Training Log Archive: barb

NY Times op-ed arguing against routine PSA screening to look for prostate cancer. I'm confused.

In a Nor-easter, to Park school to watch Izzy's futsol game.

To a cafe to meet some guy named Gilberte who I think didn't show, although I found out there were many men there not named Gilberte. Fortunately, I ran into three other people I knew and had a very nice time catching up with them. I found out some shocking information about an incident between a couple of kids in the junior high recently...

Then biked to auto parts store for a light bulb.

C • shocking 2

Big presentation in the evening to the Board of Directors, 45 minutes just on what I do. Sample: "Our approach is based on being a very small group in a resource-limited but scientifically ambitious start-up company." Small group = me, basically. Then out for a beer with coworkers, in which part of the conversation centered on the best brands of champagne. I had nothing to say.

Afterward I was still all pumped, adrenaline & booze I suppose, and made Dave get up and watch a movie. He picked it out; he'd had it in mind for a while apparently: "Lost in Austen". It was a total hoot. Has Seabass seen it? Kind of not surprisingly, it has a slapped-together feel, plotwise, but plenty of laugh-riot moments and they did a really fine job with the language. In case anyone's interested, you must both read the book (possibly multiple times) and watch the Colin Firth version of "Pride and Prejudice" before seeing this movie.

C • I don't think she has 1

Compass Dude

To Fresh Pond to return the Solar Pathfinder, & to work a couple times. Also biked early to Morse school to meet with teacher Julia and plan out the rest of the year for orienteering activities. I found out, since the last time I met her, that Steven, my ex-husband's ex-wife's son by her new husband, is in the class. Kind of embarrassing that I didn't know. But I don't know Steven. Yet. Anyway, I did talk to his mom, my ex-ex-wife-in-law, Sue, recently, about the whole orienteering thing with Steven's class. Maybe I mentioned that already. Julia said that she still lives in the same house as her ex, just different floors, and could relate to the complexity of it all.

Last week our hot water heater broke. I guess you're supposed to drain your water heater from time to time and replace the anode rod. Perhaps the stress of changing to the solar system was too much for it? Anyway, now we have an on-demand gas heater, quite small, to boost the temperature of the water when it comes out of the solar holding tank. So that's pretty cool.

This week, with all the sun and the mild weather, water temp at the solar collector got up above 120F.

C • ex-ex-... what? 2

Biking directions added to Google maps. Here is the route it says I could have taken on my errand; I did something like that but diverged about 2/3 of the way through, getting onto Concord Ave instead.

From a news article on the value of chickens as model organisms:

The humble chicken has provided humanity with meat, eggs, and wake-up calls for centuries, and new research probing the bird's DNA may point to an expansion of another role for the flightless fowl: biomedical model organism.

Uppsala University functional genomicist Leif Andersson and colleagues used cutting-edge sequencing technology to comb the chicken genome and identified some genetic signatures of domestication, according to a study published today (10th March) on Nature's website. These genetic signatures code for traits that make domestic chickens useful as egg or meat producers, but in humans, changes to homologous genes can lead to complex "lifestyle diseases" -- such as obesity and diabetes. This suggests that biomedical researchers may be able to use the domesticated chicken to research these conditions.


Here is the paper.

And, wow, there is a story about half-male, half-female chickens.

work

Yesterday Isabel and I worked on a shade map of the Cambridge Community Center. We gathered data for three times of year: June, May (=late July) and August. For each time period and location, we recorded the times of day that the sun would hit it, using Jamie's cool Solar Pathfinder tool.

This is in preparation for putting in vegetable gardens.

The news was actually not so good - most of the area is shaded by a couple large trees and some smaller ones.

You can calculate the percent of total daily solar radiation based on numbers provided on the tool. In the picture, the red numbers are those percentages.

Here is June; click on it to see a version big enough to read the numbers:



There are just two "sweet spots": one in the northwest corner, just beyond the reach of the shadows from the tree and the building, and another between the two large trees along the western fence. Trees across the street on the south side, not shown on the map, get in the way of the sun in front of the building, on the south.

I also took the opportunity to measure the amount of sun at our house; we are very lucky to have ~80% sun in the pots out back, and probably near full sun in the roof containers. The porch pots get decent sun. The pots I put near the neighbors' roof water barrels get ~70%. Along the driveway gets only 25%-30%, and yet the cherry tomatoes did nicely there last year; maybe it would be a good place for lettuce and herbs in the summer when those plants don't mind some shade.

work; grocery store

Morning run. Hard. Back was hurting.

If I were to find a voice, a writing voice, I think a good one would be a cross between Carl Sagan and William S. Burroughs. You know, salacious [that was edited] renditions of mind-blowing [yes, deliberate] scientific truths, all aimed at how we can be more friendly human beings. Siblings: rude pundit and Olivia Judson.

David has come up with his first two Billygoat shirt sketches. Not sure where it goes from here.

I gotta say I fell in love with the fey, umbrella-toting mincer-goat.

The macho, control-munchin' Palin (Todd, or Levi) of a goat was pretty funny too, though.

To Plough and back. Met up with Susan and Jess.