It’s been a while since I have written anything about Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire. I have been struggling to figure out what to talk about. Then the other day Kelly and I were talking, and it occurred to me that Donald Trump and Cersei Lannister actually have quite a bit in common.
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Follow my logic, if you will.
In the time since our last posts, so much has happened in our lives, and in the greater world, and in the world of GoT, that it feels truly overwhelming. I can’t keep up with it all. If I was to try to describe everything in great detail, it would take multiple posts of extraordinary length. And right now I don’t have the time or the energy.
I am just going to try to summarize everything with just one one post. At least for now.
Continue reading “Sometimes, there’s just too much going on to write”
Today I’m flying back to Boston from Dallas. As a matter of fact, as I write this I’m on the plane and we’re heading from the gate to the runway. I was surprised on my way down here how dramatic my process with the TSA wasn’t. The TSA is pretty much my nightmare of a government agency.
Today, when I went to my screening to leave Dallas, I lived my nightmare.
This is probably what The Bloggess would categorize as Spectacular Marketing Fail. Or maybe Exceptional PR Blunder. Anyway, when you’re trying to sell something, or in this case, give it away for free, remember the first rule of sales: Know Thy Audience.
Geoff and I were watching an episode of Criminal Minds the other night and a super familiar thing happened. It’s something that happens a lot on TV and it always makes me roll my eyes, but this time it irritated me enough to make me want to come here and get all science-ranty about it.
I should probably say before I get started that I genuinely like Criminal Minds and that I’ve been watching it off and on since Season 1. This problem is not specific to any particular show but to all TV and Movies that need a Big Scary Bug and science be damned.
Btw, there are photos of bugs after the jump. Lots of them. You have been warned.
Science is important. It is something that both Kelly and I take quite seriously. It’s one if the reasons Kelly has worked as a science educator for a decade, and one of the reasons why even some of our hobbies involve a lot of science. We feel quite passionately about it.
And it’s also why we both get so frustrated about the problems with scientific literacy in America – demonstrated by things like this survey that shows the gaps between scientists and the public when it comes to views of science. And if you want to see scientific ignorance displayed in all its factually-challenged glory, and I mean some truly godawful stuff, just turn on a television.
To most of us, most of the world even, this week is the festive week between Christmas and the New Year. Most Universities are in Intercession, some non-profits are closed, and many people choose to go on vacation. To those of us who work in education, this is School Vacation Week. To those of us who work in the Service Industry, this is Hell Week.
To those of us who do both, this is a tsunami of bad behavior, worse parenting, and unbelievable entitlement.
Continue reading “School Vacation Week: notes from the front”
I loved George Carlin, and I thought he was a brilliant comic and social commentator. But on one major point, I have always vehemently disagreed with him…
voting.
Your vote matters. Because EVERY vote matters.
Not in the way that most people think of “hacking”, where some teenager or twentysomething thousands of miles away taps away on their laptop in an Internet cafe and gains control of your car. Never going to happen, and do you know why?
Because your car is not a wireless device, like a PDA or a laptop. It may have computers in it, but they aren’t networked together in the way that we think of a computer network. That’s why.
The Books are Taking Over... 