There will be a real post again within a day or so. I’ve been doing stuff in the three-dimensional world. So you don’t feel left out:
Category Archives: Passing thoughts
In case you have time on your hands …
… especially if you’ve just lost an hour to an unseasonably early Daylight Savings (can I blame the groundhog for this?), here are some attractive time sinks:
Name my personality in 10 songs or less.
Chris at Mixing Memory points to research that suggests musical preferences provide a window to the personality. I haven’t seen the research yet but, at Chris’s prompting, I’ll throw myself into the ring as an experimental subject by listing 10 songs I like an awful lot*:
14 lines of iambic pentameter for 50 years.
There’s a rumor* that, when he’s in his cups, PZ Myers sounds like an overeducated — some might say Shakespearian — pirate.
Therefore, in honor of his birthday, I offer this sonnet:
Good things (a list to get me through the week).
Surely I am not the only academic who feels perpetually buried under — well, under stuff that needs doing. It’s a very daunting pile, and sometimes I think that the only plausible way that I could catch up would be to fake my own death.
But one must not lose perspective. Progress is made occasionally. And, in the background, there are cool things that make the press of obligations more tolerable.
So, this Tuesday night, I urge myself onward by taking stock of some good things, and some wee bits of progress.
The ’10 weird things about me’ meme.
As seen at Rants of a Feminist Engineer and See Jane Compute.
Ten Weird Things about Me:
Two blog carnivals and a frog.
The inaugural edition of Scientiae, the new women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics blog carnival, has been posted at Rants of a Feminist Engineer. Skookumchick has assembled an impressive array of posts dealing with joys as well as frustrations — go check it out!
Also, the 55th Skeptics’ Circle is up at The Second Sight, and the skeptics think they have your number. (You don’t believe me? Click on the link and find out for yourself!)
Bonus after the jump: See what kind of frog I am.
Non-Hallmark sponsored Valentine’s Day bullets of pure love.
Yes, Valentine’s Day is in the top three Hallmark holidays of the year. No, it is not a holiday actually created by Hallmark, despite what half a dozen people have independently asserted to me in the last 48 hours. I am appalled that the commercialization of this holiday has people keeping score on who loves the most (and who is most loved) on the basis of overpriced flowers, jewelry, and chocolate.*
The rampant commercialism of the day notwithstanding, this seems like as good a time as any to share some love:
We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!
Scientists move through the world without needing badges to indicate their various achievements.
This does not mean, however, that scientists might not want badges. If scientists all wore sashes of badges over their lab coats, it might well facilitate communication by letting them determine the relevant interests and experience of the other scientists with who they are talking. Badges would also provide a natural opening with which scientists could share their best stories with each other. (“What did you freeze?”)
Badges also help a scientist stay nimble with a needle and thread.
Below are the Science Scouts badges I have earned, so far. Each is linked to its Scout Handbook description. Questions about how I may have earned particular badges will be entertained in the comments.
The impact of blogging on me (a meme).
Dave Munger tagged me with a meme about (among other things) the effect blogging has had on my life. The questions seem worthy of relection, so I’m game: