Christmas 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.
Are 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!
This 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!
The latest Ask a Science Blogger question is one I’ve already answered, so I thought I’d just repost this unpleasant little vignette to answer this question:
What’s a time in your career when you were criticized extremely harshly by someone you respect? Did it help you or set your career back?
But first, I have to mention that every scientist must have a nemesis or two, as has been recently documented in the pages of Narbonic.
Thinking about graduate school? Here’s a little story, all true, about my very most unpleasant experiences as a graduate student—and they all revolve around one person. It is a fact that you will find honest-to-god flaming assholes in positions of considerable power in academia.
Time to go get a beer at Drinking Liberally, ’cause the Fall semester of 2006 is all over but for the final exams and the grading and the tears. The last of the written work was turned in today, and now it’s just grading until my eyeballs evulse.
Here is a prime bit of end of term suckage, too: it is mid-December in Minnesota, and it is raining. Raining! If I wanted to live in a place with cool wet winters, I’d move back to Seattle.
In a few weeks, on January 3-7, I’m going to be attending the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Phoenix. I’m going to be part of a panel in a Media Workshop, along with a few other names you might recognize:
Blogs are online “diaries” that are growing in popularity. Popular political and social commentary blogs are making the news, but is there more out there than chatty gossip and collections of links? How about some science? Can this trendy technology be useful for scientists? Come to the Media Workshop and find out! Experienced science bloggers P.Z. Myers (Pharyngula; http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/), Grrl Scientist (Living the Scientific Life; http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/), and John Lynch (Stranger Fruit; http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/) answer your questions about how blogging works, setting one up, finding things to write about, and using the medium for your classes, for research, or for educating the public.
Cool, hey? Even better, afterwards there will be a ten-round boxing match between me and John, with GrrlScientist doing the honors as the card girl (nah, not really…all three of us will probably just buy each other beers and get embarrassingly sloppy.)
The real coolness, though, is in the schedule: there are some great talks and posters going on at this meeting, and once I get the panel out of the way, I am going to thoroughly enjoy myself, learning new stuff. And yes, of course, I will be blogging the SICB meeting.
Since Orac is confessing to a stupid thing, I thought I’d repeat my own public admission of stupidity.
Public Service Announcement: Things Not to Do
Don’t carry batteries in your pocket.
This evening, I was stretched out on my recliner, enjoying a little light reading, when I smelled something odd—an odor of burning, and a faint chemical reek. I looked around and saw nothing, but the odor was getting stronger. I set my book aside, looked down, and saw something no man likes to see: tendrils of smoke rising from my fly. Then, I felt searing pain from my thigh. I jumped up and danced around (to the amusement of my daughter), and frantically tried to fish all the loose change out of my pocket. The coins were flaming hot. I was caught in the dilemma of letting my leg burn, or burning my hands trying to get these things out. I ended up throwing sizzling bits of money around the room.
I had tossed a couple of spare NiMH AA batteries in my pocket earlier, when I was out doing some photography. A pair of them had apparently jostled into exactly the right configuration to short out against the coins in my pocket, leading to the surprisingly rapid and intense generation of heat.
I don’t think I’ll carry batteries that way anymore. I now have the imprint of a pair of quarters scorched into my palm, and feel a bit like Belzig, the fat sadistic Nazi from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And my kids are laughing at me for dancing around with my pants on fire.
And now I tell you this cautionary tale, O Gentle Reader, to spare you the humiliation of repeating my error. See how much I care?
Whether I’m admitting this to make Orac feel a little less alone, or whether it’s because I have reason to worry that he might be about to do the same thing and needs a warning, is left to the interpretations of the reader. You may also argue among yourselves which of us is more foolish.
I posted that about two years ago, and I’m pleased to say that I haven’t carried batteries in my pockets since. See? I can still learn! It’s so much more sensible and safer to stick them up your nose.
So Skatje is setting up a new weblog, and she’s looking for suggestions for a new name. Make a suggestion! Just to make it interesting, let’s make it a contest: whoever comes up with a wonderful idea that Skatje accepts will receive a fabulous prize plucked from my collection of biology textbooks, and including some spectacularly cheap plastic cocktail squid.
You might also drop a hint that she really ought to have her father’s blog on her blogroll. I’m feeling rebuked.
Watch out, Minnepolitans—I’m going to the bowling alley. Anyone else interested in picking up the physics of bowling?
