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pharyngula | May 7, 2006You know you've got an interesting blog post when one of your sentences begins, "Two of my favourite corpses…" It's got cute pictures of dead things, too.
My favorites were actually collections rather than individuals. One set was in a barn loft owned by my aunt and uncle; apparently, the previous owner of their ranch had gone nuts and slaughtered all of his chickens before committing suicide himself. The dead birds had just been left there (the dead rancher had been carted away; my cousins and I had grisly speculations about what he'd look like if he'd been left there, too), and their…
pharyngula | May 6, 2006I mowed my lawn today.
It's the first time this year in what will be the coming weekly ritual. I hate it. Every time, I fantasize about never mowing again…let's rip out this ghastly generic middle-class turf and sow it with wildflowers and the Big Bluestem. This should be prairie, dang it, and it should be flourishing with 8-foot tall grasses. Let it all come back and surround my house with a grassy sea, and bring back the bison to crop it down now and then. We already have a municipal schedule for my part of town—garbage pick up on Monday and Thursday morning, recycling pick up the first…
pharyngula | May 5, 2006I just noticed…I got a favorable link from Susie Bright!
Now I'm going to be insufferably full of myself for a while.
pharyngula | May 3, 2006The Drinking Liberally event was packed. I don't know how many people were there, but I think it was somewhere within a few orders of magnitude of a gazillion. Kos speechified briefly, exhorted us to buy his book because every copy sold makes a conservative cry, and then answered questions from the crowd.
Dr B and The Connoisseur did show up fashionably late, and didn't even make it in the door before she was intercepted by her fans.
We all had many pleasant conversations, and I think there may be a few new converts to the Drinking Liberally phenomenon. I also learned something very…
pharyngula | May 2, 2006… and that one big stack of grades is done. I'm going to Drinking Liberally! I might be a little red-eyed and late, but I need this.
I'm here…so is Kos. It's a mob scene, but there's still room for more, so come on down.
We're still waiting on the good Dr B. She must be planning on making an entrance.
pharyngula | May 2, 2006I really want to go to Drinking Liberally tonight—I even said I would go.
It is, however, the end of the term, and there is a horrific pile of grading sitting on my desk. It's the classic dilemma of having to choose between fun and beer and interesting people vs. obligations and responsibility and work.
So I took a look at the pile and carved out a harshly large chunk of it, and I have set myself a goal: if I can get that scary looking subset of it done in time, I'll take off for Minneapolis. If I can't, I'm going to stay here and make lots of furious little red marks instead. I think I can…
drorzel | May 2, 2006I had a surreal moment in the airport on the way out Friday, when I got a call from a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and spent half an hour talking about particle physics and physics funding and whatnot in the gate area. The guy sitting next to me was reading a magazine about NASCAR, and the guy across from me was reading Maxim, and they both kept giving me odd looks.
I didn't end up being quoted in the article (which is fine by me, what with not having tenure...), but it was a kick just to have a reporter contact me to ask questions about stuff I said on my blog.
Other…
pharyngula | May 1, 2006Hey, I'm back home again, and crawling through my mail. While I'm simultaneously trying to recover from a long, long drive, skim through a mountain of mail, and get caught up on essential grading (there are days I'm glad I have three brains), read Circus of the Spineless #8. I will be back in the blogging business sometime soon.
drorzel | May 1, 2006I'm back from the Vegas trip, lighter by about $100 at the tables (thanks entirely to a bad run Sunday morning at the tables, one of those games where you get dealt a 19 with the dealer showing a 4, and the dealer draws four cards to a 20...), and heavier by well, quite a bit, probably, as I rather comprehensively went off the heartburn diet for the weekend.
While the laws of statistics continue to work in the house's favor, medicine remains a mystery. The official medical advice I got was to avoid alcohol, carbonated beverages, overeating, fried or oily food, and spicy food. Saturday, I had…
jstemwedel | April 30, 2006Yesterday I asked for advice about how to deal with a nest of eggs that presents itself in an inopportune place (a tree slated to meet a gruesome end in a whisper-chipper) at an inopportune time (mere days ahead of when we finally launch our backyard overhaul). The consensus among commenters who professed knowledge of or experience with birds in the wild seems to be that there is no promising way to relocate the nest without scaring the mama bird away and leaving the eggs cold and orphaned. Given that the whole point of moving the nest would be not to throw out the baby birds with the…
pharyngula | April 29, 2006Hurtling1 down the road in my black Chevy2, I laugh maniacally3. "Time to kick creationist butt4," I say, "and test the mettle of the Cheeseheads.5"
I'm heading off to the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point to minister to the heathen today, so my online presence may be limited. I've got a lecture to give in their Evolution Sunday series. Here's a copy of the PowerPoint file6, just so I have an online backup.
I'm racing right back early Monday morning, though. I've got a hellish week or two of grading and exams and classes and more travel, and I've got to get an early start on it all.…
jstemwedel | April 29, 2006I need to call on the collective wisdom of the internets to address an issue in my back yard.
We have this tree in our back yard. It's a pretty awful tree. It was probably a living Christmas tree that the people who lived here before us planted, but it's in a really bad location (from the point of view of being able to use the rest of the yard sensibly), and it's ugly, and it's also sharp and pointy.
We want it gone. Indeed, finally, after about a year of planning, we are ready to have it removed (replaced with a Fuyu persimmon tree, in a slightly different location) as part of a major…
pharyngula | April 27, 2006My life isn't easing up just yet as we wend our way to the imminent end of the term. I'm going to be flitting about over the next few days.
I'm chauffeuring #1 son to a job interview in Minneapolis today, and then returning him home to St Cloud again sometime this evening. I'm planning to be in St Cloud in time for a painful event: Kent Hovind is speaking there.
Date :April 28, 2006
Time :7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Title:Dr. Kent Hovind (Dr. Dino) -- Creation v. Evolu.
Description:Dr. Kent Hovind or the more popularly known Dr. Dino, is one of the most requested speakers on the Creation and Evolution…
jstemwedel | April 27, 2006The grading is unrelenting. The crud is not entirely cleared from my system. I still owe you the promised post on plagiarism.
Must be time for a meme (specifically, the ABC meme, which I saw at jo(e)'s)!
Accent: Not usually. When I taught lots of kids from Maryland and Virginia, I'd drift a little southern. Out here, I sometimes drift a little surfer (dude!). But, despite having spent the bulk of my childhood in New Jersey, I don't have a Joisey accent.
Booze: Usually single-malt Scotch, but this time of year mojitos.
Chore I Hate: Besides grading? Dishes. Thankfully, my better half…
pharyngula | April 23, 2006Remember when you went to the high school dance, and all the social strata of the institution were exposed? You knew who the jocks and cheerleaders were, and the stoners and the college preppies, and of course, the geeks, the A/V nerds, the chess club crowd…the ones who didn't show up very often, and when they did, everyone was wondering what they were doing there. Geek Prom wasn't anything like that—it was kind of an anti-Heathers experience, where all the distinctions were thrown away. There were some beautiful people there, and everyone liked them, but they weren't any more special than…
pharyngula | April 21, 2006It's a busy busy day today.
It's Earth Day. I'm going to spend a little time this morning with a community group helping clean up part of the town.
It's a new student registration day at my university—this afternoon, I advise and help next year's freshman figure out what courses to take.
Tonight is the Geek Prom! Right after registration, we have to rush to Minneapolis; I hope we make it in time for the Grand March at 7PM.
Chuck Olson of the vlog Minnesota Stories is going to be taping the Geek Prom, so you might get a chance to watch us nerds online later this week…but come on, if you read…
drorzel | April 20, 2006The official letter from the department requesting the formation of an ad hoc committee for my tenure review was sent in yesterday. This is the official start of the process-- I'm still a little fuzzy on the timeline from here out, but by September, I'll have to provide the committee with a huge amount of teaching and research material, and then there's a long process of interviews with students and faculty, external review of my research, and a visit by someone who will be evaluating the lab that I've built.
This isn't the main reason why I haven't been blogging as much this week-- that's…
pharyngula | April 20, 2006The true history of the world is told in the movies, so obviously what we need is a compilation of movie events to see what was really going on. It's a work in progress, so there are a few gaps—the period between 1 zillion BC and 65,000,000 BC is a bit sparse on information—but more recent events are better covered. For instance, the year of my birth was quite busy:
1957New Zealand - Lionel Pritchard and his girlfriend Paquita battle a horde of zombies (Braindead)
Camp Crystal Lake, New Jersey - Jason Voorhees drowns (Friday the 13th)
Michael Myers born (Hallowe'en)
Lana Turner meets Johnny…
pharyngula | April 19, 2006My daughter has posted her ACT scores (if you don't know what they are, they're an exam high school kids take; here's an explanation of the scores). She did very well, especially considering that she took them a year earlier than most kids do. She's a sophomore in high school, and she wants to go to UMM full time next year, taking advantage of our state's PSEO program. She's going to be a full-time college student at the age of 16.
I knew she could do it. I just told her that if she kept her grades up and did well on the exams, I wouldn't take her to the Purity Ball. What a great motivator…
drorzel | April 18, 2006Two items from the sports pages this morning:
1) Not really a sports story, but I saw it first on ESPN: two Duke lacrosse players have been indicted. It really doesn't deserve a whole "CSI: Durham" post, because it's a sealed indictment, so there's basically no real information. But if you're following the story, there's the latest.
2) More importantly, from ESPN's NBA pages:
Larry Brown does not plan to coach the Knicks' final two games because of acid reflux, ESPN learned Monday morning.
Maybe I'm just a sad, pathetic little person, but this makes me feel like less of a wuss for bitching…