timing

absolutely scary

defining species

canis soup and very uncoli-like coli

very berry

miracle fruit

march 2007 - no progress

by march 2007 i had nearly finished the bamboo floors inside, and was chomping at the bit to eliminate the invasive vines outside. it was getting to be time to dig in the dirt again.

the view from upstairs shows how close the oak cluster is to the house. the canopy covers about half the roofspace and shields much of the hot late afternoon sun.

the side yard is narrow and steep. needs steps badly. this is a zero lot line with the neighbors siding acting as my fence.

the front was a patch of boring st. augustine with a reasonable raised bed trimmed in railroad timber. while a bit dilapidated, this will do until the budget allows for poured concrete or dry stack/flat stack stone.

june 2006 - blank slate

this was my back yard shortly after move in: a massive infestation of asiatic jasmine and english ivy. these are popular in my area, which borders the bull creek preserve. why people think it's ok to plant invasive non-native vines here, i'll never know.

the live oak cluster just behind the house. diagonal view across the ocean of asiatic jasmine. i had no idea what was underneath that mass. i had too many things to tend to inside the house to find out.

gas

because god cares about gas prices. (thanks don)

good cat

joel didn't believe me when i said irobot made a gutter cleaner. then he comes back with this. i may want that more than the squeegee bot. i could talk to my dogcats from work. or manage the cats when they're on autopilot while i'm on a weekender.

santa, that's what i want for xmas.

needles

some vaccines are easier to develop than others

safe injection sites

that time of year

browse austin gardens

sparky's time machine

maybe that's not so far from the truth.

“This research supports the theory I introduced that animals are stuck in time, with no sense of time extending into the past or future.” link

cecropia

i saw one of these on the weekend dying on the sidewalk outside tomlinson's pet store. today i got a newsletter from the ladybird johnson wildflower center describing that very moth.

no wonder i saw it dying: it only lives 10 days in its adult phase.

measure twice, cut once

i watched this movie back in school. we all knew the biochemical cascade of inflammatory response, but finally being able to visualize it made the process that much cooler. this movie was more relevant to my job at that time, which was heavily rooted in discovery and exploration. now i'm just a glorified mechanic of things nano. here, fix this. it's broken.

here's another good one that i hadn't seen until recently about the nifty little silencing enzyme, dicer. measure twice, cut once.

to die in the name of seed diversity

i should have been a field biologist. this is yet another example of how life would be better not under fluorescent lights.

"Stalin wanted nothing to do with genetics, and Vavilov's progressive ideas amounted to heresy. In 1940, in his early 50s, Vavilov was jailed for pursuing "impractical science." Three years later, he starved to death in prison."

loss of diversity.

"In the past 200 years in the U.S. alone, 75 percent of the variety within crops has vanished... Crop yields will need to roughly double in the next 50 years to keep up with the pace of population growth."

seed vault.

"Dug nearly 400 feet deep into a sandstone mountain, the vault's interior temperature is immune to changes in the surrounding permafrost. It sits roughly 425 feet above sea level, protected against flood even if all of Antarctica were to melt... capable of holding 4.5 million samples of vital crop seeds."

who knew.

"Before it gained notoriety for its prison, Abu Ghraib was the site of Iraq's national seed bank. It was destroyed and looted after the 2003 American invasion, its collections of lentils, rye, barley and other seeds gone forever."

chemistry

careful who you work for: the birth of vx

custom blend

about 2 yrs ago i started mixing my soft drinks 1/2 diet, 1/2 full strength at the fountain thinking it might cut some unneeded calories while satiating my carbonated sweet tooth. specifically i was hoping to get rid of my 30th birthday present (tummy fat, the kind that makes your belly button look deeper). i have not noticed a difference. at all. reading this blurb and the corresponding journal article in bne makes me wonder. i'm a firm proponent of highly evolved, hardwired physiological response. our biochemistry dates back to well before our species originated in africa 200,000 yrs ago. not to mention the empirical evidence that the general consumer of the diet drink is big as a house.

it may be time for some self-experimental data taking.

dear bad date,

i dedicate this article to my lousy date some months back at the starbucks in westlake. that was my 1st of 2 lousy dates at that place. who wants to meet at an abominable $4 coffee place in an uppity neighborhood? free market capitalists. that's who.

a society medicated

some statistics on lifestyle drugging.

"A study of antidepressant use in private health insurance plans by the New England Research Institute found that 43 percent of those who had been prescribed antidepressants had no psychiatric diagnosis or any mental health care beyond the prescription of the drug."

(thanks quirkmaster)

three trillion dollar war

$16bn per month is quite a tab. and really really bad accounting practices to boot. as in, oops where'd i put that $8.8bn?

"...the official Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far was of the order of $500bn. The figure was so low, they didn't believe it, and decided to investigate. The paper they wrote together, and published in January 2006, revised the figure sharply upwards, to between $1 and $2 trillion." the cost of war.

a woman overlooked

nearing the 50th anniversary of her death. this story always makes me a little sad.

the teapot dome scandal

a nice story about corruption, oil, illicit love, and the republican national committee. the present day storyline has not changed much since the 1920s.