Uncertainty Analysis

February 14 is National Donor Day

2009-02-11T17:05:00.007-06:00

I just learned that February 14 will be the 10th National Donor Day.

Being on the organ donor registry means a lot to me--the chance to help dramatically improve or even save a life is a gift I am honored to be able to give. And the need is so great: over 100,000 people are on waiting lists for organs.

Please consider joining the donor registry in your state this Valentine's Day.

(Post has been updated thanks to the good editorial eye of a reader -- not a skill I possess, particulary with my own work.)

Cool site: Medical History of British India

2009-01-03T12:33:00.005-06:00

I was doing a search on the history of cholera when I came across a fascinating web site: Medical History of British India -- Disease Prevention and Public Health.

Sponsored by the National Library of Scotland, this site has over 50 reports on diseases studied in 19th- and 20th-century India. You can browse by disease (cholera, leprosy, plague, malaria, yellow fever), publication type (maps, diagrams), year, region, and author.

The site is quite well-designed and has some beautiful maps and diagrams. The map in the upper left corner shows the progress of epidemic cholera in 1818 and 1819. This is a chart from 1896 showing plague mortality at Cutch Mandvi.

And this is an 1896 map of India, showing railway plague inspection stations.

Jargon generators

2009-01-02T23:19:00.004-06:00

There are a number of jargon generators out there, many of them creating a humorous three-word phrase of gobbledygook.

There's business jargon (pro-active, team-based synergy), management-ese (scale out-of-the-box functionalities), and web/tech-speak (integrate dynamic network effects).

But this is the first time I've come across a jargon-generator that creates entire sentences.

Moreover, a focus on core competencies means that management must concentrate on the operational imperative of strategic decision-making oriented to market growth vectors.

May come in handy for that next quarterly report...

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Long hiatus -- to blog or not to blog?

2009-01-02T10:38:00.003-06:00

Happy New Year and hello to 2009. I've enjoyed blogging, but haven't done so in the past 3 months. There are several reasons for this:

Time: I usually blog on nights and weekends, but when I get home, I rarely want to sit in front of my computer. I've also used my blog for a more lengthy, reflective look at a topic, which often prevents me from starting.

Other interests: cooking, reading, exercising, and discussing current events with B.

Other outlets: primarily through Facebook and sharing feeds.

So, I'm thinking I may start blogging again, but keeping it short like many of the blogs I enjoy reading.

Sat. Image of Open Arctic Sea Routes

2008-09-10T10:16:00.002-05:00

I had read a few stories like this one in the NY Times about the open arctic seas creating a Northwest Passage over both North America and over Europe and Asia for the first time in at least 50 years. But a story like that isn't fully meaningful until you see pictures. Here's the the satellite image published by NASA's Earth Observatory that's worth a thousand words:

satellite, arctic
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Jim Leach to speak at Dem. convention

2008-08-24T21:31:00.004-05:00

Just found out via Mark Halperin's The Page that Jim Leach is going to be speaking tomorrow during the inaugural evening of the Democratic Convention. I can't wait!

I know I'm beginning to sound like a groupie, but I think this is really cool news. And at the risk of really sounding like a nerdy wonkette, I'm going over to the television right now to set my Tivo to record the PBS coverage of the convention tomorrow!

Biden for VP

2008-08-23T14:23:00.004-05:00

I like Joe Biden. If Obama wasn't considering Jim Leach for VP, I think Biden is the next best choice :)

As I said in a note to my sister:

He's made some really stupid comments in the past, but I think those were the exception to his character rather than the rule. I think he's very sharp but seems to be able to laugh at himself; he's a great diplomat and has good foreign policy experience. I also think he and Obama would make a good team and complement each other's personalities and ways of doing things.

Bike-Lane Emergency: Biking in NYC

2008-08-13T16:23:00.003-05:00

Saw this video on Urban Velo. I would never survive being a bike commuter in New York City.

Bike-Lane Emergency from Nicholas Whitaker on Vimeo.

Republicans for Obama and Jim Leach leads the way!

2008-08-12T17:08:00.007-05:00

I just received a link to this story in an e-mail from my mom:

Former Q-C congressman Jim Leach backs Obama

Jim Leach not only was the U.S. Representative for my home town for all of my formative years, but has long been a family friend. My mom worked first for his campaign office, then his congressional office in Davenport, Iowa. We kids spent many summers helping out with the campaigns, stuffing envelopes and working the parades.

Granted I've got many biases here, but I've always liked and admired Jim. He was the statesman and the scholar of Iowa politicians. I never saw him bully or berate or cajole anyone - always speaking in a thoughtful, measured, and determined voice. I was delighted when I heard he'd wound up directing the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. What an excellent political role model.

Of course, he was - and is - a Republican, as is virtually all of my family. But Jim has always been the type of moderate Republican that I have found common ground with. That's why I was so tickled to hear he's become part of a new Republicans for Obama group. Yes! Hurrah!

Read the Q-C Times article for more.

fourth of july ride

2008-07-05T08:17:00.005-05:00

We had a great 4th of July. The weather was superb - sunny, high of 81, and low humidity. (In fact, the humidity has been so unseasonably low, it feels like we're living in California instead of the Midwest.)

In the afternoon, we rode the Midtown Greenway to Trader Joe's. There were lots of people out on their bikes, which was really great to see. At Trader Joe's, we took advantage of their really great wine prices and loaded our panniers with eight bottles (and a few groceries).

On the way back, we stopped at Dunn Brothers coffee (which, thankfully, was still open) and refreshed ourselves with some iced coffee.

Later that night, we enjoyed some of our newly-purchased Prosecco on the back porch. The neighborhood was peacefully quiet - everyone had taken their revelry elsewhere, it seems. Ah, what a great day!

food safety - who's minding the store

2008-07-04T12:17:00.006-05:00

Those of us in food safety are definitely living the Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times."

Case in point: The definitive source of the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak, now at a staggering 922 laboratory-confirmed cases, remains elusive. Now the possibility of jalapeños and other ingredients in fresh salsa have come under suspicion.

Why are many outbreak investigations so difficult? How have food safety challenges - and out responses - changed? These were some of the questions addressed at an extraordinary conference back in April, "Who's Minding the Store: The Current State of Food Safety and How it Can be Improved", sponsored by the law firm, Marler Clark.

Bill Marler recently announced on his blog that they've made the presentations available for public download. Just go to the conference page and click on a presenter's name to download the PowerPoint file. I wasn't able to attend the conference, so I'm really grateful to have access to these presentations.

I haven't reviewed all of the presentations yet, but was especially happy to see the talk given by my friend, Carlota Medus, who is a stellar epidemiologist at the first-rate Minnesota Department of Health. She discusses the successes and challenges in foodborne outbreak investigations, using several recent examples.

If you'd like to know more about food safety in the U.S. today, I encourage you to check out the conference slides.

Have a happy Independence Day! And speaking of food safety, check out this resource page for Summer Food Safety Advice.

Grilled pizza

2008-06-24T17:44:00.004-05:00

We wanted something quick and easy for dinner this weekend while we finished our yard clean-up (more on that later). It just so happens that one of the featured recipes from Eating Well magazine this month was grilled pizza.

Grilled pizza? Yes, we were skeptical, too. Won't it fall through the grating? Nope. That was thanks to a sturdy wheat pizza crust recipe that accompanied the pizza recipe.

The only trick is waiting for the coals to cool off sufficiently. But we used the time and the heat well by grilling the eggplant that became one of the pizza toppings.

It was fast, didn't require an oven (a plus for warm summer days), and oh so good!

Happy 'dump the pump' day!

2008-06-18T21:53:00.004-05:00

Thursday, June 19, is Dump the Pump day, brought to you by the American Public Transportation Association.

Find public transportation in your area.
Calculate how much you can save by riding public transportation.
Calculate how much you can save by riding your bike:

It's more the potatoes than the couch...

2008-06-16T20:02:00.003-05:00

A provocative new study I learned about from Science Now (via Eater's Digest) suggests that people are not substantially less active than twenty years ago, suggesting it is the type and amount of food that we're eating that plays the larger role in the high rates of obesity.

Researchers analyzed metabolic data collected in the Netherlands over twenty years and found that the rate of calories burned was similar but the obesity rate in the Netherlands has doubled.

Twenty years doesn't seem a long enough time to look at physical behavior trends, though. The researchers posited that people were similarly sedentary reading newspapers or listening to the radio in the 1950s, but that is much longer ago than twenty years. I do think that people's eating habits may have changed more dramatically, and I agree with Marion Nestle that it is more socially acceptable to eat in a variety of places and situations.

There are other precautionary caveats because of the pooled nature of the study subjects and possibilities this group is not representative of the general Dutch (or American) public, but it should make us work harder to get better answers to the causes of obesity.

Our not-so-little wall project

2008-06-06T21:10:00.000-05:00

Memorial Day weekend is the perfect time for those home improvement projects you'd been dreaming up over the long winter, right? Yes, we fell for that line of thinking, too!

For us it was building a new front wall. We replaced the front steps and walk late last Fall, but with the snow melted and Spring in full bloom, it was time to replace the wall that has been in front of the house well over twenty years. Ben had already rebuilt both sides of the old mortar-less yellow flagstone wall and thought our energies and money would be better used on a totally new wall.

Here are some photos of our ~~weekend~~ week-long project.

It took us most of the long weekend just to finish the west side of the wall. The Versa-Lok blocks were fairly easy to deal with but they were extremely heavy - 85 pounds each - which meant I couldn't lift the standard blocks and Ben was saddled with the lifting.

The most time-consuming task was the digging (lots and lots of digging) and leveling the base course of blocks. Everyone says that the initial leveling is the most important step, but it's also the most frustrating.

Ben and I spent another three days on the eastern wall, taking some time off of work and working into the evening. We had expected to be physically tired, but were really caught by the mental fatigue. We probably calculated and re-calculated our digging depth four or five times and we still got it wrong. We dug down farther than we needed to - not a project-killing mistake, but a bit disheartening after all the digging we did.

In the end, though, it was a very rewarding project. The wall turned out great and it's something I'll think about every time I see it. And there's nothing like a front-yard project to get to know the neighbors. We met lots of new people and caught up with neighbors we'd not seen during the long winter.

Plus, we successfully gave away all of our old wall stone. Lots of people had driven by, seen the pile of old flagstone, and stopped to ask us if they could take some. It felt good to see the stone good to so many good homes.

I'll stick to the street

2008-05-14T19:35:00.002-05:00

Today was Bike to Work Day here in the Twin Cities (although National BTWD is on Friday). Even though I've commuted into work before, that has always been to an office in downtown St. Paul; today I was working from the U, so I had a longer commute.

There were quite a few bikes out and about, but since Minneapolis has one of the highest rates of bike commuting and because I was riding a new route, I couldn't really tell if this was higher than normal.

My route takes me along the river road that has a marked bike lane for most of the way. There is also a pedestrian/bike path that winds along the river side of the street. I rode on the street on the way in, but decided to try the path on the way back. I thought it might be a little easier to negotiate a snarly 5-points intersection (Franklin Ave. & East River Road) on the path than in the road.

How wrong I was! Viewing the intersection through the lens of an on-road biker rather than a pedestrian really threw me for a loop. Because this is a 5-points, everyone waits their turn, including the trail pedestrians/riders. In fact the trail users have their very own "turn", meaning there is a time when all road traffic is stopped and only the trail traffic is moving. This means you can't pay attention to the traffic light, you must obey the pedestrian signal.

Part of me saw the green traffic light and said, "Go!", another part saw the red hand signal and said, "Stop", and my higher brain was thinking, "Maybe no one pushed the crosswalk indicator and it's okay to go."

When I finally crossed (against the crosswalk sign), I said, "nuts to this, I'm sticking with the road!" I have become so accustomed to being traffic that the rules are almost instinctual now. I found it very disorienting to be on my bike and try to think like a pedestrian.

Don't get me wrong, I love bike trails, but contending with pedestrians, roller bladers, and dogs on leashes can be far more alarming than contending with cars. From now on, I'm sticking to the road!

Non-sequitur postscript: Obama spoke cards are here! Get 'em while their hot!

Finally bike commuting

2008-05-09T15:31:00.001-05:00

It's been a long, cold Spring. Last year, my first bike commute was March 16. There was still snow on the ground then, but it was fairly warm and dry. This year, between the weather, travel, and lots of early morning meetings, I'd not done any bike commuting until yesterday. Yesterday was just too perfect not to ride in. And I was in good company.

It was a great ride and I discovered I had pretty good physical memory recall, shifting, signaling, and standing with a fair amount of ease. Yes, I'm sure that's the reason for the adage, "just like riding a bike", but I'm still a bit of a bike novice, so I'd not personally tested out that phrase.

But it seems like I've gotten into the swing of things just in time for Bike/Walk-to-Work week next week. Check the LoAB site for events in your state.

Satellite images bring Myanmar's devastation home

2008-05-06T21:42:00.002-05:00

With every news report over the past two days, the death toll has kept climbing and climbing, reaching the astronomical height of 22,500 as of this evening, with an additional 41,000 people missing. Those numbers are virtually unimaginable to me. I cannot fathom the destruction that would precipitate this astonishing number of deaths.

One of the small, tangential stories about Cyclone Nargis that impressed me was how satellite images - images available to everyone - have both foretold and documented the destruction. One of the most striking is a before and after pair of pictures featured on NASA's Earth Observatory site. How tens of thousands could have died becomes frightfully clear when you see the entire coastline of Myanmar utterly obliterated:

Technorati Tags: myanmar, satellite, images, nasa, cyclone nargis, flooding

Indiana Jones makes appearance on mlb.com

2008-05-02T11:19:00.004-05:00

I'm not sure if this is a crafty marketing product placement tie-in or the work of cheeky hackers, but an image of Indiana Jones has appeared on MLB.com game schedules. It made me chuckle, anyway...

Of course, with all of the stories about MLB cracking down on bloggers for illegal use of their logos, I'll probably get a nice letter from their legal department soon. Cheers!

Nature is a cruel, fickle temptress

2008-04-26T10:31:00.008-05:00

Wednesday we were frolicking under a radiant sun and 70-degree temperatures. Today we are hunkering under glowering skies and gusting winds.

The Twin Cities awoke to a skiff of snow this morning and those to the Northwest were digging out from under 18 inches of white.

We are all feverishly waiting for Spring not to simply blossom but to erupt fully and finally in the North land.

first ride of the season

2008-04-06T19:33:00.006-05:00

It was a beautiful day yesterday, sunshine and highs in the 60s, so Ben and I got out the tandem and went for our first ride of the season.

We decided to ride along the Midtown Greenway and check out the new Bike/Ped bridge that has recently opened across Hiawatha Avenue.

And what a difference the bridge makes! It really connects the community. Hiawatha is a large, busy, and fast multi-lane road that was a real bear to cross. But now we've got a fun, safe, uninterrupted path. It makes the Greeway much more accessible to families with small children and anyone who may have difficulties crossing Hiawatha in the short time allowed by the traffic light.

We were feeling pretty good on our ride, so we decided to extend it a bit a pick up some groceries at Trader Joe's. All told it was about a 21-mile ride. A bit longer than we expected to do, and we're a bit sore from it today, but it was a nice flat ride, for the most part, and an excellent start to our biking season!

troubling signs for food security

2008-04-01T21:40:00.001-05:00

I work in the world of food safety, keeping the food supply safe from microbiological or chemical contamination that causes illness. But another arena near and dear to my heart is food security: making sure people have enough food to eat.

Unfortunately, there have been several troubling signs in the food markets that indicate it may be harder for many people to put food on the table. First, there have been world wheat and cooking oil shortages. The steep increase in prices for these commodities have influenced American farmers to plant more wheat and soybeans, and fewer acres of corn, as reported today by the USDA's Prospective Plantings report.

Next, the weakened economy, high energy prices, and the resulting high food prices have created the "worst case of food inflation in nearly 20 years." The New York Times reported yesterday that a near record number of Americans will be using food stamps, with a projection of 28 million people using the aid program by the end of the year.

But funding for food assistance programs is tied up in the farm bill, which has been delayed in Congress for six months, causing a "desperate situation" at many food banks, according to America's Second Harvest. We are now almost in planting season for 2008 and the "2007" Farm Bill has yet to be passed. On March 12, both the House and the Senate passed an extension that expires on April 18. But it sounds as if there's still a lot of distance between Congress and the White House on several issues within the bill.

This is definitely a volatile time in the financial markets, housing markets, and commodities markets. Public safety nets are being stretched and I fear more than a few people will fall through them unless we work together to shore them up.

I also see these issues only increasing in importance as we get closer to the presidential election. We've got a political 'perfect storm' of both serious domestic and international problems that our nation is facing. This feels like the biggest test candidates have faced in an election year in quite a long time.

'king corn' coming to pbs

2008-04-01T12:18:00.003-05:00

King Corn, the documentary film about the impact of corn on agriculture and what we eat, will be broadcast on PBS by Independent Lens.

You'll have to check your local listings, but it looks like it will be airing the week of April 14.

Ben and I saw the movie last December and thought it was great. I'm happy to hear that it will now be available to the general public. (Made possible by viewers like you - and me and Ben.) Thanks, PBS!

opening day snowstorm

2008-03-31T20:25:00.004-05:00

In case you hadn't heard, we've got a pretty decent snowstorm going on. Another one. Sounds like we might end up with 6 inches.

Guess it's a good thing the Twins don't have their new open-air stadium yet. But then again, it could be a lot of fun - like watching the Packers in Lambeau.

apple ts post 4: mlb gameday

2008-03-31T16:38:00.002-05:00

I changed the name of my Apple MacBook trouble-shooting posts to something more benign. Maybe I'm feeling less vitriolic as I settle in and the things I encounter are more minor. Here's the backstory. And now for the latest installment:

3/31/08: Where's my baseball?!?
Okay, this one is very minor but caught me by surprise and I thought I'd share. Today is major league baseball's opening day. (Well, depending who you talk to, it could have been yesterday or last Tuesday. But for me, it's today.)

Opening Day for my Chicago Cubs is about as good as it gets: Cubs vs. Brewers in Wrigley Field at the classic North Side starting time of 1:20 PM. So I went to mlb.com to check out the game using their Game Day interface. It shows you what's happening in the game pitch-by-pitch. (And they thought Final Four was the bane of office productivity...)

Went to Game Day and all I got was a big white screen. Okay, don't panic. Maybe it's the ad blocker. Nope. What about if I switch from Firefox to Safari? Nope.

Turns out, you need the latest version of Flash. Visitors to a site are normally notified when they don't have the latest version of a browser plug-in, but apparently that notification isn't working for Macintosh on Firefox 2.0.0.12. I did notice a Firefox update this morning, but was too busy to install it.

Like I said, a very minor thing, but it gave me an excuse to put up a new post.

As for the game, it's zero-zero in the bottom of the 7th. I knew it was going to be good game!

Previous installments:
2/27/08: You say "Erase", I say "Format"
2/18/08: Finding your MAC address on your Mac
2/3/08: iMovie Rant

finally gettin' 'round to writing

2008-03-22T13:34:00.010-05:00

Yesterday was a University holiday, so I took the opportunity to make headway on some very long- over-due writing.

You see, even though I finished my dissertation and earned my Ph.D. a year ago this month, I have yet to submit my work for journal publication.

I've certainly kept busy with my post-doc and living the life of not being a student. But I don't think I will feel I've really completed my Ph.D. until I get published. And two of my closest academic advisers are very supportive of getting my work out into the scientific world, so I've got lots of great reasons to get this done.

While I have good writing skills and an abundance of material to work with - that's my full dissertation tome on the right of my computer in picture - I recognize I'm going to need some help with this.

I found some excellent resources at UMN's Office of Clinical Research "Anatomy of a Manuscript" site. And I'm using a great tool called NoteBook to organize my writing. Now I just need to work on it with a little more frequency than holidays and snow days.

Good Friday snowstorm

2008-03-22T13:15:00.004-05:00

The Twin Cities metro received about 3.5 inches of snow yesterday, setting a record for the date, with areas to our Southeast getting as much as 11 inches. (I snapped this picture as I left the house yesterday morning.)

But Madison, WI, set an even bigger record: they've had the snowiest year they've ever had. Yesterday's snowfall put the city at 99.6 inches and will most likely hit the 100-inch mark before the books close on the 2007-08 season.

why i'm feeling good about the democratic primary race

2008-03-16T10:12:00.000-05:00

The Democratic race for the presidential nomination is still going strong and, unlike the super delegates and other party members, I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing.

First, in a course that seems to be the opposite tack of many Obama- or Clinton-supporters, I'm feeling better about the other candidate in recent weeks. I'm a full-fledged and pledged supporter of Barack Obama, and for several months I was full of dread and animosity towards Hillary Clinton.

But now a lot of the feeling has ebbed away. There's still much I don't like about her, and I remain a staunch Obama supporter, but I'm not a Hillary-hater, either. A lot of that is from what I hear her saying on the campaign trail, but much of it is also to do with the ridiculous, vitriolic, and down-right hysterical salvos between the candidates' supporters in the media and in the blogosphere.

I've been following Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog since his article in the Atlantic swayed me to Obama. And I've watched the mudslinging get progressively nastier. But instead of winding me up into a frenzy, I've been able to detach myself by realizing it's all a tempest in a teapot. These people obviously don't realize how buffoonish they appear, picking on every little thing in each campaign. Some of these points have some merit - and they make the national news, as they should - but for the most part it's bald-faced rantings. Plus, the legitimate questions that are coming up now are only for the best. There is now plenty of time to deal with them before the general election.

The other reason why I'm feeling good about the primary race is that as the fight spills over into more and more primaries and caucuses, more and more people are coming to listen to the Democrats speak. An article in the New York Times today describes how the candidates are continuing their campaigns to states like Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina. That means large rallies where thousands of people will get a chance to hear the presidential candidates. If the general election race was already sewn up, would Obama or Clinton spend any time in these states? Would these people get to hear a presidential candidate up close and personal?

So now we'll have hundreds of thousands of people who will remain interested in the presidential race, will get a chance to vote, will feel like their vote counts. Many of them will come out to vote in a Democratic primary or caucus who would have stayed home, or perhaps would have attended the Republican counterpart.

That's why I'm feeling good about the Democratic presidential primary race. To the vitriolic Democrat wonks: stop the hatin', y'all. And to the Democrats at large, I say: no worries, mates, it's all good.

flying in to d.c.

2008-03-02T22:24:00.005-06:00

One of the things I love about flying in to DCA (I never call it Reagan, if I can help it), is the potential for having a brush with the politicos.

I flew into D.C. tonight for a week of glamorous, high-powered meetings with the wheelers and dealers of Washington. (Okay, a bit of an over-statement, but a gal can dream, right?)

And who should I sit next to on the plane but the junior Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar. I knew who she was from the first. It must be really odd that first year or so as a Senator when people know who you are all of a sudden. But I didn't acknowledge that I knew who she was at first.

About half-way through the flight, we struck up a conversation. I told her a bit about why I was going to D.C. - with a quick, good plug for my FoodSHIELD project.

We chatted a bit about her job, too. She said her office gets about 1000 e-mails a day, with a wide variety of requests, some more bizarre than others. I told her about the types of calls my mom used to get working at Jim Leach's congressional office in Davenport. I remember one story my mom told about someone calling in outraged that the Quad-City Symphony had raised the U.S. flag that morning upside-down, demanding the Congressman to take action!

She then confided in me one thing I found particularly interesting. One of the hardest parts of her job, she said, over the travel, the long days, responding to constituents - all the things you'd associate with a Senator - the unexpectedly hard part of her job was the presidential campaign. She's a Super Delegate, of course, and all such delegates are under an enormous amount of pressure by the Obama and Clinton campaigns for support. Do you vote with your district? (Obama won Minnesota by a healthy margin.) And how long is the Democratic presidential battle going to last? I didn't realize how trying the whole experience was.

It was a pretty cool conversation, if only because it was a brief, chance encounter. But that's what I love about Washington. It's a beautiful city and a great place to do the policy wonk-type of star-gazing. And many of them fly coach, just like you and me.

apple $hitlist 3: you say erase, I say format

2008-02-27T09:08:00.014-06:00

Here's the backstory. And now for the latest installment:

2/27/08: You say "Erase", I say "Format"
I tried out Time Machine for the first time last night. I wanted to back up some stuff before I installed the latest Leopard version 10.5.2 (Macworld has a video review of the new features, including better stack choices for you Dock).

I had a 40 GB USB drive that I used to backup my documents on my old HP. I plugged it into my Mac and identified it in Time Machine as the destination drive for my backups. A notice popped up that the system needed to erase the disk, I clicked "OK" and away we went.

Well, we didn't get far. The first problem, admittedly, was no surprise: not enough space. 40 gigs is pretty small when you're trying to backup music and photos, so I had to go in and whittle down what I wanted to back up. Time Machine does this by excluding things you don't want to back up, rather than identifying the things you do, which was the opposite of what I was used to, but not a big deal.

But even when I got it down way below 40 gigs, I kept getting an error. And the content of the error was very vague, of course, as these things tend to be. Something like "an error occurred in attempting to copy files to the backup volume..." Also no surprise was the similar vagueness in the Time Machine error support page.

But one thing jumped out at me: "make sure the backup disk is compatible." No instructions on how to do that, but I'm used to working with the crumbs these official support pages toss out to you. (Do these folks take perverse pleasure in stringing you along?)

But I had my aha! moment: I needed to format my external drive. With Windows (and, I think, prior versions of Mac OS), "format" was something you could execute from the contextual menu that appeared when you right-click on an item. A quick look at my device icon told me it wasn't going to be so simple.

I needed help, so I went the the Finder Help and typed in "format". Nothing. Reformat? Nada. It wasn't until I started poking around on the Apple Support pages that I found out the magic word was "erase".

Okay folks, I get that Mac is supposed to be the easy machine and therefore, maybe you don't support the techie, jargon-y words like 'format'. But could you throw an old Windows dog a bone once in a while?

In order to erase a disk, you need to go use the Disk Utilities app located in the Utilities folder. You've got a number of options when erasing something - located under Security Options - including a "Don't Erase Data" option (huh?) that just erases file access information. What had happened before, I think, when Time Machine initially said it was erasing the external drive is that it actually didn't remove the old data.

So, after selecting the erase option that actually erases the data I was back in business.

Previous installments:
2/18/08: Finding your MAC address on your Mac
2/3/08: iMovie Rant

pandora radio - a fabulous internet music player

2008-02-23T10:50:00.006-06:00

Ben stumbled upon this one. Pandora Radio (www.pandora.com), which says it's mission is "to play music you'll love - and nothing else," starts out with a song or artist of your choosing, then plays a line-up of songs and artists with similar elements.

It's really fun and very easy to use. We started out with They Might Be Giants. TMBG is my personal litmus test for these types of things, because they're rock, pop, 80s, 90s, and quite quirky. And we were very pleasantly surprised with what Pandora played back for us: Talking Heads, Weezer, Barenaked Ladies, and lots of artists I didn't know about but really liked. Which, of course, is the point: to listen to stuff you love and discover new groups and branch out a bit.

We then threw Aimee Mann and Willy Porter at it, and Bebo Valdez, R.E.M., and Lee Morgan. All with the same great results. Each new search creates a new station, which you can save after free registration. You can guide the evolution of your stations by identifying what you like and what you don't. You can even tell it to hold off on playing a song you've heard too much of and it won't play it again for a month.

And all of the songs, albums, and artists have their own pages to find out more, listen to more, and purchase from iTunes or Amazon.

It's all based on the Music Genome Project. The founders identified hundreds of attributes, or genes, they used to describe and classify the songs. Then they used a distance function to describe how closely songs relate to one another. Pandora uses this to select similar songs and artists to cue up in your stations.

The music fidelity is really good and the streaming continuity has been excellent, as well. It's become our favorite way to play music at home!

apple $hitlist 2: MAC address

2008-02-18T16:30:00.002-06:00

Here's the backstory. And now for the latest installment:

2/18/08: Finding your MAC address on your Mac
This frustration was pretty mild, since I was able to find the answers fairly quickly. But I thought I'd post it for my (and others') future reference. I was a bit surprised to find out that your hardware address is different depending on your connection method, meaning you've got a different address for wireless than for an Ethernet connection.

First, the wireless. In order to connect to my home wireless router, I needed to know my hardware address (a.k.a MAC address). This is because we have the security settings on our home router set fairly strictly and it will only allow connection from known hardware addresses. Not knowing where to start, Ben quickly found the "how to" answer. Go to System Preferences then Network, then highlight AirPort, then click the Advanced button. Your wireless hardware address is the AirPort ID listed at the bottom.

But for the Ethernet, it was a bit harder. Here at the University, I need to register my hardware address before I can connect via the Ethernet jack in my office. But the Ethernet ID doesn't appear (at least not in the Leopard OS) unless you've got a live Ethernet connection.

Ah, the dreaded Catch 22...

But the friendly folks at the IT help desk walked me through an alternative using the Terminal prompt. First, open up the terminal by going to your Applications folder, then the Utilities folder. At the [yourname]$ prompt, type ifconfig followed the enter/return key.

What you will see is a long list of information. The Ethernet hardware address is listed under the en0 section right after the word ether.

By the way, your wireless (AirPort) address is also listed here, under the en1 section, also right after the word ether.

As a lowly serf in the computer language fiefdom, I utter Tennyson's line almost as a mantra: Their's not to reason why...

Except the part about dying. Hopefully there won't be any of that going on.

Previous installments:
2/3/08: iMovie Rant

cold, cold sunday

2008-02-11T16:25:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a good day to hibernate. We were greeted to a Fargo-esque -15 degrees (not factoring in the wind chill). The teens and twenties we're to expect later this week sound delightfully balmy by comparison.

super tuesday in minnesota

2008-02-09T18:21:00.000-06:00

The caucus was pretty wild last Tuesday. Ben and I decided to walk, since we figured parking would be a challenge. Soon we joined other streams of people going to the caucus. It was kind of cool to walk with a band of people getting out to participate.

When we arrived at the junior high school where our caucus was taking place, the line was out the door and down the block. (Nice photo from the Pioneer Press at left.) While not nearly as long as the Obama rally line, it was a bit of 'déjà vu all over again.' And even though it wasn't overtly rowdy or raucous (this was your typical, orderly, well-behaved Minnesota queue), there was a lot of excitement running up and down the line.

Inside the doors, though, it was controlled chaos. The party organizers and volunteers were doing yeoman's work, directing people to the correct meeting room: music room, new gym, old gym, etc. The hardest part was trying to conduct the normal precinct caucus business while continuing to sign people in and handing them presidential preference ballots.

Early on the chair called for tellers (counter of the ballots) and soon I and the other three volunteers had been recruited to sign people in. There were eight of us taking people's names, addresses, and signatures and it still took until almost 8 o'clock (when voting officially stopped) to sign everyone in.

It was a caucus of historic proportions. The Minnesota DFL (as the state's Democratic party is known) reported 212,049 Minnesotans came out to caucus on Tuesday, beating a 40-year-old record. Our precinct recorded 455 ballots: 325 for Obama, 125 for Clinton, 3 for Edwards, 1 for Richardson, and 1 Undecided. It was indicative of many precincts: Obama carried the state with 66% of the vote to Clinton's 32%.

The crowding was so bad that there is talk of having Minnesota hold a primary for presidential elections. I like the idea of a primary in addition to a caucus. That would make presidential preference voting easier and still preserve the caucus-style participatory democracy for electing delegates and debating party platforms.

obama rally in mn - and my first video

2008-02-03T21:09:00.000-06:00

Senator Barack Obama was in Minneapolis yesterday for a rally at the Target Center. Ben and I had picked up tickets on Wednesday and, boy, were they a hot item! All the tickets were gone by Friday, I think.

And the crowds were crazy! We showed up around 1:30 pm and were told to walk towards the back of the Target Center to get in line. Well, the line didn't end there, it continued across the bridge and several blocks away. It took us 15 minutes just to walk to the end of the line.

The doors were supposed to have opened at 1:30, but even when we got to the end of the line, there was no movement for a long time. I was sure we weren't getting in. The line was just too long. Ben calculated later that it was 1.2 miles long - it seemed longer in the 30 degree weather - and he created a nice tracing of the full line we were in (at right).

Despite our first incredulous impressions, we stayed in line and it finally started to move. By 3:40 pm we were inside and got a nice spot on the floor of the arena.

The place was packed - it really was amazing. And we didn't have to wait long, by 4 o'clock things got started with Minneapolis mayor, R. T. Rybak, apparently one of Obama's early supporters who helped convince him to run.

The speech Obama gave was impassioned and inspirational. And it solidified in me the feeling that this is the person who we need as our next president.

I pulled together some photos and video I took to create my very first video (after overcoming some initial frustrations with iMovie) and put it up on YouTube:

I didn't include any video of the speech itself, but you can see excerpts at the Star-Tribune site. And also on YouTube is this awesome Obama-inspired music video, "Yes We Can":

Go out and participate in your democracy this primary season.

And GO OBAMA!

apple $hitlist: a running tally of my frustrations

2008-02-03T13:16:00.003-06:00

I switched from an HP laptop to a Macbook in January 2008. This wasn't my first experience with Apple computers, but I was willing to give them another try.

Yes, there are lots of great things I love, love, love about my Macbook, but when I feel the need to vent, I'm going to come here - back to this post - to vent so I don't drive the people around me (namely the love of my life, Benjamin) crazy!

2/3/08: iMovie Rant
Went to a big Obama rally in downtown Mpls yesterday and took lots of pictures and video with the idea that I'd use iMovie, the movie editing software that comes bundled on Macs, to make a short video I could post on my blog.

I imported my photos and video from my fabulous Sony Cybershot into iPhoto, the photo album that also comes bundled on Macs. So far so good. But when I tried to import them into iMovie, I couldn't do it. Drag-and-drop didn't work; I could select the files but they wouldn't show up in iMovie. Finally, I copied them into a movie folder and tried to select them from the file browser but the were greyed out!?!

In the short time I've had my Mac, I've learned to skip the software help - and even the software support pages - and go straight to the discussion boards where the real help exists.

And guess what? The format that several cameras use to record video, .mpg or MPEG, is not supported by iMovie! WTF people?!? And if you use Apple's QuickTime to export it to MP4, it copies the video but not the sound! This is the friendly, compatible "it just works" functionality that Apple crows about?

Fortunately, there is a free software program called MPEG Streamclip that does these conversions quickly and easily.

Another huge problem with iMovie is that if you import QuickTime .mov movies into the program and then edit and export them - even to the same .mov format - you lose the video; you wind up with a black screen with the audio. Geez, you'd think that their own software products would work together!

Whew! Okay, that felt good getting off my chest. I hope to post some video from the Obama rally later today.

getting ready to caucus for obama in mn

2008-02-01T16:55:00.000-06:00

Exciting times in the run-up to Super Tuesday, when Minnesotans will be caucusing for their candidates.

Last Saturday, I went to a local Barack Obama Caucus Training event (photo at left). It was a lot of fun, and great to see all such a variety of supporters. The crowd got really rowdy when the cell phones started to buzz, announcing Obama's victory in South Carolina.

The whole caucus system is a little kooky and can be very confusing to the uninitiated (hence the multitude of training events). One of the best guides to the caucus I've seen was actually produced recently by Al Franken's campaign - he's running for U.S. Senate here in Minnesota. I'm pretty sure I'm going to caucus for him, too.

At the caucus training they also announced that Obama was coming to Minnesota to speak before caucus night. When we got the news he was going to be here on Saturday, we went to the local Obama campaign office to get some free tickets.

I'm really looking forward to going to the event and seeing him in person. It's at the Target Center, a big sports and concert venue, so I'm expecting a huge crowd. I'll try to take pictures and post them up this weekend. Exciting!

blogging from my new mac

2008-01-26T19:32:00.000-06:00

I've been fighting computer problems for the past two weeks. My hp laptop had been shocking me and shutting down - not desirable to say the least.

We took it into some great guys at Computer Renaissance and we first thought it was just a battery problem. But I kept getting the shocks even without the battery installed.

I've been thinking about switching to a Mac for a while now. I'd had a couple of Macs, but became disillusioned with the switch from OS 8 to OS 9. I thought OS 9 was a dog and had all sorts of problems with it. Plus, I had some pretty heavy statistical needs for my dissertation, so I switched to an XP machine.

But now that I have a computer at work to cover all my work-related research stuff, I thought about what I wanted as my personal computer. And I wanted to come back to Mac. Plus, the pricing for the basic Macbook was very good, especially with a University staff discount.

So here I am. The Macbook arrived yesterday and I woke up early this Saturday morning just dive right into it - kinda like a kid on Christmas morning!

I'm certainly excited, but I don't think I'll ever be a Mac 'disciple' again. It's cool, but it isn't 'that which can do no wrong'.

Still, it's fun to be back in the fold again.

the delegate race is on!

2008-01-11T11:03:00.000-06:00

We've got a good, old-fashioned delegate race happening in both parties and it's quite exciting.

I'm still a bit confused about the system, but I found a good, simple explanation of the delegate process on CNN.com.

I've also embedded a nice delegate counter from myDD.com on the sidebar so I can easily keep track of the races.

following the money

2008-01-09T17:52:00.000-06:00

I just came across an interesting federal government site, USASpending.gov.

It's meant to be an easy, transparent way to find out where federal contract and grant money is going, as mandated by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. And, happily, it lives up to these ideals: it's very user-friendly and well-designed.

You can see the top 100 contractors (Lockheed Martin Corp. comes out on top in 2007 with $24B), browse by agency (Lockheed Martin also comes out on top of Dept. of Energy, with - interestingly - University of California coming in second).

Just out of curiosity, I searched on the University of Minnesota. (One thing I found a bit confusing is the site separates "contracts" and "assistance", the latter being grants and loans. I didn't find a way to combine them into one report.)

Here's the U of M's contracts profile, officially filed under the Regents of the University of Minnesota.

You can see how many contracts were won through competitive bidding, what the top services were, and the trend in contracts since 2008.

The site could also potentially be used to sniff out the pork, since you can browse by congressional district, too.

Interestingly, the top 5 services for the state of Minnesota are:

Miscellaneous Electrical and Electronic Components
Food Items For Resale
Guns, over 125 mm through 150 mm
Dairy Foods and Eggs
Ammunition, 75 mm through 125 mm

Who knew that Minnesota was supplying the feds with Guns and Butter?!?
:)

reflection, journaling, and the journal 10+

2008-01-06T16:37:00.000-06:00

So it's the new year and I'm feeling a little reflective, thinking about goals and aspirations for the annum.

I was skimming through my RSS feeds and was struck by a post on zenhabits: "Wake Up: A Guide to Living Your Life Consciously." Zenhabits is a bit of a 'lifehacker for the soul'. I don't follow these things religiously, but sometimes I find a few ideas that resonate with me.

And the idea in this post that resonated was one of unexamined choices and unconscious movements in the day-to-day grind of life. I thought I could take some steps towards more conscious living by starting with tip #1 in the post: Make reflecting on your life a regular routine.

I don't keep a journal. I've actually tried a few times, only to fizzle out after a few days. But in researching journaling for some fresh approaches, I came across the idea of the "one-sentence journal" on The Happiness Project blog. The author's focus was more on recording memories and events, rather than mindful reflection, but I liked the idea of something short and easy.

There were a lot of suggestions in the comments section of the post on products and methods that make journaling easier. One reader described a book for keeping short daily entries for 10 years. I checked out the Journal 10+ web site and really liked what I saw.

4 lines for writing each day
carry-over pages for when you want to write more
one page for each day, divided into 10 years
pages for recording - and following up on - annual goals
pages for recording special events or things you want to keep track of like doctor's visits

I was very attracted to the idea of keeping my daily reflections in one place for ten years. What will it be like to look back over my entries ten years from now? Who will I be then? Where will I be then? What things will I have seen in that decade?

So I plunged right in and bought one!

Journal 10+ publishes a new journal every year, which is pretty nice since the dates and days of the week are filled in for you.

One nice cost-saving option Journal 10+ has is that it offers previous year's journals at a good discount. I purchased the 2007-17 edition for $24.95, about $15 less than the 2008 edition.

I just received it in the mail yesterday, so I'll let you know how it goes.

obama takes iowa

2008-01-03T23:56:00.000-06:00

Obama victory rally by Win McNamee/Getty

Like these Barack supporters, I'm crazy-happy for the spectacular showing for Obama in my home state of Iowa.

(I'm more than a bit envious, since anything we do in Minnesota on 'tsunami Tuesday' will be a mouse squeak in the roar of election return fever. Although I don't miss the TV ad bombardment.)

One of my favorite posts about tonight's results is this one by Andrew Sullivan. More than fitting, since his Obama article in the Atlantic monthly carried me over to the Barack side.

white out

2007-12-23T18:37:00.000-06:00

We set out for my mom's house today. It was snowing and blowing when we left, but we had checked the road conditions in both Minnesota and Iowa and it looked like it was going to be okay. We figured there were spots in Eastern Iowa that might be dicey, but going down I-35 through Minnesota was green-lighted all the way.

...well, it took us an hour to go just 35 miles.

And it was just getting worse: horrible visibility, cars in ditches. We were still 50 - 60 miles from the MN-IA border, so we decided to turn back.

It took us even longer to get back home because of a major slow-down due to tow trucks working on getting vehicles out of ditches.

When we got back home, I checked the road conditions again. Iowa's had gotten better, but the 'green light' for Southern I-35 had turned to this:

(Rice County is just South of the 7-county metro area, and we had just entered Rice County when we decided to turn around.)

I'm glad we turned around. It just wasn't worth it. Even if the weather had improved as we drove South, it would have been a very long and very stressful drive.

The weather looks better for tomorrow, so hopefully we'll set out first thing in the morning for a more relaxed drive.

king corn

2007-12-17T16:25:00.000-06:00

Last week, Ben and I went to see King Corn at one of the local indie/art film movie houses, the Oak Street Cinema.

I'd heard about King Corn by happy happenstance: via a LISTSERV from a sustainable agriculture group based in Minneapolis, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. We'd not heard anything else about the movie, but it was only playing for a limited time so we decided to give it a go.

And it turned out to be a really great movie!

King Corn is all about two college friends from Boston who decide to rent an acre of Iowa farm land, grow some corn, and find out where it goes. They were curious about how corn winds up in so many foods, a tale they heard told by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma and elsewhere.

It turns out that despite being Bostonians, born and raised, both Ian and Curt (the filmmakers) had ancestors from the same part of Iowa, a town called Greene. (Greene is also a town not too far from where my mom and dad grew up, and one we pass somewhat close to on our trips down to the Quad Cities.)

They head to Greene to start their great corn adventure. Along the way they talk to farmers, seed and fertilizer sellers, ranchers, scientific researchers (a couple from my alma mater, ISU), food manufacturers, economists, authors like Michael Pollan, and lots of ordinary folks.

The movie touches on a lot of different topics for the simple reason that corn is part of several different stories: how corn is grown and how growing corn has changed; corn as a major source of sugar and how cheap sugar is affecting diets and health; corn as a major source of animal feed and what that means to the animals, the farmers, and the consumers; the huge improvements in yields in the past decades and how that contributed to cheap, abundant food - and the benefits and ills from cheap, abundant food.

It's a very thoughtful and thought-provoking movie. And I liked the Field of Dreams-esque ending. Perhaps a little corny, but that fits, doesn't it?

welcome to the fookoo-dome!

2007-12-12T12:33:00.000-06:00

Great news, Cubs fans! The Cubs have just signed Japanese outfielder, Kosuke Fukudome, in a 4-year, $48 million dollar deal.

Talk about signing the slugger has been non-stop in the news, blogs, and podcasts of the Cubbie faithful, so I'm oh-so-thankful that the deal is done (pending the obligatory physical check-up).

Ben sent me the news, which he saw posted in a Yankees blog, the LoHud:

Finally, Japanese outfielder Kosuke Fukudome signed a four-year deal with the Cubs. The Yankees were never interested and it’s probably just as well. I’m trying to picture what John Sterling’s home-run call would be for him.

“It is high, it is deep … ”

I better stop there and keep my job. Just dropped a lot of money on Christmas presents.

(See John Sterling's Wikipedia page for background on the joke.)

Is Fukudome (pronounced foo-koo-DOH-may) going to put up those stellar numbers that fans of the Chunichi Dragons have seen? Should we be concerned about his recovery from elbow surgery in August? Are the moon and stars aligning for the end to the Cubbies' 100-year drought?

Who knows?!? It's the off-season - a glorious time for building our hopes, when all is right with the world, and when "wait 'til next year" happily morphs into "this is our year".

All I know is that I totally want a Fukudome t-shirt! Rock on!

copenhagen pic on schmap

2007-12-08T11:34:00.000-06:00

One of the pictures from my trip to Copenhagen is now part of an on-line travel guide!

I was contacted by Schmap for permission to post my picture of Frederiksberg Slot, the summer palace, on their new Copenhagen guide. They had found it on my flickr account.

I'm quite tickled about this, although in all honesty I don't think it's a fabulous picture. I was in Copenhagen in January and the sun was so low in the sky that the palace turned out horribly back-lit. But still, it's very cool!

I'd never heard of Schmap before, but I'll try it out the next time I'm planning a trip. One of the intriguing tools they offer is the ability to download their guides. I'll have to explore it a bit more.

pitching my tent in the Obama camp

2007-12-02T12:10:00.000-06:00

I've been on the fence about who to support in the 2008 presidential campaign, but I now know I want Barack Obama to be the next president of the United States.

I'd not really immersed myself in the 'race for the White House.' I've been aware of the coverage, but I've not done any thorough accounting of the candidates and their platforms. Being quite liberal, I knew I'd be voting for one of the Democrats, but there'd not been a crystallization moment for me until recently.

This has been a crystallization of several small elements, actually. But one article that really got me thinking was one that appeared in the December issue of The Atlantic. A story by Andrew Sullivan titled, "Goodbye to All That."

Sullivan argues that the American public in general, and American politics specifically, has become bitterly entrenched since the Vietnam era. And that elections have become trench warfare: fighting the same fight over and over again like our own political Verdun or Somme. Sullivan sees Barack Obama as the only candidate capable of bringing the nation past all of this.

Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us...
At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

I don't make this out to be a strict generational conflict, and I don't think my support for Obama can be glibly surmised as a Gen X-er whining and ranting about the Baby Boomers.

But I do see that Barack Obama has the singular ability in this race to take us to a different place. I'm not naively thinking he will be taking us to a promised land. But I want something different. I think we need something different.

And we need a hopeful, thoughtful, and inspiring person to take us there.

snowstorm

2007-12-01T14:58:00.000-06:00

We've got ourselves an old-fashioned snow storm!

The latest news says we might get up to 8 inches by midnight tonight.

I'm pretty excited about the news, but I feel for my family and friends down in Iowa - they're getting freezing rain - ugh!

I took this picture earlier this morning. I gave Ben a new yellow finch feeder for his birthday last month. It's a very artistic design, but also very functional, giving the finches one continuous perch.

The goldfinches certainly didn't mind the snow!

food bank shortages

2007-11-30T08:38:00.000-06:00

I normally blog about food safety issues here, but food security issues are another topic near and dear to my heart.

An article in today's New York Times describes the shortages in food banks nationwide. What is particularly striking is a perfect storm-like confluence of factors:

including rising demand, a sharp drop in federal supplies of excess farm products, and tighter inventory controls that are leaving supermarkets and other retailers with less food to donate.

The people and entities that normally donate to food banks have less, so they donate less - individuals have less to donate due to the current credit crisis, the currently strong farm economy has left fewer commodity surpluses for the USDA to purchase and donate, and there is far less federal funding.

There is increased funding for federal aid proposed in the new farm bill, but it sounds like current shortages are so extensive that this would not be adequate - and certainly not before the end of the year.

A spokesperson from America's Second Harvest said in the article that shortages are the worst in 26 years.

“Suddenly it’s on everyone’s radar,” Mr. Fraser said. “Food banks are calling us and saying, ‘My God, we have to get food.’”

America's Second Harvest has many resources on their web site to find your local food bank, donate, volunteer, and advocate.

have a safe and happy thanksgiving!

2007-11-21T11:17:00.000-06:00

FreeFoto.com (c)Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Just wanted to mention that USDA has some good food safety tips for preparing your Thanksgiving meal.

And special tips for safely cooking a turkey and storing leftovers.

Have a safe and lovely holiday!

an uninvited guest

2007-11-20T19:40:00.000-06:00

We awoke Sunday morning to what sounded like dresser drawers being opened and closed. Then it sounded like two cats running around the living room.

Except that we don't have two cats, only one.

The other "cat" turned out to be a squirrel. We suspected it had gotten into the house through our chimney and had made its way up from the basement, trying to find a way out.

Our cat, Callie, had cornered the interloper under a radiator. We put her safely out of harm's way and then went about figuring out how to facilitate a speedy squirrel egress.

(Un)fortunately, this was not the first time this had happened, and Ben had an old live trap down in the basement. It's one of those items you'd never set about buying until and unless you need one. But oh! when you need it, it is oh so good to have.

We quickly blocked off the radiator, leaving one end open for the cage. With a little encouragement in the form of a yard stick, the squirrel shot out of its hidey hole in a blur of gray. Thwak went the cage door - mission accomplished!

We relocated our nervous friend out into the alley, much to the relief of all concerned... Except perhaps Callie, who looked a bit disappointed that the excitement was over.

inspectors concerned about e. coli "cook only" loophole

2007-11-10T13:37:00.001-06:00

USDA Image Library

There's a really interesting article in the Chicago Tribune this morning: "E. coli loophole cited in recalls."

Federal meat inspectors are concerned with a policy that allows ground beef contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 to be categorized as "cook only" and be used in precooked product.

It is true that the product is made safe by cooking, since this destroys the E. coli bacteria. So, I don't really have an issue with these precooked products. In fact, in light of all of the trouble with pot pies and pizzas, I think more products should used precooked ingredients.

The point the inspectors made that really jumped out at me was the environment it creates at the processing plants:

But some USDA inspectors say the "cook only" practice means that higher-than- appropriate levels of E. coli are tolerated in packing plants, raising the chance that clean meat will become contaminated. They say the "cook only" practice is part of the reason for this year's sudden rise in incidents of E. coli contamination.

These inspectors also believe this practice is masking the true rates of O157 in meat, since companies who do their own testing and find positive batches of ground beef can label it as "cook only" without reporting it to the USDA.

However, some meat companies do have an open book policy. The article describes the testing policy at Tyson Foods, where they test all their meat that is to be ground and allows USDA inspectors access to all of its testing records.

I am concerned that the "cook only" outlet for contaminated ground beef allows producers and farmers to remain at business as usual. There's not the increased pressure to improve prevention of the E. coli in the first place.

Technorati Tags: food safety, e. coli, ground beef
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food safety at the border - round 2

2007-11-10T12:28:00.000-06:00

Last Monday, I talked about a startling announcement by the USDA that they would being more rigorous testing of meat and poultry products imported from Canada. This was a large procedural shift and appeared to set far stricter food pathogen standards than for domestic products.

Since then, the USDA have clarified things a bit. On Thursday, the USDA published a letter (link, full pdf) it sent to the director of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. They will increase testing of ground beef and its precursors (trim, etc.) for E. coli O157:H7. They will also increase testing of ready-to-eat products for Salmoenella and Listeria monocytogenes.

This is more in line with the types of domestic testing they do - and far less severe than had originally appeared. Still, it is a big policy change with our Northern trading partners. And there seems to be a lot of confusion about the details and concerns of long hold-ups at the border.

food safety at the border

2007-11-05T16:38:00.000-06:00

I'm a little confused by a recent statement from the USDA's Food Safety & Inspection Service:

Effective next week, FSIS will increase testing for Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7 and will require that shipments be held until testing is complete and products are confirmed negative for these pathogens. (Dr. Richard Raymond, 11/03/07)

This statement was part of the response to a multi-state outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 linked to Topps Meat that was recalled in late September (USDA notice, CDC notice). A Canadian company, Ranchers Beef, Inc., was a supplier to Topps and is now under investigation by the USDA for poor sanitation practices.

The intriguing part of this statement, as I read it, is that it sounds like inspectors at the Canadian border will not allow any raw meat or poultry products into the U.S. unless tests show it is free of Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, and E. coli O157:H7. If this is true, it is a far stricter standard than for domestic meat!

In the case of Listeria, the USDA only has guidelines for ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, since they are deemed the most risky.

For O157:H7, it is only identified as an adulterant (and therefore illegal) in raw ground beef, not in any other cut/kind of beef or other meat.

And for Salmonella, testing for this bacteria is only in the context of sanitation performance standards. It is not considered an adulterant and is perfectly legal to be present on meat, poultry, and eggs. (By the way, I recommend you treat all meat, poultry, and eggs as if they contained Salmonella. I did my dissertation on this, so I take this very seriously.) The USDA intends to post the names of serious Salmonella contamination offenders soon, but that is several steps removed from the authority to get product off the market.

So you can see why I am struck by the notion that the USDA will deny the importation of Canadian meat and poultry products that are contaminated with these disease-causing organisms.

Am I missing something, or has the USDA just ensured that Canadian imports will be safer than domestic meat and poultry?

threw a shoe

2007-11-02T19:00:00.001-05:00

I was riding home from work tonight when I got a surprise. I stopped at a light at the top of a hill. When the light turned green, I struggled to get started again and was surprised when my right foot came out of my cleat. And I couldn't get it back in.

After I crossed the intersection, I pulled over for a look. Apparently my cleat bolts had become loose and one fell out as I was struggling to get started. I thought it was odd that the right cleat had worked itself loose, since I usually keep this foot clipped in. It's my left foot that I am constantly clipping in and out, since I put my left leg down when I'm stopped.

When this happened, I was only a quarter of the way into my ride, so I had to ride the rest of the way without being able to click in to my pedals. I felt like a horse that had just thrown a shoe!

Regardless of equipment malfunctions, this was probably my last bike commute of the year. With daylight savings ending on Sunday, it will be quite dark when I leave work. I realize this may seem a bit lame, but I am concerned about being seen.

Maybe if I get a set of these Reelight lights, I can extend the commuting season a bit!

blow me down!

2007-10-23T18:07:00.000-05:00

I just got back from my bike commute from work, and, boy, that was a wild and woolly ride home! The weather turned blustery this afternoon - very blustery.

A quick check of the Nat'l Weather Service site says the wind speed is 18 m.p.h. with gusts up to 37!

There were a couple of times I was stopped at a light and I almost got blown over - and I had my feet on the ground!

Well, at least I got my exercise...

meebo me!

2007-10-21T21:40:00.000-05:00

I just added a widget to my blog that allows visitors to IM me directly.

The meebome widget is part of meebo.com - a web service that is like a meta-IM site, allowing you to be signed in on several of your IM networks at once and send instant messages through any of your networks from any computer without having to install software.

With meebome, I can chat back and forth with visitors right on my blog site. They don't have to open a separate window or application and neither do I.

And I can set up as many widgets as I want, each one with a unique nickname, if desired. So if I'm known by a different name on a different site, I can use that.

They also have chat room groups, which is how I heard about meebo. I'm a supervisor for WikiAnswers and they have a group room on meebo, protected by a password.

(The next thing I'm waiting for is a working app for Facebook. There is a meebo app in the Facebook application directory, but it's been disabled with no explanation as of yet.)

So if you see me online, send me a shout out and say hello!

drinking in a beautiful fall day

2007-10-21T14:23:00.000-05:00

After a long week of relentless rain, Saturday turned sunny as promised by the forecasters.

The morning started slowly, reading the news over cups of Yunnan tea. Then as the sun came out, we decided to take our bikes out for a spin. We rode over the Lake Street Bridge to hook up with Minneapolis' Midtown Greenway and make for the Midtown Global Market for lunch.

The ride was nice and we had quite a lot of company. It seemed like everyone was out on their bikes yesterday. In fact, the one not-so-nice part of the ride was when we encountered a large group headed in the opposite direction that swelled across both lanes of traffic. We slowly picked our way past them, trying to encourage them to share the road.

We were also a bit miffed that the beautiful bike/ped bridge across the dangerously busy Hiawatha Avenue is not yet opened. It's complete but awaiting a ribbon cutting ceremony on Nov. 8. I'm all for publicly celebrating and acknowledging the tremendous effort that went in to getting this bridge built. But meanwhile, a safe way across six lanes of traffic was barred to all of the bikers, walkers, and rollerbladers out on a beautiful day, waiting another 2+ weeks to open on a Thursday afternoon in November!?!

But I digress from an otherwise lovely day. We arrived at the Market and surveyed our fabulous lunch choices before deciding on a couple of sandwiches at Manny's Tortas.

We also sampled the extensive array of beverages at the Farmer's Market inside the Market space. I was intrigued by the Dandelion & Burdock root soda - interesting, but an acquired taste - while Ben went for the antioxidant powerhouse, Black Currant juice, which had a refreshing tartness.

Once back home, I was itching for some afternoon coffee. So, we packed up our library books and drove to Café con Amore. We spent a lovely hour sipping lattes and Americanos and both, coincidently, reading about WWII. I'm reading an engaging 1942 memoir by Elliot Paul titled, The Last Time I Saw Paris, which describes the cast of characters on the street near the Left Bank where Paul lived as an American journalist, and how it changed as the war drew close. Ben is reading An Army at Dawn about the North African front.

Back home again, we started prepping for dinner: Buckwheat Crêpes with Sautéed Onions and Goat Cheese. We were introduced to buckwheat crêpes, called gallettes, in Normandy and decided to have them the traditional way: with a nice glass of cider.

We found the cider at Surdyk's, a local legend of a liquor store that we'd not been to until last Friday. The place was a mad house and we had to circle the block a few times just to find a place to park. But it was worth it for the nice selection of Normandy ciders, and they also had a good selection of Calvados. We struck out on the Pommeau - we've only been able to find it at one place in the Twin Cities -but two outta three ain't bad.

We didn't linger over dinner since we had a concert to get to at eight o'clock. Saturday night was the opening seasonal performance of the Lyra Baroque Orchestra. This is a true gem of a group that performs on a lovely, intimate stage at Hamline University, just ten minutes up the road from our house. And probably the only place I get to hear pieces written for the harpsichord.

Last night's program included an amazing "cantata drammatica", Cassandra, by Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach. It was a dramatic telling of the Battle of Troy, sung in Italian by an engaging soloist, Emily Lodine.

The night was rounded out with an episode of PBS' Mystery and a nice glass of port. All in all, a wonderful day.

latest salmonella outbreak: where food safety, marketing, and policy don't meet

2007-10-14T18:41:00.000-05:00

I was delighted to see a friend quoted in the New York Times today. Carlota Medus works for the Minnesota Department of Health and was quoted in an article about the current Salmonella outbreak from pot pies.

The article, "Did Your Microwave Nuke the Bacteria?", pointedly identifies a few of the gaps created by current food production, food safety regulation, and food marketing. Unfortunately, at the confluence of these gaps is now a nationwide outbreak of at least 174 illnesses, with 33 people being hospitalized.

One of the roads leading to this food safety gap is the popularity of microwave-cooked foods. There is a large demand for quick meals that are just as tasty and satisfying as dinners that take a long time simmering on the stove or roasting in the oven. Food companies have done wonders delivering on the 'meal in minutes' idea, but there are still a few instances where minutes just don't cut it.

One of those instances is trying to thoroughly cook raw chicken in dense, frozen pot pies, in just a few minutes in a microwave. As the Times writer, Andrew Martin, points out, microwaves vary greatly in their power. Microwave ovens are also notorious for creating hot spots and leaving cold spots in foods like pot pies that aren't stirred and are quite dense.

Even if the pot pie feels quite hot and looks fully cooked, you can't be sure that the chicken in the middle of the pot pie has reached the minimum safe temperature of 165° F unless you use a food thermometer.

A second food safety gap is that it is legal to sell a food product that contains Salmonella as long as (1) the food product contains raw meat (beef, chicken, pork, etc.) and (2) the food product is intended to be cooked in a way that would kill the bacteria.

This is related to a third gap, really a confluence of the first two, which is how we think about and treat food that is packaged for microwave cooking. Many microwave meals are pre-cooked or semi-cooked so that we're just using the microwave to heat the food to make it palatable. So a lot of us aren't equating a frozen dinner with a hamburger patty or chicken breast - a raw product that we know needs to be cooked thoroughly.

And we're better judges of what it means to cook something thoroughly by cooking it on a grill, on the stove, or in a conventional oven. When you use the microwave oven to cook something, it can be easy to be fooled by how hot and steamy the food looks relatively quickly, even though it may not have reached a food-safe temperature throughout.

I do not believe it is enough to mention on the package that a microwave entrée contains raw meat and give a warning that cooking time may vary. I think food companies should not use raw meat in any product meant to be cooked in the microwave. The meat should be pre-cooked - period.

This has not been the first time we've had an outbreak from microwave entrées containing raw chicken and it won't be the last as long as raw meat continues to be put in these types of microwave products.

cubs clinch it!

2007-09-30T09:07:00.000-05:00

It hasn't been a fantastic journey, but the destination sure is beautiful - the Chicago Cubs clinched the NL division late Friday night.

We're visiting family this weekend, and it's been fun to talk Cubbies baseball with my fellow long-suffering fan, my brother.

It looks like it will be a wild ride in the NL to shake out the wild card winner.

Let's get ready for October baseball!

new orleans

2007-09-26T09:58:00.001-05:00

I flew into New Orleans on Monday for a conference. I'd not been to the Big Easy for four or five years and I was happy to be returning.

My taxi driver, after the initial hellos and talk of the weather, began a post-Katrina orientation of sorts - unprompted by me - on the drive in from the airport. I suppose he's been asked the same questions so many times by visitors and tourists that he naturally transitioned from a Q & A into a story-telling session.

It wasn't hard to spot the big differences, primarily the lack of people - in the neighborhoods I could see from taxi, and in the convention area I walked through during the conference.

But things sure were hopping on Monday night. The Saints were playing Tennessee on Monday Night Football. It was New Orleans' home opener and everywhere I went there was talk of football. (Helped by the fact that the hotel where I was staying was where the Titans players had stayed.)

I had a great time Monday night at a good Cajun restaurant called Mulate's, just down the street. There was a great live Zydeco band, good blackened catfish, a nice local beer, and a festive game day atmosphere. I left while the game was still close (the Saints wound up losing 31-14).

I don't really have anything especially insightful to say about what this city is going through; nothing to add to all the talk of what will be done, what should be done. But it is a very unique city and I was glad the conference brought me here to see it again.

st. paul classic bike tour

2007-09-15T11:10:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, Ben and I participated in my first St. Paul Classic Bike Tour. (I've embedded links to a lot of my pictures in this post; you can view all my photos on Picasa.)

Every year they mark out a route around St. Paul for the ride. It was really a lot of fun, despite the cold morning temperatures.

We arrived at the start around 8 AM. It was only in the upper 50s, but there was still a great crowd and a festive atmosphere. There were costume contests and lots of sponsor booths - including a great car-sharing program, HourCar.

The main sponsor is the Neighborhood Energy Connection, which promotes energy efficiency. One of the really cool things about the ride was that everything was recycled or composted - even the coffee cups!

Another great thing about the ride was the camaraderie. This was my first organized ride and it was great to be in the midst of so many fellow bikers.

And it was such a kick to have so many roads to ourselves and being able to ride right through stop lights. We really built up good speed on our our tandem going down some of the hills and it was great not to worry about stopping - or car traffic!

I definitely want to do this again!

2007 St. Paul Bike Tour

library card sign-up month

2007-09-04T21:00:00.000-05:00

As I've said before, I love my library. I know the 'cause of the month' stuff can get old and seem a bit cheesy, but when I saw it was Library Sign-Up Month, I knew I had to give a shout out.

The American Library Association wants to remind everyone just how much you can do with this one little card. September is the perfect month for this, too, with the school year beginning.

The Department of Education has a nice site where you can look up libraries near you. You can also see a list of libraries on the Libweb site.

Another service I stumbled upon while researching this event is BetterWorld.com online book store. Proceeds go to literacy programs, they are a carbon neutral company, and they keep libraries' used books out of the landfill by trying to find them a happy home.

I also came across ALA's Wiki page and American Libraries flickr page. I especially like the Eddie Murphy Gumby-inspired advice:

let's go cubs!

2007-09-03T14:30:00.000-05:00

Hey, Cubs fans!

The Cubbies are leading their Division - just barely, but we'll take what we can get!

I've updated the link to my favorite Cubs podcast (see right sidebar).

Full disclosure: Cubscast is having a 'Plug Us' contest and I decided to get in on the action.

italy trip - ravenna

2007-09-03T13:13:00.000-05:00

July 23, 2007 - We picked up a rental car in the Piazza di Roma, said goodbye to Venice, and made the short trip down the coast to Ravenna.

Navigating by car wasn't bad. We had a nice Michelin road atlas that worked great in getting us from place to place. The tricky part came when we were driving into town. Our city maps usually didn't show the outskirts of the city, and Ravenna was our first exposure to the confusing one-way streets of several Italian towns: one-ways that turn into one-ways coming the opposite way! We went around in circles a few times before finally pulling in front of our hotel.

By happenstance, we arrived in Ravenna on San Vitale Day - the patron saint of Ravenna. The good part: parking was free, few crowds since most of the locals were at the beach. The bad part: many of the restaurants were closed for the day.

But once we set out on foot to see the city, the charms of the city were quickly revealed. Ravenna has an amazing and unique place in history. The emperor Augustus built the port of Classis south of the city as one of two bases for the Adriatic fleet. It was the capital of the western empire for about twenty years in the late 5th century, then ruled by the Goths, then part of the eastern empire, was part of the papal states, and then the Venetian Republic.

When the port of Classis silted up, Ravenna lost its strategic importance, which also helped save many of the churches, tombs, and baptisteries from destruction. And that is what makes this city so special. There are mosaics here from the 5th century, when Christianity was still quite young. There are several baptisteries that were built separately from the churches in order to baptize adults, since the unbaptized were not allowed in church. Another unique aspect of the age of these works is that there are several depictions of Jesus without a beard (see the picture of the mosaic above).

The mosaics are simply spectacular and there are so many of them restored to excellent condition: the church of San Vitale, the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the Arian and Neonian Baptisteries, the Sant'Apollinare church - all breathtaking.

You can check out more Ravenna pictures in my web album at Picassa...

2007 Italy Trip 2: Ravenna

ahhh, wonderful california

2007-08-30T15:20:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting in an Oakland coffee shop, enjoying a wonderful cup of Joe and *free* high-speed wireless access, getting a little work done before going out to soak up the sunshine.

It's been a jet-set life for me this week: two meetings in two separate cities - Columbus, OH and Oakland, CA - in four days. I touched down in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, hopped on the BART, and as I relaxed into my seat for the ride across the bay, it instantly struck me how good it felt to be in California once again.

I'd spent six years in San Diego, and although I've been back in the Midwest for seven years, I've come to realize this state has gotten into my bones. So much about it feels comfortable and familiar, even when it isn't (like the BART, which I've never ridden before).

We'd thought about having Ben join me on the trip, but ultimately didn't act on it - primarily because I'd been so busy before my travel that all I could think about was getting home. But now I regret that. I wish he were joining me tomorrow. I realized my mistake the moment the BART train pulled out of the airport station and the view opened up before me. I was back in California, and it felt good. I want more and I want to share that. I won't make that mistake again.

Italy trip - Venezia

2007-08-18T18:04:00.000-05:00

[I've dotted this post with links to pictures, rather than pasting a lot of pictures right into the text. You can also view the full Venezia album.]

Our first stop on our Summer trip to Italy was Venice. Venice, it's true, is like no other city.

One of the things I love about this city is the way one can quickly get off the beaten path and feel as if you are (almost) alone - that Venice is yours.

We discovered this quite by accident, or rather by making three choices that led to our happy discovery:

(1) Finding a lovely apartment to stay in that was very close to the Rialto bridge but off the main thoroughfare,
(2) Bringing along an excellent map, and
(3) Choosing not to visit the Piazza San Marco until our last day.

The location of our apartment meant that we could easily strike out in any direction, preferably whatever direction in which the crowds were not traveling. For the most part, tourists stick to pre-determined routes. Unfortunately, many of these routes force crowds through very narrow passageways, as is common in Venice. It was quite a sight to see throngs of people erupting into a small square like ants swarming out of a mound. By far the most crowds were in the Piazza San Marco. I find navigating large crowds to be quite draining, so I'm glad we decided to leave that 'til the last day.

I can't stress enough how important our choice in maps turned out to be. The Rough Guide map labeled virtually all the 'streets' (alleys, passageways) of Venice. Several times we were able to help out fellow tourists who had gotten hopelessly lost. Plus it had the hours of operation for several of the museums and sights, and a map of the vaporetti (water bus) routes. And it's made out of a Tyvec-type material making it rip-proof and water-proof.

Speaking of the vaporetti, our foray into Venice wasn't without challenges. Our first introduction with the water bus system was at the Piazzale Roma, just having arrived from the airport and on our way to meet the apartment owner. A simple ride down the Grand Canal on the 82 vaporretto line. Except what we didn't know is that the boats traveling in opposite directions often docked right next to each other. We happily hopped on the first 82 we saw, then became a bit puzzled when we started heading for open water. This 82, it turns out, not only goes up the canal (wrong way), but then skirts the outside of the city! There were other mishaps, too, but you just have to go along with the vagaries of public transportation.

Another drawback: it was hot. Damned hot. And gawd-awful humid. With no breeze, even on the water. But it made it that much nicer when the temperature fell a bit on the third day.

There are many more happy memories of Venice than bad ones: my first Italian cappuccino, my first Italian multi-course meal, the lions of San Marco, the art at the Biennale, Venice at night, the market, the streets, the piazzas, the light.

I've got lots more stories to tell, but I think I'll leave it here for now.

2007 Italy Trip: Venezia

just checking in

2007-08-05T08:46:00.000-05:00

We got back from a fabulous 10 days in Italy last Tuesday, July 31 (map). Wednesday was a crazy day - craziness I knew was going to happen and horrible craziness that I didn't.

We had two of our project team from out of state visiting on Wednesday - a long day with a full agenda - and a lot of great things got accomplished.

To celebrate, we'd arranged for a team night out at the Metrodome to see the Minnesota Twins. As Ben and I were driving towards downtown Minneapolis, we noticed an odd haze among the buildings looking passed the University campus towards downtown. We were just pulling in to a parking garage when em called, asking us if we'd heard about the 35W bridge collapse, which had happened about 40 minutes earlier. We hadn't - we left right after we got home from work and had not been listening to the radio. As we parked the car, we saw the emergency vehicles parked on 35W just a few blocks away.

It was actually somewhat fortuitous that we all had arranged a spot to meet before the game. It gave us a way to know that we were all safe. Cell phone lines were jammed, but I got off a few "we're okay" text messages.

Wednesday night was very surreal. I was tired and jet-lagged from our trip. The Twins decided to go ahead with the game, trying to keep all the people there at the stadium and off the streets to give the emergency workers more open access. We followed the game through the 5th inning, sharing news with those around us who had downloaded pictures and information from the web onto their phones. Then we drove back home along fairly empty streets, checked the latest news, and went to bed.

Thursday and Friday were a blur. I was helping get a proposal finished and out the door for a Friday deadline. Then there was the mass of emails that had built up during the vacation. And all the time, following the news and checking in with everyone to see if they were okay.

It turns out the only person I knew to be involved in the horrific accident was an Epi professor, Jean Forster, who was on the section of the bridge over the West River Road when it collapsed. The dean had sent a message around on Friday informing everyone that Dr. Forester was okay and resting at home. She, like so many others, had been helped out of her car by the 'everyday' folks first on the scene who did extraordinary work to rescue who they could.

Yesterday, I finally had a chance to rest and regroup a bit. I'll be posting pictures from our trip soon.

ain't no sunshine...

2007-07-17T00:15:00.001-05:00

Well, folks, you may have heard that SunRocket Internet VoIP phone cut off service today. Just like flipping a light switch: now you've got phone service, now you (and 200,000 other customers) don't.

We've used SunRocket for about a year and a half. For the most part, we were pleased with the service. The price was great, the phone quality wasn't too bad (although we did have bad connections on occasion), and it was loaded with extras like caller ID, call waiting, forwarding, etc.

And it was always there, just like what you expect from a utility, until it wasn't. Because it wasn't really a phone utility in the Ma Bell sense.

It's left us scrambling a bit, but less so because we have cell phones as a back-up. Of course I'm upset to be left in the lurch, but I didn't miss paying high phone bills all of those months. So maybe it's "you get what you pay for." I'll be a lot more upset if we don't get some type of reimbursement on the remainder of our contract. We shall see...

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"rethinking thin" - what do we really know about obesity?

2007-07-06T21:18:00.000-05:00

I just finished Gina Kolata's new book, Rethinking Thin (Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2007). It is one of the most thought-provoking books on science and health that I've read in quite a while.

It's a quick read - only a couple hundred pages - and quite a page-turner. The book follows overweight and obese people enrolled in a 2-year clinical trial, starting in 2004, comparing the Atkins diet to a low-fat diet. But the comparison is almost beside the point. The true resonance here is the questions she poses, researches, and discusses throughout the book.

What causes obesity?
Why do so many attempts to lose weight fail?
Is simply being obese (minus other health conditions) bad for your health or shorten your life?

What her research found - talking to physicians, scientists, and nutritionists, reviewing scientific studies, interviewing obese people - strongly suggests that people are born with a pre-set adult weight. Your body may deviate from that weight by 15% or so, but any loss or gain greater than that is very difficult to sustain.

The gain part of that seems counter-intuitive, but in a research study of prison inmates who tried to gain as much weight as they could found it very difficult to add on more that 15% of their starting weight. And when the study concluded, most participants easily went back down to their pre-experiment weight. The same is true for weight loss.

[N]o matter what the diet and no matter how hard they try, most people will not be able to lose a lot of weight and keep it off. They can lose a lot of weight and keep it off briefly, they can lose some weight and keep it off for a longer time, they can learn to control their eating, and they can learn the joy of regular exercise... [b]ut true thinness is likely to elude them. (p. 217)

Being fat in large part is not a choice or a moral failing. It has been shown on a number of occasions that when obese people lose a substantial amount of weight through diet, their body reacts the same way as normal weight people who have been starved. Not just a mental feeling of starvation, but a physical reaction.

One of the great quotes in the book questions why we would think that everyone experiences hunger in the same way, to the same degree. Many obese people feel hungry constantly. Interestingly, this is one of the ways in which gastric bypass induces weight loss, not just by shrinking the stomach but somehow it minimizes the body's constant cry for food.

Perhaps the most provacative and challenging idea in the book is that obesity may be a consequence of the success of the human race - not through our over-abundance of Big Macs and Big Gulps, but something that happens very early in our development.

The origins of people's recent weight gains may have little to do with their current environment or with their willpower, or lack of it, or with today's social customs to snack and eat on the run or with any other popular belief. Instead, [scientists] say, we may be a new, heavier human race and our weight may have been set by events that took place very early in life, maybe even prenatally... Maybe, these researchers say, something happened early in life - better nutrition, vaccines..., antibiotics to cure infections like strep throat or pneumonia - that precipitated changes in the brain's controls over weight. (p. 221, emphasis added)

This idea goes against a lot of established wisdom in the scientific community, and one must grant that it is also as yet an untested and unproved hypothesis, but it is a truly intriguing idea.

It should also not be minimized that there are several co-factors with obesity that are serious threats to health and life: diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol to name a few. But we must admit that we don't fully understand the cause and effect between obesity and these other health conditions. As one of the scientists in the book said, obesity is an outcome, not an exposure. Now, I'm not fully convinced of that statement in all instances, but it opened my eyes to the consequence of looking at obesity as an outcome vs. an exposure. Does obesity cause these other things or are they outgrowths of a common precursor?

As you can see, lots of great thoughts have been sparked by this book. And a reminder to question what you know - or what you think you know -about a topic.

New camera, new dilemma: flickr or Picassa?

2007-07-06T21:05:00.000-05:00

I just received a great early birthday present: a Sony Cybershot DSC-T100. Benjamin gave it to me early so I could practice with it before taking it on our trip to Italy. It's a beaut - with lots of great features! (I tried out the macro lens on our raspberry patch - see right.)

Now that I'm taking more snaps, I'm keeping them organized with the free Picasa software on my laptop.

And that presents a dilemma. You see, Picasa also has a web album utility, with easy upload and download between Picasa and Picasa Web. This means I can easily share my pictures on the web, but it also acts as a storage/backup, with easy download back into Picasa.

There are lots of things I like about flickr, but I'm paying $25 a year for larger storage capacity and more album or "set" capability. Picasa Web Albums gives me 1 GB free storage space and allows for higher resolution than flickr's free service. I compared Picasa Web's free service with flickr's free service and I'm inclined to start using Picasa and not renew my flickr premium account.

Also, in an issue that doesn't directly affect me, but has affected my friend, flickr has imposed censorship upon members in Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea. He's decided not to renew his flickr premium membership.

So, I'll probably be using Picasa Web Album for my blogging in the near future. If you're interested, my public page is here.

thoughts on food safety in a global economy

2007-07-01T10:47:00.001-05:00

The National Center for Food Protection & Defense, the academic institution that sponsors the project I work for, had their biennial conference this past week. It was one of the best conferences I've been to in a while because it was small and focused enough to have some really good discussions. The participants weren't just academicians, though, but included federal officials and food safety personnel from large food companies.

And one of the topics on everyone's lips was China. We spent a couple of good hours working through a melamine case study that really got the neurons firing, and we all hit upon aspects that we'd not personally considered before.

Of course, we're not the only ones talking about Chinese imports these days, as an article in today's New York Times illustrates: "Companies in U.S. Increase Testing of Chinese Goods."

All this has sparked some questions and highlighted some points in my own mind that I'd like to share:

You are most likely consuming something that was grown or produced in China, or contains ingredients originating in China: Vitamin C to xanthan gum, garlic to apple juice (see NPR story for more).
The increase in food imports is driven in large part by price: it's cheaper to import these foods and ingredients from China than purchasing them domestically.

Cheaper for companies and consumers now, but the melamine fiasco opened a lot of eyes to the fact that they were taking huge risks by assuming the products (1) were what the labels said they were, and (2) met the levels of quality and purity that consumers expect.
If companies have to continuously fly over to China and hire interpreters to come along with them as the go out into the fields and go into the factories to rigorously inspect everything - what's in the soil, what's being sprayed on the fields; what's being put into the vats, where is that coming from - and on and on, I don't think that the prices are going to look so cheap.

One of the professors I talked to is a consultant for a food company that sells canned goods, including beans. A decade ago, this company could get their beans from Michigan and Minnesota. But with the ethanol demand, among other things, the price of corn is too good to pass up for farmers. They've dropped beans switched to growing corn. Where can this company get their beans now? China!

So this is another consequence of the emerging ethanol demand that I blogged about earlier this month.
In several instances, it's not that the companies are seeking lower prices but they are seeking sufficient supply - they just can't get their product in large enough quantities anywhere but China.

I think we need to step back and take a long view of energy self-sufficiency, with all that entails, including the impact on food safety (and food self-sufficiency). I'm not promoting isolationism. But I am saying that sometimes "cheap" isn't cheap. And that means cheap gas (yes, it's still cheap) and cheap food.

Technorati Tags: food safety, China, imports, melamine
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bike registration

2007-06-27T21:39:00.000-05:00

Several states and municipalities have a bicycle registration or bicycle license option: you register your bike and (hopefully) that helps recover it in the event of theft.

I'd been thinking about this ever since I got my new bike, but didn't really get around to it until Monday. I called our Department of Transportation's main number and was quickly transferred to the main bike contact. Unfortunately, he explained to me that bike registration ended in 2005, since the cost of maintaining the registry exceeded what they collected in registration fees. I guess that's that.

But then I stumbled upon a site that provides a national bicycle registration service. The National Bike Registry allows you to register your bike on a national database that can be used by police departments to recover and return stolen bikes. They have a pretty extensive list of agencies that have used their system.

The price was right: just $10 for 10 years of a single bike, $25 for transferable 30 year coverage or up to 5 bikes at a single address. So I signed up.

Do I really think I'll get my bike back if it's stolen? Well, for $10, I figured that it wasn't a major investment and worth a try.

npr road trip

2007-06-20T14:15:00.001-05:00

Calling all public radio fanatics!

I'm not sure how long this has been around, but I just discovered NPR Road Trip during my time away at conferences. It's not just a station finder, though. They've combined a driving directions mapping utility with their station locations to give you your route and all the stations you can tune into along the way!

I tried it out with a trip we make fairly often down to visit my mom - ZIP codes are sufficient - and here's our route, complete with the public radio stations along the way.

Hover over a station to get station identification and signal strength:

I'm in public radio heaven...

conferences from border to border

2007-06-20T14:12:00.000-05:00

I've been gone this past week at conferences. I first was in Niagara Falls, NY, for the Great Lakes Border Health Initiative conference (Go "glibbies"!).

The GLBHI group is a great, pioneering group of federal, state, and local public health and food/ag officials from six Great Lakes states/US feds and Ontario/Canadian feds. With all the technology we have, public health is still very much about folks talking to one another.

I had a great time connecting with so many great people, and even had some time to cross over into Canada to see the falls - wonderful!

Then it was off to San Antonio for an AFDO conference (Association of Food & Drug Officials). Getting down there was a pain - I got there a day ahead of my luggage - but most everything was good from then on. I got to finally put faces to names that I've worked with since October. We got a lot of support for our project, and I learned a lot!

San Antonio was fun, too. We had front row view of the Spurs' championship parade. Parades in this city are special - the floats actually float! The parades come down the river, along the lovely River Walk. I don't really follow the NBA at all, but it was cool to see the trophy propped up on the bow of the boat with Tim Duncan alongside.

Now I'm just sitting in the airport, waiting to go home after a long week...

laptop spring cleaning

2007-06-09T12:21:00.001-05:00

My laptop performance has been miserable lately. It seemed like it was running through molasses - especially at start-up. To help diagnose what was going on, Ben suggested a site called PC Pitstop. One of the free services it provides is a free diagnostic test (click New Members - Firefox users will be prompted to run the test on IE or via the IE Tab add-on).

The test looks at hard drive space, usage, and fragmentation; scans your list of programs for possible culprits; tests your Internet connection; inspects your browser and other settings; etc. Then it gives you an easy-to-understand listing of your results: red flag means serious trouble, yellow flag for possible improvements, and checkered flag for good performance. Then you can click on each result for more information and suggestions for improvement.

My hard drive got a red flag. Turns out, I only had 5% of my disk space free! And the PC Pitstop folks recommend 25%!! To put that in perspective, Windows XP defragmentation process recommends at least 15% to even defrag your drive.

Wow, how'd that happen? Well, the answer may not come as a surprise to some of you: music and pictures. I went through and cleaned up other areas (old dissertation files, uninstalling unused programs), but the biggest impact was quite simple -- deleting old podcasts, seldom-played music, and extra photos.

I went from 5% free disk space to 18% of the 55 GB on my laptop, just with a cursory Spring cleaning. I still have a ways to go to be optimal, and that makes me think about whether I'm going to have to be more judicious about what I download. Also, I'm thinking about getting a digital camera. Where am I going to store those pictures? How particular will I have to be in deciding what I want to keep?

I have an external hard drive that I use as my back-up. Would I get a second just for storing files?

Anyone struggling with the same thing? Any tips you want to share?

Technorati Tags: xp, computer, maintenance
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biofuels, barley, and beer

2007-06-03T12:12:00.001-05:00

I found this recent news item about biofuel and beer prices particularly interesting. Apparently, Germany's brewers are facing a barley shortage because farmers are choosing to plant crops like corn and rapeseed that can be turned into biofuels. These crops are not only fetching a higher price because of biofuel demand, but they are subsidized. Less barley, higher barley prices, higher beer prices.

And Germany isn't alone. There were reports this January that beer prices would be rising in the US and Australia due, in part, to barley prices that have risen "due to droughts... and more farmers choosing to grow different crops like corn and soybeans."

This highlights another facet of an evolving debate in agricultural commodities: food vs. fuel. I don't know about other countries, but as has been pointed out in Michael Pollan's book and elsewhere, US agriculture has been honed to deliver abundant and cheap corn (and soybeans) for 'value-added' products: to feed cattle and hogs for meat, and to make high fructose corn syrup for all sorts of products.

Now that we have ethanol in the mix, it is upsetting that system by driving up costs and diverting large portions of the crop to fuel uses. No more cheap corn, no more cheap food.

Not that I'm against biofuels. I'm very excited by the groundswell in ideas and actions towards a more diverse and (hopefully) more environmentally-friendly range of energy sources. But there are so many forces and interests at play here, that it's no wonder we're seeing some undesirable results, like higher food (and beer!) costs. Subsidies, lobbying, special interests, technological limitations, petroleum prices, existing commodity 'infrastructure', and on and on.

I think we're up to the challenge, but it's just a reminder that we need to keep the dialogue open and the pressure on to prevent lopsided outcomes.

Technorati Tags: biofuels, economics, agriculture
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rock star astronauts

2007-05-25T14:44:00.000-05:00

This was the NASA Image of the Day yesterday. These come up as thumbnails on my Google home page.

When I first saw this, I thought, "Why is some 70's rock band on Nasa's picture page?"

It's actually the Mercury 7 astronauts during their Air Force survival training in 1960.

What a great picture.

nat'l bike to work day

2007-05-18T10:54:00.000-05:00

Today is National Bike to Work Day. Last night I was thinking that this would be no problem. I was going to be working all day at the U, so I could dress more casually. And I had a pretty open schedule - perfect for a leisurely ride.

I woke up to the forecast: winds and rain coming into the Metro area. I considered not biking, but I saw the rains were to quickly move out of the area, so it wasn't going to be an all day affair. I decided to put on the cycling gear and pack my street clothes, a pack towel, and my deodorant and go for it.

What this meant was a second panier: one for the laptop and work stuff, one for the clothes. It seemed like too much stuff, but I was determined.

The ride was a bit chilly but, as I've found to be true with camping, if you plan for the bad weather, it will more than likely be held at bay. All that trouble for no rain!

I've not bike commuted to the U before, so I parked my bike at the first rack I found. My bike had a lot of company, which was nice to see. But as I schlepped my two paniers to my department, I passed four or five much closer and less crowded bike racks. Ah well.

But now the sun is coming out and its warming up. Happy Friday, everyone!

windy and winded trip to the library

2007-05-16T12:57:00.000-05:00

My bike commute yesterday turned out to be quite the workout!

It was extraordinarily windy yesterday afternoon when I set out to pick up a book at the library before heading home.

I work in the capitol area of downtown St. Paul. (I've been playing around with Google Maps, so you can see my map of the area). There's a large park-like open area in front of the capitol building and the wind coming through there made me feel like I was in a wind tunnel. I was so exhausted in just a few blocks I thought I was going to have to ditch the errands and head straight home. Thankfully, I turned off the main thoroughfare and onto a more sheltered side street and was able to re-energize a bit.

It made me think of this recent article in the New York Times that suggests interval training that includes short, high intensity bursts followed by slower periods make for the best workouts. I feel like I do that every time I'm on a bike - powering up hills, speeding to make a green light - it's natural interval training!

The rest of the ride to the library was quite easy. It's located on a street that was recently repaved with nice bike lanes painted in. I showed up to the library almost refreshed and took advantage of the respite to take off my jacket and cool down a bit.

I have to say that I love my local library. It's a great little building and is one of the busiest places in the neighborhood. The hours of operation are fantastic - open until 9 PM Monday through Thursday! It used to be open every day of the week, but they closed the branch on Sunday so they could keep the downtown library open all weekend.

And with the on-line book reservations and ILL, I really feel like the world is at my fingertips. I just picked up a wonderful Tuscany travel reader. And Benjamin has put me on to a great mystery series set in Venice. I really like the idea of getting to know a place through mysteries and dramatic fiction. I've been meaning to read Rebecca Pawel's series set in fascist Spain, too.

Does anyone else have a good 'destination' series to recommend?

working weekend

2007-05-13T22:22:00.000-05:00

We accomplished quite a lot this weekend.

We stained another three windows, just another two left until they're all done. We had new windows put in this Winter, nine of which had unfinished wood trim. This batch was harder since we had a difficult time matching the existing wood. We put a total of five coats of stain on using three different colors! We also got three window shades put up - not without some trial and error.

Yard work was another big chore. The grass was lush and tall, which made it tough work for our human-powered push mower. It's usually not this much work, but we'd let the grass get a bit too tall. I had to go over each patch at least twice to get a nice cut. It was definitely a good work out.

With all of this work, we didn't think we'd get a bike ride in, so we decided to run errands yesterday on our tandem. Library, grocery store, and bakery. We had our paniers fully loaded (including some "pan" - bread) and decided to treat ourselves to a coffee and the corner coffee house.

We also took the time to wish our mothers a happy Mothers' Day and catch up with family goings on.

Now it's the end of the weekend and I've got just enough time to do a little blogging and a little reading before starting calling it a day.

thoughts of Spring

2007-05-06T12:56:00.000-05:00

Today is a very blustery day here in the Twin Cities. We had thunderstorms yesterday and a chance of them again today, with predicted sustained winds 23-30 mph and gusts up to 55 mph.

With wind like that, I'm sure most of the blooms will come off our lovely back yard crabapple tree. I snapped this picture last Thursday evening while I was sitting on our back porch reading about Venice and soaking in the Spring weather.

I didn't do as well as I hoped meeting my goals during TV-turnoff week, but I have made a habit of spending some time outside after work doing a bit of reading. My new ritual may have to be suspended as we get into the stormy part of the Spring season, necessitating my bringing the books inside for a bit.

I was thinking of Spring, warm weather, and plants in bloom when I came across this article in the New York Times last week, titled "Feeling Warmth, Subtropical Plants Move North" (5/3/2007). It includes a very interesting graphic of the change in growing zones over the past 16 years. The growing zone of my Iowa hometown sixteen years ago seems to have moved with me up to the Twin Cities. And the coolest growing zones which once cut a wide swath across the upper Midwest and Great Plains states has shrunk like a watering hole in an extended drought.

Scientists interviewed for the article remind us that the migration of warmer climes not only bring more types of plants and earlier Spring greening, but also more insects and harmful plant pests. A long, hard freeze has its benefits - which Minnesota may be in danger of losing.

trout on the (indoor) grill

2007-04-25T14:30:00.000-05:00

I love to cook, and I've been quite successful with several recipes I've tried. Crêpes, Gnocchi, Tamales, Croissants, Paneer, Seitan, Gelato, Cakes, etc.

Even so, I'm still very anxious and apprehensive whenever I try something new. What are all the many ways I might ruin it? It's an odd manifestation of self doubt, but it never keeps me from trying anything. (Which is good, but I'm not sure why the doubt hasn't stopped by now... A question for the analysts, I guess.)

Last night was no exception: worry, try, succeed! This time it was grilling fish. I haven't cooked fish in an age. Would it overcook? Would it be too bland? Would it be too seasoned? But I had this recipe that looked too simple to pass up: Grilled Whole Trout with Lemon-Tarragon Bean Salad, from EatingWell.com.

I gave myself the upper hand by buying the trout from a highly-regarded local fish market, Coastal Seafoods, which is just a few blocks from my house. I called ahead of time to make sure they had what I needed: whole, cleaned trout.

They had some lovely rainbow trout - hurrah! I brought them home, unwrapped them, and got to work. This was an insanely easy recipe: make dressing; toss with rinsed, canned white beans; season fish and place lemon slices and tarragon inside; grill 4-5 minutes per side; remove lemon and tarragon; drizzle with some reserved dressing; serve with white bean salad.

I had a bit of trouble removing the heads and tails. We don't have a fillet/boning knife (well, I couldn't find one) and I had to put some muscle into it. I'm sure there's some technique I'm missing.

I was way too lazy to fire up the charcoal grill, so I just oiled our grill pan and used that. They looked so good, I had to take a picture! They cooked up fast, about 5 minutes per side, just like the recipe said. I could easily monitor the doneness by watching the edges go from pink to tan. One of the skins got a bit mangled in the flipping, but the end result was very tasty!

Now that I know how quick and easy it is, I'll definitely grill up more fish again!

wonderful saturday

2007-04-21T20:20:00.000-05:00

I had a wonderful day today. The clouds were threatening rain this morning but it turned out to be a warm, mostly sunny (and windy) day. I got to catch a bit of Nathan's game. Then I was off to a cooking class.

Ever since our trip to France last year, I've wanted to learn how to make croissants. I noticed a few months back that a local shop was hosting a croissant-making class - fabulous!

We learned all about prepping the dough, rolling in the butter layer, and folding, folding, folding the dough. Whew, it's quite a process! Three folding steps with a 30 minute chilling between each. The class only lasted through the first fold, but we got to cut and prep some pre-made dough for tasting. The picture above shows some savory croissants on the left (sautéed vegetables) and chocolate croissants on the right. I didn't have much of a lunch, rushing from baseball to class, so it was really great to have these to tide me over.

Interesting fact: croissants originated in Vienna. They were designed by the local bakers to celebrate victory over (not falling to) the Ottoman Empire.

Once I got back home, the day was so beautiful I felt compelled to get out on the bike (and maybe work off some of those croissants). I had a nice hour-long ride, stopping by the wine shop for a nice Viognier (at a nice price) and a Belgian golden ale.

All-in-all, a wonderful day!

tv-turnoff week

2007-04-21T11:16:00.000-05:00

I just found out that this next week, April 23-29, is TV-Turnoff Week. This comes at a great time for me as just last night I was watching television and thinking I needed a break.

I've got so many books I want to read and I'm just not dedicating the time to them. Here's just a sample:

Sweet and Low: A Family Story, by Rich Cohen - his 'unauthorized biography' of his grandfather's invention of the sweetener and the ups and downs the family, the American diet, and saccharine itself.
Venice: The Collected Traveler, by Barrie Kerper - in preparation for our July trip to Italy.
On Food and Cooking, by Harold McGee - an excellent food science book Ben gave me for Christmas. I've only made it a quarter of the way through...

Not to mention the magazines, newspapers, and RSS feeds I struggle to keep up with.

Now that the weather is nice and the evenings are lengthening, I can set myself up on the back deck with a book and a glass of wine, watching the dusk settle in. Yes, I think that's exactly what I'll do! I'll follow up next week to let you know how it's going.

gettin' better at this whole bike-riding thing

2007-04-19T12:35:00.000-05:00

Hey, I successfully started signaling turns today! Without losing control of the bike and careening into parked cars!

Look, ma, one hand! (Not sure when I'll get to no hands.)

I feel like a baby who's just taken her first steps. The baby's excited -- and the parents, too -- but the older sister is thinking, "big deal, I've been doing that for years!"

I'm better using my right arm than my left. I know you're taught to signal right turns by raising your left hand up, bent at the elbow, but that's not my style (yo, I don't roll like that!). Point left for left, point right for right.

But I did discover an instance where the bent left arm would be useful. On my approach to work, I descend a fairly steep hill and need to make a sharp right turn down a side street. It's easier to signal with your left hand while keeping your right hand on the brake!

bomb threats at UMN

2007-04-18T15:11:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: With no evidence to the contrary, this was most likely a hoax. Buildings were reopened this morning. [4/19/07 @ 12:20 PM]

Several University of Minnesota buildings have been evacuated and closed due to bomb threats. Police are still investigating and, at this point, no bombs have been discovered.

According the the Minnesota Daily article, several universities and high schools around the nation have received similar threats.

[In case you're wondering: I'm not on campus today, I'm at my Downtown office]

st. paul bike route maps now on-line!

2007-04-15T10:24:00.000-05:00

I was looking for an on-line equivalent of the excellent Twin Cities Bike Map. We've got a student from Georgia coming up to intern with us this summer and she wants biking/busing options, and me being a bus- and bike commuter, I'm strongly encouraging her to go this route.

I've sent her links to our bus routes, and Minneapolis has had their bike route maps on-line for a while. But how do I show her the best bike commuting lanes in St. Paul?

After a bit of searching, I found a map site on the City of St. Paul web site that includes bike maps - hooray! There are several versions of the bike route map (which I find confusing) but the Bikeways Map B (PDF) includes proposed bikeways with the year of completion, and makes distinctions between off-street bike trails and 'share the road' on-street bike routes.

Another cool map is the bicycle parking map (PDF) for downtown St. Paul. It shows where there are bike racks and bike lockers and the capacity in each location. It also shows the best street routes for downtown -- which are very few and far between. The second page of the map document has more information and helpful web links.

One limitation to these bike maps is that they aren't completely up to date. For example, Marshall Avenue west of Snelling has been resurfaced with nice bike lanes, which you can take across Lake Street bridge and hook up with the Midtown Greenway. (There's also a cool map of Midtown Greenway access points on wayfaring.com)

Technorati Tags: cycling, st. paul, minneapolis, maps, commuting
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spring snow storm

2007-04-13T16:43:00.000-05:00

We had a fairly big snow storm here on Wednesday. It's not really felt like Spring since the official start of the season on March 21. It's been quite cold and very windy.

But that's changing. You can see that snow covered the ground on Thursday morning (left), but was all melted by the afternoon (right). And from the looks of the forecast, temperatures in the 50s+ are on their way! Yay!

Play ball!

2007-04-02T14:26:00.001-05:00

Happy opening day, baseball fans!

The Cubs v. Reds game is underway...

Looks like the Tribune Company will be putting the Cubbies up for sale. I hope it goes back to being family-owned.

Anyway, enjoy the day!

[Picture source: Flickr; originally uploaded by WisDoc.]

amazing girls

2007-04-01T09:33:00.000-05:00

A lead story in the New York Times today is about 'amazing girls' - high school girls "by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitious, confident... Girls who do everything: Varsity sports. Student government. Theater. Community service." ("For Girls, It's Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too," New York Times, 4/1/07.)

A lot of it is about the push to excel at just about everything and get into a great college (a 'name' school), but at the same time to be yourself and have fun.

One expectation is to take several AP (advanced placement) classes. You are a bit of a slacker if you just take two. Geez, when I was in high school in the late '80s, I think we only had two AP classes, English and chemistry. I took neither. I knew I wanted to be a biological scientist, so I took an advanced biology class. Then there was pre-calc, band, etc.

I was also a little gun-shy by my senior year. I'd taken a Comparative Government class my junior year. We covered the UK, the USSR (there's a throw-back for you, kids!), and China. That class kicked my butt. It was one of the hardest classes I've ever taken - in high school, undergrad, or grad school. Because of the Comp Gov class, and what I was hearing about college from my sister who'd started the ME program at Illinois two years before, I was afraid that I'd fail in college. Well, maybe not fail, but flail. I was so afraid, I started college early - the summer before freshman year - so I could get a head start on calculus. I literally drove off to college the day after my high school graduation.

So, I felt pressure, but most of that was self-imposed. I don't think these high school students feel academically unprepared for college the way I did, but I do worry about what one of the interviewed parents termed 'anorexia of the soul.'

I did some extra-curricular stuff, some that I loved, like Yearbook, and some that I wound up hating, like basketball (I'm really horrible at sports, but stuck it out because I didn't want to be a quitter.) But I also had lots of time to develop as a person and get a sense of self. My friends and I would get together to bitch, of course, but we also debated religion and politics, science and ethics. I used to tag along with my friend, Naomi, as she did her afternoon paper route (another throw-back, kids!). I used to think of them as our afternoon philosophy sessions. We'd have great political debates (she was from a liberal family, I was from a conservative one), wonder at black holes and time travel, discuss Paradise Lost.

I'm a fairly smart person, but I'm not an over-achiever. I have more interest than drive. And I'm not sure I would have pursued a graduate education if I came up in such a pressure cooker atmosphere. I really think I would have burned out. Maybe not, maybe I would have adapted. But that's a lot to internalize.

So to those high school students who feel overwhelmed: for your own sake and,really, for the sake of your future, ease off a bit. You can go to a regular state college and tap wonderful opportunities there, go to grad school if you want, and live an amazing, rich, and happy life. I am, and my friends are. And a lot of us are working at making the world a better place - which includes making sure the kids are alright.

what's for dinner?

2007-03-25T16:46:00.000-05:00

Back in October, I wrote about a private blog that Ben and I were using to do menu planning. We were feeling in a food rut and thought this would help us explore new flavors and old cookbooks.

Well we're now six months on and still going strong. There have been some days we've thrown our plans out the window for a quick burger or pizza, but for the most part the dinners have become something I look forward to.

This has become our time to reconnect at the end of the day and shrug off the frazzle of work by focusing on chopping, sautéing, boiling, and broiling - not to mention eating!

I've discovered new enjoyment in foods I had shied away from: fennel, beets, and Brussels sprouts, among others. Each week we re-cap the menu with brief comments, noting what we liked and what fell flat.

And we've just started to supplement our own cookbooks with ones we've checked out from the library. We've started keeping track of these in a separate page called Cookbooks We've Explored.

Another recent change we made is that we decided to make our What's for Dinner? blog public. It had gotten to be a real hassle logging in to the blog every time we wanted to look at it, and we thought it would be fun for our family and friends to see what we've been doing.

So if you're stuck for dinner ideas - or just curious - surf on over and check it out. All of the recipes are vegetarian, with reference to the cookbook or web site, and organized on a weekly menu schedule. Feel free to leave a comment, too!

world water day

2007-03-22T10:57:00.001-05:00

Today is World Water Day. This year's theme is "Coping with Water Scarcity." It's estimated that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in regions with "absolute water scarcity."

In many countries, irrigated agriculture is the primary consumer of fresh water, reaching 70-95% of all water use in a country (UN-Water report) . (In the U. S., by comparison, 40% of water usage goes to agriculture, 39% to thermoelectric power, and 13% for public supply).

Not only is it a primary water consumer, but irrigated agriculture in many cases has also been a large driver of economic growth an poverty reduction. Competing interests for water put huge demands on sustainability and cause conflict over water rights.

There are several good resources to find out more about this very important global issue, including UN Water, UNEP, and the Water for Life project.

my diploma arrives!

2007-03-17T12:19:00.000-05:00

My PhD diploma arrived in the mail today!

I quickly put it in the fancy frame I had purchased during last year's Grad Fest (took me longer to finish up that I had planned). Then I donned my poofy hat (a.k.a. tam) and we took an impromptu picture.

Now I just need to construct the obligatory "me wall", a term I learned from my sister and her Navy buddies.

my first bike commute

2007-03-16T10:03:00.000-05:00

I went on my first-ever bike commute on Monday. Ben snapped this picture before I set out. It was a bit chilly in the morning, but it was warming up to the 50s - a great day for a ride.

You can see I've bought and borrowed some great commuting gear. I got a rear rack at Now Bikes, where I bought the bike, and they installed it and adjusted my seat for free (great people there!). We picked up the fenders at REI with our annual dividend (not large this year - we've shown restraint).

The pannier is one of Ben's. I think it is designed more for touring and travel, but it's also great for commuting. It even has a cylindrical vertical pocket that fits my insulated coffee mug perfectly! I must say that, especially for a newbie, the pannier is much easier than slinging a bag on my back. I'm surprised more folks don't use them.

The bike accessories that you might not expect for a newbie are the Shimano SPD clipless pedals. I use these on our tandem, and got a special deal (those great folks at Now) on Shimano pedals for my solo bike. I was a bit apprehensive that I'd be keeling over at every stop sign, but it only took me a few tries to get used to them - no keeling involved, and when I have had to yank my foot out unexpectedly, the cleats have released fine. They do require a special shoe - I got more of a mountain bike/street shoe style rather than the sleek road shoe - but I've come to appreciate the improved power transfer and stability of being cleated in.

The commute itself was good. It's an easy 4.2 miles, mostly on a wide road with bike lanes. The commute back has a bear of a hill right out of the starting gate. I found I was really sluggish at that time of the afternoon, too. I think I'll need to take a shot of espresso before I leave work!

The next two things I need to work on are (1) hand signals and (2) standing up and pumping. Remember, I'm a bit of a newbie, so these skills that most folks learned when they were ten or eleven, I never got around to.

Despite my first success, I haven't been on the bike since Monday. I had an early day on Tuesday and I didn't want to go out in the dark just yet. And the days since have been cold. But next Monday looks to be another warm day, so I hope to get out there again!

graduation gift to myself: new wheels!

2007-03-08T14:45:00.000-06:00

It's still cold and there's tons of snow on the ground - not to mention the rutted and sloppy roads - but we went ahead and picked up something I've been looking forward to for months: a new bike!

I haven't had a new solo bike since I was twelve (tandem is a different story), which was stolen within a few months of my getting it. So, I never really had a chance to acquire great bike-handling skills. Still, I enjoy riding our tandem so much that I want to get on to a solo bike and start riding - and commuting - regularly.

[As an aside, only tandem bike riders ever use the term 'solo bike'. But, being as I am a tandem rider, I almost can't help myself from prefacing the word bike with some sort of qualifier. Hope that's not too annoying to you all.]

Ben and I went out this weekend to one of our local bike shops to pick up a bike I've had my eye on since I test-rode it last Fall: a 2006 Jamis Coda Sport. It's a great bike with great handling. And it was on sale since it was last year's model - fantastic!

I can't wait to hit the road! Well, hopefully not literally hit the road. Although my bike skills are quite rusty - and, quite frankly, they were never very well lubricated at any point - I'm hoping that it will be, as they say, just like riding a bicycle.

life post-phd

2007-03-01T16:24:00.000-06:00

I turned in the hard copy of my thesis to the Graduate School on Tuesday, paid them the required publishing fees, and as of yesterday (the last day of the month) I am a PhD!

I was planning on getting all of my paperwork in on Monday, but my colleagues at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture threw me a little surprise party, complete with yummy DQ ice cream cake!

So, today, on my first post-PhD day, we've got such a snow storm that the University of Minnesota closed at 2:30 PM and nearly everyone at the Department of Ag bailed out around 2.

Just my luck: I'm no longer a student and now we get a snow day!

Podrunner - Weekly workout podcast

2007-02-19T12:39:00.001-06:00

Ben and I gave each other exercise equipment for Christmas this past year: he received a weight-training bench and I received a rowing machine. It's been great to get my heart pumping with a good workout in my own home while the frigid winter set in.

I've been experimenting with different types of music to listen to while exercising. I created some higher-tempo playlists of my own music, but couldn't find a group of songs that had a consistent beat. Earlier, I had written about a service you can use to find music at a particular beats per minute (BPM) rate, but now I've found something even easier.

Podrunner is a weekly podcast by L.A.-based dj steveboy. Each week he mixes a full hour of music with a specific BPM. The tempos range from the 130's to the 170's and the BPM is listed in the title, making quick work of finding what you need. (In case you're curious, I've found my rowing pace to be between 130-135.)

The music is basically a good, driving 'dance floor' type of beat with some vocals. The music isn't distracting, in fact just the opposite. Since I'm not emotionally invested in the music, like I was when I was creating my own playlists, I find it much easier to 'dial in' and focus on my workout in an almost meditative way.

Also, since I'm not trying to follow along to lyrics, I can listen to this music with the volume turned down so just the main beat is coming through. That makes it easier for me to be more aware of my surroundings when I need to be. Granted, I don't have to worry about this while rowing in my basement, but it's a nice feature if I want to groove along to a walk outside - I can hear what's going on around me.

You can check it out for yourself on iTunes or this XML link.

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happy new year

2007-02-18T15:15:00.000-06:00

The Chinese New Year began today - the year of the pig!

The pig (or boar) is considered a very lucky sign, and since I was born in a porcine year as well, I consider this year to be extra lucky.

However, I've just read that the years of the pig can also be turbulent as well. (Guess that covers just about every possible outcome for the fortune-tellers.)

Anyway, have a happy new year!

Celebrate! A Successful Defense!

2007-02-17T11:45:00.000-06:00

My dissertation presentation and defense are over and I passed!

I was still working on my slides as late as Thursday night. There was quite a lot of ground to cover, and my entire presentation was a hour long. It was great to see so many friends and family in the audience. It was very energizing to have a supportive crowd.

The committee questioning part of it took about an hour, too. There were a few questions I had trouble with, but the session ended with some very interesting ideas on where this work could go.

We celebrated at the University Lounge, a small bar at the Radisson Hotel on campus with leather couches and wood paneling - a scotch and soda with cigar-type place (sans cigars, thankfully, due to the city's smoking ban). It 's become a bit of a tradition for post-defense celebrations, primarily because it usually isn't too crowded and it has a generous 2-for-1 happy hour!

Now, I just need to make a few edits to my dissertation document, get my adviser's signature, and hand it off to the Graduate School (along with money for printing and reproduction fees). I'll turn that in by the 28th and I will officially be a February graduate.

And I even have gainful employment lined up! My position with the project I've been working on since October with become a full-time post-doc. I like the possibilities this opens up for me to perhaps write some research grants and make some great connections across the country.

Thanks for everyone's support. I couldn't have finished without it.