New Poll!

Hello readers,

Just wanted to let you know, there is a new poll up on the sidebar! I'm curious about how many of the international hits on my blog are actually people reading my posts, and how many are just looking for photos of Johnny Depp or giant isopods or something. Oh, and hey, if you're just here for the pictures that's cool too -- maybe leave a comment and tell me what you were searching for? I'm curious about who's checking out my blog!

Minor Mental Meltdown

Hello readers (or other visitors looking for pics of Johnny Depp),

Just so you know, blogging this week might be a touch on the sporadic/incoherent side. I have two papers to finish writing this week. But lucky you, I might actually post on the topics of my papers after I finish them, because I happen to think they're really interesting! (Then again, I also think Trivers-Willard is interesting, but I might be the only one.) If you like "Better Know an Insect" you'll like them, how about that?

If you're looking for fun things to read, check out my "Favored Links", they're good fun and will keep you busy.

Stay tuned, next week I'll have an update on our garden, Things You Didn't Know About Ants, atrocious puns, rumination, speculation, meditation, and more!

Blog Update

Hello readers,

I have some exciting news: my wonderful and loving fiancé has given me what every girl really wants. That's right -- I have my own domain name! So exciting! What does this mean? Well, you can continue to come to my blog at blogspot.com, OR you can now view my blog at:

Holophusicon.com

Yay! I have a domain! Maybe one day there will be other content there as well, but for now it's just a redirect to this site. Ready, set, update your bookmarks!

Godwin's Law: The Movie

A new movie is coming out this Friday called Expelled. It claims to present evidence that intelligent design (aka creationism) is being pushed out of academia despite being well-supported and a good alternative to evolution. Oh, and it also links Darwin to Hitler.

Right.

It is propaganda and lies, pure and simple, which is why I'm not actually linking to the movie's web page. (Learn more here.) I actually had this quandary a few weeks ago, and here comes Pharyngula with a solution to my problem! I couldn't bear to link to the actual movie page and boost their Google ranking, but I couldn't just let Ben Stein and his pseudoscience slide under the radar entirely. NCSE to the rescue!

Welcome to my blog.

Welcome to the Holophusicon. Strange name, you might say. It means "all of nature" in Greek, at least according to eighteenth-century museum owners. It referred specifically to Lever's natural history museum, but I use it as the name of my blog in the sense more of a curiosity cabinet. You can read more about the original museum here.

My interests are diverse, but my main purpose in starting a blog was to collect the things that I frequently email to people in one place. I also hope to initiate/host a dialog in the comments section about the articles and other things I post. Food, education, and ecology are the big topics on my mind, but I'm always thinking about everything; I might post on modern art, politics, semicolon use, or even occasionally my upcoming wedding (June 09).

Thanks for visiting, and enjoy my curiosity cabinet!