I have a question for the scientifically informed hive-mind:
Why is it that no matter what I do, I end up with a head-cold by a few days after Thanksgiving?
Category Archives: Personal
Obligatory stadium relocation rant.
I don’t usually blog about baseball, but today I’m riled. I’m not a hard core baseball fan, but I’m not an enemy of the game either. Beside watching my brothers play little league (and even acting as scorekeeper for their games on multiple occasions), I quite enjoyed the handful of Major League baseball games I’ve attended over the years — even the Red Sox game I went to with my Organometallic Chemistry seminar my junior year, where the skies opened up and soaked us at the top of the seventh inning.
Assuredly, I have mostly paid attention to MLB in order to track the fortunes of the Cubs (since I know that should they win the World Series, it’s time to drop everything so I can go home and face the apocalypse with my family). But I have begrudged no one his or her opportunity to enjoy the game.
But peaceful coexistence is off the table when they decide to move a major league stadium to my town.
Monday grab bag (with important question to readers)
Yeah, I’m grading. (Maybe you would be too if you weren’t reading the blogs, hmm?) But I wanted to check in.
- I pulled my back loading the car for the last soccer game of the season. What’s the proper inference to draw from that (besides the obvious: that I’m getting old and all this grading is doing nothing for my muscle tone)?
- How is it that if I make assignments at school they often are left undone, whereas if I make assignments on my blog, people do the work and turn it in? (Are we now awarding ScienceBlogs course credit?)
- As much as I hate feeding capitalism (seriously, ask these guys) and consumerism, I do like nurturing the interests of the young in positive directions. So, to balance the bad stuff out there on the market, I’m putting together a round up of brain-friendly gift ideas for the youngsters. My question to you: What games, toys, or other giftables would you recommend for a kid who may or may not have an interest in math and science? Tell me by email (and expound on why your suggestion rocks), and I’ll compile a list of the favorites to go up in the neighborhood of Buy Nothing Day. (You can research on Buy Nothing Day, I think).
More when I emerge, victorious, from the stack of papers.
My election day tale of woe.
Actually, after filling out all four sides of my absentee ballot last night (stupid California legislation-by-ballot-measure!), it was really no problem to drop off the ballot at a polling place this morning — there was one in the library of our elementary school, so I swung by after dropping off the kids. There were many occupied voting stations but there was no line to speak of at 7:35 A.M.
The pollworkers at the table checked to make sure I had signed the return envelope as was required, then they put my absentee ballot in the box. As I was turning to go, one of them said, “Hey, do you want a sticker?”
“Sure,” I said. “I can set a good example for my students!”
I accepted the oval “I voted!” sticker, affixed it to my shirt, and was trying to figure out why the pollworkers were looking at me funny as I walked out. Halfway to my car, I understood:
I had put the sticker on upside down.
The student loan letter.
Something quite unexpected happened to me: I managed to pay off a student loan nearly a year before I go up for tenure! Who’d have thunk it?
Here’s the letter they sent me, with a bit of reading between the lines:
A backward glance at PSA 2006
ScienceBloggers meet in the three-dimensional world: (from left) Janet Stemwedel, John Lynch, Prof. Steve Steve, John Wilkins, David Ng, Ben Cohen.
I managed to get back home last night from the PSA meeting in Vancouver, although just barely. My co-symposiasts got a rental car and headed off to see mountains, an expedition I’d have joined were it not for my plane-missing paranoia. (“You realize that flying home from Vancouver is essentially a domestic flight, so you probably don’t need to check in until about 90 minutes before flight time,” the field trip organizer assured me. But I know what I worry about, rational or not.) Given that the hotel had pretty much cleared of philosophers and historians, I got bored enough hanging around in the lobby that I ended up catching an earlier airport shuttle, which proceeded to get stuck in traffic. No matter, I was still at the airline check-in kiosk 2.5 hours before my scheduled departure time.
And then the kiosk informed me that my flight had been cancelled. AAAAAAAIIEEEEEE!!
One of the remaining human gate agents was able to work out how to get me booked through to another Bay Area airport as my final destination. “But,” she said, “your flight out of here departs in 30 minutes, so you’re going to have to hustle!” Through customs, through security, to a gate in the hinterlands that required that I run across a large connecting tube, down a flight of stairs, across another large stretch, up a flight of stairs, and then a little further to the gate (carrying my coat and shoes the whole time, of course). But I made it.
Off the top of my travel-tired head, here are some observations from this year’s conference:
Panda and philosophers meet paparazzi.
Guest Blogger: Prof. Steve Steve
My adventures with John Wilkins at the PSA meeting in Vancouver continue. Last evening, Wilkins brought me to a reception where I had the pleasure of mingling with a great many philosophers who have made philosophical studies of various aspects of evolutionary biology. Strangely, these minglings were punctuated with camera flashes. Here I am trying to have a word with Robert Brandon as the paparazzi close in on us.
Here I am trying to catch up with Roberta Millstein (who blogged at the much-missed Philosophy of Biology) about her recent move to UC Davis. Once again, some interloper with a camera decided to butt in. How do philosophers manage to carry on a conversation with distractions like these? (Why, for that matter, were there paparazzi in a gathering of academic philosophers?)
A panda’s-eye view of the PSA.
Guest Blogger: Prof. Steve Steve
My esteemed Panda’s Thumb colleague John Wilkins invited me to attend the PSA meeting in Vancouver. It seemed like a good idea at the time, so I agreed.
Last evening started pleasantly enough. I met Wilkins, John Lynch, Ben Cohen and David Ng, and Janet Stemwedel (from whose blog I am writing to you now) for refreshments. Yes, there was a bit of confusion when it turned out that the hotel didn’t have an ice machine on every floor. As well, there was the puzzle of how properly to utilize the fresh limes for beverages in the absence of a knife. (The solution: quick and forceful jabs with a house-key. There was no suitably clever solution to the puzzle of how to extract a cork without a corkscrew, however, so the wine remained in its bottle.) Still, there was lively conversation and good cheer.
After the ScienceBloggers confab, we joined the larger conference reception, where I greeted an important philosopher of science:
Bits and pieces, posted from Vancouver.
First the really important thing: if you haven’t done it yet, write some letters (or send some faxes) to save the Tripoli six. You’ll be glad that you did something to stand up for truth and fairness.
Less life-or-death, but still worthy: Shelley Batts from Retrospectacle is up for a Student Blogger Scholarship, and you can vote for her here.
Now, I’m off to meet John Wilkins for lunch. From our phone conversation:
John: You know what I look like?
Me: Kind of like an albino gorilla?
John: That’s an old photo …
More soon!
To Canada I will go with pockets a-jingling.
So, I’m getting ready to go to Vancouver, BC, next week for the Philosophy of Science Association meeting (which coincides with the Society for Social Studies of Science meeting and the History of Science Society meeting). And I’m really jazzed that I’ll get to meet John Lynch and John Wilkins and Ben Cohen and David Ng in the three-dimensional world.
But I’m also psyched that I’m going to be able to get rid of all the Canadian coinage that has found its way into my hands over the last several years.*