MAGNFICENT OBSESSION

From the ridiculous to the sublime. Or the sublemon. I dunno.

My wife and I play on a team with an ever-changing name in the Fresno Pub Quiz. Recently our team beat out about 25 other gangs of six to win a share of a fat four-figure prize. Given that it costs the two of us just $10 /week to compete, it was a pretty nice win.

In fact, it was such an improbably-sizeable win (I won't bore you with the details) that they've decided to reduce the length of time a jackpot carries over from one week to the next. Seems that they were getting a bit nervous about it!

What can I say? I like winning, but having played College Bowl and been in the Jeopardy pool and all that, I can't say that I'm surprised to be on the winning side now and then, nor can I crow too much about the jackpot. After all, if you win enough games, you'll win your share of jackpots. But my wife? She has definitely found her obsession, and she loves the team we play with, because everyone who is there is definitely in it to win it. Witness, for example, our team captain's Facebook post:





It's....um.....the winning sheet from our most recent victory, with every response in all four rounds tagged with some explanatory comment. Have to admit, gets me kind of pumped up, makes me want to win again....!

AWED BY THE GALAPAGOS

The Fresno Bee approached me a little over a month ago with the idea of doing an article about my Galapagos experiences.

That article ran in Saturday's Bee and can be viewed on-line here.

The article itself is a pastiche of quotes either collected by the reporter, Ron Orozco, or edited from observations that they asked me to submit. There were some formatting problems with the Bee article that were corrected on-line, but the paper has more still shots from video taken by yours truly. Overall, I was happy with the article.

If this is your first time visiting my blog, well, I haven't been posting a lot lately but there is lots of back material. I'm interested in promoting science education, and I hope you'll take a look at any categories that interests you. My Galapagos trip has caused me to more tightly focus my blogging on ways that promote local science education, and I have another blog to support that effort, here.

WILL SPEAKS REASONABLY: WILL THE RIGHT LISTEN?

Interesting take by a prominent conservative.....