December 2009
2 posts
Coffee consumption reduces risk of prostate cancer... →
This preliminary study out of Harvard Medical School completely validates my lifestyle.
October 2009
4 posts
Mountains cause brain damage? (duh!) →
Here’s a recent article in Outside documenting how rapid changes in altitude have been shown to cause brain damage in some otherwise healthy individuals who showed no signs of illness (e.g. AMS, HAPE, HACE) otherwise. The damage can occur even at moderate altitudes like 14,000-15,000 ft. Apparently amateurs don’t spend the time necessary to acclimatize on mountains like Rainier and...
WatchCody Townsend rips an unbelievable couloir in TGR’s Re:Session. I would kill to know where this is. It almost looks like the Wasatch, but can’t really tell.
September 2009
5 posts
You know things are bad in Iran when... →
The Iranian Minister of Science has had a 2009 paper retracted from the journal Engineering with Computers because a significant portion of it was plagiarized from a South Korean paper published in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.
Greatest experiment ever
In 1842 a guy named Elias Loomis performed one of the most ridiculous experiments I’ve ever heard of. In order to figure out the windspeed of a tornado (a hitherto unknown measurement) he needed a proxy- something that had gone through a tornado with a qualitative change. This change, he reasoned, should be repeatable under controlled conditions and thus quantifiable. It had previously been...
never cry shitwolf
I really look like a dick in the dept right now. I came down on the wrong side of an argument without having the facts straight beforehand. I cried foul where apparently no foul had been committed. Lesson learned. I think George Green sums it up well.
August 2009
10 posts
Success: starts with S, stands for Serious
I found out on Friday that I’ve got to get my thesis proposal done by the end of September. Time to get serious. To that end I went to the library today, from which I checked out 5 things:
1) Proposals That Work [Fourth Ed.]: A Guide for Planning Dissertations and Grant Proposals. by Locke, L.F., Spirduso, W.W., and Silverman, S.J.
2)Writing Proposals [Second Ed.] by Richard...
New RPSEA Website →
One of the PI’s on the project I’m funded through put together a new website for the project. Maybe we should have contacted Chantyce, though I don’t think he tackles un-artsy projects like this.
WatchBetsy McCaughey came running out of the maniac closet last night on The Daily Show. The interview is fantastic because she reads the portions of the health care bill she is so concerned about and leaves you wondering on what basis she is making that interpretation. Turns out, after her appearance last night, she resigned from the board of Cantel, a NJ based medical device company, to “avoid...
WatchVintage 1950’s kayak roll. That’s got to be one of the hardest things to do in a boat.
August drops
I went with my kayaking buddy Ben yesterday to Waterton Canyon on the South Platte for some August drops. Nothing else is running this late in the year, and even though Waterton is low now (572 cfs) it still has some nice size drops and waves. I swam the trickiest rapid (Green bridge) on the first run due to a bad entrance line, but we hiked the run for a second chance and I cleaned it (esteem...
Smogcity
Denver in the summer generally has pretty good air quality as compared to other orographically “low” cities (i.e. Los Angeles, Salt Lake, Sacramento), but sometimes we get ground-level ozone to reach unhealthy levels due to a temperature inversion coupled with negligible wind and a prolonged high pressure system. On these days, it’s just plain gross to look out from Golden over...
Sunspots
We are currently in a prolonged period without sunspots that has not been equalled since 1933. Through June, 2009 we had experienced more than 670 days without a sunspot (which is actually a repeated anomaly of the Sun’s magnetic field in which the dark spot is caused by a local change in the orientation of that field perpendicular to the sun’s surface). It’s interesting because...
July 2009
12 posts
WatchStephen Colbert is usually just funny, but the writers make an excellent point that the Democrats completely failed to verbalize this week during the confirmation hearings. Had they said what he says here, instead of just kissing ass and throwing softballs, they could have done more to end discrimination under the law than her nomination alone.
Grieving 2.0
The recent passing of the King of Pop brought about an interesting phenomenon on the web. Within hours it seemed that almost everyone who regularly updates their facebook status had changed it to something like: “OMG, RIP Michael Jackson.” While most of us are too young to have been truly devoted MJ fans, it seems striking that facebook has become a platform for public displays of...
WatchFriday Morning Ride for Friday, July 10. 20 mile cruiser.
I am having an epic summer
Hillary saw someone in the Seattle airport last week with a t-shirt that apparently I need. It said “I am having an epic summer” and yes, I am. Let’s recap:
June 13-14: Bridges, Cache la Poudre River, Fort Collins, CO
June 19-21: Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Telluride, CO
June 26-28: Great Sand Dunes NP, First run down Brown’s Canyon at 3000 cfs, Buena Vista, CO
July...
June 2009
8 posts
Humble pie
Today we had a meeting of everyone working on the project I’m working on to talk about what data we’ve generated thus far, our experimental approaches, and where we go from here. Leading it off, I had to get up there in front of 12 people and admit that I had no idea what I was doing when I set up the experiments and did the analysis that lead to the crappy data I showed them today. I...
Eat a dick AT&T
I’ve wanted an iphone for about a year now, but haven’t pulled the trigger because of the prohibitive price tag. Then I hear that at&t dropped the price on the 3G to $99*. The * means “not for existing AT&T customers, and certainly not for people who already own an iphone.” Instead I would have to pay $299 for the 3G, $599 for the new 3G-S. I’ve been with...
Knife fight to the end
Thanks to Mr. Denton, my legal counsel, for forwarding this on. In response to a question about the Virgnia primary Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said, “Nobody can outwork Terry [McAuliffe], and this is going to be a knife fight to the end. He’s got the energy to take this all the way to the end, and when there’s a bump in the road, he’s not going to cry like a girl and...
WatchOregon Rafting Team killing it on Eagle Creek. Sick falls shots!
May 2009
10 posts
“Among other woes, losing coverage “hurts liquidity, making it harder for...”
– Jeff Anderson, CFO Intevac Inc., from WSJ 5/26/09
Work with your hands
In a recent Times Magazine article Matthew Crawford makes the argument that we have become, as a nation, completely lost on the subject of work. We get in line early on in our educations for the conveyor belt taking us through high school, college, and ultimately into careers as “knowledge workers,” where we sit at desks for 8 hours a day, dealing with the abstract, number crunching,...
Jordan White Skis all 54 Colorado 14er's →
Quite a feat!
What Big Eyes You Have
This weekend’s adventure was supposed to be an amazing couloir in the Eagles Nest Wilderness called What Big Eyes You Have, aptly named since it is an ambitious project. The couloir itself doesn’t look that bad- 1900’, relatively small snow climb- but the approach is long at ~7 miles. Andy V. and I found this out saturday night as we tried to make this approach in the dark, in a...