The Old North State
terrasig | May 3, 2009If you follow me on Twitter (@abelpharmboy) or looked at this post Thursday, you'd know that I was going to a meetup of area Twitter users. I honestly had no idea what to expect and have to say that it was a rather enriching experience. It gave me a chance to press the flesh with a crowd very different and higher energy than some (but not all) scientific gatherings.
The group was different because the people I met were more in the tech and communications biz and the higher energy might have come from that I was probably one standard deviation away from the mean age. Click through the photo…
terrasig | April 30, 2009I only signed up for Twitter (@abelpharmboy) on 21 January but have found it incredibly valuable for staying up to speed on blogs, MSM articles, local and national news, and science and medicine stories. I've already accumulated 284 "followers" which is about half of our daily blog visitors. I'd say that about 60% of those are not spammers.
Well tonight in the Bull City, there is an event called Triangle Tweetup, a meetup of local Twitter users at Bronto Nation Software (@bronto). I'm going as are a few bloggers our readers may know such as Bora Zivkovic and foodie, jewelry-maker, and…
terrasig | April 29, 2009Word around town and just tweeted by local hero, Ayse, is that the great Ernie Barnes passed away yesterday at the age of 70.
From the biography at Mr Barnes' website:
Born Ernest Barnes, Jr. on July 15, 1938 to Ernest Sr. and Fannie Mae Geer Barnes during the Jim Crow era in Durham, North Carolina, his mother worked as a domestic for a prominent attorney. As a child, young Ernest would accompany her to work and was allowed to peruse the extensive collection of art books. One day in junior high school, a teacher found the self-admitted fat, introverted young Barnes drawing in a notebook while…
terrasig | April 15, 2009Serendipity. Me and Tancredo, of all people.
Start here: The press has been buzzing today about former Colorado congressman and US presidential candidate, Tom Tancredo, having to cut a speech short yesterday at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill due to protesters on his stance toward illegal/unauthorized immigration to the US. With regard to state universities, Tancredo is opposed to granting in-state college tuition to children whose parents came to the US outside of legal immigration procedures.
I am not a fan of Tancredo or his policies. The time has come in this country…
terrasig | April 14, 2009
Well, it's that time of year for public radio stations in the United States: the biannual fund drive to support operations and programming. Many public radio stations are run by or associated with universities, thereby giving provide course and internship opportunities to students in print and broadcast journalism, graphic design, recording engineering, and music studies.
I love my radio station, WNCU-FM 90.7 in Durham, North Carolina - "Your Connection To Something Different." WNCU is a jazz-intensive station run out of North Carolina Central University (NCCU), a HBCU within the…
terrasig | April 9, 2009My deepest gratitude goes out this morning to Bora Zivkovic, Mrs. Coturnix, and family for hosting what was for my daughter and I our first Seder supper. The evening was made even more special with Sheril Kirshenbaum, her BF and his labmate, Lisa (I'm sorry I don't know your full name but I do remember you got your recipe for the spicy matzah dish from The Southern Jewish Cookbook), Anton Zuiker and his wife, and all our kids - celebrating as Bora said, in "a very secular/humanist/feminist/environmentalist way, focusing on good company, good food and good wine." Speaking of the latter, I…
terrasig | April 7, 2009Great timelapse video of the crowd converging on Franklin St at Columbia just below the Top of the Hill Restaurant and Brewery and the evolution of the bonfires that I still just do not understand.
But the best part of yesterday's game for me was reading Ed Brayton's recollections of his connections to the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Michigan State national champions:
So watching them win the national championship was a huge deal to me. I still remember every name, not just Magic and Greg Kelser and the stars but all the role players too - Terry Donnelly, Mike Brkovich and his brother Don,…
terrasig | March 28, 2009
Dr John Hope Franklin was a 1935 A.B. graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, TN, then earned his M.A. (1936) and Ph.D. (1939) from Harvard University. [For reference, W.E.B. DuBois also graduated from Fisk (1888) and was the first Black to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard (1895).] Franklin's doctoral dissertation, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860, planted the seed for his classic 1947 work, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (subtitle later changed to "A History of African-Americans"). This book, now in its eighth edition, was written originally during his four-…
terrasig | March 25, 2009My colleague, DrugMonkey, recently wrote an absolutely fantastic post on bigotry in sports and the pioneers other than Jackie Robinson in breaking the so-called color barrier. I had actually forgotten that in the 1970s, Warren Moon spent much of his career in the Canadian Football League because NFL teams wanted him to convert to some other position, you know, because Black players couldn't be quarterbacks. The post is much deeper than that and I encourage you strongly to read it.
But Brother Drug triggered my longstanding intention to write about a related topic; between his post and the…
terrasig | March 22, 2009I had the happy pleasure of visiting on Friday with Sheril Kirshenbaum and Bora Zivkovic for a panel discussion in a course at Duke University's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.
Directed by Dr Misha Angrist, PubPol 196S "Science in the Media" is described in the course catalog as follows:
Those who write about science, health and related policy matters for a general audience face a formidable challenge: to make complex, nuanced ideas understandable to the nonscientist in a limited amount of space and in ways that are engaging and entertaining, even if the topic is far outside the…
Fullsteam Brewery founder and local-ag guru, Sean Wilson, to appear on WUNC-FM's The State of Things
terrasig | March 18, 2009The local food movement is not local here in the sprawling US. Hence why am posting this note here.
North Carolina beer saint and local-ag brewer, Sean Lily Wilson, will be on the radio in about an hour. We featured Sean back in January when the state's flagship newspaper named him Tar Heel of the Week for his efforts to modify our draconian beer laws to allow high-gravity beers, especially many of our European favorites, to be sold statewide.
Sean's a good man, a great dad, and epitomizes community on so many levels. If you're not local, you can listen to him together with two other…
terrasig | March 14, 2009Blogfather, editor, and science journalist extraordinaire, Anton Zuiker, is selling his house.
Tomorrow, they are hosting an open house:
Help me sell my house - invite your NC friends to stop by our open house Sun, 3/15 at 2pm. http://bit.ly/Q8UoZ
Although nestled in tall pines, the home is exceptionally bright and comfortable, and the hardwood floors are absolutely to die for. A perfect location with interstate access, tons of shopping, a great low-traffic neighborhood, all while being in a quite, relaxed setting.
Anton and his wife, Erin, have opened their lovely place to us shifty science…
terrasig | March 9, 2009
I'm very proud today to see one of my formative professors, Dr Fulton Crews, quoted extensively in a USAToday article on a new, web-based alcohol awareness initiative, "Rethinking Drinking," from NIH's National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Division of Treatment and Recovery Research.
While many associate heavy drinking with liver problems, it can also increase the risk for heart disease, sleep disorders, depression, stroke and stomach bleeding. Consumed during pregnancy, it can cause fetal brain damage, says Fulton Crews, director of the Bowles Center for Alcohol…
terrasig | March 8, 2009I used to keep a separate blog for items of local interest but I can't even keep up with one. So, you'll occasionally have to bear with me posting about issues of import from the area in and around Terra Sigillata World Headquarters.
But here's a local bit of info for our NC Triangle readers that should also remind the rest of you around the world to see what you can do in your own communities, especially during the global economic downturn.
This came across a tag in my Facebook from my far-better half, PharmGirl. I said, "Wow, this is great - where did you get it? Did you write it?" The…
terrasig | March 2, 2009I have to travel to Washington, DC, quite a bit - this week, in fact. So, boy, I wish that our Amtrak rail service to the nation's capital was faster and more dependable because once you get to the airport, go through security, etc., we're starting to get closer to the time it takes to drive.
Our European readers will howl they learn it takes almost 6 hours to travel the 280 mi/450 km from the capital of North Carolina to DC. While Amtrak service is pretty awesome from Boston through New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, once you're south of DC the passenger trains have to compete…
terrasig | February 15, 2009I had occasion this week to tell friends the story of my maternal grandmother. She was born in 1906 in an eastern Pennsylvania coal mining town. Her family was so poor that she was sent at age 16 to northern New Jersey to clean houses for wealthy families. She gave me pictures of her from the late 1940s as the only woman in a machine shop and, later, continued to shop for her own groceries three-quarters of a mile away well into her late 80s. Although she drove my mother crazy (my Mom is a fantastic story of achievement for another day), I suspect that grandma had undiagnosed obsessive-…
terrasig | February 3, 2009Following on the heels of the ScienceOnline'09 conference, I was delighted to learn this morning that our local fishwrapper has launched its own Science and Medicine blog. Led by N&O science editor, Sarah Avery, the Science and Medicine blog will expand upon the surprisingly sparse coverage of one of the most scientifically dense areas of the United States:
The Triangle is home to a wealth of medical and scientific research. While the nature of scientific advancement is incremental, many of these findings help advance our understanding of important diseases, drug therapies and natural…
terrasig | January 20, 2009
It'll be a few days before I can get together posts on this past weekend's ScienceOnline'09 conference in frigid North Carolina. The Friday Fermentable Live! was a terrific success and it already looks like there are seven posts out there (for example, Eva Amsen on her Nature Networks blog, Expression Patterns, put up an account with vasectomy-like precision).
I had the honor of participating in two sessions: one on gender and allies in STEM, online and off, with the youthful Alice Pawley and Zuska and another on pseudonymity/anonymity and building online reputation with PalMD. Speaking…
terrasig | January 12, 2009
Bora/Coturnix has a nice post up this morning on science and nature things to do around the Research Triangle area for those of you coming to the area and staying before and/or after.
While Bora resides in Chapel Hill, I take personal pride in singing the praises of Durham, the sometimes-maligned apex of the scalene triangle that comprises, well, the Research Triangle (the third point being Raleigh, the state capital).
Since the unconference is being held at the Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park (80% of which is actually in Durham), here are two of the most valuable resources I use:…
terrasig | January 4, 2009I should really save this new item for next week's Friday Fermentable but I was too excited walking back from picking up the NYT and local fishwrapper from the cold, rainy driveway this morning.
Beer enthusiast, brewer, and public policy wiz, Sean Wilson, is staring back at me on the front page of the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer as "Tar Heel of the Week," in a Josh Shaffer article entitled, "Brewer to blend mad science, local flavor."
Each week, the N&O recognizes a citizen making substantial and often unique contributions to the state's economy, community, cultural patina, or all…