And now, the Center of the Galaxy!!!

The center of the galaxy is a giant black hole that is hiding inside of "Sagittarius A," which is this glowy spot in infrared and radio waves because of the heat emitted from matter "accreting" into the black hole. Accreting means growing bigger, which I don't really get, I guess things get bigger when they heat up? Maybe matter is accelerating towards the black hole, heating up and expanding before disappearing? No clue there. Well anyway, this picture is pretty awesome, I got it from the Sweet Astronomy Picture of the Day. While we are on the subject, I would also like to point out that the center of the galaxy is in the constellation of my astrological sign, Sagittarius, which we COULD say, if we were being sassy, either explains my massive ego OR that my heart is actually a black hole. Or that astrology is silly.

There is also this cool video that was on the APOD site:


I can't really watch videos very well on my computer anymore because all browsers on the Mac hate me, BUT what I can tell you is that it has this cool part where it shows the orbits of the closest stars around the black hole, including this star which gets 17 light-hours away from it!!! (Recall here that earth is 8 light-minutes from the sun) Well, anyway, I think the whole thing is pretty mind-expanding.

A big day in Europe

Although I was alive when it happened, I do not really remember the Fall of the Berlin Wall. But there are some pretty nice pictures of the event and the celebration that happened today and for the past few days in Berlin. People in Europe seem pretty excited to celebrate this event, and I suppose it is for good reason. The only connection I feel for it though is that my family had a hamster named Gorby around that time. He was a plain brown hamster. It does make me think that maybe I should visit Berlin when I am in Germany over Christmas break.

Remember the Time

Reminiscing about my last year of undergrad and the founding of an American Great, VG&B. Honestly, it mostly consisted of me, Kavi, Chris and Burney playing Star Wars Battlefront II and me getting my ass handed to me while taking over the galaxy (oh yeah, and beer too, hence the 'B'), but you know, I couldn't have been that bad seeing as how I did get the Wookie upgrade sometimes. When you have the Wookie, you can be really reckless because he has more defensive power, but he was SLOW. In any case, sometimes things got more exciting, such as the memorable time Petey and I made it to the pleasure dome in Smash TV, which is a classic arcade game that Kavi had on his hacked up Xbox. I have it on the SNES and its not that great to play, because I think the two joysticks on the Xbox are KEY. Anyway, the pleasure dome was a mythical place that we weren't sure existed, but there it was, at the end of the game. You go to a psychedelic temple and instead of collecting sweet prizes like cars and big screen tvs, you collect LADIES. And then you get to the final boss and its all over. Anyway, Kavi was big on making video blogs at the time, and he posted it on his blog back in the day. Click for SWEET VICTORY.


In addition to the great fun inherent in that video, you can see poor Georgie when she was a kitten and known as Dioge (D.O.G.). Sad little girl was shitting all over the place at that time, and they found out later that it was because she was drinking out of the toilet that had a bleach insert in it because they were bad about keeping her water bowl full (or feeding her for that matter). Honestly, I'm surprised she turned out as big as she is, or as healthy, and was able to grow into a semi-well-adjusted cat.

And now! We will play the game where you can hear all the songs from my work computer with the word 'remember' in them!!! And by 'work computer,' I mean the computer I sit in front of when I should be working. Yeah...
Remember the Time
I've Got Dreams to Remember
I'll Remember April
And now if my blog gets shut down, we know why.

The Oceans, they are a-changin'

A gross sea slime produced by algae blooms is bogging down sad sea birds, forcing them onto the beaches where they die of predation or hypothermia. Such algae blooms are produced when there are unusually high local levels of nutrients; basically when things are out of whack. SO, what is up? There have always been algae blooms in the ocean, part of the cyclical nature of life, however this appears to be different. That's all. And THEN, a giant algae monster raises from the sea and consumes the plastic continent!!!

This reminds me... People talk about metabolic engineering of bacteria, I specifically talk about making organisms that eat plastic and oil and whatnot (& turn them into diamonds, but thats not really very practical (although it would make for an attractive beach!)). But of course theres the whole question of introduction of engineered organisms into the environment, and gene transfer between bacteria and archaea is really rather easy, so is something like this REALLY ok?! I don't know...

Painfully Adorable Sea Dragons

BBC has filmed Sea Dragons, which are basically like seahorses, during their courting dance and subsequent babies' births offshore of Australia.



The dance is only so strange because of the way the sea dragons look; we have all seen schools of fish mirroring each others movements, so it doesnt seem like too rare of an occurrence. Probably involves sensing water movements with their lateral line. ANYWAY, the baby sea dragons are where it's actually at, super cute, with their little eyes in the eggs and then after they're born... Reminds me of when my dad's fish were breeding and there were all these little babies that were basically a pair of giant eyes with a little tail attached, hanging out in the plants and miraculously not getting eaten. I'm just glad my fish don't breed, because anything that fits in a goldfish's mouth will not last very long.

All that said, I guess I didnt really realize that seahorses were fish, since they sort of look like a cross between a starfish and a fish, maybe, even though that makes absolutely no sense. I guess the seahorses don't need much in the way of a fuller more fish-like body as they have adapted to sort of hang out instead of swimming around and don't need all those extra muscles.

Pictures of Atomic Bonds Using Atomic Force Microscopy

Awesome. I'm depressed and I still think its awesome.

Science article for those who have access.

Gizmodo article.

As a side note: Grad school is depressing.

Eat Them Eggs

This post is mostly for my father, who has been depriving himself of eggs for the past few years for cholesterol reasons. Turns out, dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with how your body stores cholesterol in your blood (HDL or LDL, etc), and this makes total sense. I've already heard whispers of this, but here it is in words for you.

THAT SAID... Factory farm chickens are sad, and so it would be best to find a local farmer to get eggs from. Or get your own!

Sprint Training FTW

There was an article in the NYTimes that claims through studies with rats (mices?) that intense sprint training results in the same molecular/cellular changes as endurance training. We all know that interval training pretty much rocks, but this shows that INTENSE interval training (like 20 sec. of intense effort at a time) is really the way to go for fitness. NOW... My question is, does this just improve "fitness" or will this improve your performance, in say, a sprint tri? Because I signed up for one like 5 weeks from now and I am not enjoying the swimming training especially, and if I could flop around in the water for a few minutes and get the same results as if I had actually done a half or full mile of swimming - I mean, that sounds pretty great to me. I think that you would still have to do the long swims to get your pace down, maybe.

ANYWAY, this is all great for me, because I generally prefer to put in a lot of effort anyway. I bike hard, and I actually swim hard too, (which is no good for trying to maintain effort over time) so sprint training would come pretty natural for me. In addition, I used to be a sprinter back in JH and HS, sooooooo. I will admit that I actually did some sprint repeats like a month ago, and I was really sore afterwards, even though I had been running/jogging regularily, so it seems accurate to me that you get a similar sort of work out after a shorter amount of time.

ANYWAY, I'm sold. Let's hope I don't drown the first lap I try to do all-out in the pool, and the other people don't look at me funny.

Less is More?

MANY of you may have seen the opinion piece in NYTimes recently, "The Joy of Less." I had wanted to comment on it when I first read it, and was reminded of it today when I was on this other site Three At Sea. (They actually call it Three@Sea, but I refuse to support that because the @ is WAY too tacky, and the people used to be in computers and stuff and well... Not hip, guys.) Anyway, its about a family who used to live in Boulder, but sold their house and most of their stuff and bought a boat and are planning on traveling around the world during their daughter's middle school years. THE POINT BEING: That these people have bucked the status quo and are living their own way somehow, with the lack of many material possessions (although they remain entirely wired to the rest of the world).

All of this sort of jives with the whole grad student lifestyle. I am poor, live in a small apt, no longer watch tv, and because of my whole environmentalist leanings, am also disdainful of the consumerist society we live in. That said... I have a lot of stuff. But I figure I may need some of it some day, so I have to keep it, because otherwise I would be feeding the consumerist beast, right? My life is less about the pursuit of things and more about the nurturing of the BRAIN. This is true with what I actually do for money, and for what I do in my spare time. Also, the pursuit of the body is in there somewhere, cuz I live in Boulder, and we are all fit and beautiful here. You could say this is also a mind-pursuit of sorts, as theres all sorts of thinking and refreshing you can do while youre working out, if youre not plugged in, which I rarely am.

Anyway, I am not so sure about the pursuit of happiness part being entrenched in these drastic lifestyle changes. It is true that hectic lives make people crazy. And that a more moment-to-moment life, like that achieved on a boat (OR being a forager/hunter/gatherer, my personal favorite escapist fantasy), where you have to be paying attention to your surroundings in order to live, seems more fulfilling than doing some drivel that you find meaningless. However, I am unsure about the necessity to buck the yolk of society in order to obtain happiness. I agree it is probably not found in things. Maybe too often people associate the obtainment of things with a typical American life, but maybe you can do the normal things like have a regular job and not be obsessed with the pursuit of things, and whatever happiness can be obtained that way. There are just a lot of people who seem to think something drastic needs to be done with their actual life situation in order to be happy, but maybe it is just the internal adjustment, which often accompanies that outward change, that is truly the key.

Or...

Is this how people talk themselves into settling down for a common life?

The Lion-Cut

Yes, the lion-cut for meowers. Look, this gorgeous animal can pull it off. I had previously thought that people gave their cats the lion-cut themselves, and I had been thinking that that sounds very difficult, and I don't have shavers anyway. But then I learned that they get it done! You go to a doggie cut place or wherever, and they can do it... The issue here mostly is that my cats are very furry and their fur gets everywhere, and the summer is coming anyway, so why not? This would cut down on the extreme amounts of fur, and then the kitties would be happier. This is partially for my boyfriend's sake, because I feel sorry for him when he gets all covered in fur when he is used to his non-furry existence, and it gets stuck to his face, and it all really rather pathetically adorable. Apparently there is even a movement of fur from my house to his house, that travels by way of our clothes. Presumably mine more than his, but you know.

ANYWAY. I am seriously considering this. In the past, I have been opposed because I thought that their fur is very sensitive and so cutting it might hurt them or something, but I think maybe it would be just more of an annoyance, not some ongoing horror. I mean, we can feel when things land on our heads, so maybe their follicles aren't incredibly sensitive, like I thought. The only issue is they might be extremely upset by the whole thing. Maybe I can take them to the vet and get it done, since they are only like 3 blocks away and then Georgie wouldn't freak out. I read something recently about training cats to tolerate car rides, maybe I should go find that again...