Weeks 4-5-6

The problem with trying to get my school on and blog at the same time is that the former generally prevents the latter. For shame. Here's a quick, bullet style account of the weeks that have passed us by:

• We hosted Beck's Tufts classmates Beth and Shelly for a few days while they attended a conference in Scottsdale. Crazy-timing as we were in the move-out-of-condo phase, but fun to have guests in the casa. Spackle and Dubsy appreciated the extra attention accordingly.
• Speaking of out-of-towners, I grabbed a quick drink with superstar of Rice Cloud Nine Ultimate and all-time awesome guy Mike Konopka - he was in town doing some collaborative work with some of the Biodesign folks at ASU. We presciently bemoaned the Cubs playoff chances and generally caught up on goings on, frisbee-related and otherwise. Mike, nay Ragdoll, is still as awesome of a dude as ever.
• That same night, D&C and the Beck & I caught Vampire Weekend in concert down at the Marquee in Tempe (Xtina, strangely, did not order an 8 dollar long island, nor did she attempt to find Dan in the bathroom). I've gotta hand it to those NYC boys and their Afro-pop stylings - despite essentially playing their album on shuffle and only doing a 45 minute set, they do have quite the little songwriting showcase repertoire in them. Kudos, and their tunes are still running through my head. For example: who gives a @#$% about an Oxford Comma? Beck, Dan, Christina*,* and I do.
• I would be remiss if I did not mention that Danimal played his first of two awesome e-mail subjects that week, this one being "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Doc Martens." Even my loser in-laws will probably catch that reference.
• Did I mention WE MOVED last week? Into a house? A human style, take ownership of the land abode? I can't even begin to do this topic justice just yet. Phineas agrees: A separate post.
• Law, Science and Technology Topics covered in the last three weeks:
  
• Science, Values & Politics in Risk Assessment (Case Study: Nuclear Risk)
  
• Congress's Role in Risk Assessment (CS: Global Warming)
• Social / Economic Risk Assessment (CS: Second Life and Virtual World Law)
• Technology Assessment (CS: Nanotechnology)
• Digital Copyright Law
• Patent Law (Case Study: Gene Ownership)
  
• Various Books Read in the last three weeks
  
• Segerstrale's Defenders of the Truth
• Francis's Why Men Won't Ask For Directions
• Carmen's Politics in the Laboratory: The Constitution of the Human Genome
• Bowker and Star's Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences
• Kohler's All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850-1950
• A veritable slew of other articles
• In addition to the typical WEfnuking, I played in a scrimmage of local Phoenix club level players against the current PHX Club team, the aptly named Sprawl. I HAD A FRIGGIN' BLAST! So much fun. Unfortunately, we won - not exactly great for Sprawl morale if they get beat by a thrown-together team - but man oh man was it fun to play high level disc on a Sunday morning.
• I'm working on a book review with a former student of Jason's named Maggie - we have had a couple of very productive meetings and things are rolling along nicely.
• I wrote an abstract for my law paper. See below*.
  
• And we moved. Many rolls of tape and bubble wrap were involved. Lots o' boxes. Lots o' sweaty scrounging of condos in Scottsdale. But now we are here, and thus far it is good. Among other thing: we are much closer to D&C, facilitating casual dinners / movies. Most excellent.
  

That's about it off the top of my head. Of course, other salient points are that the Cubs are in the process of blowing the playoffs, I have my first Scottsdale softball game tonight, and I actually did a presentation on that horrendous All Creatures book mentioned above which went pretty fantastically well**. So... yeah. Okay, back to work - I'll hit y'all on the flip side.

* - Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, despite general acceptance within the traditional institutional scientific community, remains a highly controversial topic in the United States of America. In the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21^st century, opponents of evolution have put forth quasi-scientific theological theories such as Creation Science and Intelligent Design as alternatives. They have attempted to insert these alternative theories into standard public education curricula or, failing that, have employed other means to discredit evolutionary theory. Consequently, much of the legal debate regarding evolution has focused on the First Amendment Constitutionality of teaching religiously-motivated theories in a public school setting and whether those theories are in fact religious or are true scientific alternatives. In this essay, I contend that there is a fundamental incongruence between the argument taking place in the courts and the argument within culture. While the First Amendment Establishment Clause is largely intended to disallow state-sanctioned religion, that is not the contested issue between the cultural pro- and anti-evolution ideologies. The culturally-motivated issues between the two camps invoke a wealth of values and narratives that are not accounted for by that narrow conception of the problem. Further, I argue that this disconnection between the legal and cultural debates encourages overly technical and indirect approaches to the conflict. Such "underhanded" tactics ultimately debase the discourse and distract from the underlying issues which could be addressed more directly for societal benefit.

** - To protect the names of the not-so-innocent, I'm just going to assert that this presentation went "fantastically well." I will leave to the reader's imagination the extent to which this two person presentation was actually written and presented by one person. What the reader may not imagine is the identity of that one person writer/presenter, who was me I.