Adventures in Costa Rica, or, how i learned to love the rainforest from within an air-conditioned room

Just home late last night from Costa Rica. Had a great time with the REU crew (Brenda, Shea, Mel, and Chris [see links at left] and the rest of the village. For the first time since I was 15, I spent a good deal of my time in the rainforest in air-conditioned comfort, aka, I froze my ass. Here's a pic of me deep in the jungle, working hard with the crew:


Yeah, I was down there to do stats. You perceptive bloggeroos will notice that's R I have open; trying to get the damn code to work for 4 different study designs. I do have some good stories and a few pics to post, from outside actually, but that'll have to wait. Cerveza calls, and tonight... there is no beans&rice.... or rice&beans... or rice with beans&rice...

More fun than it should be

Just got a new Winchester semi-auto 12 gauge (Super X3 for those of you keeping track at home). Took it out to Slab Camp with Chris to try it out for the first time. We did stop shooting skeet long enough to play a little:

Junkfood Science... blog... and new energy source?

Discovered a cool blog: Junkfood Science. Latest post is a nice review of review paper on sweets and kids.

Also ran across this interesting video clip--can it be true?

Some research is in order to see where this is at, commerically and academically...

Does anyone know? Let me know if you do!

Science Debate 2008--85% of Americans think we need it!

"This is not a niche debate, the future economic success of the United States depends on out-performing the competition with smart people and smart ideas. Without the best education system and aggressive investments in basic research and development we will become a second rate economic power. We hope the candidates for president take this very seriously."

-Craig Barrett

Chairman, Intel

"WASHINGTON—May 12, 2008— A new poll (charts, pdf, 3.1mb) shows that 85% of U.S. adults agree that the presidential candidates should participate in a debate on how science can be used to tackle America’s major challenges. The poll found no difference between Democrats and Republicans on this question. A majority (84%) also agree that scientific innovations are improving our standard of living.

The poll, commissioned by Research!America and ScienceDebate2008.com and conducted by Harris Interactive®, shows that 56% strongly agree and 29% somewhat agree that the presidential candidates should participate in a debate to discuss key problems facing the United States, such as health care, climate change and energy, and how science can help tackle them..."

Read the whole press release here or visit the ScienceDebate2008 website here.

C'mon Obama, Clinton, and McCain! Let's talk about it!

The Front Fell Off--the Whole Story

The viral "The Front Fell Off" has been making its rounds across emails everywhere, which was damn funny in its own right but incomplete--I recently found the whole story. If you have yet to see just how the oil caught fire, as well as the Minsiter's comments off the air, check it out here:

Been busy... but what else is new?

Chris, Shea, Erin, and I recently got back from the 76th Annual Western Snow Conference, where we presented a couple of posters. This summer I'll actually be able to post a link to the papers... so stay tuned!

Had a damn good time there; there were a few thousand years of experience in the room at any one time, but everyone was laid back, friendly, and just made for a wonderful experience.

Long hike up Deer Ridge today; had to park way the hell down at Slab Camp and hoof it to the top of the ridge (2 hours, thank you very much! This ole guy can still hike, even if I can't keep up with the 'young 'uns'). Our ^#@ snow scale gave out after two courses, but at least we got some depth readings. Also got some snow for Bill, Jay, and Jessica in the microbial group; we'll see if anything interesting turns up outta that. If it does--hello pubs!

Got a fun video of Shea and Chris coming down a slope today. (Snow?!?! It's almost May!!!) Enjoy...

"Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth"

Great video at YouTube helps explain why many of the freshman I've taught can't do basic math in intro science classes.



You can't reason your way to math proficency--this provides good examples of how misguided math ed has been over the past decade or so. But I've seen some of her examples in my friends' kids'' homework!!!

It's 15 minutes long but worth watching if you have ever despaired over the state of math knowledge among college students or the general public.

Of course, if you don't know math, you will certainly have trouble reasoning logically. Hmmmmm.... the fact that NCLB came from Texas makes one leap for conspiracy theories. But since I am decent at math, I will simply leave it to the commentators to hash out and stick to my logical approach to reality. :-)