penn

Baking Tip

If you find that you have no baking powder and plenty of baking soda, just add in about a tsp of vinegar with your tsp of baking soda. Baking powder is just a powder that combines a basic (soda) with an acid (cream of tartar) and a filler. Vinegar works quite well to activate the baking soda, I've found.

This post brought to you by my day in PJs and my compulsive need to bake at 11 pm. Sure, I could go to the grocery store, but isn't it more fun to play chemist?

side note: It's not quite as good as using baking powder, so I'd only use this tip in a pinch. Leaves a touch of an after taste, I think.

A little bit of what I've been doing

I've been in this weekend field class for the past five weeks, and this weekend is my last weekend. Each weekend, we've done at least one field problem (and usually two). On Friday night, we meet with a faculty member or senior grad student, and we develop a research question that we can adequately answer with one day of work (some questions are better than others). Then, we go out and do the work on Saturday. Saturday night, we repeat the process with a new faculty member and do the project on Sunday. The next weekend, someone from the group presents results and turns in a paper.

Last weekend, instead of working with a faculty member on Sunday, we worked on our own. For my independent project, I wanted to look at the differences in salamander species abundance on north versus south facing slopes. For those not well-versed in ecology, there is a marked difference between north and south facing slopes. South facing slopes tend to get more sun exposure, so they are often drier and warmer. I seem to remember that trees there grow faster. Conversely, north facing slopes are cooler and moister.

In speaking with people in my lab, I realized that the salamander question would be difficult to answer. Therefore, I decided to look at leaf litter amount and moisture, and I also looked at the invertebrate community in the leaf litter.

I haven't analyzed my results yet, so I don't have anything to report (but I'll try and let people know what I've found). Right now, I'm reading a bit in order to write my introduction and whatnot. What I found strange was that no one in my department seemed to know much about this north/south facing slope difference; I find it strange because it was a commonly known fact in my undergraduate school (mostly, I think, because we used a data set about north and south facing slopes in one of our stats exercises).

Anyway, in doing research, I pulled out my ecology textbook to see if I really was right (even though plenty of published literature mentions it too). Lo and behold, there's even a section for slope: north and south facing in the index.

I flip to the section, and what do I find at the very end? "In contrast, terrestrial salamanders inhabit the cool, moist north-facing slopes (Spotile 1972)." Heck. If I had bothered to pull out my ecology book before I did my research, I would have found my answer and been able to look at something a bit more unknown.

History of American Births

Check out "The Score" from the Annals of Medicine in the New Yorker. I really enjoy the New Yorker for it's longer feature pieces, and the science ones are always wonderful. This one gets the double whammy of important by virtue of its author; Atul Gawande is a medical doctor and a science writer. If his skills in surgery are even half as good as his writing, I'd put my life in his hands.

Friday the 13th of October

And it's my birthday.

Many thanks to April for the coolest scarf ever. I love scarves, and I love green, so it's a perfect match. Plus, it's started to get really cold here (it flurried yesterday), and I was just thinking that I needed to start wearing scarves.

Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 times where my birthday has been on a Friday. I was born on a Wednesday at 12.16 am. In 1989, 1995, and now my birthday was on a Friday. My birthday won't be on a Friday until 2017 because of that gosh darn leap year thing.

Off to have crepes with my housemates now . . .

Cross-country trip: the numbers

I just tallied this up, so I'll share for those interested.

My drive across country: roughly 3004 miles of driving (that includes a touch of driving around the A2 area once I got here)

Total gallons of gas consumed: 119.193
Total cost of said gas: $362.18 (I'll tally avg cost per gallon once I get around to popping all this data into a spreadsheet)
Average cost per mile: 12 cents

ready for the coolest number ever?

average mpg: 25.2

I'd like to point out, for the record, that I was driving a loaded 2004 Corolla and towing a 4x4x8 U-Haul trailer. I went across two continental divides and several mountain passes. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Toyota for creating such an excellent car. I'd also like to thank the city of Ellensburg for forcing me to take a traffic safety class (in response to a speeding ticket) in which I learned about the influence of driving habits on gas mileage.

Them's the numbers of my trip. Someday I'll get around to putting up pictures :-)

A lack of sensibility

Apparently, a professor at UW-Madison is forwarding the idea that the US Government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, similar to the Nazi's Reichstag fire. People are upset because this professor wrote an essay on his view, and this essay is included in a book required for one of his classes.

I understand the controversy, but I'm all for the professor having his own views provided he can back them up. I haven't read the essay, so I can't speak to the evidence for his claim.

The strange part of the article is this (and also the source of the title of this post):

The university's decision to allow Barrett to teach the course touched off a controversy over the summer once his views became widely known.

Sixty-one state legislators denounced the move. One county board cut its funding for the UW-Extension by $8,247 -- the amount Barrett will earn for teaching the course -- in a symbolic protest, even though the course is unrelated to that branch of the UW System.

In this move, the county is only harming its own students and not doing anything to actually protest the professor they dislike. I can't believe any person thought this was a sensible action to take.

Baseball Thoughts

I'm watching the Detroit Oakland game. I never thought I'd be rooting for Detroit to win a baseball game.

I have a great dislike of Detroit. I chalk it up to years of crappy Detroit visiting Seattle while I was working there; there aren't too many Detroit fans that come to Safeco, so I didn't make much money when they were in town.

However, I have an even greater dislike of Oakland. In fact, one could say that Oakland is my least favorite team in baseball. Let's say that the 2 to three trillion record Seattle has with Oakland is disheartening.

I'd really like Oakland to crash and burn in the playoffs, so I'm watching the Oakland Detroit game instead of doing my homework.

Also, it would be really cool to see Detroit do something worthwhile for a change.

A high school class finally paid off

I did a mail-merge to put together progress reports for my students. I don't even know how long it would have taken by hand. I'm so glad that I was required to take occupational education in high school.

It now occurs to me that I would probably make an excellent secretary. However, I don't think that would be so fulfilling.

President Bush versus Governor Bush

My favorite Daily Show bit ever:

I'm starting to hate comcast too

I've spent the last 5 days trying to pay my Comcast bill. Last Friday, I couldn't get through to the call center, and the system wouldn't let me pay online (apparently, having an out of state cell phone number means you can't access your account via their phone system).

This morning, when I called in, their phone billing system was down, so I couldn't pay then.

I finally got through to a human and attempted to pay my bill tonight, only to find out
(1) they didn't even know my balance at the call center and
(2) paying through the call center costs an extra $2 on my bill

According to the phone person, the call center is an independent thing hired by comcast. I've had bad experiences in the past when I've paid places other than the exact company. No way was I going to do so again. Thankfully, the rep informed me that I could set up my bill online (which the paper bill I received conveniently forgot to mention).

Beautiful. I love online billing stuff. So simple and easy. Except . . . it doesn't work. It just keeps asking me to enroll later.

I'll try to pay again tomorrow morning. If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do. I'm not happy about this at all. I don't have time to go drive over to the billing lobby and pay there, and I'm frustrated by this whole experience. I knew there was a reason I didn't get my own internet when I lived on my own.