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I was bored for a little bit yesterday afternoon, so I hit my StumbleUpon button. And it took me to the most awesome blog I’ve ever seen: 1000 Awesome Things. Go there and read the awesomeness.
Take a trip back in time with me. July 3, 1997. I had finished my first year teaching at Coastal Carolina University and was getting ready to teach (by command performance I might add) second semester intro physics in summer school. On July 3, I drove in to the university like I normally would, not suspecting that my and my wife’s lives would never be the same afterwards.
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Science professors are often reluctant to teach their courses online, citing the difficulty of virtually replicating hands-on experience in the laboratory. Nevertheless, the proliferation of do-it-yourself experiment kits that allow online students to do at home almost everything that classroom students can do — including dissect a fetal pig — has won over some long-time critics to the portability of the sciences through distance education.
Women Bridging Gap in Science Opportunities
The prospects for women who are scientists and engineers at major research universities have improved, although women continue to face inequalities in salary and access to some other resources, a panel of the National Research Council concludes in a new report.
Apes often make weird sounds when they’re tickled, and some researchers now say these pants and hoots truly are related to human laughter.
Most of us have had the experience of receiving e-mail with an attachment, trying to open the attachment, and finding a corrupted file that won’t open. That concept is at the root of a new Web site advertising itself (perhaps serious only in part) as the new way for students to get extra time to finish their assignments.
Lasers and business cards go together. I mean, how else are you going to find your beam while wearing goggles? Or see fringe patters? Or have something convenient and disposable to burn?
But, what if you could eat your business card? Mmmm. Meat Cards. I’m glad someone thought of this.
This morning when I checked my blog’s dashboard, I was surprised to find that over 300 people had viewed it yesterday. I thought, “What the xxxx is going on?” Generally Chemistry averages about 30 views a day, mostly people reading one of my first posts on different atomic theories. Yesterday there were over 150 views of my Alt Bier update. Must be a lot of Alt fans out there, right? Well, not really. It seems that my blog appeared in AlphaInventions. This looks like a site that shows blogs as they’re published in real time. Interesting. The post didn’t result in any comments, which I didn’t really expect anyway. I’ll be interested to see if this change in “readership” is meaningful.
I heard some sad news today. Win Dolan, who turned 100 on Friday, died Saturday evening. Win was in Linfield’s mathematics department, and had served as the college’s interim president and on the Board of Trustees. I met Win at church, where he made me feel welcome in a Sunday school class, and then chided me for not letting the others in the class know what I was thinking. Maybe he regretted that when I finally did speak up, but he never said so. Last year, Win delivered Linfield’s commencement address – possibly the best commencement speaker I’ve ever heard. If you want to see and hear Win, look below the fold.
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Yesterday was the last day of classes at Linfield. I don’t know why, but this semester has really dragged on at the end. Ok, I do know why. It’s all American Airlines’ fault! All was well until we tried to return from the ACS meeting in New Orleans, and found ourselves stuck. First in New Orleans, then in Baton Rouge.
Well, thankfully, that’s over. So, how did this semester go?
Sometimes, especially at this time of the year, I feel like I’m on a path like this:
This is El Camino del Rey, in Spain
As many of you know, today is Mother’s day. Today my daughter and I should be waiting on my wife hand and foot. We’re not. Instead, we’re going to the Portland Opera’s matinee showing of Aida.
You may wonder, what does this have to do with Mother’s Day or chemistry? Well, on the Mother’s day side, my wife gets what looks to be a beautiful afternoon all to herself, which I’m sure she’ll enjoy. On the chemistry side, I get to try and find one of my colleauges in the chorus.
Update:
Well, that certainly didn’t work out. We had just reached I-5, when I heard a “thump”. Soon, the red lights on the dashboard for the battery and oxygen sensors lit up, quickly followed by the water temperature light, and the needle was rising. I took the first exit I could, found a safe place to pull over, and watched the white smoke from the back of our 85 VW Westfalia camper.
I got out and watched a large volume of coolant draining rapidly from the back. When I looked into the engine compartment, I could see the coolant vigorously boiling in the resevoir, and found that one belt – maybe for the coolant pump – had broken, and another was off.
About two hours and almost $100 later we were back home, thanks to AAA. Needless to say, we missed the opera, and my wife didn’t get to have the relaxing Mother’s day that she deserved.
Chicago traditionally dyes the Chicago River green today. Go to Molecule of the Day to find out how! Now, if only they’d turn on a bunch of black lights over the river…
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