Travel, Tech, Thoughts…
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birding and blogging
Debi and I had our first birding outing last Sunday. A couple of professors at UT we’ve gotten to know are big into birding and took us out bright and early Sunday morning to get a taste for it. We went out to Brooker Creek Preserve and spent a couple hours peering through binoculars looking…
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sad, sad, sad
What has the world come to? I saw this story in the local paper today and it made me want to cry and kill the perpetrators at the same time. Basically a guy who is a bit slow but who is an avid walker in his neighborhood was jumped by a couple of young thugs…
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2 great sociology articles today in the NYTimes
I generally don’t post links to these anymore on here (though I do include what I’m reading in the widget to the right), but these two articles were too good not to post. The first is by Paul Krugman, who does a great job illustrating that race still matters in the U.S. The second is…
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something you never thought you’d hear from us 😉
Debi and I went to a professional football game yesterday – Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. New Orleans Saints. In fact, we even had $250/seat tickets for club seating. Here are a couple pics (from my crappy cellphone camera) as evidence: Here’s Debi at the game: Here’s a shot of the famed pirate ship: And here’s…
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hard-wired politics?
I caught this article in the LA Times today about some recent neuroscience studies illustrating differences between conservatives and liberals. Turns out, there are actual biological differences: conservatives don’t respond well to ambiguity and don’t take kindly to change; liberals, on the other hand, are very accepting of change and tolerate ambiguity well. Like the…
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vegetarianism and the environment?
Here’s an interesting news item I rediscovered in the NYtimes today: raising animals for meat releases more CO2 into the atmosphere than does the entire travel industry combined. This is based on research conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. I’m sure some of my regular readers will take issue with…
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dinner with the McDonaldizer
Last week I was gearing up for all of the orientations for the new job when I noticed on the schedule for Tuesday a keynote speaker who surprised me – George Ritzer. The non-sociologists who read this blog probably won’t recognize the name, so you may want to check him out on Wikipedia. The sociologists,…
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LA Trip D7 – Stan Winston studio tour; dinner with Scott, Shalynn, and Anderson
My Uncle, Stan Winston, offered to let my extended family take a tour of his studio while we were out there. I’m always hesitant to ask, as I know Stan is extremely busy. But most of my family was interested, so we took him up on his offer. What’s more, my cousin, Matt, offered to…
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LA Trip D6 – lunch with Scott; the La Brea tar pits
We thought we might be touring my Uncle’s studio today, so we got kind of a late start. Also, Ethan seemed to be coming down with something – he had a temperature and was crying for much of the night. We ended up scheduling the tour for Tuesday, but with everything else going on we…
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AZ-Humphrey’s Peak
Summit Date August 12, 2007, around 11:00 am Party Ryan Cragun and Mark Woolley Trip Report Mark and I woke up around 5:45 to get ready for the hike. Tom, well, Tom had been up all night anyway with the runs and vomiting and was semi-awake when we got up. For those who don’t know…