wendy’s posterous

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Glen's parents and sister are staying with us for the next few days. The highlight of our Christmas dinner with his large extended family last night was his cousin Sid's 18 month old boy puking a surprisingly large amount of nastiness all over (and down) his cousin Ron's shirt. The splash of bright green puke colored by a recently consumed avocado looked like a small alien had exploded all over Ron's nice brown button-down shirt. I'm guessing Ron won't be the next cousin to have a kid.

As Glen drove me home from lab at 1:30am a couple nights ago, I found the message displayed on the bright electronic sign by the Bay Bridge very amusing. If people text messaging while driving is a huge problem, then I wonder how many accidents will be caused by people battling Darth Vader or winning a game of virtual air hockey.

Glen got his iPhone on Monday night, but as a testament to how busy we have been with work, neither of us has touched it since we left the store. (He changed his number, so his old phone still works for a few weeks.) I'm currently in the lab running gas samples on the gas chromatograph (think CSI). Hopefully I'll get out of here by noon, and I won't have to think about work again until Sunday when Glen's parents and sister, who are arriving this afternoon, have left. By then, I'll be an iPhone expert, cursing the remaining year on my cell phone contract before I can switch over.

It took a total of seven weeks, but Glen and I just finished watching all five seasons of The Wire, a cop show based in Baltimore that explores how culture, politics, the media, the educational system, and other factors converge to create the local drug trade and high crime rates. We decided to watch it after hearing rave reviews about the writing from many of our friends. I am a fan of non-fiction books, documentary films, and based-on-a-true story movies, so knowing that all Baltimorians regard The Wire as an accurate portrayal of their city made the show that much better for me.

I found it most interesting that the drug dealers call their lifestyle and business, "the game," and that "citizens" who are not in "the game" are never targeted for violence--no guarantees on stray bullets though. That helps to explain to me why most of the shooting victims in San Francisco are gang members or players in "the game." And I'll feel a little safer the next time I visit Baltimore. I might even ask for The Wire tour given by a crazy friend who has tracked down many of the real life sites used in the show.

An unexpected side effect of watching The Wire so intensely was that I started dreaming in extremely foul language and ebonics during the first season based mostly in the West Baltimore projects. I even let a few choice words out of my mouth when a bee stung me in the back of my neck while doing field work. Anyone who knows me knows that I always keep a clean vocabulary. (Hence my references to animal poop and not s*** in my previous postings.)

As much as I truly enjoyed The Wire, I am a bit excited to get my life back. And now I can finally get to weaning myself off TV...  

an iPhone! Except that I sort of don't want an iPhone. I'm currently on the same cell phone plan as my parents, so my monthly charge as an additional line is $10 (paid by my parents). It's hard to think of suddenly spending upwards of $70 a month on a cell phone plan. That's about three pairs of super on-sale, super cute shoes from Bandolino, a few bargain items from Banana Republic, or enough food to feed a few starving African children each month. I currently don't know how to text message, and I rarely use the (crappy) camera on my phone. But think of how an iPhone could transform my life! Can someone please convince me one way or the other?

It's 10:20pm, and Glen and I just got home with our recently favored late night dinner: Mongolian beef and salt-n-pepper pork chops from a nearby Chinese take-out restaurant. I wonder how long we'll have to live such busy lives like this. We definitely can't raise children with this lifestyle...

I was horrified to find out at my lab's holiday party last night that there are some sunscreens that contain photocarcinogens. A website called Skin Deep lists the ingredients in many cosmetic products and rates them on their safety. My sunscreen of choice, Neutrogena's Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock SPF 55, is not recommended based on health hazards from the fragrance and the active ingredient, oxybenzone. I specifically chose this sunscreen because it contains oxybenzone, which is one of few chemicals that can block UVA rays that cause skin aging. (Most sunscreens only block UVB rays that cause sunburns.) I suppose I should switch to sunscreens that contain titanium dioxide which more safely does the job.

Some friends recently asked me what I meant when I said that I'd been doing field work. I took my video camera out with me this week so that I could show them what I meant. Until I put those videos together, here are some photos from field work at my labmate's field site in the Sierra Foothills in eastern California. A bunch of us went out with her on Friday to help her sample the greenhouse gases coming out of the ground and to collect soils for laboratory analysis of microbial enzyme activity. All of this involves a lot of manual labor--lugging equipment up hills, pounding things into the ground, digging holes, etc. Last week my arms were so sore from a day in the field that I couldn't even shuffle the cards during a home game of poker that night.

I just haven't been able to keep myself away from the animal poop lately. My labmate is looking at whether putting compost on cow pastures will allow more carbon to be stored in soil rather than released to the air as carbon dioxide and methane compared to untreated cow pastures and compost that just decomposes in a pile somewhere. She's also testing whether a particular way of plowing the soil called Yeoman's plow helps increase carbon storage in soil. It's very important to try to store carbon in places other than the air so that we can reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the air. The compost applied at my labmate's site is part goat poop and part plant material (i.e., municipal compost such as lawn clippings and biodegradable kitchen waste). The compost was fascinating once you got over the poop part, which was difficult because it reaked. It was so hot from bacterial activity that it steamed even in the relatively warm mid-morning air!

I have included photos of the compost pile, the compost being sprayed over the pastures (unfortunately we are not allowed to drive the machinery), a couple labmates using a laser to set plowlines along the contour of the hill, and the beautiful sunset (plus Becca collecting soil) that was the highlight of our 17-hour work day. Did I mention that we left Berkeley at 4:30am, worked until there was absolutely no light left, and then made the 2.5 hour drive back to Berkeley in a car that stank of poop? I don't envy the long drive that Becca has to make every time she visits her field site, but you can't beat the serenity and beauty of the Sierra Foothills.

         

Click here to download:

what_is_field_work_to_a_soil_s.zip (14438 KB)

I haven't had a chance to blog in a few weeks because I've been very busy with research. I'm finally analyzing my data from all my trips to San Diego from the past year--before now I couldn't bring myself to look at the data because I associated them with horribly long and lonely nights in the lab. I am also finally getting to do an experiment that I've wanted to do for three years now. Instrument failure or unavailability had always stood in my way when I had time for it in my schedule. I completely understand the slow pace of scientific research now that I've been doing it for five years now.

My field site is on Sherman Island near Antioch, California. The "island" is very fertile land right where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers meet and deposit organic material (e.g., leaves and logs) that has washed downstream. Many years ago, levees were built so that the land could be used for agriculture. Just like New Orleans, the land has subsided a lot over time since the rivers can no longer deposit material in the area and the existing layers of organic material continue to decompose. Sometimes as I am doing field work, I can watch a sail boat glide by about twenty feet higher than me. After the Katrina disaster, there was some talk in the Bay Area about how "the big one" will certainly bring down the levees. In this case, salt water from the Pacific Ocean (via the San Francisco Bay) will rush into this low lying area and contaminate the drinking water supply that runs down to southern California. A group at UC Davis estimated that the levees would have to be something like 50 feet high and a few hundred yards wide to be able to withstand "the big one." That's impossibly enormous. And therefore, we've all decided to just cross our fingers and hope for the best.

I am trying to understand how much nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, is being released from the soils on Sherman Island. I work in an active cow pasture, which means that it's impossible to not get cow poop on myself at some point during the day. This past Thursday I spent seven hours digging holes in the ground to be able to bury "soil gas chambers." These chambers consist of PVC and silicone tubing that I glued together so that gas in the soil can diffuse inside but gas from the air aboveground can't get in. I can then remove the gas from the chamber and analyze it for how much nitrous oxide is in the soil. A few times, I looked up from my digging to find a curious cow about ten feet away staring blankly at me. At one point, I happened to be holding a handful of soil that I had just excavated from a hole so I threw it in the face of the cow. It didn't even blink. I loudly serenaded the cows with terrible renditions of Mariah Carey songs, and they still didn't run away. I had one truly scary moment when I found myself almost completely encircled by the herd of 100+ cows and juvenile bulls that kept inching closer and closer, each with that blank stare. There's just something about having that many pairs of eyes on you that betray no thoughts (because there are no thoughts) that is very frightening. That and the fact that they could easily crush me if they wanted. I finally ran towards them, which started an earth-shaking stampede, luckily, away from me.

Photo 1: One set of holes with a soil gas chamber in one. I dug down to 5, 10, and 20 cm. It takes about an hour to dig one 20 cm deep hole that is just the right size to fit the soil gas chamber. I wanted a snug fit so that I didn't disturb all of the soil around the chamber.

Photo 2: The buried chambers with my improvised cow guards. The cows just LOVE to chew on the PVC, either ripping the entire chamber out of the ground or just breaking the valve off the top. They also sometimes just turn the valve to the open position so that aboveground air can enter the chamber, and I can't get a soil gas sample from it. Maybe cows can think. 

Photo 3: This is what I saw one of the times that I looked up from my hole-digging. I ignored this cow who lost interest in me a full fifteen minutes later.

     

Click here to download:

my_Ph.D._in_digging_holes.zip (10935 KB)

The Environmental Working Group tested pesticide levels in fruits and veggies that had been washed to determine which foods you should buy organic if you can't afford to completely switch to organic. Milk was not tested, but others have reported high pesticide levels in some non-organic milk (brands not disclosed). Joining a farm share is a fantastic and cheap way to buy organic. We love Trader Joe's too.

REI has a sale, and the parking lot is not completely full.