Liz's Bloglet - Tuesday 21 February 2006

Two small religious colleges--one Christian, one Jewish--sharing space and learning from each other. _
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08:19:08 AM, Tuesday 21 February 2006

Is NBC showing NASCAR instead of Olympics everywhere right now, or is that a unique benefit of living in NC? _
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03:46:34 PM, Sunday 19 February 2006

This Sunday!!! (Sunday Sunday) _
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03:20:46 PM, Sunday 19 February 2006

How do you prevent more women from becoming firefighters, police officers, etc.? You refuse to hire or promote them. You compel them to take physical tests unrelated to job qualifications, such as requiring women to lift more than the Occupational Safety and Health Administration permits. You refuse to train women, subject them to hazing or hold them to higher performance standards than their male peers.

When they're pregnant, you cut their overtime, refuse to put them on "light duty" if they ask or force them to take time off without pay. You isolate them on the job. You make them change clothes in the same locker room as the guys. You give them numerous lateral transfers to the most tedious jobs and tell them to quit if they don't like it. You and your colleagues retaliate nastily if a woman complains that an officer or supervisor has started grabbing, groping, leaving violently sexual notes, regularly demanding sexual favors and so on. _
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08:27:18 AM, Sunday 19 February 2006

Duke study shows female faculty are under more stress _
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11:14:03 AM, Friday 17 February 2006

Michael Berube has one of the clearest explications ever of what academic freedom really is and why it matters. David Horowitz is coming to Duke next week to lecture us all on how evil academia is and how conservative men should all get A's in all their classes because they're oppressed, so this is particularly timely. _
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08:31:56 AM, Thursday 16 February 2006

Glacier Bay National Park. Newly revealed streams from glacial recession. And me. My research has suddenly expanded from how in-stream processes reform following disturbance to how they form the first time around. Which is a very strange place for a stream ecologist to find herself. That place is apparently Gustavus, Alaska. _
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04:13:46 PM, Wednesday 15 February 2006

Is Corey Haim's character in Lost Boys supposed to be gay? The two Coreys at Comicon (in 2004) sidestep the question. Ah, the Coreys, how we miss them (unless you saw that episode of Greg the Bunny with Corey Feldman). _
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10:52:56 AM, Wednesday 15 February 2006

Yesterday, I took one of my middle school mentees to visit the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, a free, public, residential school for juniors and seniors in NC with exceptional aptitude in math and science. She really hopes to go there in a few years. Even though it's just a few miles from her house, it is a completely different world from that of most kids in Durham. She was most excited that a)it's free, b)she could see her family on weekends but live on campus, c)they like smart people.

Going on the tour, 29-year-old-me really wondered why 16-year-old-me didn't apply. I have a clear recollection of having the brochures and applications for there and the North Carolina School of the Arts (similar concept, more grades, has a small cost, also has a college). I don't think even I filled out the applications to either of them. Quite a missed opportunity, but I'm sure I had what seemed like perfectly good reasons at the time (probably having a lot more to do with cross-country and marching band than with academics). _
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09:32:18 AM, Sunday 12 February 2006

Anne Lamott gets to talk about abortion to Jim Wallis and says what needs to be said. _
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08:48:04 AM, Sunday 12 February 2006

Dr. King once spoke about what he would have liked his own funeral to be like, and (except for the length) I think that this well describes Coretta Scott King's funeral. She was the first woman, and the first African-American, to lie in state at the Georgia capitol. That says more than anything else I could say about how far we've come and how far we have left to go. _
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01:03:29 PM, Thursday 9 February 2006

A pretty cool graphical representation of the 2004 federal budget _
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08:12:58 AM, Thursday 9 February 2006

WUNC has a reporter named Leoneda Inge (said like lee-oh-need-ah inchg). I still haven't decided if she should have changed her name to be in radio, or if she did and she chose that name. _
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07:59:55 AM, Wednesday 8 February 2006

Betty Friedan died. I hope that every 20-something woman who claims to not be a feminist will listen to the news today and realize just how much she owes Betty and NOW. _
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08:14:04 AM, Sunday 5 February 2006

President Creates Cabinet-Level Position To Coordinate Scandals The Scandal Secretary will log all wiretaps and complaints of prisoner abuse, coordinate paid-propaganda efforts, eliminate redundant payoffs and bribes, oversee the appointment of unqualified political donors to head watchdog agencies, control all leaks and other high-level security breaches, and oversee the disappearance of Iraq reconstruction funds. He will also be responsible for issuing all official denials that laws have been broken. _
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10:26:58 AM, Thursday 2 February 2006

I love Google Scholar for its flexibility. I still use Web of Science for literature searches when I know what I'm looking for, but Google Scholar is great when vagueness is involved ("I'm looking for a paper one of whose authors is Peckarsky and it was written in 2000 or 2001" or "I need a citation for high aquatic biodiversity in Southeast--fish, reptiles, bugs, whatever"). They are still working out some kinks, though. Today, I saw references with authors with the names "C. Bay" (talking about water quality in Maryland) and "N. Carolina" and of course, everyone's favorite author on US government websites, "F. Report". _
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03:51:09 PM, Monday 30 January 2006

We sang this hymn yesterday, written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Nazi concentration camp in which he died.

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,
And confidently waiting come what may,
we know that God is with us night and morning,
and never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,
Still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;
Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation
for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare.

And when this cup You give is filled to brimming
With bitter suffering, hard to understand,
we take it thankfully and without trembling,
out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world You give us
The joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun,
we shall remember all the days we lived through,
and our whole life shall then be Yours alone. _
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08:27:03 AM, Monday 30 January 2006

The Arbor Day Foundation has modified the hardiness zones to reflect climate change. Those of us in the Southeastern Piedmont have moved from Zone 7 to Zone 8. Guess I won't get rid of my gardening in Georgia book, since central NC has become south GA. _
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08:23:36 AM, Monday 30 January 2006

Meat and three An awesome article about traditional Southern eatin in Athens, GA. _
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11:55:50 AM, Thursday 26 January 2006

Peter Pesic, tutor at Santa Fe and from everything I've heard a really cool guy, has written a book called Sky in a Bottle about how we came to understand why the sky is blue. It gets a review in this week's Science which is pretty awesome exposure for a tutor-scientist. If anybody else misses the Program approach to scientific understanding as much as I do, it looks like a good read. _
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09:51:13 AM, Thursday 26 January 2006

Swimming and sex seemed a lot alike to me when I was growing up in Tuscaloosa. You took off most of your clothes to do them and you only did them with people who were the same color as you. _
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12:33:13 PM, Tuesday 24 January 2006

"...the actual experience of deciding about one's own embryos injected a host of complexities that didn't arise in abstract discussions about someone else's products of conception. Such complexities don't track with the classic pro-life and pro-choice stances, and they are surely lost amidst the impassioned political debates accompanying pending appointments to the Supreme Court. Whomever is charged with deciding reproductive policy at the federal level should heed these voices and understand the shades of gray that permeate these difficult questions." _
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04:45:43 PM, Monday 23 January 2006

Ralph Reed is going down? It couldn't happen to a more horrible human being. _
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12:34:40 PM, Monday 23 January 2006

I have always thought (and been told) that rhyming translations of poems are universally awful and tend to do horrible things to meaning in favor of rhyme. However, what Isaac Watts did with the 23rd Psalm makes brings out the meaning and rhymes in a lovely way. The text fits "common meter", which is, as the name implies, the most common meter for hymns, allowing easy interchange of words and music (Emily Dickinson frequently wrote in common meter and much hilarity can be gotten from singing her poems to the tune of Amazing Grace). The tune we traditionally sing it to, "Resignation" is always just identified as an early American tune and thus the text pre-dates it probably by a century or so. I have no idea what tune Watts might have written it for, but this tune is so perfect for the text.

My Shepherd will supply my need:
Jehovah is His Name;
in pastures fresh he makes me feed,
beside the living stream.
He brings my wandering spirit back
when I forsake his ways,
and leads me, for his mercy's sake,
in paths of truth and grace.

When I walk through the shades of death
his presence is my stay;
one word of his supporting grace
drives all my fears away.
His hand, in sight of all my foes,
doth still my table spread;
my cup with blessings overflows,
his oil anoints my head.

The sure provisions of my God
attend me all my days;
O may thy house be my abode,
and all my work be praise.
There would I find a settled rest,
while others go and come;
no more a stranger, nor a guest,
but like a child at home. _
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05:27:59 PM, Sunday 22 January 2006

I am a terrible biochemist! _
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06:50:43 PM, Friday 20 January 2006

Gay marriage is now legal in Maryland. The judge did some spanking of the favorite strawmen. (thanks to Mr. Bohannon for the inside scoop.) _
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03:02:56 PM, Friday 20 January 2006

Friday Random Ten
because I haven't done it in awhile and I find it amusing
1) Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning--Cowboy Junkies
2) Your Truth, Our Lies--Young Fresh Fellows
3) Tit Smoking in the Temple of Artesan Mimicry--Devendra Banhart
4) Spin--David LaMotte
5) Joking--Indigo Girls (absolutely rocking live version, by the way)
6) Girl of the North--Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash (I thought I had deleted that--it kind of sucks and I feel really bad for Johnny through the whole thing)
7) Please Don't Call--David Wilcox
8) You Don't Mean It--The Minus Five
9) Reuben--Flatt & Scruggs
10) Absolutely Bill's Mood--They Might Be Giants

Wow. _
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08:40:14 AM, Friday 20 January 2006

The man who said no to Walmart. Snapper, of McDonough, GA, decided to not dilute their brandname by selling cheap, disposable versions of their quality, durable products to Walmart. They now are only distributed by independent dealers. _
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03:38:34 PM, Thursday 19 January 2006

So Harry Belafonte was the keynote speaker at the Duke MLK celebrations and campus conservatives are annoyed. You can see the lovely poster they put up all over campus here forgive me for linking to frontpage.com. It is not clear that they see the humor in what they're saying, or if they understand that the sorts of folks they might like to see invited instead are the sorts of folks who opposed King himself. I'm all for having all viewpoints represented on campus, but there are 364 other days in the year and I don't see why we should insult Dr. King's memory in order to make these guys happy. _
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12:38:01 PM, Thursday 19 January 2006

It's no joke anymore Ariel Dorfman's attempt at humor falls flat at the Modern Language Association as the members contemplate the current US state of affairs. _
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08:09:41 AM, Wednesday 18 January 2006

What I did this weekend:

Oxidation is pretty:

Riverine wetlands:

Cypress-Tupelo swamp:

More pictures here _
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09:33:26 AM, Tuesday 17 January 2006

Brokeback Mountain is really, really good. I wish the fundies would see movies before they prevented them from being shown in entire states. _
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06:05:15 AM, Saturday 14 January 2006

Going to Alaska. in June, when the weather will be awesome _
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03:04:58 PM, Thursday 12 January 2006

My worlds collide: there is a reference to Remi's friends in the independent role-playing world in the comments on Alas, a Blog. _
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11:08:15 AM, Tuesday 10 January 2006

I finally submitted the revised manuscript for the publication of the first chapter of my thesis. The next time I see some fool online degrading the peer review system I will show him the gallons of blood I sweated to get published this article about the effects of stream bank management practices on macroinvertebrates. _
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04:19:40 PM, Friday 6 January 2006

When reading and listening to year-in-review after year-in-review, think about the folks on the Gulf Coast again. The south Mississippi Sun-Herald has before/after pictures. _
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12:05:02 PM, Saturday 31 December 2005

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