Virtually Home

Jacob and Jessie on NYE 2018 was kind of a whirlwind. There were a lot of highs and lows, but mostly highs. I had some wonderful adventures this year. Here are some highlights. January Oberst with Taylor Hollingsworth of MVB We kicked off the New Year in the best way possible: by seeing a Conor Oberst concert in a California. Jacob and I flew out to Los Angeles and met up with friends from all over the country to see Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band play their first show in years. We caught up in line all day in the gloriously warm (by comparison with Minnesota) weather. We ate amazing Mexican food. And the show was brilliant -- the new venue in Silverlake was really cool and made custom cockatils for the show. Miwi La Lupa played a fabulous solo acoustic set to open. At midnight, the band played "Auld Lang Syne". The New Year couldn't have begun in a better way. That day turned out to be the last time I hung out with my friend Christina outside a ...

Stephen Hawking was an incredible scientist and said a lot of interesting things. One of the things he did that was most valuable was make science interesting to non-scientists and relevant in pop-culture. In the wake of his death, his quotes are making the rounds on social media. From my perspective as a biologist, the two most-often shared Hawking quotes this week are the worst choices to be broadly disseminated among non-scientists. 1) "Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious." Astrophysics is rad, but also there are SO MANY things going on under your feet we still don't understand. Turn over a rock. Look at a salamander or an insect or a lichen. Honestly, just look at the rock. You can be curious about why we're here in such a more direct, accessible way than is implied by this quote, taken out of context. There are a ton of ways to be a scientist, or just a cur...