The Blogger Who Wasn't There & and the End of the Year

I didn't want to be the blogger who lamented long periods of bloglessness. Yet, here I am, in spite of encouragement by my fellow bloggers. The blogger who wasn't there. When the autumn quarter arrived, I was hard pressed to sit down and write up something worth reading. And I refuse to blather on about politics,  intelligent design creationism, which weird personality test I took, and so on. Dammit Jim, this blog is a research notebook, not a diary. And so I didn't really blog at all.

Of course, the last few months have been busy enough that I felt like I had to cut something loose. I was back to teaching after a year off. It's amazing what you forget --like that you have to order books. And jumping into a huge lecture course jammed with freshmen who have a bottomless pit of excuses and sob stories is no picnic. But that's over. And I had to get my tenure file put together and turned in. Good news: My department voted unanimously to tenure and promote me. I await the administration's view, but I predict being an Associate Professor at the start of next fall. I can't wait for those perks! Oh, wait. There are no perks. Huh. Also, I had to help (in some sense of the word) bring my daughter, Ella , into the world: November 15, 7:12 PM, 9 lbs. 7 oz. and absolutely perfect. In no uncertain terms, that was the ... best ... day ... ever.

I start back with winter quarter on 3 January. I'm teaching two courses, one upper level, undergraduate elective called, "Philosophy and Cognitive Ethology." A fun course on "animal minds." The other course is a graduate seminar called "History and Philosophy of Biology." That course is centered around the "rise and fall (?) of panselectionism" in evolutionary genetics from roughly the 1930s to roughly now. (Stay tuned for the reading list.) I'm going to be busy. Just plain busy. But then in the spring I and whole "fam" leave for the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Durham --the whole spring. All research (and other stuff). Can't wait.

Hopefully, blogging will pick up this winter in connection with the HPB course. Perhaps, even, I will force graduate students to ponder evolutionary genetics right here on this blog. Heck, some of what I'll be teaching is right here on this blog. I've got to find some way of "encouraging" the shrinking violets listed on the moribund "HPB Group" to the right to contribute to the blog. We shall see.

2006 has been good to me. I'll be happy if 2007 just maintains.