Blacksburg, VA

Andrew and I spent a day in Blacksburg en route to moving me out to North Carolina. We took a short hike on the Dragon's Tooth trail, which follows the AT for a bit. It was a beautiful day until the hike back to the car when it POURED on us!









These little raccoons must've known the rain was coming. That's probably what they were trying to tell us with all that chattering! They drew attention to themselves, and we saw them climb into their tree hole. I think I've only seen raccoons going through garbage cans or dead on the side of the road and never thought they were very cute, but these little guys sure were!

See this one climbing the tree:


And this one with his cute little face peeking out of the hole:

Newfoundland

I am terribly behind in my blogging, so much so that probably no one - except for Kate, Andrew, and my mom - is checking my blog for updates anymore :) St. Johns, Newfoundland was a really nice trip. I'm glad I was able to break away from the ASLO conference for a little bit to do some running, sightseeing, and hiking. Up by Cabot Tower you could see some remnant icebergs that had drifted into the cliffs (kinda hard to make out in this photo - remember my digital camera broke, and my old Minolta just doesn't seem as good). Anyway, the color of the water around the ice chunks was really pretty:



On the last day of the conference I slipped out early to do an out-n-back run/hike of the East-Coast Trail (http://www.eastcoasttrail.com/trail/). It was an overcast sky, but still beautiful scenery! I ran/hiked about 18 miles (including the 3 miles to get from the hotel to the trailhead). It was a good workout!










My attempt at a self-portrait :)

Assault on Science

I've been meaning to blog about my marvelous trip to St. John's, Newfoundland, but have not had the time nor the internet connection. Now I have the latter but not much of the former, so instead I need to bring attention to an extremely important current issue:
http://lasciencecoalition.org/
It's scary and troubling that this stuff is happening. Here are the important points outlined in an e-mail I received from the Ecolog list-serve:

Point 1: The Louisiana law, SB 733, the LA Science Education Act,
has national implications. So far, this legislation has failed in
every other state where it was proposed, except in Michigan, where
it remains in committee. By passing SB 733, Louisiana has set a
dangerous precedent that will benefit the Discovery Institute by
helping them to advance their strategy to get intelligent design
creationism into public schools. Louisiana is only the beginning.
Other states will now be encouraged to pass such legislation, and
the Discovery Institute has already said that they will continue
their push to get such legislation passed.

Point 2: Since Gov. Jindal's support for teaching ID clearly helped
to get this bill passed in the first place, his decision to veto it
will stick if he lets the legislature know that he wants it to stick.

Point 3: Simply allowing the bill to become law without his
signature does not absolve the governor of the responsibility for
protecting the public school science classes of Louisiana. He must
veto the bill to show that he is serious about improving Louisiana
by improving education. Anything less than a veto means that the
governor is giving a green light to creationists to undermine the
education of Louisiana children.

I don't understand what it is about the United States that makes these ID issues constantly arise. It is pretty much only the U.S. where this happens - other countries realize teaching religion in a science course is a horrible notion that doesn't even deserve a speck of consideration. The implications are scary for both religion and science - mixing both is a detriment to both. Even though I'm not a Louisiana resident or in any way associated with the state, I'm really embarrassed for their legislature, their governor, and the citizens who support turning their science classes into a joke. Spread the word and urge Gov. Jindal to veto this bill!

Rape in the U.K.

My God. I had no idea that this was the state of things in Britain. This is unspeakably awful. I realize that some of this "culture of skepticism" regarding rape still exists here the U.S., but it is nowhere near the magnitude of 95% of rape cases not resulting in conviction. For anyone who thinks women's rights are no longer an issue of concern in developed nations, read this article. This needs to change now.

Giving

I found this article comforting, in a way. I sometimes feel so guilty about how fortunate and selfish I am, especially when disasters strike, such as the earthquake in China and cyclone in Myanmar. Or when I open my inbox. Yes, I voluntarily signed up to receive e-mail news and donation solicitations from Save Darfur, Human Rights Campaign, Global Exchange, Susan G. Komen, etc. I signed up because I supposedly care, but it's pathetic how often I ignore those pleas for money that I know would be well spent. I am very impressed that Peter Singer gives over a third of his income to charity, whether his annual income is $4K or $4million. The numbers in the news lately have been staggering. Tens of thousands dead in each disaster, and I would guess exponentially more whose lives have been tragically, unimaginably altered. People have been comparing the Chinese government's response to the current disaster to that of the 1976 earthquake where about 240,000 people died. Reading about this reminded me of something I read in "When the Rivers Run Dry" by Fred Pearce. He wrote about an event that occurred in 1938 during the Sino-Japanese War. In an attempt to stop the invading Japanese army with a wall of water, Chinese troops inserted explosives into the Huayuankou dike on the Yellow River and blew it up. The death toll from this foolish act of war: 890,000, nearly all of them Chinese. Pearce saw a photo of the river valley taken in July 1938 and said the only other photo he had ever seen with such devastation was of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. I'm really poor at history, but I find it troubling that although we're taught about very important historical events such as the Holocaust and Hiroshima, there are many events of equivalent magnitude that aren't covered in great depth or even mentioned at all.

Endangered Species Day

May 16, 2008 is Endangered Species Day in the U.S. Happy Endangered Species Day everyone! There have been some small victories lately. Polar bears have finally been listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, although most scientists agree they should be listed as "endangered". In the Pacific Northwest cutthroat trout have been given a second chance at making the endangered species list after a ruling by the U.S. Appeals Court that they were wrongfully denied status by the Bush administration, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. This press release mentions some interesting facts:

The Bush administration has only protected 58 species of plants, animals, and fish to date, compared to 522 species protected during the Clinton administration and 231 during the elder Bush’s tenure. Under this administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service has not protected a single U.S. species in 712 days. This is by far the longest period without a new species being protected since the landmark federal law was passed, surpassing even James Watt, who, under President Reagan, in 1981 and 1982 went 382 days without listing a species.

“The Bush administration denied coastal cutthroat trout protection not because the species doesn’t need to be protected, but because of hostility to the Endangered Species Act,” said Greenwald. “Decisions about how to protect our rivers and fish need to be based on science, not politics.”

That last point is so important. As a scientist, especially as an ecologist, I find it so frustrating when careful, high-quality, often expensive science is simply brushed aside because it doesn't fit someone's narrow-minded agenda. But I also understand that some of the blame falls on us - our inability to effectively communicate science and the implications of our results to policy makers and voters. Some people just don't understand how important it is to preserve biodiversity and understand our natural resources. Some things can't be replaced, but it's difficult to convince someone of that who only ventures outside their air-conditioned office for a round of golf or something. How do we get people like that to care about bacteria in the ocean sediments off the Bahamas, for example? Or more importantly, get them to appreciate the ecological connections between those bacteria and the rest of the ecosystem? Something to think about on Endangered Species Day!

Yes!!!

This is huge! I can't tell you how happy I am to see such long-overdue progress. I am confident there is more to come in the next few years. Basic human rights and sensible justice will always triumph over bigotry.

AMEN!

...to Marie Cocco's column in today's Post. How awful that such things still happen in our modern American society.

I don't understand Congress!

When I had Mrs. Schofp's NSL Government class as an ignorant, naive 10th grader, I thought a three-branch government with bicameral legislature made perfect sense and was the best system possible. Now I read about stuff like this and want to bang my head against a wall. Congress sucks. We need a new political party - one that won't waste my tax $ and actually accomplishes something! I bet the Green Party would be more efficient if voters would give them a chance.

Anyway, the quality of my blogging is compromised now because my digital camera broke :( And I would rather not waste film on things like the "brutti ma buoni" cookies I made and Madeline making funny faces, even though they'd be interesting enough to post. But Andrew lent me his camera for a while so I took some pictures of the flowers in the courtyard of the building where I work. If I have some reading to do, I like to come out here instead of sitting in my office:

Adding color to the greening of America

I've been going through my electronic "to read" list and finally got to this article. It made some excellent points, and elegantly illustrates that "not only is environmentalism a human rights issue, it is also an economic opportunity." I agree! I think a massive move towards "green collar" jobs will occur out of necessity in the near future (see Stephen Colbert's interview with Van Jones).

To CG and anyone else who doesn't understand ecology

Regarding your comment to my April 20 post, I have not yet read the article you recommended on littering immigrants, but I will assume you are right and that littering is indeed a problem (but isn't it a problem everywhere - see the link in my April 15 post). However, this border fence is indeed an environmental disaster - I would guess more so than littering - and I will try to explain why. First, there's the easy-to-understand issue mentioned by one of the scientists in the Post article: in some regions the fence will cut off animals from their water supply. Alternative supplies are not easy to find in a desert, so this could be lethal for a population. Second, I'll explain all those issues that I mentioned in my posting that "government asses have no clue about". The ones I listed were dispersal and migration constraints, habitat fragmentation, inbreeding depression, and the keystone species concept. Each organism has its own habitat requirements, including a certain amount of space. That space needs to be large enough (which for many of the endangered large mammals is quite large) so that each individual can meet its energetic needs and stay within its range of environmental tolerances (e.g., temperature, moisture, pH, salinity, etc.). If a barrier is created and the organism can no longer disperse freely, its ability to survive and reproduce is compromised due to many direct and indirect effects (e.g., an isolated population on a remnant habitat becomes too dense, leading to food shortages, leading to local extinction). Besides local extinction, one common outcome of habitat fragmentation and reduced dispersal is inbreeding depression: the population may survive, but decline drastically in numbers, leading to a loss in genetic variation. A loss of genetic variation makes a population more at risk for extinction if disease or another disturbance were to befall the population. Separate from dispersal and habitat fragmentation is the issue of migration. As the Post article mentioned, the U.S.-Mexico border is an important migration route for many animals. Impeding migration could have no impact or multiple impacts, depending on the species. For some species, it will impede their ability to reproduce or reach seasonal feeding grounds. But furthermore, other species that do not migrate may be dependent on those species that do, and thus may be indirectly affected by the impeded migration. Migrating species may transfer nutrients between habitats or otherwise interact with the other species in those habitats in important ways. One example I can think of is from research done by an INHS ornithologist. I can't remember what bird species it was, but there is a certain species that gives out alarm calls when a predator is approaching. These alarm calls are understood not just by its conspecifics but by the other bird species in the community as well. If the alarm calling species fails to migrate back north, the other bird populations dwindle because that species is no longer around to warn them. This brings me to the keystone species concept. A keystone species is a species who has a disproportionate impact on the environment, compared to its biomass. Wikipedia has a decent explanation. For example, Paine's classic study shows that when the starfish, an important predator, was experimentally removed from the intertidal ecosystem, the result was not simply an ecosystem with no starfish, it was a total collapse of the ecosystem - the starfish's prey, the mussels, took over and drove all the other species to local extinction. Sometimes the impact a species has on an ecosystem is not apparent until that species is removed. Even if a species isn't a keystone per se, every organism interacts with other species and its environment, so its removal can still impact other species. The main point here is that you can't look at this border fence issue and say, "well who cares, only the antelope, jaguars, and ocelots are going to be affected". Because the reality is that a lot more organisms than we know are going to be indirectly affected, and these indirect effects won't become evident until it's too late. Everything is connected, and most of those connections are really hard to discern but are nevertheless important. This is not "gloom-and-doom" or unrealistic, it's a scenario that's already played out in so many over-developed and fragmented regions where we've lost biodiversity. I think it's really sad, but maybe you're one of those people who needs to visit places in person to appreciate their significance and irreplaceable qualities (hopefully you're not one of those people who has no appreciation for nature unless there's $ involved :) I think ecology (not just general biology) should be required for every high school student to understand this basic stuff about how nature works.

Orioles tied for first place!

So far this weekend there was good news and bad news in sandracookie's World of Baseball. The bad news is that in what is probably the only baseball game that Andrew and I will get to attend this season, the Orioles suffered a heart-breaking loss last night to the White Sox when the 5-5 tie was broken in the bottom of the ninth inning by a Brian Anderson RBI. What was really frustrating was that the Orioles had given themselves the same opportunity in their half of the 9th when they had the bases loaded and only one out. However, it was an exciting game to watch, and the good news is that the Orioles had won the first game of the double-header on Saturday afternoon in exciting fashion - a 3 run 9th inning which included 2 errors and a wild pitch by the Sox (thanks reliever Octavio Dotel!). This game was needed as ammunition for the taunting Sox fans sitting behind us during the night game. Further good news is that Boston has lost their last 4 games, the Yanks have lost their last 3, and thus the O's are now tied for first place!!



This is how the AL east standings should stay, with the team with the highest talent-to-$$$ ratio on top!!! Also, the Phillies won last night when Ryan Howard broke out of his slump with a 2-run homer. The Phillies are now 14-11, only 0.5 game out of 1st place.

Happy Earth Day, Planet Earth!

Here is a perfect example...

...of the Bush administration's dismissive, careless anti-environmental policies and cocky, unconstitutional above-the-law attitude. This goddamn border fence is just as illegal as, if not more illegal than, the immigration it is supposed to prevent. I do not know how many specific laws there are prohibiting illegal entry into the United States. But according to this article, the Bush administration has "waived more than 30 environmental and land-management laws" in its hurried determination to build this disaster to wildlife. The DHS spokeswoman is quoted as saying, "For a number of miles, we've determined that it would have only insignificant impact." Bullshit. We all know that the administration, Congress, Senate, and other government asses have no clue about the importance of plant and wildlife dispersal and migration, habitat fragmentation, inbreeding depression, keystone species concept, and other relevant aspects of community ecology, and they won't listen to those scientists who do know about such things. The DHS spokeswoman further proves this point by saying that the fence could actually help the environment by reducing trash by border-crossing immigrants! Does she think the American people, especially us environmentalists, are idiots? This is even more ridiculous than the whole cutting-down-trees-to-prevent-forest-fires gimmick. Can you picture a bunch of Mexicans LITTERING as they attempt to sneak stealthily over the border? I commend those brave scientists who are so outraged that they actually plan to lay in front of the bulldozers, and I commend the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife for taking this issue to court. Thankfully, there are only 274 days left in the Bush dictatorship. However, I'm honestly not sure how much better Obama, Clinton, or McCain would be on this issue. They all voted for the initial bill, but I don't know if they favor the waiver of environmental laws. Those of us who care enough will have to write letters and lobby our representatives and new President for a plan that is not environmentally destructive, more cost-efficient, and more effective at addressing the root of the immigration issue.

Article about Catholic priest abuse

This is a really good blog posting by the president of Chicago Theological Seminary about the Catholic Church sex abuse problem. I totally agree - it is not homosexuality that causes pedophilia, it is "immature sexual identity and a negative attitude toward sexuality".

Orioles SHUTOUT the Yankees!

Boo-yah!!!!!!!!

This is so sad...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080415/ap_on_re_us/beach_debris

The group that did this looks like something I'd like to be involved in:

Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup

Here's a picture of volunteers beautifying the waters of Maryland (borrowed from here).




I will be moving closer to an ocean! But it looks like they do inland waters, too. We limnologists appreciate that!

The Orioles won again today!

THEY WON AGAIN!

What a great game! They've already equaled their longest winning streak from 2007.

This site is for bird lovers not baseball fans, but I may have to make a purchase.

Bonus today: The Phillies won and the Yankees are currently losing, but it's only 5-2 in the 7th. Double bonus: Jeter is injured and A-rod is 0-for-3 w/ 3 strikeouts.

O YEAH!!!

My Orioles are HOT!! Yes, it's less than 10 games into the season but I can still savor the fact that they're tied with the Brewers for the best record in MLB!



Aubrey Huff breaks the tie today by hitting a homer:

This is awful...

...on so many levels:

Environmental Laws to Be Waived for Fence

Confronting danger in Afghanistan - sigh, how romantic!

I missed this news when it first came out, but I was watching a Colbert Report rerun last night and he talked about this videoconference Bush had with the troops in Afghanistan. I could not believe the President actually said these things, so I had to go find the Reuters article. Colbert gave a "wag of the finger" to the troops for arousing the President's envy (har!)

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Well gee. Now when I think of war and its impact on troops, I will no longer think of PTSD! I think how lucky these young people are! And gosh, if they're having such a "fantastic experience" what's with all this "support our troops" hogwash anyway? If things really are "exciting" and "romantic" over there they don't need our support.

Days until the idiot is outta there: 305

12 days until BASEBALL SEASON starts!!

Some interesting environmental science news

There's cool environmental science news every week, but I thought these two studies were especially interesting. The first is an excellent example of why temperature fluctuations, more so than simple increases, are an important climate change-related phenomenon to study further (original article here). I was out of the country at that time, so I didn't remember it, although I do recall people talking about it afterward. It just shows how the basic physiology of most organisms can only handle so much!

I found this article very surprising, even after all the reading I've been doing on dams. I never would have thought that all the world's dams store enough water to reduce sea-level rise! That's kind of scary. As Sahagian (from the EES dept. at Lehigh, my graduate alma mater!) noted, we're not going to be building many more dams. But what wasn't mentioned in the article is the fate of existing dams. Dams have a finite existence - the reservoirs behind them fill up with sediment rather quickly. Plus, dams are being torn down in some areas, because people are recognizing that they are not economically feasible and are ecologically destructive. So how will that impact sea level in 100 years or less, when all the reservoirs are losing their capacity due to sedimentation and/or the dams are torn down?

LBL Marathon picture

They posted pictures from LBL. I'm actually smiling! Probably because I'm only at mile 3. It looks kinda dreary and cloudy, but it really was a lovely day.

How my birth-control pills are connected to your catfish dinner

We limnologists have a job to do! By the way, I love how they call "tiny zooplankton" a "sentinel species".

Giant City State Park

After the LBL trail races (see post below) we went to Giant City State Park in southern Illinois. The hike we took was only a mile, but that was enough to loosen up my sore foot without over-exerting it. The snow and icicles on the limestone formations was very picturesque and reminded me that spring is coming soon!

LBL Trail Marathon

On Saturday I ran the Land Between the Lakes trail marathon. It was my fifth marathon and my second trail marathon. The weather on Friday and Saturday was highly atypical for western Kentucky in March. There was about 5-6 inches of snow on the ground and a temperature of ~22 F when the race started at 6 am! But actually it turned out to be a really nice day. The clouds cleared out, giving way to a beautiful sunny blue sky, but it stayed cold enough that the snow didn't melt. The sun on the snow-covered trees was really pretty, and at times I wished I had a camera during the race. Despite the snow, the trail wasn't that difficult to run on. By the time us middle-of-the-packers got going on it, it was packed down. It did get a little slushy and muddy by the second half of the race, though. The trail was fun, but parts of it were quite hilly, and so I was pretty pleased with my time of 4:49. It was my slowest marathon ever, yet the miles really seemed to fly by! Maybe this was because I was running with friends part of the time and I didn't look at my watch ONCE during the race. Usually I check my time at least every mile, but with my gloves and running jacket it was kind of too much effort to look at my watch:) I felt pretty strong when I finished, but I had absolutely no desire to try for the 60 K distance (you're allowed to switch events during the race - 23 K, marathon, 60 K, or 50 miler). Even if there had been a 50K option, 26.2 was plenty. Today I feel pretty good. My foot was bothering me this morning, but it feels fine now.

After I had finished the marathon, I rode around with Cuzn Don and Byroni to different aide stations along the course to catch Ellen on the last loop of her 50 miler. While we were waiting at one of the stations Cuzn Don and Byroni built this lovely snowman. I just helped touch it up a bit:



Note its gel packet ears! Also, here is the lime-green shirt we all got in our race packets. It's too bad it's such a boxy, unflattering cut, because it's a nice fabric and color:

27 Days Until Baseball Season!

Madeline's String Toy Art

I came home yesterday afternoon and found this. I was very impressed with Madeline's perpendicular arrangement of two of her favorite toys:



She should be featured in volume 2 of Why Cats Paint.

Yesterday my friend Adam and I went cross-country skiing at the Allerton Schroth Trail. I feel lucky to have gotten to ski twice this winter! The conditions weren't the best - the snow was a little wet and melty in the sunny open areas - but the majority of it was fun. When I was running this trail a couple weeks ago, it was flooded. So lots of the trees by the river had these "ice skirts" - sheets of ice stuck around the trunk, remnants of where the previous water level had frozen. These pictures didn't turn out that well, but they looked pretty cool in person:

Long Weekend

I flew to MD this past weekend for my mother's big 60th birthday bash. It was much fun to see relatives I hadn't seen in years. I'm not sure if they all want me posting pictures of them, so instead I'll post the cake...



...and the kitties (Mooch and Hobbes):





Aren't they cute! I also got to see my friends Erin and Kate this weekend. We went to the Body Worlds exhibit in Baltimore on Sunday. Then on Monday, after running 18 miles in SUNNY 70 DEGREE WEATHER IN FEBRUARY, I hung out with Pasha, my mom's neighbor's cat, who apparently considers our porch her second home:





Then my mom and I went to see the frog exhibit at the National Geographic museum:



Let's get it on!

Mucus Haikus

Chin to the sky. SNEEZE!
Slimy yellow booger string
Flies splat across nose.




Tongue cannot reach it
Try to wipe off on Mommy
No, Madeline, no!

Greg Craven's video

If you haven't yet seen this geeky science teacher's You Tube video "How it All Ends", take a look (it's about 10 minutes). Even if you don't agree with his risk-management logic and ultimate conclusion (ahem, CG), it's still entertaining!



Here's his website.

February!

Happy Birthday to me! I got 7 inches of snow for my birthday, and so the next day Andrew and I went cross-country skiing. It was a gorgeous winter day and we had a blast:





Then afterward we went to KRR's Fat Ass party where we each won a Mardi Gras shot glass like no other:



I have updated my "current reads" in the favorite book list part of my profile. I am reading (or rather listening to in the lab) a really great novel that I randomly picked up in the library. It is called The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, and I highly recommend it. It's fiction, but it actually goes quite well with the non-fiction book I'm reading When Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce. On the lighter side I'm also reading Stephen Colbert's I Am America (and So Can You!), which I got for my birthday.