09:08 – One thing about biology is that living things do things in their own time, and there’s little or nothing we can do to change that. That makes writing a biology lab manual a bit different from writing one for chemistry or nearly any other science. With chemisty, I could design self-standing experiments that fit in convenient cubbyholes. With biology, it’s often a matter of hurry-up-and-wait.
For example, as I was working on protozoa labs yesterday, it occurred to me that I needed to start a microcosm series of labs very early in the semester, both because the life cycles of microcosms run several weeks to several months, and because I could use those microcosms at various stages in their life cycles for lab sessions later in the semester. So I just added a group of labs in a chapter before Group I, which I titled First Semester Project. We’ll create two kinds of microcosms: open, aquarium-like microcosms where we’ll grow pond life, including protozoa that we’ll use later, and closed Winogradsky columns that we’ll observe over the course of the whole first semester, if not longer.
@RBT: I just wanted to say thanks!!! For two things.
1. Very interesting column. I found it by googling something about the quality of DVD-R burns, years ago, bookmarked it, and read it daily since then. (BTW, the new format is actually better IMO because it allows comments, and some of them are intelligent.)
2. I read your theory about Reed Hastings being smarter than he gets credit for, a couple of weeks ago. You got me thinking. Soon after, Netflix crashed from $115 to $75, I bought, and now I’m 19.69% ahead 🙂 You were quite right on that one.
(I just hope you’re wrong about the EU/euro/Greece part, because that’s too scary…)
I think the probability that I’m wrong about the euro situation is something less than 0.01. The timing isn’t certain, of course, but the ultimate outcome is about as certain as anything with this many variables can be.
Given the only two options remaining–collapse or inflation–I suspect the eurocrats will choose inflation as the lesser of two evils, although Germany’s deep concern about repeating the Weimar hyperinflation may mean they continue refusing to inflate the euro until it’s too late and Italy/Spain/Belgium/France topple.
Of course, the US has gone the inflation route with so-called quantitative easing, and we’re going to end up paying big-time for that, albeit not just yet.
DIY epidemiology:
http://gizmodo.com/5856526/genius-parents-are-organizing-pox-parties-on-facebook
Football pictures at this link.
http://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com
A number of years ago I read of deaf parents who *deliberately* tried to arrange it that their own kids would be born or become deaf. How sick.
I read about that, too, Greg, and it is very sick and twisted. They apparently got sucked in by the same neo-Marxist virus of radicalism no matter the issue that has decimated academia, the media and government over the last half-century. This is akin to the morbidly obese radicals who wish to force us to celebrate their great beauty and they should not have to pay for an extra seat on the plane and we should be overjoyed that they are a burden on the public health care system. Notice, though, that the evil smokers have been thoroughly cowed.
This virus has a been long-lived and pernicious and it has also clearly infected a number of libertarians, as well, over the years. What the Left couldn’t do through overt warfare, they have done from within the gates.