Links to the new homes of my blogs:

The Ranting Chemist

Navel Gazing

Prof Quotes

About Me will remain a blogspot blog until I work it into my homepage.

OK, the move is done. The Ranting Chemist and associated blogs are up and running at http://www.rantingchemist.com/blog. Click here if you don't want to copy and paste the address. I am leaving all of this at blogspot, so that everyone can still find me, but I will only be updating the new version.

All the blogs have been successfully migrated to Movabletype now. All that is left is template tweaking and adding of links, and I will post the new links here.

I moved the sub-blogs back over to blogspot's hosting for now. I think I want to redesign a few things and maybe try a different blogging software before I move everything over to my website for good. I am currently trying get a copy of this blog up and running with MovableType, but the templates are refusing to cooperate with me. GRRR. Whatever develops, I will probably leave a copy of all my blogger stuff here on Blogspot.

Here is a little more information about this previous post concerning the investigation of perfluorooctanoic acid, which is used in the manufacture of Teflon^®.

Easter was fun. I got to see my grandma and my aunts and uncles on my dad's side of the family, because all of them got to make the trip this time.

I am currently in the process of moving my sub-blogs to my new server. It is working for the most part, but for some reason, some of the archive links and permalinks come up dead now. If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix that, please email me at suggestions at rantingchemist dot com.

Time traveller or inside trader?
You have to give the guy credit for one of the most original 'not guilty' pleas ever. I wonder how the judge manages to keep a straight face.

From L.T. Smash:

The following have given their lives to liberate Iraq.

Thank you to all of these soldiers and their families. You have made the world a better place to live.

Also, it struck me that what I like most about blogging is that I get to see a side of people I know that I don't always see when I'm around them -- not to mention getting to know people I've never met, and I get to read about how a lot of people deal with the same kinds of problems -- and different ones -- every day, plus I have a place to speak my mind. It is comforting to know that I am not the only one that thinks a given thing is crazy or to get a different perspective on how to handle things that are bothering me or to be able to provide encouragement to someone else once in a while. I have really never been good at communicating that sort of thing IRL, and I am hoping that it will start carrying over.

I just bought a year's worth of webhosting and my own domain name, and I have a break coming up in less than 24 hours, which just happens to be the amount of time it takes for my domain name to be resolved on the servers. I will probably be working moving my blog over there at some point next week, but I will leave it up here for a while, too, since it is finally garnering a lot of visitors. More on these and other developments later; I need to finish off my Shakespeare paper right now.

Here is a partially encouraging (?) reminder of one way of tackling antibiotic resistance: find out whose fault it is that we have this problem in the first place.

This seemingly innocuous story has a very sad fact hidden in the middle.

Literacy could also be a factor, the report suggested, as nearly one-quarter of the U.S. population cannot read well enough to handle everyday tasks.

I have to count not being able to read as one of the most miserable existences on the face of the earth. About 80% of my day is either reading, talking about things I have read with my friends and other people, or writing about one thing or another. What is there to do if you can't read besides listening to audiobooks or watching TV, unless you have lots of friends to rely on? Not to mention the fact that literacy is essential to really learning about God. Illiteracy makes a person almost totally dependent on others to tell them what to believe. Not being able to read and amass enough information to make a good decision is potentially very dangerous in any situation, even more so when making decisions about what to believe.

One more question: Dyslexia and older illiterate people aside (they can't possibly account for 25% of the population here), what is wrong with our educational system that anyone could get through without at least learning to read? It shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Cool. A working Rube Goldberg contraption made from auto parts.

Congratulations to Joe and Ashley Neeson! Their daughter, Lilly Macayla Neeson, was born today around at 12:57pm. She was 8 lbs 5 oz and 21 inches, which translates to about 3.77 kg and 53.34 cm for those of us who like SI units. :-)