time can be warped in some weird quantum way whose theoretical basis is traceable back to Einstein?
Well, one or two…
jstemwedel | June 30, 2010Recently, I traded up from my nowhere-near-smart phone to a slightly more advanced (but still nearly obsolete) phone -- one maybe about a year newer (in terms of technological endowment) than the old one.
Practically, what this means is that I am now able not only to receive text messages, but also to send them. And, tremendous Luddite though I am, I have discovered contexts in which sending a text message actually seem reasonable (e.g., to contact a fellow conference-goer in the morning after a night of conference-carousing, when a phone call might interrupt sleep or networking or something…
laelaps | June 29, 2010Disclaimer: I write the following post as a private citizen. Even though I am a research associate at the museum, my work is done on a volunteer basis in cooperation with museum staff. I am not employed by the museum, and my views do not necessarily represent those of any New Jersey State Museum employee.
After months of uncertainty, the short-term fate of the New Jersey State Museum has finally been revealed. Despite plans proposed by Republican governor Chris Christie that the museum (along with the State Library and Thomas Edison College) be folded into Rutgers University, it was recently…
drorzel | June 27, 2010... because SteelyKid is a baby on the move, and she moves fast:
SteelyKid spent a long weekend with Kate's mom, and we went down there yesterday to pick her up. This picture, snapped during a playground visit this morning, gives you some idea of her energy level.
Accordingly, Kate and I are both exhausted. Which means no deep thoughts for you on the blog, but at least you got a cute baby picture out of the deal.
pharyngula | June 27, 2010Marit Simonson, one of the helpful people I met in Oslo (and also one of the organizers of Kritisk Masse, the skeptics' conference taking place in October), just sent me a pile of photos from our visit. Here are a few of the faces of modern atheism in Norway, taken at a picnic in Frognerparken AKA Vigelandsparken.
drorzel | June 26, 2010A couple of related items from the uncomfortable questions comments. First, from Elizabeth:
What's your favorite homemade supper? What is your favorite thing to cook?
then a bit later from CCPhysicist:
What is the WORST thing that Kate ever cooked? What was your own worst cooking disaster?
This is a tough question, because I like to cook, and I like pretty much everything I cook. I don't get to do much complicated cooking these days, though, because with SteelyKid running around, it's a little risky to do much beyond "grill meat, heat vegetables, serve."
My favorite thing to cook is…
clock | June 25, 2010....by my SciBling, Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal blog. But this time, it is very little about blogging or Open Access publishing or science journalism, except at the very end. This interview is more about my experience in the academia - how I got into grad school, how I survived it, how and why I left research, the How and Why questions of using animals in research, and more.
I know it's long, but I hope you read and comment - go ahead and click right here and read it right now! ;-)
jstemwedel | June 25, 2010The funding situation in the California State University system being what it is (scary-bad), departments at my fair university are also scrambling to adjust to a shift in the logic governing resource distribution. It used to be that resources followed enrollments -- that the more students you could pack into your classes, the more money your department would be given to educate students.
Now, in the era of enrollment caps (because the state can't put up its share of the cost for as many students as it used to), it's looking like resources will be driven by how many majors a department can…
laelaps | June 25, 2010
Even though I sometimes feel quite anxious about the publication of Written in Stone, the positive comments the manuscript has received so far have helped to relieve my apprehension. Professional reviews will not show up for another few months, of course, but during the process of composing the book - from pitching to my agent to asking my wife to read the completed copyedit-ready draft - I am glad to say that the early responses have been overwhelmingly positive. Nevertheless, when the time came to ask scientists and science writers for blurbs, my nervousness spiked again. These are people…
pharyngula | June 25, 2010It's another conversation recorded for posterity: I appeared on the irreligiophilosophy podcast. Fortunately, they did not ask me to pronounce "irreligiophilosophy".
drorzel | June 24, 2010SteelyKid is spending a long weekend with Kate's mother, so we are baby-less. Which means no Appa-for-scale picture this week, alas.
Since I know some of you would freak out without the weekly cute-baby photo, though, here's another shot from the backyard playhouse:
As you can tell, Kate has an ever-so-slightly easier time fitting into Chateau SteelyKid than I do...