As I was reading though my blogroll, I found this post by a very smart rodent. Eli has dumped one of the NASA freedom of information act (FOIA for those in the acronym game) requests in the memory hole. I’m sure it’s mentioned somewhere, but there should be a contest about which quote(s) will be taken out of context. My contribution:

I should have kept more data, but I was not interested in US data.

(I’ve only got through about 1/4 of it, so maybe they’ll be something “juicier” later.)

In other rabbit news, Eli references my “wiki work”: “Here is a short derivation of the adiabatic lapse rate.”<ref>[1]<ref /> which isn’t so much writing as fixing, as the previous version was _________ (not sure of the right word, “bad” comes to mind but isn’t quite right).

First: Watergate was named “gate” for a reason. Every other “gate” is just a silly name.

Second: The only emails I’ve read, I’ve read involuntarily as they’ve been posted to Wikipedia. I don’t think it’s right reading the email of others.

Third: I assume the ‘worst’ emails are the ones they’re trying to push.

Fourth: From what I’ve read, this seems much ado about nothing.

I haven’t kept up with the climate blogs/news recently, so maybe my assessment is wrong. But it seems like the email conversations you’d expect scientists to have.

My two cents.

New undergrads on campus. Which means I get to hear all sorts of silly thing like:

Wombats are just like little kangaroos, right?

According to Le’ Wikipedia, they are both of the order Diprotodontia, and they both live on the Australian continent, but that’s as close as they get. Like comparing a fox and a polar bear because they’re both in the order Carnivora.

In other news, I’m looking for someone to help fix/update the blog software. He or she would be paid a modest fee. Leave your email in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

One commenter on my post last Friday suggested that I may not have been too busy to be writing a blog. I have been editing at Wikipedia, but that’s just plain fun. Not the writing part, but watching people get worked up over minor things. And trying to figure out the Wiki-way, even though it’s clear the Wiki-way doesn’t work for somethings. Fun all around.

Anyway, the main reason I haven’t been blogging is because I’ve been trying to lose weight. Sometime last year I tipped the scales at almost 200 pounds {{convert|200|lbs|kg}} at 6 feet {{covert|6|ft|m}} tall (too bad those WP templates don’t work on this blog). Just your typical lazy, fat American. Or simply American to non-Americans. This morning, I was 160 lbs. Woot. And without a gym membership too. My routine consists of running, push ups, sit ups, and pull ups. Notice that they’re all free… because I’m a cheap bastard.

And speaking of timely, I just got this email.

Dear Professor [redacted]

Short summer sessions and the economy both point toward the use of custom course materials as opposed to textbooks…

Darned spammers got my title wrong (not that I’m complaining a whole lot though), but I am teaching 2 intro classes this semester and haven’t decided on a textbook yet. Maybe I’ll try them out…