Every time I boot up… it creeps the heck out of my office-mates. (HT Greg Laden)

If only!. Not quite as cool as the Singing Tesla Coils, but still cool.

Greg Laden worried us all with his post this morning about PZ Myers getting into an accident on the road. PZ has recently reported back on his blog that he is OK and will be giving his talk in Michigan as scheduled. Here’s what happened:

It wasn’t bad; little traffic, the roads were icy, but I was taking my time and coping like a real Minnesotan. Then, as I was leaving lovely Glenwood, I saw a truck stopped to make a left turn way ahead — like 4 or 5 blocks ahead. So I touched the brakes to slow down a little more. So I tried to slow down a little more. So I tried very hard to slow down some more. Why isn’t this car slowing down at all? I still had plenty of room, so I started easing over to the right to miss the truck on the shoulder. I tried to ease over. Why isn’t the car turning? I was pumping the brakes and trying to shift over just a little bit, right up until the moment I crunched into the right rear corner of the truck.

Well, I have have it on the word of a very unreliable source that PZ left a few details out. Someone uploaded a video to YouTube:

Read More…

This marks my first real weekend in a while. Not counting the fact that this morning I have to go pollinate a few plants in the greenhouse, but after that it’s nothing but bees, ripping something out of our kitchen, and maybe a little stuff with our newly thawed-out back yard. In the words of Bill Watterson’s vision of a father: I love the crazy hedonism of weekends!

I’m back in Madison from the 51st Maize Genetics Conference, which was full of wholesome scientific goodness. It was also a great opportunity to finally meet Anastasia Bodnar from Genetic Maize, and discuss everything about communicating plant genetics, from common arguments to the cool nitty gritty scientific details that make this topic something really fun to learn about by itself. Anastasia is great and it was a delight to spend the conference with her - here’s to a long and productive future of cooperative blogging!

We also met another blogger at the conference, James Schnable from James and the Giant Corn. Here are the three of us hanging out near the posters.

Hey who’s that little guy with us? And what cool stuff did we learn and talk about at the meeting? What video interviews, audio conversations, and pictures did we bring back? Keep an eye on Biofortified for details.

Today, I’m driving (or riding in) a van full of fellow graduate students to St. Charles, Illinois, an easy 2.25 hour drive from Madison. Contrast that with the flight to Washington D.C. last year. That’s right, I’m going to the 51st Maize Genetics conference! I’ve got some recording equipment with me and a good digital camera, but I have no plans to do a podcast of the conference like I did last year. I have a couple ideas up my sleeve to be revealed at a later date. I’m looking forward to finally meeting Anastasia at the meeting, too. Check Biofortified for updates.

The next edition of Mendel’s Garden is up at Biofortified. Come read the latest in genetics blogging!

One of my lab-mates still sings and watches the EP-Motion video I posted before. Well here’s a new one - funny, neat graphics, but nowhere near as catchy and memetic. Behold: Roche’s latest robotic invention:

I wish I had this kind of a budget for my plant breeding videos! I’m in the wrong business. The REAL money is in making the supplies for life sciences…

I had a pleasant surprise in my morning news reading this morning. The Kepler spacecraft has been cleared for launch this evening!

Kepler, named for the early astronomer (and author of the laws of planetary motion), will search for Earth-sized planets with its camera array made up of 42 CCDs. What’s also unique about this spacecraft is that it will take an orbit that trails the Earth, eliminating gravitational perturbations usually experienced in Earth orbit, and the Earth will also block the sun from view. Read More…

Here in Madison we’re enjoying a spat of warm weather - it’s 55 degrees outside! This is going to continue through at least tomorrow, so in the early evening my Queen and I will be taking a look at how our bees fared over the harsh Madison winter. Last year, we lost a small late-season swarm colony over the winter, but each of these hives were strong with 2 or 3 brood boxes full of healthy-looking bees. The only thing that worries me is whether or not they have enough sugar for the winter. Here’s to hoping!

And here’s an interesting article, hat tip to Luigi at ABDW: The American Bee Glut. I will be feeding our bees some pollen substitute patties to get them going with a strong start, maybe that will help ward off the dreaded CCD too?

Update (evening): Looks like I didn’t get quite enough sugar syrup to all the hives last fall, I lost two out of the five. But the three remaining hives look strong, and ready for a fresh, sweet surprise this weekend! After a split and a few swarms we should have more bees than we had last year! This isn’t too bad for our first Wisconsin overwintering of serious colonies. The swarm we had the year before was only two frames in a single box - it didn’t have much of a chance.