Bowling for Science

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On Tuesday, I’ll be in the Twin Cities to pick up #2 Son for Thanksgiving break, and as long as I’m there, I’ve been invited to join in the fun of this month’s Cafe Scientifique: it’s the Physics of Bowling, to be held at Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis. This has the potential to be very interesting, since they’re pitting the best of BRB bowling team against…scientists. They promise that there will be science-based bowling tips, so maybe there’s hope. (Anyone else remember Egghead Jr., the smart chicken in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons who excelled at sports by scrawling formulas to calculate what he’d do next? I don’t think that works in the real world, but we’ll see.)

To entice people to show up, this could be dramatic entertainment. I am a very bad bowler. There is a chance of pratfalls. There could be injury and death and destruction, and blood on the floor. I could fall over, burst into flames, and explode. At the very least, you’ll get to watch a geek do a spastic dance and throw a heavy ball somewhere. You don’t want to miss this!

(Unfortunately, if the organizers read this they may decide that somebody else might be preferred to bowl—liability issues, you know. Having all the spectators laid out prostrate with laughter could be risky.)

Freshman meet-and-greet…tonight!

In case any of our biology students read this wacky site, I’ll remind you all that there is a meeting for all first-year biology majors this evening at 7:00, at my house (300 College Ave, west of the science building and across the street from LaFave House; we’re the place with the lawn that looks like bulldozers and zombies had a war on it). The biology faculty will be there with sweet tasty desserts, and you can ask us anything about classes, careers, science. It’s all going to be informal and fun.

If you want, you can meet with other biology students at 6:45 in the bioclub room (1040 Science, near the post office) and walk over in a group. Or come over any time by yourself between 7 and 8—the door will be open.

P.S. If you have allergies, we do have cats. However, they will be confined to the basement for the duration of this event.

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TBogg reads Lileks so I don’t have to

Really. We Minnesotans are so uncivil that we never read Lileks, we leave that to foreigners with more tolerance for twee jingo. Out here, we see that face in the Star Tribune and we say “Gah, #%$$&!” (or other such un-mild, un-Minnesotan phrases), and turn the page to the comics section…where we mutter other unholy terms of exasperation at Mallard Fillmore. (How the hell did that mindless, unfunny loon* end up in our newspaper?)

*Whether I’m referring to Lileks or the cartoon duck is left as an exercise for the reader.)

The Halloween Cafe Scientifique: an evening of Mad Scientists

On Halloween, I gave a short presentation as our first Cafe Scientifique of the year. The main intent was to introduce our schedule for the year and to give an amusing introduction to the media image of scientists by showing a few movie clips…and to say a few things about how we really ought to be seen.

I’ve put most of the clips on youtube, so you can see what I was talking about below the fold.

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Bill Ingebrigtsen, Rethuglican

I live in the 11th Minnesota senate district, and I’m represented by a Democratic incumbent, Dallas Sams. I am not a fan of Sams; he’s one of those pro-life moderate Democrats, not particularly progressive (although he did make the effort to squelch an anti-gay marriage act), and if there’d been an alternative candidate at the Minnesota caucuses, I would have pushed for them over Sams. I will be voting for Sams on November 7th, though—I won’t even hesitate.

His opposition is a Republican, Bill Ingebrigtsen. Ingebrigtsen has been sending ads—expensive-looking (he has raised twice as much money as the incumbent), glossy, full-color ads—to my house all week. Ingebrigtsen has annoyed me with the implicit racism of his campaign. Ingebrigtsen is a thug.

One of the ads was a collection of mug shots, mostly of minorities, all labeled as “on parole”…apparently, thanks to Dallas Sams. Anyone remember Willie Horton? This was Willie Horton times ten.

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Oooh, scary. Better vote for Ingebrigtsen—he wouldn’t ever consider the particulars of a case, or worry about the rights of convicts, or allow the perfectly legal, reasonable process of parole to be carried out. Once you were convicted of anything, forget it—lock ’em up, throw away the key.

Another was a green-tinted, grainy picture, as if taken through night-vision goggles, of a group of dark-skinned people climbing over a wall. Stopping illegal aliens is Bill Ingebrigtsen’s #1 priority! It didn’t look like a sight I’d see at the Canadian border, though; maybe it was Iowa.

Another was astounding in its hypocrisy. He piously deplores the rising cost of college educations, ignoring the fact that it is his party that is responsible for the trend away from support for public institutions, and blames the problem on one horribly irresponsible proposal. Can you guess what it is? There’s a theme here, you know.

That’s right: illegal immigrants. Those damned undocumented aliens want to take your tax money to educate their children, which means you’ll be subsidizing the tuition of brown people while paying exorbitant amounts of money for your kids to go to school. What prompts this fear is that Dallas Sams supports the Minnesota DREAM Act. This truly radical proposal says that children of undocumented aliens who had attended two years of public school in Minnesota and who were enrolled in a Minnesota university would qualify for residency and be charged for in-state tuition.

That’s it.

Bill Ingebrigtsen thinks that if you are a Lutheran who grew up in a white, prosperous suburb of Minneapolis, you are more of a Minnesotan than if you grew up in a rural town where your parents were recent immigrants brought in to pluck chickens at minimum wage for one of the poultry factories in the area. He seems to believe that it is to our state’s advantage if we keep these newer residents of our state poor and uneducated.

That’s all he babbles about: the threat of a Mexican invasion of Minnesota. It’s true that we do have a growing Hispanic population, as our rich factory farms try to bring in more and more cheap labor to do the dirty and dangerous work. It seems to me more to our interests to bring these new people into our communities as full partners, rather than treating them and their children as outsiders who must be ostracized and blocked from becoming even more involved members of our society. But no…that’s not the kind of thing that comes to the mind of a thug.

The scoop on Mike S. Adams

For any locals who are curious about that Mike Adams character who gave a talk on campus yesterday, Bartholomew’s notes on religion has a good summary of his career as a professional victim. There’s also a more complete account of the terrible oppression Adams faced after his response to the 9/11 emails, a story he told in part but at some length yesterday. Funny how he didn’t mention that part of the story involving an undergraduate student he’d marry 18 months later…

Mike S. Adams, glib hypocrite

I did manage to get to Mike S. Adams’ talk here at UMM. It was a packed room (not our biggest lecture room here, but it was filled to capacity) and I arrived late, so I had to stand outside the door to listen in. Kudos to our students, who were polite and attentive, and let him blather on without interruption.

Adams is a slick, fast-talking, folksy guy, and he made the audience laugh quite a bit. He had to talk fast, though, to keep his story from sinking beneath the weight of its improbabilities, and I do wonder how many of our students actually caught on to his inconsistencies.

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