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pharyngula | March 25, 2009I had a harrowing morning. I got up at 5 to make the long drive to the airport, only to discover that last night, after several days of rain, it had frozen. And snowed. Uh-oh, you say…at least in my usual caution I had given myself 5 hours to make a 3 hour drive, so I figured I'd have no problem.
It wasn't bad; little traffic, the roads were icy, but I was taking my time and coping like a real Minnesotan. Then, as I was leaving lovely Glenwood, I saw a truck stopped to make a left turn way ahead — like 4 or 5 blocks ahead. So I touched the brakes to slow down a little more. So I tried to slow…
tlambert | March 25, 2009I was looking through my grandmother's scrapbooks and found this picture of her grandfather -- he's the one standing (click to enlarge).
I found the history of the lifeboat he is on:
In 1879 a new British-built lifeboat, designed by the RNLI and built by Forrest & Co. Ltd in London, arrived in Sydney and was displayed at the Sydney International Exhibition, a showcase of the latest technology from around the world. Following the exhibition the lifeboat was put into service at Watsons Bay and launched as the Port lifeboat in 1880. Probably after 1885 it was named the "Lady Carrington"…
sciencewoman | March 24, 2009It's Women's History Month, and the Diversity in Science Carnival has asked us to profile women scientists. I spend a lot of time thing about the things that affect the lives of today's young women scientists, but I also know that we are preceded by some incredibly strong and brave women who faced much tougher working conditions than we. And some of those trail-blazing women in science were young not that long ago. So I'm taking this post to talk with one of those amazing women and see what has changed and what hasn't.
Over the course of two hours, I had a wonderful conversation with this…
pharyngula | March 23, 2009For the past few years, I have been receiving postcards from Theo Nelson regularly. They are lovely and colorful handmade cards with a poem on the back. I got another one today — all the others are lined up on a wall in my office — and I thought it was about time to mention it. It's Spring again!
Of course, Spring in western Minnesota doesn't look much like that: what we have is lots of gray rain, gray dirty snow shrinking into lumps of gray dirty ice, and brown grass poking up through mud…but we'll take it!
(Reverse of card below the fold)
pharyngula | March 22, 2009This week, I'll be heading off to Grand Rapids, Michigan for a few days, and more than a few of you have been asking me for the details. Here's my itinerary:
Wednesday - March 25, 2009
4:00-4:30 pm - Interview with Jeremy Beahan - Reasonable Doubts Radio Show/ Podcast
5:00 pm - Check into Hotel: Days Hotel Downtown GR.
6:30 pm - Meeting Setup @ WCC (Jeff Seaver will pick you up at Hotel at 6:15)
7:00 pm - CFI Featured Event @ WCC Format: 45-60 minute presentation with Q&A following (RSVP here).
9:00 pm - After event Social at Vitale's Restaurant.
Thursday - March 26, 2009
9:30-11:30 am -…
clock | March 22, 2009As I'm sure you already know, I saw 'Fiddler on the Roof' this weekend at the new Durham Performing Arts Center. Actually, I did not see it once, I saw it twice (complicated story how that happened). Bride of Coturnix and I went alone on Friday night, and we brought the kids with us on Saturday afternoon. Which was good timing as today Topol had to cancel and Tevye is being played by his understudy.
First, I have to admit I am very happy that DPAC (the Durham Performing Arts Center) is doing so well. As Breakfast with Pandora says, building an enormous new art and performance center at this…
jstemwedel | March 21, 2009As Friday was the first day of spring (for my hemisphere, anyway), I went out to the back yard to survey the local level of springiness.
I didn't make a quantitative measure of the spring constant, but qualitatively, things seem to be on their way.
The pink jasmine is starting to bloom:
Its fragrance won't be too intoxicating until the weather is warmer, which is fine -- we wouldn't want to be too intoxicated as we fight back the well-adapted weeds that took advantage of the rainy season to get a foothold.
Similarly, the wisteria is ready to explode:
More intoxicating fragrance (although…
laelaps | March 21, 2009Hi, everyone. I noticed that many of the people who originally expressed interest in meeting up at the National Zoo tomorrow will not, in fact, be able to make it. As such I have decided to cancel the meet-up tomorrow. Don't fret, though. I hope to be back in the area sometime later this year and I will provide a little more notice about it.
I just hope I will be capable of walking around at all tomorrow. After 9 hours of shuffling around the museums and memorials I don't know if I'll be standing up again anytime soon.
clock | March 20, 2009And there is something amazing about sharing the same space with a legend. At the age of 74, after 42 years and 2500 shows, Topol is finally retiring his role of Tevye in the Fiddler On The Roof. And he is just amazing.
jstemwedel | March 20, 2009Today I decided to play with some chemicals I ordered to try to spherify V-8. It's the molecular gastronomy thing where you mix a liquid with sodium alginate, then drip it into an aqueous solution of calcium chloride to get the juice-alginate mixture to gel, forming a skin around a liquid center.
My first attempt did not produce the results I was shooting for.
First off, my kitchen scale, a lovely little device that measures with a precision of 1/8 ounce or 1 gram, is not great for measuring tenths of grams. Who knew that I'd miss Mettler balances (and weighing boats)?
Second of all, V-8,…
jstemwedel | March 20, 2009It's a proud day for any parent when offspring start getting interested in formal proofs. So I felt a little thrill when the elder Free-Ride offspring sat down with Dr. Free-Ride's better half to consider whether it was possible for there to be a largest prime number:
:
Not just a proof, people. A proof by reductio!
It makes a mother a little emotional.
Lest I get totally verklempt, let us note the levity my child has inserted into the proof.
In the line of the proof that notes the contradiction (that n, which is prime and also greater than p presents a problem for the claim that p is the…
drorzel | March 20, 2009I carry some of my gear to and from the lunchtime basketball game in a red and white canvas-and-mesh bag. The zipper doesn't work, and hasn't for years, and the logo on the side is almost worn off, but if you look closely, you can still make out the New York State Public High School Athletic Association logo.
The bag was a freebie when my high school basketball team played in the NYSPHSAA championships in my senior year. That was twenty years ago this week-- I'm pretty sure that bag is older than some of the students who play with us at lunchtime.
I should note that I was a deep bench player…
drorzel | March 19, 2009While the DVR piles up enough basketball to allow me to fast-forward through CBS's nine-minute commercial breaks, here's this week's Baby Blogging picture:
SteelyKid has been in an amazingly good mood this evening, and here you see her obligingly stretching out to her full length so you can see how much she's grown.
jstemwedel | March 18, 2009
The younger Free-Ride offspring's admiration for and appreciation of the work of Jonathan Coulton continues unabated.
In fact, JoCo songs have become the subject of painstaking drawings that the younger Free-Ride hopes Mr. Coulton might encounter while Googling himself (as one does).
The latest offering is the younger Free-Ride offspring's conception of Skullcrusher Mountain (lyrics here):
The level of detail is impressive. Maybe even a little disturbing. But I will admit to being quite taken with the half-pony, half-monkey monster:
For those who didn't already know:
I made this half-…
Fullsteam Brewery founder and local-ag guru, Sean Wilson, to appear on WUNC-FM's The State of Things
terrasig | March 18, 2009The local food movement is not local here in the sprawling US. Hence why am posting this note here.
North Carolina beer saint and local-ag brewer, Sean Lily Wilson, will be on the radio in about an hour. We featured Sean back in January when the state's flagship newspaper named him Tar Heel of the Week for his efforts to modify our draconian beer laws to allow high-gravity beers, especially many of our European favorites, to be sold statewide.
Sean's a good man, a great dad, and epitomizes community on so many levels. If you're not local, you can listen to him together with two other…
clock | March 17, 2009If you have been reading my blog for years, you may remember this passage:
I have seen "Fiddler on the Roof" on stage more than 20 times in my life, starting at about the age of seven. Since I was about 24, I saw the movie a few times. I have had, over the years, LPs, tapes and CDs of several different renditions. I can play a few of the tunes on the piano. I love it. That is my favourite show of all times.
I have heard the music so many times, my brain is so wired to it that I cannot stop myself from crying every time I hear it (that is why I don't listen to it in the car - it is a traffic…
terrasig | March 15, 2009I am truly humbled by reader response to my Thursday post on the 12th anniversary of my father's death. What began as a simple journaling exercise interspersed with some great photos provided by my sister has become one of my most highly-read and most-commented posts.
I don't want to comment too much lest I take away what this post has meant to me and others. But for background, this is something that I had intended to write for the 10th anniversary of Dad's passing. However, I had only been with ScienceBlogs for a few months and wasn't yet in a position to write so frankly and personally…
cmooney | March 15, 2009It's been a while since I had a good string of talks lined up--it's harder, I think, to do a lot of them from the West Coast. But now I'm back east and about to embark for the first two of these four upcoming appearances; so mark them down if you're in the area. And of course, when Unscientific America comes out, we'll both be traveling up and down the country (mostly the coasts, as usual):
Lynchburg, VA
Randolph College
Annual Thayer Lecture: "The War on Science is Over. Now What?"
Monday, March 16
7:30 PM-8:30 PM
The Wimberly Recital Hall, Presser Hall
Web site
Jupiter, FL
Scripps Howard…
jstemwedel | March 14, 2009We've been watching some episodes of Blue Planet here, marveling at the beautiful cinematography, as well as at how emotionally gripping they can be.
Especially in the Frozen Seas episode, I found myself feeling almost wrung out by the dramatic roller-coaster. This is definitely nature red in tooth and claw (and blood-soaked maw), although as my better half points out, there's actually rather less on-camera carnage than you might expect from the narration.*
I think part of the dramatic tension comes from the fact that most of the animals featured in this episode are fairly charismatic mid-…