About Trees

A note to the person who was driving in front of me yesterday on Eagle Lake Road. Yes, the trees are beautiful right now. But if you see a tree that is especially you colorful you don't have to brake suddenly. Because here's the thing about trees: they don't move. What this means is that you can slow down gradually and pull over to the side. Then you can get out of your car and walk back to the tree, or turn around and drive back, or put the car in reverse and go back to the tree. The tree will still be there; it's not going to run away.

Search Terms

Somebody recently found my blog by seaching on google for the phrase vodka in a humidifier. The most search term that has led the most people to this blog is free socks. The vast majority of the free sock seekers who arrive at my blog are from outside the US, with a suprisingly large number from the former Yugoslavia.

Cosmogirl!

Big news! College of the Atlantic has been selected as one of Cosmogirl's 100 best colleges. There is no mention of the criteria they used to select their top 100. I wonder if they'll send us free lip gloss.

Genetically Modified Budweiser

It seems that Budweiser uses genetically engineered rice in some of their beer. Here is a press release from Greenpeace. And here is a post about the GE beer on Brookstone Beer Bulletin, which seems to be a frequently updated website/blog with information about craft beers, especially in Norther California. On the Greenpeace website there is further discussion of the contamination, including an excellent spoof of a Budweiser TV commercial.

Doreen and her Greenpeace colleagues have been working on this for a while. Now that this information is public, it will be interesting to see how Bud responds.

Miscellaneous Updates

A few tidbits from the week and the weekend:

1. The soul-crushers, also known as the NEASC review team, spent around two and a half days on campus last week. I think the visit went pretty well. The preliminary report was mostly very positive, and the areas of potential weakness were pretty much the ones that we had anticipated. I was quite impressed with the review team; they gathered a lot of information quite quickly, and seemed to be quite sharp.
   
   
2. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were quite warm. It was almost summer-like. Today, however, it felt like fall. Not cold, but a little crisp. It was sunny and breezy and beautiful. When I arrived on campus mid-afternoon there were two large V's of geese flying south flying very high above the college. Their honks sounded very cool.
   
   
3. Doreen returned today from a week in Quebec. She brought back some yummy biotechnology: Quebecois beer, yogurt, bread, and cheese.
   
   
4. I planted around 150 bulbs today. Hopefully they'll survive the winter and we'll have a flowery spring.
   
   
5. In addition to doing a lot of work around the house, I finished a batch of Physics grading and completed a review of an NSF grant.
   
   
6. It's starting to get chilly at night. Soon it will be time for the first fire of the season.