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: Personal
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:
Shaken up.
Just had an earthquake here. I’ll post the USGS data on it when I have it.
UPDATE: Preliminary estimates put the magnitude at 4+. And more than 1000 people filed reports within about 10 minutes of the shaking.
We Californians are well trained.
Media consumption inventory.
Over at BlogHer, Marianne Richmond has tagged everyone with a meme on personal media consumption. Given that I’ve already self-identified as a Luddite, I figured a little self-examination of my media habits might be worthwhile.
Generational differences in gift selection.
It’s my birthday today.
My numerically obsessive parents opted to mark the occasion by sending me Jack Benny and a Hitchcock film.
My offspring had a different idea about what sort of gift was appropriate:
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.
Words that strike fear into the hearts of faculty members.
Uttered by my dean as an intense, two hour long committee meeting was adjourning:
“There’s a lot of untapped administrative talent in this room.”
Help!