The best week of teaching

This week in Intro Zoo our lab was about Mollusks and Evolution.  We used mollusks as an example of adaptive radiation.  Usually these lectures are pretty boring, especially since I did not write the lectures.  It isn't that the lectures are poorly written, but writing lectures for multiple teachers isn't really a "one size fits all" thing.  I will often find myself jumping ahead or skipping slides to come back to them later.  This reordering sometimes presents the ideas with a better flow.

There wasn't much reorganizing this week, as the main topic of lecture was natural selection.  I believe I lectured for an average of 30 minutes too long in each of my sections.  This is one of the few lectures that directly pertains to my interests as a scientist.  The best part is that MOST of my students weren't asleep at the end!  Not only were the students interested, but I didn't hate the world at the end of my 3rd section this week (which is a first). 

I could hold out hope that this will become a trend, but I don't think I should.  I'm sure there will be other weeks which are nearly as interesting, but not many.  Ecology is where I hang my hat, and for 3 hours this week I got to talk about niches, what they are, and how they fit into the grand scheme of evolution.  Natural selection and its driving mechanisms are so elegant and simple.  I want to teach at the end of all this education and there is one reason for that; I enjoy helping others understand ideas and concepts that I find interesting.


"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. "
Charles Darwin

One after another

I am not a college football fan.  I love football, but my interest lies within pro ball.  I have been an Indianapolis Colts fan my entire life.  Since 1999 the team has posted a winning record and made the playoffs almost every year.  That success is mostly because the team decided to draft Peyton manning in 1998 and then build a team around him.

This season has not begun as well as the previous 12.  The team is yet to win a game this year.  This down trend is due to the absence of Peyton Manning.  Peyton had neck surgery (for the 2nd time this year) right as the season began.  He had to wait until the season began because of political complications within the National Football League.  League rules did not allow Peyton to see his team doctor over the summer (after the first surgery).  This meant no regular checkups of proper physical therapy, which led to the need for a 2nd surgery.

The team has had to make due without Peyton in the starting lineup.  The back up quarterbacks we have been using this year have not been up to snuff.  This fact has hurt out offensive production.  The unforeseen effects of Peyton's absence are the most harsh though.  He is a team leader, not just for the offense.  Without him keeping things running the defense and special teams have been lack-luster as well.  All these facts combine for an as-yet winless season.  I am still holding out hope, but I am not sad about missing all of the team's games this season.

There is always next year...and at this rate we will get the 1st pick in the draft :-/

A spark ignited

I am an avid gamer.  I have played just about every type of game you can think of, and most specific games that you could.  It all started with a flight simulator that my dad installed on our first home PC.  I was about 8 (I know why they don't make 8 year olds pilots) and I had hours of fun just trying to keep my jets airborne.  I was gifted a Sega Genesis when I was around 10, and that is where the obsession truly took hold.  I used to play the few games I had for hours on end.  I distinctly remember a love for NBA Jam, which is odd, as I hate sports games now.

My love of gaming encouraged broader and broader horizons as I grew older and met different people.  I rarely turn down an invitation to learn a new game.  This practice took me from video and board games into the world of miniature gaming, which led to both paper-and-pencil role playing games and collectible card games.  I still play each of these genera of games actively today (some more than others).  Upon moving to Oklahoma few years ago I sunk myself deep into video games as my escape from work.  That had given way to my current preoccupation with card games and RPGs.  I am quite happy with the progression that my gaming has taken here, as my interests today are the most social forms of gaming.  I am a social person, and love to be surrounded my friends and family.  In the absence of family, the nerds I pal around with now make my down time the most fun possible.

The wonders of talk-radio

I took a trip to San Antonio this weekend.  I went with a bunch of friends to cut down on hotel costs, share driving time, etc.  My friend Chris (who drove us both ways) filled our car in on his secret to long driving times: talk-radio.  In particular he likes to listen to Fox News (or something similar) as he finds their opinions and insights to be altogether laughable.  I detest politics, but I am open-minded and decided to give this method a shot.  My one condition was that I would treat these radio shows like Mystery Science Theater (Wiki page).  Our car had a wonderful time poking fun at just about everything we heard the hosts and guests say.  But I would like to share with you some of the things I learned from the radio on this trip (not all of these things came from conservative talk radio).

I learned that "Sister Joan-of-Arc" is an acceptable name for a Catholic nun.  I learned the difference between watts and lumens when choosing light bulbs.  We should all be investing most of our money into precious metals.  Some people expect silver to out-pace gold in price/ounce in the next 15 years.  I found out that not a single person who is "Occupying Wall Street" knows why they are doing it.  I learned that some people actually pay attention to what Roseanne Barr says now-a-days.  No one likes what Roseanne Barr says now-a-days.  The one fact that I for-sure came away with, after some 10 hours of talk radio, is that President Obama is ruining everything.

Ingesting science

I went to Cajun King Buffet with a friend this afternoon (more on the venue later).  At this fine establishment they had frog legs, which I had never had the opportunity to eat before.  The frog legs themselves were ok...not great, but not terrible.  Frog meat seems a bit odd, chewy and tasting like bland chicken.  The big story here is that I had never eaten something that I have dissected in a lab before.

It was a strange feeling.  When I looked at the legs I noticed the same muscle definition that I had seen in high school.  I remembered having to cut the skin before peeling it off the leg to identify the underlying muscles.  The only difference between the frog legs I had seen before was that the ones today were beaded and deep fried.  Thinking of all this did not stop me from enjoying my meal in any way (which made me feel like a good scientist for some reason).  I did, however, strip the legs and throw the meat into my gumbo, which increased their flavor all around.

Back to the topic of Cajun King.  This restaurant is amazing!  I am a big fan of Cajun food, which makes it a pretty obvious choice for me.  If you have never had correctly prepared Cajun, or if you love the style like me, then I cannot recommend Cajun King highly enough.  The staff is friendly (including a head chef who patrols the place to make sure you are having a good meal), the food quality is high, and it is right here in Norman (over by the Home Depot on Ed Noble Parkway)!

I promise they didn't pay me for that endorsement...

Broken headphones

So, as I have previously discussed, music is very important to me.  I normally get my daily allotment of tunes while riding the bus to and from campus.  I do try to respect my fellow commuters though.  Therefore I must use headphones to use whatever music playing device I have on hand.  I just recently had to buy a new pair of headphones.  This makes the 5th set I have bought in the last 3 years.

I understand that our current stage of technology pushes cheap and replaceable products.  That doesn't make this cycle suck any less.  At a point I realized that this break-and-buy method became a process for my headphone choice.  I first started with big flashy headphones, and they broke.  I then bought a pair of less flashy, equally as large headphones, and they broke.  Next up were smaller, weird-shaped headphones, and they broke.  After going through all these I bought the smallest, simplest set of headphones I could find.  To be fair they did end up lasting the longest out of any pair I have had (about a year).  But they still broke due to simple wear and tear. 

So, needing tunes, I was once again forced to buy a set of headphones.  I have now decided that my process for these purchases will be to find a pair like my last ones that costs the least amount possible.  Quality is obviously not a concern, as they WILL break.  If I assume they will break, then I can feel good about buying cheap ones. 

Connecting the world

I am still relatively new to social networking.  I started on twitter originally.  I got an account so that I could keep up with some of my friends from around the country.  Those same friends finally convinced me to get on facebook.  Before then I had avoided facebook and myspace and any other social networking site like the plague.  I had some idiotic notion that I was standing up for individuality by not signing up like everyone else (this mentality developed during undergrad, when facebook was just becoming popular). 

Once I finally got onto facebook I used it pretty irregularly.  I gradually got more used to the ins and outs of the site, as well as the proper uses for it.  Eventually it became my primary way of communicating with friends that I had developed here in Oklahoma.  I was also able to keep up with the lives of my brothers and friends from Purdue.  Thinking about it now, I realize that I have already started to take that opportunity for granted.  I remember how hard it was to keep in touch with my friends just a few years ago, and now I can stay just as close as they want me to be.



"Twitter is like being in a chatroom with the world, but you can only see comments from people you want to listen to."