So tomorrow we will all know how many planets we have (for now) in the solar system ( Read more... )

I got sent a bunch of pictures of stalactites today, and here's my favorite (it's made of malachite):


( Read more... )

Wikipedia meme about the day I was born.

EVENTS:

Progress against colonialism: 1896 - Ethiopia defeats Italy in the Battle of Adwa, marking the first victory of an African nation over a colonial power ( Read more... )

I'm in Iowa. It's flat here. Looks kinda pretty, though. We'll see how I like the campus. I am nowhere near Newbury Park.

So I just drove home over highway 17 through the Santa Cruz Mountains this afternoon, and there is SNOW! There are snowplows and everything! I'm sure that CHP and Caltrans aren't nearly as happy about this as I am, but damn, I just drove through snow to get home today! There were little snowmen on the center divider that people had made while ( Read more... )

It's the greetest!

In Darwin's Black Box, Michael Behe originally coined the term "irreducible complexity", one of the cornerstones of the "theory" of intelligent design. In his argument, he makes the analogy of a mousetrap: If you take any of the pieces of a mousetrap away (spring, base, hammer, catch), the mousetrap no longer works. (And so it couldn't have been ( Read more... )

Okay, leaving this morning (man it's early) to go up to Seattle. Ya-hoo! I've never even been up there before; this will be neat.

I talked to my faculty advisor today, and set some of the things in motion for next year: I'm getting my office soon, and my new email account, and I'm looking through what classes I want to TA. I'm so excited!

It was my sister's birthday yesterday, and I called her last night. She recently got accepted at Cal Poly (woot!) but doesn't have any money to pay for it and can't get financial aid yet for FAFSA-timing reasons. She called our dad (who promised to help us out with college years ago in his attempts to get us to like him/live with him) who told her ( Read more... )