Yes. I went to a conference in Sacramento today from around 9-3. It lasted longer, but the folks I went with fortunately wanted to go home before the last session.
It was the Planning and Conservation League's (PCL) annual symposium (Greening California's Landscape). I went because I want to expose myslf to other sorts of jobs that people do in the field of conservation, as well as learn some about how the ESA (Endangered Species Act) is affected by climate change, as well as the (possibly) pending water bill and the effect it may have on the delta.
The delta session was pretty interesting. Senator Lois Wolk spoke, as well as a rep from the PCL (who was super young btw), and some guy from the Metropolitan Water District of Souther California, which apparently is a wholesaler to cities such as LA and San Diego. Apparently cities such as LA, and wholesalers such as this guy who spoke, have sort of a portfolio of water sources...the Owens Valley, the bay/delta area (via the California aqueduct), desalinaton (!) and the Colorado River. The more they can diversify their portfolio, the more they can guarantee that they will have a steady supply coming from somewhere or another. Even though the water bond states that they won't get any more water from the bay/delta (they'd be guaranteed what they are already getting I think), it's better than nothing, and it's a guarantee. So they are for the water bond, which may or may not construct some sort of canal around the delta (protecting the ecosystem (?)) to deliver water south.
Lois Wolk was avidly against the water bill, because there is no enforcement and apparently the delta communities get hosed. I'm not sure how they get hosed, but I was surprised that they didn't talk about whether it was a good idea or not for people to even continue farming in this area since the levy system is such a disaster, as is the ecology of the area (for which the ESA is used to sue and make sure that the water flows for the native species), the chemical buildup from agriculture and the peaty soils is alarming and poisonous to people and wildlife alike, and the general subsidence of the islands that were created when delta land was reclaimed in the early part of the last century, causing major flooding potential. That was a super long sentence.
I was a little disappointed that the speakers didn't really know the ecology and biology of the delta. I was also interested in what one person said about the biological opinions being only about the pumping of water (here's the FWS website, I need to look this stuff over). There have been lawsuits to stop pumping (which sends water down south to the San Joaquin Valley for agriculture and the cities down south) because of the endangered delta smelt. Everyone is suing everyone else and it's a huge disaster and the delta smelt are practically already extinct. Now the farming interests are asking for a National Academy of Science panel to convene before the end of March to go over the science of how pumping affects the delta smelt. I'll tell you: they get sucked into the pumps and they die. But apparently, this is controversial, because even though they've had to stop the pumps during low flow times to protect the smelt, the smelt is still declining (I spoke with the guy who does the sampling and they found 4 this year. FOUR!!). So just because the smelt aren't coming back means we should just pump away.
Obviously this is a complicated issue, and other measures need to be taken for the smelt to come back (such as introducing more natural variability cycles in the delta in salinity and flows), but for God's sake. The pumping isn't helping at all.
Jim Hobbs, who refers to himself as the grim reaper for native species, because he pretty much only gets called to work on species that are in dire situations (seems a little similar to my study species), was talking about the fact that it's almost inevitable that we will lose the natives...the Sacramento perch are already gone, replaced by "invited guest" species such as the striped bass that provide a fishery. There is an extinct chub already, and the delta smelt are circling the drain. So do we just adopt the introduced fishes as our "flagship species"? Just embrace the change? Yay striped bass because they are yummy and the perch are gone anyway? Yay threadfin shad because they are good enough baitfish and are hardier than the delta smelt and the longfin smelt? I don't know.
For some more background on the Sacramento-San Joaquin bay/delta ecosystem, check out the UC Davis Center for Watershed Science website: http://watershed.ucdavis.edu/research/delta.html
It makes me think about the similarities between conservation and conservatism. Conservatives want things to be like "they remember it back in the day", so they are conserving what they like. In many ways, conservation workers are doing the same. It's just an interesting way to think about it...aesthetics. Perhaps I want things to be like they were when I was a kid, and the next generation will want what they had as kids, and we're still moving the baseline forward but reaching back out of some nostalgic lust. I don't know.
I've also been thinking about the public perception of science as either some sort of religion and fact (think of Joe Plumber talking about this being "scientific" or that being "based on scientific research") or as just more political machinations (think of the tea party perception of global climate scientists). It just seems to me that the general public doesn't really understand what science is. And what science isn't. I'll get into that later. But I'll repeat one of my favorite lines: Science isn't a democracy. All ideas don't get to be represented (sorry intelligent designers); only the good ones get to be taught in the classroom.
OK, going to Ironworks tomorrow to climb routes. I went to Oakland on Monday and Thursday to train with Shannon, which was good. We did some workout on Thursday (well I sort of did it) that hurt my shoulders a bit...so I took it easier. I think I'd rather work on core and abs instead. Fortunately we got a crossfit instructor to help explain some of the exercises to us. He seems to really know his shit, which is very cool. And he's interested in teaching us (even though that's his second job). James is convinced he's flirting with us. Whatever the case, we're learning, and that's pretty cool.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
psyched on life
Maybe it's because there are more daylight hours, or it's not raining, or I've been getting excellent training sessions in the Oakland gym with some fabulous people... Or possibly it's because I'm looking forward to a climbing trip, or have been hanging out a lot more with friends...
Could it be because I've been motivated more at work, and I'm actually collecting data on my third chapter?
Why not because I'm off of Facebook, or I'm blogging again? Baking a ton, and cooking a lot of veggies too?
Whatever the reason, I'm pretty psyched right now. Motivated to do things, getting out of the house a lot. I remember what this is like. This is good.
Could it be because I've been motivated more at work, and I'm actually collecting data on my third chapter?
Why not because I'm off of Facebook, or I'm blogging again? Baking a ton, and cooking a lot of veggies too?
Whatever the reason, I'm pretty psyched right now. Motivated to do things, getting out of the house a lot. I remember what this is like. This is good.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
A nice piece on why FB isn't real
My friend Lyn sent me this article, and once I got past the stuff about the history of friendship and on to the op-ed about how Facebook devalues friendships, I was into it. It put a lot of the things that I'd been thinking in to words.
I had another friend tell me that I'd regret leaving Facebook, and that he thought it was a "rash" decision. It wasn't. I'd been thinking about it for a while, actually. The weird privacy settings, the fact that you have to "reject" people who you don't want to be friends with, or just accept everyone, or defriend people...whatever. It bothers me. It's like being in a crowded room with a lot of people you'd just rather avoid. I'm not the kind of person who wants to have superficial contact with a lot of people. I'd rather have meaningful contact with a few people. My friend Jeff says that it keeps marginal friendships alive. There isn't a single person on Facebook who I want to keep in touch with who's phone number or email address I don't have. And this is because I've put a lot of effort into the relationships I have in my life. Real friendships take effort. Facebook doesn't.
Not to mention the ads that are on there and the fact that "we are conducting market research on ourselves."
It's interesting to think that deciding NOT to be on Facebook is the outlier position, when only a year or two ago the exception was to be on a social networking site.
And about finding people, I suppose people could google me and come up with a way to get in touch if they really wanted to. Rather than seeing my name somewhere on someone's wall and friend requesting me without any note or anything at all. I got friend requests from people I'd never met before. I guess it's cool that maybe you could meet someone new on Facebook, but it's just too easy to let your tally of friends rack up with people you'll never see again, or even talk to again.
Anyway, here is a link to the piece.
I found these paragraphs particularly interesting:
"The most disturbing thing about Facebook is the extent to which people are willing—are eager—to conduct their private lives in public...Are we really so hungry for validation? So desperate to prove we have friends?
But surely Facebook has its benefits. Long-lost friends can reconnect, far-flung ones can stay in touch. I wonder, though. Having recently moved across the country, I thought that Facebook would help me feel connected to the friends I'd left behind. But now I find the opposite is true. Reading about the mundane details of their lives, a steady stream of trivia and ephemera, leaves me feeling both empty and unpleasantly full, as if I had just binged on junk food, and precisely because it reminds me of the real sustenance, the real knowledge, we exchange by e-mail or phone or face-to-face. And the whole theatrical quality of the business, the sense that my friends are doing their best to impersonate themselves, only makes it worse. The person I read about, I cannot help feeling, is not quite the person I know."
So that's a little more on the Facebook decision for now. It's definitely not a big deal, I mean who cares if I'm on it or off of it. Plus, why couldn't I just keep my account and not use it? To answer that question, it's too distracting to have an account and not use it. Maybe I'll go back on at some point. It's just that I've been thinking about Facebook more critically, and in a broader context, and what is this blog for if not to put random thoughts down?
I had another friend tell me that I'd regret leaving Facebook, and that he thought it was a "rash" decision. It wasn't. I'd been thinking about it for a while, actually. The weird privacy settings, the fact that you have to "reject" people who you don't want to be friends with, or just accept everyone, or defriend people...whatever. It bothers me. It's like being in a crowded room with a lot of people you'd just rather avoid. I'm not the kind of person who wants to have superficial contact with a lot of people. I'd rather have meaningful contact with a few people. My friend Jeff says that it keeps marginal friendships alive. There isn't a single person on Facebook who I want to keep in touch with who's phone number or email address I don't have. And this is because I've put a lot of effort into the relationships I have in my life. Real friendships take effort. Facebook doesn't.
Not to mention the ads that are on there and the fact that "we are conducting market research on ourselves."
It's interesting to think that deciding NOT to be on Facebook is the outlier position, when only a year or two ago the exception was to be on a social networking site.
And about finding people, I suppose people could google me and come up with a way to get in touch if they really wanted to. Rather than seeing my name somewhere on someone's wall and friend requesting me without any note or anything at all. I got friend requests from people I'd never met before. I guess it's cool that maybe you could meet someone new on Facebook, but it's just too easy to let your tally of friends rack up with people you'll never see again, or even talk to again.
Anyway, here is a link to the piece.
I found these paragraphs particularly interesting:
"The most disturbing thing about Facebook is the extent to which people are willing—are eager—to conduct their private lives in public...Are we really so hungry for validation? So desperate to prove we have friends?
But surely Facebook has its benefits. Long-lost friends can reconnect, far-flung ones can stay in touch. I wonder, though. Having recently moved across the country, I thought that Facebook would help me feel connected to the friends I'd left behind. But now I find the opposite is true. Reading about the mundane details of their lives, a steady stream of trivia and ephemera, leaves me feeling both empty and unpleasantly full, as if I had just binged on junk food, and precisely because it reminds me of the real sustenance, the real knowledge, we exchange by e-mail or phone or face-to-face. And the whole theatrical quality of the business, the sense that my friends are doing their best to impersonate themselves, only makes it worse. The person I read about, I cannot help feeling, is not quite the person I know."
So that's a little more on the Facebook decision for now. It's definitely not a big deal, I mean who cares if I'm on it or off of it. Plus, why couldn't I just keep my account and not use it? To answer that question, it's too distracting to have an account and not use it. Maybe I'll go back on at some point. It's just that I've been thinking about Facebook more critically, and in a broader context, and what is this blog for if not to put random thoughts down?
This is a fucking no-brainer
Men are less sensitive than women, and they feel less guilt. Aren't we lucky to be women?
Here's the link.
Here's the link.
Monday, January 25, 2010
More on altruism/cooperation
I read this overview of a paper that suggests that cooperation, altruism and symbiosis are more common than biologists originally thought (and across taxa and time). Dawkin's Selfish Gene made group selection a joke, but the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way with evidence of self-sacrifice (at least in terms of direct reproduction for some individuals) for the overall health of a group, or the ability to survive in tough niches. Inevitably, the pendulum always settles in the middle though. Some examples of selfishness and cheating exist, as well as examples of altruism and group selection. And of course, organisms can shift over time to one side or the other. Such is life.
Check it out.
In other news, it's raining. Still. The fish are going to be happy, as are the fishermen and the farmers and everyone else who fights over water in the bay/delta area. On the other hand, with no water shortage it will be difficult to pass any kind of reform in delta management policies. Unless of course there are levy failures...which in my opinion would be pretty exciting! I'd love to be there when one of the levies breaks and water fills in submerged islands. Crazy!
One of my goals has been to learn more about the bay/delta ecosystem and the crisis it is facing. It's a complex issue, with many stakeholders that are bitterly opposed to each other. UC Davis is one of the centers for the issues, which is awfully convenient. At some point I'll try to put a post together with an overview of the topic.
Check it out.
In other news, it's raining. Still. The fish are going to be happy, as are the fishermen and the farmers and everyone else who fights over water in the bay/delta area. On the other hand, with no water shortage it will be difficult to pass any kind of reform in delta management policies. Unless of course there are levy failures...which in my opinion would be pretty exciting! I'd love to be there when one of the levies breaks and water fills in submerged islands. Crazy!
One of my goals has been to learn more about the bay/delta ecosystem and the crisis it is facing. It's a complex issue, with many stakeholders that are bitterly opposed to each other. UC Davis is one of the centers for the issues, which is awfully convenient. At some point I'll try to put a post together with an overview of the topic.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Lemon inspiration
I decided to make this, because I liked the technique of slicing the yeasted dough and putting it into the loaf pan before baking. Looks lovely, will probably taste it tomorrow.
Altruism is selfish
According to this NYTimes article, altruism is hard-wired into our brains, and altruistic acts contribute to general happiness. Of course, if you're being altruistic to contribute to your own happiness, is it still altruism? I think so. People do plenty of things to make themselves happy that don't involve doing nice things for other people.
In the past week or two I've been spending a lot of time with friends, contacting people I don't often talk to, baking things for people, stopping by for celebrations in peoples' lives. It feels so good. After isolating myself a bit in the fall (I was climbing a lot at Gold Wall though, which is pretty damn social), the rain has forced me inside, but desire for connection has forced me out of the house. Last week I went out every single night. It was awesome!
Plus actually making a birthday plan for sushi dinner at Moshi Moshi and having 20 people show up was amazing. I wasn't even going to do anything, and the turnout was really impressive. Of course I could tell myself that it was a Monday night, and nothing else was going on...but still.
Yesterday I went to Oakland to climb with Shannon. 10 pitches, and some crazy crossfit workout. Then we had lunch at this local place called Flora's and I shook my way home to take a nap, wake up, eat, and then go back to sleep. I missed out on the Southern food potluck and seeing Avatar with Sandrine and Mike. I'd gone out so much this past week or two that it was nice to just veg on the couch.
And now I'm sore as shit. However, the workout was really fun! I felt so good afterwards! It was like going back to middle school and doing a bunch of fun PE drills. I hope to go back to do more workouts this coming week, at least until it starts to dry out. I'm more excited about the silly workouts than climbing right now. I don't have much of an interest in taking a formal class, but doing the workout with a friend is pretty fun.
I think I'm going to go to the red for a week or two from mid March to early April. I have one friend going for 1 week of his spring break, and then some other friends from the bay area going the next week for their spring break. There's talk of renting a cabin, a car, who knows. Trip plans fall through all the time, but I'm optimistic. Plus planning a trip makes workouts far more motivating. Otherwise you're just working out at the gym just to workout, and that's not good enough for me.
Goals. Do you have any? Climbing goals? Life goals? Short-term, long-term, realistic or unrealistic? I've been asking people about their goals and starting to think about my own. After getting MS I stopped making big lofty goals for climbing. I lost the fire. I've been feeling good enough for long enough now that maybe it's time to not be afraid of making goals. I'll keep you posted.
In the past week or two I've been spending a lot of time with friends, contacting people I don't often talk to, baking things for people, stopping by for celebrations in peoples' lives. It feels so good. After isolating myself a bit in the fall (I was climbing a lot at Gold Wall though, which is pretty damn social), the rain has forced me inside, but desire for connection has forced me out of the house. Last week I went out every single night. It was awesome!
Plus actually making a birthday plan for sushi dinner at Moshi Moshi and having 20 people show up was amazing. I wasn't even going to do anything, and the turnout was really impressive. Of course I could tell myself that it was a Monday night, and nothing else was going on...but still.
Yesterday I went to Oakland to climb with Shannon. 10 pitches, and some crazy crossfit workout. Then we had lunch at this local place called Flora's and I shook my way home to take a nap, wake up, eat, and then go back to sleep. I missed out on the Southern food potluck and seeing Avatar with Sandrine and Mike. I'd gone out so much this past week or two that it was nice to just veg on the couch.
And now I'm sore as shit. However, the workout was really fun! I felt so good afterwards! It was like going back to middle school and doing a bunch of fun PE drills. I hope to go back to do more workouts this coming week, at least until it starts to dry out. I'm more excited about the silly workouts than climbing right now. I don't have much of an interest in taking a formal class, but doing the workout with a friend is pretty fun.
I think I'm going to go to the red for a week or two from mid March to early April. I have one friend going for 1 week of his spring break, and then some other friends from the bay area going the next week for their spring break. There's talk of renting a cabin, a car, who knows. Trip plans fall through all the time, but I'm optimistic. Plus planning a trip makes workouts far more motivating. Otherwise you're just working out at the gym just to workout, and that's not good enough for me.
Goals. Do you have any? Climbing goals? Life goals? Short-term, long-term, realistic or unrealistic? I've been asking people about their goals and starting to think about my own. After getting MS I stopped making big lofty goals for climbing. I lost the fire. I've been feeling good enough for long enough now that maybe it's time to not be afraid of making goals. I'll keep you posted.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
I love ecologists. Check out this article title:
Colorful tits produce speedier sperm.
I sometimes wonder if people think of ecology grad students as a bunch of hippies. Or if they'd be surprised that we drink a lot of beer, many of us eat copious quantities of meat (bbqs are VERY popular - but it has to be sustainable!), and plenty go hunting and fishing (and eat what they kill!). I heard a quote from someone who said that "white trash go fishing and rich republicans go duck hunting". (Was this you Karrigan?). Anyway, Ecology grad students go duck hunting and fishing too.
But we are also hippies who carry the Smart Sushi Guide to restaurants to guide our choices, and plant trees to offset our carbon footprints. So this comes back to my earlier post of "do less harm" I suppose. Enjoy it, but do less harm.
I'm off to Oakland today to climb the routes that were set for the comp last night. Shannon is going to try to get me to do some crazy Crossfit workout, which scares me a little bit. That girl is FIT!
Oh yeah, and here's something to look at if you want to laugh at a bunch of ego-driven douchebags who think they are the shit. Check out the "contact" link. I bet they have really amazing relationships. What woman wouldn't want to be with a self-obsessed asshole? ...SHIT!
Friday, January 22, 2010
A long absence
I'm making a tentative return to blogging. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and also deactivating my Facebook account, but hadn't passed some sort of imaginary threshold that would cause me to make those changes until this past week.
I turned 30 on the 11th of January. I don't really feel any different, but when my friend Jacob asked me how 30 was, "things suddenly feel more dire" fell out of my mouth.
The weird thing is, that since this Fall I'd been trying to get my life back into order. Getting work done, climbing a bunch outside, attempting to cut off contact with my ex. But somehow none of it worked. I lost motivation at work, the rain cut short some of the climbing season (thanks El Nino), and my ex kept trying to sneak back into my life for God knows what reason. Basically, I wasn't totally committing to any of these things.
The climbing thing is a product of the lack of new things to do. I can't just project the same shit over and over again and stay stimulated. Plus Pipeworks, despite what they say, does a shitty job of keeping the routes fresh.
As far as work goes, conservation biology/ecology/genetics is a losing battle. I've been wanting to feel like what I do gives my life some sort of value, or that what I do in and of itself has some sort of intrinsic value that is unassailably and unquestionably GOOD. But it's not. What I do is just something to do. Feeling like I'm doing something "good" or that I'm a "better" person because I am "saving" endangered species is a fallacy. First of all, I'm not saving anything. The processes that created biodiversity will continue to create biodiversity in the future as well as cause extinctions, in spite of human activity. Evolution will simply work with the selective pressures that we impose on organisms, and this includes any sort of climate change, or anything that can be attributed in any way to human actions. So why do we do it? Not only that, but we're not really even doing anything that is going to ultimately make anything better. We want to "conserve" things, because we like them. But if we are simply conserving things that we like, then what if what I like is different than what you like? That's not science, it's aesthetics.
Part of why I decided to go into conservation is because I wanted to contribute to the "greater good" whatever that means. But more and more I'm coming to the conclusion that we're swimming against the tide, and maybe the "greater good" can only be defined as "do no harm", or in our case, because our very existence does "harm", then maybe "do less harm." And I'm liberally using quotation marks because even those words in quotes are open to interpretation.
I took these thoughts to a famous professor at UC Davis who is active in restoring the bay/delta ecosystem, salmon restoration in California, and dam removal on California's rivers. How does he deal with these things? First he told me that he just stays busy. Grim. He told me that I had every right to be depressed, but that staying involved in local problems and focusing on the trees rather than the overwhelming forest helped him stay positive. In addition, re-wilding rivers gives people, and children especially, a chance to play in the rivers. So simple. But really, I grew up on a tidal marsh watching the tides come in and out, seeing flood years, watching trees grow and die. Just watching the inexorable change of the natural world I think gives people perspective on what's NOT imporant. Maybe that's what we want to give to future generations. The gift of discovery that we were given. It's intangible, and it's just a feeling really, but it seems good. That's as close as I can get to the truth right now.
Speaking of truth, do you think there is such a thing as truth? Or reality? Is there such a thing that isn't open to interpretation (it seems that by definition truth and reality should not be open to interpretation, but I don't believe it)? More and more I don't think so. Not only because humans aren't equipped to detect reality in its entirety, but also because it's colored with our own biases that simply cannot be removed. So even if there is a truth, if it's unknowable, does it exist? Or does it even matter? Another thought I had is the theory of special relativity. Doesn't this theory even dispute the existence of an object in a fixed time and place? Physics people help me out here. So then there can be alternate realities depending on the mass and speed of objects?
So after that tangent, I'm going back to Facebook and my decision to deactivate my account. I need to fully commit to prioritizing the important people in my life. All of the people I want contact with have given me their email addresses and/or phone numbers. Facebook fosters superficial relationships, while at the same time making superficial relationships appear substantial. That's not to say that I don't communicate with people on Facebook that I have deeper relationships with, but that it introduces a level of static on the line that is intolerable to me right now.
I would rather pick up the phone or go over to a friend's house right now than waste time wondering what other people are doing, or posting soundbites on peoples' walls that I haven't even seen in months. This is how I'm feeling right now. Who knows, maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and realize all of the things about Facebook that make my life better. But I doubt it. I've been drifting through life and letting people affect me way too much. This is my attempt to take some control back and make my contact with people have greater quality, even if it is at the expense of quantity.
So maybe this is why I'm back to blogging. I'm still debating whether or not to lock the blog. I have not yet decided. I know that I'm opening myself up to criticism by being on the interwebs, and truthfully, I don't want to do that, which isn't terribly fair. But that's where I am so here I am.
What I do need is a forum to vent and put all of these crazy thoughts and questions that have been swirling around my brain somewhere. Why not here?
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