personal
clock | April 9, 2010The best challah I ever tasted, baked by my daughter.:
Super-secret recipe and special braiding technique: the mother-daughter team produced a work of art tonight
jstemwedel | April 9, 2010This just arrived at the email address associated with my blog (rather than the email address associated with my university appointment):
Dear Sir,
I am [Name Redacted] a student of [Institution Redacted], currently in 3rd year pursuing Integrated M. Tech. in Polymer Science and Technology. I learned about you through your website and I am extremely impressed with your research interests, I think they are an excellent match to my skills. I have an intense urge towards the development and enhancement in the field of polymers and now I want to be associated with a diversified group like yours…
pharyngula | April 9, 2010I'm scarcely home, and I've got something else lined up — I'll be interviewed on Mike Feder's show on Sirius Satellite Radio at 6pm ET today. Tune in if you can!
drorzel | April 8, 2010"What's SteelyKid doing for amusement now that the weather is all nice and stuff?," you ask. Well, here's your answer: she's giving her sky-bison rides on the swing in the back yard:
"Wait a minute," you say, "isn't it, like, 80 degrees there? Why's she wearing a coat?"
Look, man, when the Empress decides she wants to wear her coat, she's going to wear her coat. There's no reasoning with a willful toddler.
Fortunately, she's pretty darn cute. And swinging is highly entertaining:
Of course, at some point, you have to call it a night, pack up your sky-bison, and head in for the night:
(It…
pharyngula | April 7, 2010Thanks to Pamela Turner for sending me a box of TCHO chocolates — they're fabulous. My one concern is that I'm about to leave town for a day, and this box of temptations is sitting out on the dining room table where the Trophy Wife™ and the Trophy Daughter™ and even one of the Trophy Sons™ (who is visiting us for a few weeks) can find it. I'm going to come home from Syracuse on Friday to find them all gone, aren't I?
drorzel | April 7, 2010So, this was my weekend:
Saturday: Drive to my parents' with Kate and SteelyKid for Easter.
Sunday: Drive back to Niskayuna with Kate, leaving SteelyKid with Grandma and Grandpa
Monday: Teach my 9:15 class, then drive to Ithaca to give a physics colloquium at Cornell, then drive back to my parents', arriving just in time for the NCAA title game (great game, bad result).
Tuesday: Drive back to Niskayuna with SteelyKid, then go to a local mall for a couple hours so she wouldn't feel understimulated after a few days of Grandparent Camp.
This was all intentional, by the way-- it's not like we…
sb admin | April 4, 2010I mentioned a while ago that I'll be posting answers to FAQs about my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, as an ongoing series on this blog.
I thought I'd start the FAQs with one of the most commonly asked questions: How did you learn about Henrietta and the HeLa cells, and why did they grab you the way they did? Here is the answer, which I also posted about over on Powells.com's book blog this last week as part of a little guest blogging stint:
I first learned about Henrietta Lacks in the late 80s, when I was 16 and sitting in a basic biology class at Portland Community College
(…
drorzel | April 2, 2010As I was headed upstairs to bed last night, I stopped in the library, and said "There's something I ought to be doing..." but couldn't remember what. This morning, while walking Emmy, it hit me: Baby Blogging!
It's weird that I forgot, because I went to the trouble of taking pictures and everything:
This is SteelyKid hanging out on the swing in the back yard, drinking some juice. As you can tell by the short sleeves, it's Fake Summer here, and the backyard was warm and pleasant last night after day care. I have some other pictures where she and Appa aren't cropped as tightly as they are here…
pharyngula | April 2, 2010I'm flying away again, straight back to Minneapolis, arriving this evening. I'm not going straight home to Morris, though, because by great good coincidence Roy Zimmerman is playing in the Cannon Falls High School Auditorium (8209 E Minnesota St., Cannon Falls, MN), so I figure I'll take a little detour and pop in there for a while. If you're in the area, stop on by!
jstemwedel | April 1, 2010Observant readers will have noticed that three of my last four posts -- the ones sporting the spiffy Research Blogging icon -- were posts discussing peer-reviewed journal articles. This is a substantially higher proportion of writing about the details of scholarly research than I normally feature on this blog.
But I think I've developed a taste for it.
Thus, going forward, I've decided (for the foreseeable future, anyway) to stick to discussions of scholarly research and to set aside freewheeling musings on current events, answers to emailed requests for advice, passing observations of…
pharyngula | March 31, 2010I'd hate to think that someone at Syracuse University might be driving to RIT tomorrow to hear my lecture, since I've been invited by The Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers Alliance to speak at Syracuse next week, on 8 April.
Oh, and look: Hemant is there tonight, warming up the audience for me. How nice of him!
drorzel | March 30, 2010SteelyKid is a fan of a web game called BumperStars, which my parents introduced her to. If I'm at the computer doing something, she'll march over, demand to be picked up, then point at the screen and say "Buh-Pah" until I open it up.
Of course, she's a toddler, and thus has an extremely short attention span (except when she doesn't). About two minutes after I start a game for her, she'll slide down off my lap, and go find something else to do. Which would be fine, except for one thing: I have competitive OCD.
I don't mean that I try to one-up other people who have obsessive-compulsive…
pharyngula | March 30, 2010I'm off to some place in New York on 1 April — I'll be speaking at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Webb Auditorium, Bulding 7 at 8:30PM. This is going to be a quick blitz, fly in Thursday, fly back Friday, because I've got work piling up on me…but I'm sure I can find a little time in the evening after the talk for informal chat.
drorzel | March 29, 2010It's grey and dreary here, with an expected high temperature around 50F. That can only mean one thing: Spring has arrived in New England!
(You can distinguish spring from winter by the daytime high temperatures-- they're both grey and dreary, but winter is grey, dreary, and cold...)
Spring means mud, yard work, and a new academic term. But on the bright side, spring also gives SteelyKid an excuse to show off her spiffy spring hat:
Hope your spring gets off to a good start.
pharyngula | March 27, 2010Another podcast, this one from Citizen's Radio with Jamie Kilstein and Allison Kilkenny — they interviewed me in Melbourne. Tune in, it's like CNN with more swearing!
clock | March 27, 2010This was a busy, crazy week.
On Monday and Tuesday I was in Boston. You may remember I went to Boston last year as well and for the same reason - spending a day at the WGNH studios, helping with the World Science project that combines radio, podcasts and online forums. You have probably noticed I have posted announcements of these throughout the year.
A short story airs on the radio show The World, about some science-related topic with a global angle. The same scientist (or physician, or science journalist) who is interviewed for a couple of minutes on air is also interviewed for 20 minutes…
jdupuis | March 26, 2010Wednesday was Ada Lovelace Day!
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.
The first Ada Lovelace Day was held on 24th march 2009 and was a huge success. It attracted nearly 2000 signatories to the pledge and 2000 more people who signed up on Facebook. Over 1200 people added their post URL to the Ada Lovelace Day 2009 mash-up. The day itself was covered by BBC News Channel, BBC.co.uk, Radio 5 Live, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Metro, Computer Weekly, and VNUnet, as well as hundreds of blogs worldwide.
In 2010 Ada…
pharyngula | March 26, 2010Yeah, I'm on Skeptic Zone #75. I think this is the one recorded in the pub in Canberra, with Dr Rachael Dunlop.
edyong | March 26, 2010I've been teasing a big announcement for a couple of days now, and after a technical delay, here it is - the death of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
And the birth of Not Exactly Rocket Science ;-)
After two brilliant years at ScienceBlogs, I'm evolving, migrating, metastasising, metamorphosing, (retro)transposing and otherwise moving to a new home at Discover Blogs (as one clever commenter correctly guessed yesterday). My inaugural post is now up.
Being part of this collective has been an amazing experience and I'm incredibly grateful to the crew at ScienceBlogs, and specifically Virginia…
pharyngula | March 25, 2010I'll be on the air with Scooter on KPFT shortly, at about 10:30 central time. There is live streaming, if you're interested. I think we'll be talking about Australia and the Global Atheist Convention, but who knows? That guy is crazy.