Off the “to do” list

I finally managed to check off a couple of prominent items on my “to do” list. First, a manuscript I was hoping would go out around New Year’s is sitting patiently in the outbound mailbox waiting to be picked up on its way to a scientific journal. If I can get this out by the end of this year, that would make 2006 among my most productive publishing years ever. Second, I sat down with my colleague Anita this morning and we roughed out what we want to do for our new graduate course, Evolutionary Theory, which we’re going to teach this summer. It’ll be an interesting experience. Not fifteen weeks. Twenty-four days. Twenty-four days of intense teaching action.

Meanwhile, I was actually amazed to see a crustacean making the world news! Kiwa hirsuta is a newly described deep sea decapod – if I understand right, it’s a hydrothermal vent species. It’s blind and furry. It appears to be a squat lobster, which is not a well-known group to most people. But it just goes to show how engaging one good picture of a cool animal really is.