Fragments From Floyd

Technical Difficulties ** I've been told we have a comment-aborting problem on our server at the moment. If comments, fail, please email. I'll be looking for diversion while I sit watching 125 students take a test this morning. -- FF

Honeymoon Ends ** Today in class, I'll see the 25% of my class that habitually don't attend. Why they bother to come take the test I don't know. Most of the ones who don't come regularly, if past experience prevails, will make a D or an F, so the class average will fall somewhere in the sixties. There will be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. But my hope and expectation is, there will be more A's this time around than last year. I've simplified the language (fewer of the sometimes A but never B, and all are true, some are true); all questions are multiple choice; and I've limited choices to a, b, c, or d for most, versus all five-choice questions last year. I've made an attempt to teach more broadly for this group of non-majors, to give them an understanding of the forest without so much detail about the stems and twigs of individual trees. We'll see how it shakes out.

Earworms ** Nuthatch has 'em. We all have. Most of mine have come from novelty songs, starting with: The Singing Nuns, The Chipmunks, Hello Mudder, Hello Fadder...some of you know the era. What are your most persistent ear worms that fall within the taxonomy of Earverma? Just remembering them can trigger an outbreak. Be careful what you hum, even in your head!

White Elephants! ** Well, not exactly. But that there is a white giraffe is TRUE! See the image. And I will use this in class next week to reinforce our discussion of variability across the extremes of size, color, behavior, feeding preferences within any given population. This giraffe certainly falls at the extreme for color variation.

Huddle Masses ** How many people lived on planet earth when you were born? Of the babies born the same year as me, 48% are already dead, worldwide. In the US, 81% are still alive. In the US, 18% is older than I am! I didn't know there were so many people I could still be YOUNGER than! This French interactive website on population is very well done, and I may use it later in the semester. It suffers from being 8 years old and doesn't take into account more recent trends that might impact population growth (such as terrorism, infectious disease and cataclysmic storms that may portend future weather disasters as the planet heats up.) Very interesting. Recommended.

Drab Fall Foliage ** If we don't get rain soon, the fall leaf peepers might as well stay home. We are more than 25% off our yearly rainfall totals, and most of that from summer and early fall thus far. Our creek is all but dried up; we can barely hear its burble from the front porch. The pasture crunches when we walk and already the maple leaves are falling before any color change at all. We may go straight from green to brown this year. And so it goes.

Science BiWeekly Blog Repository ** The Tangled Bank is a gathering from across the blogosphere of the best science writing across the web. I don't know how it has escaped my attention til now. I'd like to think maybe soon I'd have something to contribute. I plan to peruse this event's host site at B and B and fully expect to add some kindred-spirits blogs to my bloglines list from the tangle in this particular bank. You might, as well.