I probably won't post again until next week, after I'm finished with this conference. Of course, I have to attend another about two weeks after that. I'm sure that won't eat up any of my time.

Here are some pre-conference observations in no particular order:

• Conference clothes are lame, but fashion rules are even lamer.
• Overpriced conference hotels suck, not to mention food and alcohol expenses.
• "Networking" sucks, but becomes increasingly tolerable as blood alcohol level increases.
• Your research is not as exciting or as interesting as you think it is. More people should remember that.
• Warning: There is a variable threshold for blood alcohol level where interesting and exciting become irritating and boring. Chances are you'll find it. Buying drinks for your audience may delay this qualitative change, however.
• Smaller poster sizes from previous years sort of sucks. They're cheaper to make, but limit your content.
• Statistical methods for qualitative data suck, especially compared to quantitative methods.
• Using complex, obscure statistical methods when something simpler is available doesn't make you cool.
• Not testing to ensure your data meets test assumptions of your analyses is lame.
• Non-normally distributed data suck, but not as much as missing observations.
• Outliers suck, but then again outliers can be very interesting and informative.
• Non-parametric statistics are useful, even if people seem to forget about them.
• R kicks ass.

Oh. Blogging sucks too.

And editing.

That is all.

Speaking of destroying America, today's issue of Science is dedicated to one of key pillars of thought bent on undermining America and it's Christian values: Human Evolution.

Researchers have unveiled the oldest known skeleton of a putative human ancestor--and it is full of surprises. Although the creature, named Ardipithecus ramidus, had a brain and body the size of a chimpanzee, it did not knuckle-walk or swing through the trees like an ape. Instead, "Ardi" walked upright, with a big, stiff foot and short, wide pelvis, researchers report in Science. "We thought Lucy was the find of the century," says paleoanthropologist Andrew Hill of Yale University, referring to the famous 3.2-million-year-old skeleton that revolutionized thinking about human origins. "But in retrospect, it was not.

[From Ancient Skeleton May Rewrite Earliest Chapter of Human Evolution -- Gibbons 2009 (1001): 1 -- ScienceNOW]

Sounds like pretty cool stuff. I haven't read the articles yet, but plan to do so before the weekend.

Oh, there's also this full frontal picture.

Both hands above your desk, please.

Have you ever read this blog? The answer is no, obviously. I don't even read it. And if I wasn't the one writing it, I would avoid this place at all costs. But if you did, you'd know two facts: (1) I don't post very often, and (2) the writing here sucks. So why did I opt to write a fucking dissertation?

Writing this thing is grueling. It's probably one of the worst experiences of my life. I churn out pages of garbled bullshit that wouldn't pass for rational discourse at a teabagger rally attended solely by 12-year-olds suffering from recent, severe cranial blunt force trauma.

If it wasn't for spellcheck, I'd be completely fucked. I don't bother to turn on Word's grammar check function. Who needs to see all of those green underlines?

On top of all of that, it isn't even that great of a project.

What the fuck was I thinking?

What the fuck, indeed.