personal
drorzel | November 12, 2009An indignant SteelyKid says "What do you mean I can't go to day care? I'm perfectly healthy!"
She is, indeed, doing much better. Last night, I wasn't sure you'd get any Baby Blogging at all, because snot and fever don't make for a photogenic baby. She's waddling around in more or less her usual state at the moment, though, and has decided that if she can't go to day care, she'll climb into my lap and learn about photography:
This makes me feel significantly less guilty about leaving town this afternoon. Not guilt-free, mind, but significantly less guilty.
drorzel | November 12, 2009SteelyKid had a check-up yesterday, and got three shots (chicken pox, MMR, and seasonal flu). This may or may not be related to her high fever and general misery last night; whatever the cause, she was not a happy camper.
Since she can't very well go to day care like that, I'm staying home with her this morning. I'm also leaving for the Sigma Xi meeting this afternoon, which is outside Houston, so I'm going to go from dealing with an unwell toddler to feeling like an unwell toddler as I deal with the air travel system. Whee!
In honor of spending the morning trying to distract an unhappy…
jdupuis | November 11, 2009I don't usually talk about local York stuff here, but I'd like to make an exception for the event we had last week (Tuesday, November 3rd) here at my library, The Steacie Science & Engineering Library.
The event is called YorkWrites and it's sponsored jointly by the Libraries and the Bookstore. Essentially, it's a big party in the library, with food, drink, music and speeches. In the past it was held at the Scott Library, the humanities & socials sciences library, but for 2009 we thought it would be nice to try a science and engineering focus.
What's it about:
YORKwrites is an…
jstemwedel | November 10, 2009It's been a long day, between teaching and attending to committee work, giving a colloquium talk, dealing with an emergency drill, and coming home to make a later-than-planned dinner for the kids (since my better half had to help a sprog with an arithmetic emergency during the anticipated dinner hour).
Tomorrow is a day off from school ... but for the sprogs, too, and me with piles of papers that must be graded and returned by Thursday.
What I need right now is to see Stephen Colbert dance:
The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
National Treasure Pt. 1
www.colbertnation.com…
drorzel | November 10, 2009I failed to write something on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall yesterday, partly because I think the other six million blog posts on the subject had it pretty well covered. Another factor, though, was the fact that I don't have the sort of crystal-clear recollection of where I was and what I was doing on that night. I can reconstruct where I must've been-- I was a college freshman, so I would've watched it in the tv room on the second floor of Fayerweather-- but I don't clearly recall the event itself. It's all mixed together with the endless discussions of What It All Meant…
pharyngula | November 9, 2009The mild nausea I mentioned earlier? Gone now, it seems to have vanished as soon as I disposed of the wretched rag Answers in Genesis sent me. It's a good thing, too, because I have a frantic weekend ahead of me.
Today and tomorrow, I'm pounding the keyboard to prepare a couple of talks. At least one I can borrow liberally from the book-in-progress (yeah, I'm still working on that, too).
On Thursday, I'll be giving a public lecture at Purdue University. I'm cutting it close on this one; my plane gets into Indianapolis a mere 2 hours before the talk, so if I'm late, feel free to leave…
jstemwedel | November 9, 2009Because, as it happens, I tend to notice patterns in student papers, then end up musing on them rather than, you know, buckling down and just working through the stack of papers that needs grading.
In my philosophy of science class, I have my students write short essays (approximately 400 words) about central ideas in some of the readings I've assigned. Basically, it's a mechanism to ensure that they grapple with an author's view (and its consequences) before they hear me lecture about it. (It's also a way to get students writing as many words as they are required to write in an upper…
jstemwedel | November 8, 2009Remember how I mentioned that we had some soccer tournaments this weekend?
Well, it looks like we're going to need a bigger shelf.
In contrast, we're doing just fine as far as Fuyu persimmons go.
drorzel | November 8, 2009OK, fine. Today's nice weather is well within the range of seasonal variation for New England. But after a chilly week or two, it was nice to get a chance to go to the park with SteelyKid, who definitely enjoyed it:
Of course, after a bunch of swinging, sometimes you just need to sit quietly and contemplate an acorn:
And then go home for a nice bottle and a nap.
Sadly, Daddy isn't allowed to take a nap, but has to try to take advantage of SteelyKid's napping to get some work done before the Giants game. No matter how much he would like to doze on the couch for a while...
drorzel | November 5, 2009For this week's Baby Blogging, we have a shot of Kate helping SteelyKid with her new favorite game:
It's called "Take off my shoes, and put them back on." She can play this for hours. It would be even cuter if she could do the putting on and taking off herself, but alas, she's still kind of unclear on the solidity of objects, and doesn't really grasp that her feet can only get into the shoes from the open end. She'll get there, though.
SteelyKid officially moved out of the infant room at day care this week. She's now in the next age/ development group, termed "Waddlers" (an intermediate step…
clock | November 4, 2009Last night we went to see Leonard Cohen at the DPAC in Durham. What to say? He's the Legend. Still, at this age, full of energy and spunk. And everything was done to perfection - the set, the lighting and the slow dance of the backup singers had, together, a hypnotic effect. Three hours passed like nothing - I could have stayed another three (and that would still not exhaust all of his greatest hits).
I was too far away to take good pictures with my iPhone, but I took these two, just to show the light changes. There were some quite magical light effects as some moments including those making…
clock | November 4, 2009The neighbors in Southern Village (here in Chapel Hill) are wild about Halloween, many making elaborate decorations of their houses for it (often more elaborate than for Christmas). The business on The Green also get into the spirit and put fun and scary dolls or scarecrows or other objects in front of their stores. These are often quite well designed as well. This year, we really liked this sign-post, showing the way to other businesses (e.g., Lumina Theater, Weaver Street Market, Harrington Bank, etc.) - click on buttons to see large:
pharyngula | November 3, 2009It's another podcast, this time with Mother Jones magazine.
I just finished cleaning up something like 400 spam comments made here, so it's with grim resignation that I notice the podcast already has a spam comment on it. Is there some reason my name should be associated with sanitary ball valves?
laelaps | November 2, 2009
It has been a little more than a month since I announced my forthcoming book on paleontology and evolution, Written in Stone, and I have been hard at work on the manuscript. As it stands now the book is about 3/4 complete. Provided everything stays on schedule I should have a first draft of the whole book finished in about a month.
But finishing the manuscript, while of primary importance, is not my only concern. I am a virtually unknown science writer publishing my first book through a relatively small house. That means that I cannot sit idly by and expect lots of people to take interest in…
pharyngula | November 2, 2009Since Jerry Coyne will never ever let me forget my modeling session with Ruse, I'll counter it a little with a photo of the sensible people from the University of Northern Iowa.
Theresa Spradling, Peter Berendzen, Steve O'Kane, Marek Sliwinski, Neil Shubin (U. of Chicago) and Tiktaalik, Jim Demastes, and some guy.
I'll be speaking at UNI on 10 February, too.
pharyngula | November 2, 2009When I gave my talk at Minot, ND a few weeks ago, one of the things the Northwest Art Center (which hosted the talk) did was to have the audience evaluate me. This could be useful, I thought, but they actually mailed me copies of the forms, and…umm, no, they weren't. As I rather expected, the evaluations are highly bimodal, with a majority giving me an enthusiastic thumbs up, and a substantial minority giving me a thumbs down. The negative reviews might have had some potential for helping me out, except, well, take a look at one example.
I've got a surprisingly consistent subset of reviews…
pharyngula | October 31, 2009Don't faint. I met some people at this meeting.
What did you think, I'd strip half-naked, paint myself blue, and start swinging a broadsword?
pharyngula | October 31, 2009Jerry Coyne has put up a few photos from the conference, including one of me hunched over my teeny-tiny note-taking laptop doing the exciting live-blogging thing. It doesn't look as glamorous as it actually is.
drorzel | October 31, 2009SteelyKid says "Daddy, I can help with your puppet show. Look at this awesome dragon puppet Grandma got me!"
In this, you can also see a bit of the Halloween outfit her great-grandmother gave her. There are a couple of pictures below the fold that show it more clearly:
Here's one of her obligingly looking at the camera:
I kind of prefer this one where she's grinning toothily at Kate, just out of the frame on the left:
Happy Halloween to everybody who won't be offended by being wished a happy Halloween.
pharyngula | October 30, 2009
Yes. Yes we are.
(Photo by August Berkshire; if you squint, you might notice Ron Numbers caught in the background between me and Neil Shubin, too.)