A take on how to think...

I've read every Sherlock Holmes story back when I was in high school. I read a lot then, as I still do now. Everyday on my way home from school on the city bus, I passed the library and its dedicated bus stop. Often, I would get off, lugging my backpack full of text books. I still have no idea what possessed me to lug all of them around all the time – no math or English or social studies emergencies ever came up (one always needs science text books). At the library, I always found a book or two or five to cram into my already straining backpack.

Recently, while browsing in the bookstore that is dangerously close to my house, I stumbled across Mastermind: how to think like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova. From the inside flap: “No fictional character is more renowned for his powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes. But is his extraordinary intellect merely a gift of fiction or can we learn to cultivate these abilities ourselves, to improve our lives at work and home?” How could I resist?

Since I rarely read a single book at a time, I read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at the same time. Both were equally interesting however, Mastermind was a much easier read and included tips on how to improve ones thinking.

Konnikova breaks down the scientific method (for that is what Sherlock Holmes uses), discussing how each piece can be applied to our thought processes. All the while interweaving scenes from the stories that demonstrate the point she is making.

She discusses the idea that the structure of your mind can be viewed as a 'brain attic' that can be organized and easy to find things or left as a crammed space containing everything without order. We get to choose. She also includes a warning about filling your mind with too much junk – I'm assuming she means the headlines from the tabloids I can't help reading in the checkout line that just stick in my mind.

“We can, however, learn to master many aspects of our attic's structure, throwing out junk that got in by mistake, prioritizing those things that we want to and pushing back those that we don't, learning how to take the contours of our unique attic into account so that they don't unduly influence us as they otherwise might.”

Csikszentmihalyi's view on your mind's contents is slightly different. He points out, the structure provided by memorizing things that captivate your interest can make you life richer. Memorizing medieval British kings and queens (the real-life 'game of thrones') or Shakespearean sonnets or details of the periodic table (or anything else that catches your interest) helps with thinking by providing an internal structure. Memorizing this way helps improve memory and gives fodder to think about if you end up in a sensory deprivation tank – just incase that ever comes up.

On the how thinking works theme, I listened to a podcast about thinking and memory last night (from here). According to them, the key is to constantly expose yourself to new ideas and concepts. Quality counts – sitting on the sofa vegging out in front of crapy TV doesn't count. Reading counts, as well as other active ideas like taking a course or learning an instrument. The new information creates potential connections with what you already know potentially generating ideas.

In a recent interview with Joss Whedon (one of my favourite movie and TV writers), where he discussed what he does to remain productive, he gave a range of tips including how he uses his down time to expose himself to tones of new information such as books, theatre, etc. - a process he called 'fill the tanks'. Whedon suggests “step outside your viewing zone, your reading zone. It's all fodder but if you only take from one thing, then it'll show.”

On the flip side of 'filling your tanks' a recent blog post suggested that depriving oneself of new information gained through reading, which is generally how I get new info, could be a good way to kick-start your creativity. This is a technique out of one of Julia Cameron's books. I would find this a form of torture, but I'm curious if it would work. If one is always out obtaining information, would a forced week of nothing new forge new connections (i.e. creativity) between the old information?

At the same time I read all about Holmes, I devoured books about James Bond (by both Ian Flemming and John Gardner) along with everything then published by Ken Follett (The Key to Rebecca was my favourite). Since, I read all these books a long time ago and often concurrently, the lines between what happened in what story has been blurred. I do remember enjoying them all so perhaps it's time to start re-reading all these tales.

Image is from here. 

Lost Marbles

Not the angle of repose I was looking for

I lost several hours this morning when I fell down a rabbit hole of interesting facts. I was looking for something specific about what is called an ‘angle of repose.’ No it isn’t the angle of my lawn chair - although I did stumble upon a blog called ‘My Angle of Repose’ and a 1971 novel titled ‘Angle of Repose’.

The angle of repose I’m interested in is the maximum angle a pile of something (i.e. a granular material) could reach before tumbling down. A google scholar search found scientists piling a plethora of items from mustard seeds to firewood.

Not surprisingly, the shape of what you are piling matters. In a 1966 paper, piles of tiny spheres and angular crushed quartzite were examined. For diameters of 0.5 mm, the angle of repose for the spheres was 38 degrees while for the quartzite it was a steeper 57 degrees. Meaning flatish, irregular things pile better than round things.

But, diameters of 0.5 mm are tiny, what about something bigger? For bigger things, the angle of repose decreases. The tiny spheres above would form a pile while attempting to pile marbles would only lead to escaped marbles - and an excuse to say: “help, I’ve lost my marbles.”

Adding water changes things - and this is where I really got sucked in. A 1997 paper titled ‘What keeps sandcastles standing’ was irresistible to me and completely unrelated to what I was looking for, so I read it.

If you are going to build a fancy sandcastle, you’ll quickly discover that dry sand won’t work, only wet sand will do. That’s because the properties of wet and dry sand are different. They did a lab experiment to prove it by modeling wet sand with spherical polystyrene beads ‘wetted’ with corn and vacuum-pump oil.

As a tangent - a completely different study used rice piles to model avalanches. What you use likely comes down to what you can get to work in the lab. My experience with lab experiments I designed myself clearly demonstrated that it isn’t easy to come up with something that works.

They found that by only slightly coating the beads (coating of less than 50 nm) dramatically increases the angle of repose. This means that by adding water to sand, the liquid introduces attractive forces that act to bind the particles. At first clumps form, which grow as more liquid is added until what you are working with (sand, polystyrene beads, etc) holds together.

The angle of repose is an important factor when studying slope stability and landslide prediction. How gravity influences the angle has also been studied, so what we know here can be transferred to exotic locals such as Mars. A point to ponder if you have to trek across scree in your local mountains or on Mars.

It might be hard, but...

The result of blowing bubbles in my backyard

While reading a textbook* aimed at first year science students, deep in a chapter, I came across this passage:

 “... because a mathematical description of the coriolis deflection involves vector equations and, hence, is difficult to grasp, we will rely on a more general and somewhat inaccurate explanation of the concept.” 

Now, the author did put the technical stuff in an appendix, which began with: “Although few understand the coriolis effect...” 

The author's right, vector calculus can be hard, but, that’s beside the point. All sorts of things are ‘difficult to grasp’ yet we do them anyway. This textbook is for students in a first year science course. We should be inspiring them to go on and study more science, not scare them off because of perceived difficulty. Why even mention concepts are ‘difficult’ or that ‘few understand’?

Reminds me of an old article in the Onion about how science is hard (here).

We are doing ourselves a disservice when we set up things as hard - if you are interested, hard things are doable and should be tackled. I don’t think people aim to be a professional dancer or lawyer thinking they are on an easy path. Science is the same. The fact that there is so much complexity in the world around us is fascinating and we’ll never run out of new things to learn.

Why not present information in a science textbook without judgement on how difficult the concepts are? I’ve never come across another textbook that did. Unfortunately, there was more:

“Unfortunately, the concept of vorticity is difficult to grasp without a background in physics and mathematics ...” 

And that was the end of the discussion of vorticity.

On a tangent... some time ago, I rushed into the living room to catch a science story on the news about how a particle was clocked traveling faster than light (which has since been shown not to be the case). At the end, the anchor (Peter Mansbridge) questioned why we should care about this result and the science correspondent (Bob McDonald) gave a good answer. Then the next story was about the auction of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels and no one ever questioned why we should care. Interesting...

*the textbook is Invitation to Oceanography by P.R. Pinet. Over all, it reads well, has nice figures and is easy to follow.

Reading, thinking, writing

I love dandelions when they've gone to seed

I spend most of my time doing one of three things - reading, thinking or writing. All are activities done alone. I hope the end result will be something creative and I’ve read that solitude is necessary for creativity.

Right now I’m reading Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I bought the book last week when I found out my local book shop didn’t have this one in yet (a book I’m very much looking forward to).

I’m about half-way through Quiet, which means I’ll be done in a couple of days. I’m finding the book fascinating, especially since I’m an introvert. I’ve always known I’m an introvert and I’ve always counted that as one of my strengths, even when others have not.

Quiet is about the value of introverts in our extrovert-centric society, especially around creative work. It is clear from research that brilliant ideas often come from people who mostly work alone, where group work typically results in ideas that came from the one that spoke the loudest - not necessarily the smartest.

She writes about how brainstorming in theory produces better ideas that individuals working alone - an idea that many team-building sessions glom on to. However, the actual research shows the opposite is true. When brainstorming and working in solitude are subjected to an actual test, more and better ideas are generated when working alone. Perhaps, I’ll point that out next time I’m forced into a brainstorming session (more likely, I’ll simply endure it).

In another interesting study she found, violin players were compared who all spent the same amount of time practicing. The best musicians were the ones that spent the most time working alone in ‘deliberate practice’ - which translates to working specifically on a nuance or skill where the musician struggles. The idea of a ‘deliberate practice’ intrigues me.

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book

As a tangent, the author describes herself this way: “I’m prone to wild flights of self-doubt, but I also have a deep well of courage in my own convictions. I feel horribly uncomfortable on my first day in a foreign city, but I love to travel. I was shy as a child, but have outgrown the worst of it.” - a description that would also apply well to me.

Turdus migratorius (backyard Robins)

This is not a Robin

How the ordinary can be missed...

Winter is over and I’m delighted to report it’s warm enough to sleep with my window open! My island in the Pacific is temperate, not tropical, so spring warmth is always welcome. With the window open, the first and last thing I hear each day is singing birds.

This time of year, Robins are the ones singing. Around here we don’t have the dainty European ones (they were introduced about in the early 1900s, but didn’t take like the starlings and house sparrows did). Instead, we have a member of the thrush family, Turdus migratorius or American Robin. I’ve read that robins go through puberty once a year (article here) as hours of daylight increase. By this time of year they’re looking for a mate and the search is a noisy affair.

While I was out walking around a local bog, Red-wing Blackbirds were conducting a similar noisy quest as the robins. I heard the blackbirds long before seeing them, a feat my walking companion took to mean I’m an expert on birds. I’m not. Red-wing Blackbirds and Robins are the a few bird calls I recognize (Bald Eagles are another - majestic bird, ridiculous sound). We couldn’t see the birds at first, so we stopped and gazed out into the bog. Eventually, between the dried cattails, we saw flashes of fire-engine* red as the males jockeyed to catch the eye of the females.

I do purposely go out to see birds, but unintentionally I do it poorly. I have a bird identification book and binoculars, which I almost always forget to take with me. I have a check list for local birds that I’m filling out, yet I can’t tell the difference between different species of gulls. I’m a member of the local natural history society and they regularly do outings to watch birds, yet I’ve never gone with them.

There is always at least one Robin in my backyard, so I don’t have to go out of my way to see them. Unlike the Resplendent Quetzal, a bird I traipsed through the jungle in Costa Rica to see, the ubiquitous Robin is easy to ignore. They lack the iridescent green body and brilliant red breast of the quetzal. Even the flashy red wings of blackbirds eclipse a robin’s colouring. A Robin’s breast is the same shade of the liquid that seeps out of a bucket of nails left in the rain. Additionally, most Robin’s wings droop just a bit, giving them a goofy look which is augmented by the bird’s tendency to endlessly pursue their reflection in a window.

Soon, the Robins will sort out who to mate with and the songs will fade. Fragments of delicate blue egg shells will be discarded as the next generation of ordinary Robins are hatched. From my desk, I can watch a Robin bounce over the ground, stop and tug an earthworm out of the ground, a comical procedure. As the bird flies away with a worm in its beak, I’m always left wondering how does the Robin know the worm is there?

* actually, around here, most of the fire-engines are yellow.

How I work

a page out of my messy notebook

an even messier page

I’ve been thinking about how I work - be it my writing or scientific work (which tend to be offshoots of the same thing as the tangents here are often of stuff that don’t fit with my science). When I started my current project I made an effort not to work the same way as I did with my previous project. I wanted to be more deliberate and structured - basically, I wanted to work from a plan.

I like structure and I like thinking about how to apply structures to my work. I do this with most projects I work on, even my garden has a carefully thought out structure which starts as sketches in one of my notebooks. Structure is form of a plan which allows me to put separate pieces together and not miss anything.

One of the things that stuck with me from my army days was having a plan. At the very least by having a plan, I have a place to write my changes on. It gives a place to start and can be shared with others. When I go out and do field work, I always have a plan. Things may not go according to the plan, and that’s okay. Sometimes deviating from a plan when an opportunity arises can create better results. Or, if things aren’t going well, I can quickly determine what’s important to my grand scheme and what isn’t and can be canceled.

For the thinking/analyzing work I do when I get home, I don’t see how a straight forward plan would work as I’m looking at data that has never been seen before. I worked somewhat aimlessly on a previous project, which resulted in me taking more time that I would have liked. For my current project, I try to work within a structure based on notes. I’m trying (hopefully successfully) to combine the new things I find with other work to create a story worth telling - not analyze every piece of data with every possible analytical tool.

I’ve been following note keeping ideas from Organizing Creativity (he seems to have really thought about how to work and many of his ideas work well for me). I keep multiple Circus Ponies notebooks that are annotated and organized. The outline of the paper I’m currently working on has been assembled from these electronic notebooks. But, I don’t start electronically (perhaps I’m a luddite).

I find that I need to physically write things down to internalize them. Plus, keeping notes prevents me from skimming the source material since academic papers tend to be very dry reading. As I read, ideas often pop into my head which I write down with a different coloured pen. Since, I like to make visual connections between ideas, my notebooks are littered with diagrams and mind maps.

Keeping physical notes allows me to get away from screens for a time, which is good for me (there is plenty of current research that shows sitting in front of a screen all day isn’t the best for your health). I haven’t figured out how to juggle reading a paper and having a laptop on my lap while sitting in my comfy chair. Yes, I could read the paper on an electronic device, I’m just not that technically advanced nor do I have the will to be. Sitting away from my computer for a time works for me.

My written notes all get transcribed into an electronic form. This may seem time consuming, but I find it gives me the opportunity to rethink some of my ideas and remind me of important details in other work.

Since, I think about how I work, over time I’m likely to change my working habits. I doubt there is a magic working method that I won’t evolve over time.

Flat earth and open polar seas

A view of the Arctic Ocean from 1849

Why do we hold onto ideas about the world around us when all the evidence points to another reality? Like that we live on a flat earth. On the flip side, some ideas may eventually prove to be true. Like an open polar ocean.

Once people thought we live on a flat earth - which makes sense if all you see of the world is what is out the window. It must have taken a lot of guts along with a dose of extreme self confidence to be among the first who went against this belief. One example is Christopher Columbus, who made the assumption the earth was round when he sailed westward to find China - fortunately for him and his crew, he was right (about the roundness of the planet, but not the distance to China).

From the window of a commercial flight anyone can see earth’s curvature by looking at the horizon. With pictures from space, we can conclusively show the earth is round. Contrary to this evidence, flat earth societies have not disbanded. Why do they hold onto the idea of a flat earth?

Another idea that persisted despite contrary evidence was an ice-free polar ocean, that the only ice was around the edges and once you broke through this ice it was clear sailing. This idea dated back to the 16th century, and perhaps earlier. Joseph Moxon, a royal hydrographer working in the 1660s, continued promotion of this ice-free idea attributing it to the 24hr a day solar heat melting the ice in the summer. He also theorized that ice only formed near landmasses where the water was fresher - an idea that morphed over the next 100 years into seawater being unable to freeze by its nature (which is easy to disprove in a lab experiment).

Since an open polar sea presented a potentially lucrative short-cut, expeditions were commissioned to break through the ice and find the open sea beyond. The all failed, some more spectacularly than others. Franklin tried to break through on one of his early missions, failed and went home, while the R/V Jeannette tried, got frozen into the ice and ultimately crushed. Still more ships were sent until Nansen tried walking to the pole and found ice all the way.

The idea of an open Arctic Ocean hasn’t gone away even after it was proven to be covered in multi-year ice instead the idea has morphed into one based on science. In the 1970s the idea reared its head again when an irrigation proposal was made to divert several major Siberian rivers that normally flow into the Arctic to central Asia instead. Beneath the layer of cold Arctic waters is a layer of warmer Atlantic water. This deep warmer water is insulated from the surface because the cold water above is fresher, meaning it remains less dense even though it is colder than the water below. If less freshwater goes into the Arctic Ocean, the cold top layer could become saltier and sink below the warmer water. The warm water then could influence the surface and melt the ice.

Another way the Arctic Ocean may loose its ice is through global warming. The polar ice cap is likely to melt completely in the summer in my life time - making a shipping shortcut across the pole a seasonal possibility.

Flat earth and open polar seas were both incorrect ideas that were held onto even when contrary evidence was found. This planet has been conclusively shown to be a sphere (or, more precisely an oblate spheroid), however, an open polar sea may become a reality.

Image is from here

2 + 2 = 5

I have no mathy pictures, so here is a lobster instead

A segment on the news recently disturbed me. It was about a new way to teach math in elementary schools (I’ve become interested in these stories as my daughter is now in the world). The new way is a creative approach where there are no wrong methods, and they may also have reported that there are no wrong answers - I’m really hoping I heard the last part wrong. There may be more to the story than the news presented (as is often the case), however, if it is this way, I’m quite worried about our mathematical future.

I’m all for creative approaches, however, in math there are methods that will take you to the answer quickly. One of the nicest things about basic math is that there are right answers to be found and, they can be verified as correct. Creative methods may get the right answer eventually but are not necessarily effective tools for everyday math. It may be dull to memorize mathematical basics - never the less, one needs to get the basics down. No one ever suggests that we take a creative approach to learning how to read. We are expected to learn the grammar rules necessary to understand written text - so why is math different?

Technology takes away the necessity to do math in some circumstances, but technology doesn’t always work. Understanding some math is necessary - how would you determine if you can afford something? How about telling if you tax return is reasonable? Did you get the right amount of change back on a purchase? Or when is a sale at a store actually a good deal? Recently, I found a man looking at peanut butter in the grocery store trying to determine if it was a better deal to get a smaller jar on sale or a larger one - in this case the smaller jar was the better deal (he seemed relieved when I told him).

A lot of people have trouble with math, but I wonder if this is due to our society’s portrayal of math as scary. Math isn’t scary, it’s simply a set of rules to manipulate numbers. Since, people’s brains work slightly differently making picking up math harder for some, if someone is struggling to learn a mathy technique help should be available to coach them towards the right answer.

I’m biased about math because I use it all the time and am comfortable with it. Although, I’m not very good at doing math in my head but, I’ve practiced tricks allowing me to do everyday computations. With a pen and paper I can work out most things - calculators make it even easier. At higher level university courses, math becomes more abstract and harder to intuitively grasp. One needs to use this type of math regularly, or be mathematically gifted (which isn’t me), to apply it. As a scientist, I understand the math that describes my field but the pure abstract math is often baffling to me as I haven’t spent time working with it.

Picture is from here

Frustrated with technology

He looks just as frustrated

Recently, I’ve experienced another version of the ‘technology trap’. Warning: rant ahead.

I flirt with three different operating systems - Mac, Windows and Ubuntu (linux based).  I wish I had the skill to customize my own operating system, but I don’t and I don’t have the time (or will) to gain them. Mostly I use my Mac, however there is always something I need another operating system to do. My older laptop is a Ubuntu/Windows dual boot machine which I use regularly.

I now have data from up north (Ice cleared enough for the ship to get into Cumberland Sound). The data is in a hex format that needs to be converted by the instrument’s software into a format I can look at. This software only runs on Windows - no problem, as I have a Windows machine. I started up the old laptop (which is only about 3 years old), ran some updates and the machine hung up. I let it sit for a few hours and nothing happened, so I turned it off and back on. All I get is 7 beeps - it doesn’t even go far enough for me to use a boot CD. After some hunting around on the internet, I found out that 7 beeps on my make of laptop means that the motherboard is toast. Based on the age of the machine it isn’t worth fixing - essentially, my laptop is now garbage.

Along the same vein, I got a call from my cell phone provider. My cell phone contract is up and they want me to sign up again. To entice me I was offered a new phone. My current phone works just fine, so why do I need a new phone? The woman, who was trying to sign me up, just didn’t get that I didn’t want to throw out perfectly good technology. She went on to suggest I could keep the old phone, while using the new one. That just sounds like adding clutter to my life and ultimately creates more technology garbage. Phones are easy to come by, when my old phone dies I’ll get a new one.

The short life span of technology is perhaps good for the manufacturers of this technology - but it is terrible for the planet. Like it or not, my occupation and lifestyle requires me to use these gadgets - I can’t think of a way around it as I live in this society and times (if I was using Victorian era gadgets, I could adapt gadgets to my needs and fix them as required). Still, I get frustrated whenever my technology dies a few years after I got them and I won’t be replacing things until they die.

Note: the picture came from here.

There's a hole in the middle

Where will these guys go?

Here is my slightly depressing view of what's happening in the Arctic which mainstream news seems to be ignoring (this is just my opinion).

Two stories recently came out about Prime Minister Harper's plans for the Arctic - both of which I find disturbing. The first is the announcement of a new Arctic research station with priority on resource development. This announcement came as news of another Arctic research station, one that focuses on climate science and is much cheaper to run, is closing due to canceled funds.

The second is the announcement of a new national park, Naats'ihch'oh National Park Reserve, NWT. This park's northern boundary is deeply indented to allow for mining exploration. Is this new park for wildlife? Or was the park established so roads can be built for mining exploration and development? Talk about a subsidy to the mining industry if roads are built on someone else's budget. The result is a mostly-protected watershed (86% according to Parks Canada's website) - which doesn't sound protected at all. An industrial accident could easily contaminate the whole watershed.

I can't help but think our government views resource development as the only important thing the Arctic offers. Right now, we have an opportunity to learn from our past environmental mistakes and protect a large contiguous wild space. This is a rare opportunity in human history. Here are my two good reasons to care about the Arctic that are relevant to those of us who live further south and there are plenty of other good reasons.

All our oceans are connected. The Arctic Ocean acts as a bridge between the Pacific and Atlantic - waters from the Pacific flow through the Arctic Ocean and exit into the Atlantic, plus some Atlantic water circulates through. While water is in the Arctic Ocean the cold modifies it, cooling it down and making it salty by brine rejection from sea ice. The result is denser water. This cold, dense water sinks when it reaches the Atlantic, making the Atlantic one of the two places deep ocean water is formed (Antarctica is the other place). Warm return currents, like the Gulf Stream, replace this sinking water, while keeping Northern Europe warm.

Let's say we heat up the Arctic Ocean to the point where all the sea ice melts (this summer is already on its way to the history books as a minimum for pack ice). This melted water may still be cold, however it will be fresh. Since fresh water is less dense than salty water, it may just float on the surface spreading out across the Atlantic. The surrounding land masses (Europe and North America) would experience a cooler climate. This is an extremely simplified view of the result of warming the Arctic.

Second, although plenty of wildlife survives in the Arctic, the food web there is relatively simple compared to southern ecosystems. At each level in the food web there may only be one or two species. This simplicity means that if we drive a single species to extinction (for example, by building a mine or a highway over a traditional migration path, or a chemical spill, or siltation destroying fish spawning habitat) the food web could collapse.

Already, a changes in top predators (if we ignore that humans are the true top predator) is occurring - polar bears are giving way to killer whales. Shrinking ice will only make life harder for the polar bears since they will have to migrate farther from pack ice to shore each year. This is particularly tough on cubs which lack their parent's endurance. All life in the Arctic will be forced to adapt to a reduction or loss of pack ice - or go extinct.

For those who don't care if there are any animals in the Arctic, plenty of animals migrate to the Arctic each year for rich summer feeding grounds - if these feeding grounds are changed, who knows what the impact will be. Imagine the Arctic with luxuriant vegetation in summer - Snow Geese likely will benefit and their population will swell. That may have an impact on grain farms in the south - even today geese raid fields to get extra energy for their migration. But hey, why worry - the mining and oil industry is making money.

Why don’t we just stop resource development in fragile places - or at least take a good look at what the impacts will be instead of just putting our heads into the sand? Just because a resource is present, it doesn't necessarily need to be pulled out of the ground for short term gain (money). Instead of looking to extract more resources like fossil fuels, we should look at ways to reduce our reliance on them. Ultimately, keeping a place wild is a good enough reason to protect our Arctic. We cannot develop mines and industry adjacent to every wild "park" and expect life to thrive.

Note: the picture came from here.

My difficulty with poems

My favorite artwork by William Blake

I’m going to go on a big tangent here... I generally don’t like poetry (does that reduce my sophisticatedness?). I have friends who love poetry. One has gone on to get an advance degree in poetry of a specific era, another can recite long poems while simultaneously hanging out of a cherry tree plucking the fruit. I’m not like them; if I’m reading something and find the author added in a poem for some reason, I skip it. A book of poems I wouldn’t even open.

This is my only poetry exception (you can skip it if you like):

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

These are the first four lines from ‘Auguries of Innocence’ by William Blake and I love them. Years ago, I saw Sting claim he came up with these lines for one of his songs on an Oprah interview. William Blake wrote this in 1803 - years before Sting (I’m still baffled Oprah didn’t call him on it, I would have but maybe that’s why I’m not on TV). There is much more to the poem, it seemingly goes on forever - the rest can be found here. I must admit I’ve not read the whole thing.

Also, if a story I’m reading breaks out into a few lines of song (like Lord of the Rings does) I skip that too. However, I like some song lyrics, which is kinda like poetry - except without the expectations I built up about poetry from high school English. I used to top my high school physics classes without difficulty, but for high school English I had to put in tones of work just to get by.

Anne Lamott in her book Bird by Bird has summed up the view high school English gave me of poetry: “Think of those times when you’ve read prose or poetry that is presented in such a way that you have a fleeting sense of being startled by beauty or insight, by a glimpse into someone’s soul.” It sounds lovely in concept, but high school English had tests where I needed to come up with the right interpretation, rather than my interpretation.

Reading poetry became hard work as I felt I needed to look for deep meanings under every snowflake - accepting a snowflake as being just a snowflake (as they are wonderful) just wasn’t allowed.

Ironically, I currently live in a neighborhood where all the streets are named after poets.

The artwork image came from wikipedia

What will change?

I’ve been thinking about how my life will change with the addition of a child (she’ll be here in roughly 3 months). The baby part is flat out scary. I expect that for a while my life will center around sleep deprivation and bodily fluids. But, after that, how will my life be different? The real answer is that I simply don’t know - but I can ponder the idea.

I don’t live a wild and crazy life, so there are no wild parties for me to give up (I never enjoyed them anyway). I don’t base jump off high-rises or go spelunking in unexplored caves. I’m not in the army anymore - there are no more late night calls where I have to pack my dirty laundry and head off somewhere potentially life-threatening. Overall, the danger in my life is minimal.

Once I’m past most of the sleep deprivation (does the sleep deprivation ever really end?), I'll continue my focus on science. In fact, since I’m super lucky to have a supportive supervisor and committee - being a grad student offers me a lot of flexibility for the next few years.

I usually spend about a month a year in the field, sometimes a lot more and sometimes less. For this summer’s field work someone went in my place (at 7 months pregnant no one thought I should go) and I don’t know if I’ll manage field work next summer. One of the things I like about the science I do is the field work so I hope to resume field work sometime in the future. However, I am thinking of putting a three week cap on the length of individual trips.


When I was a kid I drew and created things. I tended a sub-plot in my mom’s garden where I grew zinnias and beans plus, I kept chickens. I spent endless hours exploring my forest and local beaches including watching the critters there. I read voraciously about adventures and nature. I even wrote stories and kept notebooks full of observations and ideas. I still do all of these things and all of them can be done with a child.

I suspect that my life is about to fundamentally change, but in a lot of ways stay the same.

Image is from here.

Getting tangled in jargon

A crab drawing of mine - completely unrelated to the text

Since I spend most my days with people in ocean science and people who have been around ocean scientists long enough to understand what they say, I often don’t notice ocean science specific jargon as such. I got caught out the other day using ‘water column’ when asked what I do - I didn’t even realize I was using jargon until she said she didn’t know what that meant.

Imagine you are out on the ocean on a rubber raft. If you looked straight down over the side, from the surface of the water all the way down to the bottom would be considered the water column.

On another note - a blog post I wrote about how we measure temperature in the ocean has been posted here.

Apollo 18

Apollo 18 never happened – originally it was scheduled to land two people on the moon for a three day stay. Apollo 18 and future manned moon missions were cancelled due to budgetary reasons meaning, Apollo 17 was the last manned mission to the moon in December 1972.

I watched 'Apollo 18' last night as snow, and the threat of more snow, prevented our expected dinner guests from arriving. The movie became the alternate evening entertainment. 'Apollo 18' is from my favourite genre – space horror (zombie movies are my second favourite – I have some unsophisticated tastes). This morning I was still thinking about the movie and it isn't often that I keep thinking about movies after they are over. By the way, I might give away the ending here.

The movie is presented as a series of clips from the Apollo 18 mission to the moon. It's presentation is similar to 'The Blair Witch Project' – which made me motion sick when I saw it in the theatre. 'Apollo 18's' clips were better executed, thus easier to watch and they maintained a nice 70's vibe to the footage. I think real moon footage was included. The cast was small and centred around the one guy orbiting the moon in the command module and the two guys camping out in the lunar module.

Apollo 18 is a secret military mission to the south pole of the moon which is why the public was lead to believe it was cancelled. The lunar module ends up landing only 2km from an ill fated Soviet mission's lunar module and frozen cosmonaut remained (in reality the Soviet's never made a manned landing on the moon). The astronaut's mission goes downhill from this discovery.

There are aliens, which I thought were handled well. We never find out why they are there or what they really want. They aren't humanish, nor do they speak English. We don't even know if they really are evil, although that is implied. Also, the physics of space was handled well (I never expect it to be perfect) and air was a serious issue.

Over all I liked the movie even though a lot of the reviewers didn't. I was left with one big question at the end, how did they recover the film?

As a tangent, I would be seriously on edge camped out on the moon even without strange things going on. Any creak or groan of the lander would put me on high alert as I'd be well aware that if something did go wrong there would be no one coming to save me. At least when I'm up in the Arctic, I know that if something went wrong rescuers would come - eventually.

Shiny Shoes

A look at my red shoe polish

Last week I went walking in the rain wearing my black leather shoes. Predictably, my shoes got wet. As they dried salt stains appeared, creating jagged white lines across the dull black leather. I’m not particularly fussy about my footwear, however, I want them to look well kept. So, I dug out my shoe polish tin and brush to return the shoes to their uniform black state.

As soon as I twist open the lid, the shoe polish smell takes me back to when I was in the military. Boots polished to a glossy shine was required back then - a feat that included a time-consuming regimen of spit and polish. I never really had the patience to keep my parade boots to the required shine as I always could think of better things to do. As a result, I suffered the consequence of not having shiny enough shoes more than once. I do however, have no problem brush shining my shoes to preserve the leather and keep them black.

The few moments it took to blacken my shoes started me to wondering: what is shoe polish anyway?

From wikipedia: Shoe polish is a waxy paste or cream to polish, waterproof, restore the appearance and extend the life of leather footwear. Originally concocted from wax and tallow, generally people made their own shoe polish. Tinned shoe polish took off during World War I as suddenly there were hordes of soldiers who needed to shine their shoes. Recipes for shoe polish have evolved by going into the realm of industrial chemistry. Now they are composed of a multitude of ingredients including naphtha, turpentine, dyes and gum arabic. Clearly modern shoe polish is flammable (I wonder if it would work as a fire starter in the event of an apocalypse as I have several cans in the house).

Again according to wikipedia, banana peels can be used to shine shoes - who knew? So banana peels can make my shoes shiny, what can make them black?

There is a recipe made from olive oil and lemon juice here, again lacking a blackening ingredient. A recipe more along what I would expect can be found here. These directions use: charcoal (what makes the polish black), hard soap, kerosene (still flammable), citric acid and liquid paraffin. More recipes can be found here. Since I have lots of shoe polish at the moment, I haven't tried any of these concoctions - yet.

As a tangent - I polish my black shoes with red polish (the tin calls it 'mahogany') from time to time as I like the rich colour the red adds. I always feel a little naughty doing it as I was only allowed to use black polish on my army boots.

The talking crow

A picture of a crow - but not the talking crow

“Wanna ball,” demanded a small metallic voice. I stopped peddling my bike to put a foot on the ground and look around. I was alone on the road, not even a car to be seen. It was near the end of summer in the early 80's. My precious blue bike had been bought for me at a garage sale for twenty-five cents – the kind I had to peddle backwards to brake. All summer long, I rode my bike to the corner store, the swimming hole and anywhere else I wanted to go. On this particular dusty hot day, the kind signaling the approaching summer's end, I was biking along Headquarters Road, a rural road lined with fields of yellowed grass circled in barbed wire fences.

On a wire nearby, perched a crow looking me in the eye. He fluffed up his glossy black feathers and tilted his head. “Wanna ball,” he stated, as though voicing a common crow need. I stared at him, which he took for encouragement to continue. “Wanna ball, wanna ball, wanna ball ...”

It was getting late; as curious as the crow was, I needed to get home. So I balanced my bike and started to peddle away. The crow took flight, landing on the fence a short distance ahead of me, continuing to make the same demand. As I picked up speed, he just flew beside me in silence. The crow followed me all the way home (I guess he thought I was hiding a ball somewhere). Once we reached my house, I told my mom about the bird. She didn't believe me, and I don't blame her based on my overactive imagination, until the crow demanded a ball from her. 

Thanks to G.Hanke for the crow picture (I didn't have a camera back then)

nature at the back door

The monster-from-a-horror-flick stage 

of a lady bug's life

In my office, I've arranged it so that from my desk I look out into the backyard. My husband and I have removed most of the lawn and whats left contains more clover than grass – which the neighbour's bees love when it's blooming. Raised garden beds now dominate the space. In the spring, I'll plant them with veggies. Right now, they contain remnants of last summer's garden – kale, parsnips and turnips ready for harvest. Plus, one bed is currently home to our crazy chickens (crazy because as soon as one catches sight of me, they all come running). We also have berry bushes and herbs waiting for spring.

Now that there is a variety of landscape, nature has moved in (we don't apply any nasty chemicals in our yard). I've observed the full cycle of a ladybug's life from it's monster-from-a-horror-flick larvae stage to its glossy-red-poka-dotted adult stage. Jumping spiders and bee flies visit, neither of them stay still long enough for me to get a good photo. A hummingbird has taken up residence in the holly behind the fence. A Bewick's wren raised a family in a pile of cedar branches which we almost carted off to the dump (we noticed the birds just in time). I'm looking forward to the day I see a garter snake move in to help with the slugs. Someday, frogs would be nice too.

Producing tasty fruit and veggies is my goal for the backyard, but, it's nice to see creatures finding a home in my yard. Even in winter, lots of creatures are making use of the yard.

Swamp Water

Home for many microbes

On a whim, I did an internet search on 'swamp water'. What came up included alcoholic drink concoctions and a 1941 movie based on an earlier book which looked like more of a drama than the potential horror promised in the title. No search result came up for swamp water as the random mixing of soda pops (which always came out brown for me because of the necessity of root beer). When I was a kid, I looked forward to any opportunity to mix pops and called it 'swamp water'. I did an informal survey of friends, and I'm not the only one who made swamp water, in fact, a few friends admitted they still do it, especially with slurpees. It even turns out some kids today are still making swamp water.

Speaking of kids and swamp water, I ran a group activity for kids last week on microbes (specifically the oceanic variety, although discussions didn't go that way). I borrowed a microscope and brought in water wrung out of my aquarium's filter, otherwise known as my in-house swamp water. The whole activity reminded me of when I was kid and my science-teacher father brought home a microscope from work for me to use. All the little critters out of my aquarium's filter became visible to me.

We haven't always known about microbes. Anton van Leeuwenhoek (I have no idea how to pronounce his name) discovered these tiny life forms everywhere in 1675. For his discovery, he used a microscope of his own design – one of the earliest microscopes. By definition microbes are simply creatures you need a microscope to see, and they typically form the base of an ecosystem. According to Wikipedia, many blame the failure of Biosphere II on an improper balance of microbes. Microbes are incredibly useful: they are required for brewing, wine making, baking, pickling and fermentation; they play a role in decomposition of organic matter; and they aid our own digestion by synthesizing vitamins and fermenting complex carbohydrates into digestible form. Microbes aren't all beneficial, in fact, many infectious diseases can be attributed to them.

My favourite of the aquarium-filter microbes are amoeba, partly because I can identify them and partly because they lack a definable shape. They are moving blobs that use their blobiness to envelope their prey. Amoeba were discovered by August von Rosenhof (another name I can't pronounce) in 1757, a surprisingly long time after the discovery of microbes especially considering how ubiquitous they are (in every aquarium I've ever had amoebas have flourished).

With the exception of amoeba, I can't identify specific microbes. They are hugely diverse: there are ones that swim like snakes, ones shaped like tiny ovals zooming around, and ones formed as large blobs that change shape as they move – plus many more. And this is just in my aquarium (which was originally seeded from local pond water). What would I find in my soil? Under the oak leaves in the park nearby? In a tidal pool? How about in my kitchen sink's drain? I'm always amazed by the diversity of critters right under our noses (or even in our noses). We live in a wild place.

Down on the beach

Breaking waves on a sandy beach

I took a group of students down to a local beach last week – it turned out to be the only day that week that poured rain (I often have that kind of luck). As the students were doing their work, I walked up and down the beach to check on them. Since I was dressed for the rain I didn't mind the weather, in fact I found it pleasant to be away from my computer for a few hours. In addition to my rain jacket, I wore my rubber boots so I could walk through the shallowest waves and feel their strength tugging at my ankles. Okay, the real reason I wore my rubber boots was because they were dirty and I hoped the wave action would clean them.

Most of the beach was cobble, that is, composed of golfball to baseball sized smooth stones. With each step shifting rocks allowed my foot to sink in a bit, it almost felt like I was wading. Off shore, breaking waves (less than 1 metre) formed perfect curls along their tops before crashing down. Beneath the crashing waves, rocks tumbled with the moving water adding their own sound to that of the waves. Constant wave action was moving the rocky beach, in fact, all beaches exist in a constant state of change. At different time of year a beach may look completely different. In summer, gentle waves bring more sand on shore while in the winter, larger waves can remove the sand entirely.

Beaches are made from loose sediments like rock and sand or even ground up hardened lava (Hawaii has beaches like this) that are deposited. A sheltered place in between headlands is ideal as the headlands will take the brunt of wave energy. Beach sediments can originate from a far off river or from right close by. The cliffs overlooking the beach I was on provided all the sediments needed for the beach to form.

As a tangent – my rubber boots are now nice and clean.

No zombies here

Do zombies eat popcorn with their fingers? No, they prefer to eat fingers separately.

This post has nothing to do with zombies, I just heard this joke the other day and found it bizarrely funny. I guess there is no accounting for my taste in humor. Instead of zombies, I’m going to write about lee waves as they are cool (in my mind) and I gave a talk about them recently. Lee waves can be found everywhere if you know what you are looking for. They lurk in your sink, form over mountains and even beneath the ocean’s surface (I wouldn’t be surprised if they can be found out in space too).

Topography, like mountains or under-sea ridges, affects the flow that passes over it. Fluid (air or water) in the lower layers is pushed up the windward or upstream side where it squeezes in with the upper layers causing the flow to speed up. On the lee side, flow slows down again and a disturbance to the flow is formed. This 'disturbance' is often a wave that travels in the opposite direction of the flow. When the speed of the flow and this wave are the same, the wave is stationary and called a lee-wave. (ever notice a bump in the water right below a weir? It’s a non-linear form of a lee wave called a hydraulic jump).

Lee waves were discovered by glider pilots in the 1930s. If a glider catches a lee wave in the right place, the unpowered aircraft can gain significant altitude. All these early papers are in German, so I don’t know what these early pilots had to say about lee waves, my guess is that they found it pretty exciting. As a teenager, I regularly flew in gliders – which typically included a full day of pushing the glider around on the ground and about 7 minutes of actual flight time. I loved it. We flew out of a field on the prairies in Alberta, too far from the Rockies to gain altitude through a lee-wave.

A soon as lee waves were discovered, scientists started looking at why and how they form. The theory requires looking at the Navier-Stokes equations – a mighty difficult task which only recently became doable with computers. As an alternative, lab experiments were conducted. These experiments (and there was lots of them) offered a straightforward way to look at the factors influencing lee wave formation – combinations of the obstacle height and width, and the fluid velocity and density. Once this parameter space was full, it could be used to predict real world phenomenon.

Ocean lee waves are common and in shallow waters and beneath them a significant amount of turbulence is created. Oceanographers can look at them in detail using current meters (I don’t think there is an equivalent measurement instrument for the atmosphere yet). Because of the augmented flows and turbulence, the sea floor under a lee wave makes great habitat for critters – especially stationary filter feeders, as a buffet of tasty treats is whooshed by.

Filter feeders are often also builders, such as coral reefs, glass sponge reefs or even mussel beds. Sometimes the structures they build can intensify the turbulent flows they moved there to take advantage of. They can add to the roughness of the bottom (thus creating more drag) or even make the slope steeper. A steeper slope will result in a steeper lee wave, steeper lee waves may even break (remember the hydraulic jump?) creating even more turbulence. More turbulence means more food can be churned through the water giving the filter feeders more to eat.

As a tangent: this is post number 100.