personal
oracknows | July 10, 2008It's been a week now since my wife and I learned that our beloved dog, whom we've had for eight years, had terminal cancer. At the time I was so sad and down that I just couldn't even imagine getting myself into the appropriately light-hearted frame of mind that I try to maintain. In the week since the shock of learning the diagnosis, I still can't achieve that frame of mind, although, as you may have noticed, I've been able to achieve the level of sarcastic snarkiness directed against pseudoscientists and antivaccinationists that my readers have come to expect. It's easy when you're angry…
sa smith | July 10, 2008A funny thing happened today. PZ is now, officially, a D-List Blogger** (a status I attained months ago, hehehehehe!!).
Shortly after that, Richard Dawkins made a nice statement of support for PZ on RichardDawkins.net.
... I love being *us*, you guys.
I love being *the good guys*.
One of us is in a tight spot, and the rest of us have their back.
Contrast that to *the bad guys*:
Michael Behe gets shown up by a kid... silence from his 'friends'.
Dembski gets nailed for stealing and has Harvard law on his ass... silence from his 'friends'.
Luskin is used and abused like any other cheap…
pharyngula | July 10, 2008So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because — in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness — apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email…
oracknows | July 7, 2008Given all the heartbreaking stuff that's going on with our dog this week, I'm rather grateful to John Lehrer for pointing me to this uplifting article about the dogs abused by the evil and despicable Michael Vick.
It turns out that that bastard didn't end up leaving all his dogs so vicious that euthanasia is the only option or too vicious to be reclaimed. Through love and hard work, most of the dogs have been saved:
Of the 49 pit bulls animal behavior experts evaluated in the fall, only one was deemed too vicious to warrant saving and was euthanized. (Another was euthanized because it was…
clock | July 5, 2008Too busy all week to write about this, but last weekend we went on a family trip to NYC. Old-timers here may remember that we took the kids there two years ago, so they were eager to visit again. We spent four days there, flying JetBlue (always happy with their service), and generally having great fun. We did touristy things, mainly whatever the kids wanted to do. No online access at all!
So we shopped at F.A.O.Schwartz and at Macy's:
We ate a chocolate-based lunch at Max Brenner:
We traveled by Underground, where I tried to do what Grrrl does and took pictures of the subway art:
We…
clock | July 5, 2008Last night, the skies opened. And that sky-opening business is always kinda tricky - the sky-trap-door engineer has to make sure that everything goes well. And last night, as Jesse Helms was going up in the sky to meet his Maker, the trap-door kinda got stuck. Or perhaps ol'e Jesse wanted to send one last fart at 'Liberal Zoo' as he used to call Chapel Hill.
The thunderstorm was very sudden and powerful and much of the area lost electricity. We were without power for about 5 hours - from 8:30pm till 1:30am.
So, we lit up the candles. Kids played Monopoly. I, being offline, read a book -…
oracknows | July 5, 2008Thanks to everyone for your kind comments about the recent bad news about our dog. (Even someone who really detests me because of my position on the vaccine/autism issue was in this instance kind.) I don't know if I'll feel much like blogging for a while; on the other hand, blogging has been therapeutic for me in the past when bad things happen, even if I don't actually write about them. It's always been a good way to take my mind off of badness by concentrating on other badness, such as quackery. Also, Echo has often been my little (OK, well, not so little) black blog buddy, lying nearby or…
pharyngula | July 5, 2008Yesterday, I blitzed through a tiny slice of the Mensa meeting in Denver. My time was really tight, so after arriving on Thursday for a fabulous Pharyngufest, I only got to sit through two talks in the morning session before mine, and then whoosh, I was off to the airport and hurtling through the sky at 475mph to get back home.
I had time to look through the program at least, and I hate to say it, but Mensa meetings are better organized than the big meetings of most atheist groups I've been to (this is a peeve of mine — atheists give bad meetings, although I'm sure Margaret Downey will prove…
oracknows | July 4, 2008
Today is Friday, which has normally meant for the last two years that it's the time every week when I poke fun at some particularly outrageous woo. Indeed. I even had a great idea for a 4th of July-themed post today that (I hope) would have been hilarious. I had even started to write a bit of it a couple of nights ago.
Then real life intervened, and I didn't feel the least bit like humor last night. I still don't feel capable of humor this morning, either. Those of you who don't have pets may want just to skip the rest of this; you may not understand why I'm feeling so down and may view…
pharyngula | July 3, 2008We had a great time at Wynkoop's tonight, although I noticed that the other attendees at our Pharyngufest were fading out at 10:00 — I had to mention to quite a few people that they had no stamina at all.
Although the fact that they started drinking at 5pm and Wynkoop's has a marvelous assortment of microbrews might have had something to do with it. Truth be told, I was starting to feel a little woozy myself. Anyway, if you weren't there, too bad. Here's a little panarama of the crowd.
It turned out that Wynkoop's was an excellent venue for another reason: check out this amazing mural that…
drorzel | July 3, 2008The great Garage Remodeling Project is slowly drawing to a close (the contractor is running way behind), but the crucial elements of the room are now in place: we can haz bookshelves:
That's looking from the front of the room back toward Kate's desk, but it give you the best idea of the room. The base cabinets will eventually have doors, to keep FutureBaby from getting into whatever we store in them. The front of the room, where my desk is, is dominated by windows:
You can see my workspace here, which is freakishly clean at the moment, because I haven't been working in this room long. Over…
pharyngula | July 2, 2008Remember, all the cool people in Denver will be at the Wynkoop Brewing Company around 5 on Thursday evening—I have been warned, however, that there will simultaneously be some peculiar game called base-ball played on a nearby empty field. It appears to be a sporting event in which hooligans compete with scalliwags in determining who can hit balls with clubs and scamper about in circles the most, and its inexplicable popularity means that parking in the area will be in short supply. Use mass transit if you can. Avoid burley men with sticks.
I can see already that I shall have to try a…
clock | June 30, 2008The one I got for Mrs.Coturnix's birthday? Tanja has updated her website and now you can see both that mirror (in a much better photo) and a bunch of other mirrors and artwork she made recently.
sa smith | June 29, 2008I finally had some time to get the BLAGROLL together! You all will never be bored again-- LOTS of good stuff in there, so read up!
Please check to make sure Ive got you listed right, or if you missed the first call, go ahead and leave a comment!
Aaaand Im still working on the nifty rotating side-bar thingie... thatll take another free afternoon to figure out, lol!
pharyngula | June 27, 2008
I need to get a cool hat like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Margaret Downey if I want to be one of the Cool Kids.
pharyngula | June 25, 2008Around 5 on 3 July, we're meeting up in Denver … but we've changed the location! We will be meeting at the Wynkoop Brewing Company, where we have a room of our own reserved for 50 people. That should be enough, right?
sa smith | June 23, 2008Fuck.
**sigh**
For my 23rd brithday, the fellow I was dating at the time got us tickets to see Carlin. Wonderful memory... But I was kinda hoping Id get to see him again, sometime...
Fuck.
Well, for those of you concerned that Fundie cocksuckers wouldnt jump on this with "CARLINS NUT AN ATHIEST NAU!", fear not. The cunts always deliver.
Not that I think George would be offended. Fundies crying crocodile tears at your funeral is a great honor :)