As promised, we had a party on Friday night.
Some highlights:
Category Archives: Passing thoughts
Argumentation: FAIL.
One of the big things philosopher-types like to do with their students is work on extracting arguments from a piece of text and reconstructing them. This can be useful in locating sources of disagreement, whether they be specific premises or inferences.
But some chunks of text that seem like they ought to have arguments that can be extracted and reconstructed end up being … opaque.
For example, this question and answer between Katie Couric and Sarah Palin (transcript by way of Shakesville):
San Francisco millionth comment party this Friday night!
Just a quick reminder that the San Francisco party to celebrate one million comments on ScienceBlogs is tomorrow, Friday, September 26, starting at 9:00 PM at Tonic, 2360 Polk Street (at the corner of Union). I’ll be there, as will the brothers Bleiman, Craig McClain, Josh Rosenau, and Razib. If you show up, you’ll be there, too!
Also, don’t forget that until the end of September you can still enter the drawing for a fabulous trip to New York City, including a dinner with your favorite ScienceBlogger.
Random question about your typing habits.
Actually, this might just be a question about my typing habits.
Garden update: day 64.
Another installment of the ongoing saga of the raised garden beds I planted back in July, in which we get to start enjoying the fruits (and vegetables) of our labors.
Garden update: day 52.
Since it’s been a while, I thought it was time for another update on the plant denizens of our raised garden beds which we planted back in July.
The first thing to note is that, to a first approximation, the automatic drip irrigation system we set up to water the beds works reasonably well. There are a few patches that don’t get quite enough water without some hand-watering every couple days, but the important thing is that the seedlings made it through our week-long trip to Wisconsin last month.
The second thing to note is that we’ve been having rather more hot spells this summer than is (was?) normal for our region. This means that some of the seeds I planted that are supposed to be sowed in mid- to late-summer may be feeling like they were planted at the beginning of the summer. I offer my sincere apologies to the confused seedlings that have resulted.
Still, at this stage of the game, it’s looking like most of what I planted is humming along reasonably well.
The Vegetarian’s Hundred.
Sean assesses his familiarity with the Omnivore’s Hundred. I thought about playing along, but it’s pretty meaty, while my diet is not so much. However, Sean was kind enough to post a link to the Vegetarian’s Hundred, a list of one hundred vegetarian food items everyone should try at least once. (Unless you’re vegan, at which point maybe you need to propose your own hundred.)
If you want to play along, here’s how you do it: copy the list, including my instructions, and bold any items you have eaten and
strike outany you would never eat, and then post it to your blog.
I’m going to add the following rule: italicize items you have made (or grown) yourself. (Presumably, you’ve eaten those as well.)
The Vegetarian Hundred:
Come celebrate copious commenting!
If you make your way to this blog by way of the ScienceBlogs homepage, you may have noticed the “Comments” ticker clicking ever closer to 1,000,000. Our benevolent overlords at Seed Media Group have decided that crossing the millionth comment mark is cause for celebration, and they would like to offer you ScienceBlogs readers (whether you comment or merely lurk) a piece of the action.
Earthquake weather?
OK, I don’t actually believe in earthquake weather, but it was really hot today and the house just shook. (I could see the shaking as well as feel it.)
I’m going to check what others are reporting to the USGS. Be right back.
UPDATE: So far, it seems to be a magnitude 4 or so — a wee temblor. Here’s hoping letting off stress like this keeps the ginormous killer earthquakes at bay.
Random bullets of new school year.
- The sprogs were beside themselves with excitement yesterday on the eve of the first day of a new school year. Will this excitement persist? Will the first homework assignments deflate it? It remains to be seen.