Look out, Phoenix!

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.

True Confessions Day at Scienceblogs!

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.

The daughter goes her own way

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.

There are better fates than this

What if Stan Lee worked for Chick Publications? You’d get apocalyptic tracts with giant planet-eating space men.

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(via Pen-Elayne)

This is all you’re getting from me for a while. I just finished a 9 hour long meeting (freaking uncivilized, if you ask me), and next I have to go attend some god-awful Christian propaganda — my daughter is the stage manager for the high school production of “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat”, so I have to go — and I suspect my day is going to continue its trend of ongoing frustration and exasperation. It is in my best interests to avoid further posting to the web until the demons fade away.

I just hope I don’t rise up in the middle of this play, barking and howling in tongues, with my head spinning around on my neck. It could happen.

Please, Galactus, come eat me now.

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.)

Bizarro Chez Myers

For a little context, you need to know that we had a foreign exchange student from Italy living with us for a year. If you’ve been reading this blog for long, you may also know that I have somewhat strong feelings about religion—OK, I’m one of those surly evil atheists your momma warned you to avoid.

So now go read this story of a Polish foreign exchange student who came to the US…and found his host parents were Christian fundamentalists. Keep in mind that foreign exchange programs are often stressful, and sometimes the students and host families experience a little culture shock, but still…!

I don’t know exactly what our student thought of us—she hasn’t been interviewed in Spiegel and given an opportunity to dish the dirt—but despite my horned and fanged reputation, when she came to stay with us we showed her where the local Catholic church was and told her we’d willingly give her a ride if she wanted to go. We didn’t try to convert her to atheism, either, or make plans to have her disseminate our godless doctrines when she got home.

I guess we missed our opportunity.

Language lesson

Oh, no! I’ve been assimilated!

What American accent do you have?

Your Result: North Central
 

“North Central” is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw “Fargo” you probably didn’t think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
Boston
 
The West
 
The Midland
 
Philadelphia
 
The Inland North
 
The Northeast
 
The South
 
What American accent do you have?
Take More Quizzes

I suppose that since my mother’s side of the family were a bunch of Scandinavians who ended up in Seattle by way of Minnesota, it could be I had the accent before I got here.

But no, no way do I sound like those Min-nesöötans in Fargo…no sing-song here, just flat. The test also depends on your personal perception of your pronunciation, so I don’t know how accurate it could be.

(via Reassigned Time)

Friday Filtered Random 16, Commercialized Version

So this is a sorta random music list, but not quite. The new version of iTunes has this “iMix” feature where it will generate a web-based collection from any playlist, so I selected the first 10 from my randomized library, threw it into a new playlist, selected iMix, and…discovered it only builds a list from music it can find in the iTunes collection. Only 3 made it. So then I threw the next ten in—seven or so made the cut. A dozen more…suddenly it spits up 16. Bleh, I wasn’t going to fuss with it to get exactly ten.

So here it is, the subset of a random subset of my iTunes library that Apple thought they could make a few bucks off of. In theory, if you click on that link, it’s supposed to take you to your copy of iTunes with all these tracks listed, ready for you to play a preview or buy them from Apple.

This Devil’s Workday Modest Mouse
Wasteland of the Free Iris DeMent
Heart Shaped Box Nirvana
Come As You Are Nirvana
Fidelity Regina Spektor
Mylardatter Sorten Muld
Glory Bound Train #1 Roy Zimmerman
White & Nerdy (Parody of "Ridin’" By Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone) "Weird Al" Yankovic
I’m Not Worried at All Moby
Suddenly I See KT Tunstall
Hot Hot Hot!!! The Cure
Captain Badass Songs: Ohia
Coming in from the Cold The Delgados
Blade of Grass Asylum Street Spankers
Guitar Flute & String Moby
Little Bird Annie Lennox

I don’t know that I’ll do this again. It also comes back with an html-formatted email that I could have just pasted in, but it was ugly code, so I had to strip out some of the gunk just to make it presentable. I don’t think it was really worth it.

Yakkety yak

So…I’m on this chat room thingie. Anyone else want to join in?

Is it more interesting if I say Mary and Skatje are there, too?

I’m out of that madhouse now…time to go to the theater. We’ll have to try it again sometime, but I suspect we’re going to have to move to IRC to cope with the volume.