A general what’s update:

My 70+ pages worth of end-of-semester papers worked out fairly well. I like them much better than what I wrote in the fall, and they earned me three Honors grades. For Dan Kevles and Ole Molvig, I wrote a paper arguing that historians of science should salvage and utilize as much of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions as possible, showing along how Kuhn’s ideas could be modified to fit some of the diverse recent work in the history of science. For Naomi Rogers’ Science and Feminism class, I did a research paper based on the letters of recommendation of G. Evelyn Hutchinson, the famous Yale ecologist. It analyzed a wide selection of recommendations in terms in terms of gender and the student-mentor relationship. Hopefully it said something novel about the latter and demonstrated the historical usefulness of scientists’ letters of recommendation. For Beverly Gage’s 20th-century American Conservatism, I wrote a group review of four Intelligent Design-related books: Doubts About Darwin, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, Creationism’s Trojan Horse, and the 3rd edition of Ed Larson’s Trial and Error.

(Incidently, Gage is married to the liberal cartoonist/blogger Tom Tomorrow. Of course, most political cartoonists have a pretty easy job these days, but back before W. was in office, I found This Modern World consistently funny and insightful. Ironically, I’m probably more of a conservative now than I have been in the past.)

Now I’m in a 5-week German for Reading Knowledge class… the class is actually quite enjoyable. Lots of laughing and smiling, everyone in the class is highly competent, and most of the people are interesting. I’m finding German much easier than French.

I played ultimate frisbee twice last week, and will probably play twice weekly for the rest of the summer. On Sunday, I played with Alison Greene and a pair of her friends. We expected more than just the four of us, so we had to make due by recruiting some of the little kids that were playing in the park. This little 7-year-old boy was really enthusiastic (and fortunately, he was on my team). The weather has been great since we got back to New Haven, although it’s too hot for Faith.

Reading: Kepler’s Witch

Watching: 24 – Season 2

Listening: Discover America, twothirtyeight, Bob Dylan