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drorzel | January 22, 2010There's an expert-level debate going on in the comments of Wednesday's quantum essentials post, and I do have some thoughts on the matter that I will eventually type up (in a top-level post rather than a comment, at this point). It's Friday, though, and I'm kind of fried. So here's some wibbling about pop music instead.
On the way into work this morning, the Bryan Adams chestnut "Summer of '69" came on the radio. I'm probably destroying any credibility I have on the subject of popular music by saying that I have an unironic fondness for that tune, primarily for nostalgia reasons, but also…
laelaps | January 22, 2010Last weekend I attended the annual North Carolina sci-shindig (called ScienceOnline2010 this year), and it was the best iteration of the conference yet. I am still reeling from everything that happened during the three days I was there. Rather than post a session-by-session discussion of what happened there, though, I thought I would simply share a few of the main lessons I took away from the conference.
Writers Help Other Writers
Writing a book is no easy task. It involves much more than simply sitting down and hammering out an arbitrary number of words or chapters, and as someone who is…
drorzel | January 21, 2010Here we see SteelyKid enjoying our post-day-care ritual: kickin' back, eatin' pretzels, and watching Pardon the Interruption:
"LeBatard always ruins Odds Makers," she says. "He's silly..."
There was some screaming and crying a little bit before this was taken, not that you can tell. Pretzels and juice fixed everything.
May it always be that simple.
pharyngula | January 20, 2010We had a good crowd, lots of questions, and an interesting group of student skeptics at UCSB this evening. Next up is a little sleep, then a plane hop to Sacramento, and a talk at UC Davis at 6:30, in 194 Chemistry. I also think I'll break up my next talk a bit more; this one bounced about over some fairly dense sciencey stuff, and a little more variety and more opportunities to discuss should be more fun.
pharyngula | January 20, 2010Hey, I'm in sodden, stormy California! Just in case you hadn't heard, I'll be speaking at the University of California Santa Barbara tonight at 7, in Embarcadero Hall. It should work…I'm still a little bit skewed towards Midwestern time, but 7PST isn't that bad. The fun will start afterwards when someone hands me a beer at an hour way past my usual bedtime, and I pass out in public. You don't want to miss that!
pharyngula | January 19, 2010It's kind of like stage diving into a mosh pit, I think. I'm leaving for Santa Barbara this afternoon, beginning a week-long tour of a big chunk of California. Zeno has cruelly pointed out that my itinerary is a bit convoluted, but I say you take the tour you've got, not the one you wish you had.
The amazing thing is that I scarcely know what I'm doing. I show up in Santa Barbara tonight, and I'm hoping I'll be caught by the locals (you know who you are: you should get in touch with Lyz at the SSA, who'll give you my secret cell phone number), who'll show me a couch or a bed or something,…
revere | January 19, 2010An interesting sounding paper just appeared in the December 2009 issue of the journal American Sociological Review but we don't have time to read it. So I'll just tell you what the press release says:
As many as 50 per cent of people bring their work home with them regularly, according to new research out of the University of Toronto that describes the stress associated with work-life balance and the factors that predict it.
Researchers measured the extent to which work was interfering with personal time using data from a national survey of 1,800 American workers. Sociology professor Scott…
edyong | January 18, 2010Now that is how you do a conference. Massive thanks to Bora and Anton for organising ScienceOnline 2010, one of the most enjoyable science shindigs I've had the pleasure of attending. I'll stick up more on the conference later, after I'm done recovering from the horrendous American plague that I may or may not have contracted from SciCurious. For the moment, some random musings:
I love the feeling of meeting people who you know relatively well for the first time. That face-to-face interaction is invaluable for building relationships that started online, and people's online personas largely…
laelaps | January 18, 2010The wonderful thing about this past Saturday's ScienceOnline session on going "from blog to book" is that my co-panelists and I were able to highlight the ways in which the web is becoming increasingly important for authors. The only drawback was that there was so much to talk about that we could not have answered all the questions even if we stayed in session for the rest of the day! Fortunately audience members continued to ask me questions and make comments throughout the rest of the conference, and I wanted to specifically address one comment brought up by the wonderful blogger Stephanie…
pharyngula | January 16, 2010I think I'm on BlogTV right now.
Done now! If my end was fuzzy, blame it on the fact I was trying to do it from a hotel connection at a tech conference full of people sucking down the bandwidth.
pharyngula | January 16, 2010I am going against the herd here at ScienceOnline 2010 — I am not tweeting and blogging throughout the event, but am just sitting back and enjoying the talks, while all the nerds are pounding away at their keyboards. (Note sneaky implication that I am not a nerd with the rest of 'em.)
However, I did just do my interview with Reddit, so it's all recorded and done with and merely awaiting editing and publishing. It will probably be available online on Tuesday — be patient, I'll put up a link when it is available.
I will remind you also that tonight at 9pm EST I'll be helping to raise money for…
laelaps | January 15, 2010If there is any problem with my upcoming panel discussion with Tom Levenson and Rebecca Skloot tomorrow morning it is that there is too much to talk about! There is no way to get to it all. In the spirit of the conference, then, we are going to let the questions of our audience guide the discussion rather than lecture our listeners about our experiences, but I did want to briefly comment an issue Tom brought up on his blog earlier today.Tom wrote;
[O]ne piece of advice I do have for writers planning to start blogs specifically to aid their upcoming book projects -- don't. At least don't…
pharyngula | January 15, 2010I'm going to be doing an interview with Reddit later today, and they've opened a thread to collect questions for me. I'm already a-scared. Hold me, Mommy.
drorzel | January 14, 2010Kate here:
Since Chad's out of town, you get Substitute Parent Blogging today. It's with my non-DSLR camera (and also taken very fast before she decided she wanted the camera more than what she had), it's with something other than Appa, and it's eloquent of "I miss Daddy and want to be just like him."
I tried to tell her that Chad doesn't actually wear those gloves to play hoop, but she wasn't having any of it.
terrasig | January 13, 2010I've tried to get about three different posts started today.
But they all seem meaningless and trite in light of the devastation and suffering being experienced in Haiti since yesterday.
We've done some work with anticancer compounds from plants in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Ethnobotanists continue to work today to try and document and preserve folk medicine knowledge from Hispaniola. But that will have to wait as yet another tragedy has hit the island nation, one of the poorest on the planet.
So, I'll just leave this as an open thread for people to list their suggestions and…
drorzel | January 13, 2010As I've mentioned before, I have a cell phone that's just a cell phone-- no data plan, no camera, no nothing. It's also a few years old, so the battery life isn't what it could be. I was a little concerned about that, so I made a point of plugging it into the charger last night before bed.
And I am absolutely sure that it's still charged, mostly because I think it's still plugged into the charger in Niskayuna. Which won't do me a whole lot of good here in Austin...
On the bright side, sine it's just a phone, I'm not missing that much, unlike most people with fancier phones, who rely on them…
laelaps | January 13, 2010For the third consecutive year I was surprised to find that one of my posts made it into the annual science blogging anthology The Open Laboratory. Not only was the number of submissions very high (760!), but my essays were up against some stiff competition (and I should know since I sifted through quite a few as a judge).* There was a good chance that none of my entries would make the cut, but I am proud to say that my essay on the early whale Maiacetus will be included in the 2009 anthology. Many thanks to those who nominated my posts on "Ida" and "Ardi", the judges, Bora, and Scicurious…
drorzel | January 11, 2010Depending on what you read at ScienceBlogs other than this blog, you may have noticed a New Year's fitness theme. Blame Ethan. So, now, everybody's posting workout tips and the like.
Which means, of course, that I'm obliged to post my Fitness Secrets here for free, when I could be charging money for them to build a college fund for SteelyKid. Curse you, Ethan!
So, what's my secret infallible fitness program?
Um, I don't have one. Sorry.
I've never had much luck sticking to a workout routine, mostly because I am easily bored. Mike Dunford waxes rhapsodic about swimming, but after a few laps I…
laelaps | January 11, 2010Just under three weeks. That is all the time I have left to finish my first book, Written in Stone. Although I must admit that I have had my share of "Oh crap, that paper is due today?" moments during my academic career, I am happy to say that I am fully prepared to meet my deadline for the book. The text of Written in Stone has been essentially complete for a few weeks now. It still needs some work, some rough patches need to be buffed out and some holes need to be spackled over, but all of the major parts are in place.
But this is not to say that I am devoid of anxiety. I have written a few…
drorzel | January 11, 2010The problem is, "What is Chad going to do in Austin, Texas on Thursday night?"
I have recently been appointed to the APS Committee on Informing the Public, which is having a meeting in Austin this Thursday, January 14th. Of course, as neither Austin nor Albany is a major airport, the travel to and from Austin takes up pretty much an entire day on either end, so I'll be staying over Wednesday and Thursday nights, and leaving Friday afternoon.
I've got dinner plans for Wednesday night, and I'm going to meet a former student for lunch on Friday, but I have no concrete plans for Thursday night.…