I have absolutely no idea when Easter is, but judging by how many weeks I've been eating Easter candy, it's bound to be soon. I ran across these cute nature-inspired Easter eggs and thought they were adorable. Directions are in the comments section here.
If you're a girl and you love beauty products than you are well acquainted with a wonderful little website known as Sephora. I could spend entire paychecks at Sephora, but I keep myself limited to my three favorite makeup necessities (primer, foundation, powder) and the occasional impulse purchase. One of the best things about Sephora are all of the free samples you get with every purchase. In fact, I have an entire box in our linen closet labeled "small samples" to organize these little gems. 
One of many fly fishermen that were at the falls yesterday.
Didn't I tell you that I had popped?! I mean - wow! This is dramatically different from even last weekend. I never got our "cute couple at the falls" picture, so we settled for the "boring, by the empty fireplace after we got home" picture.
B's grill creations of shrimp appetizers and chicken and veggie kabobs - so amazing!
Dear Professor Gotelli,
I saw your op-ed in the Burlington Free Press and appreciated your support of free speech at UVM. In light of that, I wonder if you would be open to finding a way to provide a campus forum for a debate about evolutionary science and intelligent design. The Discovery Institute, where I work, has a local sponsor in Burlington who is enthusiastic to find a way to make this happen. But we need a partner on campus. If not the biology department, then perhaps you can suggest an alternative.
Ben Stein may not be the best person to single-handedly represent the ID side. As you're aware, he's known mainly as an entertainer. A more appropriate alternative or addition might be our senior fellows David Berlinski or Stephen Meyer, respectively a mathematician and a philosopher of science. I'll copy links to their bios below. Wherever one comes down in the Darwin debate, I think we can all agree that it is healthy for students to be exposed to different views--in precisely the spirit of inviting controversial speakers to campus, as you write in your op-ed.
I'm hoping that you would be willing to give a critique of ID at such an event, and participate in the debate in whatever role you feel comfortable with.
A good scientific backdrop to the discussion might be Dr. Meyer's book that comes out in June from HarperCollins, "Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design."
On the other hand, Dr. Belinski may be a good choice since he is a critic of both ID and Darwinian theory.
Would it be possible for us to talk more about this by phone sometime soon?
With best wishes,
David Klinghoffer
Discovery Institute
You'll enjoy Dr Gotelli's response.
Dear Dr. Klinghoffer:
Thank you for this interesting and courteous invitation to set up a debate about evolution and creationism (which includes its more recent relabeling as "intelligent design") with a speaker from the Discovery Institute. Your invitation is quite surprising, given the sneering coverage of my recent newspaper editorial that you yourself posted on the Discovery Institute's website:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/02/
However, this kind of two-faced dishonesty is what the scientific community has come to expect from the creationists.
Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.
Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.
"Conspiracy" is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke, because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and on new empirical studies that overturn previously established principles. Creationism doesn't live up to these standards, so its proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books, blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don't maintain scientific standards.
Finally, isn't it sort of pathetic that your large, well-funded institute must scrape around, panhandling for a seminar invitation at a little university in northern New England? Practicing scientists receive frequent invitations to speak in science departments around the world, often on controversial and novel topics. If creationists actually published some legitimate science, they would receive such invitations as well.
So, I hope you understand why I am declining your offer. I will wait patiently to read about the work of creationists in the pages of Nature and Science. But until it appears there, it isn't science and doesn't merit an invitation.
In closing, I do want to thank you sincerely for this invitation and for your posting on the Discovery Institute Website. As an evolutionary biologist, I can't tell you what a badge of honor this is. My colleagues will be envious.
Sincerely yours,
Nick Gotelli
P.S. I hope you will forgive me if I do not respond to any further e-mails from you or from the Discovery Institute. This has been entertaining, but it interferes with my research and teaching.
Foods that require absolutely NO sugar (pasta sauce, etc.) have tons of it, and foods that require some sugar have WAY too much of it (peanut butter, yogurt, cereal, ketchup, I could go on for days…). And I’m sure that I’m more aware of this issue than most people because of my hypoglycemia, but if you’ve never paid attention to what foods have added sugar or how much, you should absolutely start looking at the packages and educate yourself.
As a very small example, I CAN’T eat regular yogurt. It’s not that I don’t like it, I love it, but it has so much sugar that my body physically can’t process it unless I’ve had a meal first, or unless I add large amounts of granola or wheat germ to it. As I result, I eat plain yogurt, which is quite bitter, and add honey for flavor and sweetness.
In addition to the fact that this phenomenon affects me personally and makes me search out alternative sweeteners with a lower glycemic index (agave syrup), buy the “lower sugar” versions of products (which are becoming more prevalent), buy organic (which often has much less sugar than the non-organic versions), and make my own food at home (pasta sauce, etc.), it angers me that our child will be subjected to this as well. It’s unfair that our kids are becoming addicted to sugar through almost no fault of their own. If the only food they sell is loaded with sugar, is it any wonder why people become addicted?
One of the many small things we do to combat this problem is to make our own pasta sauce. Being Italian, both B and I grew up exclusively on homemade sauce and we’ve continued that tradition. Every few months we load up on groceries and B spends a Sunday afternoon blanching tomatoes, cutting fresh herbs, opening cans, doing tastings, and making our own sauce. After about 4 hours, the big huge vat of sauce and homemade meatballs gets divided into 8 containers and hits the freezer.
I realize that most people don’t have the inclination to do this, but sauce is one of those foods that has tons of unnecessary sugar so I was excited when I ran across this super simple sauce recipe in this month’s issue of Everyday Food. I haven’t tried it, but it sounds like a good place to start even if you need to add some extra herbs to pump up the flavor. As a general tip, you can’t go wrong with basil, parsley, and oregano.
Rustic Marinara Sauce
In a large pot, heat 2T of olive oil, 2 cloves of minced garlic, and a pinch of red pepper flakes over medium until fragrant (2 minutes). Add two 28-oz cans while tomatoes with juice, crushed. Season with salt and pepper. Cook at a rapid simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 15 minutes.
