Blogging, philanthropy, and commerce. (Oh my!)

I realize that I forgot to mention here that I’ve been writing posts on the Invitrogen-sponsored group blog What’s New in Life Science Research. The blog is hosting discussions about stem cells, cloning, biodefense, and genetically modified organisms. (The cloning discussion just started yesterday.) As you might guess, I’m primarily blogging about the ethical dimensions of these biotechnologies. We’d love to have you get involved with the conversation.
In other news:

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Some Thanksgiving recipes (part 2).

Here are the rest of the recipes for dishes that I’m making for Thanksgiving this year (with the exception of pumpkin pie — I’m still shopping for a pumpkin pie recipe).
I’ll mention here (and should have mentioned in the previous post that all the measurements here are U.S. quantities (cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, etc.). Those of you using non-US measuring cups and measuring spoons will want to find a good conversion guide.

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Thanksgiving.

Back when I was a college student, Thanksgiving meant getting myself home to Northern New Jersey from metropolitan Boston.
Before my parents entrusted me with the fire engine red ’77 Chevy Impala station wagon my junior year, this involved inviting another student who hailed from the West Coast and who had a car on campus to spend the holiday with my family. Once I was in possession of the station wagon, it was an occasion for me to provide a ride home to another denizen of Northern New Jersey who was car-less at school. But once I was home, it was the typical holiday meal with parents and siblings, the Friday spent at a high school football game (not to actually watch our team lose, but to say hi to other classmates home from college), the hope that the pull of It’s a Wonderful Life or King Kong or whatever other classic movie the local stations were showing on TV would be stronger than the siren song of the malls. Then laundry, packing up, and driving back to school to finish the semester.
When I moved out to California for grad school nearly two decades ago, going back to New Jersey for the Thanksgiving holiday was pretty much off the table. Luckily, a bunch of my friends from college migrated to the Bay Area at about the same time I did, so we began a Thanksgiving potluck that has become our traditional holiday feast.

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Permanent budget crisis.

There are some newspaper stories that must be pretty easy to write at this point because it seems like they’re essentially the same year in and year out. California is having another budget crisis, and the Californians who are going to take it in the teeth are students — especially students in the California State University (CSU) system, to which the university that employs me belongs.

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