Harvest Moon, originally uploaded by Matthew Singer. Beth, one of the photo club members and employee at the Prichard Art Gallery downtown, mentioned at our last meeting that a student was in town with the current exhibit at the gallery. He didn’t know anyone and was desperate to hang out with people his own age. So we got a group together last night and hung out around the town. I thought the visiting student was an art student, but it turns out he’s actually studying conservation biology and had spent some time working environmental education. And, he’s from Maine. Well…
Out of nowhere, our dog population has increased four fold. Here’s the back story. Several weeks ago, I came home to find two extra dogs at the house. They were two German Shepherds, a male and a female, that Erin had decided to watch for a friend while she got on her feet and found a place to live with her dogs. Four big dogs in our tiny house is a bit much, and it didn’t help that the two we were watching were very active. Lana, the female, is a very nervous dog, especially around men, and she…
Spring is officially here on the Palouse, as temperatures soar to almost 80 degrees and graduation season is upon us. The University of Idaho had its commencement yesterday, though I did not attend. This marks the end of my first year in graduate school, and so far it has been a success. But this summer, I’ll be finishing up some projects in the lab and really hammering out ideas for my own disseration. Of course, the summer is not completely for work. I’ll be planning a few backpacking trips and other expeditions to explore the landscape around me. The real…
It’s hard to imagine what America’s prairies looked like when they were unspoiled. Today, more than 95% of our prairies and grasslands have been repurposed for agriculture. The last remnants are so highly fragmented that it’s a fight to keep non-native invasive species from taking over. Prairies and grasslands were once thought to be ecological wastelands, a monoculture of grass with not much productivity. From a distance, the prairie might seem like a boring place. But up close, prairies have the capacity to harbor more diversity than some forests. To really appreciate all that these grasslands have to offer, it’s…
This semester, one of my classes has required me to turn in all of my assignments in LaTeX. LaTeX (la-tek) is built on TeX, a typesetting language meant to produce beautiful documents reminiscent of the days when papers were printed from engraved plates. Typesetting was an art that got lost in the digital age. When I first got the news that assignments were to be handed in using LaTeX, I admit I was a bit worried. The assignments were already going to be difficult enough since it is a bioinformatics class working with data types I have not…
Somehow, I had arranged the semester to be fairly light allowing me to work on my research. I was only signed up for one class, the work of which parallelled the work I have to do for my degree, namely write up a dissertation project proposal. On top of that, I was slated to teach one lab section, so overall my class and teaching load would be light. Funny how things actually work out. I am taking 3 classes, though one not for credit, and teaching two sections of lab. 314 lab isn’t really that bad, it’s all computer-based, but…