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(Oops, was editing the original post and it got evaporated.) I’m a tenure-track professor! Assistant professor of environmental chemistry at Castleton State College in Vermont. It’s great, the students are really mature and friendly, and University of Vermont has a program to share instrumentation and resources so that Castleton students can do proteomics (identifying and quantifying proteins using a tandem mass spectrometer). I’m excited!!
There’s a pretty cool collection of everything
Charles Darwin ever published online at
this cool website. At first I thought
“Okay, whatever. About time.”
But then, wait a second, he made a ton
of drawings, and they are all scanned in and
available on the site! It’s totally cool. The
bird embedded in this post, labeled
Tanagra darwini (Darwin’s tanager),
is one of many many
drawings from The Zoology of the Voyage of the HMS Beagle. And, he has a number of other books with
lots of drawings. What a great collection of public domain stuff.
Via Marginal Revolution, via Ryan’s googlereader shares.
Wifey and I are on our way to New York City! We’re
meeting her brother
and his wife down there for a weekend of hanging out
and seeing city
stuff. We’re riding on the awesome
Cornell Campus-to-Campus
bus right now, which has free food
and wireless internet and big
plush chairs with footrests. Pretty snazzy.
We forgot to bring a camera (doh), but we did bring my laptop with a webcam on it, so here we are trying to hold the lappy steady and look like sophisticated travelers. Yes? Have a good weekend, internets! I’m on vacation.
Al Gore has a new talk on climate change, just posted on TED. Less “doom and gloom” and more “what to do,” which is a more helpful way to discuss things. I feel like we’ve been too focused on restating the evidence, over and over again, for anthropogenic climate change. By doing that, we play into the hands of people who try to say there’s no such thing. We’re justifying their ridiculous rhetoric by continuing the conversation of “is there a problem?” Instead of allowing Fox News pundits to frame it as an unresolved dispute, let’s just move on and talk about what people can do. If you care, then contact all those people you vote for and tell them so. Below is Al’s talk. Convenient timing with a recent (well-written) story on a lawsuit bringing out details of the Bush administration’s atrocious surpression of science, forcing the EPA to ignore data about CO2 and sit on thier hands.
Wifey and I had a great time at the
Ithaca Farmer’s Market
on Saturday (first day of the season!).
It was loads of fun. We met some friends there,
and ate some tibetan and cuban food, and then
the four of us bought a bottle of wine and spent
a lazy afternoon eating popcorn. I haven’t done
something so relaxing in a long time, and I found
myself wondering “why do we work so much?” And
then I remembered the looming pile of things to do,
and I lost that wonder completely. Maybe next year
will be relaxing.
An odd occurrence: I’m not a doctor, but I am going to make an estimated guess that Fruit Loops are not normally supposed to grow on one’s arm. I was going to have it checked out, but then a few weeks went by, and now it looks like it’s ready to fall off. The texture and rainbow-like colors are uncanny. Wifey’s been the voice of reason, and she convinced me it wasn’t anything to worry about. Probably just a bug bite, chemical spill, or some ridiculous combination of the two. It was a nice chance to use the “macro” setting on our camera, which, incedentally, works really well! To see what I’m talking about, follow this link. (Not an image I’d like to post on the blog’s front page…)
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