Search Results: class
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17 Jul 2020: Winnowing Money Plant Seeds
Food: Brassicaceae, foraging, seeds · 1 commentI picked a bag full of money plant seed pods yesterday. I've been enjoying the flowers and leaves of this backyard weed since reading Rebecca Lerner's post about it earlier this spring, and am hoping that the seeds will make an interesting and delicious m ...
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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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11 May 2020: Car Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Trunk
Politics: bicycles, cars, lifestyles of the privileged minority, privilege · 4 comments... my mode of transportation. If I am not in a convertible or classic car, people assume I'm on the road because I am trying to get from ...
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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 comments... logging roads. It's unfortunate that the "wee little Jeep" class isn't more well-represented on the rental market, because for any job ...
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17 May 2020: But I’m Not Dead Yet!
Meta: April fools · 4 commentsHuh, I suppose it's been a while, hasn't it? 1: I was really surprised by how many of you fell for my April Fools joke. 2: I do have a real job now. I'm an environmental consultant, and I can't be much more specific than that - not because I am tryi ...
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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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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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8 Mar 2020: Kiwi Lime Pie (with Bonus Cocktail)
Food: Actinidiaceae, cocktails, kiwi, pie, recipes, Rutaceae · 13 commentsThe mojito is quite possibly a perfect cocktail. Fussing with it never seems to generate significant improvements, but driven by the need to seem unique and creative, bars keep offering variations with pomegranate, green tea, lychee, or whatever else t ...
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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... make a long story short, I'm co-teaching a communication class to engineers and I want to introduce them to science blogging. I'm planning to have them write brief essays about classic science papers (similar to the Beginnings of Immunofluoresence), and ...
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15 Feb 2020: Line Spacing with the LaTeX Memoir Class: Why doesn’t setspace.sty work?
Science: howto, LaTeX, typesetting · no comments... LaTeX memoir class has its own way of setting the leading (line spacing) in a document. By ...
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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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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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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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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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13 Jan 2020: 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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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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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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15 Dec 2020: Geo-Memeage
Aimless: · 5 comments... high 44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing - I haven't been to Devil's Tower, but Devil's Postpile, in California, is another classic example... I'm going to count it! 45. The Alps. 46. Telescope Peak, in ...
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6 Nov 2020: Why Proposition 8 Hurts So Much
Politics: · 3 comments... singling out a different group of Americans for second-class citizenship. Each of those measures stung, but California's Proposition 8 ...
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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 commentsThe Where on Google Earth? competition has been going on for almost two years now, wandering the geoblogosphere from winner to winner. During that time, we've covered all 7 continents and a whole buncha islands, but we've revealed one great big bias. We'r ...
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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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10 Oct 2020: What Donors Should Choose
Aimless: · 2 comments... not only do you have a severely constrained budget for classroom supplies, you must also be very careful about what you ask your ... on both fronts. He can't afford copy paper to supply his classroom; his students can't afford to bring in that most basic and essentials ...
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8 Oct 2020: Donors Choose Update: Prizes!
Meta: · 4 comments... can only assume that playing with stream tables in science class will instantly turn the entire 4th grade population of this elementary ... into ignominious obscurity. And if kids in this Oklahoma classroom don't get some rocks in the next two weeks, they won't be getting any ...
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1 Oct 2020: In Which I Want Your Money: Donors Choose Challenge 2020
Aimless: · 3 comments... that science is getting squeezed out of elementary school classrooms. Teachers know that their students love science, and are determined ... a family of 4 on a grad student's salary". These are not classrooms where parents will chip in to buy the latest educational doohickeys; ...
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29 Sep 2020: Cucumber-Fennel Soup
Food: Apiaceae, cooking, cucumbers, Cucurbitaceae, fennel, recipes, soup · 3 commentsI haven't been eating many sandwiches lately, so yesterday, when I reached into the refrigerator to cut a few slices off of my "sandwich cucumber", it was... no longer suitable for sandwiches. It wasn't rotten, just decidedly un-crispy, and definitely ...
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26 Sep 2020: What Planet is my Clafoutis From?
Aimless: · 12 comments... 2 3 eggs, 2/3 c. flour, 1 1/3 c. milk, 2 t. vanilla, classic dessert spices and a pinch of salt in a homogeneous mixture. 3 Analysis ...
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24 Sep 2020: Carnival of Feminists #65
Aimless: · 9 comments... feminine performance/appearance debate is chock fulla class privilege: What neither of these groups ever seem to want to acknowledge ... to please a man. ... When women who are middle/upper class engage in a debate as to whether an article of clothing, or makeup is ...
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19 Sep 2020: 5 Minerals Every Dabbler Should Know
Aimless: · 11 comments... will be impressed. If you need extra syllables, try the subclassifications of clinopyroxene and orthopyroxene. Mica is important because ...
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1 Sep 2020: The Science of Deliciousness
Aimless: · 9 comments... of deliciousness, pulling most of his examples from classic French cuisine. The examples usually keep things clear and practically ...
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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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17 Jul 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · no comments... PhysioProf is on the job. The inaugural edition of the classic science papers carnival The Giant's Shoulders is up at A Blog Around ...
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14 Jul 2020: Earthquake Prediction Just as Tantalizingly Close as Ever
Aimless: · 6 commentsThere's an article in last Friday's issue of Nature describing some changes in the rocks near the San Andreas Fault that occurred in the hours before two small earthquakes. Here's the BBC's writeup; for those of you who can sneak behind the Nature paywall ...
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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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28 Jun 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · 1 commentOkay, I'm still trying to figure out why my del.icio.us link-posting script is broken, but it's time to get back to quasi-regular link-posting anyway. Christie at the Cape has a great post on archetypal female geologists - a counterpart to those irritati ...
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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 commentsGreetings, and welcome to this week's Carnival of Space! Before getting to the astro-goodness, Will has a question: How many of you get your astronomy news directly from the press release? Planets and Plutoids Everyone likes Mars, which means everyone's ...
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18 Jun 2020: Advice for a Mathphobe?
Aimless: · 25 comments... is a student who doesn't think that an intro science class should contain such nasty things as logarithms, a desire to beat them ... you to avoid linking in relevant concepts from their math classes. Most geology is more or less an application of chemistry and physics ...
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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 comments... of rubble in waiting. It is a delusion common to my social class that urging people in decent financial situations to make wise individual ...
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11 Jun 2020: How Crater Lake was formed, in four parts
Aimless: · 8 commentsHow Crater Lake was formed, in four parts Originally uploaded by erika_amir Via LJ geology. ...
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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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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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4 Apr 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Halite
Science: · 5 commentsI was going to write up a proper post on marine evaporite sequences, and how they relate to the deliciousness of expensive salt vs. cheap salt, but, um, I didn't. Hey! Look! Pretty picture! Enough salt for nine lives... Originally uploaded by aleske ...
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3 Apr 2020: Mud Volcano Tofu
Aimless: · 7 commentsThere is a village in Taiwan trying to build a reputation for tofu flavored with the local mud volcano. On the face of it, this is a horrible idea - blecch, mud! - although there is probably some money to be made by importing the stuff to the U.S. and sel ...
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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 comments... responsible for my reaction when the students in my intro classes spout it back at me on exams. And once again, I am not in it. But ...
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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... happened in my family since those cholera-ridden steerage-class Atlantic crossings. If I use stories about Germany or Scandinavia to give ... of you without Minnesota roots, is a generic term for a class of casserole. It typically involves cream of mushroom soup, and is topped ...
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9 Mar 2020: Borg Business
Meta: · 3 commentsFirst things first: Happy birthday, PZ Myers! (MOAR LOLPZ?) Next things next: The Borg Overlords are working on a replacement for that "most active/most emailed" thing in the sidebar - one that gives more exposure to good posts from us wee little borgian ...
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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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5 Mar 2020: Delicious Internet Noms
Links: · 2 commentsAvalanches on Mars Caught on Camera! -- You can see the dust cloud. If that's not enough for you, the HiRISE team has just released 75 pages of droolworthy new Mars pix. Whoever is in charge of cropping these things has a good eye for composition. This i ...
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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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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... Day from Twisty Faster -- "Women's status as a class of purchasable receptacles is never in question, of course. Valentine's ...
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12 Feb 2020: Jim Watson, My Racist Corporate Overlord
Aimless: · 32 comments... with all the advantages that brings me as a middle-class white person, and I occasionally find myself harboring unconscious ...
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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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4 Feb 2020: Why I Don’t Use the BPR3 Icon
Meta: · 14 commentsI'm a bit cynical about the revolutionary power of the blogosphere. I blog because it's a fun and easy way to share things that I find exciting, it makes my writing better, and it helps keep my ginormous slavering beast of an ego fed in the manner to whic ...
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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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20 Jan 2020: How to Make Good Cloud-Watching Weather
Science: climate change, clouds, irrigation · 2 commentsIrrigated land stays cooler than native desert terrain. In the late afternoon, when this temperature difference is largest, the hot air above the desert wants to rise, and cool air from the irrigation district flows outwards along the ground to replace it ...
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25 Dec 2020: Where on (Google) Earth? #82
Science: drainage networks, google earth, Where on (Google) Earth? · 4 commentsAfter a hint, I found Ron's volcanic complex. Which means I can declare the recent trend of oblique images to be so very last week, and return to some straight-up, top-down imagery. I would really like a geomorphologist (or at least, someone who can play ...
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18 Dec 2020: Grading Codes I Want to Give
Teaching: funny, grading, students say the darndest things · 1 comment... if you followed them. E: The first assignment in this class was to assemble (or at least think about) your own earthquake survival ... yes, it does give me the warm fuzzies to hear that this class has taken you on some kind of personal journey of fear and enlightenment. ...
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4 Dec 2020: How to Earn Your Diversity Cookie Without Doing a Damn Thing
Politics: affirmative action, anti-racism, feminism, let's all preserve the status quo, white liberals who want cookies · 6 comments... did "affirmative action" cease to be a description for a class of policies, pointed to by countless shrill right-wingers as the very ...
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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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8 Nov 2020: Can You Read Me?
Meta: blogtinkery, datamining, flesch-kincaid, readability, reading level, writing · 2 commentsThis little reading level analysis tool is all the rage; I'm fairly happy with my result. But of course, the little badge is just a snapshot - what I really want to know is whether blogging has really helped my writing or not. I found a WordPress plugi ...
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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 comments... female computer scientist who appears on the cover of the classic edition of the game. And also cat pee. Chuck the Lab Lemming objects ...
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20 Oct 2020: The Spinning Dancer and the Brain
Science: debunking, neuroscience, optical illusions · 69 comments... that can be seen in either of two ways, it's in the same class of illusion as the Necker cube and the face-vase. Your visual system ...
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19 Oct 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Zoned Feldspar
Science: crystals, igneous rocks, rock blogging · 1 commentI found this one on the side of the road, near the top of Sonora Pass. The zoned structure reflects some change in the conditions under which the crystal was growing, but frankly, telling you that this is feldspar has strained my mineralogy skills to the ...
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15 Oct 2020: Whatever Doesn’t Kill Us Will Provide a Nice Soak
Personal, Science: camping, hot springs, Long Valley · 3 commentsI went camping this weekend in a natural disaster waiting to happen. Seven hundred and sixty thousand years ago, a volcano went off in Eastern California, covering the western United States with ash and leaving behind a 15 km x 30 km caldera. That volcan ...
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5 Oct 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Berea Sandstone
Science: rock blogging, sedimentary rocks · 1 commentThe world's most generic sandstone comes from a narrow strip that runs from northern Kentucky through the town of Berea, Ohio, and then into Pennsylvania. It's an area that, 330 million years ago, was occupied by a large bay off the epicontinental sea tha ...
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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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2 Sep 2020: Why I’m a Geophysicist
Personal, Science, Teaching: college education, turning to the dark side · 5 comments... science education was not very compelling - a 7th-grade class taught mostly out of the textbook, and a vague impression of musty cases ... things that makes me excited about teaching an intro-level class. Since we're drawing mainly from a pool of students who don't intend to ...
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30 Aug 2020: Notes From the Books Precariously Stacked on My Bedside Table
Human Fuzzies, Politics, Science: feminism, feminisms, history, psychology, racism, rape, sexism, trashy novels, white studies · 3 comments... Londa Schiebinger. This is a fabulously useful overview of classic "women in science" topics. The book is in three parts, covering some ...
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29 Aug 2020: Another Year Older, Another Year Fartier
Whimsy: kids today · 5 comments... how out-of-touch I am with this year's entering freshman class, as determined by some random people in Wisconsin. You can tell they're ... NBA season has always gone on and on and on and on. Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson. Half ...
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29 Jul 2020: Understanding Everyday Symbolism
Politics: hate crimes, racism · 6 comments... bigotry? You are discussing the previous question after class. You don't think your friend's choice of Option 3 was a reasonable ...
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20 Jul 2020: Where on (Google) Earth? #35
Science, Whimsy: glaciers, google earth, volcanoes, Where on (Google) Earth? · 8 commentsI figured out Ron's vacation itinerary, so now it's my turn again. I have a short vacation coming up in a couple weeks, to an area of geological interest... but I thought I'd pick out instead a place that I will probably never get the chance to visit in re ...
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11 Jul 2020: Where on (Google) Earth? #26 – Now with 90% Fewer Coordinates!
Science, Whimsy: google earth, Where on (Google) Earth? · 11 commentsRon's view of the Deccan Traps had everyone stymied for a while... fortunately, he gave us a hint and now the crack pipe is circulating once again. #25 was perhaps a quartz or topaz on the hardness scale*. This one should be considerably easier to find; ...
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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 comments... and women of color that feminism is a movement for middle class white women to snap quickly into focus. Oh yeah! Look at that! It totally ...
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1 Jul 2020: Leaving the Ivory Tower
Human Fuzzies, Politics, Science: academia, book reviews, grad school, Phi Delta Qoppa · 3 comments... Lovitts doesn't really focus her study on gender, race, class, or sexual orientation, but she briefly invokes community integration as ...
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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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18 Apr 2020: Lollinks
Links, Personal, Whimsy: cat macros, psychology, test anxiety · 4 commentsI haven't said much here about my newfound obsession with cat macros. I hope the cat macro haterz among you are appropriately grateful for that... otherwise, I might have to start continue photoshopping weird netspeak onto scientific figures. And I was ...
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18 Mar 2020: Iconic Figures: Energy Release by Earthquakes
Science: earthquakes · 10 commentsScientists like stories with lots of pictures. In fact, an awful lot of what goes on during talks is more like a pre-reading child telling stories about the pictures in a picture-book than a grown-up engaging with the textual content of an article. Some ...
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1 Mar 2020: Hey Lookit My Tooth
Personal: dentistry, teeth · 5 commentsSo this was my morning: root canal fun time! I went over to Wikipedia's article on root canals, hoping to find some kind of valuable scientific lesson to share with all you gentle readers, but no dice. Instead, I find myself mildly annoyed with the art ...
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18 Feb 2020: Ediacaran Fossil Embryos
Science: cnidarians, embryos, paleontology, Precambrian · 2 commentsSweeeet. Paleontologists have found late-stage fossil embryos in China's Precambrian Doushantuo Formation. The things have a three-coiled spiral structure and look kind of like baseballs. Less developed embryos (blastulas, for all you embryology nerds) ...
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22 Jan 2020: Sediment Transport by Splashing
Science: erosion, gardening, geomorphology, rain, science is pretty · 4 commentsBack when I had a quasi-nice winter garden going, I spent some time thinking about splashback. After a good rain, the lower bits of my plants were always heavily dirt-spattered; this helps spread soil-borne diseases, especially fungal spores, and people o ...
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14 Dec 2020: Finals Week = Bitch About Students
Personal, Teaching: apathy · 5 comments... tell them. Or actually, I won't tell them, because this class is graded on a curve. No one on this campus understands about curves. I ... get on the final to earn a B, even though they "know the class is curved". Anyway, point is, I meet apathy with apathy. What really ...
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29 Sep 2020: Friday Rock Blogging, Mailbag Edition
Science: mystery rocks, rock blogging · 8 commentsReader JM sent in today's rock, with the assertion that it is an anomaly from the western Utah desert and not, in fact, the sort of thing you might find in a three-year-old's nose. There is nothing in the photo for scale, but it is ~3" long. Here's what ...
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21 Sep 2020: Blackboard Art Insanity
Links, Science: da vinci, science is pretty, visualization · 2 comments... aspects of anatomy. Thanks to my 8th grade drafting class my students have a reasonably decent chance of getting fault block ...
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11 Sep 2020: TA Training for Berzerkelers
Teaching: blog carnivals, grad school, teacher training · 6 comments... discussion sections covering what to do during your first class, and some general tricks. This was actually useful. Breakout sessions. ...
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25 Aug 2020: Am I an Old Fart?
Teaching, Whimsy: college mindset, old fogeyism · 9 comments... have outgrown faxing as a means of communication. - hello, class issue! "Google" has always been a verb. - I totally got 2 hits from ... organizations in the U.S. They grew up in mini-vans. - class issue, again Reality shows have always been on television. They have no ...
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20 Aug 2020: Blackberry Pie
Food: blackberries, cooking, desserts, foraging, pie, Rosaceae · 11 commentsI'm up in Seattle with Mr. McMoots for the weekend. While the Bay Area has its fair share of invasive Rubus species, compared to Seattle one might as well put the Himalaya blackberry on the endangered species list. We went for a walk, and as soon as we hi ...
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11 Aug 2020: Predicting Volcanic Eruptions Months in Advance
Science: hazard mitigation, volcanoes · 12 commentsVolcanoes are easier to predict than earthquakes. While seismologists still argue about whether detectable pre-earthquake effects exist at all, volcanologists agree that eruptions are preceded by the movement of magma from someplace very far underground t ...
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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 comments... is using his blog as supplementary material for his class on heat and mass transport in porous media; he has an excellent ...
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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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19 Jul 2020: I Read Wifework So You Don’t Have To
Human Fuzzies, Politics: book reviews, feminism, gender, marriage, sexism · 6 commentsIf you throw out all the bullshit and the intro-level patriarchy-blaming, Susan Maushart's Wifework magically transforms from a 247-page eye-roller into an insightful 10-page essay. I will now extract the most interesting points from that essay, so that y ...
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15 Jul 2020: Call for Interviewees: Women in STEMM
Politics, Science: women in science · 28 comments... teachers who will allow me to observe their science/math classes I expect interviews to run 1-2 hours, depending on age and life ...
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8 Jul 2020: Friday Mountain Blogging: Paleotopography of the Sierra Nevada
Science: rock blogging, Sierra Nevada, stable isotopes · 6 commentsNo one quite knows how old these hills are. We know how old the rocks are, of course - it's easy (or at least straightforward) to grab a chunk of granite, crush it up, and throw it in your handy mass spectrometer for a radiometric date. When dinosaurs roa ...
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6 Jul 2020: Isolated Wackiness, Shared By Everybody in the Whole Damn County
Politics: anti-Semitism, Christian hegemony, zombies · 4 comments... read by Samantha, confided "I feel bad when kids in my class call me Jew boy." [...] The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to ...
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3 Jul 2020: How Avis and the University of California are Destroying the Environment
Personal, Politics: capitalism sucks, environmentalism, SUVs · 2 comments... and the UC system doesn't include the "intermediate SUV" class. So the only way to get a vehicle with four-wheel drive and decent ... policy, is to rent in the "nonsensical gas-guzzler" class. (Note: there is a further class of SUV, the "giant honking monster ...
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30 Jun 2020: Friday Rock Blogging, Interplanetary Breakfast Edition
Science: Mars, mountains, Venus · 2 commentsPancake domes from Venus, blueberries from Mars, and a molasse basin from Earth... I need to go grocery shopping. ...
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31 May 2020: Weighted Words
: · 9 comments... for the idea and code. The output is enclosed by <p class="weightedwordlist"></p>. Optional Configuration Steps If you ... up! First, view the HTML source of your page: Does <p class="weightedwordlist"> appear? If it does, try decreasing the value of ...
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26 May 2020: Friday Cat Blogging: Holy Shit I Have Cats!
Personal: cats, Friday random ten, iTunes iChing · no commentsWell, technically, the cats belong to my housemate. Which means that I get to live with cats, but don't have to clean up their poop. For those of you who don't understand how excited I am about this, you should understand that I spend my entire childhoo ...
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22 May 2020: Of Note
Personal: blegging, workload · 2 comments... especially now that my time is no longer so structured by classwork... seriously, taking an empty day and turning it into 8-9 hours of ...
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17 Apr 2020: Dear ASUC Candidates
Personal: Berzerkeley · no comments... flyer. No, I don't have a second. No, you can't walk me to class. Do you not see my Science Face? I'm walking to the Science Place, ...
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21 Mar 2020: Thomas Kuhn and Big Historiography
Science: Berzerkeley, Big History, Kuhn, Lacan, Marxism, paradigms, philosophy of science · 4 comments... Anyway, I suspect but cannot prove that everyone in this class, myself especially included, needs a good thwack upside the head with ...
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17 Mar 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: The Giant’s Causeway
Science: basalt, igneous rocks, rock blogging, tourist attractions · 3 commentsHappy Green Beer Day! I am pleased to inform you that there are famous rocks in Ireland which you are not required to kiss, including but not limited to the Giant's Causeway. It was built by Finn MacCool in the misty dawn of time, something something Scott ...
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10 Mar 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Clay
Science: carbon cycle, rock blogging, sedimentary rocks · 2 commentsNASA's press machine is unbeatable this week. Everywhere you look (for values of "everywhere" limited to science sections of the popular press) you see the same pictures of Enceladus spewing out its watery spew - but all us cool kids have been seeing thes ...
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7 Mar 2020: Drawings of Scientists
Links, Science: kids drawings, science in pop culture · 5 comments... and have fun." I hadn't realized how pervasive the classic lab coat imagery really is. Also, vacations? But no time for that - ...
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24 Feb 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: I’d Rather Be Camping
Science: moraines, rock blogging, Sierra Nevada · no commentsI went on a Web of Science binge yesterday, sensibly followed by a filing binge today. Which means I'm set for a thinking and writing binge tomorrow, but I'd really rather be camping. Here's a picture of a moraine in the Sierras. ...
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14 Feb 2020: You Say Patriarchy, I Say Pahtriarchy
Politics: feminisms, patriarchy, rhetorical nit-picking · 4 comments... on top are the patriarchs, which is not the same as the class of all men or the generic concept of male domination. This is still ...
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7 Feb 2020: Oh Look, the “Jobs for Men” Section
Personal, Politics: advertising, sexism · no comments... the stairwells of my building into gender-segregated classifieds. The poster on the avant garde of the Jobs for Men section depicts ... because I have to leave soon for my 80% male engineering class. Today's just a bad gender day. **There were token testimonials from ...
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3 Feb 2020: Friday Seismometer Blogging: Houfeng Didong Yi
Science: rock blogging, seismometers · 3 commentsThis is a replica of the world's first seismometer, which was built in China, AD 130-ish. I haven't been able to find a good diagram of the internal mechanism, but there's some kind of pendulum in there, which jiggles in response to earthquakes. This moves ...
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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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27 Jan 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Caliche
Science: rock blogging, sedimentary rocks, stable isotopes · 4 commentsI've previously rockblogged about the crusty, water-soluble minerals known as evaporites. But you don't need open pans or puddles to produce this kind of mineral precipitate - drying out shallow soil will work just as well. When this happens, dissolved ca ...
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19 Jan 2020: Lecture Zero
Personal, Teaching: grad school, time management · no comments... are two things to do in the first class of the semester: establish the usual organizational details, and help people decide if they should really take the class or not. "Help" can of course be replaced by persuasion (manipulation, ... talking about, they'll be bored. Taking four proper classes is a reasonable undergrad schedule, but as a grad student there's this ...
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13 Jan 2020: Pretty Volcanokaos!
Links, Science: science is pretty, volcanoes · no commentsAlert readers may already be aware of the latest eruption at Augustine, one of several volcanoes located near Anchorage, Alaska. But did you know where to get the prettiest pictures? ...
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4 Jan 2020: The Privileged Huff
Politics: defensiveness, racism, white studies · 4 comments... with the unmatched confidence of (white, ruling class) individuality which dismisses any such pattern-identification as ...
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22 Dec 2020: All I Haven’t Said
Links, Personal, Politics, Teaching: ambition, Caltech, death penalty, liberty, white studies · 3 comments... white-collar job, and Tech is nothing if not chock fulla class ...
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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 comments... recent girlcott of everyone's favorite racist, sexist, and classist clothing retailer, the Countess is having a contest! Best t-shirt ...
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4 Nov 2020: Return of Friday Rock Blogging: Titan
Science: methane, rock blogging, Titan · 2 commentsThis image was taken by the Huygens probe, just after it landed on Saturn's moon Titan. Lest you think I'm somehow on top of things, let me note that it was released last January - but that old-fashioned sepia tone comes from Titan's thick hydrocarbon soup ...
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1 Nov 2020: Plebiscite Time Is Fun Time
Politics: abortion, California ballot propositions, co-op living, MediCal, teacher tenure · 9 comments... Benefits from Drug Companies A mediocre rendition of the classic poison pill: if someone proposes a new law you don't like, ask that ...
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26 Oct 2020: How Homosexuality Hurts You
Politics, Science: queerness, smart-assery, yeast · 3 comments... is the predicted offspring. However, instead of the classic a-alpha sexual cycle, the majority outbreak clone appears to have ...
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16 Sep 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Portland Cement
Science: cement, rock blogging · 5 comments... getting ideas from casual conversations and asides during class, when a professor lifts an eyebrow and says "you know, this would be a ...
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9 Sep 2020: Anecdotes
Personal, Politics: academia, co-op living, feminism, rhetorical tactics, sexism · 4 comments... from today, and one from this weekend: In a housemate's class, the GSI ("TA" - unionization brings better working conditions and ...
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6 Sep 2020: Berkeley Time
Personal, Politics: art, Berzerkeley, co-op living · 10 comments... process of being ridiculously early to their first class. Meanwhile, back in the House of Applied Queer Theory: There's an ... roommate is talking about a book she read (for some class on representations of homosexuality in film) that put forth in dead ...
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30 Aug 2020: Piles of Minute Aggravations
Personal: cars, grad school, i hate everything · 2 comments... got an email asking if I would be willing to give up my classroom key to an adjunct faculty member. Everyone likes to fuss about the ...
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21 Aug 2020: How Many For Just A Nice Relaxing Coma?…
Links: caffeine, guest posts, mind-altering substances · no comments... a marathon drinking session of about 300 cans of Coca-Cola Classic to kill me outright [this educational service giving me such ...
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15 Jul 2020: Friday rock blogging: sugary edition
Human Fuzzies, Science: crystals, guest posts, rock blogging · 4 commentsIt's rock candy! Actually, I don't like rock candy very much, but it's pretty. Should you disagree with the first part, you can make it all by your lonesome (but with an adult's help). ...
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25 Jun 2020: Friday Rock Blogging, Atemporal Edition: Road Cuts on the 5
Science: driving, rock blogging, sedimentary rocks · 5 commentsAt last, the real reason for yesterday's abysmal lack of happy Friday postings is revealed: I nipped up to the Bay for a couple days, to take care of administrivia (a potato-like mein allegedly representative of my face now appears on a genuine CalID card, ...
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17 Jun 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Beach Balls
Uncategorized: rock blogging · 6 comments... The ball should end up with four sections in a classic beach ball configuration. Stare down at the top** of your ping-pong ...
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16 Jun 2020: Garbage Day
Links, Politics, Science: Caltech, classism, Dianne Feinstein, earthquakes, feminism, flag-burning, rape, welfare · 4 comments... doesn't completely degenerate into trollishness. Also, class and gender divisions in the welfare system. Two Dammit, Dianne ...
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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 Rock Blogging: Gnammas
Science: Australia, rock blogging, Yosemite · 3 commentsGnamma is derived from a Western Australian aboriginal* term for a hole in rock, particularly one which is full of water. The one shown here is from Yosemite again, but unlike so many other features in that park, this gnamma wasn't formed by glaciers. Inst ...
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3 Jun 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Glacial Polish
Uncategorized: rock blogging · 6 commentsGlaciers look regal and calm, or at least, that's the canonical photograph: blue-tinted light refracted around a majestic pile of ice. And they basically are, but like most regal majesties, glaciers are also cruel oppressors who grind the peasantry under ...
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1 Jun 2020: Academic Insecurity Builds Character
Personal, Politics, Science: academia, brain in a jar, impostor syndrome · 6 comments... I think it ultimately leads back to what Emma wrote about class: it's helpful to have models. In particular, it would be nice to ...
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27 May 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Keiiti Aki Memorial Edition
Science: basalt, igneous rocks, rock blogging, volcanoes · 1 commentI've been trying this morning to think of a pretty way to illustrate the concept of seismic moment, in tribute to Keiiti Aki, who died last week at the age of 75. Measurements of the energy released by an earthquake are not, as a rule, photogenic. Seismic ...
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23 May 2020: In Lieu of Zurgh Urfle Blah
Links, Politics: kittens, networking, science jokes, women in science · 4 comments... aside, though, I maintain that it is way classier to contort one's sample abbreviations into obscure acronyms like DEI, ...
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20 May 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Gabbro
Science: igneous rocks, rock blogging · 6 comments... rock appears any greener than a dull green-gray, it gets classed as a peridotite. But, I place way more value on alliteration than I ...
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13 May 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Evaporites
Science: evaporites, rock blogging, sedimentary rocks · 3 commentsYour erstwhile correspondent is craving salt today. Mmm, salt! Even what we typically think of as fresh water contains loads of it; if you've ever noticed crusty white deposits around your faucet, well, that's the first step in a process that will eventua ...
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9 May 2020: Deconstructing Teh Funnay
Politics: offensive humor, rhetorical tactics · 9 comments... a familiar sort of dumb sexist (and in this instance, also classist) email forward, which included an instance of wryly described rape. ... humor theory on the internet has convinced me that such classification is futile, and certainly produces few interesting ideas for ...
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6 May 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Sedimentary Concretions
Science: Mars, rock blogging, sedimentary rocks · 2 commentsThe Earth Science Picture of the Day is often light on both "earth" and "science" (it is reliably daily, and almost always a picture) but yesterday's was a good one: bowling ball sized concretions in mudstone. Concretions form within a sedimentary rock ...
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4 May 2020: California Senate Bill 5: Freedom is Coming!
Politics: academic freedom, California politics · 4 comments... (dastardly evasion of building codes!) while lower-middle-class suburbs and student co-ops are untouched. And I fervently believe that ...
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2 May 2020: Monday Review of Stuff
Human Fuzzies: coffee, mac'n'cheez, movie reviews · 6 comments... slowness and drippiness. White Robert Reed: Marrow: Classic exploration-driven scifi, with a compelling universe and a well-paced ...
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29 Apr 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Birthday Edition
Science: basalt, Hawaii, igneous rocks, lava, rock blogging · 6 commentsI was hoping to find pictures of today's fresh lava at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. But there's not much happening at Pu'u O'o, and the most recent image update is from Wednesday: Two days off is enough for a shared party, certainly. And here's ano ...
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25 Apr 2020: Feminisms
Politics: feminism, feminisms, ideological boundary police · 4 comments... notice that they have nothing to do with: men, race, class, liberty, religion, teleology, biology, consumerism, violence, sex, or ... can be (and some have been and are) racist, classist, oppressive, bilious, homophobic, misandrist, even flat-out sexist. ...
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21 Apr 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Aplite Dike
Science: igneous rocks, rock blogging · 3 commentsLovely, but mundane, mottled granodiorite forms. Equally lovely pale aplite (quartz+feldspar) muscles its way into a weak spot. Stripe! Broken stripe! Awesome! Also, Joe has a Thursday Rock Blog up. (Update: also Kim!) The bandwagon, she ...
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18 Apr 2020: For Millennia, Google Has Spoken
Human Fuzzies, Whimsy: essay contests, googlefu · 3 comments... used for language arts instruction in elementary school by classroom teachers in the public schools. A joint Statement of Current Law on ... Council members are encouraged to attend the first class meeting to make up for the loss of a pet. A pet is a gentle guide for all ...
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15 Apr 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Sand Boils
Science: liquefaction, rock blogging · 7 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% of a football field) across. Normally, layers of sand and silt and crap underground bear the weight of whatever's on top of them ...
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8 Apr 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Schist
Science: metamorphic rocks, rock blogging · 12 commentsDon't'cha hate it when you have to do work at work? My style, it is the severely cramped! Here's a lump of schist. Also, check out the magma party at Revolving Duck! ...
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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... Bush administration to act in good faith when regulating a classic stronghold of the opposing party? Henry argues that [i]f blogs can ...
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1 Apr 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Hypertufa
Science: April Fool, rock blogging · 2 commentsMost geologists are familiar with tufa, which is a type of calcium carbonate. Tufa is precipitated from calcium-rich water in low-energy environments (lakes, ocean-bottom sediments, etc.) - and if you're anywhere near California, it's worth driving up to ...
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25 Mar 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Died for Your Sins Edition
Science: fossils, rock blogging, sedimentary rocks · 2 commentsLook at the pretty things made from dead marine micro- and meio-organisms! First, a ridge of limestone formed from crushed-up foraminifera: Second, a couple pretty laminated diatomites: Third, partial silica replacement of a foram shell in a p ...
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22 Mar 2020: Today’s Reading
Links: American history, rhetorical tactics, socks · 5 comments... Emma Goldman at War on Error, Class, Part VIII on cultural signifiers and Sorting Hats: So, really, the ...
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18 Mar 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Bishop Tuff
Science: igneous rocks, rock blogging · 4 commentsBut first: For shame, USGS! Falsifying documents related to the safety, or possible lack thereof, of a long-term nuclear waste storage facility! Someone will be getting nothing but lignite in their stocking this Santa's Birthday, for sure. Now that that ...
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14 Mar 2020: Middle Klass
Personal, Politics: academia, classism, money · 14 comments... 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 ... nor helpful to make assumptions, don't write the middle class off so quickly. Honestly, it reminds me of nothing so much as a bunch of ...
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11 Mar 2020: Friday Rock Blogging: Granite
Science: igneous rocks, rock blogging · 13 commentsPZ Myers was right to call for a more inclusive vision of Friday Cat Blogging, noting that 99% of the species on the planet are non-chordates while the Friday Ark continues to be dominated by a small number of mammalian genera. Sadly, his progressive visio ...
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6 Mar 2020: Diesel and Boobies
Meta, Personal: blogtinkery, cars, wordpress themes · 2 commentsOne: I have a new car, and it's a Mercedes, woo woo! Which would mean I'm moving up in the world, except it's from 2020, has a salvage title, and is ugly as sin. However, it does run on diesel, which means it could theoretically run on vegetable oil at som ...
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27 Feb 2020: Three Parts
Links, Personal: gender, grad school, memes, nudity, sexual tension · 16 comments... women as human beings, but not as sexual beings, or have a classic virgin/whore dichotomy problem. Men who see women as both human and ...
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: More WordPress Babbling
Meta: quizzes · no comments... it contains an ID selector, and the second rule only has a class selector. Without declaring my googleju rule to be !important, it was ... templates (based on the default WordPress theme) to use class selectors, rather than IDs. So here's my question: is there some sort of ...
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20 Feb 2020: A Lack of Synergy
Human Fuzzies: muppets, pop · 2 comments... sum of its parts. Which is disappointing; other flavored classic pops have managed to transcend themselves, at least a little. In ...
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15 Feb 2020: How to Ward Off Rapists
Politics, Whimsy: rape, satire · 7 commentsRecently I was reminded of a bit of old lore about rapists: just as vampires cannot speak the name of Christ, rapists cannot speak the name of Andrea Dworkin. Which in turn reminded me of the sorry state of the common wisdom imparted to women as regards ou ...
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13 Feb 2020: Someone’s A Bit Paranoid
Meta: cladistics, ducklings, family, fan mail, mammals, monkeys · 4 commentsNow tell me, Dearest Readers, what kinds of meat you've been eating lately: Protomonkey! It was a while ago that I was busy* looking up mammalian phylogeny, but it seems that our closest non-primate relatives are tree shrews. After that, there's some ...
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31 Jan 2020: Romanesco
Human Fuzzies: broccoli, fractals · 3 commentsMr. McMoots sent a link last week to a picture of fractal broccoli and now all of a sudden the stuff is everywhere. For definitions of "everywhere" limited to the Pasadena farmer's market, the fridge until we ate it, and the Internet. It's not all that ...
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11 Oct 2020: Weekend: Music, Injuries
Human Fuzzies, Personal: harmonic numbers, prickly pear jelly, righteous indignation, sugar syrup · 4 comments... enjoyed the show. Lead singer Robert Waller employed that classic bluegrassy style on the calling out across a parking lot side of ...
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28 Sep 2020: Movies Lately
Human Fuzzies: media politics, movie reviews · 1 comment... but I don't think "fair and balanced" is in quite the same class of claims as "100% juice" or "not tested on animals". New Campaign ...
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17 Sep 2020: Rhetorical Gatekeeping, Gender, Etc.
Meta, Politics: blogular wanking, feminism, gender, rhetorical tactics · 2 comments... interrupted all the time and asked, "sorry, I came late to class. Did I miss anything important?" And it seems to me that this kind of ...
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17 Aug 2020: Political Gear Extravaganza
Politics: · no comments... on a hunt for the One True Election-Season Apparel. The classiest thing on Cafepress so far is the Kerry's a Commie Camisole. Alas, ...
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9 Aug 2020: Weekend Recap
Personal: video games · no comments... summary of my weekend in a convention center full of classic video games and pinball: WHEE BLING BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP! Okay, so I ... seriously and attend panel discussions. On the future of classic video games. By the world champions of Dig-Dug, Pooyan, and Crystal ...
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26 Jul 2020: Bugs Bunny Goes to Washington
Politics: · 2 comments... must have original jurisdiction over certain enumerated classes of cases. Congress may make exceptions as to the appellate jurisdiction ...
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: Cruise to the Interior of the Earth!
Science: crackpots, hollow earth · 1 comment... for the Nth time and for all, in my freshman geology class. But if anyone needs a journaliste with experience in geology and ...
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25 Jul 2020: Education Reform Blah Blah
Politics: · 2 comments... with the one or two consistently disruptive students in a class. Of course this sort of thing gets lip service: Most educators don't ... the office or issuing an administrative write-up, the two classic measures of last resort when I was in high school, were utterly ...
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13 Jul 2020: Memo to the Guy in the Escalade
Human Fuzzies, Personal: cars, driving, etiquette, SUVs · no comments... parallel parking finesse. Cars larger than subcompact class may be prevented from using the pump at all until you have finished; even ...
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12 Jul 2020: Yay Class Warfare!
Politics: classism, health care, John Edwards, labor unions, trade, workers rights · no comments... love the rhetoric of class warfare more than just about anything else in political discourse, except ...
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13 May 2020: Life of the Mind
Politics: cultural criticism, intellectual elitism, intellectuals, unpaid work · 12 comments... possible contributions of a non-professional intellectual class are more properly thought of as civic duties. It's quite an involved ...
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15 Apr 2020: Oh Boy an Earthquake!
Science: · 10 comments... the snakes in Haicheng can work wonders. Snakes are sexy classics that are currently back in vogue! Sure, my house falls more or less ...
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7 Mar 2020: Investing With Your Values
Human Fuzzies: book reviews, investing, money, socially responsible investment · 3 comments... for marrying rich have stalled while I work through my classist antipathy towards the upper crust, I've decided to practice ...
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22 Jan 2020: Sonnet to Foraminifera
Human Fuzzies: · no commentsScroll to the bottom for the Sonnet to Foraminifera: In what deep chasm did your live form dwell; And when you thought, what did you think of truth? Three points for nerdy subject matter, no bonus for the occasionally strained iambic pentameter, and ...
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19 Jan 2020: Counting Dirty Words
Human Fuzzies: Congressional shenanigans, swear words · no commentsWas Congress really expecting a serious court challenge based on the distinction between "ass hole" the two-word phrase, and "asshole" the compound word? They're given distinct entries in the list of words you can't broadcast. I'm surprised the bill didn't ...
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9 Jan 2020: Ugly Duckling Fabric Magic
Personal: · 1 commentSo I finished my quilt top last night. Go me! It's not as impressive as I'd planned, what with the laziness and the scrap collection mysteriously short on colors other than blue helping to shrink it down to a small lap quilt with little overall pattern. ...
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6 Jan 2020: New Year’s Diet
Human Fuzzies, Personal: · 2 comments... is a delicious frisson of Catholic-style guilt in that classic New Year's resolution to eat better: I'm still working through the ...
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25 Nov 2020: Pie Is Fightin’ Words
Food, Human Fuzzies: book reviews, Iowa City, pie, pie shakes · 2 comments"Respect the art of pie" wrote Susan Bright. I wonder what she'd think of the diner in Iowa City I read about in the paper that tosses pie in a blender and calls it a "pie shake." No time to bake pie. No time to sit down and eat it properly with a cold g ...
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14 Nov 2020: Inherent Problems
Personal: cubicle living, domesticity, old fogeyism, quilting · 5 comments... dancing to lewd music can never top. I am partaking of a classic old person's domestic hobby in a culture that values youth and ...
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23 Oct 2020: Quicksilver: a partial review
Human Fuzzies: book reviews · 3 commentsNeal Stephenson jumped the shark on page 277. Over the moon and into some stable orbit, where a group of hasty sketches in an imitation Baroque tin can go round and round with the Bludgeon of Science History Hindsight. One wonders how many revolutions the ...
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20 Sep 2020: Someone’s Expense Account
Meta: · no comments... up to the mountains on Thursday, to learn how to properly classify and catalogue mud. I'll be up there all next week, too, learning how ...
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10 Sep 2020: Epic Immuno-Suppressing Battles
Human Fuzzies: · 6 comments... pieces about life's simple pleasures. I was unable to classify several items: A scholarly biography of Galileo - the exact title ... I thought the conversation was over. The Iliad - I met a classics major once, at Stanford. He was a nerdy guy, but humanities nerds are ...
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8 Aug 2020: Free Strip Mine Poster
Links: · 1 comment... U.S. Office of Surface Mining has produced a very classy-looking educational poster on the aesthetic benefits of strip mines. It ...
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2 Aug 2020: Housing Markets
Personal, Politics: apartment hunting, capitalism sucks, hey lazyweb, Los Angeles · 3 comments... may well be forced to buy in to the system; nearly all the classified ads in the paper are placed by such agencies, and it's all kinds of ...
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9 Jul 2020: The Difference Between Shit and the Internet
Whimsy: blogular wanking, feces, Internet overload, shit · 32 commentsThis was on metafilter, so you've probably all seen it already: The Internet Is Shit. You may not have seen plasticbag.org defending Fair Internet's honor. It seems that other people have also spent a great deal of effort crafting arguments on the relative ...
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13 May 2020: Anus vs. Mouth
Science: · no comments... and Deuterostomes: a real dumb way to classify animals. Maybe developmental biologists can tell the difference ...
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11 May 2020: No Swift For Me
Personal: · 1 comment... my last entry was confusing - I'm not actually done with classes yet. I coud still theoretically flunk physics and not graduate, and in any case I've got three weeks of class plus finals to deal with, and won't graduate until the middle of June. ...
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26 Apr 2020: Tenure’s No Damn Good!
Aimless: · 2 comments... on a Saturday afternoon, trying to finish my one remaining class from last term - not succeeding terribly well, of course, since I'm ...
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18 Apr 2020: Creeping Paranoia
Personal: anxiety, grades · 2 comments... I become. I just sent emails to all the professors whose classes I got incompletes in last term, asking them to PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ... and retreat to the mountains for the weekend with a class full of freshman geology ...
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5 Mar 2020: Orders of Magnitude
Personal: · 1 comment... I need a shower; I can't quite believe that I have class tomorrow. Good ...
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22 Jan 2020: La Loi de Qui?
Personal, Science: · 1 comment... French. Regardless, I think I just antagonized half a classful of French people by adamantly refusing to give their man credit for ...
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13 Jan 2020: Nouveau Royalty
Whimsy: · 3 comments... just now that I am the Queen of Wednesdays. I don't have class on Wednesdays, and all of my homework will apparently come due on ...
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12 Jan 2020: Orange Doodle Bomb
Human Fuzzies, Links: · 3 comments... their movements. Did I mention that I've been back at classes for a week? I have. And there was no snow while I was home, which was ...
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10 Jan 2020: Stick Up Your Etiquette
Personal: · 1 comment... awkward, and soon I'm pissed off about code-switching and class stratification. It's not that I mind turning into a screaming Marxist, ...
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10 Dec 2020: Dilemma
Personal, Politics: · 6 comments... processing homework, in lieu of a final; the prof ended class last week with a promise to send it out "probably tomorrow." I'm not the ...
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7 Nov 2020: Drop of Someone
Meta: fan mail · no comments... quickie, before I have to leave for class: The chatterbox makes me want to, well, chatter ... I guess. Fuck it. ... for quick sale" on Sundays at Ralphs, but I have to go to class. How long is it until I can just give up on everything except baking, ...
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30 Sep 2020: Tree Punching
Personal, Teaching: academia, course scheduling · 3 comments... might be very bored, so here's the schedule. Topics in Classical Physics - the title is disingenuous; this is actually an intermediate ... 1 pm Tuesdays, 2 pm Thursdays, 9 am Fridays, in a classroom to be determined. If we get one with comfy chairs I'm doomed. Er, ...
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19 Sep 2020: Incredible Finds
Personal: · no comments... necessary kitchen items. Our kitchen is done up in Classic Bachelor—splotchy linoleum, blandly finished cabinets, yellow ...
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11 Jul 2020: I give in!
Human Fuzzies: · 4 comments... in a fight between bizarre innovations and time-honored classics, the bizarre innovations will always win 3-1. I'm much more excited by ...
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6 Jul 2020: Red Pop Redux
Links, Meta: · 3 commentsGot a very urgent-sounding query in my email box today asking after Wildwood Red Pop, presumably stemming from my old desperate search for fellow Red Pop afficionados. So after a quick look through the querier's web site, which offers purportedly humorous ...
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1 Jul 2020: Queek
Human Fuzzies, Personal: slang, soup, words · 1 commentI made soup stock yesterday. On the one hand, I felt très Martha Stewart (and I don't care what they say, I still love you, Martha!), but on the other, the stock was made from leftover stir-fry and the dubious jar of red peppers a previous tenant ha ...
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19 Jun 2020: PE Class Revolution
Links: dance, exercise, guest posts · 2 comments... been training for during all those years of step aerobics classes. Now, a SoCal school is letting kids play in PE class. Lucky bastards. (But, frankly, it wouldn't have helped me then. I ...
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13 Jun 2020: The Universe Is Expanding
Uncategorized: guest posts · 3 comments... room and threatens to spill over. I don't think my physics class ever covered this ...
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20 May 2020: Stack Widow
Meta, Personal: blogular wanking, Caltech, Ditch Day · 3 comments... "Seniors Only!" save for a small twisty path we underclassmen can navigate to get to class. Which is great, except that all my senior friends have vanished ...
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23 Apr 2020: More Decision Theory
Personal: · 6 commentsThe other reason I rely on the decision-making power of serendipity, I never knew until I started studying the economics of uncertainty. It seems that in order to make a rational decision, I need to determine how my preferences behave in relation to statem ...
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17 Apr 2020: surface learning
Teaching: · 8 comments... to take responsibility for my own education, even when a class is less than ideal. When a class goes badly I just feel guilty for not working hard enough, as though I ...
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15 Apr 2020: Welcome to Fogeyville
Personal: hair, old fogeyism · 8 commentsPopulation: Me The hairs in the picture to the left are both from my head. If you are clever, and not half-blind, you will note that one is - dare I say it? - much grayer than the other. I actually think gray hair looks quite elegant. And when you're t ...
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9 Apr 2020: Ankle Exploding Hi-Ho
Personal: · no comments... walked to class behind a hefty guy with blue mule sneakers and turned-in ankles. ...
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5 Apr 2020: Starry-Eyed Youths
Personal: · no comments... around campus, sitting in on the randomest of random classes and asking questions like, what's the average class size?, are the professors friendly? or what about a triple major in ...
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3 Apr 2020: Dinosaur Lecture Hall
Personal: · 3 comments... that auditorium is currently the home of my awfullest math class - one of those ones where the professor began his career as a dusty old ...
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6 Mar 2020: Ratings: Today’s California Ballot Measures
Politics: California ballot propositions, Green party · 1 comment... conduct. Legislative Initiative Amendment. This is a classic ballot initiative - a quirky piece of legislation about a bizarre issue ...
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26 Jan 2020: People At My School
Teaching: learning, mathematics, seismology · no comments... anonymous (coughcoughthephysicsdepartmentcough). Alas, his class is right after lunch, so with full stomachs and drowsy digestive brains ...
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24 Jan 2020: Core 1a
Personal: · no comments... notifying me of the incredible opportunity to take another class, one which is worth exactly zero credit but which I must nevertheless ...
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14 Jan 2020: Goats
Links: · no comments... a classic probability question known as the Monty Hall problem. In its most ... most expensive goat in the world would be. The GoatWeb classified listings are all on the order of a few hundred to a thousand dollars ...
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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... are the only possible compensation for having to go to class. Plastic, plastic, plastic, and of course green rollerball pens and shiny ... - I've got an applied math requirement, a couple of random classes that don't do anything but add heft to my schedule, and one course ...
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25 Dec 2020: Wine and Jellybeans
Links, Personal: Christmas, molluscs, reviews of stuff, wine · no comments... would be that wine. It's very sweet and fruity, yet still classified as semi-dry... someday, when my sweet tooth is overacting again, I ...
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17 Dec 2020: Look! It’s the Internet!
Personal: · no comments... studying (I won't be getting any useful credit from this class anyhow) and I'm going to bed. But I'm still crabby. Boo. Hiss. ...
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15 Dec 2020: mo’ betta’ meta meta burger
Meta: Caltech, denmark, search requests · no comments... and have been playing guess-the-vaguely-described-upperclassmen. It's a fun game, but I haven't been doing so well at it, which makes ...
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9 Dec 2020: side couples square through
Personal: agnosticism, atheism, cookies, dancing, julefrokost, monkeys, religion, religious conversion, religious preferences, square dancing, unitarian church · 1 comment... people, and so got around the "boys have cooties and gym class sucks" problems with public education. I know it's a dying tradition, but ... it change you? The easy answer is yes - otherwise, I'd classify it as a random vision, and not a religious experience - and in a sense ...
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28 Nov 2020: I’ll take your course schedule and…
Personal: Caltech, course scheduling · no comments... the hand that feeds me. But they just took away all my classes. They merged Inverse Methods* with another, much nastier data analysis ... ranty next time. *You see, I was going to take this class next term, and thereby give myself some room to breathe next year when I ...
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24 Nov 2020: I know America
Human Fuzzies: · no commentsFurthermore we know America, we're at home; I can go anywhere in America and get what I want because it's the same in every corner, I know the people, I know what they do. We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness zigzagging every ...
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20 Nov 2020: liar, liar, dome on fire
Aimless: fire, Iowa City · no commentsI leave town for... well, four months, I guess... and so they set the big shiny dome on fire. The time before that, they burned up a bunch of stuff in my old high school auditorium; and before that, they closed my favoritest ever ice cream shop. C'mon, g ...
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17 Nov 2020: jeg var…
Personal: diary, words · no comments... and I was looking forward to utter crap humanities classes. I also had given myself "lots" of work for the last few dregs of high ... when I was voted "largest vocabulary" of my graduating class. Maybe this is a sign of higher standards on my part, but I'm inclined to ...
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14 Nov 2020: tuitive
Personal: · no comments... events and the afleveringopgave for my climate modelling class, but before that happens I've been reminded of a little backhanded ...
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13 Nov 2020: solen skinner så meget
Personal: · no comments... walked out of class today and there was this bright yellow thing hanging low in the southern ...
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9 Nov 2020: frozen hair
Personal: · no comments... I was in 8th grade, we had a gym class swimming unit in the middle of January. The pool was in the community ... the school building, and on gym days I would run back from class with my still-damp hair hanging behind me, since the hair dryers were ...
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25 Oct 2020: image games
Meta: · no comments... union suit, complete with the butt-flap, that I wore to class sometimes last year. I always felt bright and happy wandering around ...
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19 Oct 2020: trains
Personal: · no comments... Three years ago, I had spent about two days there on the classic high school whirlwind tour, so I didn't expect to recognize it at ...
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5 Oct 2020: Life in Copenhagen
Aimless, Personal: · no comments... city is about as hygge as a city can get, hygge being a classically Danish word that seems roughly equivalent to "warm and fuzzy". ... is fairly nice and has cheap rent, and I'm taking three classes, plus Danish. Since I finally figured out where to go to sign up for ...
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28 Sep 2020: Rescheduling
Personal: · no comments... lecture" but today it came back in full force - we moved class to Tuesdays. Hello, £9 flights to London. This is good. On the ...
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12 Sep 2020: I took a nap yesterday
Personal: · no comments... watching a national tragedy from a foreign country, but my classes haven't been cancelled, I have no real mourning to do, and the bus ...
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5 Sep 2020: EZ Math
Personal: diary, math · no comments... went to class today wondering if maybe my ridiculous lack of experience with Fourier ...
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4 Sep 2020: Needle in the Groove
Human Fuzzies: · no commentsFor once, I'm on the right side of the Atlantic Ocean publishing delay / this was just lying on the shelf / I was reeling / sexy paperback with a cover that smells like plastic / feels like silk / you know how it is / I had forgotten. Talk about style en ...
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: No more ranting
Aimless: · no commentsNo more ranting on the last topic, because I've forgotten what set me off in the first place. Heh. On a more random note, junk mail is much more exciting when you can't read it. It's so shiny that it must be important, and I know it's talking about money. ...
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3 Sep 2020: it almost makes sense…
Meta, Personal: · no comments... into Bad Things. Ouch. I'm going to be late for Danish class tonight, and miss supper on top of it, if I continue. More later, ...
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2 Sep 2020: redesign
Meta, Personal: blogtinkery, introspection · no comments... since so many of my shiny new friends from Danish class had left for Prague or Budapest or Hamburg or someplace. Riding the bus ... hugged the corner of my sleeping bag to my chest. Now that classes are going to start, and people are coming back to town, things just ...
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22 Aug 2020: One True Blog
Personal: · 2 comments... to realize that I only have two more days of Danish classes before it's the weeklong, pre-semester break. I want to travel ...
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21 Aug 2020: waay overcaffinated
Personal: beer, liquor laws · no comments... before I have to go running around town signing up for classes (geodynamics, paleontology, and wavelet analysis... probably). So I'm ...
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14 Aug 2020: rødgrød med fløde
Human Fuzzies: Danish, pronunciation · 1 comment... front of it. "med fløde" - we do an exercise in Danish class where we cross out all the letters of a word that aren't pronounced. This ...
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29 Jul 2020: leftover stuff
Personal: · 1 comment... of Copenhagen. I speak hardly a lick of Danish, but most classes are offered in English and I'll have three weeks to learn how to order ...
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26 Jul 2020: Red Pop and Hans Kirk’s The Fishermen
Human Fuzzies: book reviews, pop · 21 comments... about how Caltech doesn't offer any interesting hum classes. Or else I'll be gritting my teeth wishing P. would shut up. I went to ...