San Francisco Zoo (Landscape)

All photos by ME;) (Except one of me by my BF:)

San Francisco Zoo (Portrait)

All photo's by ME:)

2012 NFL Draft

Me with the Lombardi Trophy:)

Today starts the 2012 NFL draft. Before you think I am an ultra-NFL fan, I have to confess I was at the gym, and just happened to see the first pick on ESPN, so that's why I know. But anyway, it's been pretty cool. And it brought back many fantastic memories of attending the 2010 draft with my littlest bro Jason while in NYC. We were there for the third day, which isn't as exciting as the first day, but it was still SO AWESOME. In retrospect it was mostly because I was with my teeny-tiny brother on a Packer adventure in the Big Apple, but secondarily because we saw, and got our photo's taken with THE Lombardi trophy the Pack actually ended up winning that year! 

*Sigh* Can you imagine having a brother SO COOL that he actually surprises his favorite sister with tickets to THE NFL draft at Radio City Music Hall?!? Some guys just know the way straight to a girls heart;) 

OK, so onto the draft. Andrew Luck went to Indie. I saw that coming, and so did everyone else. Some 20-odd picks later...We are finally on the clock. I am thinking we will go with an OLB but......wait for it... NICK PERRY LB, USC!!!
OK, so....I confess I haven't been watching much of the draft preview, so I have no idea who this guy is, but already I see two things going for us. 1.) We need another LB to help Clay Matthews out. He was double, triple teamed all last season,and it affected his numbers. It even took me a few weeks to realize that he was playing as good as he ever had, he just had too many guys on him to be able to get anything done. We need that other guy to balance things out. 2.) He's from USC. That's where Matthews played, and so I think that the coaching, and the standards of performance should be consistent. USC is a great school for sports and also for science...I know this because my super smart, vegan brother will be graduating from there, with a MS in Austronautics in in just a few weeks! A quick shout out to the USC-SCI departments!
I wish I could express my love of football in words, but I find myself tongue tied. OK. How about this. If adore were exclamation points my love of the Pack would be: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!....OK...that's taking too long. But you get my point. Happy Draft Day, and welcome to the Pack Nick Perry;)

San Mateo Cat Burglar

Click on image about for a true "tale" about a REAL cat burglar:)

LOL. Happy National Humor Month!

(P.S. Sorry there is a 30 second commercial at the beginning...not funny.)

Neuticles!

Don't ask how I found this, but apparently now you can appease your guilt at having neutered you dog by buying him a pair of fake testicles or Neuticles. Said to "give dogs a restored sense of pride" they are made of silicone and only cost about $600 a set (based on size of your pooch).
If you just rolled your eyes and thought to yourself that this sounds like something the Kardashians would do, you are too late. They already did.

Google Images

Did you know that you can search Google Images using an image? Here are a few  I did using my paintings as the search criteria. Pretty cool hu?

Ask and You Shall Recieve

Can you believe this?!?

Martyr's Day: Armenian Genocide

It has come to my attention that today is the Armenian Martyr's Day. On April 24th, 1915 the leaders of the Ottoman Empire began exterminating what would eventually become 1.5 million Armenians. This included women and children, and members of my family. My great-grandmother survived a death march and lived to tell the story of the atrocities inflicted upon the Armenian people during this time. Her entire family was murdered and if it hadn't been for a Turkish soldier rescuing her, she would have died a little girl and been buried in a mass grave in the middle of the desert beside her mother.
It's shocking the things that people can do to each other. How we can let things like race and nationality divide us and fuel hatred. But what I am taking away from today is not a reminder not how horrible humanity can be (because we all know that), but how one person, making their own choices, can change the world for the better. You'd think I would hate all Turkish people (especially because they still won't admit it was genocide, which I totally think they should). But that would only make me as ignorant as those who began the killing the first place. I don't hate all Turks, or any other ethnic group, I only despise the stupidity that persuades people to murder each other. I know hundreds of thousands of Turkish soldiers killed millions of Armenians. It's true, it happened. It is positively atrocious what they did, and I absolutely think they should be brought to justice for their crimes. But out of all those terrible men, there was one Turkish soldier who did something good. He saved a little Armenian girl. That's a fact too. And that's what I want everyone to think of today.
Our humanity, our ability to think, and decide, and reason, can trump ethnicity. Our ability to know and act against what is wrong, can overcome any order given to us by any person in authority. Our choices as small and insignificant as they may seem can have profound effects that we can't even imagine, if we only make them. That one man, and that one decision he made, made all the difference in my world. In fact he made my whole world possible. And he made me realize that while wars and massacres may be fueled by nationalism and racism, they are ultimately fought by individual men and women just like me, each of whom have a choice.

Christmas List 2012: White Orca

I just saw a video of the first ever discovered all white Orca. And I want one. I know what you are thinking. How on earth would you get one for me? Well, I don't know. All I know is that if you really care about me you will find a way. Ha ha..OK, just kidding (kind of). But isn't this neat? I tried to find a better picture, but there weren't many that were very clear. His name is "Iceberg" and he was discovered by some Russian scientists off the coast of Kamchatka. I know I say this all the time, but I love nature. To think that I live in a universe that has produced something as beautiful as an all white killer whale makes me feel pretty lucky to be alive in it.

Barbie Girl

So this is an actual woman. A model from the Ukraine or somewhere named Valeria Lukyanova. She is only 21 years old. And apparently she's spend several hundred thousand dollars to look like a "real" Barbie. I am assuming much of the money was spent removing her lower ribs. I find this really disturbing. Sometimes I'm a bit jealous of model types because I've never been a super slender person. But that is definitely not the case here. I actually feel sorry for this girl. (Just for reference, I think my waist is 4-5x larger than hers is.)

Crime at Seaworld

So I just read a short article about 3 Australian guys who got drunk, broke into SEAWORLD (in Australia), swam with the dolphins, and kidnapped a penguin! Apparently they woke up in the morning and found a penguin running around their house and realized that they'd messed up. So they took the penguin and tried to release it into a shark infested waterway. Luckily it survived, and was returned to Seaworld.
I know I should be angry that those guys traumatized a little innocent bird, but I just think the whole thing is hilarious! It's like the scene from the Hangover, when the guys wake up after a night of partying and find a tiger in the bathroom! Ha ha ha....
I know stealing is a crime, and they should be punished, but out of all the stupid things a drunk person could do, breaking into Seaworld and swimming with dolphins has got to be one of the best I've ever heard of. Good one mates!

A Love Affair

My new shoes:)

I got a new pair of running shoes a few weeks ago. My old ones were getting worn out and giving me blisters, and my running schedule has only been becoming more strenuous. So I gave in and got a new pair. They were pretty expensive, so I used some money that I got from my Aunt in France to buy them (Thank you Aunt Pepette!). And...I LOVE them! They are absolutely the best running shoes I have ever owned. And they are pretty too! So far they have logged 158 miles, and they get more comfortable every time I wear them! If anyone is looking for a great pair of "barefoot" (i.e. no sole, or cushion) running shoes, I highly recommend these. They are New Balance, and I got them at REI.
I am normally not the kind of girl that freaks out about a pair of shoes, but in this case I totally admit it. They are practical, comfortable, beautiful, and I love them!

Noooo! Christmas Tree

For the past couple of years I have been whining about wanting to get a live (meaning with roots still attached) Christmas tree, because I thought it was be better for the environment, and blah blah blah.
Well, I just read an article (in Sierra Magazine) that might have me changing my mind about all of that.
It seems that a certain kind of pine, (specifically the Fraser Fir that has become the tree of choice in the White House), is a common carrier of a mold called Phytophthora cinnamomi, which has decimated flora around the globe.
It's originally form Papua New Guinea, was brought to the US a couple hundred years ago, and destroyed large numbers of chestnut trees and in recent years has killed manzanita trees here in California, and (gasp!) is the main limiting factor in avocado production worldwide.
And it seems that at least in some places, the spread of cinnamomi is due to the planting of infected Christmas trees! Noooooooooo!
But it's true. So apparently we should all use caution when planting our Christmas trees, checking them for mold spores before hand. Especially, they say, if it's a Farser, balsam, or noble fir. Just FYI.

Geophysics

Here are a couple shots of me "in the field" laying down lines for some geophysics that I was helping my boss out with a while back. We were up in the Sierra, and we had to camp out because it was in the middle of nowhere. It was a lot of work, but totally fun!

Climate-Altering Sheep and Things

Most of us have at least heard something about cattle and their substantial contribution to our modern day carbon footprint.
But it turns out that they are only the worst animal offender because of their quantity. Pound for pound sheep are actually worse, since they produce higher quantities of methane (by weight) but have less edible meat. (Kilograms of CO2-equivalent per kilo of food consumed are 27 for cows and 39.2 for sheep.)
And do you want to know what the number 3 "climate-altering" food is? Cheese! Yep, that's right. Cheese has a larger carbon footprint than pigs, or chickens. This is partly due to the production process involved and because it takes about 10 gallons of milk to make one pound of cheese.
The report by the Environmental Working Group Meat Eater's Guide to Climate Change and Health reports that if we all skipped eating cheese once a week it would be equivalent to taking 7.6 million cars off the road. Now on the face of it that doesn't seem like it could be true, and I am not sure how they figured that out, but even if it was only 1.6 million, that would still be pretty amazing!
I kind of feel "sheepish" now about having eaten my grilled mac and cheese sandwich yesterday.

Save the Manatee

I read a short article in the November/December issue of Sierra Magazine about how the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife was proposing to make Kings Bay, Florida into a manatee refuge. The manatee's overwinter there, and last year two of them were killed by boaters. This tragedy is even worse because manatee's are an endangered species, and "vulnerable to extinction".
Apparently though there is  a group called the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots who oppose this proposition saying "We cannot elevate nature above people. That is against the Bible and the Bill of Rights."
And while I know I must be careful not to stereotype all religious people, I would like to point this out as maybe a more extreme example of why I don't believe science and religion will ever be compatible.
First of all saying that people are not a part of nature is...frankly wrong. If you don't even understand basic fact then...well, there probably isn't much point in even trying to explain anything else. The fact that as far as "life" is concerned we are equal with slime molds, flying squirrels and chimpanzee's makes us a part of nature. The fact that our bodies obey the same laws of physics as the solar system, and the Milky Way makes us a part of the universe. When we destroy life, we destroy ourselves. When we discover something new about the universe, we discover something new about ourselves. To truly respect, and understand science you can't think of yourself as something separate from it.
Now, I understand that religious folks believe they are divinely created, but even if that were true, does that then give them the right to treat other life (especially ones that can't protect themselves) like crap? I mean do these Tea Party Patriots really believe allowing a bunch of drunk rednecks to race around in speed boats, and water ski is better than saving a species that is endangered because of us? Do they really believe that humans have the right to be fascist dictators over the rest of nature? WTF?
I'm not even going to touch the "against the Bible and Bill of Rights" thing. It's so stupid an argument it's not worth the energy or time.
I'm not saying all religious people are like this, but I'm saying there are some, and they are usually the loudest. And they are hurting science, and all of us with their ignorant ideas. And I for one don't have the patience for it.

Christmas List 2012: Cute Little Shrimps!

I'm Sick :(

I caught a cold. And while it's certainly not the end of the world, it does put quite a damper on things. My throat is all scratchy and my nose is all runny. Anyway, as soon as I got home from work yesterday I put on my pj's and best warm socks, made a pot of "sleepy" tea (i.e. chamomile/mint/lemongrass etc.). Then I made myself a little cocoon out of the chenille blankets on the couch, got my box of Kleenex and watched Horton Hears a Who. I was really craving a bit of comfort food, and I was trying to decide between macaroni and cheese, and grilled cheese (which is usually my favorite when I'm sick) and I came up with a brilliant idea. Why not make a grilled macaroni and cheese sandwich? That way my poor little sick brain wouldn't have to decide on one or the other.
I didn't have any mac and cheese at home but the BF brought some home from work, and what a treat! I generally stay away from bread, pasta, processed cheese, and butter, but OMG is it yummy together! I only made a half sandwich (so I wouldn't feel as guilty later:), and it wasn't pretty enough to photograph, but trust me it was delicious! The only improvement I could think of was if I'd had a cup of tomato soup to dip it in.
So next time you find yourself feeling under the weather, try one! It sure made me feel better!

Power, Sex, Suicide

So this months book for book club was called Power, Sex and Suicide, by Nick Lane. Despite the fact that it sounds like a cliche romance novel, it's topic was actually mitochondria, and everything you ever did (and did not) want to know about them.
I have to say it was a fascinating book, and totally worth the time I spent trudging through the technical biology review that comprised the first few chapters.
Biology is so....freaking amazing. And the way all of it fits together and works and reproduces is almost hard to believe. I feel like saying it's perfect, and in a philosophical sense I guess I do mean that. But from a technical standpoint biology is not perfect, it's only as good as it has to be to get by and produce progeny. And maybe that's better than being perfect:)
Anyway I thought I'd share a couple "higlights" from the book with you all.
The first is that the author believes that the evolution of life is (on a cosmic scale) inevitable, and that there are probably bacteria-like lifeforms all over the place. He also thinks that things like sight, flight, multicellular life, are also "not improbable". He believes if life were to be wiped out on earth, it would rise again given enough time. But he firmly and adimantly believes that the evolution of eukaryotes (Cells with nuclei and a cell membrane) was a very rare and unlikely result of life on earth because of the way in which it most likely came into being. The difficulty he argues is not producing life itself, but producing eukaryotes. I thought that was interesting because I'd always thought if we ventually found life on Mars, and it was some kind of bacteria, then it would say a lot about the possibility of intellegent life elsewhere in the universe. But Lane argues that may not be the case. It might be extreemly common for bacteria to inhabit every nook and cranny of every habitable planet, but that doesn't necessarily imply that complex life is common or even probable elsewhere.
The second thing is that most scientists believe that mitochondria were once independednt bacteria that somehow eventually became incorporated into already existing eukaryotic cells, but the author asserts that it's too hard to explain how the cell worked before the introduction of mitochondria (which produces all the energy in the form of ATP for cellular function), and therefore argues that the eukaryotic cell evolved simultaneously with mitochondria, and that....bit of luck as it were, is his reason for why it is so much harder to imagine complex life sprouting up everywhere.
The third thing I will mention is that the author also thinks the reason we age and die is not because our telomeres become shorter (as was or is? the reigning hypothesys) it's because of the free radicals produced by mitochondria as they produce ATP. As you age, copies of cells, and the mitochondria within them become less faithful in their construction, and as those errors accumulate in new mitochondria they produce more and more free radicalsand not only destroy the mitochondria themselves, but also the protiens within the cell that perform all kinds of vital functions. They also loose their ability to alert the cell that something is wrong and when it's time to die. Contrary to what people think (like all those people taking tons of anti-oxidants and all that crap) you actually need some amount of free radicals in your body because they regulate overall cell health. It's a no win situation in a way. The free radicals age you, but you can't live without them.
Maybe someday biomedical technology will find a way to change out your mitochondria every ten or twenty years, and we will all live to be several hundred! Wouldn't that be somthing?
Fourth thing is that we have so many mitochondria (which except in VERY rare cases we ONLY inherit from our mothers) that they make up 10% of our body weight!
And finally just because I thought this was kind of funny, and totally explained why I cannot be a vegetarian or eat vegan meat substitutes I thought I'd toss this in. We all have methanogens (methane producing bacteria) living in our guts. We also have sulpher eating bacteria in there competing for space (its a bacterial war zone!) Anyway the methane producing little guys prefer to abide inside vegitarians becase veggies contain little sulphur and so there aren't as many sulphur loving bacteria to compete with. They tend to take over the place and as they enjoy their private party they make you more farty. LOL.
Anyway, there was a lot more in the book, and actually a bunch of really interesting things about bacteria that I didn't know. But I think I'll save that for another day. If you have ever had an interest in learning about mitochondria I highly recommend this book!

The painting is by me of what else? Mitochondria!

Virginia City, Nevada

Over the Christmas holiday (For what my old roommates and I call "House Christmas") we went to Reno to visit one of said old roommates and her boyfriend.
During our weekend stay, and in the true Nevada spirit, we drove out to the desert to shoot guns and visited the swarthy old Comstock (silver mining) mecca of Virginia City. Even more than a hundred years after it's decline it's still a cool relict of the old west with places like the Silver Queen Saloon, with it's creaky old floors, and supposed resident ghosts!
It was my idea to go there (and everyone else was kind enough to humor me) not because I have a love of silver mining, or old western towns for that matter, but rather because my beloved Mark Twain once walked those very streets as a reporter (and then later as editor) for the local Virginia City newspaper The Territorial Enterprise! Can you believe it?!? Isn't that so cool. I read all about that part in his biography, and it was so neat to be able to see all the places that he actually spoke about.
Not only that, but there is a small museum in the basement where the newspaper was published, and where Twain actually worked, ate and slept (among other things)! I had to go by myself because no one else was interested (I think they hit up the saloon:) but I didn't mind at all.
I normally am not one to get all excited over celebrities (alive or dead) but I will always and forever make an exception for Twain. Besides being my favorite author (along side of Ayn Rand), I also admire the sort of life he lived, the examples he set forth publically (equality for all races and women), AND his sense of humor and irony, which I find match my own perfectly. For all these reasons I was SO excited to see where he worked (for a short time), to walk down the streets that look very much the same as they did when he himself wandered them.
I don't understand believing in God or gods, but I do understand the idea of a pilgrimage, to a special place. For some it's Jerusalem, for me it happens to be Virginia City, Nevada. I guess I've always been a little quirky like that.
I'll never really know Mark Twain of course (Samuel Clements actually), but much like I felt when I was in France visiting my grandmothers childhood home, I feel a little closer to him anyway now that I've been where he once was, now that I've seen what he once saw.
He feels a little more real, a little more like a real man and that makes me happy.
Here are a few photo's from around Nevada City, some from inside the Mark Twain Museum, and some from the cemetary on the edge of town.