personal
drorzel | April 29, 2010SteelyKid has a cold, again, so she's kind of unhappy tonight. There's a picture of a slightly bleary SteelyKid with Appa below the fold, but that's kind of a downer, so here's some video from the other night, showing her new favorite game:
(She'll do this for hours. Well, ten minutes, at least, but it feels like hours when you're the one being ordered around and jumped on...)
Here's the Appa picture, for completeness:
Mommy and the Red Dog make things a little more bearable, but she hasn't been a happy camper today.
pharyngula | April 29, 2010The word is out: on my way to the Gods & Politics conference in Copenhagen, I'm taking a little detour to visit Oslo, as this forum article mentions.
It's true! It's true! Tidenes happening før Skepsikonferansen 2010! En ravende, sinna, og nysgjerrig teddybjørn av en ateist og skeptiker kommer til vårt fagre land i noen dager før Ateistkonferansen i København 18-20. juni.
Han skal være her 16. juni, og skal holde en talk på Litteraturhuset 15.30 -17; om noe om Science Communication. Skal dele link til info når den kommer opp.
Dessuten overleveres han til mine klamme hender når han er…
laelaps | April 28, 2010UPDATE: Due to ongoing deliberations over the future of the New Jersey State Museum I have decided that it is in the best interest of the museum to remove this post, but I will continue to write about this story as more knowledge becomes publicly available. And, just so there is no misunderstanding, what I stated in the previous version of this post I wrote as a private citizen and not a representative of the museum itself - I am the equivalent of a volunteer and not employed by the museum.
Nevertheless, I feel it appropriate the outline what is publicly known about this controversy in the…
tlambert | April 24, 2010This is a picture of Amy Ingram, my grandmother's sister in 1918 wearing an AIF uniform. Presumably it belongs to their brother Robert who served on the Western Front.
drorzel | April 22, 2010Most weeks, I try to find some natural-looking way to get SteelyKid and Appa in the picture together. Sometimes, though, there's just no way to get it done, and we have to resort to Kate holding Appa near her:
She's hugging her jacket because it got kind of cold this afternoon, but she's in a phase where she refuses to put her jacket on, and also refuses to go inside. Life's tough with a willful toddler.
To compensate for the lack of elegance in this week's Appa picture, here are two much better shots taken by Matt Milless of Mahi Matt Photo at last night's charity basketball game. First, a…
jstemwedel | April 22, 2010First, let me refer you to Sharon Astyk's excellent post on what has become of Earth Day. If I had the time or energy to pay much attention to Earth Day as a particular day of observance, I think I'd share Sharon's grumpiness.
After all, paying attention to our impacts on our shared environment just one day out of 365 is not likely to make much of a difference, and buying stuff as a strategy to deal with our over-consumption of resources (and the pollution that follows upon the manufacture and transport of that stuff) seems pretty perverse.
That said, I'm going to take this Earth Day as an…
jstemwedel | April 20, 2010I think I've mentioned once or twice that the California State University system (of which my fair campus is a part) has been experiencing a bit of a budget crisis.
Well, while there may be glimmers of hope for a recovery in the rest of the economy, we seem to be on the cusp of things getting much, much worse.
In the coming academic year, we won't be using furloughs to try to save money. Instead, beyond employing laying of lots of lecturers (who, because they are classified as "temporary" employees, despite the fact that many of them have taught here for decades, aren't counted as being laid…
clock | April 20, 2010We bought a couple of these recently and use them for all our grocery shopping. They are environmentally friendly, strong chico bags, tiny when wrapped up (and easy to wrap up) and large when opened up:
Conflict of Interest: this is Bride of Coturnix's store (look around for other items). Every item sold puts money in our joint account. Which is good for me as I am owing tons in taxes.....
jstemwedel | April 19, 2010Dr. Free-Ride's parents, Duke and Super Sally, have been working hard to shed some of the material goods they have accumulated in the last several years, on account of they are planning a move to smaller living quarters.
Of course, this means that they shipped several boxes of stuff from their current place to Casa Free-Ride. There's some sort of conservation of matter principle at work here.
Not that I should complain. For one thing, half of those boxes are actually Uncle Fishy's. For another, there's some stuff cool stuff in the boxes that are staying with us.
There are, as expected,…
clock | April 19, 2010Shy about openly carrying condoms around your pocketbook? Well, hide them in a tasteful little case - a variety of styles, including, for those with a sense of humor and fun, these Kitty cases, pre-packaged with two condoms each:
Conflict of Interest: this is Bride of Coturnix's store (look around for other items). Every item sold puts money in our joint account. Which is good for me as I am owing tons in taxes.....
drorzel | April 18, 2010SteelyKid was playing with something on the floor behind my chair, so I started reading my newsfeeds. Kate was on the other side of the office, engrossed in her own computer-related program activities. After a moment or two, SteelyKid got up, and ran into the living room. Kate and I both finished what we were reading, then noticed a disturbing lack of baby noise.
"Where did she go?" Kate asked.
"I dunno," I replied, and we both got up from our computers and headed out of the office in opposite directions. We met in the kitchen, with no SteelyKid. Kate said, "Seriously, did she go upstairs?"…
clock | April 18, 2010The Bride Of Coturnix and I are flying to NYC early tomorrow morning and leaving Thursday afternoon. While we set Monday and Thursday to be "for us", we are flexible if anyone wants to meet for coffee or lunch - just let me know and we can arrange something. We plan to meet with my brother late Monday night for dinner or drinks (depending how timely is his flight in) but we can meet earlier.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we will attend the 140 Characters Conference organized by Jeff Pulver:
At #140conf NYC we will be taking a hard look at something Jeff Pulver calls "The State of NOW" and the…
drorzel | April 17, 2010Some bonus cute for your weekend:
Here's SteelyKid apparently deciding to be a wizard. She can wave a stick and babble in what might as well be fake Latin with the best of them-- don't try to tell her she can't.
terrasig | April 17, 2010I've often remarked that the beauty of this blog is that more people read here every day than I would reach in even the largest class I teach. Moreover, far more people read this blog than will ever read my peer-reviewed scientific publications. And that's even considering that we have very modest traffic numbers here for ScienceBlogs.com. Of course, Terra Sig readers are very discriminating - and good-looking, erudite, and probably even smell good, too.
This morning, my Twitter feed brought me a post from the blog, University of Venus, as referred to me by HASTAC Director of New Media…
drorzel | April 15, 2010The arrival of good weather has led to a good deal of yard work here at Chateau Steelypips. SteelyKid, being a sturdy and active toddler, is quite insistent that she can help with the raking:
Or, possibly, fight off demon armies with her ninja skills. It's a little hard to say. Swinging the rake around does make her happy, though, so Appa and I just try to stay out of her way.
drorzel | April 12, 2010No blogging this weekend, and not even a Links Dump for Monday morning, because I was busy with non-blog stuff all weekend. Such as fencing in Lake Steelypips:
OK, maybe that's too grandiose a name for the little decorative pond in our back yard. It's not all that large, but it is big enough to put SteelyKid at risk should she fall in, so it needed to be fenced. The actual fencing operation was dead simple, but was delayed for a bit when I forgot that I really ought to enclose the electrical outlet (for the pond pump) in the fence, requiring a second trip to Lowe's.
Between that and an…
clock | April 11, 2010
The other night I went to the opening night of RENT at Duke, the latest production of the Hoof 'n' Horn ensemble, the 'South's oldest student-run musical theater organization' (find them on Facebook and Twitter). Here's the promo video, released before the opening night:
I always have difficulty judging plays by amateur ensembles - at exactly which standard should I hold them? I have seen amazing high-school plays and horrible professional ones (I mentioned both in this post), as well as, of course, amazing professional ones. The Duke group is a mix of people with some stage experience and…
terrasig | April 11, 2010Last Monday marked 17 years since Eric Young led off the first Colorado Rockies baseball game with a home run that triggered a collective, mile-high orgasm for the 80,227 spectators gathered in the old Denver football stadium.
The advent of the expansion Rockies also launched a Pharmboy laboratory birthday celebration week tradition marked by two days off: one for a lab ski day in the high country followed later in the week with a Rockies game and the finest handcrafted ale offered by Denver's Wynkoop Brewery. I was reminded of this by my Twitter buddy, Mike Smith (@M1k303) who taunted me a…
pharyngula | April 11, 2010Hello, Wisconsin! I'll be speaking at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point on Wednesday. At least I don't have to suffer through airports this time — I'm driving, making a stop at UWSP, then briefly at Madison to drop my son off, then on to Chicago Thursday and Friday to talk morality with a communist and a priest. But this is next: