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Hi all - cell phone MIA in Golden Gate Park, will be replacing tomorrow. Private message or email your number(s); comments will be screened if you want to reply to this post.

Also, happy Thanksgiving! Non-Americans, happy last Thursday of November.

"Blah blah blah biochemistry (or whatever is at hand)."

"Now a historical example! [Researcher] was investigating [topic highly relevant to lecture] during [historical context]. S/he had a question: [why am I seeing this / what is this thing I am seeing]?"

"They hypothesized [blah, possibly with illustrative diagram / chalkboard doodle]."

"To test this, [famous experiment]."

"When the researcher did the experiment, they saw [results, with pictures / diagrams / charts / animations / chalkboard doodle]. This was [in line with their hypothesis, or surprising]! It turned out that [biochemistry]."

"Therefore, we know [biochemistry] because [keywords relating to historical example]. The take-home message is: [one or two sentences]."

Questions may be - even should be - solicited after any hard return, as well as any other time the teacher sees eyes glazing over.

The take-home is key: what is the core concept? Knowing what the teacher considers essential tells the student what is a colorful but noncritical aside, and what is a key detail necessary for their knowledge base (and passing the test).

The structure is also important: deliver different material in the same way, so students can home in on what you're looking for (context, hypothesis, experiment and results, conclusions, take-home).

This message brought to you by this week's ABO typing example, which managed to do all this except a succinct take-home. (I think it was something about haptens and epitopes, but I'm still confused on the biochemistry.)

In a nearly unprecedented display of faith in humanity, I went to see fireworks with bio!J, her friend D, and D's roommate J, and crashed at D and J's afterward. (I hate changing my plans only slightly less than I hate imposing for crash space.) I am very pleased with my pictures of the fireworks, which came out very well considering I didn't have a tripod, and include some moments that are suitably Apocalypse Now. Sunday I drove home, napped, then got back out the door for the Nats-Braves game downtown and had the unusual pleasure of seeing the Nats not lose.

Yesterday I went to work and had the unique pleasure of being reminded that the annual safety video review is, in fact, annual and mandatory. For day two I intend to beg people to play hangman during choice moments of How Not To Die By Tripping Over Power Cords and Disrobing Your Coworkers After a Chemical Spill.

Locals, I appeal to your knowledge: I am supposed to make dinner plans for early next week with someone who's staying in Crystal City. What are the good restaurants in that area? Please keep in mind that it's possible neither of us will have a car, so anyone who suggests anything on the orange line will be mocked.

One of my coworkers lives pretty close to me; sometimes we carpool. Today she locked herself out, and her roommate won't be home until late. I told her to make herself at home, and then realized I'd left all my tabs open in Firefox this morning. If you think six completely random LJ-related tabs are work safe, you'd be right five-sixths of the time; #5, second from the top, was my incomplete rant on recent poor reading experiences. Yes, norabombay, that one.

Moving right along!

I had an idea for a Halloween costume that's completely useless anywhere but work, where it will be awesome; unfortunately, I need new pants to make it work. So I've been consignment shopping this week with erratic success.

My guide to consignment shopping:

1.) Zen.
You will walk in looking for shirts and walk out with a skirt. Your shopping list will be a lamp and a coat and you'll find a Foreman grill. You will never find the right handbag, unless you're trying to find a hat.
2.) Know your jeans: walk in knowing what fits and doesn't, or plan to try on 20 pairs of jeans and strike out on every count. There's always #21, right? This is not in disharmony with #1, unless you actually had plans for those three hours you spent trying on jeans.
3.) If you think your local Goodwill is fairly useless, you may be on to something.
4.) The difference between vintage and consignment is the rack time you put in to find it.

So I don't have the pants, but I do own a soup cup, a new handbag and a Foreman grill. I think grilling is on the menu for some point this week.

Dear internet: headphones. Keeping in mind I am 1.) 1/3 of the way to my 2008 savings goal, 2.) working in a lab with approximately 7 fridges, one robot, three DNA extraction machines, a tabletop centrifuge and umpteen biddy - plus the thermocycler fans! - and rec accordingly.

Before tossing that favorite inexpensive and kind of scruffy purse into the laundry, it might be worth your time to ask, "hey, I wonder if this is so cheap there's cardboard in here?" This message brought to you by someone a little older and wiser, who spent time picking wet cardboard out of the laundry machine last night.

Last week I completely lost my head and bought four classical CDs. Hey, they were used! And if you'd heard the end of Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony on the radio - it's big. It's huge. It's amazing and splendid and the sort of thing that has to be played at volumes in excess of urban noise ordinances. So I had to run out and find it. I already had a copy, but didn't find it until later, which is an argument for turning my external hard drive into a wiki or something. But this other recording! This wonderful second example of awesome music! Boston Symphony Orchestra 1959 recording; Charles Munch conducting and Berk Zamkochian on organ. And I incidentally picked up a few more CDs, in that way you do. A Baltimore Symphony Orchestra recording of Copland's Rodeo and "Billy the Kid" made in '93; a cello concerto set of Dvorak and Saint-Saens recorded by the London Philharmonic with Mstislav Rostopovich in '77; and glory of glories, a two-disc recording of Rachmaninoff's four piano concertos and his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Rachmaninoff playing the piano. I am super, super excited about this: my favorite Rachmaninoff played by the Man! The forecast is calling for lousy humidity all week; I think I will spend it lying on the floor wringing sweat out of everything I own maximum fidelity out of my lame sound setup. Especially for the 1929 Rhapsody recording, which - mmm, tinny much? Oh who cares, I think I'm going to start crying. This is awesome.

I also found the Beethoven I'd put "somewhere safe" in June. Speaking of the Man. You know how a lot of contemporary bands have their one fast song, one slow song, and then the other 11 tracks on the album? (Coldplay, I am totally looking at you.) Beethoven has more than two songs! Okay, he also has a bigger instrument section, but the point is - many songs! Classical's dynamic range is defeated on my work headphones - okay, the fans from the fridges, freezers, thermocyclers, and let us not forget the occasional mostly balanced quick-spin microcentrigue(s) don't help - but that just gives me something to look forward to after a day of mezzoforte rock and pop.

Converter: highlight text and right-click to convert units.
Leechblock: blocks your favorite time-wasting websites for time periods of your choice.
Nuke Anything Enhanced: save your ink - stop printing ads!
Research Word: highlight an unfamiliar term and right-click to query Wikipedia or other sites.
Zotero: magic research bookmarking / collation tool. Still trying to figure out how this one works.

Bonus: IE Tab: switch the tab of your choice from Firefox to Internet Explorer. Perfect for those backwards sites only compliant with IE.

I want to say somethng about when private or intended semi-private throughts become public speech (see also Jo Walton does not respond to a review and mamadeb misses the start of Yuletide signups*) but it comes down to me gossiping about which authors' public faces I like more.

*Nota Bene I am not inviting people to re-open associated political or/and religious discussions. I am commenting on the phenomenon of semiprivate LJs going semipublic, or being invaded by the masses. Anyone who wishes to discuss fascism, Jewish holidays and American culture, or topics related is welcome to do so in their LJ.

Final thought: if you put cop buddy flicks, horror movies, and action films into a blender, then set the blender on "comedy", Hot Fuzz is what you'd get out.

Call me a bitter undergrad, but everyone's about to get the pedagogy lecture. (We know I've jumped the shark because I said "pedagogy" with a straight face.)

First: if you are writing on a blackboard, stop talking.

Second: if it's important, put it on the blackboard. Like this: "important term: means this." Corollary: no tangent should be longer than two minutes.

Third: if you are drawing a graph, label your graph, just like freshmen are forced to do in 100-level classes: title, axes, units. If you draw multiple lines on the graph, label the lines.

Fourth: if you put up an equation, put up what the pieces mean. Telling me that No/(Nt - No) = e^-[nF*(psi-psi0)/RT] is only useful if I know what psi0 represents, and also that No is Nopen, not Nzero.

Fifth: if you can't do any of these things, and it's a 400-level class, find your sub-discipline's equivalent of Albert's all-encompassing Molecular Biology of the Cell. Tell your students about it. If it costs more than $150, put it on reserve at the library. You should do this anyway, but if you're hitting your marks in lecture, a good fallback textbook is gravy, rather than essential.

Bonus: powerpoint is like salt. A little is a good thing, but a lot will kill you. Dump it at the door with the rest of the trash.

Bonus #2: I have never seen anyone go wrong with colored chalk, except by forgetting to bring it.

( So perhaps I needed to let loose a bit. )

Good news: I wrote my rant! Bad news: I still don't understand voltage-gating in channels. Busted on the procrastination front.

Cheap/free mp3 ripping software: does it exist? Where can I get it?