Recently in Personal Category
Ralph Nader shares a 83% similarity with your beliefs.
Sorry Ralph. Obama's 71% is good enough for me, and he has a chance of winning.
If you're one of the dozen people who subscribe to my RSS feed and if you are interested in what I write, 1 you might want to click through to the site and see what's there. For some reason, Feedburner missed about four entries between last Friday and yesterday morning. Or if you'd rather not visit the site. Here are titles and links to the posts that Feedburner missed:
Continue reading RSS problems.
Continue reading Honest, I didn't hire a post-doc because of a mid-tenure crisis.
If all has gone well, I'm in the air somewhere between Hartford and Chicago right now on my way to Vancouver for Botany 2008.1 This meeting is going to be busier with business for me than usual. I'm attending as President-elect-elect of the Botanical Society of America.2 I'm giving a talk in a symposium on "Demand for Botanists on Public Lands: Challenges and Solutions". I'll also be able to make it to a couple of the other scientific sessions, but between various society and committee commitments, I'll be spending more time talking about BSA business than science. But making sure our professional societies function well is important to me, so I'm glad to do it.
And, unlike Evolution 2008, where I didn't hear my student Rachel Prunier present her talk. I'll get to hear her in Vancouver. We've been working hard on her talk, and I think it will be very interesting. So if you're in Vancouver, stop by 212/SUB at 9:15am on Tuesday morning to hear Rachel's talk on "Pelargonium community assembly in South Africa: The influence of phylogeny, morphology, and climate". I think you'll find the results intriguing.
And, unlike Evolution 2008, where I didn't hear my student Rachel Prunier present her talk. I'll get to hear her in Vancouver. We've been working hard on her talk, and I think it will be very interesting. So if you're in Vancouver, stop by 212/SUB at 9:15am on Tuesday morning to hear Rachel's talk on "Pelargonium community assembly in South Africa: The influence of phylogeny, morphology, and climate". I think you'll find the results intriguing.
Continue reading Off to Vancouver.
53% Geek
Girl Scientist scored 78%, and Greg Laden scored 90%. Maybe I'm not quite as geeky as I thought.1
Continue reading I'm not as geeky as I thought.
The annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biologists are happening right now in Minneapolis -- Evolution 2008. I'm really sorry not to be there. I've only missed the Evolution meetings three or four times in the last 20 years. I always learn a lot. I'm especially sorry to miss the meetings this year, because one of my students, Rachel Prunier, is giving a talk this morning (in about an hour and a half). She's put a lot of work into her talk, and I'm sure it will be great. I'm sorry I can't be there to support her.
If you happen to be reading this from Minneapolis and haven't decided what you're going to see this morning (or even if you have), get yourself over to Anderson 270 for the 8:00am talk entitled "Genetic differentiation of white proteas in the western Cape, South Africa." You won't be disappointed. After that you're free to see whatever talks interest you.
If you happen to be reading this from Minneapolis and haven't decided what you're going to see this morning (or even if you have), get yourself over to Anderson 270 for the 8:00am talk entitled "Genetic differentiation of white proteas in the western Cape, South Africa." You won't be disappointed. After that you're free to see whatever talks interest you.
Continue reading Why I'm not in Minneapolis.
Posting will be even lighter than normal for the next three weeks. I'm off to Cape Town, South Africa for work on evolution in white proteas. I should have Internet access off and on through the courtesy of my collaborators at the South African National Biodiversity Institute, If you'd like to see some photos of the plants I'll be working on, click through to this page from the Protea Atlas Project.
If you happen to be in northeastern Connecticut some time and if you're interested in landscape trees, I recommend stopping by the UConn campus for a tree walking tour. It won't take long, and you'll see a lot of interesting trees. Printed brochures will (I think) be available at the Lodewick Visitors Center, or you can download the PDF for yourself. Enjoy!
As the small number of you who read this blog can probably guess, I'm not one of those bloggers described in this piece from the New York Times a couple of days ago:
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
It's hard to get stressed about blogging when (a) you're not doing it for a living and (b) you post three or for times a week rather than three or four times an hour.
UConn Magazine, has a short piece on me in the current issue: “Renaissance scientist: Kent Holsinger's research opens new paths for others to follow.” It's in the “Focus on Faculty” section. The other person featured is Sarita Arteaga from the School of Dental Medicine.
