personal
clock | October 21, 2007I just realized that I stupidly did not notice that my flight to Milwaukee tomorrow is at 6am instead of 6pm and I apparently cannot change that now. So, I am in a panic, trying to get some work done on a Sunday afternoon instead of tomorrow. If you are in Milwaukee, give me a holler - I'll be wondering around town...probably having lunch at a Serbian restaurant, than finding a wifi spot somewhere if possible (actually the Monday program at ASIS&T is more interesting to me than Tuesday, but I would then have to pay the registration to attend). Our Science 2.0 session is on Tuesday…
pharyngula | October 20, 2007I have arrived in beautiful Northfield, MN (motto: "Cows, Colleges, and Contentment." I expect a placid audience for my talk tonight). My first impression, right after passing St Olaf College, was an odd one: what is that strange chocolatey aroma I'm smelling everywhere? Shortly afterwards I came upon a gigantic Malt-O-Meal plant, and all was explained. I guess smelling like Malt-O-Meal isn't the worst thing that could happen to a college town, although there is one better: the UO campus at Eugene used to occasionally smell intensely of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, thanks to a bakery down the…
terrasig | October 18, 2007From the University of Alberta, here comes this shocking finding:
In a study published in The Journal of Sport Behavior, researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton examined the relationships among perceived athletic competence, peer acceptance and loneliness in elementary school children. Their findings will likely confirm the experience of anyone who was picked last for the team in gym class: children seen as athletic by their classmates are also better liked and less likely to feel lonely, while unathletic children experience the opposite.
Oh really? Thanks for the reminder of…
terrasig | October 17, 2007So, PharmK'er and I were at the originator of the chicken sandwich and she wanted a balloon. She then asked why said balloon was floating. Dad was safe in explaining how helium is lighter than the nitrogen-oxygen-carbon dioxide mixture we breathe.
Then came the killer:
"Daddy, where does the helium come from to fill the balloons?"
"A compressed gas cylinder" was not the answer she was looking for.
Thankfully, PharmMom, MD, consulted "the great big book of everything."
Commercial helium is fractionated from natural gas, where it comprises about 7-8% of its volume, particularly in deposits…
tqa | October 16, 2007
Our Coach Pitch baseball team just played the first game of the season. We had a very good game; the other team had a slightly better game. Everyone had fun, though, which is the key. A few quick thoughts on baseball and the 5-8 year-old group:
1: Before our next game, I'm going to make a recording of myself yelling "Play your own position!"
2: I'm going to make a recording of "Throw the ball to the pitcher."
3: At practice tomorrow night, we're going to spend most of the time working on the infield routine. The emphasis is going to be on throwing the ball after you catch it, with a…
pharyngula | October 12, 2007As you read this, the Trophy Wife™ and I are zooming down I94, on our way to a pleasant weekend together in Madison for the Freedom from Religion Convention. Our hotel does have wi-fi, so have no fear — I won't be out of touch. And perhaps I'll have tales of Julia Sweeney and Christopher Hitchens to share with you all.
If you're in Madison, too, don't forget: Saturday, 12-2, at Brocach is the IIDB/Pharynguloid meetup.
terrasig | October 9, 2007
The monthly Denver mag, 5280, made its way to Chez Pharmboy last week with a very familiar face staring back - and not because I've had a cardiac cath...yet!
w00t!
For our readers in the Queen City of the Plains, read more here about your favorite cardiologist.
pharyngula | October 9, 2007As I mentioned earlier, I'm going to be in Madison this weekend for the Freedom from Religion Foundation convention. A bunch of IIDBers are also attending, and they've suggested a meetup over lunch (12-2) on Saturday, the 13th, at an Irish pub called Brocach. That sounds good to me — a meeting of the IIDB and the Pharynguloid sects of the Atheism cult, over beer.
Auto-da-fe of any schismatics and heretics afterwards!
sciencewoman | October 8, 2007I'm writing this on Sunday night, at the end of a really fun weekend. Saturday we spent the morning browsing our neighborhood tag sales, and in the afternoon we explored the natural foods store and bought Minnow a bigger car seat at Target. For the evening, we hired a babysitter, so that Fish and I could go out and celebrate Fish's birthday by playing trivia at a local bar. Today was a great family outing; we explored backroads until we found a u-pick pumpkin farm with a hayride and corn maze. Afterwards, Minnow and I played with Fish watched football napped.
Why I am telling you what we did…
jstemwedel | October 6, 2007Yesterday, one of the elder Free-Ride offspring's teammates brought a Rubik's Cube to soccer practice. While this youngster fiddled with the cube during a water break, I mentioned that I knew how to solve it. I was asked to transmit this knowledge, and I promised to write it up and send it to the player at this morning's soccer match.
And I thought, "You know, there are probably others who might like this information." So I made a quick detour to the scanner, and am sharing the very same information with you all.
I'm pretty sure that revealing this knowledge won't get me drummed out of the…
drorzel | October 6, 2007As noted here in the past, I had horrible stomach problems for a good chunk of last year. This was diagnosed as "Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease" or "GERD," which basically amounts to "Your stomach hurts." After a number of deeply unsatisfactory appointments with a gastroenterologist, and some tests about which the less said the better, it eventually got better, and I haven't had serious problems with it for a while now.
Wednesday, I aggravated an old shoulder injury playing basketball. I separated both shoulders (at different times) playing rugby, back in the day, and every now and then I…
sciencewoman | October 4, 2007This week has been the hardest week so far in my first 8 weeks of professorship. I had a grant proposal due today, and two lectures to write on topics I've never formally studied. Monday was chewed up by a doctor's appointment, meetings, and errands, and there were the normal distractions of grad students, office hours, and pumping. But mostly I frantically worked on the grant proposal. In -ology, we can ask questions that are general, but the experiments get done at a specific place. In this case, the place was specified by the granting agency. So I had to learn a fair amount about a place…
jstemwedel | October 4, 2007Fifty years ago today, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, Earth's first artificial satellite. I don't remember it (because I wouldn't be born for another decade), but the "BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP" heard 'round the world left indelible traces on the fabric of life for my parents' generation, my generation, and for the subsequent generations, too.
Space was part of the terrain of our imagination for as long as I can remember -- after all, the sibling born right after me landed on Earth pretty much right before the Eagle landed on the moon, and my mom insisted on watching the moonwalk in the…
pharyngula | October 3, 2007Alright, I want you people to school me real quick. I've been reading these stories about the Countrywide mortgage company getting mean and nasty with foreclosures, and the Countrywide CEO leeching huge personal profits from the company — Krugman even compares Countrywide to Enron.
Now normally, financial news just flies by my bleary eyes and is ignored, but the name in this case perked me up: the mortgage on my house is through Countrywide. Do I have to worry?
I wouldn't think so. We got our mortgage at a good, low fixed rate some years ago, we haven't had any problems keeping up on the…
jstemwedel | October 1, 2007You know from my last post that we're working with DonorsChoose to raise some money for public school teachers who are trying to give their students the engaging educational experiences they deserve. You also know that our benevolent overlords at Seed will be randomly selecting some donors to receive nifty prizes (details about this to be posted as soon as I get them).
But I'd like to sweeten the deal by offering some incentive to everyone who donates to my challenge. Here's what you can get:
An original (and probably nerdy) poem, written just for you:
For a $10 donation, I'll write you a…
tlambert | September 30, 2007
There was a sales person at my front door. The conversation went like this:
SP: Are you interested in getting Foxtel?
Me: No.
SP: Well, [he's about to launch into his sales pitch, but then he notices Silas] That's a really big dog.
Me: Yes.
SP: OK, bye.
tqa | September 29, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, I started making some changes to the blog. I had hoped to get all of them done that weekend, but the weather interfered with that plan. (It was nice; I went swimming.) This weekend, it's pouring rain out, so I've managed to get a little bit done. If you look at the sidebar, you'll see that the old categories have disappeared, and new ones have taken their place. As of this minute, I've only gone back and assigned new categories to a handful of posts, so only a few categories are currently live. The number will increase over the next few hours, as I continue to go back…
drorzel | September 29, 2007I haven't even had a book contract for a month, and already I'm engaging in Authorial Avoidance Behavior...
I spent a while this morning messing around with setting up a del.icio.us account. This does actually have a worthwhile goal, namely to be an improvement over my current system of keeping a hundred tabs open in Opera containing articles I might want to mention on the blog. This way, I can file them in a central place, and not have the browser open tempting me to web-surf when I ought to be writing.
But, of course, it's also a wonderful excuse to putz around on the web, doing nothing…
drorzel | September 29, 2007From the "You Read Too Much SF" file: I was really disappointed by the press release that went with the headline:
Mysterious energy burst stuns astronomers
A headline like that really ought to involve bodies strewn about a remote observatory, and enigmatic alien forces roaming free, perhaps being hunted by menacing government agents. Sadly, it just refers to some sort of surprisingly large radio emitter in the very distant reaches of the universe.
clock | September 28, 2007Yesterday, Chris Clarke wrote a post that I read three times so far, then finally submitted it myself for Reed's consideration for the anthology. Most science bloggers are excellent writers, but rare is the gift that Chris displays in many a post, of weaving many threads into a coherent story that is also gripping and exciting - even when he writes about stuff like respiratory physiology, something that usually puts students to sleep in the classroom. But add a dash of evolution, a cool movie, some dinosaurs, and a personal experience and suddenly the story comes alive for the reader.
This…