Adventures in Alcohol

Maybe it's because I'm a geologist, maybe it's because I collect bottle caps, or maybe because it just goes so well with baseball, but the truth is, I drink a lot of beer.  And I think my parents noticed, since for Christmas they bought me a beer brewing kit.

So what did I do while that super exciting Super Bowl was on yesterday?  You guessed it, I brewed some beer!

Ingredients: grain, hops, malt, and yeast! (not pictured: water)

I thought I'd enjoy a beer while brewing.

Science!

And ready to ferment.

And now I wait.  In 3-6 weeks it should be ready to bottle.  Which means in 3-6 weeks I need to accumulate about two cases worth of beer bottles (as if I needed an excuse to drink more beer).  So check back here in 3-6 weeks to hear how bottling goes!  And a couple weeks after that, I'll hopefully have 5 gallons of delicious red ale (name TBD).

A recent history of my life in photos

Boston has a lot of US History.  There are a lot of statues of Paul Revere.  I even saw his grave.

I found the nearest ship... 

...also the nearest penguins.

The Williams-Mystic reunion started out on a boat, so you know it was an awesome weekend.

Here is Jim Carlton auctioning a narwhal puppet.

Back to California, here we are in Golden Gate Park watching The Head and the Heart at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

And then The Head an the Heart were at Sophia's in Davis.

Then I went to Colorado to visit Grant, Colin, and Lauren, and apparently some penguins at the Denver zoo.

We went on the Coors tour.  Golden was lovely.

We toured SLAC in Palo Alto and got a crash course in particle physics.

The Baylands Preserve was nearby and pretty.

The Giants won the Wold Series and San Francisco went crazy.  I was there and very happy.

Amy and I were both historical figures (in a way) for Halloween.  We also made a devil-chicken scarecrow.

Our pumpkins! Can you guess which two are mine?

I'm on a boat!

As you read this, I am somewhere in the South Atlantic Ocean heading west. We departed Cape Town on Saturday at 16:00. The students in the science party (of which I am a part of) are divided into 3 eight hour watches. I'm on the 09:00-17:00 (so think 9-5), which is awesome. So far all we've had to do is watch screens and log data, but once we reach Walvis Ridge we'll get to dredge rocks and they'll be lots to do!
Other things of note:
I have my own room and own bathroom/shower (most people have to at least share a bathroom).
There is a hot tub. Today I sat in a hot tub overlooking a deep blue ocean. It was amazing.
I won a game of hearts today.
The food is great, though I have a feeling the fresh fruit won't last too long.
I sleep really well with the rocking of the boat.
It's still kind of mind boggling to me that I'm actually on a big ship in the ocean of the coast of Africa, no less.

Art, Science, and the fusion thereof, Part II

I realize that my last post on this topic was not some of my best writing.  I probably should have edited it a bit before posting.  So here is a summary of what I think was the point I was trying to make (in oh, so many poorly written words):

There is a place for art inspired by science.  In fact, that art is usually some of my favorite.  But there is an important difference between science art and art/science fusion.  Macro pictures, realistic sculptures, paintings inspired by DNA sequencing are all science art.  Judit(the artist from the talk)'s installment of calcite heart and lungs disintegrating in increasingly acidic water is art/science fusion because there is a a science-y message behind it.  Her talk, however, was more a historical fiction that mentioned science.

In other words, art and science can both be great in their own right, or together, but I like it better when there's a point.

And in conclusion, here's a picture of rum and coke viewed under a microscope (thanks FSU chemistry):

Art, Science, and the fusion thereof

My mom and I went to a talk sponsored by the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion program as part of their "the Consilience of art and science speaker series."  The talk was entitled "Pages from the Book of the Unknown Explorer" by a self-described "process-based visual artist," Judit Hersko.  It was more a story and slideshow than a talk, really.  The overall story was one of using art and the humanities to investigate antarctic ecology.  I don't think I can remotely do the presentation justice by trying to summarize it here, so I'm not going to try.  After this story, Judit went on to talk about her efforts in bringing science, in the form of art projects, to students who were otherwise difficult or just plain didn't want to learn about science.

The audience was clearly moved and enamored of her presentation and ideas.  And to some degree I agree with all of the feedback from the audience.  By using a multi-disciplinary approach to education, I think kids, as well as adults, can get a lot more out of the subjects they're learning.  The real world doesn't separate subjects in neat little boxes; everything is connected.

An example of art/science fusion in the oak grove in the UCD arboretum- I made the bird!

Ok, so now I'm going to ramble tangentally on and on about art, science, and ocean acidification, so continue after the jump and read at your own risk.

Straight floatin' on a boat on the deep blue sea

In a little less than three months, I will be on a boat.  Specifically the R/V Melville:

"During a career now in its fourth decade, Melville has cruised over almost all the World's oceans in the pursuit of scientific knowledge."

And why, you might ask?  Well a fellow Carleton AND Williams-Mystic alum is getting her PhD in marine geology at OSU and her lab needed volunteers for a dredging and mapping cruise of the coast of- get this- South Africa!  So at the start of February 2012, I will be flying to Cape Town and embarking on a two month research cruise, all expenses paid.  Hooray for science funding!

Among other things, I'm ridiculously excited to:

1. be on a ship (on the ocean!)
2. do geology again
3. see penguins in the wild (or at least I hope we're in Cape Town long enough for me to do so).

There will undoubtably be more blog posts on this topic as the trip gets closer and I get more information, so stay tuned!  I might have to change the name to A is for the Atlantic!

Bats are really cool!

and I took this video!