What a clear-cut really looks like.

On Saturday at work, I saw this neat site. I followed the birding trail down towards the stream from the ridge line, until it got too steep.

You can imagine a watershed is shaped like a triangle. By definition, a watershed is the contributing area from which a stream drains, so think about how a valley is "v-shaped" and then imagine that "v" has a back-- presto! A triangle. The way in which the stream comes over the land is a "Y" super-imposed on that "v"-- at least, in my watershed, and many around here, that's how it looks.

Okay, so that is preface for where this photo was taken, standing at the intersection of the three prongs of the "Y" looking upward, It looks like a "hemispheric lens" from this angle because that expanse of triangle is all, naturally contributing to this point, and for just a second the visual and the functional are captured together.
The big dead stump is a douglas-fir-- the smaller trees also are douglas-fir-- these trees were planted about 55 years ago. The little guy on the left is Rhododendron, or as we call it "rhodie". You can see some rhodie also growing from the stump. In the foreground is "salal"-- a spiky plant that grows almost everywhere. That guy is so prolific that you can burn the entire site and it will resume it's previous cover within 1 year!

The mosses, I do not know their names. But I have heard there are more than 40 different types of mosses out there. Did I mention that this site is classified as a "clear cut"?

Snow falling on cedars

And, also on Douglas-fir and Western Hemlock.God, I hope I can come up with a good idea this month for defending so that I can keep working on this landscape forever. 

I can relate...

To this article...
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/the-college-majors-that-do-best-in-the-job-market/

I remember between college and graduate school, I wanted to find a job. I applied to literally 147 different places. Let me also say that probably 140 of the 147 did not involve any kind of college degree. Why? I was an English major. Which means that I had NO practical and NO intellectual skills, other than being able to write a little better than most people. I remember coming to my "great job" at the GNC one day and talking with a friend who ran the GNC up the street (the one that almost ended my career, eventually). She did not have a college degree. I was saying that I regretted getting mine because it took so damn long, and I didn't really learn anything from it. And it was true. I learned NOTHING while I was an undergrad. I saw the back of a museum a few times, and that was interesting. And I liked my architecture classes, because they were pretty fun, and now I feel like I can identify buildings. 

I see this and it reminds me of that sort of burdensome truth of getting a college degree in today's world-- it's just not enough anymore. I'm glad I have a masters, and I'm REALLY glad it's a practical masters. Even if I didn't get to start at the top of the pyramid with my next job, I'm glad to know that I've got a niche set of skills that makes me a viable candidate for positions that require a college degree-- clearly my goal is government work, which requires a Ph.D. in my field, but it's nice to think that I've done something for the backup. Get a certified masters degree and get your CF and you're in a much more luxurious boat when swimming the sea of job vacancies, although you may never find land no matter how nice your boat is.

Nonetheless, good read above. Good for those looking at college now too-- engineering sounds like they know what's going on. I've always thought engineers were particularly amazing. They both know and do... there's something to be said for that.

Hello world!

I can totally relate

Eight years living in farming towns

Today I went for a walk after class. It was probably around 8:30 PM when I took this photo, which is why living north of the 45th parallel (or close to it) in the summer is wonderful. I don't think they're planting wheat this year-- it looks like a legume with rounded leaves, I am thinking perhaps soybeans? I still don't know what kind of tree this is and I am hesitant to go to it and trample the crops, but I love how its so monolithic. Today it was 65 and sunny. I thought about farming, and farming communities. I'd say there's something really special about living in one. As my cousin Amanda once said about moving to a big city- no thanks, I like Carhartt. I'm not sure how attached I am to Carhartt, but the principle applies-- the simple pleasure of a tree in a field at sunset-- or Carhartt-- is a great plus to farming life.

Letter to the regulator

The FDA is apparently on the verge of issuing some harsh new regulations with regard to people's freedom to access their own genomic information. (For some appalling background into this, see here, here, and here.) Today is the last day for public comment on the issue. Here was my contribution:

I am a biophysicist by training. I have a strong belief that people should be able to access the information in their own genomes, both from an ethical and a practical point of view. Ethically, I think the case is fairly clear-cut: what information more obviously belongs to you than your own genome? There seems to be no principled basis to argue that a third party must be involved to act as the gatekeeper for this information. Practically, as a scientist, I think it is of crucial importance to encourage the application of new technologies to biomedical innovation. There have been a number of important papers that have come out of "crowdsourcing" genomics -- look up the papers authored by the folks at 23 & me, for example. If these efforts are arbitrary shut down, I feel that a huge opportunity will have been lost, and the people that ultimately are harmed by this are patients that won't receive the benefits of this innovative research.

To submit your own opinion, go here.