personal
jstemwedel | April 17, 2006I want to thank the many kind folks who submitted banners to my little contest. (Y'all are talented!) As you may have noticed, the winning entry is now gracing the blog.
The banner was designed by P.D. Magnus, who is not only a talented artist, but is also a fine philosopher of science (with his own weblog, of course). That comic book heroine graphic pretty much sealed the deal: though she is largely black and white (like our ethical ideals), she's blasting through a universe that isn't (and apparently throwing off some sparks in the process). I hope my blogging can live up to the promise…
jstemwedel | April 16, 2006Perhaps when I said I was on the mend I was jumping the gun a little ...
Light seeps through closed lids
Awake, yet eyes won't openConjunctivitis.
drorzel | April 16, 2006That's what yesterday was, at least. It was a gorgeous spring day here, which we spent mostly outside, first doing some errand-running, and then some lounging in the sun reading and napping. I didn't even try to keep track of what was posted on other blogs, and I didn't miss it all that much-- it was much more entertaining to watch the dog patrolling the back yard against squirrel incursions.
Spending a slow day yesterday means that I've ended up with an awful lot to do today. In fact, I'm typing this from my office (yes, before 10:00 on Easter Sunday), and heading down to the lab once I…
jstemwedel | April 15, 2006I have not been well. Indeed, I had a few days where I was not fully convinced of my own humanity. (Also, I was having febrile "dreams" in HTML.)
I think I'm on the mend. However, I seem to be unable to crank out an actual blog entry. Rather, I'm coughing up language in 17 syllable chunks. The course of my illness after the jump. Just in case I'm still contagious, don't lick your keyboard.
Started like a cold
Tickling trickle of mucous
Concrete in my throat.
Soreness in my joints
Fatigue grinding heavily
Knocks me off my feet.
Fever sets up shop
Brain strains to find coherence
Worn out…
pharyngula | April 11, 2006My wife is one of those statistical people who analyzes data for a local college, and she spends much more time poking around figuring out website traffic than I do. I just kind of wing it and follow my urges, she casts a calculating eye on the whole thing. So the other day, she tells me I ought to bring back that old Sex in the MRI article; it will be hot, she says, it'll draw in a lot of new traffic. So specifically at her urging, I did.
I'm getting about 20,000 visits per hour right now.
It feels a bit eery, being married to a prophetess…although I suppose anyone could tell you that sex is…
drorzel | April 10, 2006One of the standard conservatarian responses to anyone suggesting government-funded universal health care is to start talking about how universal health care will inevitably lead to faceless, heartless bureaucrats denying or delaying treatment for stupid reasons. My response to these stories is "Who's supplying your health insurance? And how do I get on that plan?"
Through my employer, I have a pretty generous health plan, administered by one of the most highly-regarded health insurance companies in the region. And this week, for the second time in two weeks, they refused to cover my…
drorzel | April 9, 2006"Mint Flavorings" is quite prominent on the list (provided by my gastroenterologist) of foods that heartburn sufferers should avoid (along with pretty much anything else you might want to eat...).
If you go to the store to buy some over-the-counter heartburn remedy-- Maalox, Mylanta, whatever-- what's the one flavor that's most common? Mint.
Somebody explain that one to me.
jstemwedel | April 8, 2006Dear readers, if you frequent the other fine blogs here at ScienceBlogs, you will have noticed that a number of them have neat-looking banners. For example, look at Afarensis, or Evolgen, or Gene Expression, or Uncertain Principles, or Cognitive Daily. Check out the rotating cast of critters in the banner at Pharyngula, or the base ticker at Daily Transcript.
And, look at the banner that won the Make-Ed-a-Banner contest at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
Now look at my banner. Really boring, isn't it? Maybe you can save me.
Stealing a page from Ed, I'm announcing a contest to come up…
drorzel | April 7, 2006Katherine Sharpe asked about the best science books ever, as a proxy for "what got you into science?" I wasn't able to give a really good answer to that question, but I will share a science-related anecdote from when I was a kid.
There's a good chance that this will come off as either painfully dorky or just plain cloying, so I'll put it below the fold, lest it damage my street cred.
(Shut up.)
When I was a kid, I watched a Nova special on dinosaurs-- it must have been in 1981 or so, when I would've been ten-- which presented the asteroid-impact theory of dinosaur extinction. The theory was…
drorzel | April 7, 2006Over at the new Seed blog, here on ScienceBlogs, Katherine Sharpe asks about the best science books ever (a topic that was also discussed at Cosmic Variance some time back.
I've been sort of swamped this week, but that's only part of the reason why I haven't responded. The main reason is a shameful secret:
(Below the fold... Isn't this suspenseful?)
The fact is, I don't read many pop-science books, and I never really have. I'm not sure why that was in the past, but these days, it just seems too much like work. Not "work" in the sense of being difficult, but "work" in the sense of "this is how…
pharyngula | April 5, 2006There are still a few pocked and dirty piles of it across the street, but as of this morning, all of the snow in my yard was completely gone. We're catching up with those Californians!
pharyngula | April 3, 2006In the rural fastness of Western Minnesota, a legend grows. A man so nerdly that his infamy spreads far and wide; when people see shell-less molluscs, his name leaps to their lips; when geeks and nerds gather, they all whisper the same thing: "Pee-Zee" (or, as the Canadians and Dr Who fans would say, "Pee-Zed.")
Yes, in yet another of a string of geek honors, I have been invited to the GeekProm, to be held in the Science Museum of Minnesota on 22 April. There will be spaz-dancing, cow-eye dissections, and a talent show, and some couple will be crowned King and Queen Geek.
Obviously, I deserve…
pharyngula | April 1, 2006OK, that's enough. This April Fool's Day thing has gone too far when I am made the butt of the jokes. So far, I've been born again,endorsed the Noah's Ark story, and have beenhired as a GOP consultant. Norwegianity even found this hugely elaborate web site set up as a parody of Pharyngula. Jeez, people, you need to pick on someone with a sense of humor. Crooked Timber found a service with the right idea: this Rhyme Rank thing from ask.com invents amusing rhymes from your search terms, but go ahead, try and enter "pharyngula"—it just gives up. It knows better than to indulge in idle wastrel…
tlambert | April 1, 2006There were some ominous black clouds and it was pretty windy and I had to take my youngest to the doctor because he was throwing up all over the place, but I made it to the picnic, even if it was somewhat late. The sun came out, we were sheltered from the wind, and we had a pleasant afternoon talking about this and that.
Here's tigtog and Morgan. To prove that we really are in Sydney, the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge lurk in the background. We also had front-row seats for the wedding you can see being set up in the background.
Umm, the bottom left corner of the picture is…
drorzel | March 31, 2006How big a dork am I? Well, you can see from the graph at left, roughly thirty pounds less of a dork than I was at the beginning of the year... Hey, man, it's not science without graphs.
So, as noted in passing in several other posts, I decided at the beginning of the year that I was going to make a serious effort to lose weight. In order for any such project to work, I need to give myself arbitrary and completely inflexible rules to work with-- the minute I start allowing exceptions to the rules, I start backsliding down the slippery slope, to mix a metaphor. One of those rules was that I…
pharyngula | March 28, 2006The Café Scientifique was very well done and informative tonight—so where were all you guys? Of course, what the event really meant was that it's nearly 9:00, I've been running around all day, the alarm goes off tomorrow morning at 5:45AM, I teach at 8:00, and somehow I've got to explain MHC and T-cell receptors to a class full of sleepy students…and I've scarcely cracked the textbook today. So I'm tuning out for a while, to return again after a brief night's rest.
drorzel | March 27, 2006As the number of students taking physics who go on to major in physics is vanishingly small-- something like 3% of students in introductory physics take even one more class-- physics departments end up serving a number of different constituencies. There are students majoring in other sciences, future engineers, and then there are the pre-meds.
For reasons I don't pretend to understand, the MCAT includes a section on physics. As a result, everybody who wants to go to medical school needs to take physics, so we teach a lot of future doctors (along with a lot of people I devoutly hope never to…
pharyngula | March 26, 2006
I seem to have become Art—I've been rendered by Nemo Ramjet at a fascinating site that contains much strange and alien art, and (warning!) some of a rather sexual nature. Somehow, it does seem fitting, with this nice picture of yours truly bearing a corona of larvae and in the embrace of a cephalopod.
Thanks, Nemo!
pharyngula | March 25, 2006I've been at my local DFL convention all morning, and I think I need some caffeine to scour my brain out a little bit. I don't think I'm temperamentally suited to politics—too much nitpicking and finagling. But I'm very glad to see we've got people here who are willing to do the hard work.
pharyngula | March 19, 2006There are freethinkers frolicking over at Daniel Morgan's place.
If you've been wondering where the heck I've been, it's been one of those days. I had to drive #2 Son to Minneapolis to catch his bus back to Madison—it's the end of his spring break—and then I had to wrestle with that ugly bloatware called WebCT Vista to take care of stuff my students find important (grades, that kind of thing) for my class. I'm feeling surly and tired, but have no fear: I'll bounce back soon.