personal
drorzel | March 18, 2006I want there to be a non-prescription anti-inflammatory drug that doesn't seriously screw up my stomach. One of you med-chem types get on that, will you?
Background: Last year about this time, I had severe muscle spasms in my neck and shoulder that led to a 2am trip to the emergency room. A combination of muscle relaxers (Flexeril) and ibuprofen dealt with the problem fairly quickly, but I've had minor recurrances ever since. Those, too, have generally been fought off with a handful of Advil.
Advil is, unfortunately, on the list of Things Not to Ingest for my stomach at the moment. Which…
pharyngula | March 17, 2006More SF indulgence, excuse me: Gary Farber has been reading Heinlein's rediscovered "first" novel (brief summary: it's very bad), and Kevin Drum raises the question of correlation between early SF preferences and later political biases, with Heinlein inspiring conservatives and Asimov motivating liberals (Drum says, "Well, I liked 'em both, but I liked Heinlein more and I turned into a liberal." I'm not touching that straight line.)
I disliked Heinlein's stuff intensely. It was badly written, with a patronizing tone, and always smugly assumed that his simplistic opinions were absolutely true…
pharyngula | March 16, 2006Call it fate, destiny, synchronicity, or astounding cosmic coincidence, but I have to report a series of highly unlikely events, a whole collection of chance occurrences that, multiplied together, defy reason and point ineluctably to some kind of universal force. These events are spread out over decades, and millions, even billions, of alternatives could have generated a completely different conclusion.
The data are overwhelming.
1957
I'm born; precisely 6 months later, Mary Gjerness born in same hospital.
1958
Mary and I reside in same small town, although unaware of each…
pharyngula | March 15, 2006Since the announcement has gone public, I'll mention it here: I get to be the Scientist Guest of Honor at ConFusion, a science-fiction convention in Ann Arbor, in January of 2007. I'll be there with Howard Waldrop and Elizabeth Moon—I'll be the nerd hardly anyone has heard of before. Sign up now before the rates go up!
pharyngula | March 14, 2006Notice: I made it back! Yesterday was one of those days where too much is crammed into too short a time. I taught my 8:00 class, slalomed down icy roads to St. Cloud State University, gave two talks (an afternoon talk on my work on ethanol teratogenesis to the biology department, an evening philosophy colloquium on Intelligent Design), zoomed home (the roads had thawed, to my relief) and collapsed into bed at 11:30.
Anyway, it was all good fun, and there was a surprisingly large crowd at the ID talk…and they asked some pretty sharp questions. I'd do it all again. Ummm, but maybe after I've…
pharyngula | March 13, 2006
Alas, my mandate for today also includes traveling to St. Cloud State University to give two talks, one to the biology department in the afternoon and another to the philosophy department this evening. It looks like I get to be driving through the tail end of a snowstorm today, too.
It may be a little quiet here today. I haven't forgotten everyone, I'm just going to be excessively busy.
pharyngula | March 10, 2006Quite a birthday party yesterday, eh? Thank you to all the nice people who wished me well and for that roundup of birthday congratulations by grrlscientist. I'm blushing still.
It's a dangerous business, having a birthday. Not only did my actual chronological age get exposed on the web for all to see (you people are geniuses to figure that out), but certain people used their detecting skills to break my cover, and post the first and only accurate photograph of me on the web. My anonymity is gone! Oh, well…at least everyone will understand why I get called an angry Darwinist.
Who you callin' a…
pharyngula | March 9, 2006The perfect world arrives in 300 years, apparently, as we learn in a Gernsbackian Mary-Sue. It's entirely wrong, I'm afraid: Pharyngutopia arrived today, in a world in which Chris Clarke writes stories illustrated by Carl Buell that are all about me.
Everyone should be jealous.
jstemwedel | March 9, 2006What do you get the biologist who blogs everything for his birthday? Probably something better than this -- but it will have to do.
pharyngula | March 9, 2006
Here it is, my 49th birthday, and it's spring break. My wife's at work, my daughter is at school, all the students are away, it's dead quiet around here. How to celebrate? I know! I'm going to do some guest lectures at the local high school!
So that's where I'll be this morning, introducing high school kids to the subject of…evolution.
oracknows | March 8, 2006Today's regularly scheduled post has been delayed due to an important and tragic development.
Something bad happened a couple of days ago, something that cuts rather close to home.
Arsonists targeted the offices used as a mailing address for the Holocaust History Project (THHP). (Video here, but only if you have IE and Active X installed, unfortunately.) The fire caused considerable damage to a warehouse complex and caused smoke damage to nearby businesses. Although the perpetrators have not been identified, there is good reason to suspect that it was not the business that was targeted, but…
pharyngula | March 6, 2006This Spring Break thing is overrated, I think. My usual day is so cleanly circumscribed and planned that I have a feeling of liberty: my PDA goes off to tell me I have a class or meeting, my little to-do list warns me of impending deadlines, and when I'm in between tasks, I at least have the illusion that it is my time.
Right now, my PDA says it is Spring Break, and will be Spring Break for several days to come, with nothing else in there. It is blank and unstructured. I am lost.
So today I polished up and submitted an in-house grant proposal, and then went to town on some substantial…
pharyngula | March 3, 2006Sad news: Carl Buell and Hank Fox have lost a good friend, Tito.
Dogs are easy animals to get to know, sometimes too easy. I haven't been able to bear the thought of having a dog again since the day, when I was 12, that I stepped off the school bus one afternoon to find my dog, Snoop, crushed and broken by the side of the road. At least it sounds like Tito had a good life and a dignified end.
Carl has put up a short photo essay and testament to Tito.
pharyngula | March 3, 2006OK, I should balance my non-random ten with a random ten, so here they are:
Somewhere In Texas
The Raveonettes
Strange Fruit
Billy Holiday
Three Bikes in the Sky
Tangerine Dream
Woman Of Heart And Mind
Joni Mitchell
Us
Regina Spektor
Black Milk
Eighth From The Egg
Tanaka Sound
Saian Supa
Truth is (featuring Robert Smith)
Tweaker
O Skeewiff where art thou? (man of constant sorrow)
Skeewiff
All Apologies
Nirvana
Sacala
Don Omar, Wisin Y Yandel & Hector
You Don't Know What Love Is
Chucho Valdez
pharyngula | March 3, 2006These things have a way of snowballing…Luis kindly sends me a couple of Roy Zimmerman CDs, I make a comment about it, and next thing you know, the friendly people at Meta4Records send me the other albums he has made. I've got the complete collection now! So I created a Zimmerman playlist in iTunes, set it to shuffle, and present to you the first ten.
"Acid On Picture Day..."
Roy Zimmerman
Comic Sutra
You're Pretty
Roy Zimmerman
Comic Sutra
Hula Yule
Roy Zimmerman
Peacenick
My TV
Roy Zimmerman
Homeland
Dick Cheney
Roy Zimmerman
Security
T.M.I.
Roy Zimmerman
Comic Sutra…
pharyngula | March 3, 2006Spring break starts…NOW. I'm done with classes for the day, and just have to make a trip out to St. Cloud to pick up my son for the weekend and my obligations are temporarily over, sort of.
Way back at the beginning of the term when spring break seemed far, far away, I scheduled an exam for my physiology course (75 students) and my introductory biology course (35 students) for this week; I also had my intro students turn in a writing assignment this week, and because they had done poorly on one rather important exercise, had also assigned an extra paper, also due now. There is a rather…
oracknows | February 27, 2006Nonmedical people always seem to have a conception of surgery as being a particularly glamorous profession. So did I to some extent before I entered medical school, although my surgical rotations quickly disabused me of that impression. Somehow, working from 5 AM to 11 PM every day and several hours each day on the weekends, combined with the grunt work that had to be done, just didn't seem as all those medical shows. All one has to do is to spend a night in the emergency room draining perirectal abscesses to know how unglamorous surgery can be. Not that it mattered. Something about surgery…
pharyngula | February 24, 2006For some reason, this has been a draining week, and I'm just slumped in my easy chair with the iTunes entertaining me…so let's toss up a Friday Random Ten.
Blade Of Grass
Asylum Street Spankers
Prayers for Rain
The Cure
Skåne
Hedningarna
Whip It
Devo
My Generation
Patti Smith
Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen
Logon Rock Witch
Alarm Will Sound
Show me forgiveness
Bjork
Stripper
Lords Of Acid
Dr.Sayus
Simpsons
Tomorrow is another day in the office, whipping up this talk for Cafe Scientifique, and I think I've got a science post or two fermenting up in my cranium.
pharyngula | February 24, 2006This is remarkable: I actually have all of my grading done, and even have Monday and Wednesday's lecture all ready to go. I'm. All. Caught. Up. I think this means the Apocalypse will be coming along shortly.
I don't quite have all my responsibilities out of the way yet, though. Next week is time for Cafe Scientifique Morris, and I'm the guy giving the talk this time. If you're somewhere in Western Minnesota or Eastern Repressive State of South Dakota, come on down to the Stevens County Historical Museum (116 W 6th Street) in Morris around 6ish. The Morris Area Arts Boosters will be selling…
pharyngula | February 21, 2006Say, would the nice person who sent me the Roy Zimmerman CDs care to 'fess up in the comments?
I need to turn you in for sedition. There might be a reward.