Product Review: Neal's Yard: Ticklemore cheese

My in-laws are in town this week and a few days ago we all took a trip up to Capitol Square. We wandered around for a while and entered a few shops.[1] One of the shops we hit was a cheese shop, called Fromagination. They had a decent selection and an impressive amount of cheeses out for sampling. Ostensibly one of the purposes of our trip was so that I could buy a goat cheese or a sheep cheese. So I did. (This one is a British goat cheese.[2]) After that we went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner and then, after Lilli went to bed, Leann and I went to a movie (Star Trek: Into Darkness).[3]

Distribution Maps IX: Hammerhead Sharks

One day I was reading about hammerhead sharks on Wikipedia.[1] There are two genera of hammerhead shark: Eusphyra and Sphyrna. Eusphyra has a single species, while Sphyrna has eight species. The characteristic shape of their heads improves their peripheral vision and their ability to detect electrical charges (electroreception). As I was reading, I noticed that they had distribution maps for the different species, but they were all ugly, low-resolution .png images. So I created new, crisp .svg images and inserted them into the appropriate articles. You can see them below.

Many Movie Reviews II

This is my next round of mass movie reviews. We'll start with The Adjustment Bureau, a tale about a Democratic [1] presidential candidate who discovers that there is a secret (and supernatural) organization trying to put him in office. After that is The Big Year, a film about competing birders that is loosely based on the real Big Year competition of 1998.[2] This is followed by my thoughts on Captain America: The First Avenger. Then we have The Conspirator, a film by Robert Redford about a woman, Mary Surratt, accused of involvement in the plot to assassiante Abraham Lincoln because the conspirators assembled at her hotel. Next up is Dante's Peak, a thriller about a man whose dire predictions of an impending volcano are ignored. This is followed by my thoughts on Jeremiah Johnson, a film loosely based on the real-life mountain man, Liver-Eating Johnson. Then I review Legend, a fantay film from the early 1980s, which draws a lot of imagery from the Bible (Garden of Eden, Fall, Redemption). Following this is Alfred Hitchcock's classic film, Rear Window. After that is Return to Oz, an attempt by Disney to start an Oz film franchise. Next up is Season of the Witch, about a woman accused of causing the Black Death. And I wrap things up with a review of Star Trek, the recent reboot of the series by J. J. Abram.

Book Review: The Alchemy of Air

I was given this book by my postdoctoral advisor as a gift. One of the graduate students in my lab recommended it to him and after he'd read it he decided to buy a copy for everyone else in the lab.[1] It is primarily a biography of two men, Fritz Haber (1868–1934) and Carl Bosch (1874–1940). Fritz Haber was a German chemist who developed a chemical process to convert inert atmospheric nitrogen (N₂) into ammonium (NH₃), which can then be used to make fertilizer or explosives. Carl Bosch, a chemist employed by the German chemical company BASF, perfected this process and scaled it up to industrial levels. Thus this process is usually refered to as the Haber–Bosch process. For their work they each received a Nobel Prize, Haber in 1918 and Bosch in 1931.[2] This book also details the role fertilizers played in world history before the development of the Haber–Bosch process as well as the involvement Haber and Bosch (and their process) had in World War I and World War II.[3]

Easter 2013

Well, I must apologize. I had every intention of posting about our Easter this year within a few days after it happened. But for some reason I forgot. I only just discovered the pictures and videos on the camera. So I've quickly thrown together a little post showing some of the highlights of Easter this year.

Cheese and Cracker Reviews

This year for our anniversary (we've been married for six years, now), Leann let me pick out a few new cheeses to try. I decided to go with Roaring Forties Blue, which is made by King's Island Dairy. It gets its name from the Roaring Forties gales, >100 kmph westerly winds that hit the King's Island, which lies between Australia and Tasmania on the 40th parallel south.[1] I also chose a cheddar-style cheese made right here in Wisconsin, called Pastures (shown to the right), from Saxon Creamery.[2] The third cheese I chose was Caerphilly, a crumbly white cheese from Wales.[3] To go with these I bought Milton's Crispy Sea Salt baked crackers.

Many Movie Reviews I

Well, dear readers, things have intervened in my life here and there and I now have a huge backlog of review posts. In order to trim this down I'm posting several at once. This saves me time because I'm not writing a full intro for each one. Hopefully you can still get something out of them. In this post I'll share my thoughts on Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which is about a kid who is just starting middle school and wants to improve his popularity—at almost any expense. After that is Driving Miss Daisy, a movie about an aging woman who has to start using a chauffeur even though she doesn't want to. Incidentally, it is also the last PG-rated film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture (in 1989). This is followed by a review of L'Illusionniste (The Illusionist), a 2010 French cartoon about an out-of-luck magician (not to be confused with the 2006 American live-action film about an audacious magician). Then I review I.Q., a romantic comedy about Albert Einstein's neice and an auto mechanic. This is followed by Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, a road-trip comedy about incompatible traveling companions. Next we have Pries☩, a 2011 post-apocalyptic film about vampirse and the Catholic priests who hunt them, based on a Korean comic book. After that I review the 2010 film RED, which is based on a comic book about a retired CIA black ops agent (the title of the movie stands for "Retired, Extremely Dangerous."). Next up is S1m0ne, a film about a down-and-out movie director who tries to pass a digital actress off as a real person. Then there's The Social Network, which tells the story of how Facebook came to be, followed by Unstoppable, which is based on the CSX 8888 incident of 2001.[1] The last review is for Yogi Bear, a live-action/computer-animated version of the classic cartoon show.