Knifeplay

Tandem Telemark skiing: ski ballet’s gay little brother.

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:12:57 -0700

Tandem Telemark skiing: ski ballet’s gay little brother.

Coffee consumption reduces risk of prostate cancer in men

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:30:57 -0700

Coffee consumption reduces risk of prostate cancer in men:

This preliminary study out of Harvard Medical School completely validates my lifestyle.

Mountains cause brain damage? (duh!)

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:32:46 -0600

Mountains cause brain damage? (duh!):

Here’s a recent article in Outside documenting how rapid changes in altitude have been shown to cause brain damage in some otherwise healthy individuals who showed no signs of illness (e.g. AMS, HAPE, HACE) otherwise. The damage can occur even at moderate altitudes like 14,000-15,000 ft. Apparently amateurs don’t spend the time necessary to acclimatize on mountains like Rainier and just shoot up in two days, potentially leading to enlarged VR spaces (like in Alzheimer’s patients) or even partial frontal cortex atrophy (dead gray matter). Whoa.

Skiing robot rips through gates. That’s the craziest...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:53:49 -0600

Skiing robot rips through gates. That’s the craziest f!@#$%ing thing i’ve ever seen. [Courtesy Lou Dawson’s Wildsnow.com]

Cody Townsend rips an unbelievable couloir in TGR’s...

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:51:31 -0600

Cody Townsend rips an unbelievable couloir in TGR’s Re:Session. I would kill to know where this is. It almost looks like the Wasatch, but can’t really tell.

The new Sweetgrass joint “Signatures” will be...

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:57:48 -0600

The new Sweetgrass joint “Signatures” will be playing at Bent Gate on October 14. Looks like a heady, new-age, “feelings” kind of ski porn. I’m goin’.

You know things are bad in Iran when...

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:56:27 -0600

You know things are bad in Iran when...:

The Iranian Minister of Science has had a 2009 paper retracted from the journal Engineering with Computers because a significant portion of it was plagiarized from a South Korean paper published in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.

This [cellphone] picture gets me so amped. I was out for a ride...

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:19:19 -0600

This [cellphone] picture gets me so amped. I was out for a ride on friday night when I came across this herd of elk right next to Hwy 40. It’s a little fuzzy, but the elk standing up is a 300 class 6x6, watching over his cows. Elk season is in two more weeks for me, and I think i should just stay in town!

I just returned from a week-long sampling trip up in Wyoming....

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:25:00 -0600

I just returned from a week-long sampling trip up in Wyoming. Gillette is boring as hell, and once you’ve been to the best restaurant in town (twice- i recommend the ribeye) there isn’t much reason to stay. Except, that I had to. So I went out to rigs drilling new CBM wells to get coal samples as they drilled through the coal zones. This wasn’t so bad, but then i started filtering from existing wells. This takes all day, and is exceedingly boring. Unfortunately, you have no idea what you’ve got until you get the filter back to the lab, spend weeks working up the sample, then do the math. So it may be that all that time was wasted, or maybe it will be the work we need to finish this particular project and get it published. Here’s hoping!

Trailer to the new Powderwhores production “Flakes”...

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 14:55:00 -0600

Trailer to the new Powderwhores production “Flakes” was released the other day. Just in time to get me so amped i can’t sit at the desk anymore.

Greatest experiment ever

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:50:00 -0600

In 1842 a guy named Elias Loomis performed one of the most ridiculous experiments I’ve ever heard of. In order to figure out the windspeed of a tornado (a hitherto unknown measurement) he needed a proxy- something that had gone through a tornado with a qualitative change. This change, he reasoned, should be repeatable under controlled conditions and thus quantifiable. It had previously been observed by many people that following a tornado chickens could be found completely stripped of their feathers, but otherwise unharmed. Loomis reasoned that if he could figure out at what wind speed a chicken loses its feathers he would know at least a minimum tornado wind speed- a first. So he loaded a six lb. cannon with five ounces of powder and a dead chicken. The feathers were completely blown off of the chicken, of course, but the chicken was also completely blown apart, making the experiment less than valuable. He estimated the velocity of the bird to be 341 mph. Read the full account here.

Interestingly, Kurt Vonnegut’s brother posited that the feather loss was actually due to a chemical response by the chicken to being frightened. This idea gained popularity for a while, but unfortunately makes no sense evolutionarily. In the question of “fight or flight” the chicken could do neither at that point.

never cry shitwolf

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:02:46 -0600

I really look like a dick in the dept right now. I came down on the wrong side of an argument without having the facts straight beforehand. I cried foul where apparently no foul had been committed. Lesson learned. I think George Green sums it up well.

Success: starts with S, stands for Serious

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:32:37 -0600

I found out on Friday that I’ve got to get my thesis proposal done by the end of September. Time to get serious. To that end I went to the library today, from which I checked out 5 things:

1) Proposals That Work [Fourth Ed.]: A Guide for Planning Dissertations and Grant Proposals. by Locke, L.F., Spirduso, W.W., and Silverman, S.J.

2)Writing Proposals [Second Ed.] by Richard Johnson-Sheehan.

3) Writing Successful Science Proposals [Second Ed.] by Andrew J. Friedland and Carol L. Folt

4 & 5) Maps of northern CO for planning elk and deer seasons

There is much studying to be done.

New RPSEA Website

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:57:13 -0600

New RPSEA Website:

One of the PI’s on the project I’m funded through put together a new website for the project. Maybe we should have contacted Chantyce, though I don’t think he tackles un-artsy projects like this.

Betsy McCaughey came running out of the maniac closet last night...

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:00:18 -0600

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1

www.thedailyshow.com

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Healthcare Protests

Betsy McCaughey came running out of the maniac closet last night on The Daily Show. The interview is fantastic because she reads the portions of the health care bill she is so concerned about and leaves you wondering on what basis she is making that interpretation. Turns out, after her appearance last night, she resigned from the board of Cantel, a NJ based medical device company, to “avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.” See the whole story from Politico.

We were going to go to Red Rocks last night for this...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:46:09 -0600

We were going to go to Red Rocks last night for this week’s Film on the Rocks, but it was SOLD OUT! Bummer, I know. So we decided to add it to our summer film series, “Homoerotic movies in our backyard.” We get the projector from the dept office, hook it up to a laptop, and project the movie on a sheet hung on the back of the garage. Last week, “300”, next week: “Days of Thunder.”

Lance posted this today, spot on.

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:07:58 -0600

Lance posted this today, spot on.

Vintage 1950’s kayak roll. That’s got to be one of...

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:44:23 -0600

Vintage 1950’s kayak roll. That’s got to be one of the hardest things to do in a boat.

August drops

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:33:26 -0600

I went with my kayaking buddy Ben yesterday to Waterton Canyon on the South Platte for some August drops. Nothing else is running this late in the year, and even though Waterton is low now (572 cfs) it still has some nice size drops and waves. I swam the trickiest rapid (Green bridge) on the first run due to a bad entrance line, but we hiked the run for a second chance and I cleaned it (esteem boosting).

Smogcity

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:51:04 -0600

Denver in the summer generally has pretty good air quality as compared to other orographically “low” cities (i.e. Los Angeles, Salt Lake, Sacramento), but sometimes we get ground-level ozone to reach unhealthy levels due to a temperature inversion coupled with negligible wind and a prolonged high pressure system. On these days, it’s just plain gross to look out from Golden over the greater Metro area.

I was trying to explain why you shouldn’t fill up your car during the day to someone the other day and realized I needed a refresher. So I went here.