Search Results: blogs
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12 Jun 2020: Four Ways to Eat Black Locust Blossoms (and One Way Not to Bother)
Food: Amaryllidaceae, black locust, Brassicaceae, chives, edible flowers, Fabaceae, flowers, recipes, salad, soup · no commentsBlack locust trees set me up for greed. It must've been deliberate - the first several trees I saw held their branches just out of reach, a few letting me grab one or two flowers as a tease, a few just mocking me from the tangled hill above the parking lo ...
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25 Apr 2020: Approaching New Flavors
Food: cookbooks, cooking, Food, foraging · no commentsMy process for cooking something fancypants on a lazy weekend afternoon has lately been as follows: 1) Acquire an ingredient. 2) Look it up in The Flavor Bible. 3) Become inspired (hopefully in a way that doesn't require another trip to the store) and cook ...
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26 May 2020: How Gay Marriage Causes Earthquakes
Politics, Whimsy: California ballot propositions, California politics, lgbt, Love waves, marriage · 38 commentsThis morning, the California Supreme Court will announce its decision on whether or not a slim 50% majority can amend the state constitution in order to specifically deny a previously-recognized constitutional right. It will also determine the fate of the ...
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21 May 2020: Field Vehicle Amenities
Science: cars, field work · 10 commentsFollowing on Short Geologist's list of things you do and don't need at a field hotel, and fresh from the field (where by "field" I mean "three days of driving around the mountains looking for stuff", and by "fresh" I mean I'm still at the airport), I thoug ...
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1 Apr 2020: Employed at Last
Whimsy: April fools, wingnuts · 15 commentsUpdate, April 2: I hope you all had a wonderful April Fools Day, unmarred by water shortages, supervolcanoes, and threats to your world view. This was a fake, but I should have a real job announcement to make soon - and it won't involve any quack apologeti ...
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25 Mar 2020: Are Geophysicists Geologists? Part II
Human Fuzzies, Science: disciplinary boundaries, professional licensing, Washington · 14 commentsThe question of whether or not I am a geologist is not just an amusing exercise in academic politics. In Washington, as in most U.S. states, geology is a regulated profession; guidelines for who can and cannot call themselves a geologist in a professional ...
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24 Mar 2020: Are Geophysicists Geologists?
Science: disciplinary boundaries, geology, geophysics, scientific culture · 13 commentsOr, less generally, am I a geologist? I have a B.S. in geophysics and an M.S. in earth and planetary science with a funky geophysics/geohydrology emphasis. I took some intro physical geology and earth history as a sophomore, but I have never taken forma ...
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20 Mar 2020: Are the Tonga Earthquake and Eruption Related?
Science: coincidence, earthquakes, volcanoes · 11 commentsOn Monday, airline passengers were the first to observe the eruption of the just-barely-above-the-water volcano that forms the islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai, in Tonga. Three days later, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake occurred on the Tonga trench. ...
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19 Mar 2020: The Parable of the Messy Map
Human Fuzzies: cartography, graphic design · 5 commentsMy job, for most of the past six weeks, has been to align cryptic old maps with existing digital data, so that points labeled in small, blurry fonts can be entered into a database. I am not going to show actual screenshots of my work - even if I gave away ...
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14 Mar 2020: Blackberry Meringue Pie with Orange Bitters and Almond Crust
Food: blackberries, meringue, pie, recipes, Rosaceae · 1 commentI don't have a lemon tree in the backyard, and springtime has only just reached the frigid northlands, but I do have a bit of Seattle summer tucked away in the back of my freezer. Pick some slightly underripe blackberries for this one, so it's as tart a ...
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: Beer Meringue Pie
Food: beer, hops, meringue, pie, recipes · 6 commentsI have had many terrible ideas for pie in my life - durian pie, anyone? And I expected this to be one of the worst. Then again, I've also had some Guinness ice cream that was absolutely fantastic; it should be possible to replicate that experience in a pi ...
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: Guinness Lamb Pie
Food: beer, lamb, pie, recipes · 6 commentsThis one's for Wilkins; it's a Pi Day / St. Patrick's Day twofer. Ingredients 1 lb. stew lamb 1 onion A few tbsp diced tomatoes (whatever was left in the can you used for pasta the other night) 1 clove garlic 6-8 ice cubes of broth - I make broth ...
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11 Mar 2020: Ternary Phase Diagram for Cracker-Crumb Crusts
Food: graham cracker crust, phase diagrams, pie, pie charts · 5 commentsAs Lab Lemming pointed out, the graham cracker crust I made for my pie last weekend cannot be represented on the ternary phase diagram for traditional pie crust. But that doesn't mean it is somehow illegitimate or unsciencey! See, look at all this science: ...
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9 Mar 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: blog carnivals, hydrology, resumes, sexual harassment, Wikipedia · 1 commentThoughts on Tuli v. Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Inc., et al. « Feminist Law Professors -- On the rewards of a sexual harassment lawsuit: "So, the bonus payoff here is, she gets to work in an environment where she is ostracized, despised, feared, a ...
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8 Mar 2020: Kiwi Lime Pie (with Bonus Cocktail)
Food: Actinidiaceae, cocktails, kiwi, pie, recipes, Rutaceae · 13 comments... kiwis and throwing them into a mojito pie for the ScienceBlogs Pi Day contest, I can't say I'm any better than a bartender shilling $12 ...
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28 Feb 2020: Pre-Pie Contest Pie Poll
Whimsy: contests, fun poll, pie · 3 commentsScienceblogs is planning a pie contest for Pi Day, March 14. I am waiting for clarification ...
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24 Feb 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: diy, google earth, Links · no commentsThe Bacon Story -- How science can make even bacon disgusting. Building a Google Earth Geology Layer -- Lots of great resources accumulating in the comments here. Magma Cum Laude: Using Google Earth to visualize volcanic and seismic activity -- A discuss ...
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19 Feb 2020: Earth Scientists on Stamps
Human Fuzzies, Science: darwin, milankovitch, philately, richter, science in pop culture, stamps · 13 commentsFollowing the Royal Mail's release of some lovely new Darwin stamps, a few of us got to Twittering over lunch yesterday about the lack of geologists on this year's release of American scientist stamps. (What's that? You have no idea what Twittering i ...
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17 Feb 2020: Teaching Engineers to Blog?
Meta: · 6 comments... can improve on it. I'm not sure how best to explain what blogs are, except by showing examples. I ran across another class blog a while ... given a couple of starting points for exploring science blogs (the list of this year's Open Lab winners was one, and I think maybe also ...
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11 Feb 2020: An Open Letter to the Environmental Geologists of the Past
Human Fuzzies, Science: cartography, environmental consulting · 11 commentsDear Environmental Geologists, Engineers, and Technical Illustrators of 20 Years Ago: Please remember that the real audience for your work - the mind-numbingly detailed technical reports over which you have slaved many hours - is not the board of petty ...
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5 Feb 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: Links · 3 commentsI finally have a day job! For a few weeks, anyway - I'm temping as a GIS monkey. While this is not functionally much different from generic office temp jobs, data entry using ArcGIS pays much better than data entry with Excel. Historically, day-jobbing ha ...
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30 Jan 2020: 2020 Flood Deposits and the Johnson County Conservation Bond
Science: floods, hydrology, Iowa, unfinished drafts · no commentsOne of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the na ...
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29 Jan 2020: Breaking Up with the Richter Scale
Science: earthquakes, Gutenberg, magnitude scales, Mercalli Intensity, richter, sesimology, unfinished drafts · 5 commentsOne of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the na ...
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28 Jan 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: Links · 4 commentsREMINDER: Accretionary Wedge posts due this Friday -- The theme is unhinged speculation about the future Earth. Calculus: The Musical! -- The concept may or may not be more charming than the execution. Sand Won't Save You This Time -- Mmm, ClF3. Plausibly ...
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27 Jan 2020: Academic Citation
Aimless: · 1 commentOne of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the na ...
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26 Jan 2020: Does the World Really Need Another Blog Anthology?
Meta: · 16 comments... Feel It? Facebook application, a couple of ideas for new blogs, and at least half a dozen quilts - is quite irrelevant. My fantasy ...
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23 Jan 2020: Cookbooks with Science
Food, Science: book reviews, cookbooks, cooking, inverse methods, pie · 5 commentsSince today is National Pie Day, I thought I would list a few of my favorite cookbooks. In particular, the ones that have taught me to bake pie. The ones with science. My staple meringue pie recipe comes from The New Best Recipe. The Meyer lemon mering ...
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22 Jan 2020: Flood Basalts
Aimless: · 3 commentsOne of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the na ...
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21 Jan 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: Links · 1 commentThe science of espresso, with a dash of geology -- Darcy's law! Four Stone Hearth (58th Edition) -- Anthropology carnival! Association of American Geographers Anne U. White Fund -- A grant for doing field work with your partner. Would've been nice to kno ...
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20 Jan 2020: What Does it Mean to “Learn Science”?
Meta, Science, Teaching: edutainment, unfinished drafts · 2 comments... Stacey is complaining that we don't teach science with our blogs: My thesis is that it's not yet possible to get a science education from reading science blogs, and a major reason for this is because bloggers don't have the incentive ...
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15 Jan 2020: Manhattan Fault Line
Aimless: · 3 commentsOne of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the na ...
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14 Jan 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: Links · 1 commentI finally fixed up a semi-automatic link-posting script that fits my needs - if you're interested in the gory details, or using the script yourself, see my post on the B-Sides. Enjoy all the backlogged links! Call for Submissions: Carnival of the Arid -- ...
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13 Jan 2020: Using Ecto’s Script Feature to Post Your Delicious Links
Meta: code, del.cio.us, ecto, perl · no comments... enough blogging, to justify that. Maybe some people like blogs where two out of every three posts are entitled "Links for [today's ...
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: Have We Really Reached “Peak Water”?
Aimless: · 12 commentsOne of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the na ...
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9 Jan 2020: ScienceBlogs Down Today
Meta: · no comments... a note: ScienceBlogs will be doing some system upgrades this weekend. The site will still be ...
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8 Jan 2020: How to Fight Global Warming at Night with your Fists
Politics, Science: climate change, environmentalism, sustainability, unfinished drafts · 6 commentsOne of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the na ...
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7 Jan 2020: Volcano Geodesy 101
Aimless: · 6 commentsRob R. asks: I've been following along with the recent happenings at Yellowstone (that is, as best as I can as a layman) but haven't seen that site [data from the Yellowstone GPS network] before. Could you explain (or link to) what I'm seeing there and w ...
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6 Jan 2020: High Femme and Geekery
Aimless: · 13 commentsOne of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the na ...
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4 Jan 2020: 2020 Blogolutions
Meta: · 4 comments... will mark the first anniversary of my move to ScienceBlogs, so I figure I have a whole month in which to be self-indulgent ...
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2 Jan 2020: A Quick Caveat for Obsessive Yellowstone-Watchers
Aimless: · 6 commentsIf you like apocalypse porn, you have probably been following the current earthquake swarm at Yellowstone. While there is no reason to believe that this is part of the lead-up to a giant caldera-forming eruption that will wipe out most of North America, or ...
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31 Dec 2020: Geological Predictions for 2020
Aimless: · 13 commentsGeotripper always comes up with the best memes [Oh, wait, looks like Brian at Clastic Detritus might have priority on this one - sorry Brian!] He's made some psychic predictions for 2020. But I think his crystal ball must have some inclusions that are scat ...
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24 Dec 2020: Happy Twinkletree, Joyous Monkey
Aimless: · 3 commentsIf the sun came out, all the trees would be twinkling with ice. Seattle has the snow chaos. It's like one of those colds that never quite goes away, except that instead of snot, the city's nose is dripping slush and ice. My neighborhood is tucked in behin ...
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18 Dec 2020: California is Safe?
Aimless: · 10 commentsAccording to a study of deaths from natural hazard "events"* across the U.S., earthquakes, volcanoes, and other spectacular geophysical hazards are much less deadly than common weather events like heat waves, floods, and thunderstorms. The study was publis ...
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16 Dec 2020: Red Bean Xenoliths Janessa
Food, Science: baked Alaska, desserts, failed experiments, lava, meringue, recipes · 6 commentsBaked Alaska is a highly technical dessert. Its success requires a firm and pliable meringue, a moist and springy sponge cake, deft assembly work, and the time-dependent heat equation. The final product is tasty enough, but it is usually meant primarily as ...
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15 Dec 2020: Geo-Memeage
Aimless: · 5 commentsHey, geobloggers: If you're going to AGU, will you tell us what you hear that is new and different? PLEEZ? Emily Lackdawilla at the Planetary Society Blog can't make it to all the sessions she wants to see and is hoping to swap notes about Enceladus: I de ...
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4 Nov 2020: Evelyn Julia Brumm, Rest in Peace
Aimless: · 8 commentsMy grandmother died early this morning after a short battle with cancer. She was 85. This is not a proper eulogy; those are hard to write. However. Grandma voted by absentee ballot early last week, before the morphine took over. If she managed to vote, ...
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27 Oct 2020: Where on (Google) Earth? #152
Aimless: · 10 comments... one again - for the first time since I moved to ScienceBlogs! - and I think it's time to start correcting this historical ...
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26 Oct 2020: Introducing Thomas M. Rock
Aimless: · 1 commentSo far, Thomas M. is the only one to take advantage of my Donors Choose fundraising gimmicks. So, this rose quartz cobble, which I picked up while hiking in the hills near Santa Fe, shall henceforth be known as Thomas. When you find something so well-rou ...
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21 Oct 2020: Geopuzzle: Beach Detectives
Aimless: · 14 commentsSomeone stole 500 truckloads of sand from a beach on the north shore of Jamaica. Police are using "forensic tests" on other beaches on the island to identify the thief; I'm guessing this involves a geologist looking at sand in a microscope. This page has ...
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20 Oct 2020: Coffee Bean Bridging
Aimless: · 11 commentsMy coffee grinder sometimes pauses in its labors, and makes a high-pitched whining noise that is nigh unbearable to the uncaffeinated ear. The noise happens because even though there are plenty of beans in the hopper, they've managed to arrange themselves ...
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15 Oct 2020: Oh Look, Links
Links: · 2 comments... to Seed magazine or 1 of ~15 pieces of ScienceBlogs schwag - mugs, laptop covers, and USB drives. At the end of the month, ... Right now, only 160 people have donated to the ScienceBlogs challenge (and we're beating the mommy bloggers! Yeah!) so your odds of ... simply forward your donation confirmation email to scienceblogs[@]gmail.com - do it quick, so you can get in on the prize drawings before ...
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10 Oct 2020: What Donors Should Choose
Aimless: · 2 commentsThere is still no official word from Seed about matching funds and/or prize drawings for the Donors Choose Challenge. However, Janet has posted a list of individual ScienceBloggers' incentives here. Donating to another Scibling's challenge might not contri ...
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8 Oct 2020: Donors Choose Update: Prizes!
Meta: · 4 comments... or may not be aware, Green Gabbro is one of the smallest blogs on the ScienceBlogs network. But on the challenge leaderboard tonight, I'm just two donors ...
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6 Oct 2020: Drill, Baby, Drill… for Geothermal!
Aimless: · 11 commentsA week ago, the USGS updated its official estimates of U.S. geothermal energy resources for the first time in over 30 years. During the past three decades, we've made significant progress on technology to exploit geothermal energy in areas where there's pl ...
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29 Sep 2020: New Accretionary Wedge!
Links: · no comments... See it in English or German. There are currently 101 blogs on the list, more than twice as many as covered by Callan's ...
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27 Sep 2020: Reminder: Seattle Millionth Comment Party Today
Meta: · 3 commentsTODAY! TODAY TODAY! Come party with me, Sandra, Dave, and GrrlScientist in the upper mezzanine at Ozzie's, 105 W. Mercer St. just behind the Space Needle*. Some of the Seattle Skeptics are showing up, and later on, a few folks from the Pacific Science Cen ...
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26 Sep 2020: What Planet is my Clafoutis From?
Aimless: · 12 commentsLike so many moments of culinary inspiration, this plum clafoutis is nothing like what I was thinking of prior to actually wandering into the kitchen to make dinner. I was going to make pancake dome pancakes. Pancake domes are features on Venus. They ar ...
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24 Sep 2020: Carnival of Feminists #65
Aimless: · 9 comments... on their accomplishments." At This is What a Feminist Blogs Like, an analogy between donating blood and health workers' ...
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19 Sep 2020: 5 Minerals Every Dabbler Should Know
Aimless: · 11 commentsWhile I was away, the rest of the geoblogosphere spent some time creating a list of 50 minerals to see before you die, and then ticking off which ones they've done; Dave Schumaker put together a neat tag cloud to display the results. Intimidated by the le ...
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13 Sep 2020: Blogosphere Administration (and bonus liquid nitrogen recipe)
Links: · 3 commentsA few more announcements while I'm catching up with the blogonets: I will be hosting the next edition of the Carnival of Feminists on September 24. Please send me your best recent women-in-science posts (or non-sciencey feminist-oriented posts, if you mus ...
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12 Sep 2020: Attention Seattle (and everyone else)
Meta: · 9 comments... those of you who don't actually read any other ScienceBlogs (hi, Mom): We're approaching the one meeeellionth comment here at the ...
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22 Aug 2020: The Sedimentary Geology of Ice Cream
Aimless: · 7 commentsI had to finish off the series. Happy Friday, everyone. ...
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21 Aug 2020: The Metamorphic Petrology of Ice Cream
Aimless: · 12 commentsI was struck by the similarity of these two images. Which one does your dentist want you to eat? I won't speculate about anyone's dentist's motivations, but the top image comes from The Science of Ice Cream, and the bottom from the USGS. I'm not sur ...
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20 Aug 2020: The Igneous Petrology of Ice Cream
Aimless: · 26 commentsIt was hot out last weekend. Some of you might scoff at what I consider "hot", but the glorious thing about Seattle is that the entire city seems willing to join me in whining and wilting whenever the temperature breaks 80 (that's 25 of your Earth units). ...
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12 Aug 2020: OMG AMNH PONIES!!1!
Aimless: · 9 commentsThe Scibling meetup weekend included free passes to see the ponies at the American Museum of Natural History. OMG PONIES... but I found the exhibit depressing, for the following reason: I don't understand why more organizations don't give out press kits ...
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8 Aug 2020: Shirts Belonging to the
EmperorScientist
Aimless: · 12 comments... is up, in a part of the Internet no one thinks of as "real blogs" 'cause it's populated by lots of women. Most women's tops, on ...
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22 Jul 2020: Volcanoes Are Good
Aimless: · 17 commentsCraig McClain over at Deep Sea News has been spewing some vile libel about our magmatic companions: Two spectacularly awful events occurred in the ocean. Ocean anoxic event 1 (120mya) and 2 (93 mya). Rather unshockingly, the complete lack of oxygen in the ...
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: Attention New York City
Meta: · 4 comments... unspecified location in Manhattan, there will be a ScienceBlogs reader shindig. To organize the as-yet unspecified snacks, activities, ...
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18 Jul 2020: If the American Geophysical Union Were More Like the Movies
Aimless: · 11 commentsGentle Reader, help me out here: Did I accidentally write Tuesday's post in crazy moon-language? The response to that coordinated swarm of movie reviews - from people who are affiliated with Sizzle, as well as people like Chris Mooney, who just plain liked ...
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17 Jul 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · no commentsEye candy of the week: Zoltan Sylvester (of Hindered Settling fame) has some fantastic photos from the Geopalooza! exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Mike Brown on coming up with a name for Make-make (the plutoid formerly known as 2020 FY ...
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11 Jul 2020: Friday Earthquake Blogging: M7.9 Southeast Alaska
Aimless: · 1 commentWell, technically this is Friday tsunami blogging, but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the 2020 Southeast Alaska earthquake and ensuing Lituya Bay megatsunami, a half-kilometer high wave which killed only ...
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5 Jul 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · 6 commentsThis month's Scientiae is out! Hear women's voices... in science! A conversation with Mr. Mister: Should I blog about this? It's got some gender in it. Yeah, it's got a lot of gender. It's kind of awful. Attention, Southern California! On November 13 yo ...
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30 Jun 2020: Tunguskatennial
Aimless: · no commentsOne hundred years ago today, a meteor exploded above Siberia, flattening trees over an area of a couple thousand square kilometers (one-tenth of Wales). This video shows the mostly recovered forest, and a view of the lake that might or might not be an impa ...
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28 Jun 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · 1 comment... of agriculture blogging, I've been meaning to plug two blogs by ag scientists, both of whom happen to be my uncles. Tom, a professor ...
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27 Jun 2020: Richard Nixon Tamed the Mole People! A Timeline of Global Seismic Energy Release
Science: · 14 commentsI've finally read Dr. Tom Chalko's wackaloon manuscript. It was fantastic. Chalko artfully combines common misconceptions about his subject matter with accessible yet impressively mathy-lookin' slipshod data analysis, and produces an argument that appea ...
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24 Jun 2020: More on Mathphobia
Aimless: · 12 commentsI've been reading The Design of Everyday Things, which I recommend as a useful and interesting way of thinking about all sorts of minor frustrations in daily life. It's also applicable to teaching - I've definitely noticed many student problems that have ...
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19 Jun 2020: Carnival of Space #59
Links: · 2 comments... "bweep!" As Steinn points out, NASA maintains quite a few blogs, including a new one for the GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) ...
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18 Jun 2020: Advice for a Mathphobe?
Aimless: · 25 commentsA reader named Amanda recently wrote me, asking for some advice: I graduated from NYU in 2020 and have been working in LA as an assistant, but I'm thinking about going back to college and getting a second degree. My first one is a BFA in screenwriting, so ...
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17 Jun 2020: Another Lusi Update
Aimless: · 4 commentsFrom the perspective of this paper's publication, my cross-country move was badly timed. Since my email access has been so sporadic over the past couple weeks, I missed chances to help edit the press release and do a couple of interviews. The press seems ...
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12 Jun 2020: Devonian Fossil Gorge to Become… SIlurian Fossil Gorge?
Aimless: · 9 commentsI don't actually know what underlies the Middle Devonian brachiopods of my childhood, but I might get to find out soon. Iowa City is experiencing its second "500 year" flood in 15 years, and Coralville Lake has overtopped its dam... again. And the river h ...
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: How to Find a Death Trap: A Guide for Apartment-Hunters
Aimless: · 11 commentsEarthquake engineer Kit Miyamoto has posted a journal of his trip to Sichuan. If you don't mind a little bit of construction jargon it's a good discussion of the details of what kinds of buildings collapse, and what kinds are safe, as well as the logistica ...
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1 Jun 2020: Happy Birthday, Lusi (the Drilling Totally Did It)
Aimless: · 7 commentsIt's been two years* since the ground opened near Sidoarjo, Indonesia, spewing mud over the homes, farms, and businesses of tens of thousands of people. The disaster quickly acquired the rather endearing name of "Lusi", which is short for "lumpur" (Indone ...
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21 May 2020: The Scouring of Fossil Gorge
Aimless: · 6 commentsJulian is hosting this month's Accretionary Wedge, and wants us all to discuss a geologic event that's significant to us personally. (Well, technically, he asked for the event that is most significant, but I love all my pet geologic events equally, so the ...
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5 May 2020: Tag Clouds for my Papers
Aimless: · 7 commentsBrian posted tag clouds for two of his recent papers. Having no shame, Lab Lemming followed suit. Since I have even less shame, I'm just going to jump on while the bandwagon is rolling. So here's the tag cloud for Davies et al., 2020, currently in review ...
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19 Apr 2020: Earthquake in Illinois: What’s up with Wabash Valley?
Aimless: · 16 commentsEvery time there's an earthquake in the Midwest, my mother emails me, just in case I want to move back home to study it. So that's how I heard about yesterday morning's earthquake in Illinois - a bit less exciting than waking up to it, but that's fine with ...
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16 Apr 2020: RIP Ed Lorenz
Aimless: · 4 commentsThe man who discovered the "butterfly effect" died this morning at the age of 90. Ed Lorenz was a meteorologist; I will spare you most of the details of his career, as they can be found in the MIT obituary. But back in the early 60s, when he was trying t ...
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: Women in Science Linky-Post
Links: · 3 commentsMy beautifully kludgy little script that does much of the work of putting together linky-posts for me - pulling everything with a special "to SB" tag off my del.icio.us account and formatting it - has stopped working. I cry tears of sadness. I also have a ...
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11 Apr 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Slag
Aimless: · 3 commentsCoal doesn't burn completely. Here's what's left over. (Do I apologize for the weak blogging? No! No apologies! I am still trying to work "elusive", "obsequious", and "vapid" into a discussion of bedrock hydrogeology. "Propinquitous", though, that's tak ...
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6 Apr 2020: Giving the Lie: Blogs and Scientific Criticism
Aimless: · 10 comments... we write, mean or nice (it's actually in the ScienceBlogs contract - "use your best efforts to ensure that all facts and statements ...
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2 Apr 2020: Geology Jargon Ripe for Zombie Re-Animation
Aimless: · 26 commentsOne of the things I love about geology is the jargon. After all, what could possibly be more fun than laying down "clayey" or "vug" on a triple word score and being able to say that yes, it is too a word? Wait, don't answer that one. Instead, let me give ...
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27 Mar 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Pele’s Hair
Aimless: · 3 commentsThis one's in honor of the new activity at the peak of Kilauea. For pictures and updates, see the Hawaii Volcano Observatory homepage. For more geoblogospheric coverage, check out the posts at Magma Cum Laude and the roundup at Geology News. To get Pele ...
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24 Mar 2020: I’ve Been Subducted Again
Aimless: · 4 commentsThis month's edition of the Accretionary Wedge is up at Magma Cum Laude, covering: How Hollywood manages to screw up, in movie and/or TV form, the science that it took me multiple years, pints of blood and continuing therapy sessions to learn, and why I c ...
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21 Mar 2020: Friday Rock Repost: Sand Boil
Aimless: · 6 commentsSo sand is just little weensy rocks, anyway. And this is a weensy volcano made of sand, in Peru. It’s about a meter (0.33% 0.9% of a football field thanks LL!) across. Normally, layers of sand and silt underground bear the weight of whatever’ ...
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14 Mar 2020: Friday Rock Repost: The Bishop Tuff
Aimless: · 6 commentsThis is an outcrop of Bishop tuff, an ash deposit created 760,000 years ago when the Long Valley Caldera exploded - though “exploded” is, if anything, an understatement. The photo was taken 15 miles (25 of your Earth kilometers) away from the e ...
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11 Mar 2020: Jello Salad is a Weird Ethnic Food
Aimless: · 21 comments... have a point. There's a lotta white people on ScienceBlogs! More than in the science blogosphere generally? I don't know - pinning ... to say about Janet's post, or fawn over the new blogs I am finding by exploring the Urban Scientist's blogroll, some other ...
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9 Mar 2020: Borg Business
Meta: · 3 comments... of the readership to put favorite posts from across ScienceBlogs into a "best of" feed on del.icio.us. Each of us in the Borg gets to ...
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7 Mar 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Mud
Aimless: · 9 commentsPicture courtesy reader Martin. Or maybe Martin doesn't actually read this blog, and it's just Wren. Anyway, thanks, Wren and Martin! Today's rock is a geopuzzle: What's up with these ridges? How did they get there, and what determines their size? I do ...
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6 Mar 2020: Repost: Larry Summers, Math, and Violence
Aimless: · 6 commentsIn light of the fact that Cal State is still committed to firing its nonviolent math teachers (the state attorney general has weighed in, supporting the dismissal, and Kearney-Brown is planning to pursue legal action), I thought I'd dredge up an old quip o ...
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5 Mar 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · 2 comments... varnish but with more coal fumes? Welcome two new geoblogs: Looking For Detachment and Geology Happens! Wanted: Gray Literature on ...
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4 Mar 2020: Oops! I’m Perjured Again
Aimless: · 7 commentsUntil I saw Ed Brayton's post about a math teacher fired from Cal State East Bay for refusing to sign a loyalty oath, I had mostly forgotten that I might be technically guilty of perjury. Y'see, as a public employee of the state of California, I was requir ...
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29 Feb 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Desert Varnish
Aimless: · 5 commentsIf you kick a dark pebble in the middle of the desert, you will sometimes find that it is light underneath. What this means is that you have disturbed a pebble that has been sitting there untouched for thousands of years. During that time, it accumulated ...
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: Focus is a Renewable Resource
Aimless: · 5 commentsThis post from Female Science Professor, about watching a colleague with ADD work, has been stuck in my head for the past couple of days: So now he just lives with it and, although he hates his inability to focus, if he keeps going back to his original act ...
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25 Feb 2020: Does This Rheometer Make Me Look Fat?
Aimless: rheology · 6 commentsI didn't manage to get myself scraped off onto this month's Accretionary Wedge - oh, noes! While I am tragically subducted into the mantle, though, the rest of you can read about the many open questions currently puzzling the geoblogosphere. Perhaps I ca ...
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22 Feb 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Oil Shale
Aimless: · 12 commentsThis is a thin section from some Colorado shale. It's part of the Green River Formation, which is a series of rocks laid down about fifty million years ago when the West was wet. The shales come from a set of lakes that occupied part of what is now Colora ...
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21 Feb 2020: And the Three Billion Dollar Grant Goes to…
Aimless: · 5 commentsChad Orzel offers the following dorky poll: If $3 billion were yours to spend on scientific research, how would you spend the money? ... For the sake of variety, let's restrict it to your own particular subfield, so, for example, how would I spend three b ...
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20 Feb 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · 4 commentsThe buzz in the geoblogosphere this week has been about an article in Nature Geoscience on the status of women in the academic earth sciences. I meant to review it here, but haven't had the oomph. Instead, you should join the discussion at All My Faults ar ...
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19 Feb 2020: Are We Baking with Volcanic Ash?
Aimless: · 10 commentsI was trawling the USGS photo archive for upcoming Friday Rock Blog candidates when I came across this scanning electron micrograph of wheat. It's from a gargantuan volume published in 2020, full of initial reports about the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. W ...
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15 Feb 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Columnar Basalt
Aimless: · 5 commentsWaterfall and Columnar Basalt © Joe Decker. Used with permission. I finally found a piece from my nature photographer friend Joe Decker that would make a suitable subject for rock blogging. Y'see, the problem with fine art photographers is that they ...
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13 Feb 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · no comments... violence" thing, which sort of counts as a theme. ScienceBlogs Please take the ScienceBlogs reader survey -- one respondent will win an iPod Bioephemera -- My reign ...
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12 Feb 2020: Jim Watson, My Racist Corporate Overlord
Aimless: · 32 comments... I certainly didn't when I signed on as a minion for ScienceBlogs. So I was surprised to learn that the over-the-line racist sexist bigot ... myself. Given the editorial freedom we have here at ScienceBlogs, I'm not really worried about stains to my personal political purity that ...
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8 Feb 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Gabbro
Aimless: · 19 commentsgabweb Originally uploaded by kevinzim I have a confession to make: I have absolutely no idea what this picture means. And most of you probably don't either, which is okay, because you're not running around the Internets pretending to be a geologist ...
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6 Feb 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · 4 commentsTelling Stories: February's Scientiae Carnival Hooray, hooray, for Scientiae! This month's theme brings us lots of stories about what sexism looks like in everyday life... and some less depressing entries as well. Stratigraphic layer-cake T-shirt I would ...
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4 Feb 2020: Why I Don’t Use the BPR3 Icon
Meta: · 14 comments... is to foster wank-fests among a lay audience, not to make blogs the new AGU conference beer break. None of what I'm doing is ...
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2 Feb 2020: Lusi Lecture
Links: · no commentsI vaguely knew that the U.S. Geological Survey's Menlo Park office runs a series of public lectures, but I didn't realize they were all videotaped and archived online for my blogging convenience. Ace! Now we just need to chop them up into bits and put them ...
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1 Feb 2020: We Can Have a New Geological Epoch If We Want
Aimless: · 21 commentsLet's get one thing out of the way right now: The question of whether or not a new geologic epoch has "really started" is precisely as stupid as the question of whether or not Pluto is "really" a planet. The definitions of geologic eons, eras, and epochs a ...
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31 Jan 2020: Hello World
Meta: introduction · 31 comments... old rocks - and that's why I was invited to join ScienceBlogs. I was talking about this with a purple-haired friend. He told me that ...
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: Moving to New Internets
Meta: · 5 comments... links and feed subscriptions! My new URL is http://scienceblogs.com/greengabbro, and the new feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/scienceblogs/GreenGabbro. Greengabbro.net isn't going anywhere - I like having it ... that wouldn't be of interest to the audience at ScienceBlogs - it won't be often, but it'll be more often than "never". So if you're ...
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23 Jan 2020: Accretionary Wedge #5: Geological Misconceptions and Pie
Science: blog carnivals, debunking, geoblogosphere, national pie day, pie charts · 14 commentsHappy National Pie Day, and welcome to the fifth edition of the Accretionary Wedge, the Internet's premier blog carnival for the earth sciences! First, I have some news for you. Make sure you're sitting down before you read this: Diamonds are not made f ...
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22 Dec 2020: Happy Solstice
Links: blog carnivals, Christmas, pie, silly putty · 8 commentsI am basically only on board with holidays to the extent that they are about pie. Thanksgiving? An awful lot of it is about pie. National Pie Day? Oh my yes. Christmas? It's more about cookies than about pie. This is a problem. {democracy:6} And a f ...
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6 Dec 2020: 403 Tamed
Meta, Teaching: anti-spam, blog status updates, plagiarism · no commentsMy apologies to anyone who's been accused of harboring spambots by my blog in the past couple of days. One of the third-party blacklists used by my very favorite anti-spam plugin, Bad Behavior, started throwing false positives like candy at a parade. I've ...
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28 Nov 2020: Shaking in Marie Curie’s Boots
Human Fuzzies, Politics, Science: blog carnivals, books, scientiae, women in science · no commentsRemember that book so many of you volunteered to be interviewed for? It's done! It's out! It has a snazzy cover and a snazzy new title (Who's Afraid of Marie Curie?: The Challenges Facing Women in Science and Technology)! I'm in it, albeit briefly and pse ...
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: It’s “That Time” of the Science
Science: goals, the scientific lifestyle, writing · 6 commentsI didn't formally sign up for International Dissertation Writing Month, but I did set myself a couple of goals for November. I'm not sure I've done enough to consider myself an InaDWriMo winner yet (though there's still time!) but I've made more than zero ...
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14 Nov 2020: Hiking the Transgondwanan Supermountains
Science: Cambrian, Cambrian Explosion, Gondwana, Neoproterozoic, orogeny, Proterozoic · 4 commentsOnce upon a time in the Neoproterozoic, there was (maybe) an 8,000 km by 1,000 km mountain range that stretched across the half-supercontinent of Gondwana - that's slightly longer than, and twice as thick as, the modern Andes. Those mountains lived for a q ...
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12 Nov 2020: Attn: Geoblogosphere
Links, Meta: blog carnivals · 2 commentsSo how well are the earth sciences represented in the nominations for the 2020 Open Laboratory? Well. There's some great geodesy, climate science, oceanography, and paleontology, and Chris Clarke wrote a lovely meditation on Miocene volcanism in the Sierra ...
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2 Nov 2020: Friday Fun Poll: Feyerabend
Science, Whimsy: philosophy of science, unprofessional boundaries · 2 commentsI haven't read as much of Paul Feyerabend's work as I'd like to, but this quote from his correspondence with Imre Lakatos is one of my favorites: The only theoretical restriction (or "definition") of science which I am prepared to tolerate is what fol ...
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1 Nov 2020: We’re Good Enough, We’re Smart Enough, and Gosh Darn It, We’re the November Scientiae!
Links, Politics, Science: blog carnivals, feminism, gender, impostor syndrome, scientiae, sexism, zombies · 15 commentsLife in Our Heads Welcome to the 13th edition of Scientiae! Today I am happy to share with you what is inside of everybody's heads: BRAAAAAAINS!! Er, wait - even though I am technically writing this on Halloween, it won't appear until November 1. So I don ...
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22 Oct 2020: Carnivalling
Links, Politics, Science: blog carnivals, civil liberties, scientiae · 1 commentRemember: Your Scientiae posts are due on Monday! Here, again, are the theme announcement and instructions for submission. You want to write about women in science, you know you do! Need a better concept of your own mortality? The second-ever edition of ...
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20 Oct 2020: The Spinning Dancer and the Brain
Science: debunking, neuroscience, optical illusions · 69 commentsThis image, originally created by Nobuyuki Kayahara, is a great scientific personality test. If you see the dancer spinning clockwise, you've got excess spleen qi in your left frontal crockus. This means that you're a vibrant personality whose passions ar ...
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3 Oct 2020: November Scientiae Call for Posts
Politics, Science: blog carnivals, scientiae · 3 commentsThe October edition of Scientiae is up at Wayfarer Scientista. Not only does this mean there are buckets of interesting things to read, it means it's my turn to play host! Eek! Stay calm. If the theme sucks, people can just ignore it and submit a po ...
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31 Aug 2020: Friday iTunes iChing: Marriage in Iowa
Politics: Friday random ten, Iowa, iTunes iChing, same-sex marriage · 2 commentsOracle! There is great news from Des Moines - same-sex marriage is legal in Iowa! Where "legal" means "a district court said so" - there's certainly a state Supreme Court challenge, and perhaps some legislative bullshit posturing, to go. O Oracle, will thi ...
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29 Jul 2020: Understanding Everyday Symbolism
Politics: hate crimes, racism · 6 commentsPop quiz! If someone throws a copy of The Da Vinci Code into the toilet in a campus restroom, they are most likely expressing their distaste for: Dan Brown's schlocky writing style An ethnic group commonly associated with The Da Vinci Code... excep ...
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26 Jul 2020: Galveston Bids for Darwin Award
Politics, Science: idiocy, natural hazards, urban planning · 3 commentsUrban planning at its least foresightful: Leaders of this fast-eroding barrier island — the scene of the deadliest hurricane in American history — are about to approve nearly 4,000 new homes and two midrise hotels despite geologists’ w ...
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24 Jul 2020: Summer Doldrum Linky Fun
Links, Politics: blog carnivals, Danish, death penalty, funny, youtube · 5 commentsThis is the funniest thing I've seen in months: Here's your good deed link for the day: Troy Davis faces execution in Georgia for the murder of police officer Mark McPhail, but since the trial, seven of nine key witnesses have recanted or contradicted ...
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6 Jul 2020: Friday Links and iTunes iChing
Links, Politics, Science, Whimsy: blog carnivals, feminism, Friday random ten, iTunes iChing, poverty · 2 commentsI've just downloaded a trial copy of the offline blogging software ecto. I'm not sure why a total savings of perhaps a dozen keystrokes for a quote'n'paste seems so slick and convenient, but it does. Until the novelty wears off I will probably be posting m ...
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4 Jul 2020: Fourth of July: I’m Doin’ It Wrong
Politics: cat macros, fuck the Enlightenment, patriotism · 11 commentsHappy Independence Day, Americans! Aren't you glad you live in the USA, and not in, say, Iraq? Boy, I'd sure hate to be living in Iraq right now. Or in Chile under Pinochet; hoorah for living in a country where the football stadium doesn't double as a conc ...
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22 Jun 2020: Where on (Google) Earth #20
Science, Whimsy: google earth, Where on (Google) Earth? · 5 commentsOkay, okay, technically I am jumping the gun on this one - Tectonite has yet to unmoderate the comments on WoGE 19. When she does, I am sure I will be ignominiously revealed as the 4th or 5th person to find the estuary. However, I am so very excited to hav ...
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21 Jun 2020: Asking for a Pony
Politics: academia, blog carnivals, entitlement, grad school, Phi Delta Qoppa, scientiae · 4 commentsOkay, the latest Scientiae carnival is up, but I'm still processing the last one. I was struck by the way Kat, in the middle of explaining how she hungers for closer professional friendships, takes a quick break to worry that her hunger is unreasonable: ...
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13 Jun 2020: Leaking From the Pipeline (Again)
Personal, Politics, Science: academia, grad school, life as a leak, Phi Delta Qoppa · 14 commentsSo here's an announcement: I've officially become a master's student. My advisor, fabulously, has agreed to support me while I prune my commitment-phobic tangle of half-finished papers and dissertation proposals into something resembling a thesis. I'll be ...
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27 Mar 2020: Look What the Discovery Channel Thinks of Female Engineers
Politics, Science: feminism, media, sexism, women in engineering · 22 commentsThe Discovery Channel is looking for someone to host a new show about engineering (warning: Craigslist ad could vanish without warning). The ideal candidate? "[M]ale, young to late forties, edgy, adventurous, and an innovator." I'll be writing them a le ...
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24 Mar 2020: Rape: Still Judged by Your Relationship to the Rapist
Politics: bravery, rape · 7 commentsWell, if I'm ever feeling dry in Noe Valley, I know where I'm going - a place where nobody knows my name, but the barstaff have my back: This was in a bar in Noe Valley that draws a mostly local crowd -- early on most days, the patrons were older folks ...
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20 Mar 2020: Link Tuesday
Links: anti-racism, blog carnivals, gadgets, scientiae · 1 commentBelated as usual... More women in science goodness at Scientiae #2 Gasoline-powered shoes! Russia is apparently the new Acme. A case study in recruiting - and retaining - minority scientists. ...
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3 Mar 2020: Belated Carnival Post
Politics, Science: academia, anti-racism, blog carnivals, feminism, gender, grad school, scientiae · 17 commentsI have been derelict at my post here, forgetting to link to two carnivals that came out on Thursday: Philosophia Naturalis, the carnival of physical sciences, and the first-ever edition of Scientiae, the carnival for women and science. I'm sure I've been m ...
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23 Feb 2020: Friday iTunes iChing: Will Lusi Be Stopped?
Science, Whimsy: Friday random ten, iTunes iChing, Lusi, search requests · 1 commentO great and glossy Oracle! Today, workers in Indonesia will begin dumping concrete balls down the mouth of the mud volcano Lusi. What wacky hijinks will ensue? The Covering - Lost Island - Tony Elman, Swinging on a Gate The Crossing - Don't Have to B ...
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30 Jan 2020: What’s the Good News of Geology?
Politics, Science: fund my research or San Francisco gets it, lay science, philosophy of science · 16 commentsThere's a great post up at Apparent Dip outlining some thoughts and prescriptions on public outreach, including: 5. We need to find a Carl Sagan of geology, someone who can take the message to the public. That's all well and good, but it ducks an imp ...
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20 Oct 2020: Selling Out is Officially Hip
Human Fuzzies: consumerism, words · no commentsYes, seismology is still screwing its creepy wiggly tentacles into my brain. No, you can't expect me to pick up the bloggy slack any time soon. However, I have seen final proof that the word "empowering" means "someone wants you to purchase it": We aske ...
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12 Oct 2020: When You Join the Teapot Tempest, You Know Your Bloggy Groove Is Returning
Meta, Politics: blogular wanking, feminism, role models · 7 commentsNot that I have time, really. But I suddenly wonder if I'm not just doing what Ilyka Damen does: This blog is small. And something I've realized over the past couple of weeks is that I unconsciously work to keep it small. I do this in one way I can't he ...
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: Seismograms from North Korea
Politics, Science: earthquakes, nuclear weapons, seismograms · 4 commentsThere's one basic difference between earthquakes and explosions. Earthquakes happen when two pieces of rock slide against each other; they generate both push-pull and side-to-side waves. Explosions, by contrast, just push everything outward in all directio ...
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11 Sep 2020: TA Training for Berzerkelers
Teaching: blog carnivals, grad school, teacher training · 6 commentsThe third cure for blogger's block: find a structured writing prompt! Dr. Crazy's reflections on what she wishes she'd learned about teaching before becoming a professor (part of Teaching Carnival #11) gave me, if not bona fide bloggish inspiration, at lea ...
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4 Sep 2020: Laborious Links: Patenting, Urban Geology, and Gratuitous Toilet Analogies
Links, Science: Bay Area geology, blog carnivals, gender, patents, work vs. family · no commentsThe first cure for blogger's block: post some links! The second edition of Panta Rei, the blog carnival of heat and flow, is up. If you've ever needed to know about Carnot engines, or the difference between milk and sewage, you must go read. Walking Be ...
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25 Aug 2020: Tidbits
Links, Politics, Science: Caltech, ground water, Mars, Pluto · 15 commentsFor the political: What long take-home exams are really testing - privilege, mainly "Geeks will be geeks" was a highly favored rationalization for ignoring continual low-level sexual harassment ("glomming") at Caltech, so I find this extra-specially ga ...
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16 Aug 2020: Oh That Wacky Internet
Links, Science: blog carnivals, Hans Island, Pluto, transphobia · 9 comments... but is pedantic, boring and wrong about everything else. Blogs 2, Traditional Media 0. * It is the official opinion of this blog that ...
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: The Grand Compendium of Geoscience Blogs
: · no comments... GIS - an aggregation of public weblogs written by GIS professionals and hobbyists. Petroleum ... Personal Blogs Most of the blogs listed above have some personal content mixed in with the geoscience. ...
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8 Aug 2020: My Identity is a List of Links
Links, Politics, Science: angst, anti-racism, porous media, sexism, white studies · 15 commentsToday's WTF sexist loons? is brought to you by the Daily Mail: The female orgasm is the natural mechanism by which men assert dominion over women.... And I for one welcome our new battery-powered overlords. Hattery-tippery to Feministe. More link ...
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27 Jul 2020: Coming Down from the Link Rush
Links, Meta: anti-racism, blog carnivals, doing science, erase racism, NASA, panta rei, race in science, racism · 1 commentI love it when the stars align and people come pouring in from several corners of the blogosphere (or trickling, I suppose; it all depends on your perspective), though perhaps it was just spillover attention from my housemate's friend's fabulous book idea ...
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20 Jul 2020: The Walrus is Angry; Listen to the Walrus
Links, Whimsy: blog carnivals, matlab, volcanic tremor, volcanoes · no commentsCarnival of Feminists XIX Tangled Bank 58 - it's the Internet's favorite science blogging carnival! What's the web design equivalent of Avon? If you can make armpit farts, can you also make armpit volcanic tremor? ...
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10 Jul 2020: Sunday, Day of Links
Human Fuzzies, Links, Politics, Science: fascist police states, Joseph Campbell, science studies · 2 commentsOh for pete's sake (via): Flipping his badge open, he said, "No, not with that shirt. You're protesting and you have to go." Beginning to get his drift, I said firmly, "Not before I finish my coffee." He insisted that I leave, but still not quit ...
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6 Jul 2020: Isolated Wackiness, Shared By Everybody in the Whole Damn County
Politics: anti-Semitism, Christian hegemony, zombies · 4 commentsOkay, I hadn't heard about this Jewish family being driven from their home until reading Bitch Ph.D.'s post: And my first thought was, "blog this." And then I thought, "what for? The only possible reaction is "those people suck," and it's one of those a ...
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31 May 2020: Weighted Words
: · 9 comments... Questions Does Weighted Words work with multiple-author blogs? When used on a multiple-author blog, Weighted Words will count words in ...
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22 May 2020: Of Note
Personal: blegging, workload · 2 commentsHoorah for the end of the semester! I feel like I found about the right level of effort this spring, working reasonably hard, but not on the edge of burnout. Next step is to see about some efficiency improvements, especially now that my time is no longer ...
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17 May 2020: Miss Manners vs. the Washington Post
Politics: miss manners, sexism, the walking uterus · 1 commentHere's some sage advice: Miss Manners realizes that people say these things [disaster stories] to mothers because they don't know what else to say. She recommends dropping the category of potential mother, saying "Congratulations" to expectant mothers, ...
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29 Apr 2020: Yay I’m Not Dead Yet
Personal, Whimsy: birthday, memes · 9 commentsHappy birthday to me! In memely celebration, here are some other things that have happened on this lovely 29th of April (factoids via Wikipedia, memeage via Science Woman): Births: 2020 - Henri Poincaré 2020 - Duke Ellington 2020 - Emperor Hiroh ...
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24 Apr 2020: Brains in Jars Have Needs Too
Politics, Science: academia, mentoring, science studies · no commentsBlog-fixing-upping won't happen until June, but it will happen - and almost certainly under the same familiar brand and domain name, archives to be restored just as soon as I can figure out how. Meanwhile: On mentoring: In fact, I'd go so far as to s ...
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7 Apr 2020: Insomnia, Slightly Beer-Induced
Links: Friday random ten, search requests · 9 commentsI woke up at 4:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep until 7:30. Graah! Is all I have to say to that. And, I met a set of potential housemates last night, for beer, which motivates today's Oracle question: if it bothers you that your housemates do ...
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29 Mar 2020: Nerds for the Cause of Justice I: Proof of Concept
Meta: blogtinkery, ideas for plugins, rhetorical tactics · no comments... by KnifeGhost: Is there some way for different blogs to host the same comment page? For example. You write an interesting ... itself outside of any blog that displays it. Any number of blogs could host it and all comments from all blogs would appear together. Is the technology available/simple to do ...
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25 Mar 2020: Breaking News: Video Games Still Sexist
Personal, Politics: sexism, stereotypes, video games · 2 commentsI had a bruising encounter with a copy of USA Today (which I found on top of a trash bin in the Oakland Airport) this morning. Apparently they're making Desperate Housewives into a video game. Why? They needed something with stereotypes in it: "As fans ...
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17 Mar 2020: Friday iTunes 8Ball
Whimsy: Friday random ten, iTunes iChing · no comments... techno? Where do I even get all this crap? Stupid mp3 blogs. Do people secretly lust after me? Wimme - Oainnáhus "Oainnáhus" ...
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13 Mar 2020: Quickies
Aimless, Links, Politics, Science: better living through science, mystery rocks, scientific culture, sexism · 9 commentsJerry wants some help identifying a mineral; I'm inclined to say "uh, green, um, chlorite? epidote?" but that's why I'm not a real geologist. He's also got some tomatoes going, and by zoinks, it's March, time to get cracking on these recalcitrant scaveng ...
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31 Jan 2020: Procrastinating Things
Links, Politics: blog carnivals, denmark, offensive humor, patriarchy, psychology, racism, relationships · 3 commentsOne I'm surprised that Ester's surprised that Fatah burned a Danish flag. Denmark's foreign policy may be sympathetic, and they sometimes talk a good talk about tolerance, but in practice many Danes who were horrified by the rise of the xenophobe-wing Fol ...
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19 Jan 2020: Go Grey Lady Go!
Politics, Science: evolutionary psychology, lazy journalism · 2 commentsCompare and contrast: [A] study released Wednesday, bolstered by magnetic resonance imaging, suggests that men may be the more natural avengers. Men appear to get greater satisfaction than women when witnessing retribution, research suggests. Bo ...
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8 Jan 2020: Rocks are the Mind Killer
Links, Science, Whimsy: science made stupid · no commentsFafblog on the geology of fear: "Giblets is pretty sure this is basalt." "The basalt of fear, Giblets," says me. "Which is the only kinda basalt we have to fear." "Crazy talk!" says Giblets. "Basalt is an extrusive igneous rock whereas fear is a clast ...
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4 Jan 2020: The Privileged Huff
Politics: defensiveness, racism, white studies · 4 commentsNubian's thinking about why white liberals freak out at the word "racist": i think that white people fear the r-word because it "others" them, just as how race, others people of color. once their invisible markers of identity become visible, their fragi ...
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2 Jan 2020: Friday Rock Blogging, Lazy Monday Edition
Links, Science: evaporites, rock blogging · no commentsOooh, pretty pink halite! ...
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22 Dec 2020: All I Haven’t Said
Links, Personal, Politics, Teaching: ambition, Caltech, death penalty, liberty, white studies · 3 commentsNow that I'm safely curled up in my old room, time to take a whack at the ol' pile of provocations: One Rad Geek on the Bill of Rights: The Garrisonians, because so many of them were fervently religious, talked about a higher law than the Constitution ...
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8 Dec 2020: AGU Four
Links, Personal, Politics: american geophysical union, feminism, peer review, pharmacists, socks · 3 commentsI skipped yesterday to do homework. Problem set and final all complete, two term projects to go, hoorah! I mean, yikes! Today's conflict: the second round of talks on fault permeability vs. communicating with laypeople and policymakers. I took a little ...
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26 Nov 2020: My Neighbors Are Penis Zombies
Politics: Berzerkeley, rape, sexism · 4 commentsScience sez, men really are mindless penis zombies: [The authors] recruited 35 students, offering to pay each a small fee for the effort of masturbating while answering a survey. [...] Ariely and Loewenstein say their results are "striking" and more t ...
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14 Nov 2020: Eaten the First Time
Links: anti-racism, Barack Obama, blog carnivals, new holiday, pirates, student parents, women in science, work vs. family · 1 commentOne: Race December 1 is Blog Against Racism Day, for the sensible reason that: Discussion of racism is often shot down by the nervous - conservatives and liberals alike - as "playing the race card," a close semantic kin to the "PC" gambit often used to ...
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8 Nov 2020: Increasingly Tending to Non Sequiturs
Links, Politics, Whimsy: boobies, geomythology, grad school, memes, myth, patriarchy, rape, t-shirt slogans · 7 commentsMy immune system is built of sturdy Icelandic draft ponies. It must be; why else would my roommate's entire respiratory system be riddled with one-way portals from the Plane of Snot, while I am blissfully healthy? Perhaps there's some sort of snot portal e ...
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3 Oct 2020: We Demand Representation!
Links, Whimsy: igneous rocks · no commentsRepresentation of igneous rocks on the Supreme Court, that is. ...
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28 Sep 2020: Hump Day a Lump a Dump Day
Human Fuzzies, Links, Politics: Hans Island, idiocy, kugel · no commentsIt's Wednesday, and I'm thinking about kabocha squash and kugel. (The San Francisco Chronicle's food section is by no means equal to the L.A. Times', but since I get the Chron in paper form for optimal breakfast-squinting-at, it'll have to do.) And while I ...
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21 Sep 2020: Balancing Work and Family: Just Use Your Penis
Politics: lazy journalism, lifestyles of the privileged minority, sexism, work vs. family · 2 commentsWell here's a totally insightful analysis of social trends that is not at all merely applauding the reinforcement of gender norms: "My mother's always told me you can't be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time," Ms. Liu said matter- ...
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19 Sep 2020: Arr
Links, Whimsy: pirate music, pirates, talk like a pirate day · 3 commentsIt be Talk Like a Pirate Day, mateys, and Language Log has th' history of "arr". And here's a free pirate song for ye. Additional celebrations: Objectin' like a pirate, scurvy sea doggerel, and a pirate jesus! ...
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16 Sep 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Portland Cement
Science: cement, rock blogging · 5 comments... find a nice petrology textbook, and turn Friday Rock Blogs into an actual structured way to study for my qualifying exams. Until ...
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3 Sep 2020: Unpacking Someone
Meta: fan mail, hate mail · 1 commentFinally, finally, finally I have a permanent room - at least for definitions of "permanent" of the kind I'm growing less and less satisfied with; it would be nice if someday "permanent" meant more than a mere pair of years at most. But! I get to unpack my ...
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19 Aug 2020: Friday iTunes iChing
Personal, Whimsy: Friday random ten, iTunes iChing · 2 commentsOh great randomizer: will I ever get my house all clean and empty, and make it up to Berkeley? Or will spend so much time blogging that I'll miss orientation? The Covering: Tear the House Down, The Fables (from Tear the House Down) The Crossing: Fo ...
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4 Aug 2020: Oh, The Things You’ll Find!…
Links: celebrities, guest posts · no commentsTom Cruise Kills Oprah![via Celebrity Smack] ...
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24 Jul 2020: A Distribution of Props
Personal: pie, thanksgiving, travelogue · 4 commentsTo Ms. Bookish, for an impromptu rendition of the Danish schoolchildren's version of various shinies at Rosenborg Slot, and for being the sort of person with whom one can pick up almost where one left off four years ago: Three squillion props To Francis ...
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9 Jul 2020: Found The Key Under The Rock By The Back Door…
Meta: blog status updates, guest posts · no commentsI guess I need to check my upteen e-mail accounts more often (or not try to access this when I'm behind my employer's firewall -- or else maybe only get on the interwebbie-thingamahootchie-jobber when I have Miles David going on the CD player) -- well, for ...
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12 Jun 2020: Chronology
Personal, Politics: fashion, feminism, plumbers, sexism · 9 commentsYesterday New glasses. Amazingly, my right eye has improved slightly, and I'm noticing the sudden lack of eyestrain when I peer at the computer. Alas, they failed to mention when I was ordering extras that the anti-glare coating will be ruined if I wipe ...
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10 Jun 2020: Friday Random Ten: Delphic Edition
Meta: Friday random ten, search requests · 1 comment... I arrived at my conclusion in advance; I'm looking for blogsitters and guestbloggers! If you vaguely aspire to contemplative posts ...
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8 Jun 2020: I am the Prince of the Air
Meta: hotlink protection, hotlinkers, persecuted Christians, satanism · 10 comments... of Satan feel guilty when they go after Christian kids' blogs? Of course not! I would take that as a compliment from the prince of ...
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: Stuff for Sale and the Intertwixtion of All Oppressions
Personal, Politics: advertising, craigslist, feminism, feminisms, racism, sexism, the Ur-Oppression, torture · 6 commentsGiven my unemployment and the fact that the real moving frenzy hasn't started yet, I haven't been posting much. Since I don't have quite enough crap to support a proper yard sale, I've been devoting my creative energies to describing it all on craigslist. ...
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1 Jun 2020: Modern Society
Links, Politics: health care, impeach Bush, Internet activism, telephony · 5 commentsOne Miss Manners gets a letter from another non-cell-phone-owner - I am not alone! Perhaps I'll revert to not owning an answering machine as well, and put out a little basket so that people can leave their calling cards if they drop by while I am out. Tw ...
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: Academic Insecurity Builds Character
Personal, Politics, Science: academia, brain in a jar, impostor syndrome · 6 commentsA tempest is brewing over at YoungFemaleScientist regarding the proper attitude to be displayed by postdocs towards their chosen careers. Part 1: I'm sorry, but if you're a postdoc by default, because you're so lacking in creativity and motivation that ...
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23 May 2020: In Lieu of Zurgh Urfle Blah
Links, Politics: kittens, networking, science jokes, women in science · 4 commentsOne From YoungFemaleScientist: And also, I was annoyed because a couple of the more successful, full-professor women sat on a panel and complained that not enough young women apply for faculty positions, and that's part of why there aren't more women f ...
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13 May 2020: Further Trivialities
Aimless, Links, Personal: blogular wanking, grad school, telephony · 5 commentsOne: Visitation Zoinks almighty, I've been visited by celebrity! You may all stand in line for sprinklings of secondhand radio pixie dust. Two: A Borrowed Rantlet From Tild, via Feministe Jebus H Christ! Is there no relief from phones? Is there nowhe ...
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9 May 2020: Deconstructing Teh Funnay
Politics: offensive humor, rhetorical tactics · 9 commentsUncle Amy, guestblogging at Feministe, takes on a sexist joke and beats it to shreds. The particular joke - about a husband's revenge when his wife fails to perform her marital duties, hereinafter referred to as the Intimate Financial Needs joke - is one o ...
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: Work a Mile in My Shoes
Science: job openings · 2 commentsTis the season for tenure reviews to go awry, for academic dreams to collapse in a pile of rejection letters, for program administrators to bloom in creationist insanity. Tis also the season for up and quittin' one's job, and GeoMonkey is seeking my replac ...
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4 May 2020: California Senate Bill 5: Freedom is Coming!
Politics: academic freedom, California politics · 4 commentsI expect Senate Bill 5 to greatly ease my passage through the hallowed halls of the University of California. Note in particular the following provision: The Legislature further declares that ... students should be free to take reasoned exception to th ...
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3 May 2020: Two Tuesday Links
Links, Personal: Brazil, masculinity · 6 commentsBecause it is Tuesday. I'm on quite the weekday kick, maybe I should buy some cutesy underwear. Kittens! Here's a conversation I've had with basically all my male friends with whom it is reasonable to have such a conversation: Me: Hey, don't guys ev ...
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27 Apr 2020: Defamation in the Congressional Record, hoorah!
Politics: abortion, Congressional shenanigans · 6 commentsWell here's a nice tactic: take an otherwise innocuous legislative amendment designed to exempt grandmothers and Greyhound drivers from liability for transporting a minor across state lines for medicinal purposes, and rewrite the summary to say the amendme ...
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25 Apr 2020: Feminisms
Politics: feminism, feminisms, ideological boundary police · 4 commentsI clocked 72 hours last week, and they were real hours, none of this namby-pamby half-working half-blogging crap in which I am sometimes able to indulge. In one way, it was nice, because I was worried about having grown soft on a steady diet of simple task ...
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21 Apr 2020: Brain Asplode
Links: Caltech, compost, grad school, sexism · 4 commentsI should not have had that third cup of coffee. I feel a little ill. Why am I drinking a diet coke with lunch? I must secretly like the idea that my heart will explode and my veins will leak and my eyeballs will shoot out the back of my head at any moment. ...
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18 Apr 2020: Reading Material
Links: anger, environmentalism, gender, kittens, motherhood, pharmacists, theology · 12 commentsWomen and anger: Our culture has a huge problem with women who do not appear to be happy every hour of the day and night. I believe this is magnified with mothers, who are not only supposed to be Happy Smiling People constantly by virtue of their gend ...
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4 Apr 2020: Links to Daylight’s Rescue
Human Fuzzies, Links, Politics: concert bands, Holst, labor unions, Taco Bell, workers rights · 2 comments... of the opposing party? Henry argues that [i]f blogs can organize a boycott against Sinclair Communications, and can play an ... - which is a pretty fuckin' ginormous "if". I don't expect blogs to do more for the labor movement than they did for Kerry's campaign. In ...
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31 Mar 2020: Today’s RSS Zeitgeist: Cheapskates
Politics: classism, consumerism, eccentricity, money · 6 commentsTwo good posts on the cultural forces that discourage us from re-evaluating our vast piles of crap, one by Flea (who is, as usual, hilarious along the way): I promise, if Alex had been with us (Christopher was, but in utero form only, so he missed the w ...
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23 Mar 2020: Where Are All the Earth Science Bloggers?
Links, Science: geoblogosphere · 31 commentsIt's time to play a game! Where are all the earth science bloggers? Are geologists genetically inclined to dislike the nontechnical nature of the blogosphere? Or are we being discriminated against by our colleagues in physics and biology? The following ...
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22 Mar 2020: Today’s Reading
Links: American history, rhetorical tactics, socks · 5 commentsOne From Emma Goldman at War on Error, Class, Part VIII on cultural signifiers and Sorting Hats: So, really, the conundrum is that, on one hand, we want some kind of shorthand, some way of sorting people, and, arguably, some agreement on an assortment ...
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14 Mar 2020: Middle Klass
Personal, Politics: academia, classism, money · 14 commentsNow that I drive a Mercedes-Benz, I should acknowledge the reality of my comfortable middle-class status. Which would be a much funnier thing to say if I actually had a picture of my car to go with it; I'll put one up eventually, I promise. For now, let me ...
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23 Feb 2020: Gender Blogrolls Quick Post
Meta: blogroll, gender · no comments... flickr photostreams or webcomics or open-enrollment group blogs like Metafilter or any of that crap - encompasses 28 men, 24 women, 6 male-dominated group blogs, and a whole bunch of people whose genders I can't remember and/or am ...
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17 Feb 2020: Initiative
Politics: dating, feminism, gender, rape · 3 commentsWe have a call and response and variations on the theme of brazen wimmins asking lovely shy manpeople on dates, and particularly, why a feminist who takes no crap from The Rules might still not want to do such a thing. Reasons discussed include (in ascend ...
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7 Feb 2020: Monday Links to Stuff
Links: brain drain, Iowa, nerdy jokes · no commentsThe LA Times wrote an article about me! Or at least me considered as a demographic phenomenon: Iowa suffers from an alarming brain drain: It loses more of its young, single, well-educated adults than any state except North Dakota. In search of bigger ...
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31 Jan 2020: Laziest Entry Ever!
Human Fuzzies, Whimsy: legalese, poetry, quizzes · no commentsQuizzes and memeage inside. I feel muffled and must defilter with zombie brains. Not thought! Squeak. First, the "first line of poetry" game, via LDH. The rules: copy the list, and replace all the first lines you don't recognize with the first lines of ...
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24 Jan 2020: Pie Day
Personal: burns day, national pie day, new holiday, pie · 3 commentsThanks to Fafblog, I remembered National Pie Day just in time to travel to the local chain pie restaurant and eat pie. I do wonder what genius strength reasoning went in to the decision to have National Pie Day in January, when only citrus fruits are in ...
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20 Jan 2020: Fantasy Cabinet
Politics: fantasy politics · 9 commentsI already fucked up Not One Damn Dime Day by buying gas, of all things - not only buying it, but spilling a bunch onto the pavement 'cause the auto-pump-shutoff gadget failed. Sorry, fishies! But there's a much better game, over at Rad Geek People's Daily ...
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17 Jan 2020: The Daily Day: MLK Edition
Personal, Politics: colds, Larry Summers, Martin Luther King Jr., mathematics, nurturing, sexism · 4 commentsIf liberal culture was more firmly entrenched, wouldn't we all recognize that the failure to give one's employees a day off "for diversity" is the same thing as allowing the Klan to solicit contributions in the cubicle farm? Racism hurts everyone, white ...
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14 Jan 2020: Magical Cow Pr0n!
Links, Politics: earworms, feminism, pornography, sex · 2 commentsPoint the First: all this talk about pornogroppression! If I could wave my magic feminist wand at the subject and boil away patriarchy, I think we'd be left with a sticky residue described by Brian Ulrich: I don't believe healthy sexuality can exist wit ...
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9 Dec 2020: Abortion Post Omega
Politics: abortion, ethics · 7 commentsNot really, but at Alas (and subsequently Mousewords) there's been discussion of an essay which attempts to take precisely the opposite of my preferred approach to abortion rights: namely, it considers the problem of fetal value in a hypothetical universe ...
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7 Dec 2020: Old Enough to Buy My Own Candy
Human Fuzzies, Links: candy, Christmas, Hanukkah, nostalgia · 2 commentsWhy did they not have caramel apples coated in M&Ms and/or cookie crumbs and/or coconut when I was a kid? Is this a new innovation in candy, or a cultural problem with the Midwest, or what? No one at Francis's is answering the question that obviousl ...
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6 Dec 2020: An N Things Post: N=2, Politics
Links, Politics: gender, US party politics, USDA · no commentsBeen meaning to link to two posts as Mousewords on feminism as a frame for the Democratic party: I: bouncing off the marginalization of women in the punditry and II: a succinct followup: You cannot reply to accusations that your side doesn't have a vi ...
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20 Nov 2020: Abortion Post Alpha
Politics: abortion, ethics, organ donation · 22 commentsI feel like I've been abnormally serious here lately, what with the politics and the politics and the what-all. I almost had a bit last week on the disgusting way I clear my sinuses, but just couldn't muster the enthusiasm for a good old-fashioned TMI yuck ...
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3 Nov 2020: Back on the Horse
Politics: angst, Internet activism, presidential elections, Ralph Nader, US party politics · 2 comments... don't know what those will look like - MoveOn, Meetup, and blogs are all headed in the right direction, but the Internet isn't ...
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2 Nov 2020: So Distracting
Personal, Politics: colds, presidential elections · no commentsThis election is a productivity pit. I'm getting a little bit of work done, but only a little, and I'm sure tomorrow will be worse. My throat started getting sore yesterday afternoon and hasn't stopped; calling up two precincts worth of Democrats* and goin ...
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29 Sep 2020: Moral Leadership A La Dennis Hastert
Politics: · 1 commentIt seems at this point that voting against the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Reform Act would be political suicide - which is why it's the best bill ever for introducing sneaky measures to legalize the practice of sending random Canadians to Syria for tw ...
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17 Sep 2020: Rhetorical Gatekeeping, Gender, Etc.
Meta, Politics: blogular wanking, feminism, gender, rhetorical tactics · 2 comments... lists or even physical rooms with heavy doors to close. Blogs don't have such ready barriers against the trolling masses, but ... this has a gatekeeping function, if only because niche blogs tend to attract larger audiences. Presumably it's an exercise in healthy ...
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7 Sep 2020: Happy Arrival Day!
Politics: booze, cultural appropriation, Judaism · 4 commentsToday we can all pretend to be Jewish: As I explained last year, Arrival Day is a holiday of the American Jewish people rather than the Jewish religion - a celebration of the Jewish community and its contributions to the United States. As such, non-Jews ...
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31 Aug 2020: On What Grounds Is This Legal?
Politics: · 2 commentsIt seems Secret Service agents were busily protecting the President from those dangerous Michael Moore media interviews at the Republican National Convention. Or perhaps they were just protecting Mr. Moore himself from an armed and dangerous NPR reporter, ...
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26 Jul 2020: Bugs Bunny Goes to Washington
Politics: · 2 commentsThe House has just passed a clever attempt at thwarting Constutional separation of powers, and in particular the quaint notion of judicial review. Go, House! But the analysis on OxBlog makes me think this law was written by a trickster-god: Article III of ...
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13 May 2020: Life of the Mind
Politics: cultural criticism, intellectual elitism, intellectuals, unpaid work · 12 comments... Lilith asks: I mean, here we are writing our blogs, all of us from so many different places, backgrounds, occupations - ...
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23 Apr 2020: Lazy RSS Roundup
Links: dreams · no commentsA couple of my coworkers have been saying things like "they're giving you responsibilities, that means they must like you!" but seems to me that's kinda like saying "that bear ate your son, it musta really thought the boy was tasty!" - tasty or not, it pre ...
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18 Apr 2020: Meme, I Give In
Human Fuzzies, Whimsy: · 5 comments... it to page 23, and typed the fifth sentence into their blogs? No? It's just me then. You know why I held off so long on this? It's ...
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16 Mar 2020: Spain, Appeasement and Multilateralism
Politics: · 2 commentsEugene Volokh wonders if we should ignore the decisions of other countries when we think they might be influenced by terrorism: The foreign countries' decisions may simply be probative of their own desire not to be attacked, not of what's the morally righ ...
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1 Mar 2020: Describe Your Nose-Picking Habits
Links: boogers, medicine · 1 commentVia a disturbing search request comes The Nose Board, and the disturbing realization that Empty Nose Syndrome is an actual medical problem. The moral of the story seems to be: do lots and lots of research before allowing someone to perform surgery on your ...
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22 Feb 2020: Le Tutoiement des Blogs
Human Fuzzies: french, net culture · 3 comments... serait intéressant pour toi (on se tutoie sur les blogs Dominique) que tu rencontre d'autres personnes que Mr Loc Le Meur pour ... cette nouvelle génération d'outils dont font partie les "blogs". [It would be interesting for you (one uses the informal "you" in ...
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2 Feb 2020: Linky Roundup
Links: · 2 commentsApparently I'm not the only one who was internet-starved all weekend.* The RSS is full! Here's some of what it's full of: Item 2020: custom-colored matches. This is the kind of random shit you are supposed to feed your Bayesian link machine. It's not the ...
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12 Jan 2020: Pride’s Downfall
Whimsy: · 3 commentsVaingloriously tracing search engine hits has inevitable drawbacks. I just found a blog devoted to the bathrooms of Iowa City (which has gone untended for a couple of months, leaving a trail of comment spam that's about as interesting as a prescription dru ...
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12 Aug 2020: Recall Candidate Blogs
Politics: · no comments... should be multiple gubernatorial recall candidates with blogs; so far, I've only found William Tsangares, who is running on a "Recall ...
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9 Jul 2020: The Difference Between Shit and the Internet
Whimsy: blogular wanking, feces, Internet overload, shit · 32 comments... Hey! That'd be a great name for a blog! In some ways, blogs are the new garage bands of the 21st ...
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8 Jul 2020: Blog Birthday II: Return of the Sleazy Googlers
Meta: · 4 commentsIn the spirit of meta-meta calendrical hoo-hah, I will say this: two years is both longer and shorter than you think it is. And I hope you don't expect me to back that up with any genuine meaningfulness. While I'm posting fluff, a few details. First, a vot ...
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24 Jun 2020: Am I an Ex-Academic?
Personal: · 3 comments... a thread, loosely running through my favorite academic blogs, on the emotional effects of grad school. I've identified on an almost ...
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12 Jun 2020: That Explains Everything
Links, Science: crackpots, lazy journalism, nanoscience · no commentsThe commercial value of nanotech stems from the simple fact that the laws of physics don't apply at the molecular level. Shit! My degree is worthless! Thank you, Caroline Lucas. (link from the Life of a Fake Lintott) ...
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7 May 2020: Vacuuming for Losers
Personal, Whimsy: cleaning, howtos, vacuums · 2 commentsMaterials: Dust-bearing carpet with cereal on top Vacuum cleaner A couple old socks, and maybe the nice wash rag used to clean off the communal white board Dish soap, or hand soap, or something. Procedure: Notice that you've been harboring unsp ...
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26 Jan 2020: Link Fest Rama Lama Ding Dong
Links: · 3 commentsYou've seen it before (most likely via Simon), but now you'll see it again: the advertising slogan generator. It takes a tough man to make a tender Green Gabbro. My new personal motto is "Try Mild!" Tom Tomorrow cites the Iowa City Press-Citizen as a pr ...
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26 Oct 2020: Not Dead Yet
Meta: · 1 comment... Lookout! It's Blogamel! With his evil Blog! All the Blogs: Oh no! Blog for your lives! We're blogged! Blog me! Run for the ...
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9 Aug 2020: Don’t Ask Me
Meta, Whimsy: blogular wanking, email, spam · no commentsPossibly the strangest email I've ever received: From: xxxxx Subject: ASK GOOGLE Could you tell me more about Radioactive Waste Experiments in the 2020's or 2020's around Greeley school (now known as anderson school) in Minneapolis, Minnesota? ...
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5 Aug 2020: Sock Rebuttal
Whimsy: laundry, socks · 2 commentsHow fortuitous! I come back from a dinner with lawyers (preparatory for this biotech patent law mock trial hooha I'll be doing in the next few months) to discover that Simon has responded to my tempestuous gauntlet-throwing. Like any sensible blogger, he c ...
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1 Aug 2020: Panties Ready for Bunching
Personal: socks, trolling · 3 commentsToday I've been hunting down rants. Discarding a misguided list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters ever (Porky Pig made it in over Marvin the Martian? Apoplexy!) and a sanctimonious Fast Food Nation fueled look at butchery (I don't give a shit about the ...
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11 Jul 2020: I give in!
Human Fuzzies: · 4 commentsSeems I can't read a blog these days without hearing about someone else's cooking. Usually more skillful cooking than mine, too - I have a few dishes practiced to dependable edibility, but the rest of my chef-skills stem from two things: I watch too much ...
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8 Jun 2020: Two Things Not Math
Uncategorized: dreams · 2 commentsLast night I dreamed that I went to Kat's blog only to find a long and sorrowful post by ester describing how Kat had been decapitated in a skydiving accident. In maroon Verdana. This, I think, is the surest possible sign that I Need A Break From Internet ...
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5 Jun 2020: Guestbloggers Coming
Meta: blog status updates · no comments... or perhaps a fault scarp. Luckily, they all have their own blogs and can speak for themselves, so without further ado please ...
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2 Jun 2020: Priorities
Links, Meta, Personal: blogtinkery, soccer · 3 comments... to know is, have you said something clever about this blog/blogs in general that I'm forgetting? Have I ever said anything ...
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31 May 2020: ¡Viva el Mundial!
Personal: · 1 comment... in a loud off key while I read my favorite international weblogs. At least, I must do that if I want to watch anything on English-language ...
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28 May 2020: Link Your Thirst
Meta: · no comments... only if we can get small Indonesian children to write our blogs at three cents an hour. Speaking of sweatshops, I have two intrepid ...
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20 May 2020: Stack Widow
Meta, Personal: blogular wanking, Caltech, Ditch Day · 3 comments... it isn't inane. Which isn't to say that all college blogs are the same. Although at bottom every blog has the same underlying ...
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13 May 2020: Philosophical Questions
Meta: · 2 commentsSomeone's lost: There must be some way out of here ... Sure, but it'll take many lifetimes. But why would you want to leave, anyway? It's so warm and cozy here! i want to know what love is The one thing I've noticed is that people who run around tellin ...
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8 May 2020: Joys of Bandwidth; Stuff
Human Fuzzies, Personal: · 4 commentsIt's a background exhaustion you don't even notice, coupled with the throbbing stress headache of the soul that only comes from four-hour exams on which you do not do very well, that makes this time of year so special. So now, being done with all but one m ...
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2 May 2020: awooga!
Aimless: · 2 commentsYou know that feeling when you blow your nose and your eardrums pop out and they take all your cochlear fluid with them so your head feels like it's falling off and exploding at the same time? Yeah. I have that. I filled out one of those "87 idiotic person ...
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14 Apr 2020: Tax Time, Fun Time!
Meta: · 2 commentsConversation earlier this afternoon: "You can be fined $500 for filing a frivolous tax return." "You mean, like deducting money you spent on prostitutes in Hong Kong?" "Or like making the check out to Ariel Sharon instead of the United States government?" ...
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10 Apr 2020: A Flood of Someones
Meta, Whimsy: candy, Christmas, fan mail, på dansk · no comments... note to new arrivals from the They Have Blogs! craze: you too can turn this space into a spongiform advice column for ...
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7 Apr 2020: Someone Has a Real Question
Meta: · no comments... right now, like email our Mum, but if you're just in from blogsnob and you're confused, please make the appropriate enqueries. Our future ...
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: They Have Blogs!
Whimsy: · 6 commentsHe's an intellectual pot-smoking blowhard without a clue. She's a righteous geeky brat obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They have blogs! ...
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14 Mar 2020: New Toy!
Meta: blogtinkery · 3 comments... me to novel or successful implementations of multiple blogs within a single ...
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10 Mar 2020: Much Ado About
Meta: · no comments... some kind... I don't. Rigorous standards make for shitty blogs. The flip side is that sometimes, things send me into rant-mode after ... at a receptive audience. Anyone reading this or other blogs must realize that other people's thoughts can be interesting on their own ...
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9 Mar 2020: Today in History…
Links: anniversaries, birthdays · no commentsI feel incredibly lucky to be living through the 440th anniversary of the day public kissing was banned in Naples, the 211th anniversary of the first use of ether as an anaesthetic, and the 80th anniversary of South Slavia's approval of Italy's annexation ...
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22 Feb 2020: new brand of peanut gallery
Personal: · no commentsYeah, I should stop posting angst on the internet - after the initial rush of turning some emotion into coherent thought, writing becomes a bit like picking a scab, it's perversely satisfying and also counterproductive. Talking to real people is better; so ...
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21 Feb 2020: snide wastes of time
Links: · 3 comments... looks like a fun one - the idea is to visit a few random blogs and write something honest - nah, snide - about most of them. I like ... - "Five thousand word philosophical dissertations in blogs bore the shit out of me." Right on. accursed creamsicle - kinky sex, or ...
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22 Jan 2020: hoom, hoom
Politics: · no commentsIt seems like all the half-assed holidays are in winter. Except Columbus Day. And Veterans Day. There goes that theory. By all rights this ought to be a very trendy holiday, since there are infinitely many people who can talk about modern-day nonviolent pr ...
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8 Jan 2020: Fish-Blooded Bourgeois
Links, Meta, Personal: binders, highlighters, killing brain cells, office supplies, random classes, rollerball pens · 1 comment... Trapper Keeper fan sites. Also, those of you who are into blogs should fill out this splendid and worthwhile award-nomination form. No, ...
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15 Dec 2020: mo’ betta’ meta meta burger
Meta: Caltech, denmark, search requests · no comments... that might be more interesting to those of you without blogs of your own (yes, all three of you): To me, blogging is all about ...
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14 Dec 2020: filthy bloggish slime
Meta: · no comments... how many people are sitting out there, writing blogs in some obscure language that almost nobody can read? After seeing how ... "obscure" and "common" languages - so do you know of any blogs written in a language with less than 5 million speakers? They could make ...
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6 Dec 2020: tee hee
Whimsy: hipster ouroboros, quizzes · no commentsI'm The 'Which Online Personality Test Are You?' Test! Oh irony of ironies! I just can't get enough postmodernism, so of course I'm this same test I've just taken. Ho-ho! [via Francis] ...
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4 Nov 2020: C.B.C.B.C
Links: · no commentsThis Thursday, 7 pm, Tjilipop Cafe. Rantzausgade 28. Be there if you can, or just be jealous if you can't. Well, since I apparently can't remember what I came down here to blog I'll just direct you to these links which I've added to link-O without menti ...
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30 Oct 2020: too much ask google
Meta: search engine games · no commentsThat particular gimmick is just a little too much fun for an occasional intrusion into my blog; I've decided to give it a blog of its own. If anyone wants to play too, just email me, and I'll invite you on. It'll be a good wholesome waste of time that we c ...
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28 Oct 2020: speakin’ the heathen chinee
Human Fuzzies: globalization · 1 commentSpeculations on the future of the English language: a bandwagon I can't help but fall on to. I consider Denmark in many ways to be a bilingual country - sure, very few people speak English as their first language, but practically everyone speaks it as t ...
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: new blog
Links: · no commentsMy prodding has finally paid off: grid got himself a blog. That makes two (count 'em, two) people I met first in realityland who have moved in to blogland with me. Hooray! It's such a convenient way to keep abreast of far-flung gossip. And I'm such a lazy ...
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19 Oct 2020: trains
Personal: · no commentsLuxembourg is gorgeous. QWERTZ kezboards are crappz. Travelling alone, I've been compulsively writing stuff down and saving it to blog as some kind of substitute companionship, but out of sympathy for the people waiting for my computer I'll talk zou onlz t ...
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13 Oct 2020: More fun with referral logs
Meta: search requests, socks · no comments... person came here via this list [broken link removed] of blogs by Danes and/or people who happen to be living in Denmark. It's a small ...
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27 Sep 2020: good morning.
Links, Personal: · no commentsWell, yes, hello. My stomach's in a bit of a knot right now, but otherwise things are usual and I'm taking my shock and bewilderment in small doses, separated by me very intensely doing mundane things like talking back to the news and thinking about laundr ...
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25 Sep 2020: nonsense words
Aimless: · no comments... and I recommend that they remove the plank from their own blogs before examining the splinter in others. I, however, only gently prod ...
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3 Sep 2020: it almost makes sense…
Meta, Personal: · no comments... standard of Blog Quality. Whenever someone's choice of top blogs deviates from this standard, whatever it might be, they are accused of ...
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24 Jul 2020: I’m a Poser
Personal: · 1 comment... a while, and see if it fits. That's it. No more reading blogs at bedtime. This is ridiculous. If I read it over tomorrow and still ...
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16 Jul 2020: mistaken identity
Meta, Politics: · no commentsSo, when Andorus waved to the one person who had signed her guestbook, I naively assumed it was me, and IM'ed her about it. Which resulted in a perfectly nice conversation with absolutely no funny coincedences, even after we realized that I hadn't actually ...
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14 Jul 2020: argyle sock envy
Links, Personal: · no comments... in the morning again, and I've been visiting random other blogs, to scope out the competition and try to snag potential link-swappage. I ...