Syzdekistan

Recently, we were in Zion National Park and stopped for ice cream at the main lodge in Zion canyon. We were lucky enough to see a Botta’s pocket gopher (Thonomys bottae) excavating it’s burrow in the field near the lodge.

These mammals are high specialized burrowers. They have huge incisors and their lips close behind their teeth so they don’t get dirt in their mouths while digging. Pocket gophers almost never leave their burrows and are rarely seen. They can move with ease backwards in their burrows using their tail as a sensory device. Pocket gophers have large, fur-lined cheek pouches that can be flipped inside out and eat roots and tubers. They can be extremely harmful to agricultural fields but in wilderness areas their burrowing greatly hastens soil formation.

Of course, there were other cute mammals in the field as well:

Technorati Tags: gopher, mammal

While Rob and I were at Defcon, we saw this BMW Z4 with Nevada license plate “NO TAG.”

This reminded me a funny story I once heard. A guy was filling out a customized license plate application and his first and second choices were “BOATING” and “SAILING.” Not having a third choice, he wrote “NO PLATE” intending that if he couldn’t get his first two choices, he didn’t want a personalized plate.

Well, his first two choices were taken so the DMV issued “NO PLATE.” He decided to keep the plate despite the mistake.

Anyway, after four weeks he started getting parking tickets in the mail. Lots of parking tickets. It turned out that when a parking ticket was issued to a car with no plates the officer would write “NO PLATE” in the license plate field. The DMV computers would end up sending him the ticket. Over time, he got over 2,500 tickets in the mail and ended up setting up a form letter to send to the courts to get the ticket removed.

I wonder if this Nevadan hacker knows the story and if he gets tickets in the mail.

Check out the Snopes story here.

This past weekend, Rob and I attended Defcon 16 here in Vegas. DefCon is a hacker conference. While there is a lot of nefarious talks (like how to hack the Boston subway which actually got cancelled due to a lawsuit) at the conference, there is also a lot of cool technology and great security information. Rob and I are both hackers — in the good, taking things apart, and making them better sort of way. We are not crackers who break into systems and do bad things.

We had a great time. We managed to stay off of the Wall of Sheep where people who use unsecured network traffic for emails or logging into websites get their logins and passwords displayed to show everyone how stupid they are using the “world’s most hostile network”.

We drank beer chilled from 80 degrees to 40 degrees in 24 seconds in an apparatus consisting of an ice chest, dry ice, isopropyl alcohol, 20 feet of copper tubing, an air compressor, and a red funnel.

From Warballooning, hacking medical equipment, and some cool hardware, it was a great conference. We are definitely planning on going next year.

I tend to get excited when we have tornados in Nevada. Heck, I get excited when we get clouds. Anyway, there were three supercell thunderstorms near Fallon, Nevada yesterday. Supercells are the biggest and nastiest thunderstorms. They have an very strong rotating updraft that feeds the storm and keeps it stable. Supercells commonly have intense rain, large hail, strong winds, lightning, and sometimes generate tornados.

News reports from the area stated:

A “monster storm” 20 miles wide produced a tornado, rain and large hail Monday in Northern Nevada, National Weather Service meteorologists said. A tornado touched down 5 miles north and west of Fallon, hail an inch around pelted Lahontan Reservoir and heavy rain fell on Churchill and Lyon Counties. No injuries or severe property damage were reported. Meteorologist Scott McGuire said the tornado was reported at 3:34 p.m. north of Fort Churchill State Park. It traveled across Lahontan Reservoir and passed by Fallon before dissipating by 4:45 p.m. A trained tornado watcher clocked the funnel traveling northeast at a speed of 17 mph. McGuire said there might have been more than one tornado in the area. The strength will be assessed by a storm damage survey team today.

The National Severe Storm Prediction center has some cool reports of the tornados, hail, and strong winds.

The storm damage survey team’s initial report (cleaned up for the web):

Public information statement national weather service Reno NV 630 pm PDT Tue Jul 22 2008 …preliminary damage survey results from July 21 2008 storms…

This statement may be updated on Wednesday. Photos from storm spotters and storm track maps will be posted to our website. Visit our website at weather.gov/reno for details. .

General information… Several supercell thunderstorms tracked over portions of western Nevada during the afternoon of July 21 2008…mainly affecting Lyon, mineral, and Churchill counties. Meteorologists from the national weather service in Reno surveyed areas of reported damage and funnel cloud sightings along us highway 50 from near lahontan reservoir through the fallon area and eastward to near Sand Mountain.

Three distinct supercell thunderstorms affected the area:

1) tracking from Schurz to near Sand Mountain (this was the strongest and longest lasting storm of the day), 2) from near wabuska to fallon, and 3) from near lahontan reservoir to west of fallon. At this time based on spotter reports and the damage survey evidence, we cannot confirm a tornado touchdown with these storms. However spotters did report funnel clouds with rotation at the base of the cloud with each of these storms. It should be noted that we surveyed a relatively small area along us highways 50 and 95, which makes it very difficult to definitively say a tornado path occurred. . Storm #1… The storm which tracked east of fallon near sand mountain (#1) produced a swath of hail pockmarks in the mud along highway 50 approximately 20 to 22 miles east of downtown fallon. These marks indicated that numerous hailstones of pea to marble size occurred with this cell, with a number of marks suggesting hail up to quarter size. There was damage to a power pole in this area which appeared to be caused by high winds…however based solely on this a wind speed cannot be estimated. A trained weather spotter located near fallon reported a funnel cloud with this storm, but it is uncertain whether this touched down. A department of transportation employee who happened by the site mentioned flooding had occurred across Dixie Valley road. The ditches along us highway 50 were still full of water this morning, indicating torrential rainfall fell with these storms. .

Storm #2… Straight-line wind damage was noted southwest of fallon in the schindler lane and scheckler cutoff areas. A few trees were blown down with branches torn off. Wind speeds were estimated at 60 to 70 mph. A trained weather spotter reported a funnel cloud with this storm as it passed over fallon and to the north of fallon, however in the area we surveyed we found no indications that it had touched down. The spotter also reported seeing a greenish color to the sky which is indicative of a hail core. Hail up to 1.25 inch diameter occurred with this storm in fallon. .

Storm #3… The storm survey concluded in the vicinity of fort Churchill state park in Lyon county south of Silver Springs, where park rangers indicated a brief period of small hail, but a more prolonged period of heavy rain and strong winds associated with the initial stages of this storm. Only minor tree damage was observed in this area although park rangers mentioned that cleanup had already occurred and that a portable toilet had been blown over in the storm. Based on this information…wind speeds were estimated at approximately 60 to 70 mph.

A couple of thoughts on documenting a tornado. In most of the country, it is fairly straightforward to document the swirling winds of a tornado versus the straight-line winds. However, in the desert, it can be hard to find evidence of any winds. A tornado in a wheat field in Oklahoma would leave lots of evidence but a tornado traveling across desert scrub or a playa would leave little sign of its passing. Also, unpopulated areas have few persons to report a tornado. My point is that Nevada tornados are very likely to go unreported or under-reported.

Technorati Tags: Nevada, tornado, weather

Tonight, I’ve been playing with Stellarium, a very cool planetarium program. It’s an open source program so it’s free and has a lot of features. I really like the view where you can have different culture’s constellations and asterisms portrayed on the stars. It has a night mode if you want to take your laptop out with you. It’s really fun to put the program in equatorial mode, zoom in on Jupiter, and speed up time. You can then watch the Jovian moons revolve around Jupiter, Jupiter revolve on it’s axis, and Jupiter slowly moving across the field of stars. If you do use it in the field, make sure to set your location and check that the time is current.

Free download for Linux, Mac, and Windows here. Special thanks to Small Dog Electronics that mentioned the software in their email newsletter.

My biggest goal in my life right now is to have a species named after me. Stephen Colbert just demanded and got a spider named after him and I think it is my turn.

I’m not against other things being named after me. The most “honorable” way would be to discover a comet. The first discover has the comet named after them. However, it is hard to compete with the automated observatories now. Automated sky survey LINEAR has 236 comets named after it. Honorable may not be the way to go.

My biggest hope for scientific immortality without doing something crazy like groundbreaking research is to find some poor soul describing new species who ran out of ideas for names. Really, something named after me would be much better than a list of tortricid moth species like this:

Eucosma bobana, E. cocana, E. dodana, E. fofana, E. hohana, E. kokana, E. lolana, E. momana, E. popana, E. rorana, E. sosana, E. totana, E. vovana, E. fandana, E. gandana, E. handana, E. kandana, E. mandana, E. nandana, E. randana, E. sandana, E. tandana, E. vandana, E. wandana, E. xandana, E. yandana, E. zandana, E. nomana, E. sonomana, E. vomonana, E. womonana, E. boxeana, E. canariana, E. floridana, E. idahoana, E. miscana, E. subinvicta; Kearfott, 1907

Right now, I have two possibilities. I know two taxonomic researchers. One is doing work on fungus gnats (which include those tiny black flies that appear near over-watered houseplants). He has some specimens from the Bolivian rainforest that he is planning on describing. He is also going to be collecting fungus gnats here in Nevada.

The other possibility is a guy I met doing work on Mexican scorpions. Having a scorpion named after me would be very cool (and the tattoo would be much better) but I’ll be happy with the fungus gnats.

Now before you tell me, “Hey, biologists aren’t supposed to name newly discovered species after their friends. They’re supposed to name them after after some trait of the species.” Here is a whole list of species named after famous people. Hopefully, the situation will be more like:

Sylvilagus palustris hefneri Lazell, 1984 (Lower Keys marsh rabbit) An endangered rabbit named after Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.

and not like:

Malo kingi Gershwin, 2007 (jellyfish) Named after Robert King, who died after being stung by it.

Thanks to XKCD.

Right now, I am going through a morass of strong feelings about our terrible experience attempting to buy two 3G iPhones this morning. I am angry for wasting my morning, and furious at myself for being such a fan boy and convincing three other people to waste their valuable time with me. I am deeply saddened that I don’t get a new toy that I have been yearning for since the original iPhone announcement in January 2007.

However, the thing that really pisses me off is that we did our due diligence. We went above and beyond in preparing for this purchase and still got screwed by AT&T.

Here’s how it happened. Hot Wife’s nephew was going to get an iPhone as a “starting college” gift and I was going to replace my increasing cranky Motorola RAZR phone. Hot Wife gets a nice discount at AT&T through her work, however, she has a wonky account that always seems to cause problems when we try to make changes. After dealing with a number of problems when she got her Blackberry, she knew to anticipate problems.

So yesterday, we all trooped down to the AT&T store as directed in their marketing materials to make sure our account was ready to change out a three year old phone and add a line to the family plan. We ran into some problems accessing the account and eventually we left a message for the AT&T corporate sales guy that Hot Wife has dealt with in the past.

Finally, at 7:30 last night, the sales guy left Hot Wife a message saying that everything was fine for us to change out my phone and add a new one. We were set to go to the store in the morning.

While I took the kids to school, Hot Wife picked up her brother and nephew and got in line about 7:30 AM. I arrived right after 8:00 AM. There were perhaps 70 people ahead in line and the atmosphere was pretty jovial. Store personnel handed out water, the line was in the shade, and it wasn’t too horribly hot. They had about six registers going and each transaction was taking 10-20 minutes.

Now, on the first day of a product launch, I am pretty understanding. I expected to wait in the heat. I expected it to be slow. I was disappointed but not surprised when they ran out of 16GB iPhones. I could settle for an 8GB iPhone.

However, when we got up to the register, everything went to hell. It took her almost 5 minutes to pull up the account using the phone number. OK, the system’s a bit slow. I can deal with that. When she got it up, she said “Sorry, your account is locked. I can’t make changes or add a phone to your account.”

We called the manager. Same story. “I can’t make any changes to your account.”

Hot Wife called the sales rep and I was amazed that he answered. He did most of the talking but the end result was “Sorry, we can’t make changes to the account.”

We briefly discussed Plan B. What if I got a new family account and added the nephew as a second line to the account. We’d forgo the discount but we could walk out with phones.

“Wait a second.” I asked. “If we start a new account, can I keep my old number?”

Again, “Sorry, we cannot make changes to the old account. You would have to get a new number.”

I’m a patient person. I also hate making decisions rapidly. However, giving up on the 16GB black iPhone I wanted and having to change my number I’ve had for 3 years, was too much.” We decided to leave.

Hot Wife has since called AT&T and they have told her “Sorry, I can’t make changes to your account.”

“OK, who can make changes?”

“I can’t tell you but I can have them call you.”

“OK, have them call me. When will that be?”

“Within two days.”

“What do you mean, within two days? Don’t you want to sell me two iPhones and a service plan?”

We’re waiting for that call.

I am still feeling sick to my stomach for what I put Hot Wife and her family through. I really, really want a new toy to play with. My old phone sucks. Despite a brand new battery, it still dies unexpectedly and smells like cat urine (don’t ask how that happened but let’s just say Bluetooth is wonderful).

The most frustrating thing is we tried very hard to do the right thing. We did research, planned and organized. We knew exactly what we wanted. We were polite when we needed to be and direct and forceful at other times. Still, all we got from AT&T was “Sorry, we can’t make changes to your account.”

Check out this great review about a documentary of one of Las Vegas’ most influential and fascinating citizens.

Let’s see … Israeli independence, McCarthy, civil rights, the mafia, Howard Hughes, Watergate … have I missed anything? Probably — he was a crusader against the IRS, he tried to help broker a Middle East peace pact, he owned TV and radio stations here in Las Vegas, and he basically bought up all the land between the Strip and a sleepy little burg called Henderson, the area now known as Green Valley and my back yard.

After seeing the film, I couldn’t help but think that Hank Greenspun in a way was a real-life Forrest Gump, except he wasn’t a passive observer at so many key points in American history. He actually affected it. It’s hard to say how this world would be different if Hank Greenspun hadn’t made that long drive from New York to Las Vegas, but one thing I know for sure — I wouldn’t be sitting here typing this if he hadn’t.

Technorati Tags: las vegas

Over the holiday weekend, I read an excellent book by Mary Roach called Bonk — The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. This very entertaining and often hilarious book explores the physiology of sex and the people daring enough to research sex. It turns out, sex researchers are generally not perverts. The author’s willingness to put herself (and her very understanding husband) into some strange situations and write about it with grace and humor had me laughing out loud and sharing hilarious anecdotes with Hot Wife.

For example, while at a research lab studying sexual response in people with spinal cord damage:

It is a testament to Sipski’s reputation in the the disabled community community that more than a hundred men and women have traveled to her lab to be part of a study. Unless you are extremely comfortable with your sexuality, masturbating to orgasm in a lab while hooked up to a heart-rate and blood pressure monitor is, at best, an awkward proposition. It’s even more daunting when you have a spinal cord injury. Among those who can reach orgasm, it takes on average about twice as long to get there. Though Sipski’s subjects are alone behind a closed door, they can hear voices and sounds on the other side of the wall. They can tell people are out there, timing them, monitoring them, waiting for them to finish.
The people out there this morning are uncommonly disruptive. That is because one of them is me, and because Sipski’s colleague Paula Spath said that by climbing up onto her desk and pressing my nose up to the one-way glass, I could get a peak at the experimental setup. I have on a skirt that does not lend itself to scaling office furniture. I lost my balance and crashed into Paula’s monitor, which slid across the computer it was standing on, knocking off a row of knickknacks and causing Paula to leap back and let out the sort of high pitched exclamation that might more appropriately be heard on the yonder side of the wall. It’s a wonder anyone invites me anywhere.

I highly recommend this book. You can buy Bonk here.