TUSKERS - a synopsis

It’s game day on November 25, 2090, and football as you’ve never imagined it, between Nebraska and Oklahoma. Nebraska has not lost a game in ten years, but must win this last one against OU to complete the perfect decade. Both teams bring secret weapons—in the form of unique players—to the stadium. An obscenely-wealthy, foul-mouthed genius chemical engineer named Arly Hockrood, who holds the patent on corn slime, Nebraska’s most important agricultural product, is an evil force, using all his resources to help Oklahoma win. The origin of Hockrood’s disdain for Nebraska is explained as backstory. The other main characters include Marvin, Hockrood’s valet, chauffeur, and helicopter pilot; Archie, the woolly mammoth Nebraska mascot; Jack Alexander, one of Hockrood’s corn slime salesmen and ardent football fan; Suzi Alexander, Jack’s wife, a highly intelligent woman who, as a child, loved mammoths and now studies Archie continuously (learning about football as a by-product!); Nancy Robbins, one of Jack’s former girlfriends and now the mother of Charlie Robbins, the finest tuba player in the Nebraska Marching Band; West Edmond Wilcox, the Oklahoma coach, Billy Boy Peebles, the Nebraska coach and his staff—“Slammin’” Sam Bangham (defensive coordinator) and Mort Flint (academic adviser)—and various players, especially Tyreese “The Fleece” Henderson, the greatest cornerback in the history of college football and, of course, a uniquely talented OU backfield.
TUSKERS not only is science fiction, it also is hilarious satire, exploring the American obsession with football as a national sport as the world experiences global climate change, political turmoil, and accelerating technological advance. In the end, the book is not so much about sport as it is about our preoccupation with sport as a displacement behavior in a world that is changing so rapidly we cannot control it.

Open Letter to the National Republican Party

I'm sick of receiving fake census forms from the National Republican Party. Click on the link above for my open letter to the GOP. Feel free to forward and distribute this letter to your heart's content.

Conversations between God and Satan

The full title is: CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN GOD AND SATAN HELD DURING OCTOBER, 2004, AT THE CRESCENT MOON COFFEE HOUSE IN LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, USA, EARTH, MILKY WAY. Cover painting is by Wendy Jane Bantam. God invites Satan to coffee to discuss why people all over the universe are killing one another in His name. After two weeks of daily Big Talk, they decide to meet again in two thousand years. Stay tuned.

Why are politicians so scientifically illiterate?

Why are politicians so scientifically illiterate? And, why does the press give politicians a pass on science, or even on the matter of evidence (climate change, evolution, etc.)? I'd like to start a discussion of this topic, with some serious suggestions to the press regarding the right questions to ask of those seeking public office. Should we start with Sarah Palin and BIOS 101? The link is to a chapter from my book Pieces of the Plains: Memories and Predictions from the Heart of America (J&L Lee, Lincoln, NE, 2009), and I believe it outlines the issues reasonably well.

Podcast of Parasitology lectures

If you're having trouble getting to sleep, here is the URL to subscribe to my parasitology lectures in BIOS 385 at UNL:

http://my.unl.edu/webapps/lobj-podcast-bb60/feed/BIOS385150.20102/podcast.xml

It's supposed to work for everyone.

JJ

Thorny-headed worms from 9/11

See my Facebook page for a photo album of thorny-headed worms, collected on 9/11/2001, and discovered this week in a block of ice.

Final Report on BIOS 101_09 to the faculty

This report is one delivered to some of our University of Nebraska faculty members regarding my large lecture section BIOS 101 from the fall semester, 2009. It's obviously somewhat of a political document, but it's also fairly informative regarding the first year, first semester, college student experience. - JJ