As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to be in Madison this weekend for the Freedom from Religion Foundation convention. A bunch of IIDBers are also attending, and they’ve suggested a meetup over lunch (12-2) on Saturday, the 13th, at an Irish pub called Brocach. That sounds good to me — a meeting of the IIDB and the Pharynguloid sects of the Atheism cult, over beer.
Auto-da-fe of any schismatics and heretics afterwards!
Alright, I want you people to school me real quick. I’ve been reading these stories about the Countrywide mortgage company getting mean and nasty with foreclosures, and the Countrywide CEO leeching huge personal profits from the company — Krugman even compares Countrywide to Enron.
Now normally, financial news just flies by my bleary eyes and is ignored, but the name in this case perked me up: the mortgage on my house is through Countrywide. Do I have to worry?
I wouldn’t think so. We got our mortgage at a good, low fixed rate some years ago, we haven’t had any problems keeping up on the payments (the cost of living in Morris is wonderfully low), and we don’t foresee any reason to trouble a lender in the future. But I have noticed an annoying uptick in dunning phone calls from Countrywide “offering” to renegotiate the mortgage (we neither need nor want to), and now all this chatter has me losing confidence in them.
I know there are economics wizards and smart legal minds among the readers here. Reassure me.
You just can’t trust Canadians. I let a couple of them into my home, and what do they do? They reveal all my secrets, that’s what.
Man, I’m just glad I didn’t take them on a tour of the basement. There are things down there mere men weren’t meant to see.
For some reason, this seems like the perfect place to cite LOLTHULHU.
I am another one of PZ’s students just introducing myself. I am a biology major. When I am finished with my undergraduate work I hope to attend medical or physician assistant school. I am in neurobiology because I love learning about how the body works. It is part of what attracts me to the medical field.
Hello. I’m a student in PZMyers’ Neurobiology course. I’ve never blogged before, but hey, there’s a first for everything I guess. My major is Biology. My strengths are ideas and problem solving; weaknesses include porcrastination. When I’m not in class, I enjoy swimming, swing dancing, and Rock & Roll.
I don’t really have any reason for taking neurobiology over any other bio elective I just figured that it would be fun. I’ve found that I have more interest in studying the micro level over the macro level. If I decide that I like neuro, maybe I’ll look into a grad program with neuro, though I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
I’ll catch you all later.
I am currently taking the neurobiology course offered by Dr. Myers, and being as this is my first blog entry on his site, I will give a little introduction about my interest in neurobiology and why I am taking this class.
To begin, I will say that I really do not know much about neurobiology. I know the basic idea: that the brain is responsible for transmitting signals that tell the rest of the body what to do. What I would like to learn more about is the act of signal transduction, specifically the propagation of the action potential down the axon and the role of the sodium-potassium pump. This pump is involved in membrane potential and depolarization, and is also linked to HYPP, or hyperkalemic periodic paralysis. In this disorder, muscle attacks or paralysis occur due to elevated levels of potassium in the bloodstream. I wish to know more about this disorder, and I hope that learning more about neurobiology will help me to accomplish that.
I also hope that Dr. Myers’ experiment will toughen up my skin a bit.
Would you believe the Urban Dictionary has an entry for PZ? It’s lousy—I can’t believe anyone uses the term that way, and I can’t imagine how they pronounce it. And pzizzle isn’t any better.
Myers, at least, has some punch to it: “Last name of any various white masked knife weilding bad muther *uckers.” I still think most of these entries are jokes sent in by people, especially when the spelling and grammar are atrocious, and that they don’t really have any common usage.
She really hasn’t changed a bit.
Well, maybe a little. Skatje (since everyone asks how it’s pronounced, I’ll spell it out: scot-ya) is turning 17 today, and guess how she’s going to celebrate?
She’s hosting the first ever meeting of the UMM Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists, with free pizza, free discussion, and free thought at the Morris Pizza Hut, at 7:00. She’s a regular little godless debutante, I guess.
This is so sad. There is now a Richard Dawkins social networking site, and I have no friends. Not even among those dour, hateful, amoral atheists. You’d think we’d be so perfect together!
There is going to be a melee in Minneapolis, a testicle-twister in the Twin Cities, a bloody battle at the Bell — the framing debate is going LIVE, in an event sponsored by the Bell Museum in Minneapolis at the end of September. On one side, Mooney and Nisbet; on the other, Greg Laden and … uh, me, I’m pretty sure. I’m still juggling some travel dates, but I think I should be able to make it.
I think the plan, though, is to pretend I can’t, so Mooney and Nisbet get all cocky. Then, just when Greg is down, trapped in a headlock by one and the other is doing the dreaded pinky toe pincer, I come parachuting down off my Northwest Airlines passenger flight, carom off the ropes, launch into a flying tackle on both, and Greg and I then spend the next hour kicking and punching two cripples. And then we buy them both a Bud Light.
That’s the plan, anyway. It should be great fun.
Don’t worry, Greg. I’m not chickening out. It’s part of the dramatic narrative, where putting you in the role of the underdog is part of the frame to get the crowd supporting you.
