As the nerd–off rages on (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) I turn to the sprogs as evidence of my madly nerdy parenting skillz.
Category Archives: Passing thoughts
Nerds at cocktail parties (another nerd-off volley).
Other ScienceBloggers may think they’re nerdy. They haven’t spent time with me at a party.
It’s a nerd-off.
Perhaps not every ScienceBlogger is hot, but almost all of them are nerds. The time has come to see just how high those geek flags fly.
It’s time for a nerd-off.
My opening volley after the jump, starting where one does: my momma.
Another list I’m not on.
Hottest sciencebloggers.
But come on, you already knew this was a blog of ideas, right?
Personally, I think the non-human primates were robbed.
Clues for those who have misplaced their calendars.
Suddenly your inbox is overflowing with messages from people you’ve never met expressing their intense interest in your subject.
And, driving across town in the morning takes twice as long as it did just a month ago.
And, your laptop takes a tumble and breaks a hinge.
Plus, the photocopier at work seems to be involved in a work action (but, curiously, can’t be bothered to make a placard to announce its grievances).
And, the combination-locked computer-enabled classroom is suddenly without its all-important doorstop (which lets students get into the classroom), so you’re reduced to cramming one of your sandals under the door.
Good golly, it must be the beginning of the school year!
Spatial synchronicity (or, how should I feel about this?)
As I noted earlier, the population density in my office at school decreased enough to free up some room for a couch. The original plan had been to adopt an ugly orange love seat from a colleague’s apartment, but it looks like the UOLS will be going in his office, since the couch he was planning to bring in for himself won’t fit his office.
So, I hied myself to IKEA and bought the maximum amount of couch that would fit in the trunk and folded-down back seat of my car. (If you must know, it’s a Prius. Not cavernous, but good with the mileage.) And seriously, if the flat-packed box of couch pieces had been even half an inch wider, I would not have been able to cram it into my car.
With the kind assistance of two students and a colleague, we got the couch to my office, whipped it out of the box, perused the non-verbal instructions (which seemed to suggest that the people assembling the couch should be naked while doing so — a suggestion that we ignored), and put that couch together. It fit perfectly into the bit of space that had opened up in my office.
Which is to say, that huge amount of extra space I was all excited about getting? Amounts to roughly the back of a Prius. How sad is that?
Angels, or angel hair pasta?
From field reporter Andy, proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monster supports our troops.
Random quotations meme.
Because Julie tagged everyone:
The rules: “Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe.”
I’ll add: Go with the first five that work for you (i.e., don’t worry about getting global optima). It took me two bundles of quotations with the randomizer, but here’s what I end up with:
Random bullets (“Is the term actually starting next week?!” version)
*Updating syllabi to reflect the coming semester’s actual meeting days and assignment due dates? Really, really boring. The boredom further propagates when it requires updating a kazillion webpages, then uploading the updates to your site (one at a time, since Fetch thinks it’s cute today to “lose” the connection when you use the feature that lets you set up the whole list of files to “Put” all at once). And don’t get me started on the tedium of undoing the MS Word crappy formatting when you turn your word document into a webpage. I’m guessing there would be buckets of money (plus rose petals and chocolates) for the developer who could provide the mutatis mutandi utility for syllabus and webpage updates.
Viral information outburst: cool things are more fun when you share them.
David at The World’s Fair has posed another, “Ask a ScienceBlogger, Sort Of” question:
Essentially, as scientific types who tend to analyse, over-analyse, supra-analyse things, and who like to categorize and follow empirical trends, I’m interesting in hearing what you think it is that sparks these viral outbursts of information outreach? This question (and apologies for its convolution) also relates directly to your role as a blogger, where the assumption is that you revel in increased traffic, and are kind of looking for these tricks anyway. I guess, I’m just interested in hearing a scientist’s opinion on this, as oppose to the usual IT expert/academic.
Shorter David: Why do some pieces of information take off and spread like head lice at a preschool? My guess: The pieces of knowledge (or culture or what have you) that really grab us are grabbing us as information it would be important or fun to share with others. Information rattling around in our own heads doesn’t seem as valuable to us as information that has also been transmitted to the heads of others.