Lego Star Wars

This game totally rocks.

Total play time: 20 hours
% of game completed: 30%

Definitely worth the $20 price tag.

It's shaping up to be ...

... another disappointing year to be a Mets fan.

Boo hoo

Not to be outdone in the histrionics category, P.Z. Myers gets his nose bent out of sorts because he didn't get a copy of Chris Mooney's new book as quickly as some others had. Oh noes!

I received Chris Mooney's last two books as review copies, before the simple folk could get theirs, and I also gave them positive (and sincere!) reviews. I'd noticed that he's got a new book out, but strangely, I hadn't been sent a copy this time. I was wondering what was up with that ...

Oh, I don't know ... maybe Chris thought it was time you actually paid for your damn copy? Of course the complaining resulted in his being sent a copy, so all is well in Myers world now, we suppose. At least until he reads all the chapters, because then he may "... have to be brutal." in his review. Oh good Lord, what will we do then?

Summer Camp!

Here we have free-thinker Richard Dawkins, who is so supportive of free-thought that he wants to indoctrinate children to think exactly as he does. Of course, he also argues that teaching children religion amounts to child abuse. Atheism is, of course, just fine and dandy, and it's the sort of indoctrination which is, I presume according to him, not child abuse. There is nothing hypocritical here folks, not at all. Move along.

Of course, Dawkins jumped the shark years ago with his horribly researched book* The God Delusion, which was summarily destroyed by Alister E. McGrath.

*Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. - Terry Eagleton

What the?

So my collaborator on a recent co-first-authored paper informed me that they received their reviews back today. Sweet Jimminy! It took exactly 30 days for the submission and return of the reviews. Here in agriculture-review-land, I had to wait over 100 days for the reviews of my submission to be returned to me (which I now need to address). My current submission has been in for 8 days. Wonder if I'll hear anything back in the next 22?

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Finished up statistics training this week. I swear, it's like the summer of lost productivity. Between meetings and training, I'm surprised anything is getting done! At any rate, we went through this statistics training. Blergh. Helped the wife with stats this past semester, so I'm not a total noob, but when the instructor started getting into SAS, my mind turned to goop. Sure, I can do most of my stuff on Excel, but I'm afraid that when I write up in my M&M that I used Excel, I'll get laughed out of review. So, SAS it is (besides, it's provided to us for free). At any rate, if anyone knows of a good SAS book, drop me the tip in the comments, I'd be most appreciative.

So I'm putting together ...

... my opinions on the whole "science and religion" hullabaloo which has made the rounds across many blogs lately, most notably (by me at least) on the blogs of Chris Mooney and Jerry Coyne. I've tried to follow the main players as much as I could. This of course means I've completely ignored the hanger-ons, the ones who can be likened to those annoying kids who would shout "Yeah dude, take that!" after someone else did all the hard work (be it providing a beat down, insult, what have you). I always wondered what it took to become a well known science blogger, and after reading some of the tripe across the net lately, I've decided that it doesn't take much. Probably just kissing enough of the right posteriors. Anyways, look for the entry to be finished in the next few days. I'm trying to equally offend both sides of the issue, so I want to get enough sources* together to ensure I do it justice.

*I'm going to do some serious Richard Dawkins scholarship here. I'm looking up as many websites as I can.

I'll pass ...

... on visiting "The Ledge" at Sears Tower. I live thousands of miles away, with both feet firmly planted on the ground, and it still makes me uncomfortable.

Yeah, uh, ummm ...

... I may skip the Transformers movie. The review is totally friggin hilarious. One of the commenters sums it up best when they say: Wow. I wish I could not see this movie more than once.

Hear, hear!

Don't waste tax payer dollars to kill Iran democracy movement!

Obama can help this budding seed of hope for civil liberties even more emphatically by altogether cutting the budget "to promote democracy in Iran," evidently channeled through the U.S. Agency for International Development. Ken Dilanian of USA Today reports, "the Obama administration is moving forward with plans to fund groups that support Iranian dissidents."

This financial aid is not only a waste of taxpayer money under these severe economic circumstances, but is in fact the surest way to kill that inborn and grassroots movement.

It mostly will be abused by expatriate and entirely discredited opposition groups ranging from the monarchist supporters of Reza Pahlavi to the members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization, and it will in turn strengthen the hand of the regime to denounce the Green Movement as funded by Americans.

I am never surprised at how our government wastes our tax dollars.

So my ASM General Meeting ...

... talks arrived in the mail today. If you attended the meeting and wanted to re-hear the oral presentations you could order them from Sound Images @ http://www.e-attend.com. I ordered them, and they arrived.

What a total cluster. Not only do I need to install a program to view the files, I need to open up ports in my firewall to give SI Mosaic access to the internet, and I need to install "Microsoft Silverlight". What the hell is up with that? Why these couldn't just be in a damn MP3/MP4/AVI/QT format is beyond me. Oh yah, probably because of "piracy". I'm sure most ASM microbiologists are going to throw these lectures up on PirateBay. Give me a freakin break. I need to jump through a million hoops just to listen to a couple of damn lectures, how pathetic is that?