Over spring break, a few weeks back, I went to Mexico with a bunch of friends. More importantly, I spent several days without checking email or browsing the web. And I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really didn’t miss my lack of connectivity. At least for the few days…
Several of us trekked up to Google today to see the mothership a talk by Greg Asner, from the Carnegie Institution of Science, Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. Asner studies tropical forests and uses a variety of spiffy techniques (Google Earth images, spectroscopy, CLIMBING TREES, derring-do) to image and analyze ecosystem health and…
I don’t normally watch reality tv, but I’ve recently started watching one show. Filmed high up in a tree in Decorah, Iowa, two cameras record the lives of a family of bald eagles. This weekend saw some excitement, with the hatching of two of the three eggs mom laid about 40 days ago. Here’s a…
As any pet owner will tell you, lots of non-human animals have their own personalities. Even within the same species, individual animals can have specific behavioral traits, such as tendency to be shy or playful. In the case of zoo animals, knowing a creature’s personality could help zoo keepers improve its well-being in captivity and…
The effects of Japan’s Honshu earthquake reached as far as Santa Cruz on the Californian coast. On March 11 the waves came and left tens of millions of dollars in damage to the harbor. On spring break, I wandered down to take a look. This is what I found . . . One week after…
During winter quarter I interned at the San Jose Mercury News. On my last day, I saw ROBOTS. In the *building*. The bots keep the presses plied with newspaper, but really they’re plotting to take over the world (just a hunch). In a cavernous back room, the Merc hides an army of paper-toting automatons that hoist…
Who needs an alarm clock when you’ve got the Whomping Willow wailing on your deck? Or Whomping Pine Tree as it were… The part that smashed into our house around 10:30 last night completed its ground assault early this morning (7:30am), waking everyone in the house. It also took our neighbor’s power line with it….
We’ve been having some intense weather today. Wave after wave of hail woke me up this morning – little stones clattering on the roof. Anything that isn’t nailed down has been wildly bouncing in the wind. Our power started to flicker off and on earlier in the evening. I was speaking with one of my…
Someone I love is scheduled for triple bypass open heart surgery tomorrow. “Bypass surgery.” It’s one of those phrases I’ve heard a million times, never truly knowing what it meant. They’re not going to build a freeway interchange inside his chest. At least not literally. Heart valves are a little like metering lights at a…
For the past two weeks, I’ve been parked in front of my computer. Yesterday, I finally went stir-crazy and listened to my pleading, sorely underused muscles. “I’ve had it!” I thought, and promptly began stomping around. It was time to get moving. So I did some ballet for the first time since busting my ankle during…
