My Track Record

The economy is so bad right now that, after spending one night in the Holiday Inn Express of Spokane Valley to attend the USATF club cross country championships, we received a handwritten, personalized card from the hotel thanking us for our patronage. I suppose it's possible that they've always sent out thank-you notes, but I doubt it.

Then at a family gathering on Christmas Eve, my brother-in-law jokingly advised us to get ready for the coming of the End Times. Since my ears are perpetually tuned to science rather than religion, what I thought I heard him say was that we need to prepare for the "Coming of the Enzymes." Now there's a scary thought . . . especially considering that the enzymes may already be upon us. In fact, the more you look around (using spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography and so forth), the more you realize that they're everywhere. Aaaaaah!

Happy New Year, fellow doomed earthlings!

Posted by crowther at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

To make it easier to share our family videos (most of which are about Phil), I've created a web page with links to all of them: www.science-groove.org/Greg/videos. Two new winter-themed ones, "Movie Trailer" and "Child of Mine," are listed at the top. Happy holidays, everybody!

Posted by crowther at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm in New Orleans, attending the annual conference of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

My son's middle-of-the-night visits to our bed have cost me many hours of sleep lately, so I saw this trip as a chance to get some good, uninterrupted shut-eye. Last night I turned my hotel room lights off at 10 PM. I didn't set the alarm on the clock radio because I didn't need to be awake at any particular time in the morning.

At 4 AM the clock radio -- the one I hadn't set -- turned on. Apparently the previous guest in my room had needed to be up at 4. Argh! Well, I thought, at least it's still early enough that I should be able to fall sleep again. And I did.

At 4:15 my TV -- silent and dark up to this point -- began showing a cartoon on the Disney channel. This was really galling. How was I supposed to know that the TV had been programmed to be a time bomb? I angrily turned it off, went to the bathroom, and returned to bed.

At 6:15 the TV came to life again, and so did I, incredulous and bitter. I was now involuntarily watching a program that, at first blush, appeared to be an adaptation of The Flight of the Conchords designed for 3-year-olds. It turned out to be the The Wiggles.

The Wiggles have a wide following among young children and their parents, but at that moment, I would have preferred my son's screaming.

Posted by crowther at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)