Miscellaneous Harvest Stats

A longer post updating you on the current status of the soil survey will be forthcoming, but here, a few amusing (and perhaps terrifying) numbers to sketch the picture. All values are accurate to three decimal places. Totally. We're doing super-precise science here!


Number of able-bodied assistants: 2
Hourly wage of able-bodied assistants: Higher than NSF pays graduate fellows
Enthusiasm of able-bodied assistants: Off the charts
Volume of music played in the lab by able-bodied assistants: Dunno, but it's *loud*

Max number of soil cores processed in one day: 39
Soil cores processed to date: 163
Soil cores remaining: 91
DNA samples taken: 1632
Anticipated end date: Wednesday -- two weeks ahead of schedule!

Hours per day Holly spends at the microscope: 8
Car Talk podcasts listened to at the microscope: 7
Number of times Kid Cudi's "Up, Up and Away" has played on repeat on my iPod: 217
       (Yes, I can get a little obsessive.)
Number of Rutgers football games listened to on the radio: 1
Number of Rutgers wins listened to on the radio: 0
Percentage of workday calories comprised of chocolate: 97%
       (Also I think I ate three plums and a banana.)


I was starting to have dreams about meat again, but luckily J. arrested my rapid degeneration into protein deficiency by suggesting Indian takeaway on Thursday night.

In other adventures, I have learned that the proportion of drivers who like to honk at running girls is substantially higher in Chch than in SF. (Today's mile times averaged 7:45 so I'm heading in the right direction!) And that, according to J., I drive a standard transmission "better than expected," but "can only improve from here."

Have I mentioned that J. is a pretty laid-back and super-accomodating guy?

Baby, we were born to run!

I have a really clear memory of the first time I ran as a deliberate exercise.

Looking back, I had always been a runner in some way. I was the kid at recess who sprinted back and forth on the field just for the joy of it. (Luke and Danny will appreciate that, after Dad read Jurassic Park to me, I used to pretend I was a velociraptor on the hunt. Surprisingly enough, I was not a particularly popular child.) I always ran the full set of laps on field day, and, err, I suppose I chased a few boys around the playground as well.

But then one day, Mom took me to the fitness club with her. Usually, we'd go inside for a few laps in the pool, but this time, for some reason, we went around back to a few jogging trails. Mom settled in for a brisk walk and said, "Why don't you run some, Holly?"

Off I went.

The girl who quit gymnastics and basketball, who dodged wiffleballs instead of catching them, who didn't learn to ride a two-wheeler until middle school, and who couldn't swim the crawl without drowning herself until last year... That girl had finally found something that would stick.

Let the record reflect that I outran this thunderstorm home. :)

The Squeeze Theorem

If you haven't heard me talk about the navigational applications of the Squeeze Theorem before, you've been missing out.  (Hey watch it, I can see your eye-rolls!)

For those of you who didn't take, or don't remember, first-year calculus, the Squeeze Theorem is a mathematical nicety that helps you if, say, you need to know what value a function (a particular type of equation) will have as a variable on which it depends goes to infinity (i.e., as you take the limit).  If you're lucky, you don't need the Squeeze Theorem, and you can calculate the limit directly.  But if you can't perform that calculation, you might be in luck if you know that your function is bounded (i.e., always bigger than one thing, and smaller than another thing) by two other functions that go to the same limit.  That is to say, your function of interest gets "squeezed" to its limit by the bounding functions.  Ta-da!

All right, that whole paragraph was utterly useless (and probably not mathematically accurate).  But the Squeeze Theorem, that most glorious concept, is not!  Because, you see, the Squeeze Theorem is vitally important to everyday life -- specifically, to finding your way around in strange places.

Consider the following:

• You are Holly.
• You want chocolate.
• Chocolate occurs in discrete patches.  For example, in Ghirardelli Square, at the tip of the San Francisco peninsula.
• Therefore, if you head generally North while in the city (creating your own wandering function as you do), and do not swim across any bays or oceans (your bounding functions), you shall reach chocolate.

I've used the Squeeze Theorem to find chocolate, and also to burn it off (it worked remarkably well during long marathon-training runs in Boston, which, like any decent city, has a river to aid in bounded navigation).  And my friend Adam has reported that it works rather nicely in Minnesota, where the land is so flat that you can see your boundaries for miles (never mind that those boundaries happen to be ten miles apart).

And, wonder of all wonders, it turns out that Canterbury plans are the perfect for some Squeezing.  Allow me to present photographic evidence:

Imagine you are biking along a perfectly anonymous road.  You are surrounded by cropland, and it's very flat (i.e., the plains of Canterbury).

Perfectly Anonymous Road

 You might think you are lost.  But no!  Simply look left, then right!

To your left, some power lines (which are a useful North-South
bound once you get the hang of the place), but more importantly,
the Southern Alps!

To your right, the Canterbury hills!

Now securely bounded, you know you are traveling Southward!  Don't ask me how far apart the hills and the mountains are... that's why I've memorized road names. :)

How to Get Raccoon-Eyes in Two Hours

I was feeling a bit down after my tour of post-quake Christchurch last Saturday (and after spending $40 -- $40!!!! -- on a pair of hiking socks), so I hopped on a bus out to the coast.  After living for a year literally on the water in Woods Hole, I find nothing so soul-restoring as the ocean.

Perhaps the easiest beach to access by public transportation from the heart of Christchurch (read as: The only beach Holly has yet accessed by public transportation from the heart of Christchurch; any tips Liz?) is out at New Brighton. 

It feels like a truck going by...

The first time I ever felt an earthquake, I was perhaps five or six years old, in Los Angeles visiting my grandparents.  I remember thinking that a fully-loaded eighteen-wheeler must have driven by the house, a sufficiently frequent occurrence that I wasn't alarmed at all.  That quake didn't do any damage -- nor have any others I've subsequently experienced.

Perhaps for this reason, I'm characteristically oblivious to earthquakes.  Last year, Tad (my Ph.D. advisor) was giving a lecture when suddenly the room fell silent and someone said, "Was that an earthquake?", and the projector began swaying.  As the TA, perched in the back of the room, I hadn't felt a thing.

But here in the Christchurch area, everyone is finely attuned to any movement of the earth.  And so they should be -- a big quake in September, 2010, damaged many buildings in the heart of the city.  The first time I visited New Zealand, three months later, I walked around a Christchurch liberally decorated with caution tape, bracing steel, and a few security fences.  Still, I got a chance to see a beautiful city teeming with life.  I bought the ring that I wear everyday in Cathedral Square, toured the Botanical Gardens, and saw an exhibition in the Arts Centre.

11 December 2010.  On the left, the University of Canterbury's former campus,
now the Arts Centre.  On the right, the Christchurch Cathedral.

Because I spent only one day in the city, I admired the iconic Christchurch Cathedral from afar, figuring I'd have plenty of time during later trips to get the inside tour.  Unfortunately, this was not to be.

In February 2011, almost one year ago, Christchurch was rocked by another quake -- this time, in the middle of the day.  This time, 181 people lost their lives, and the Cathedral's tower fell.

Today, the heart of the city is cordoned off for repairs, most -- if not all -- of the buildings are sealed shut, and every doorway still bears the spraypainted marks of the crew that cleared it after the devastating quake.  I felt like a voyeur photographing the city when I returned to it yesterday.  Although commerce is springing back in the form of brightly colored shipping containers-turned-temporary storefronts, the streets are only lightly populated.  Most of us seem to be tourists, taking silent footsteps and saying little, awkwardly pointing cameras at piles of bricks and twisted metal.

Left: Chain-link fences block pedestrians from entering the heart of downtown.
Many of the buildings there are still dangerous, especially since aftershocks are
still being felt every day.  On the right, Summer 2011 ads still mark this storefront.
The spraypaint on the glass marks the building as cleared, by a New Zealand team
four days after the earthquake.

The Shipping Container Mall.  Business must go on -- in this 
case, with typical kiwi flair.  Within this one block, you find
an enclave of commerce in an uber-modern setting.

And yet there is the sense that life is resilient, that it goes on.  I cannot imagine the feelings of the city's citizens, if I, who saw the place only once before, feel so utterly heartbroken by what I saw when I returned.  It seems... wrong... to feel such strong emotion about it, since I am just a visitor here.  I feel like an imposter, with an inappropriately keen sense of empathy.