It’s a flocculent sort of day

It was snowing lightly this morning, with relatively little wind, and the flakes just seemed to have a kind of magnetic attraction to the trees. So instead of our usual landscape with skeletal black branches everywhere, we got blue skies and black skeletons limned with crystalline white.

IMG_0290

It was actually much more spectacular earlier this morning, when I was off on a walk, and I took these pictures around noon, when the sun was beginning to melt away some of the effect. But here are some branches that were in the shade and still had the full laciness.

IMG_0293

Local author does good

Chrissy Kolaya, who teaches writing here at UMM, go a nice write-up for her new book in the Chicago Tribune. Her book is Charmed Particles: A Novel, and it’s about people and super-colliders.

You should read it, and then you should come to the Cafe Scientifique in Morris on 26 January, because she’s the speaker and she’ll be telling us all about it, and taking questions. It’ll be a great start to a new semester!

Anita Sarkeesian reviews Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I like the review, because it’s exactly how I felt about the movie.

One difference in our backgrounds, though: I started out as a big Star Wars fan. Loved the first one. Saw the second one and thought it was even better, because it was adding more depth and complexity to a fairly simple story. Saw the third and realized it was all going down the toilet in the name of marketing. And don’t even mention the prequels to me.

Of course, the best summary of the recent movie, even better than Sarkeesian’s, is this one.

Who’s the idiot now?

Steve Harvey has long been notorious for saying stupid things.

Emmy Award-winning TV host and best-selling author Steve Harvey advises women not to date atheists because you don’t know where the man’s “moral barometer” is, and says that as far as someone not believing in God, “well, then, to me you’re an idiot.”

Harvey, who also hosts a radio show and started his career in stand-up comedy, went on to say that Darwinism is essentially nonsense because he doesn’t think the universe “spun out of a gastrous ball and then all of a sudden we were evolved from monkeys.” If that were true, he says, then “why we still got monkeys?”

Yep, that’s his argument, the dumbest argument against evolution ever…although at least he spiced it up with that “gastrous ball” comment. So now I am full of schadenfreude at his latest gaffe.

[Read more…]

Liven up that Christmas get-together!

I’m more than a little tired of Christmas carols now — to be honest, I was exasperated around Halloween — so I don’t know if changing the lyrics is quite enough. But maybe it will work for you: here’s a gallery of scientific songs of praise, mostly familiar Christmas carols with fresh words.

I think I’ll stick with my usual medley of Nine Inch Nails songs of angst and frustration.

How to be one of the cool kids

NPR is giving lessons in how to do the Minnesota accent

. I should probably practice so I can blend in better.

One nice thing about it is that they’re emphasizing the subtleties–it’s inspired by the television series, Fargo, but all the people in that show have the extreme version of the local accent — they all sound like they’re straight out of the Iron Range, way up north. Around where I live, the accent is recognizable but much, much softer.

We should all work on our accents while I struggle with a few other things: it’s a heavy grading day for me, and my computer is still mostly dead and unreliable (I’m pecking this out on my iPad, which is totally unsuitable for writing of any length). My goal is to get all the exams graded today, and reward myself wit the local showing of the new Star Wars movie.

Don’t worry, my keyboardless state means I won’t be able to dump spoilers on you. I’ll be reduced to short texting style one-liners by then. “WORST STAR WARS EVER.”