Monthly Archives: August 2013

Struggling with Technology

As we’ve been traveling so much this year, I’ve been looking for new ways to lighten our load or pack strategically. I’m not sure what it says that “strategic packing” is a thing in my life. It certainly doesn’t say I’m organized. Or, if it does, it lies. Lightening the load, though, that just makes sense.

In Albuquerque, visiting friends and family, my arms and chest were still in a bad way from my mole removals. I couldn’t bend my arm most of the trip, which meant reading on the plane was a real challenge. Bill loaned me his iPad, so I could read that way. It worked really well and I ended up realizing this might be a good tool for me. I have one of my own now, and it’s great.… Continue reading →

Some Links

First find your tuatara. If you read nothing else from this list, read this one. It gives a really great, simple explanation of how to sequence an organism’s genome, in this case a tuatara lizard.

I think this is a cool post because it not only shows the iterative nature of science in a single moment, but also lays some groundwork for understanding what genome (or even gene) sequencing is. For those who read this blog and don’t know how it’s done, but are interested in gene-related issues (patented DNA/cDNA, genetically modified/engineered organisms), this is some good foundational material, even if it is not directly related to those things.

The other two links go together, and are both about a paper that recently came out about primate infanticide as a driver for monogamy.… Continue reading →

The MetaCookbook Challenge

Yesterday, my friend Corrine said to me, “So, you’re not a foodie anymore?” It was only half a question. When I asked what in the world she was talking about, she pointed out that the posts on this blog these days are often about beer, less so about food. She’s not wrong, but the food stuff isn’t going away entirely.

Bill and I launched this blog back in June 2010 to be a mutual project of cooking out of our many1 cookbooks. After a great start in 2010 for cooking and blogging, this space nearly died in 2011 and in 2012 came back sputtering, then roaring, back, but with a rather different focus. We launched a new (and substantially more attractive) design, by Angelique Weger, showcasing this new focus in 0ctober 2012.… Continue reading →