Nippy

Boy it's been chilly in Vancouver. Maybe I've grown accustomed to the nice warm summers we've been having but I thought I sensed a bit of Winter's nip in the air today. It's particularly disheartening when it's wet, cold and still dark out but it's already 8 am.

Yet all is well when I get my early morning cup of hot cocoa! I've weened myself off of coffee. In fact, I get far too jittery to concentrate when I'm cranked up on adrenaline, chronic cortisol and caffeine to top it all off. Right now I'm sipping a large mug of thick cocoa from Soma generously sprinkled with cinnamon. It also takes some of the stress away probably because it's so very comforting.

Lets backtrack for a moment back to the first day of school at UBC--Imagine Day. I bumped into my bioinformatics prof this year, Joanne. She's part of a the Terry Project and was telling everyone about K'Naan coming to the Chan to do a talk/spoken poetry. I went and to my surprise he was extremely humble and so honest that it was really funny. He even did a couple of songs for us. I'd like to quote/paraphrase what he said as he reached behind for his Starbucks, "Now I apologize. I feel like this is the 'justice crowd'," as he raises the cup, "Sometimes you're stuck between your ideals and shit that tastes good."

Watch K'Naan at Terry UBC here.

By the way, Dr. Allen Sens in the video is an amazing instructor and is much more engaging in class. I highly suggest taking ASIC 200. It changed my approach and perception of every socio-economic-scientific issue since then. It forces me to see the bigger picture at all times.

Weekend Birding

As part of my ornithology class, we have to survey the bird population of 2 to 3 areas. While setting up our area at Pacific Spirit Park, we were lucky enough to spot a male Pilated Woodpecker.

*Apparently quite a few people we encountered at that particular park has seen it at one point or another. A few people have even tipped us off about the bird songs they hear that we haven't yet identified--like the Northern Flicker. If you see three girls standing around in a park with binoculars, please come and say hi.

Back in Action

Gee, where did the time go? I swear I had been meaning to blog (and there was so much to blog about!) but I had been so busy. Believe me, I have a million post ideas written down and floating through my mind and it's frustrating not being able to put it all down. So expect a post where it's just photos with short captions.

I wanted to start blogging again with something witty, something catchy and something to set the tone for a new (school) year but that would have taken so much effort. And it's not because I don't have a lot to say, on the contrary, I have too much to say.

"The Unicorn"
-would love to credit the artist but I lost their name so if you know who it is please let me know

Yet instead I felt compelled to post this before it totally slips mind:

Unicorn:

Six Easy (Rainbow Colored) Pieces: Essentials Of Unicorn Physics Explained
by Richard Feynman

Publisher's Note------------------vii
Introduction by Charles T. Unicorn----ix
Moonbow Preface-----------------xix
Feynman's Preface----------------xxv

ONE: Unicorns In Motion (red)
Unicorns: how do they work?
Anatomy of a sparkle
Magic and happiness reactions

TWO: Basic Unicorns (orange)
Unicorns before the internet
Horn particles
The subatomic unicorn

THREE: Unicorns As They Relate To Other Species (yellow)
The lesser ungulates
The horned ungulates
Narwhals: a special relationsip
The pega-corn question

FOUR: Conservation Of Magical Animals (green)
Kinetic and potential unicorns
Unicorn states: full-on double rainbows and more
What happens to prismatic dung

FIVE: Unicorn Theory (blue)
Hoof motion and flight
Jewel's Law
Horn spirals as The Mandelbrot Set
The tapestry experiments
Rainbow Brite: the confusions

SIX: Unicorn Behavior (indigo/violet)
Mane mechanics
An experiment with giggling
An experiment with soft focus
An experiment with manga
First principles of total fucking awesomeness

Epilogue: They'll actually eat corn from your hand!

^ THIS being a comment for a blog post by Dave Ng who is beyond awesomeness. SOMEONE WRITE THIS BOOK!

Dave was my prof for ASIC 200 and it changed my whole university experience. Dave also blogs for the Science Creative Quarterly and has a wicked Twitter account(s). To top it all off, he's part of the Terry Project.

Appeal to your inner nerdiness and indulge in all these links -- I promise it'll be worth your time and you'll feel more intelligent, more socially conscious and wittier after reading.

G-20 Protest Ramblings

Does anyone even know what the G20 Summit is about now? The media has focused so much on the protesting that there is relatively very little news about what the summit is actually discussing. In fact, this post isn't even really about the G20 Summit. It's going to be about the 'hipster revolution'.

[via Philogynist]

Hipsters look like they're intellectual, artistic and well-intentioned individuals who strive to defy the mainstream trends. Yet we'll tell our future generations that back in the day, hipsters are just reincarnations of the 60's hippy and that people will never change.

 Jasmin-O-Saur: fervent advocate of free speech and destroyer of the opposition's signs. File Under: Hypocrisy.

UBC's full of them. For instance: the infamous SDS' (Students for a Democratic Society) fervent and outspoken resistance to the university, campaign to rid Canada of the military [1] and hilarious bonfire next to the grassy knoll [2] which resulted in student arrests. They decried police brutality which is utter blasphemy. These over-privileged kids are so used to complaining that they forgot to propose an actual practical solution. They're so young (in fact, they're a couple of years older than I) that they still hold on to their glorious ideals of world peace. But I must say that these protesters are a step up from the G-20 riots which are not only violent but none of us have any clue what they're actually protesting about...

This reminds me of the protesters that hung giant "Free Tibet" banners across the Golden Gate Bridge. When asked to point out where Tibet actually is on a map, some protesters had no idea. If you have a cause and want to do good in the world, maybe you should spend some time figuring out exactly what the hell you are advocating for before you start making a fool of yourself.

Stop giving hipsters a bad rap.

---

[1] I actually attended the SDS public discussion at UBC about the 'evils of the military' and the 'conspiracy behind it'. Everyone seemed to be invited to this forum so I went with two of my friends who happen to be in the Canadian military. Obviously they didn't show up in uniform. We in fact sat quietly in the back of the room while we listened to them preach to the choir. At the front of the room was a table set up for SDS executives and speakers.

They started the meeting by appreciating the fact that we were on "stolen native land". They passed around a petition that was against the UBC underground bus loop. On the back were valid points on why we shouldn't have this new development. Yet when I watched the petition being passed around, I saw that no one had read it. They just signed--blindly.

As the speakers were talking, I can see heads nod in agreement. I wondered how much these people actually knew about the military and the topic. Then my favourite speaker, whom I affectionately called "Jasmin-o-Saur", stood up to talk. She was passionate but made very few arguments and spent most of her time complaining and accusing. I was infuriated and had to step out of the room to breathe. When I re-entered, she looked smug.

When it came time to ask questions, my friend bravely stood to ask a question. He wasn't angry and the question was valid but it was obvious he wasn't one of them. You can see one of the panelists look in shock and the first thing that came out of their mouth was, "Are you in the military?" It was an irrelevant question. After attempting to dodge the question, my friend eventually answered "Yes" The room was tense and awkward. Since then the tone of the forum had dialed down from extreme to moderate. That sucked. Then they were outraged that my friend had brought along a voice recorder to record this. We were stunned because there were shouts like "This is how the government gets you!" (By the way, these shouts came primarily from guests that were invited to come speak from the US). It wasn't until after the forum that my friend and I spent time emailing and phoning government groups about voice recordings. It turns out that it was ok to record the forum as long as it was a public forum. Well, that was an SDS fail.

Finally when the discussion was over, we all had an opportunity to speak to the guests and panelists. They're pretty chill when they're not all angry. They asked us if we liked the idea of war. No, none of us, not even my friends in the military, like the idea of war. Ideally war would be non-existent but the SDS was asking for a movement to abolish the military. Great; So Canada would be the first and probably the only country to rid themselves of military defenses. Smart move. Oh, and what about peacekeepers?, we asked. We ask our peacekeepers to stand in-between two countries that hate each other and don't give two sh*ts about the collateral.

This is when I legitimately started hating on the SDS.

[2] Then there was the grassy knoll protest. It was the epitome of the 60's protests. People dancing as if they were perpetually high, horrendous live music (honest to goodness bad music), ribbons, tents and hippies that I never noticed on campus before. It was as if you took an old hippy film and have it regurgitate it's contents in the middle of our student space.

As a joke and a statement, some students came out and protested the protest. We were armed with signs like "10 Things Better Than the Knoll" and symbolic shovels. In fact, I had a lot of fun reading the discussion boards and wall of the FB group "Students for Reasonable Protest". Even Emporer Karl Palpatine got involved, srsly. The content of that group was both seriously thought-provoking and ROFL-worthy. Jasmin-o-Saur, who is obviously a big proponent of free-speech, also dropped on by to leave a few... encouraging... words behind.

But I digress. Back to the bon-fire. At night a giant bon fire was lit next to the knoll. I suppose it's some sort of hippy ritual to dance and sing around it. Oh, and did I mention that it was a giant bon fire that was right beneath some dry and very low overhang? When the fire department and police came to put out the fire, the protesters stood in their way (literally). So they arrested them and rightfully so. They were there to save the very knoll the protesters sought to protect. Why would you jeopardize the very thing you want to save?

My First Book

Ok, no, it's not really my first book but I did co-author it with Mandy Chan. It's an educational booklet about the disappearance of bees.

Mandy has much more credibility than I do. She works with Dr. Leonard Foster at UBC on the life cycle of bees. We never actually met each other in the making of the book but we did lots of email :) You can check it out or better yet purchase your very own copy through genegeek.

Nicole also cowrote a book on the Mountain Pine Beetle for educational purposes.

Just thought I would mention that :)

A Day in the Life...

I can't believe this is the last year of our UBC undergrad. Last year, in an attempt to make up for lost time, I did most of the events our campus had to offer (including Storm the Wall & Campus Chase). This is what university life should be: fun, challenging, soul-searching, sweat-breaking goodness.

Oh lab report. Rae's over at my place writing her's. She's accompanied by Quatchi.

Quatchi will also accompany us to Swanguard Stadium in Burnaby for the Easter Seals 24-Hour Relay. Last week we did our first Krispy Kreme sale for Easter Seals at Terra Nova Save-On Foods. Hopefully it's a first of many great fundraisers.

Speaking of fundraisers, come to Doolin's Irish Pub on June 30th for good times and bonus karma points. It's going to be a bar party to raise money for the BC Cancer Foundation's Underwear Affair. Contact me for tickets ($12. Includes a beer & burger) The proceeds go to charity.