personal
pharyngula | May 20, 2010Awww, it's my very first Islamic threat…and it's pretty tame compared to the Catholic rantings I get.
MUSLIM!!
Do you know by doing such things like drawing the cartoon of Our Holy Prophet will make us aggravated!.
If I`ve ever come across you I swear I will relieve myself with this burden.
Daniyal Masood
I don't know…that sounds like he's threatening to pee on me.
drorzel | May 19, 2010SteelyKid's day care is closed today and tomorrow for a Jewish holiday (happy (?) Shavuot to those who celebrate it), so she's home all day for the next two. Of course, Kate and I are both crazy busy, so my parents are coming up to watch SteelyKid today while we're off at work. We really had to twist their arms to get them to agree to spend a whole day with the cutest baby in the universe...
Anyway, in honor of that, here's some bonus baby video of SteelyKid playing one of her favorite games with Grandpa:
It's less elaborate than a lot of her favorite games, but really, anything where she…
jdupuis | May 18, 2010Yes, it was May 18, 2009 that I opened a new chapter in Confessions of a Science Librarian history.
One year on Scienceblogs -- it's been a fantastic experience, one that I'm looking forward to continuing for the foreseeable future.
Now, where's the cake?
drorzel | May 18, 2010I have copy edits for an Anglicised edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog to review, lecture notes to write, and a faculty meeting to go to, so I'm going off-line for the rest of the day (with one possible exception). To keep you amused in my absence, here's some video of SteelyKid dancing to Bruce Springsteen:
Ain't no party like a SteelyKid party, because a SteelyKid party don't stop. Except during the sax solo.
Should you want to hold your own SteelyKid dance party, here's a list of songs that she has been directly observed dancing to:
"I'm Going Down," Bruce Springsteen
"The Lion…
sa smith | May 17, 20101. Mute your computer
2. Watch this video. I didnt take this video, but this was our weather in OKC yesterday. Make sure you catch the 2 minute mark:
Oklahoma Hot Tub: When baseball sized hail pelts your swimming pool. LOL!
clock | May 17, 2010Not everything gets posted on the blog (though people who follow me on Twitter, FriendFeed or Facebook may catch some of these blips), so here's a quick summary of the past few weeks:
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Most important news first - there is a new kid on the block! Not exactly my block, but close enough - this is a small town! Welcome Oliver Anton Zuiker to the world! So, no surprise Anton's been busy lately - for all the good reasons. Congratulations, my friend!
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These brief respites from what is usually deemed "work" do not stop us! We are - though in a slower, summer-style tempo -…
revere | May 17, 2010The lights are out at Effect Measure. It is closed and locked. No one is there any more. So consider this a note tacked on the door. I had always intended to leave it as a way to connect you with The Pump Handle and that's still its purpose. But now I feel compelled to add a thank you note as well.
Shortly after publishing the final post I went off to my university's commencement. Of all the duties of a university faculty member, this is one of the nicest and happiest, the moment where we send our intellectual offspring into the world to do good on their own. The students who receive their…
pharyngula | May 16, 2010Just in case you're nearby, I'll be speaking at the Southdale Public Library in Edina at 2:00 on how religion is always wrong. Come on by!
If you can't make that, we'll also be going to Q Cumber's restaurant at 4 for dinner. Everyone is welcome to join in.
revere | May 16, 2010It's been a long time coming but the time has come. Effect Measure is closing up shop, after 5 and a half years, 3 million visits and 5.1 million page views of some 3500. You commented on them some 37,000 times. It's been a grand ride but to all things there is a season. It's time to simplify my life and while my family has had me all along, at times science got short shrift. Now my time is getting short and I want to turn my attention to my research, the other polar star of my life. "Revere" will continue to post occasionally on Effect Measure's successor site, The Pump Handle (TPH), which…
pharyngula | May 15, 2010It was commencement day here at UMM, and it was a special one for us because Child #3 is now officially Bachelor of Arts #3. Here she tolerates her father and mother for a few more moments before she abandons us forevermore.
And there she is in the midst of all the faculty and 2010 graduates of the computer science discipline at UMM.
Yay, we're all done! Kids gone, all off on their own trajectories into the future!
drorzel | May 15, 2010It's a beautiful day here in Niskayuna, and we have family visiting. So here's a bonus baby picture (also in use as my Facebook profile picture at the moment), in hopes that while you're distracted by the cute, I can sneak outside with SteelyKid and enjoy the nice weather.
Everybody say "Awwwwww...."
jstemwedel | May 13, 2010We continue to get to know Snowflake Free-Ride, and she us.
*Given her fondness for tossing her blue bowl around and spilling her alfalfa pellets, we got her what was advertised as an unspillable food dispenser. Snowflake seems pretty unconvinced that it's actually unspillable, although she hasn't managed to spill it yet. Indeed, she has me wondering whether it's really unspillable.
*Speaking of food, her current favorites from the yard are dandelions and nasturtiums. (She looks very pretty eating the bright yellow and orange nasturtium flowers.)
*Carrot or stick? She actually likes…
drorzel | May 13, 2010SteelyKid went through a phase recently where she didn't want to eat much of anything. This wasn't medically dangerous, just kind of nerve-wracking. As a result, when she declares out of the blue that she wants a bottle, well, she gets a bottle:
Actually, she got two bottles right after we got home from day care. And another at bedtime. Go figure.
Just for fun, below the fold you'll see the comparison shot from Week 10 (this is Week 92):
She's changed just a tiny bit since then...
(For the record, her appetite is pretty much back to normal. Asking for bottles is anomalous, but she's been…
sb admin | May 13, 2010Things have been a bit quiet here as I finished up my crazy
four-month-long book tour, and there's much to catch up on. First, some big news just in: Oprah,
Alan Ball, and HBO are going to be making a movie version of my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This news has gotten quite a bit of
coverage on Twitter and elsewhere, with me fielding questions about the movie,
and various folks voting on who should play which character in the film (not
that I have any control over such things, but it's still fun to think about).
The combination of Oprah, Alan Ball, and HBO is nothing…
pharyngula | May 10, 2010Not that kind! And we were surrounded by chaperones! And there were lots of people there! I'm going to be in such trouble when the Trophy Wife™ finds out what I was up to this weekend.
jstemwedel | May 8, 2010... to the elder Free-Ride offspring's trumpet teacher.
While I am generally accepting of your choices as far as the pieces you are having my child learn how to play, I have a small bone to pick with you this evening.
You see, May is what we in the college education biz call "grading season". It is when the calendar tells us we are rapidly running out of time to get the assignments we've collected read, commented, scored, and returned to our students so they can use this feedback to prepare for their final exams.
Grading is not the most enjoyable part of my job. And when the stacks of…
drorzel | May 6, 2010This week, we offer a shot from the forthcoming "Casual Living with SteelyKid and Appa" catalogue:
If you look closely, you can see two things: 1) a small scrape by her right eye, from an accident at day care-- even SteelyKid is bound by the laws of physics, and gravity is a harsh one, and 2) her new Williams shirt, picked up when I visited there last week. I'm not actually obligated to buy new college-logo clothing whenever I visit, but it amuses me when Kate rolls her eyes at me for buying baby clothes with purple cows.
Another decent view of the shirt is here:
When I gave it to her after…
revere | May 3, 2010I'm sitting here in the dark and freezing. No, not really. It's not dark yet and it's hot and humid. But I have no power, except what's left in this laptop. Can't connect to the net because I use wifi at home and the router is electrical (if I get really desperate I'll crawl up to the study and huddle in back of my desk and connect with ethernet but I don't think even I am that much of a slave to being online. Actually I am, but I'm too tired). So what happened?
Mrs. R. and I are sitting here together, each of us reading, on a very warm, sort of sunny Sunday afternoon and we hear a tremendous…