Category: General

A significant portion of my childhood was spent camping. My father loves camping. He has since before I was born. My parents went camping every available weekend. After I was born, the pace didn’t slow down, and as I grew up every school break was certain to be spent camping.

I’ve logged a lot of hours camping. I’ve been on camping trips that were two months long. I’ve camped in every state this side of Texas.

Nonetheless, when I moved out to go to university, my camping days mostly stopped. The span between trips went from being measured in weeks to being measured in years.
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I’ve been enjoying the Natwest ODI cricket series between England and India and decided that I needed to get more active.

My choices: See if I could join an Arizona Cricket league, or break out the darts board for the first time in 15 years,

The darts board won. I can’t see myself standing at the wicket waiting to be pummeled by a legspinner.

Technorati Tags: Blog

It’s been a while since I blogged any paleontology news… Families: 260 Million years, and counting.

Reuters => Fossil shows parents doted 260 million years ago

LONDON (Reuters) – Parents have been doting over their offspring for a very, very long time, it seems. A South African fossil suggests pelycosaurs — intermediates between reptiles and mammals that lived in the Permian Period before the rise of dinosaurs — may have been caring parents 260 million years ago, scientists said on Wednesday.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Paleontology, Science

So we’re going through the school lunch menu for October and notice that October 1 is designated “National Vegetarian Day” and, more importantly, none of the choices for lunch contain meat. Coincidence? I think not. No other day in the month contains completely meatless choices.

Now, that’s all fine and dandy, I suppose, but where’s national carnivore day?

Besides, what kind of message does this send to the kids? Is the school* endorsing vegetarianism? If so, they why not embrace it and always have at least one vegetarian choice? If not, are they just patronizing vegetarians? If there are any parents inflicting a vegetarian diet on their children, this will be the one day all year that they can eat a school lunch? Are those parents even likely to be looking at the school lunch menu considering its usual fare? Where’s the logic in this?

Even I, a devout omnivore, can eat the occasional vegetarian lunch. It proves nothing.

*Actually, my daughter’s school contracts to have their lunches provided by a Scottsdale school district, so it’s not really her school’s choice.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Kids, School

BBC => Slitheen For Sarah Jane

Raxacoricofallapatorians return for spin-off show.

New CBBC series The Sarah Jane Adventures will feature the return of some familiar Doctor Who enemies when it debuts later this month.

The Slitheen, a family of scheming monsters first seen in Aliens of London / World War Three are back – and out for revenge.

RTD… Russell… Russ… listen… repeat after me: “We hate Slitheen. We hate Slitheen! We hate Slitheen!!!!

In case I wasn’t clear: WE HATE THE SLITHEEN!!!!

They are the lamest DW villain ever. We know you spent some money on the costumes, but send them to Blackpool already and be done with them – forever.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who, Television, UK, Video

Our new playset for the kids was installed today. It’s not quite finished, a circular slide is still on backorder but for now it’s done.

It’s taller than I thought, though. It’s actually taller than my house in the back, which mean the little sh*ts who live in the apartments can easily see it. I wonder how long it will be before they try to get into my yard?

I also wonder how long until it shows up in Google Earth?

Technorati Tags: Arizona, Blog, Family

Poor old Apple TV, always a bridesmaid, never a bride…

Still, now that Apple has built up the infrastructure in iTunes to allow the new iPods to purchase video from the Internet and sync it back to your iTunes library, I wonder if that will also be a quiet upgrade for the Apple TV anytime soon? After all, it’s just a fixed, big iPod for the entertainment center.

I gather the first iteration of the iTunes Wi-Fi store will be music only, but how long will that last? Since most of the new iPod models can handle video, it has to be just a matter of time.

Not that I’ll ever buy anything for my Apple TV, since it’s perpetually full of DVD rips waiting to be watched. (My list of movies now only reaches the letter “B” before it runs out of room.)

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple TV, Blog, Computer, iPod, iTunes, Movies, Television, Video

BBC – Press Office => Doctor Who: Series five

After months of media speculation, BBC One can confirm that the Bafta-award winning Doctor Who will return for a fifth series in spring 2010.

That’s the good news… the bad news is that 2009 will not have a regular series, just three specials. Apparently to accommodate David Tennant performing Hamlet.

On the other hand, perhaps that’s great news… if they’re going to accommodate him for Hamlet, perhaps that means it was a way to keep him onboard as the Doctor for the 2010 series. No announcement has been made, however.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Doctor Who, Dr Who, Television, UK, Video

As I mentioned earlier, blogger PZ Myers was being sued for calling someone’s crackpot science… well, he called it “crackpot.”

The good news is in, the suit is being dropped, presumably because it didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Saudi Arabia.

Since “crackpot” means eccentric or impractical, I guess the suit was crackpot, too.

This is an appalling development, which was brought to my attention via Richarddawkins.net (but ultimately came from Boing Boing)

PZ Myers sued for a negative review in a blog post
by Boing Boing

PZ Myers, Ph.D., Division of Science & Math, University of Minnesota, Morris, says: I’m in an interesting situation. I wrote a very negative review of two versions of a book [Lifecode: The Theory of Biological Self Organization] by Stuart Pivar here and here. He claims to have a revolutionary idea for how evolution works, but his ideas have no connection to reality, and these lovely elaborate drawings he made look nothing at all like actual embryos. The bottom line is that I said his work was more about the evolution of balloon animals than biology.

His response is to sue Seed Media and Paul Z. Myers for “Assault, Libel, and Slander.”

You can read the reviews and see that this suit needs to be laughed out of the court, and the plaintiff given a good, swift kick in the ass if for nothing else than wasting the court’s time. The guy wrote a book, and a qualified professional didn’t like his premise: deal with it. (It wouldn’t matter if he was an unqualified reviewer, it’s his opinion and he’s both entitled to it and has the right to expound it.)

What concerns me here is that, it would appear that Prof. Myers might have to expend money before this even reaches the ridiculousness test phase. That is clearly injustice.

PZ Myers maintains the Pharyngula blog.

Reviews and docket:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/lifecode_from_egg_to_embryo_by.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/lifecode.php
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-nysdce/case_no-1:2007cv07334/case_id-311649/%3E

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