personal
drorzel | March 1, 2009Kate's father passed away today. He's been battling cancer for while, so this was not unexpected, but the end was still surprisingly fast. He was at least at home with loved ones, including Kate and SteelyKid, who went down there yesterday.
He will be missed.
drorzel | February 28, 2009Because everybody could use some extra baby pictures, a reminder from SteelyKid that a baby's reach should exceed her grasp...
... but not for too long.
sciencewoman | February 27, 2009As Alice kindly announced, today is my 30th birthday. The day got off to a rough start, but a little time ignoring work, eating a lovely organic lunch, reading some Pride and Prejudice, and then eating too much ice cream has turned the day into quite a lovely experience. Anyways, before my natal day expires, I thought I'd seize the chance to wax on a bit about where my thoughts wandered as my third decade waned.
For months, I've been looking forward to my 30th birthday. I'm a mother to a two year old. I'm in my second year on the tenure track. I own my second house. That combination of…
skookumchick | February 27, 2009Haaaappy birrrrthdaaaay tooo yoooooou,
Haaaaappy birrrrthdaaaay toooo yooooou,
Haaaappy birrrrrrrthdaaaaay, deeeeear Sciiiiience Womaaaaan,
Haaaaaappy birrrrthdaaaaaay toooo yoooooooou!
(Aaaand many moooooooore!)
clock | February 26, 2009My son had to do a homework for his Biology class, a kinda stupid long worksheet. He was given a bunch of DNA sequences (and had the codon table handy) and needed to translate that into amino acid sequences. The a.a. sequence spells out a sentence. Busy-work, if anyone asks me.
Anyway, he was too lazy to do it by hand, so he wrote a little program to do it for him: type in DNA sequence, click OK, out comes the a.a. sequence. He sent his teacher both the answers and the program....just goes to show that doing this homework does not require a brain capable of reasoning.
I know there are…
drorzel | February 26, 2009For this week's Baby Blogging, SteelyKid shows off the latest look for the baby on the go:
In this picture, she's all set to face a busy day at day care. She's in her car seat, with the dangling toys on the handle (Left to right, a rattling snail, a butterfly with crinkly wings, and a flower with a squeaker in it. The difference between baby toys and dog toys is not all that large.). You can also see the fleece car seat cover for cold weather, and her little red dog, for when she's actually in the car, and the handle has to be flipped down out of the way.
This carrier car seat will not be…
clock | February 26, 2009I'll be in Boston in about 10 days from now. On March 8th, I'll go to the Science Cafe - the website is not updated yet so I don't know what the topic is yet, but it's going to be fun for sure: science+pizza+beer, who can ask for more? So, if you come to that, try to spot me in the crowd and say Hello.
The next day, on Monday, March 9, 2009 at 6:00pm, we'll meet at Casablanca Restaurant which is at 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA. If you are a scientist, blogger, reader, come and let's eat and drink together. If you are on Facebook, I have made an Event page so you can get all the…
laelaps | February 24, 2009Am I a scientist? It seems like a simple question requiring little more than a "yes" or "no", yet I am at a loss as to how to answer it. Even though I have been called a scientist by people I respect I cannot bring myself to use the term to describe myself.
It is not that I am holding onto some vaunted ideal of what a scientist is or should be. It is not as if a PhD, a prestigious academic prize, or a paper in Science is required to lay claim to the title. Instead I think of a scientist as someone who actively participates in research (or has done so in the past) and shares the results of…
edyong | February 24, 2009Following last week's 400th anniversary post, I have another celebratory announcement. A year ago today*, I set foot in ScienceBlogs for the first time.
As previously noted, some things have changed while others are much the same. The posting rate has gone up, and traffic has almost quadrupled from about 4,000 views per week to something like 16,000 now. Nonetheless, I've kept to the basic rules - non-sensationalist, considered, writing based on primary sources, for a general audience.
Some thanks are in order. I'm very grateful to the following people:
The awesome ScienceBlogs overlords…
clock | February 22, 2009This morning we took it easy - a little shopping for kids, some cakes at Veniero (white is shampita, brown is Napoleon), a little walk, including past the Museum Of Sex (did not have time to go in, though), with the special exhibit about sex in animals (including this, of course). Then a long wait at the new JetBlue terminal at JFK which is nice, big and technically very modern. Now at home, exhausted - tomorrow is a new (work)day!
clock | February 21, 2009A couple of times over the past few years I tried to find if there was a Serbian restaurant in New York City, but Google could not find one. So, I gave up looking and assumed there wasn't one. And that was true - until recently. Last night at the meetup, Nikola Trbovic told me there is one now - opened just last June: Kafana on Avenue C (between 8th and 9th Street, see reviews here and here).
So, tonight, after watching the amazing August: Osage County on Broadway, The Bride Of Coturnix and I went to 'Kafana' to give it a try. And we were not disappointed - the atmosphere was pleasant and the…
clock | February 21, 2009"In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.", Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Or, in modern online usage - "Pics, or it didn't happen!"
So, here are some of the pick from last night. First, we went to Seed offices, where we met everyone during the Happy Hour, including the Overlords, Erin and Arikia:
Then we walked over to Old Town Bar, where we soon were joined by my Scibling Jake Young, my old friend from SciFoo and the 1st Science Blogging Conference Jacqueline Floyd, my Twitter buddy Arvind Says, and the Overlords of the new Nature Network NYC Hub Barry…
clock | February 20, 2009Just had a very pleasant lunch with John Timmer, the editor of Ars Technica. I learned about the history and concept of Ars Technica, we talked about science journalism, science communication, science blogging, and even about science itself: his and my old research:
clock | February 20, 2009Just came back from coffee with Jay Rosen:
Topic: The state of journalism, of course. Fun was had by all.
drorzel | February 20, 2009Over at Making Light, Jim Macdonald has a response to the anti-vaccination movement, taking his cue from the Navy:
There's a manual that every Navy gunnery officer is required to read or re-read every year: OP 1014; Ordnance Safety Precautions: Their Origin and Necessity. It's a collection of stories about, and photographs of, spectacular accidents involving big guns and ammunition. Gun turrets that have fired on other gun turrets on the same ship. Holes in the coral where ammunition ships were formerly anchored. That sort of thing. It's simultaneously grim and fascinating.
Nowadays there's…
terrasig | February 20, 2009Dear Friends,
I have been so swamped lately, I cannot even spend enough time with PharmGirl and PharmKid much less find time to call my out-of-state family, what with time zones, kid bedtimes, and such.
However, each of you continue to put out a large volume of high quality posts that I really want to read fully but just can't right now. I've been working for five weeks on my ScienceOnline'09 winetasting post that is still not done and will definitely miss the deadline for submitting a post to the Diversity in Science carnival. And I've now been getting bluescreen memory dump errors on the…
oracknows | February 19, 2009I have returned.
The funeral is over; I went back to work yesterday; and it's time to reenter "regular" life again. To me that includes blogging. I do not know when or if I'll do a post about my mother-in-law's death from breast cancer. I tried, and I'm just not ready yet. The only thing I can say is that work yesterday produced a strange sort of disconnect. Things just didn't seem real, and I had a hell of a time motivating myself to do anything that I didn't have to do. I'm sure I'll get over it soon enough. I have to. The old curse goes, "May you live in interesting times," and…
clock | February 19, 2009Mrs.Coturnix and I arrived nicely in NYC last night and had a nice dinner at Heartland Brewery. This morning, we had breakfast at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, where I ordered my pastry using a Serbian name for the cake, and the Albanian woman working in the Hungarian shop understood what I wanted! I forgot to bring my camera with me today, and Mrs.Coturnix did not bring her cable, so the pictures of the pastries will have to wait our return home.
Then, Mrs.Coturnix went for a long walk (it was nice in the morning, got cold in the afternoon), ending up in the Met. I joined my co-panelists Jean-…
drorzel | February 19, 2009For this week's Baby Blogging, SteelyKid couldn't decide whether to show off her ability to grab Appa or her ability to touch her toes, so she tried to do both at once:
The color scheme of this outfit is undoubtedly going to lead to some irritating interactions with people in malls ("Why is her outfit blue, if she's a girl?" "Her outfit is actually pink. It just appears blue after the light falls into the immense gravity well created by your stupidity."), but it goes too well with the dinosaur theme of her nursery to pass it up.
edyong | February 18, 2009As of yesterday, I have written 400 proper articles for this blog.
Woo, and I might add, hoo.
That's excluding random announcements, navel-gazing, chatter or the odd journalistic take-down. Four hundred summaries, each covering one or more new pieces of research. Each one probably represents about 2.5 hours of work, and it's taken about 2.5 years to accumulate all of them. But it's been worth it, for me certainly and I hope for people reading too.
If you're new to Not Exactly Rocket Science, you can find the entire back catalogue in "The Full Works". Or if you want a taster, have a look…