My (Undergraduate) Career is Over

Well, almost. Still four more finals, but who’s counting? Had my last class today, and also handed in my final three essays (ugh), and had the senior bio party, where there was a lot of patting ourselves on the back. And funny stories about the profs who missed it. Mine: during one of our animal behavior labs last year, we were out watching/counting ducks on an absolutely miserable day. It was pouring rain and about 35 or 40°, and the wind was driving the rain against our backs, so our backs and legs were totally soaked by the end of the lab time. We were all soaked and super whiny, and my professor had had to put towels down on his car seats before we were allowed back into the car. We were whining about how cold we all were, and he shrugs and says, “You could’ve been SoAn (sociology-anthropology, all one thing because my school is so small) majors.” We all look at each other, and go, “Hell no!”

Anyway, I made this for another professor. It’s called “Landscape of Fear,” and the only way anyone is going to think it’s funny is if you know something about Yellowstone’s trophic web and/or what behaviorally-mediated trophic cascades are. A quick rundown: Everyone and their mothers should know that wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995, which has dramatically decreased elk densities. Basically, the BMTC theory says that there’s been way more improvement in aspen growth in the park just from a decrease in elk densities, so something else is going on. That something else is a change in the elk’s behavior (hence behaviorally-mediated), and they avoid the aspens because aspens grow in dangerous (high wolf predation risk) areas. Someone came up with the snazzy “landscape of fear” slogan for this. This is probably too much explanation for a joke (isn’t it always with me?), but here you go:

You should totally go check out some of the papers written on Yellowstone if you have a chance. Super interesting.

They’ve Forgotten, Forgotten How to Sing

Okay, well I haven’t written anything in a while. Things that have happened since: spring break. Applied to a couple of jobs (I’m graduating, what?). We had a house breakfast at Slappy Cakes on Monday morning, which was a lot of fun. I made some hella good rosemary bread, using this recipe. (Tangent: I also made some super good baked eggs off of another recipe on my Pinterest page, which is where I put all my I-like-this-crafty-idea thingies.)

Obviously I have to work on my food photography skills. Hello, absurdly wide aperture.

For break I went camping with Ella on the Olympic Peninsula for three days. It was wet. And cold. And rainy. Lots of rain. It was fun though, and I finally finished my bloody Rushdie book (The Satanic Verses), which I started in January and then had to put down because it was too much of a time commitment. It’s not you, Rushdie, honest, it’s me. I just wasn’t ready for a relationship that took that much effort. Photos of the camping will be up on Flickr eventually, as usual, and The Satanic Verses is on my Shelfari.

I also worked a bit yesterday and today, which was pretty mellow. Got more reading done. My first phone call yesterday went something like this:

(A word to the wise for that guy, if you’re not willing to accept me taking a message, I’m definitely not going to trust you when you declare that you’re not a telemarketer.)

I also watched a movie called Tomorrow When the War Began on Prescreen, which is a pretty nifty site where you can rent movies you’ve probably never heard of on terms much like those of the Apple Store movie rentals. Tomorrow When the War Began was entertaining, though I felt like it was trying to pull in too many directions at once. It’s a sort of apocalyptic story about a group of teens in Australia who miss an invasion by another country because they’re camping. I felt like it left a lot unresolved as to what happens to those who are captured (what the heck happens to the parents?), and it started to go interesting places in exploring the psychology of some of the characters and then never quite got there with any of them. I enjoyed it anyways; the writing was pretty good and the characters never did exactly what I expected.

That’s pretty much it for me; I’ll be doing mostly homework the next two days I think. Only three and half weeks of classes left.

I’ve Moved On

To puns no one understands. If it helps, “rood” is an Old/Middle English Germanic-based word for “cross.” Between this and my ineffable paper topic means it’s clear my seminar class is going to doom me to a life of intellectual snobbery.

Cuddlefish

Sage words from Captain Jack Sparrow.

Count Your Blessings

“/ To see what you look for.” Adele, “Rolling in the Deep.” Between Adele and Florence & the Machine and Mumford & Sons (and Susan Enan), I feel like we’ve hit a second British invasion or something. Her new album has broken so many records it’s ridiculous (a taste: most-downloaded album ever on Amazon and in the UK, longest simultaneous chart-toppers on both the top albums and singles since the Beatles in 1964), and for good reason. None of the rest of the songs are quite on par with “Rolling in the Deep” (I highly recommend the music video, btw, it makes no sense and yet manages to be completely mindblowingly epic anyway), but they’re quite good and range all over the place. Conclusion: I like. Very much.

Week of death and subsequent “breather” week now over (had a two-page history response due this week and had to teach a class on biogeography). Have a research paper for history (evolution of slavery in India after Islam came) and my analyses for phylo about the zipper effect and another English paper due next week. Week after that is the last week of school (holy mother of God that just registered), in which my animal behavior grant proposal (super cool! I’m looking at the make-up of killer whale hunting sub-pods in Puget Sound, because they are sometimes made up of members of multiple pods) and official lab report for the phylo thing due the next week. Phylo has been a mite frustrating; my outgroup was apparently NOT an outgroup (grumblegrumble stupid gene tree versus species tree thing), so I had to pick two other species that were proper outgroups and do everything over again. Now trying to use LAGRANGE (a specific program for biogeography analyses that uses Python), only I don’t have admin privileges on the computer I’m using, so I have to wait for my prof to email me back about having her install it.

In the midst of this, I have managed to finish a book. My first Wodehouse book (Summer Moonshine). I think I have found my new favorite author. He’s like a slightly sweeter version of Terry Pratchett, mixed with Oscar Wilde (especially in terms of his plots, which are INSANE). To be honest, the only reason I picked him up in the first place was because Neil Gaiman was described at one point as having a “Wodehousian generosity of spirit.” Do not ask me how I’ve remembered this. But the comment intrigued me, and now I feel like I understand what the critic was getting at, though I don’t fully understand how this applies to Gaiman.

Also, fun new science knowledge to boggle minds! Well, mine anyway. Clownfish are hermaphrodites, so Marlin (Finding Nemo, though if you didn’t know that already I am deeply disappointed) should’ve just switched sexes when Coral died. Out of the mouths of bio profs. Even cooler, hamlet fish are simultaneous hermaphrodites. So they have both organs at the same time and can switch their energy output at will. This is actually brilliant, because eggs are far more costly (energy-wise) than sperm, so if you can find a partner to trade off with, you can make way more babies if you both do mostly eggs and just a little sperm.

Bees are eusocial, which is actually caused by their underlying biology. Bees are haploid/diploid (humans are diploid/diploid), which means that males have half the chromosomes of females, and these are all inherited from mommy the queen. But females get the proper double set of chromosomes, one from mommy and one from whatever daddy bee mommy mated with forever ago and stored all the sperm from. So what this means is that female bees in the same hive are actually more related to their sisters (3/4) than their queen (1/2). In reference, human parents and offspring are related by 1/2, as are siblings. So it makes a lot of sense for female worker bees to be highly cooperative, because of the ridiculous kin selection involved (at least one of their sisters will go off and form her own colony). If someone (mom, Maisha) wants me to make a genetics diagram I can. Unsure how clear you guys are on genetics. (Gramps, obviously I’m not worried about you. It’s relaxing to know you’ll understand anything I throw at you. )

Conclusion: science is weird. (In case I haven’t convinced you, take a look at this. I think this explains a lot about Frank Herbert. And here’s a picture that looks photoshopped, since Wikipedia failed to provide in that area.)

And a parting shot:

Molecular dating. Social dating. Sincerely hoping I don't have to explain this further.

Kill Me Now

Yay for lab report and two midterms in one week! Next week is looking up, but the week after that (the week before spring break, thankfully) is just depressing.

So, we’re ignoring that for now. And watching a lot of Angel. In the meantime, here’s the cladogram (a type of phylogenetic tree) for you that I made in MacClade from data my prof gave me. (My favorite tree ever is this one.)

A cladogram is one of three types of phylogenetic trees. The simplest, because it only deals with relative relationships. The other two are phylograms (measure distances in terms of changes/divergence) and chronograms (measure distances in terms of time).

And because I’m a super nerd, that same prof gave me a book called Phylogeny, Ecology, and Behavior that I read for fun in my spare time.

Serving alphabet soup, of course. And õ is a dude with a toupee.

Oh, Look! More Terrible Puns

See, I could be reading Invisible Man for English tomorrow like I’m supposed to. Or… I could do this. (As a way of explanation, here’s my favorite joke: What’s brown and sticky? A stick. Now you know.)

This only makes sense if you've seen some of "Firefly." (I didn't say that would make you think it was funny.)

You’re welcome. Graphics graciously provided by Google Maps, since I was too bloody lazy to draw the Thames myself.

Away From Home I’ll Go

Sort of true, sort of not. The hazards of living in two places at once.

Bestest song I’ve found in like the last month: Matthew and the Atlas’ “I Followed Fires.” Banjo-y road trip folk. <3 Been listening to it pretty nonstop the last couple of days, broken up by the rest of his their stuff (two EPs) and the Black Keys’ new album “Brothers,” which is weird because I’ve been very unimpressed with their stuff before. But “Brothers” is super good. Distorted pop/rock blues sort of stuff.

Two finals and a revision (for short story, had to read an excerpt during the final time period) down, and one final (evolution) to go. Tomorrow morning. Then off to lunch with Sira to celebrate her almost freedom and my for-real freedom. Then a day to pack and do absolutely nothing, and then home! In the meantime I’m watching a lot of Buffy. (And studying, of course. But Buffy‘s far more interesting. They had a musical episode! It was epic.)

And here’s another comic for you.

Not actually accurate, because degenerate rectangles and circles have no area. But then I would've had to draw a line, and a line can't wear sunglasses. Obviously.

And a side note for those who (whom? never got that one) I haven’t told: I got a tattoo. It’s a clockwork magpie, on my arm, and I’m not really interested in arguing about it, and I’ll get more at some point. I think she’s beautiful (her name is Eva) and was totally worth it, and if it sets any minds at ease my rules for tattoos are: must be cover-up-able with long sleeves (no hands, neck or face), and no religious iconry of any kind. I’d still like to be hireable. But I really like the idea of permanent art on my body (thought for a long time about what I wanted), and I’d be happy to break down the symbolism involved for anyone interested (because I am a huge nerd and love symbolism in all things).

One more fun thing before I go back to studying! Background: a while ago I read this amazing hilarious makes-you-think book called Brain Thief (highly recommend it if you like weird alternate reality sci fi), and there’s some seriously whacked science in there. And then Emily took this cyborg class this semester (coolest sociology/anthropology class EVER, that’s what she’s majoring in), and it turns out most of that science is REAL and already exists!! It blew my mind. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is a real-live taste of the whacked science that’s happening right now. I’ll give you a hint to make you go watch it; it involves robots. And rat brains. Epic.

This is Ella’s Fault

Her and her stupid comics made me want to pull out Paint. So here we are. (Also, I finally did a legit update on Flickr, so there’s some fun new stuff up now.)

You really have to have watched "Captain Planet" to get this. The five characters had rings that gave them superpowers (earth, air, fire, water, and heart, which was always the lamest).