berry go round 2
The second edition of Berry Go Round is up at Further Thoughts. I’m not in it this time, but it’s still fantastic. So go get your plant lovin’ on!
My two favorites are this post with incredible pictures of fiddleheads and this detective story about the sandpaper plant.
who’s gonna die?
Nothofagus dombeyi, or coihue, is a large tree that grows in the Andes. In the late 90s, northern Patagonia was hit with a pretty severe drought that killed many of these trees. So what was the difference between the trees that kicked it and the trees that are still going strong?
Some trees constantly live with higher water stress than others. This is usually due to where they’re growing. If a tree is on a particularly steep patch of ground, the water runs off before it can suck it up. If a tree is growing in shallow soil or on a very sunny slope, it’s going to be a lot thirstier than your average tree in the forest.
The authors of this study thought that these trees might be the ones to be hit hardest during the drought since they were already stressed. They also considered the possibility that the trees growing in more water stressed areas are different and better able to cope with drought. The trees used to the good life might have invested more in their tops than their roots, which could be bad news in a drought. A tree with a smaller root system might not be able to suck up enough water to support all its branches in a very dry year.
The authors also wondered if there were a way to look at a tree and use where and how its growing to predict whether or not it will survive a drought.
So, what did they find?
let’s get lucky
This is the first in a series I’m going to do with my differential equations notes. My teacher just phrases things perfectly…
Why I like zappos
A pair of boots I bought in China have recently begun to leak. They were worth about $70. They lasted me 1 and a half winters of good wear and half a winter of rather uncomfortable and slightly damp wear. So I decided to invest in a nicer pair. I wanted something warmer than the synthetic liner of my old boots. I wanted something taller – I was sick of snow in my shoes. And I wanted something a bit nicer looking.
Then I found these. They fit all of my requirements and at at almost $100 off, weren’t totally out of the range of what I was willing to spend (though a bit out of the range I could actually afford…). So I bought them and got the free standard 5 day shipping. Then Zappos sent them to me, at no extra charge, overnight.
So I wore them around the house for an hour and fell in love with how comfy they were, then wore them to class. In class, I noticed that the zipper had FALLEN OFF one of them. Who knows how. So I called Zappos and asked about exchanging them. Not only were they incredibly nice and understanding, they overnighted my new pair to me and gave me a gift certificate. Plus the exchange process is very very easy.
I bought a pair of shoes from shoes.com earlier this year and they didn’t fit. I didn’t bother returning them because I didn’t have the time to hassle with their exchange/return process for a sale shoe.
So, if you need new shoes, go to Zappos 🙂
unpublished
My school newspaper recently published an article on the debate surrounding Roe v. Wade. I wrote a letter to the editor in response. It was not published. This confused gem about “liberal politics” did make the cut, though. While I’ve discussed most of the things I bring up in the letter already on this blog, I think it’s a decent summary of a big problem in the abortion debate.
Anti-choice activists claim that they are trying to save lives by fighting to make abortion illegal. In fact, criminalizing abortion does not reduce abortions; it kills women. A study published last October in the Lancet found that abortion rates were not affected by its legality. Some may argue that criminalizing abortion is the right thing to do even if it does not actually affect abortion rates. This stance is inhumane. Almost 70,000 women a year die from unsafe illegal abortions. A year after Nicaragua placed a blanket ban on abortion Human Rights Watch published a report, “Over Their Dead Bodies,” documenting the results of the ban. This report found that women were dying because of the law. Many pregnant women with complications are afraid to seek treatment in case they are accused of attempting to induce an abortion and doctors are not giving abortions to women who will die without one. If anti-choice activists were truly “pro-life,” they would join hands with the pro-choice movement to promote policies that reduce unwanted pregnancy – comprehensive sex education in schools, forcing insurance companies to cover family planning services and providing public funds for this effort, and ensuring easy access to emergency contraception. Unfortunately, most anti-choice activists do not support these actions. Like many religious fundamentalists, they seem far more concerned with controlling women and punishing them for having sex than saving lives.