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drorzel | March 11, 2010SteelyKid says "You know what? Bacon tastes good!"
We've had a hard time convincing her that anything that isn't either 1) crunchy, or 2) goopy is food. Cooked vegetables, she'll pick up, look at, and toss aside laughing. Cooked meat is similarly rejected. This week, though, we discovered that she'll eat bacon, which evidently is crispy enough to overcome its Meat Nature. Also, bread is ok, probably because in addition to being yummy, it can be ripped into lots of little pieces that can be scattered all over the table.
Emmy, of course, is insanely jealous that SteelyKid gets bacon. It's very…
jstemwedel | March 11, 2010Why is it that it's not until you're right in the middle of a class discussion, one where lots of people are actively engaged, asking good questions and raising important issues, and where you know that you are working against the clock to get all the contributions in, that you discover ...
... that the white board, where you have been tracking key points in the discussion (and which you need to erase to collect the new points that people are raising now), will no longer release the dry erase marker with a dry cloth?
And, at that point, in the absence of a water bottle, what alternative is…
pharyngula | March 10, 2010After a long confinement in a cramped metal tube, the guards stewardesses have finally released me in Melbourne. I'm going to have to figure out what I'm doing next — I think the University of Melbourne Secular Society is going to wrangle me out to a wildlife sanctuary, but I haven't connected up with them just yet. I'm just sort of savoring the sense of freedom right now, and making fiendish plans.
But the important news is that I've survived, mostly. You might want to stay upwind of me, but otherwise I'm feeling pretty good right now.
drorzel | March 9, 2010I'm going to be attending the March Meeting of the American Physical Society next week, in Portland, OR. This will be held at the Oregon Convention Center, which is apparently on the opposite side of the river from every hotel in the city.
I have never been to Portland (or, indeed, anything in the Pacific Northwest) before, so I have no idea what there is to do there. I'm sure that at least some of my readers have been there or are from there, though, so here's your chance to clue me in: What essential Portland activities/ eateries/ whatever should I make sure not to miss while I'm there?
I…
clock | March 7, 2010Yesterday I spent the day at the RTP headquarters, attending TEDxRTP. The TEDx conferences are small, locally organized offshoots of the well-known TED conference.
This was the first TEDx in the Triangle region (though Asheville beat us as being the first in the state) and, judging from the response of the audience, it seems everyone expects this will become a regular annual event. You can check out the Twitter account as well as the Twitter chatter if you search the #TEDxRTP hashtag.
The event was livestreamed and the rough videos are already up on the Ustream channel. Better quality videos…
clock | March 7, 2010On Friday, the Bride of Coturnix, Coturnietta, a friend of hers and I went to DPAC to see 'Spring Awakening'. As you may already know, this is a rock adaptation of an old play located in late-19th century Germany, following the growth and maturation of a group of high school students surrounded by a disciplinarian and authoritarian adult world, in which sex is taboo (so they have to learn on their own, feel guilt about it, and suffer consequences) and strict, dogmatic religion trumps every attempt at independent thought or questioning.
I have not seen the play before, though I have heard the…
drorzel | March 4, 2010Here we see SteelyKid kickin' back in her babypod, sharing a meal of Cheerios and dried fruit with Appa:
SteelyKid says "You know, Daddy, if we traveled by sky bison, you wouldn't have to worry about the wiring in your car, and you wouldn't be faced with driving a giant rental pick-up truck to Vestal tomorrow..."
She's not always the world's most helpful baby.
jstemwedel | March 3, 2010The semester must be in full swing, because suddenly I have an abundance of papers to grade. So I'm using a brief pause (between grading one stack of papers and grading another stack of papers) to share a grading-aid I just figured out at the end of last semester.
Typically, by the time the stacks of papers come in, I have all kinds of other pieces of work-in-progress on my desk. I could put those away (and hope that I'll remember where I put them when I'm done with the grading), or try to keep the papers I'm grading restricted to part of the desk. This never works that well, and the…
revere | March 2, 2010This weekend I got a haircut and noticed for the umpteenth time that the hair from the top of my head (I still have plenty) that landed in my lap as I sat in the barber's chair was grey. This always surprises me because when I look in the mirror I don't have much grey hair. I have some, but not that much. When I look at old photos of myself I can see my hair is very dark and in more recent photos it is pretty grey, but not when I look in the mirror. I mentioned this today at grant writing meeting with our large team of investigators, some of whom are more or less my age, and one of them came…
terrasig | February 28, 2010A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about being stricken with pneumonia and my reflections on what it must be like for people who live continually with chronic illnesses. I was surprised by the response from many readers, quite a few of whom I've never seen comment here, who voiced understanding and even relief that a "normal" would take the time to reflect on what their life might be like.
Well, my illness is continuing even longer than my pulmonologist had expected and this has evoked for me a whole new layer of emotions. I write the following not for sympathy or concern, but rather for the…
drorzel | February 28, 2010When I headed to work this morning, I made the turn onto Nott St., and all the error lights in my car lit up, and the speedometer and tachometer went dead. I know exactly what the cause is, because this has happened twice before: rodents of some sort are chewing on the wiring in my car, causing things to short out and throw error messages.
These furry little bastards have hit my last nerve. This has been a week from hell, and I can not afford to lose yet another day to having my car worked on to repair rodent damage, to say nothing of the $200-ish it will cost to have it fixed.
At a minimum,…
drorzel | February 26, 2010Today is the Purim parade at the Schenectady JCC, so all the kids needed costumes to wear. This isn't that easy, especially for a little girl (Babysaurus had a couple of different sets of boys pajamas that were superhero uniforms, but nothing equivalent for girls), and was complicated by the fact that SteelyKid had yet another cold this week (which she was bothered by for just long enough to get sent home from day care with a fever Wednesday, meaning I stayed home with her yesterday, which is always an adventure).
One costume idea I had was to put her in fuzzy white pj's, and give her a set…
edyong | February 25, 2010Wow.
The nominations for the first ever Research Blogging Awards are in! The awards were created to "honor the outstanding bloggers who discuss peer-reviewed research". Nominations were sent in by readers and an panel of judges have selected the finalists. Voting begins in a week's time and bloggers who are registered with the community can cast their votes. I'm in the running for:
Research Blog of the Year
Blog Post of the Year (for, what else, duck sex)
Research Twitterer of the Year
Best Lay-Level Blog
I'm really honoured, and doubly so because the panel of judges who selected the…
pharyngula | February 24, 2010I just got back from another two hours in The Chair. I had 3 30-40 year old fillings replaced — I have outlived my childhood dental work, which is the sniny way to look at it — and had a wisdom tooth removed.
Never mind me, I'll just be curled up in the corner, whimpering.
pharyngula | February 22, 2010This hasn't been a good week for me. I was flattened by a cold this weekend, and now I've been diagnosed with incipient periodontal gum disease, and just got back from a long, long session with the dental hygienist. I was trapped in a chair for two hours for a painfully thorough cleaning: scraping, plating, grinding, needley poking, an evil machine that produced a high-pitched screaming noise and sharp agony in my gums, more whirring gadgets, strange substances, and the constant taste of blood as the oozing filled my mouth. It was the longest stretch of sustained sadism I've experienced in,…
terrasig | February 21, 2010The Australian psychiatrist, musician, amateur astronomer, daddy, and blogger Tsuken just sent out word that his custom electric guitar has arrived from New Zealand luthier, Adrian Hamilton, at Ash Custom Works in Auckland.
At his blog, Music, Medicine, and the Mind, our giddy colleague writes:
Oh. Baby. Yeah. I'm here today to tell you: there is nothing - nothing - like a custom guitar. No way will a production instrument compare. To illustrate, I will describe the guitar I have just collected.
This is truly a fantastic instrument; I can hardly keep my hands off it. It plays like a dream,…
pharyngula | February 20, 2010I was briefly interviewed for Sunday Night Safran, with John Safran and Father Bob Maguire. It'll be broadcast on Triple J radio at 9pm Sunday, and will be available as a download sometime the day after.
Don't expect too much — it was a short interview. I think they're just beginning to warm Australian audiences up for the big conference next month.
drorzel | February 18, 2010Look out, it's a Giant Monster Baby!
OK, she's not really gigantic, but she does tower over Appa these days. And she's strong enough to lift Appa one-handed, while drinking juice with the other:
That's really just about the perfect Appa-for-scale shot. For comparison, here is the very first Appa picture we took:
Yikes.
Finally, as a bonus, here's a cute picture of SteelyKid with a newspaper ad featuring a Boston terrier. She recognizes it as just like Gammy's dog, Truman:
She does tend to refer to all dogs in pictures as "Booyyy," which is a better approximation of my parents' dog Bodie.…
terrasig | February 17, 2010Following this weekend's loss of musician Doug Fieger, I'm going through some YouTube vids and found two of my favorites from the less-appreciated 2nd album by The Knack, "But the Little Girls Understand."
"I Want Ya" was the second cut - just a bunch of simple chords but Bruce Gary's drumming is even better than I remember.
This is the cover of The Kinks', "The Hard Way," that I mentioned on Monday.
And yes, I owned a black and a brown skinny tie - the only way to express individuality in a boys Catholic school uniform in the late 70s and early 80s.
jdupuis | February 17, 2010A bit of self-promotion. Forgive me. I'll be brief.
My TAIGA fisking post from a while back is featured prominently in Walt Crawford's most recent Cites & Insights (March 2010) (pdf, html) with quite a bit of value-added comment from Walt on TAIGA, the Darien Statements and other topics. Thanks, Walt.
I'm flattered to be mentioned in Graham Lavender's presentation at the recent Web2.You conference in Montreal. His very fine presentation was on Blogs and Twitter for Individuals and Institutions. No doubt referring to my 2008 presentation at Web2.You, on slide 3 he mentions that "…