Benazir Bhutto assassinated

In case you hadn’t heard.

I’m certainly no expert on Middle East politics, but this seems like a pretty major setback for the region. Bleh.

Xmas blues

I’m sort of not looking forward to heading to my parents’ house for Xmas. Mostly because I’m not a big fan of hanging around with extended family and friends that I don’t have much in common with. It ends up being a fairly boring time overall. I should obviously use the fact that I’m switching to a new aligner on Tuesday as an excuse to go lie down and watch TV or something.

In other news, here are two completely unrelated links (via BoingBoing):

• IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR (not as offensive as it sounds)
• Just try to redeem this coupon

Everybody loves bacon

Except maybe this guy. Some bacon links, via BoingBoing:

• Bacon flowchart
• Bacon Cheese Baconburger
• How to Make Bacon Soap
• Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

Blogs I read

Here’s a list of blogs I read regularly (using Google Reader, which I highly recommend)

• Atheist Revolution
• Bad Astronomy Blog
• Boing Boing
• Penny-Arcade (more of a webcomic, really)
• Pharyngula
• Rate Your Students
• What Would Tyler Durden Do?

Enjoy!

Oh the humanity

Baaaah. So it turns out I made an error in calculating the grades in one of my classes, so I had to go into the office and fill out a bunch of paperwork to get the grades changed. Plus I’ve been inundated by emails from students asking what’s going on with their grades. I thought the semester was over! Plus, I’ve been trying to figure out what to get my family for xmas. I think I have it all worked out except for my parents… any suggestions?

Also, here’s a funny picture.

High-larity

I admit it. I’m a pop culture junkie. I watch Survivor (boo Todd) and Amazing Race (yay Phil). I watch The Soup and Best Week Ever. And this video is funneh.

Grades done

Hooray for my grading being done. One good outcome of yesterday’s power failure was that I didn’t really have anything to do except go into my office and crank out the rest of my grading. Now I have a little time “off” to visit my family for the holidays, get my talk ready for the Joint Meetings, and get my spring classes ready. Spring will be here before I know it!

Man Conquers Space

Via Bad Astronomy Blog:

The film Man Conquers Space looks like a documentary made today, and is peppered with archival footage from the dawn of the space age during WWII, through to today, narrated by the people who were there – the engineers, the astronauts, the scientists, the visionaries, the politicians. This film is based on an alternative timeline to the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo era of reality – it is based on the premise that all that had been proposed in the early 1950’s actually came to pass – and sooner than they expected.

Some of the video footage on the site is very pretty, and it makes me a little sad that things like this seem so distant and implausible in reality.

The word of the year

W00t. Yes, according to Miriam-Webster, it is supposed to be spelled with zeroes. There’s a hilarious video from CNN where some non-nerds try to understand the “w00t” phenomenon. Interestingly, the WordPress editor doesn’t flag “w00t” as being misspelled, but it does flag “WordPress.” My head is about to explode from the irony.

In any event, I’m w00ting because my power is back on. Hooray electricity!

So my power is out

As I mentioned, my power is out currently.  We had a bad ice storm blow through here over the weekend, and apparently there’s still about 5000 people in my town (of about 25000 residents) still without power.  I’m a little concerned about the food in my fridge spoiling, and a little more concerned about my pipes freezing, but I don’t know that there’s really anything I can do about either problem.

The power company doesn’t have an estimate on when the power is coming back, though they’re saying they hope to get power back to “most” people by the end of today.  Hopefully I’m included in the “most” category.  I really like electricity, and I would like it back, please.