utenzi

This hasn't been, for me, the most ambitious weekend in history. Originally I was slated to participate in a science blogging conference this weekend. It was the second annual NC Science Blogging Conference and was held on Saturday. My trip to the Lemur Center on Friday was associated with the conference. I participated in the conference last year, as you can read about here if you're really bored. Unfortunately two things interfered with my attendance this year. First, Lee decided she needed to visit my house--finally. Since this weekend is a 3-day affair it was the best time in January to come over. As you can see here, Lee doesn't like to wake up early. I don't understand the need to sleep at 4am but she does it anyway. Weenie. The other problem was snow. We here in the south really aren't well equipped to drive in snow. And since it was supposed to be snowing almost all day Saturday on my end of the Triangle--I live way over on the Piedmont side--and I had no ...

Friday afternoon I left work a few hours early and went to the Duke University Lemur Center. This is the sign that greets you to the center. Until recently it was called the Duke Primate Center. The name change is apparently a PR push that Duke is making for a more visitor-friendly approach. The logo seen above on the T-shirt is quite cute and plastered all over the place. Since lemurs are often cute and always fascinating I'm sure that funding will jump now that Duke is pushing for a more public image. The education portion of this program. Lemurs developed from one common ancestor, a small mammal that hit Madagascar around 65 million years ago. Since there was little competition from other species, a common circumstance on islands, this mammal developed into a large variety of species over the years to take advantage of available food sources and habitats. Had Darwin spent time in Madagascar instead of the Galapagos, no doubt his theories of speciation would have used lemurs as t...

Here's a brief break from serious science posts. Let's talk some television. I watched a show last week that was dreadful. It was originally supposed to show in the Fall but kept getting bumped. The name is The Knights of Prosperity and the episode I saw was so bad that I immediately deleted the show from my recording list. I didn't want to take a chance on seeing another episode by accident. It was that bad. Last night I watched a half hour show on Steve Irwin that's named Crikey, What An Adventure! I'd recorded from Animal Planet on Sunday. It's being played a bunch of times this month along with Ocean's Deadliest , the special that Irwin was in the process of filming at the time of his death. I'll watch Ocean's Deadliest tonight and expect that it'll be quite interesting albeit sad since we won't be seeing anything new from Steve though it does seem like Bindi, his daughter, will be getting a lot of exposure. A week and a half ag...

A few days ago I mentioned that I was going to attend a one day conference on the topic of science blogging. Yesterday was that day and the conference was very good. The organizers (Anton Zuiker, Bora Zivkovic, Brian Russell & Paul Jones) did an excellent job--particularly when you consider they were pulling this off with a shoestring budget and a lot of volunteer time. The meeting was well organized--Anton seemed to be everywhere at once making sure everything was running well--ran on time, and the speakers were fantastic. After some beginning remarks by Anton about the conference and Bora about science blogging in general the main program started. The morning session was comprised of two lectures with lots of Q&A afterwards. The lectures were by Hunt Willard, director of the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, who gave a very informed and pertinent lecture on how best to approach disseminating science knowledge whether via blog, print media, or even press conf...

Ren and I are going to be spending the next two weeks apart. Tragic, I know. This has nothing to do with us and everything to do with work. Work... Ren and I both regard work as a necessary evil--she'd rather be sleeping and I'd rather be reading but nobody has offered either of us money for those activities so we still go to work. Back to the topic at hand: Ren's job is going to be more stressful for the next 2 weeks. They're doing a major installation which for a variety of reasons--that's code for "I didn't understand her explanation"--requires warm bodies in the department at all times. 24-7. Merely being on-call just won't cut it. So for two weeks everyone in her department will be working 12 hour on/off shifts. Ren needs at least 8 hours, preferably more, sleep a night. Between driving to and from work, feeding herself and those other necessary activities, she'll only have 10 hours open and her kids and the fur patrol (4 cats and a dog) w...