Jacqueline Gets Her Geek On

I like the dinosaurs

I love tourist traps.  That's why I live in the biggest tourist trap in the world, and why, when visiting Natural Bridge in Central Virginia a few weeks ago, I also had to visit Dinosaur Kingdom, the Monster House, the Wax Museum, etc.

Neal has a great post captioning several of our pictures.  The rest of the pictures are posted here.

Please stop utilizing "utilize" when you should be using "use"

Thank you.

I'm an evangelist for the serial comma

My current job is to help scientists apply for research grants, so I spend a lot of time reading and editing stuff along the lines of, "Dust is not healthy for children or other living things.  We have a nifty van that measures how bad your dust is.  Give us money."  (Except the actual proposals are longer, less direct, and more sciencey.)

If you've ever read scientists' unedited writing then you can probably imagine my pain.  The passive verb tenses, the nominalizations, the convoluted run-on sentences so stuffed full of technical terms that I can't tell where the compound adjectives end and the compound nouns begin... they make my brain melt.

But most of that is just endemic of science writing in general, so I'm not sure how much I can do about it.  There is, however, one permanent improvement to my coworkers' writing that I believe is within my reach: adoption of the serial comma.

Although some people can argue in favor of the passive voice as being more "impersonal" and thus more appropriate for science writing, there are no good arguments against the serial comma.  We are no longer setting typeface by hand and do not need to save ink or space at the cost of clarity.  The AP Stylebook needs to get with the now.

When I first began working here, only one of the four writers in my department consistently used the serial comma.  The other three would accept my edits when I imposed it onto their writing, but they kept sending me drafts in which it was omitted. 

So I decided to make evangelizing the serial comma my personal mission.  I explained to them why the serial comma was the superior choice for clarity.  I wrote the classic "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God" example on their whiteboards to demonstrate why omitting it was confusing.  I complained about how I can't tell how many items are in a list if I'm unfamiliar with the terms and they don't use the serial comma. 

And finally, after months of cajoling and correcting, I seem to have made a convert!  I just edited a draft document in which the writer used the serial comma consistently throughout!  Also, another one is halfway there -- he seems to get the general concept, but is confused about the placement of the final comma in relation to the "and" -- he writes, "thing, thing and, thing" instead of "thing, thing, and thing."  But at least now I can tell how many items he intended to list, so that's an improvement.

I am so pleased.  I feel like I have made the world a better place.

Next mission: consistent hyphenation of compound adjectives.  Oooooo.  I'm getting tingly just thinking about it.

Hello from somewhere over Arkansas!

Neal and I are flying to Virginia to attend his friend's wedding and visit his family.  We are flying AirTran, and they have in-flight wifi!!!  This is SO COOL!!!

PS Less cool: No power outlets. :(

Lee's Beer Experience

Saturday Neal and I attended the 3rd annual Lee's Beer Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton.  This is an amazing event for beer lovers, offering the opportunity to sample hundreds of beers from around the world.  It is sponsored by Lee's Discount Liquor (a great local chain of warehouse-sized liquor stores with amazing selection and prices) and the proceeds go to charity.

I was on a mission to sample all the porters and stouts or puke trying.  Alas, we ran out of time before we ran out of beers to try, but I think I managed to hit most of them. 

I rated the beers I sampled on a 0-5 scale, with 5 being a Young's Double Chocolate Stout (my favorite beer of all time) and 0 being "I would spit this out right in front of the brewer" (fortunately I did not encounter any 0s).  My tastes and biases are that I really only like porters and stouts (and maybe the occasional brown ale or amber), prefer smoother beers, and really don't like anything sour or overly carbonated.

Here's what I tried and how I liked it:

Porters:

• Baltika #6 (Porter): 4/5. Smooth, slight sour tang but not in a bad way. All the way from Russia!
• Polygamy Porter: 4/5, smooth but a little weak. Love their slogan, "Why have just one?"
• Michelob Porter: 4/5. I only drank a Michelob brand beer because I was on a mission to sample all the porters, but I was pleasantly surprised!  The Michelob booth lady told me that they are releasing an Imperial Stout soon and to check their website for details.
• Stone Smoked Porter: 3/5. Good beer but too smoky for my taste.
• Anchor Porter: 2/5. Too sour for me.

Stouts:

• Young's Double Chocolate Stout: Still 5/5. This is the standard I had in mind for my 5-point scale when I walked in the doors. Smooth & chocolatey.
• White Pine Imperial Stout: 4.5/5. Very smooth. They are building a new brewery in Ely, Nevada.  Also spotted the first kilt of the afternoon on White Pine's "Brewmaster" Steve.
• Guinness: 4.5/5. Like I needed to "sample" this again, but their booth babes were roaming the floor and pushing it on people, what could I do?
• Old Rasputin Imperial Stout: 3/5. A little harsh but otherwise tasty.
• Deshutes Obsidian Stout: 3/5. Quality beer but too bitter for my taste.
• Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout: 3/5. Smooth, high quality, but too sour for me.
• SNAFU (Southern Nevada Ale Fermenters Union) member's homebrewed Coffee Sweet Stout: 3/5. Basically tasted like coffee mixed with beer.
• Bourbon County Brand Stout: 2.5/5. It's strong but has a weird taste I don't like. Neal loves it, though. It is $5/bottle at Lee's Discount Liquor and they were just giving it away at the Beer Experience!
• SNAFU homebrew club Lawgiver Stout: 2/5. Mostly just tastes burnt. But props for the obscure Star Trek references!

Others beers I sampled, usually because when I asked if brewery had a porter or stout they just pushed something else on me instead:

• Charm Soju rice vodka: 3/5. Tastes like sake but is actually a "rice vodka" from Korea. With the raspberry mixer they added it's 4/5.
  
• Banana Bread Beer: 3/5. Not a porter or stout but Neal said I had to try it. It smells and tastes like bananas. Interesting.
  
• Negra Modelo: 2/5. Not a porter or stout but I sampled it anyway in honor of fond memories of ordering "Una mas cerveza negra, por favor" in C.R.
  
• New Belgium 1554 black lager: 2/5. People kept encouraging me to try other types of beers but I just don't care for non-porters/stouts.
  
• Spanish Peaks Brewing Co Honey Raspberry Ale: 2/5. I ask for a porter or stout and they offered me a girly beer instead. Not a fan of it.
  
• Warsteiner Dunkel: 2/5. What the lady gave me when I asked if she had a porter or stout. Sour and weird tasting.
  
• Dogfish Head Craft Brewery Palo Santo Marron: 2/5. Another "do you have a porter or stout?" "no but try this" experience. Sour/carbonated.
• Blackthorn Fermented Cider: 2/5. Unfortunately it's not nearly as good as Canadian cider. Sour/nasty.
• Unibrour Trois Pistoles: 1.5/5. When I ask for a porter or stout don't hand me something completely different and say "try this." Sour/nasty.

We also entertained ourselves by collecting evidence to support or refute Neal's pet theory that beer quality is inversely proportional to the attractiveness of the booth babes serving the beer.  Pretty girls serving = bad beer, Fat bearded guy in a kilt serving = good beer. 

However, Neal was forced to revise his theory after encountering the Guinness and Deschutes girls:

Neal's revised theory is that it is actually breast size that is inversely correlated with beer quality.  Here are the Miller Chill and Aneuser Busch booth babes, in support of his revised theory:

Whereas Steve, the "Brewmaster" of the soon-to-be opened White Pine Brewery in Ely, Nevada, and brewer of one of the better beers we tasted all afternoon, is your stereotypical kilted beer guy:

We will return next year to gather additional data.

Literal videos

Meatloaf: Anything for Love

Journey: Separate Ways

Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart

Billy Idol: White Wedding

Or, for another approach to the idea of literal videos:

Buggles: Video Killed the Radio Star

Like comics? Like economics? Read Ecocomics!

Via Marginal Revolution, check out what is possibly the best blog idea ever: Ecocomics, "Where Graphic Art Meets Dismal Science."  Here are some excerpts that demonstrate why you should add it to your feed subscriptions (I'm talking to you, Shawn):

Mutants and the Economy

"Imagine what Magneto could do if he worked in construction. For one thing, all of those New York City public works project would have their completion dates moved up from 2018 to roughly five minutes from now."

Where Does the Canadian Government Get the Money from to Keep Making Super-Soldiers?

"Regardless, someone in the Canadian government was still there to provide funding for Weapon X, whatever its intended purpose may have been. And I'm sure they had to receive progress reports such as: "We created a supersoldier with a healing ability and an indestructible skeleton. And he was really cool. But then he killed all of the scientists and the guards... and he's living in the woods now. So... we need more money."" 

Millionaires = Crazy

"In the world of comic books any individual who has more than 5 million dollars in saving or assets immediately becomes bat-shit insane."

Adventures in GMAT, family edition

My brother is taking the GMAT today.  Neal and I have been trying to help him study, but we may have just flustered him more. :(  I'd forgotten what tricky little bastards those data sufficiency problems can be.

However, I am pleased that soon we will have quantitative proof that I am the smarter one (and thus more deserving of our parents' love) and by how much.  Ha ha ha.  :)

Neal is enjoying the sample test so much that I think we should make him take the GMAT next!  He might beat me on the quantitative section, but probably not my overall score.

Competitive?  Me?

Hmm... what am I up to?

Whatever I'm doing, it seems to be taking a while, so don't hold your breath that it'll be done anytime soon.

In Seattle Saturday-Thursday

Neal and I will be in the Seattle area this Saturday-Thursday, visiting my family.  Since this trip is longer than a couple of days we should have time to meet up with local friends at least once.  Please email me if you're going to be around and let me know which days/times work best for you.

Update: And we'll be in Bellingham Tuesday afternoon - Wednesday lunchtime, if anyone wants to go out for margaritas at Casa Que Pasa Tuesday night or lunch at the New Peking on Wednesday.  (Does anyone else even still live in Bellingham?)