A few random thoughts I scratched down while I was home for the matzah-oriented holidays:

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They’re still cleaning up the mess in downtown from the tornado. Sue and I stayed at the Omni Hotel while she attended the American Heart Association conference (they were trying to find out if Libertarians have hearts). Many of the skyscrapers are still missing windows. The Peachtree Center looked like it had been bombed. Our hotel room had a crack in the window and the elevator lobby had temporary windows over the shattered remains of their forbears.

Mother Nature scares the hell out of me sometimes.

Of course, this residual destruction did not deter the hordes of shoppers, tourists and, um, heart people from swarming the CNN Center every day.

(Speaking of CNN, a visit to their headquarters will let you know just how full of themselves they really are. And also, just how short Wolf Blitzer is. No wonder he needs such a macho name.)

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On my first day, I went with my family to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in downtown Atlanta. On one side of us were a gaggle of sharply-dressed attorneys discussing debentures or something. On another side was a black family that looked like they had just gotten out of church. On another side were two people in leather with more tattoos than I knew there were body parts that ink could be injected into. The waitress was a marvel (and a cute one at that) — I don’t think anyone so much as ran out of coffee. My daughter was in full happy mode, jabbering at everyone she could lock eyes with. And everyone had a smile and a wave for her. It was a good time; a great time.

To me, that’s America. What it is and what it can be. 300 million individuals living their lives as they want — whether it’s as a tight-ass lawyer or a laid-back biker. Everyone doing their own thing, minding their own business and being decent to each other. No one looking down their nose. For a second, I had a vision of the future in a small Atlanta restaurant. And our future is good.

Or maybe I was just high on the wonderful omelettes.

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Whatever they’re doing in Atlanta on race relations, the rest of the country needs to follow suit. Maybe it’s because Atlanta has four excellent black colleges and therefore a large educated black community and entrepreneur class. But it just seemed that African-Americans in Atlanta are happier, friendlier, more successful, more visible than any city I’ve lived in.

There are areas of Atlanta that are still scary. But there were many areas that are mostly or almost entirely black where I felt completely welcome.

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Who makes matzah that isn’t kosher for Passover?? Honestly. Is there a big Christian demand for matzah?

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My sister-in-law can flat cook. I’d be jealous except that my wife can cook too.

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Atlanta is a beautiful beautiful city. Texas seems so desolate by comparison. It is positively lush with vegetation. We caught the end of dogwood and azalea season. It was warm, but not hot.

I miss the place sometimes.

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More to come…

Appropos of my angry post on vaccinations, I think I just got my first illness from my baby. Veteran parents tell me that I won’t be fully healthy until the last child moves out of the house. But we put Abby in day care two half-days a week some time ago. And last week, we were both tired and very gassy. Abby can’t speak, but I had a bad bellyache as well.

Now, for me, that’s par for the course. In fact, if there were ever a Wikipedia entry on me, I would probably be described as “tired and gassy, with an achy belly”. But for Abby, it was unusual.

Ah, so much to look forward to. I can’t wait for flu season.

I’m screwed:

Ever since there have been scientists, there have been those who are wildly successful, publishing one well-received paper after another, and those who are not. And since nearly the same time, there have been scholars arguing over what makes the difference.

What is it that turns one scientist into more of a Darwin and another into more of a dud?

After years of argument over the roles of factors like genius, sex and dumb luck, a new study shows that something entirely unexpected and considerably sudsier may be at play in determining the success or failure of scientists — beer.

According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper’s quality and importance.

The results were not, however, a matter of a few scientists having had too many brews to be able to stumble back to the lab. Publication did not simply drop off among the heaviest drinkers. Instead, scientific performance steadily declined with increasing beer consumption across the board, from scientists who primly sip at two or three beers over a year to the sort who average knocking back more than two a day.

Actually, I think there may be other factors. My current situation means that I can not afford beer and I’m publishing as frantically as I can to try to keep my job.

But then there’s this:

Moderate drinking may actually improve brain power, according to Japanese research.
It is thought that an ingredient of alcoholic drinks may help prevent or restrict the hardening of the arteries which could lessen blood flow to the brain.

However, there are other factors linked to moderate alcohol consumption which could also be linked to improved IQ.

The researchers, at the National Institute for Longevity Sciences in Aichi Prefecture, near Tokyo, tested the IQs of 2000 people between 40 and 79 years old.

Men who drank less than 540 millilitres of sake or wine a day had an IQ 3.3 points higher than men who did not drink at all.

Women drinkers scored 2.5 points higher than teetotallers.

So is booze good for you or bad for you? I’m so confused. I need a drink.

The price of my soft drinks has gone up significantly in the last month. Is it because of that stupid asinine ethanol crap?

Which Battlestar Galactica Character Are You?

More on Battlestar Galactica. Created by BuddyTV

I’m William Adama. Who knew? Funny thing is that if I have a son, i want to name him William.

Freakonomics just had a contest to come up with the best six-word motto for the United States.

There was a clear winner:

Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay (194 votes)

Here are the runners-up:

Caution! Experiment in Progress Since 1776 (134)

The Most Gentle Empire So Far (64) votes

You Should See the Other Guy (38)

Just Like Canada, With Better Bacon (18)

I still think P.J. O’Rourke’s suggestion: “America … It Doesn’t Suck!” is better.

Just recently, we bought a playpen for my daughter — somewhere where we could park her and she would play and be safe while we worked.

Well, she’s grabbing the railing and trying to scrabble over the side now. She hates being in the playpen.

Ugh. People, do yourself a favor. Have dumb kids. So much easier.

The waiting is the hardest part.

In academia, the job application cycle is a six-month ordeal. I put in my first applications in November. So far, I’ve gotten one rejection. It’s only thanks to the rumor mill that I know that at least a few more jobs are interviewing and are probably not going to be offered my way. But it will be at least March and possibly later before I know that I’m truly on the way out.

Grants are even worse. I put in two NSF grants but will not hear about them until May or even June (after my funding runs out). Moreover, if I get them, the money will not flow until September if not later. So I’m facing at least a few months without a salary, unless I can find someone willing to make a short-term hire. And I may have to figure out a way to quit my job and then be rehired or I will lose several thousand dollars worth of accumulated vacation pay come August 31.

I still have no idea what I’m going to do if nothing pans out — which seems about 2 to 1 will happen. Sue has pointed out that we can tread water on her salary and I can try to live my dream of being a novelist — finish that book I’m 60,000 words into or the one 10,000 words in. This seems like the most likely course. But it’s scary being out here in limbo — waiting to here some news, any news. I’m working as hard as I can just in case something does work out. But knowing it may all be for nothing doesn’t exactly inspire one’s best productivity.

It’ll be a pity if I have to leave. This last year has been one of my most productive in terms of papers and proposals. There was a time when I was quite lazy about my work. But that changed when I came to Texas. It’s appearing likely that it will be a matter of too little, too late.

As I said in an earlier post, I’ll have no regrets if I end up leaving astronomy. And I’m sure, with a PhD and a long resume, finding work will not be a problem unless the economy completely collapses. But it’s not an easy time. And that knot in my chest is not going to unravel for a long time.

So you’ll understand if my posts here and at RTLC tend to be a bit vitriolic. Most of the day, I’m working and too busy to fret. Or I’m taking care of my daughter and enjoying the moments. But at night, when I blog, the future looms awfully bleak.

Actually, you know when waiting gets the worst? When you get an e-mail. My work computer will tell me — sometimes interrupting what I’m doing — that I’ve gotten an e-mail and who it’s from. Knowing the chairs of all the job commitees and the program officers at NSF by heart, I instantly recognize when something job related has come down. There’s this moment when you hesitate. For me, I know that getting an e-mail, rather than a call, is not generally good. And I’m familiar with that horrible sense of disappointment — it begins even before I’ve read the mail. It’s at times like that that the universe stops, sounds and sights grow more intense, the hairs on your body stand up. For that knowledge of pending disappointment is threaded with a silver trace of hope. And then it comes crashing down when your eyes, without reading anything else, lock onto that word “regret”. There’s a sense of disappointment, but also one of relief.

Yes, the waiting is the hardest part.

I’ve been through this before, of course. When I applied to grad schools the first time, I got rejected. But I was 21, enjoying college and had a year to build up the resume while working in my dad’s office. The next year, acceptances came early, alleviating any stress. When I applied for my current job, it was offered the position in December. No stress at all. Last year, I knew I had a little grant funding left and could eek out one last year. It was stressful, but too bad.

The only comparable moment to what I’m going through now was my last year of grad school, when I didn’t even get short-listed until February. This is worse. Then, I was 28. Now I’m 35. Then, I was very single. Now, I’m married with a little baby. Then, I was living in a small apartment. Now, I’ve got a mortgage and bills.

Says it all, don’t it:

So why do we bother? In part, because sometimes we do have an impact. Anybody remember Harriet Miers? In part, because we’ve got the writing bug and the new media allows us to bypass the traditional gate keepers that controlled access to the public. We write because, as somebody famous whose name I can’t remember said, we have to. And maybe, just maybe, there’s a little narcissist in all of us.

First, off, the “have to” part. Writing has an addictive quality. I got hooked on the stuff back in college but manage to control my habit most of the time. But if I had a million dollars, I’d write full time (and, if my grants run out, I might do that anyway). I’ve been blogging at my own site for 2.5 years, mostly into silence. It doesn’t bother me. The process is the reward.

But, yeah, there is the narcissistic part. Everyone who blogs thinks he has something interesting to say even though only a tiny fraction do. When Lee, a very good blogger, asked me to blog first at Moorewatch and then at Right-Thinking, it was a great ego moment.

Of course, the disadvantage is that I can now make a fool of myself to a wider audience. But at least it’s a quiet humiliation.

A year ago, the blog collapsed under the weight of tens of thousands of spam posts per day. All my old posts are lost beyond that event horizon. I rebooted with wordpress and it’s been good to me. Askimet and user registration have blocked almost everything and blog traffic is way down (a good thing when 99.99% of your previous traffic was spam).

Today, someone tried to register as CHEAP-VIAGRA-PORN. Um, yeah.

Most of my political blogging, you may have noticed, has been absent in this space. Almost all of it is now taking place at Right Thinking From the Left Coast. (I’m in Austin, and that’s sort of the left coast of Texas). There are a variety of reasons — greater exposure, superior blog software and one of our bloggers has been silent for almost three weeks now.

I’m reserving this site for unrelated sports and personal blogging as well as my longer essays.

Seventh 14-hour night in a row tonight.

Mercury is at a balmy 29 degrees and falling.

It’s windy.

I have to go into the freezing cold dome every ten minutes to adjust the telescope.

Why am I doing this to myself?

Here is my life for the last week:

That’s a little bit exhausting. Fortunately, I’m taking lots and lots of long exposures so I have plenty of time to do other stuff while observing.