personal
jstemwedel | November 28, 2007Do you know that feeling one gets that is characteristic of "about to come down with something", where you have an off taste in your mouth and your head feels fuzzy, and it seems like the very best thing you could possibly do is just lay your head on your desk for a few moments and close your eyes?
Yeah. I've had that feeling all day.
However, I have absolutely zero time to actually come down with something at this particular juncture. Therefore, I will be conducting a Mind Over Immune System experiment (not a very scientific one, I'll admit) in which I see whether telling myself sternly…
terrasig | November 28, 2007...and we thank you.
If you look down yonder left, you'll see that my SiteMeter counter passed 100,000 visits earlier today.
To be precise, a visitor from the University of Edinburgh's Moray House Institute of Education dialed into ScienceBlogs' 'Last 24 Hours' channel at 2037 GMT and clicked on my post about yesterday's death of Dr Robert Cade, the renal physiologist who formulated Gatorade. (So that readers don't get nervous, SiteMeter doesn't track in any greater detail than that.).
So, a great many thanks to my Scottish reader for being #100,000. If I knew who you were and could be…
jstemwedel | November 27, 2007This is not breaking news (unless your news cycle is more geological), but it strikes me as relevant on the day that I deliver my penultimate lecture in the newly-created ethics module in the Introduction to Engineering class at my university:
Can you trust an ethicist to behave ethically?
Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust asked other philosophers, who presumably have a good bit of data on the everyday conduct of professional ethicists. The majority seemed to think that ethicists were no more ethical in their behavior than are other sorts of philosophers.
Brian Leiter suggested that a finer…
pharyngula | November 27, 2007Those sneaky alumni organizations — they've always got new angles on how to get to you. The alumni magazine for the University of Oregon has a writeup on me and a current member of the UO faculty, Mark Thoma. Apparently, we are Cyber Scholars, professors who use the blogosphere to teach the world. I think we need some new academic robes to go with that designation — preferably something in silver fabrics, and with a jetpack.
drorzel | November 25, 2007... or, Emmy's Best Thanksgiving Ever!
We did the traditional turkey-and-trimmings dinner Saturday with both sets of parents. Again, we brined the turkey overnight, following the Good Eats recipe, and other than a small glitch with the thermometer placement, everything went very well. The turkey was nicely roasted, moist, and juicy.
And that's where the problem started. Or, if you're the dog, that's where this started to be the best Thanksgiving EVER...
Neither Kate nor I really eat gravy, and it has the reputation of being fiddly to make, so we didn't do anything with the juices that…
clock | November 22, 2007I tend to give annual thanks on New Years' (I may have skipped a couple of years, but this year I have a lot to be thankful for, so come back here on December 31st for the extensive list).
Enjoy the holidays, be good to each other and, if you are so idle you decide to come here and see there is no new content, it is because....
And so should you!
terrasig | November 22, 2007For readers not in the US, today is Thanksgiving Day. Our friends to the north celebrated their harvest festival last month.
I'll be giving thanks today to my local Honeybaked Ham® franchise for making our little stay-at-home celebration that much easier.
As I also enjoy my British-crafted Samuel Smith Imperial Stout, I'll also be giving thanks that my little blog hobby is something that is valued by you folks around the world.
There are a great many challenges on this planet and there is much suffering among our people. We should all find something to be thankful for today.
Wherever you…
sheril | November 22, 2007
Like most of our readers, we're off on vacation over Thanksgiving - Chris to Wisconsin, Sheril to New York - and posting will be very light til we return.
We wish everyone a warm and happy holiday!
drorzel | November 22, 2007Kate and I will be hosting Thanksgiving again this year, but not until Saturday, for reasons having to do with pet-sitting-- the Queen of Niskayuna will not tolerate inferior dogs (i.e., any dog who isn't her) in her house, and for some reason, it's hard to find a pet-sitter for Thanksgiving Day. Imagine that. Anyway, we'll be doing some advance food prep today, but the big turkey dinner will but put off for a couple of days.
So, we won't be having the traditional gluttony, but it's still traditional to take at least a few moments to reflect on what you're grateful for over the past year, and…
oracknows | November 22, 2007...from EneMan.
Here's wishing everyone who celebrates it a Happy Thanksgiving. As you might expect, our blog mascot is joining in the fun, preparing the turkey, and loading up on tryptophan!
Believe it or not, given my usual prolific nature, I'm taking the day off from blogging to engage in the traditional Thanksgiving Day activities of eating, drinking, and falling asleep on the couch watching football.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and I'll be back tomorrow.
You know, this reminds me. I've been very, very remiss in not featuring everyone's favorite blog mascot for his usual monthly…
pharyngula | November 22, 2007I did not drop off the face of the earth in the last 3/4 of a day — I joined the 47 million Americans who spend the day before Thanksgiving in an annual familial migration. I had to drive Daughter #1 and her sweetie-pie to Buffalo, Minnesota; then drive to Minneapolis to pick up Son #2, who'd had a long day on a bus from Madison, Wisconsin; then back to Buffalo to pick up Daughter #1 sans sweetie-pie; then to St Cloud to pick up Son #1; and finally, back home to Morris. For a time there I had my entire genetic output in a small car with me, in the snow, on a freeway (and I think all 47…
sciencewoman | November 22, 20071. Happy Thanskgiving everyone. Minnow, Fish, and I are enjoying a mini-Thanksgiving meal of turkey, wild rice, and apple pie. Minnow will be getting her first taste of turkey. Photos will be taken.
2. On this day of feasting and family, take a moment to think of those who are less fortunate than you. This year you might send your compassion (and your money) to victims of Cyclone Sidr that struck Bangladesh last week. The latest news stories report more than 3000 people have been confirmed dead, with fatalities rising hourly. The area that was hit was already impoverished, and these people…
drorzel | November 21, 2007On a happier science-related note, the AIP's Physics News Update highlights a very nice article in The American Journal of Physics about the wide-ranging scientific investigations of Luis Alvarez:
Scientist as detective: Luis Alvarez and the pyramid burial chambers, the JFK assassination, and the end of the dinosaurs
Luis Alvarez (1911-1988) was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century. His investigations of three mysteries, all of them outside his normal areas of research, show what remarkable things a far-ranging imagination working with an…
pharyngula | November 20, 2007An article in the NYT on surname frequency settles the most important issue of our time:
Myers
83 occurrences/100,000 people, rank 85.
Meyers
21 occurrences/100,000 people, rank 528.
Now can everyone please start using the dominant, correct spelling?
drorzel | November 18, 2007If you go to the California Bar home page, you will see that only 56.1% of the applicants who took the bar exam this year passed. If you poke around a little, you can find the list of those who passed, and on that list, you'll find my sister's name. She graduated law school back in May, and took the test in July, and has been waiting on the results for months.
So, here's a blog post to congratulate her on a non-trivial accomplishment: Congratulations, Erin!
(And if any of my readers happen to be running a law firm in the San Francisco area and are looking to hire an up-and-coming young…
clock | November 18, 2007Last Wednesday I went to Wine Authorities, the new wine store in Durham, for our monthly Durham Blogger Meetup.
Afterwards, I could not help it but go home with three new bottles of wine. The best is the one I tried from the Enomatic machine at the back of the store - 2005 Fleurie, Granits des Moriers (Jacky Piret), a gorgeous Spanish version of a Burgundy.
Since Thursday and Friday were crazy (on Thursday I spent 12 hours online monitoring the media and blog responses to the Nigersaurus paper and unveiling) and I was teaching on Saturday morning, we finally managed to have a nice dinner…
sciencewoman | November 16, 2007I'm this close to crying in my office. I just got out of a candid chat with a visiting speaker and another young female faculty member about work-life and workload issues. And bringing up so many stressful things at once was just too much. I'm starting to have nightmares about next semester. I have two new upper level preps - one on a subject I'm barely familiar with (don't ask why) and one with a lab. That's 9 hours of class time per week. I'm barely hanging on this semester, how can I possibly manage that sort of load? I'm counting the classes until the end of this term and realizing that I…
grrlscientist | November 15, 2007
Even when life is overwhelming and I find myself hiding from everyone and everything, as I have been for awhile now, I still find pleasure in feeding my birds. I know that many of you understand and share in this pleasure, so I thought I'd tell you what's on my parrots' menu for this week;
frozen thawed mixed vegetables (corn, peas, whole green beans, lima beans, asparagus pieces, red Bell pepper pieces, carrot chunks)
fresh corn on the cob, cut into 1-inch chunks
fresh cranberries
fresh globe grapes with seeds, cut in half
fresh mango, cut into 0.5-inch chunks
fresh kiwi fruit, with…
jstemwedel | November 14, 2007Over at The World's Fair, David Ng dangles another meme before us:
... this meme asks that you come up with your own scientific eponym. What's that exactly? Well, first read this excellent primer by Samuel Arbesman, which basically provides a step by step description of how to do this effectively. Then have a go at your own blog. If all goes well, I'd like to create a page at the Science Creative Quarterly, that collects (and links to) the good ones.
Since it is well known that I am a tremendous Luddite, it will come as no surprise that my scientific eponym is a measure of how tremendous a…
clock | November 11, 2007OK, back home and rested - it's time for a pictorial report, in two parts. This one is social, the other part will be about the conference itself. All of it under the fold...
Day 1
On Thursday morning I got up early, took the kids to school, loaded my luggage and got started for the airport. As my car was on empty I had to stop at the nearest gas station to fill up and, who stops behind me and start pumping gas? John Edwards. In jeans. Elizabeth was in the car. He recognized me and said Hello. I said Hello. A regular guy, in a regular car, wearing regular clothes, doing something we…