Athletics

Hey, when’s the Super­bowl this year?

ZOMFingFSM!

Dear Archie McPhee,

Please send me 20 fin­ger ten­ta­cles (fin­gers AND toes). This is all I want for Christ­mas, except maybe ten­ta­cle pros­the­ses.

And if you know More­house Farm, please ask them to send along these adorable Hedge­hog Mit­tens.

Because hedge­hogs are as adorable as cephalopods are awesome.

Thanks,

Josh

North Carolina

I’m off today for North Car­oli­na, where I’ll be doing some library research, some talks at UNC and at the Nation­al Evo­lu­tion­ary Syn­the­sis Cen­ter, and then a cou­ple of ses­sions at Sci­ence Online. Expect blog­ging to be spot­ty, and I hope to see you at #scio11.

Open Lab 2010

Con­grats to the blog­gers cho­sen for the Open Lab blog­ging anthol­o­gy. I was a judge this year, as I was last year, and it’s amaz­ing how much real­ly good sci­ence blog­ging is out there. Jason Gold­man deserves enor­mous cred­it for tak­ing on the dif­fi­cult task of putting togeth­er not just the best sci­ence blog posts, but the best col­lec­tion of blog posts, possible.

Happy New Year!

And may every year suck less than the one before!

Happy New Year from the BCSE

The British Cen­tre for Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion sent this New Year’s note:

Hap­py new year to our friends in the NCSE

For those unfa­mil­iar, this is the ref­er­ence our friends across the pond are mak­ing. And a hap­py New Year to y’all as well!

Go see my brother-in-law Off-Broadway

The AP reviews my broth­er-in-law’s play: Campy aliens no drag in ‘Dev­il Boys From Beyond’:

You can tell from the title that “Dev­il Boys From Beyond” intends to be fun, and the campy pro­duc­tion that opened Sat­ur­day night at New World Stages does not dis­ap­point. It’s a satir­ic, raunchy, all-male spoof of low-bud­get sci­ence-fic­tion films from the 1950s, per­formed with gus­to by the tal­ent­ed cast.…

Robert Berlin­er is all lock­jawed upright­ness as Mat­tie’s booze-yearn­ing, unfaith­ful for­mer spouse. “Your pen is as poi­son as the blood in your veins,” Greg snarls at Mat­tie, just one of the many won­der­ful­ly exag­ger­at­ed, back-to-the-1950s lines of the play.…

Notably intri­cate wig designs by Ger­ard Kel­ly, mas­sive eye­lash­es for the female char­ac­ters, and detailed, kitschy peri­od cos­tumes by Gail Bal­doni are all per­fect­ly in tune with the per­vad­ing goofy, B‑movie-in-drag mood. Min­i­mal scenic design is aid­ed by retro-tinged sound and lighting.

Worth a vis­it next time you’re in NYC.

Cilantro

Still awful.

Update: Link fixed.

No one could have predicted…

…that the fish biol­o­gist would pull a bait and switch.

Hey, look!

Rhada­gast is blog­ging again! He was one of the big sci­ence­blog­gers when I start­ed (that was August of 2004, so hap­py 6th blo­giver­sary, TfK­ers), but took a 2 year hia­tus. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of new sci­ence­blog­gers and new sci­ence­blog­ging net­works got me look­ing for peo­ple who I was read­ing back when it all started.

Any­way, my month-and-a-half hia­tus seems to be over. Between my wed­ding, and a gen­er­al sense of ennui about blog­ging, I did­n’t feel com­pelled to write. But now I do, so let’s kick off the sev­enth year of TfK in style.