personal
terrasig | April 26, 2008Here's a Saturday morning open question to the readership:
I'm experiencing some changes in my life that may affect my blogging frequency in the negative direction (but not the quality, of course). I've always blogged intermittently - this has always been a labor of love, intellectual stimulation, and public education rather than ego fodder - but I already feel a little frustrated with myself, for example, in being able to address topics you submit or questions you ask via e-mail.
Several others at ScienceBlogs and elsewhere start team blogs or take on additional bloggers with a similar…
terrasig | April 25, 2008Okay, some people are smoking some bad dope.
Whilst helping the PharmKid get down to the car for school this morning, I came upon PharmGirl, MD, in a rage while sitting in front of her laptop. The object of her vitriol was a 17 April article in BusinessWeek entitled, "Are There Too Many Women Doctors?: As an MD shortage looms, female physicians and their flexible hours are taking some of the blame." The article derives from a point/counterpoint pair of essays in the 5 April issue of BMJ (British Medical Journal) entitled, "Are there too many female medical graduates?" ("Yes" position, "No"…
jstemwedel | April 24, 2008Do you ever get to the point where if you haven't checked your syllabus within the last few hours, you have no confidence that you actually know what day it is?
Or is it just me?
j7uy5 | April 23, 2008Everyone's
anatomy has little quirks. One of mine, is the length of the
roots
of my wisdom teeth. They go down halfway to Sulawesi.
When
I was in college, I had to have two of them extracted. The
oral
surgeon told me they were "difficult extractions."
Magnanimous as
he was, he gave me a prescription for Tylenol #3. Which is
what
they give you when they want you to think you are getting something
that will work, even though they know perfectly well that it is
completely useless.
So I went back to the house where I was
renting a room. There was this strange guy there.
Things
like…
jstemwedel | April 22, 2008Another Earth Day rolls around, and I still have major qualms about the typical American approach to it (which seems to boil down to "Consumer choices will save the world!"). Possibly, viewing ourselves and each other primarily as consumers explains how we have had such a dramatic effect on the environment in the first place.
Still, while we try to muster the political will and get ourselves together to respond collectively to the challenges to the Earth we all share, it's undeniable that our individual choices do have impacts. Here in the U.S., some of those impacts can be pretty big. So…
drorzel | April 20, 2008Scott Eric Kaufman, inspired by this piece in The New Yorker, relates his own tale of being stuck in an elevator:
At this point I was about five minutes into my own hanging. The damn thing wouldn't settle and so I panicked. I started pacing frantically and I checked my watch and I knew I would be late for class because you know and why am I still hanging inches above my point of egress but then wait a minute I'm an inch from the floor I want to be on but am in fact floating in an elevator shaft four stories up with a two-thousand pound counterweight aimed at my head and maybe I ought to…
terrasig | April 20, 2008I never will forget the look on the faces
Of the men and women that awful day,
When we stood around to preach their funerals,
And lay the corpses of the dead away.
We told the Colorado Governor to call the President,
Tell him to call off his National Guard,
But the National Guard belonged to the Governor,
So he didn't try so very hard.
- Woody Guthrie, Ludlow Massacre (1944)
US Senator Ken Salazar (D-Colo) has commemorated today's 94th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre by introducing a bill (PDF) to designate the coalminers tent colony as a National Historic Landmark. Unless you…
jstemwedel | April 19, 2008ScienceWoman has a great post on balancing responsibilities in a new tenure track job, with an eye to publishing papers and setting up a robust and productive research program. It's a must-read, especially for those who are lucky enough to be starting tenure track gigs in the fall. Since I'm getting toward the end of my probationary period before the tenure decision (ask me on May 23, I'll know by then), I thought I'd offer my words of advice for hitting the ground running in a tenure track job:
Find out the basis on which your tenure case will be evaluated from the very beginning. Get…
terrasig | April 18, 2008A group e-mail showed up today from some of my boyhood friends and fellow Springsteen worshipers on the sad passing of Danny Federici yesterday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NYC from melanoma. He was only 58.
Here's my open letter and response to the thread:
Hey-a Boyce,
Not too much more to add here except my sadness on the passing of a great musician and, as O'D sez, one of the crucial background guys who added so much to the sound without needing the spotlight. I watched the killer video of Danny from March 20th in Indy doing the accordion on "Sandy" - he looked fabulous…
pharyngula | April 18, 2008I've been profiled in MinnPost — and it's mostly boring stuff I already knew, but the reporter apparently called around the Morris community, too, which is how I learned this:
Myers acknowledged that he is something of a curiosity in a Minnesota community of church-goers, many of them deeply committed social and political conservatives.
Still, Myers has created no big buzz in town, said the Rev. Tom Fangmeier, an Assemblies of God pastor who chairs the Stevens County Ministerial Board. One Lutheran pastor complained to the board about Myers, Fangmeier said, but "I haven't heard about him in…
drorzel | April 18, 2008I drank the last of the Dogfish Head Raison d'Etre last night (I don't go through beer very quickly these days), which means the fridge is nearly empty, and it's time for a beer run. Which, of course, is a great excuse for a filler-iffic audience participation question:
What sort of beer should I buy?
Not that you could tell from my behavior last weekend, but I'm not a big fan of pilsner or light lagers-- if I'm only having a few, I prefer a heartier, darker beer. Belgian beers and IPA's are great. Fruit flavors are right out.
So what should I get?
oracknows | April 17, 2008I love my iPhone.
I really do.
However, I don't love AT&T so much, and unfortunately the iPhone is yoked to AT&T exclusively for the foreseeable future.
I used to think Sprint was bad, and indeed it was and is in many markets. During my frequent trips to Chicago I found that the service was at times almost worthless, with dropped calls, crappy signal areas, and dead zones aplenty. However, I had to admit that it got better over the years to the point where I rarely had a problem making a call. Eventually it had nationwide plans at reasonable prices with promiscuous roaming plans that…
pharyngula | April 17, 2008Tonight, in about an hour, I'm going to be on Second Life in a talk show called Virtually Speaking. You can show up there in your avatar, or if you aren't quite that nerdy, you can just listen in on the audio simulcast.
Strangely, I just realized that I have absolutely no idea what the topic of the interview will be. I guess you can just surprise me with questions!
jstemwedel | April 17, 2008Janet D. Stemwedel: Hey, can we talk about pseudonymous blogging?
Dr. Free-Ride: Haven't you already written a bunch of posts about that?
Janet D. Stemwedel: Yeah, but the blogosphere seems to be discussing it again.
Dr. Free-Ride: You know I only work on Fridays, right?
Janet D. Stemwedel: Get your pseudonymous butt in gear and help me have a proper dialogue!
Dr. Free-Ride: Dude, how are we supposed to have a dialogue about this? I'm you. You have yourself a monologue.
Janet D. Stemwedel: Hey, you were a pseudonymous blogger for a whole year! That's experience you can draw on.
Dr. Free-…
cmooney | April 17, 2008Following our hint last week of an announcement--which we have now officially made--there was some gossip about Sheril and myself. I know it's not meant that way, but it can be hurtful to people in our personal lives.
So although until now I have kept that part of my life pretty much off the blog, I thought it time to do a post about my beautiful fiance, Molly McGrath, who is both the sole and the best reason that I moved to Los Angeles. Over the past six months, Molly has been kicking butt out here working for the Writer's Guild of America--she moved for the job and immediately got to work…
oracknows | April 15, 2008I love my iPhone. I really do.
There is, however, one thing I don't like about it, a characteristic that (or so I've learned) the iPhone shares with many other "smart" phones, and that's its annoying tendency to interfere with poorly shielded electronic devices. The phenomenon, known as radiofrequency interference, manifests itself as hysterical bursts of mid-frequency electronic buzzing that sound something like "dit-dit-dit-dah-dit-dit-dit-dah," or Morse code on speed with a continuous buzz behind it. The problem appears to be most common with GSM-based phones, such as AT&T (the iPhone'…
jstemwedel | April 15, 2008Actually, a few of them. Since we sent our tax return off already, the answers to the questions probably doesn't have much practical import, but here they are:
Y'all know that I get paid a (pretty modest) amount for blogging. As such, Seed sent me a 2007 Miscellaneous Income report (Form 1099-MISC).
This form shows the modest amount that I earned in box 5, "Fishing boat proceeds". Under "Instructions for Recipient" it says:
Box 5. An amount in this box means the fishing boat operator considers you self-employed. Report this amount on Schedule C or C-EZ (Form 1040). See Pub. 344.
My…
clock | April 15, 2008Just arrived in Trieste. It's 1am here so I am about to go to sleep. The hotel is nice, but it charges exorbitant amounts of money for Internet access (50 euro for 5.5 hours)!!!! I complained at the desk - the guy smugly replied "Free market". I said that in the USA free market is driving everyone to provide free wifi - if you don't you get no business as you belong in the 19th century. Ah well...
Tomorrow I will find a place where I can get access cheaper or free...
drorzel | April 15, 2008Back when I was a kid, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I spent about a week one summer staying with a great-aunt in Arlington, VA. I don't remember exactly when-- some time in the early 1980's-- and I don't remember where my parents and sister were at the time. I recall that they came down later and picked me up at the end of the trip, but not what they were doing while I was there by myself.
Anyway, since I was in the DC area, and nerdy as hell even as a pre-teen, I wanted to see a bunch of the Smithsonian museums. My great-aunt never had any interest in that sort of thing (she did take me…
sheril | April 14, 2008Science blogs are buzzing over National Poetry Month, so here is my favorite poem of all time:
If I Were The Sun
- Seth, 1984
If I were the shining sun,
I would shine on the Earth everyday,
And clear away people's gloom,
So that they would be full of joy.