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.

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.

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.

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!

On a sweeter note, I'm bringing these to Ryan, and this to Jason. Hopefully I'll see James and he'll be honoring National Pie Day (not to be confused with National Pi Day) by baking a pie!

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?

Fig tart

I made a fig tart. I found some figs for 2.99 a basket at the nugget. I bought two baskets but by the time I got around to making this some of them were moldy :(.

Anyway, it's a shortbread crust with honey-almond pastry cream and figs. Delish!