Onsum.org

Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.
- Dame Edna Everage

Here we are hamming it up in Bear Valley. The voice at the end of the video is my brother-in-law Brad.

We are often asked how we, as Californians, are holding up in the Boston winters. Well, aside from a few wicked cold days, the winters here are beautiful. Here’s a shot of Jamaica Pond in January.

We were wined and dined by my (old) company at our Winter gala, this year held at Gillette Stadium, home of the AFC Champion Patriots (almost Super Bowl champs).

We were blessed by a visit from our dear friends the Waters. Here are their girls playing in the Boston Commons. Honestly, they make me want kids.

In March, as the snow was melting in Boston, we decided we needed just a bit more cold weather so we headed to the mountains of CA to ski.

We concluded the winter by visiting our family and some old friends in the Bay Area.

I posted some photos from our wedding here. Yes, our wedding was 15 months ago but better late than never. Thanks to Leon for suggesting SimpleViewer.

This is a great website:

http://producten.hema.nl/

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Bill Bryson’s book A Short History of Nearly Everything. He provides an great narrative of the lives and personalities of the scientists involved in some the world’s biggest scientific discoveries. What really stands out are the petty rivalries between scientists working in the same field (eg, see how Richard Owen systematically destroyed a fellow paleontologist).

Well, I’ve just come across a current rivalry, and seeing how it is the 21st century, each scientist has a blog so we can watch them fight real-time. On the one side we have Michael Mann, who created the “hockey-stick” plot of global temperature that has been used by the IPCC and Al Gore. His blog is www.realclimate.org (note the subtle title). On the other side is Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. They found an error in Mann’s mathematics– you can read about it here (BTW, the author of this article was my physic professor at Berkeley). McIntyre’s blog is www.climateaudit.org. Now McIntyre and McKitrick do not argue against global warming, rather they show that Mann’s results are exaggerated. Their argument is that all climate data and analysis software should be made available to the public so that we (or other nerds) can judge it and make intelligent policy decisions. As far as I can tell they are right. But Mann fights back and so do they. So sit back and watch the pocket protectors fly.

… and we plan to keep posting, so please keep in touch through checking the website and leaving a post or writing an email.  We have now both returned to work and we are adjusting back to life in the US.

Thank you for the Christmas cards sent from so many of you.  It was fun to return to a pile of personal mail

When my great-grandfather from Denmark came to the US, he wrote a letter describing this strange American holiday called Thanksgiving.  In a letter from November of 1911, he wrote: “last Thursday was Thanksgiving in the U.S.” and that it is a day set aside for all to say thanks for what the year has brought.  Additionally, he says: “everyday should be Thanksgiving and that I have a lot to be thankful for.”

I couldn’t agree with him more.

 We visited our dear friends Cara & Matt Dejong in the Netherlands last weekend!

This is a selection of our photos from Prague… sorry for the delay.