personal
pharyngula | December 28, 2006I am actually completely done with all of my grading, at last. Fall term 2006 is officially finished for me, and I got everything submitted a whole 9 hours before the deadline. Now I need to party.
Fortunately, my copy of The Physics of the Buffyverse(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Jennifer Ouellette arrived just now, so I think I'll get wild with a book.
oracknows | December 28, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts, most of which are more than a year old.) These posts will be interspersed with occasional fresh material. This post originally appeared on December 30, 2005, and I'm reposting it today because today marks one year since my uncle died. I rarely blog about…
jstemwedel | December 27, 2006
In the midst of a hectic holiday season (at 3 a.m. on 25 December: "Can we go downstairs and start opening presents?"), I was lucky enough to catch up with SiBlings Evil Monkey and Tara C. Smith for a drink, some traditional (unamplified!) Irish music, and some delightfully nerdy conversation.
May your holidays be similarly rich!
pharyngula | December 26, 2006I come from good lower middle class family with a healthy respect for education. Most of my relatives from the generation prior to mine had rarely finished high school, let alone gone on to college, but they weren't stupid people, oh, no — we were regularly told that a good education was a path to a better life, and all had a lively interest in the world around them. My parents both liked to read and were creative, alert people, but I will admit that the combination of unschooled intelligence and an omnivorous curiousity unhampered by academic conventions meant that the reading material…
terrasig | December 25, 2006To all of our readers, near and far, please accept our warmest best wishes for peace and happiness today and in the upcoming new year.
If the other end of this internet connection finds you in a warm home and/or in the company of loved ones, consider yourself fortunate.
Looking forward to returning to science and medicine, but be sure to take time today for yourselves and be grateful for what you have.
pharyngula | December 25, 2006Ah, Christmas morning…with teenagers. Their natural sloth wars with their desire for the Christmas loot, and they compromise by getting up at 10:00 rather than noon—so it means that I get to sleep in and everything is calm.
Although I do confess to now and then missing the little guys pounding on the bedroom door at 5am and jumping up and down and squealing. Maybe if I started giving out better presents, like this:
I'm going to get a cup of coffee and put my feet up for a while — may you all have an equally placid, non-frantic Christmas morning.
oracknows | December 25, 2006I'd just like to take this time to wish everyone out there Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hannukah, and all the rest. And our blog mascot wants to show he's in the spirit as well:
Here's hoping you're having fun with family and friends!
pharyngula | December 24, 2006Yes! This atheist family committed atrocities in preparation for the holiday. Here's the gang undermining the true meaning of Christmas by decorating a tree while experiencing a complete absence of any sense of the sacred.
That's Skatje in the coat and hat (it really isn't that cold in here, unless it's the chill from our icy hearts), Alaric adjusting the stand (or, perhaps, bowing to the darkness), and Connlann looking fairly normal, although of course his wicked soul does not appear in a photograph.
That's not an angel on top; it's a white Father Christmas figure that I think looks a bit…
pharyngula | December 24, 2006Christmas Eve is an excellent time for another edition of the Carnival of the Godless!
In my own strange Christmas Eve tradition, I'm spending this late afternoon sorting flies and setting up Drosophila cultures — I'm not even done with grading and I have to get to work on next semester's labs.
jstemwedel | December 23, 2006If you're grabbing some quick blog-reading amongst your other goings on, I have a few posts to recommend.
At Wampum -- you know, the fine blog that runs the Koufax awards-- Mary Beth faces down a holiday with tight resources:
A few hours ago, my eldest asked me when we were going to go pick up our Christmas tree. I couldn't do anything but mumble some rather incoherent, "I'm not sure we're going to be able to have a tree this year." Trees, lights, trimmings, all cost money, and while Eric's now gainfully employed, we don't expect to see a check this week. I've picked out a few books to wrap…
pharyngula | December 23, 2006Are you all as exhausted from the festivities as I am? I partook a little too heavily of the traditional Driving-Long-Distances-In-The-Snow-To-Pick-Up-Returning-Progeny-Whose-Bus-Was-Over-An-Hour-Late part of the celebration, which means my brain is turning over a little slowly this morning. I'm going to sit and sip coffee for a while, and read some Science…expect something on the phosphatized embryos later!
jstemwedel | December 22, 2006The Free-Ride family was only delayed by about 8 hours in getting from California to Maryland. This was no thanks to the very unhelpful America West/US Airways ticket agent at San Francisco, who, after we waited in the line to get to the podium for nearly 4 hours, thought to put our luggage on the red-eye from Las Vegas but had to be pressed to put us on standby for the same flight rather than offering as our only option the connection-you're-about-to-miss-but-24-hour-later flight. Luckily, Las Vegas Customer Service Guy Patrick C. got us the relevant flight information that the evil-SFO-…
clock | December 22, 2006Below the fold are the pictures of me, Prof. Steve Steve and Rev.Big Dumb Chimp taken immediately after the Ken Miller talk in Raleigh. If we look a little drunk or high, it is because we were just subjected to an overdose of theistic evolution and religious apologetics!
jstemwedel | December 21, 2006Today the Free-Ride family schleps to the airport (with what seem to be crates of warm layers) to fly East. Assuming Super Sally's wireless internet allows it, I'll have a Friday Sprog Blog up sometime Friday.
I guess that also assumes that there are no missed connections or flight cancellations. Let's hope.
Anyway, Dave Munger tagged me with another meme, so I'm posting my response before I officially become a Holiday Traveler.
The question:
What one sentence would you tell the future if your area of expertise was about to expire? For example, Richard Feynman, the physicist, said, "The…
j7uy5 | December 21, 2006So, here I go into Border's last night. Spend $95. Everyone is happy.
Then this morning, I get up and they've sent me an email, with a coupon: $20 off a $100 purchase, before 12/24. It came in at 1:27 AM, about six hours too late.
clock | December 20, 2006Somehow I feel that I've been tagged by Janet for this meme, because it is public that we celebrate Hannukkah. But we really make it low-key, family-only, and have only been doing it for about a dozen years so far. Actually, this is the first time that we had guests for the first night.
1. Latkes or Sufganiyot?
Latkes. Mrs.Coturnix is a superb Latke-Meister.
2. Multi-colored candles or blue-and-white?
Coturnix Jr. lights the blue-and-white candles, Coturnietta lights the multicolored.
3. Do you place the Hanukiah by the window or away from the window?
In this house, away from the window…
jstemwedel | December 20, 2006On the heels of the Hanukah meme, here's the Christmas meme, as seen at Musings of a Distractable Mind:
1. Hot Chocolate or Egg Nog?
If I must choose, nog with whipped cream (but no bourbon). I also like coffee with a slug of chocolate syrup and a shot of Peppermint Torani's.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Unless it's something big and unwieldy, Santa (or his minions) wraps them, usually in paper with pictures of Santa.
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
Colored lights on the tree, white outside if we get to it.
4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No. A long…
jstemwedel | December 20, 2006On a post where I mentioned the eight-nights'-worth-of-gifts challenge, Liz left a comment that kind of tagged me with Flea's Hanukah meme.
Since the Free-Ride household celebrates both Hanukah and Christmas, the Christmas meme will be up next.
Hold onto your kippah -- here we go!
1. Latkes or Sufganiyot?
Latkes. However, after a bunch of years where all my attempt to make my own met with disappointment -- either the latkes were greasy, or the potatoes tasted raw, or both -- I now only use the Trader Joe's frozen latkes. They taste excellent, and I have mastered the necessary skill set to…
pharyngula | December 20, 2006This one you've heard of, and maybe more of you subscribe to: the Dec/Jan issue of Seed. In addition to an article on Dark Energy, a review of the Year in Science, stories about Angela Merkel and Stephen Colbert and James Hansen, there's the infamous feature on us sciencebloggers, and the very first entry in my new column. You've got to love a magazine that intersperses its articles with full-page photographs of venomous jellyfish. All they need now is a cephalopod centerfold, and the magazine will be perfect!
jstemwedel | December 20, 2006David posted his holiday letter, but I didn't feel up to composing one of those. So instead, I'm going to do this "year in review" meme I saw at Geeky Mom's pad. (She got it from Trillwing.)
The rule: post the first sentence of the first post for each month.*
January: It must be a law of nature that when past and current graduate students dine together at the end of December the conversation turns, sooner or later, to cheaters.
February: These are the offerings for the semester starting February 1, 2006. [This was the month I hosted Tangled Bank #46.]
March: I have noted before that…