personal
clock | May 6, 2009It is really sad when an independent book store closes. It is even sadder when that book store was not just a shop but also a center of local community, a place where people gathered to have coffee, talk, interact with boook authors, take art or yoga classes, participate in theater or children's activities. But the economic downturn is affecting everyone and Market Street Books in Southern Village was forced to close by May 1st.
I went there a couple of times last week, to commiserate with the employees and volunteers who were packing, wondering what the future will bring for them and picked…
pharyngula | May 5, 2009The other day, I read this fawning review by Andrew O'Hehir of Terry Eagleton's new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, and was a little surprised. I've read a smattering of Eagleton before, and the words "brisk, funny and challenging" or "witty" never came to mind, and the review actually gave no evidence that these adjectives were applicable in this case. I felt like ripping into O'Hehir, but was held up by one awkward lack: I hadn't read Eagleton's book. Who knows? Maybe he had found some grain of sense and some literary imperative to write cleanly and…
terrasig | May 5, 2009Bear with me this morning because I am growing very weary of my physician colleagues enduring all sorts of haranguing for being hateful, pharma shills who only want to cut, burn, and poison.
I was extremely fortunate, personally and professionally, to train in two clinical units with strong basic science programs. As such, I worked at the bench with MD fellows and we schooled each other on our respective strengths. I loved when when my colleagues would come back from clinic and tell me of experiences that put our bench work in real world perspective. Yes, not all bench work is immediately…
clock | May 4, 2009You know I went to the #TriangleTweetup last week at @Bronto, an Email Service Provider in Durham, NC, with an inflatable brontosaurus as its mascot:
Apart from searching Twitter for TriangleTweetup, you could also follow @triangletweetup for updates. At one point during the event, the hashtag was 'trending' but I don't know how high it got.
There were about 250 people there, mostly programers, web developers and PR folks. Reminds me of the old bloggercons. Will tweetups also evolve over the years to attract more people who are using it and less people who are designing it? A first Science…
terrasig | May 3, 2009Many readers of Terra Sig and the larger ScienceBlogs community likely remember former neuroscience graduate student blogger, Shelley Batts. Shelley originally launched Retrospectacle and she and I (and ~25 others) joined Sb in June, 2006, second wave. When she put the hammer down to finish her PhD at the University of Michigan (former home of Dr John Jacob Abel), she shut down Retrospectacle and joined forces with Steve/Omnibrain at Of Two Minds.
Shelley earned her PhD last December, headed off to postdoc at Stanford, and got engaged to her high school sweetheart, Luke Rumsey.
Well, while…
jstemwedel | May 3, 2009A few weeks ago, the Free-Ride family welcomed some new members.
About 14 new members (although it can be hard to get an accurate count when they're squirming around).
Right now their main interests are eating, growing, and climbing on their siblings to find more to eat. Their growth is pretty alarming in its rapidity (especially since we've just moved them to the largest wide-mouth jar we have).
We were waiting for their arrival for a good long while. Now that they're here, we're trying to enjoy the days before they grow up and have kids of their own.
jstemwedel | May 1, 2009In a chat with a colleague today, I learned the following:
1. My colleague thinks the media coverage of swine flu is very overblown.
2. My colleague has already stocked up on face-masks.
Hmmmmm.
drorzel | May 1, 2009I'm walking a little gingerly today, thanks to an injury to my left foot. Sadly, this was not the result of anything cool, like rescuing orphans from a burning building, or dunking a basketball in order to win a league championship. Instead, I bruised the bottom of my foot by landing on one of Emmy's bones while frog-hopping across the room to entertain SteelyKid.
This is in a fine family tradition-- my father once blew out a knee trying to do the cossack dance for me-- but it's worth it. In the last week or two, she's started laughing just about every time she sees me-- evidently, I am the…
drorzel | April 30, 2009"These Baby Blogging pictures are old hat," says SteelyKid. "I could do this standing on my head!"
You can't really tell from the angle, but she's laughing. This is a game we play from time to time-- I'll tip her over backwards, gently lower her down to the floor, and say "BONK!" Then I pick her back up, and she giggles and laughs and grins hugely. I suspect she's going to share her mother's love of roller coasters.
pharyngula | April 29, 2009Good news for me! I get to spend a week in Germany, attending the Nobel Laureate meetings at Lindau on 28 June-3 July. I get to have all the fun, but at least you'll benefit indirectly, since I'll be regularly blogging the talks here. In English. You wouldn't want to see the butchery I would do to the lovely German language.
I was looking over the schedule, and what jumped out at me right after seeing all those great titles was that they are actually confining Nobel laureates to only half-hour talks. That will be something to see, too.
drorzel | April 28, 2009Well, it is. What with the jumping around, and the giggling, and waving toys in the air, and the tickling and giggling, and taking a walk in the stroller...
It just tires a baby right out.
(If you've clicked through to warn us that letting SteelyKid sleep on her stomach is Incredibly! Dangerous! and May Cause Instant Death!!!, please don't. We've heard it.)
terrasig | April 28, 2009UPDATE (Wed 29 April): As friends and family of the Urbanos and Kanes have been arriving here via web searches, I wanted to provide a compendium of individual obituaries and plans for visitation and funeral.
Visitation for all will be at Thiele-Reid Family Funeral Home, 585 Belgrove Drive, Kearny, NJ 07032, (201) 991-1031 on Thursday, 30 April, and Friday, 1 May from 2:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Funeral liturgy will be offered for all, at St. Stephen's Church, in Kearny, on Saturday, 2 May, at 11:00 a.m.
The Urbanos will then be laid to rest at St. Nicholas Cemetery in Lodi; the Kanes will be laid…
clock | April 27, 2009When I woke up this morning and went online while kids were getting up and ready for school, the first this I saw was this tweet by abelpharmboy:
Two articles on @BoraZ in today's Durham Herald-Sun. Will post links later. Herald-Sun has pain in the ass registration to access site.
So, I went out and got a hardcopy of the paper, and also looked at it online (feel free to use login: coturnixfan and password: boraborabora to see the articles, thanks Bill). The first article starts on the front page of Chapel Hill Herald (I think that if you buy the paper in Durham, Chapel Hill Herald is inside,…
oracknows | April 27, 2009After having been bummed out at the invasion of faith healing and quackery in my hometown newspaper I came to something that bummed me out even more. Most readers here have probably never heard of the Michigan Central Station train depot. Suffice it to say that it is a huge train station that was, in its heyday at least, every bit as impressive as Grand Central Station in New York or Union Station in Chicago. Indeed, it's not for nothing that the Michigan Central Station was likened to "Michigan's Ellis Island," as it was frequently the first thing in Detroit that new arrivals saw, as this…
laelaps | April 26, 2009After a long wait, the new Palaeontologia Electronica is now online! It even includes a review of Jane Davidson's A History of Paleontology Illustration by yours truly. Check it out!
jstemwedel | April 26, 2009Ah, Spring! The time of year when children wear sandals and then admonish their siblings not to pick their toes on the way to pot-luck dinners.
Yesterday's toe picking prompted me to tweet a question that was mostly facetious:
If a child sequentially picks toes and nose, is there a risk of getting athlete's nostril?
But on Twitter, no silly question goes unanswered. So Bora replied:
I think so. The fungus just needs a decent amount transferred and sufficient time to set up shop elsewhere in the body.
Interesting. Also, potentially painful!
And of course, one of my Facebook friends took…
drorzel | April 24, 2009SteelyKid says "Look at me! I'm HUGE!"
Seriously, look at how small she used to be.
This is it as far as blogging today, by the way. I have to teach a class, and then I need to get through the copyedits on the book-in-production. Try to contain your disappointment.
pharyngula | April 23, 2009There will be a few opportunities for informal conversation today. I'll be on an evolution walk at Briscoe Geology Park at 2:00pm today, and for those of you who can't bear the thought of seeing me without a beer or four in you, I'll be popping by the Standing Stone Brewing Company sometime after 9:30…after my talk and after I've had some dinner with Jefferson Center folks. If I'm late, don't panic, just have some good conversation with other godless Pharyngulistas, and I'll get there eventually.
pharyngula | April 23, 2009I'm here in Ashland, and you'll be able to catch me on the radio in about 45 minutes, at 9am. It's a call-in show, too, so have fun.
The rest of my day is busy, too — you can find out more at the Jefferson Center website.
pharyngula | April 22, 2009Oy, this has been a long day of travel, and it's not over yet. I'm at the Salt Lake City airport right now, with a long 5 hour layover. At least I have wireless and my kindle.
It's a bit of a shock being here, though. I'd forgotten how much those big lumpy whatchamacallums, you know, those giant piles of rocks and dirt — oh, yeah, mountains — add to the scenery. Also, 80°. The world is not supposed to be that hot right now.