omg

not only for the cute factor, but wtf is it doing?

I find this very interesting

How impulse control relates to prosperity.  

There is a LOT of information packed into this piece. Of course when I think about impulse control, I think about the people I know, and who is good at it and who is not and how that relates to their life.  But this perspective can be broadened to think about nations and culture, and the relationship between impulse control and wealth.

It circles back to an idea that I've been pondering lately that is inspired by basic behavioral ecology: The decision to do something is also the decision NOT to do something else.  The decision to spend your life climbing is also the decision to not, for example, go to college. Or to not stay in one place and cultivate meaningful relationships. Ultimately my decision to go to graduate school was, in some ways, the decision to not depend on climbing for overall happiness. It is not sustainable for me - the gain in climbing harder doesn't make up for what I would have to give up.

I think it's a decision that most obsessive climbers come to in the end, whether because they are not good enough to make it a profession, or because they don't want to limit their lives to such a narrow focus. I've seen a lot more depression/struggling in people with the former scenario.

By the way, this guy is so so smart. And so productive with his writing and blogging. It's really impressive.

Ugh.

Pineapple express coming our way.

Tilden mushroom hunting with Shannon

Today I went down to Walnut Creek to pick Shannon up so we could look for mushrooms.  First we went to Briones, but we didn't find much.  Just a couple of boletes that were infected with another fungus.

So we decided to go to Tilden, because I know there are mushrooms there.  We found a couple, but nothing like what Drew and I found a few years back.  Here are some photos:

Western Grisette (Amanita pachycolea), below with Shannon to show the size. It's a pretty cool mushroom, in the Amanita genus, which includes the mushrooms that are deadly poisonous - the Death Cap and the Destroying Angel. I went on a mushroom hunt with Sunshine when we lived in Santa Cruz and she found a HUGE Destroying Angel. 

The Western grisette is edible, but we let it be.

 This is a Cauliflower mushroom (Sparassis radicata), well-spotted by Shannon.

Apparently these are cultivated for food in Asia. Here's a quote I lifted from Wikipedia: Sparassis crispa can be very tasty, but should be thoroughly cleaned before use as the folds can contain dirt and other material, as it grows and envelops objects around it such as pine needles. Antonio Carluccio reports that European Sparassis crispa should be picked when creamy white, and once yellow are too indigestible to eat. It is good for drying and reconstituting as it retains its cartilaginous texture and hence is good for soups.

A Sulfur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare). This guy is NOT edible.  Here's what wikipedia says: "consuming it can cause vomiting, diarrhea and convulsions." We didn't pick this either.

So that was my day.  Not too many mushrooms this year. There was a hard freeze for a few nights in a row last month, which I think put the kibosh on a good mushroom year.  

Haul of Justice

So Jailhouse season has begun for me, and I'm trying to climb there two days a week.  I started working on a project called Electric Chair, but it sucks and the crux is a big sideways dyno that I can't do, so I gave up. I started working Haul of Justice instead, because I figured that if I'm going to fall of a route, I may as well fall off a quality route.  This one is pretty fun. Hopefully I stick with it.

It's hard.

Someone who was around for part of the Spain-Trip-from-Hell is coming to climb at Jailhouse, and I'm a bit hesitant to spend time with him.  I don't want to dredge up the past, and this guy is a notorious boundary-pusher (putting it generously). Blargh. Maybe I'll get lucky and not see him very much. What's done is done.

I remember last year I was...not spyched...around Christmas time. I don't think I got any gifts for anyone, and sort of hid from the festivities.  This year I'm pretty psyched though, and I have a bunch of gifts planned for people. It's fun!  Last year I made some truffles for my family as a last minute gift.

I have big plans for homemade gifts this year, starting with the salsas and jams I canned late summer. I want to make some cookies, some apple cider gummies (like gumdrops), maybe some biscotti, truffles, doggie treats for the dog owners, and whatever else I think of.  I wandered around Davis and picked some pink peppercorns (the trees are planted ornamentally around town), and I'll make some toffee with them.  I was worried about poisoning people, but I told Emily that they grew around Davis and she made some caramels and already fed them to people, and they aren't dead yet, so I guess they are ok. I'm glad she did some testing for me...I'm a bit conservative when it comes to eating things I gather.

January 11 I turn 31.  Or, as Bjorn and Lisa call it: thirty-WON-derful.  can't. wait.

Arsenic-based life form? Don't get too excited.

Here is a nice piece on the arsenic-based life forms hullaballoo from Slate. I think it's kind of messed up that NASA's press release was:

NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.


Because, really, that's not what happened at all.  If you want to get into the meat of the criticism, see here.

Though often science is not very scientific, at least there is a broad community for peer-review. Even if a paper or a piece of research gets beyond the first gauntlet of getting published, if it's no good, or there are big questions remaining, it will be eviscerated in the science blogosphere, and perhaps a rebuttal will be published in the original journal.

NASA scientists are not commenting.

This is why I don't sleep in

Holy shit I had the weirdest dreams last night. I think it's because I overslept (usually I wake up between 6 and 7, this morning I made it until 8). Also, my housemate and I watched two intense movies last night: The Last King of Scotland and Notes on a Scandal.  So my brain was prepped for weird dreams.  I don't mind weird dreams except for the fact that they seem SO REAL. I'll even have internal conversations with myself in my dreams about how this is probably a dream but it feels real.  Very real conversations with real people...it's intense.  So here are some highlights from last night: my sister (who's been dead for almost 10 years) murdered someone that had something to do with the Catholic church.  The person was a friend of hers who was in the hospital. My parents were trying to deal with it. Simultaneously, my ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend was sending me texts of her tits (in my dream she is foreign and has poor command of the English language, perhaps texting tits enabled her to communicate more freely?).  I was super annoyed by this, so I was trying to post them on the internet for the collective embarrassment of all involved, but my cell phone plan had some privacy setting that reset text messages every night so I couldn't retrieve the picture. Yes.  So. Weird.

My point is: sleeping in - not for me.