Smoke trees

Sorry for the misleading title if there are any stoners out there, but in this instance "smoke" isn't a verb.  Our smoke trees (Cotinus obovatus) usually flower and then produce a hazy purple display for days before we notice.  Many of you are probably familiar with the smoke bush (C. coggygria), a fairly common ornamental shrub of Eurasian origin, but for reasons we have been unable to determine, our yard has 4 smoke trees, and they are native (N. Amer.) members of the anacard family (sumacs).  This time of year they put on quite a display that it tends to go unnoticed because it's up there in the crown of these 30-35 foot trees. Our smoke trees have clearly been there for some decades, and around here they are quite uncommon; ours are the only ones we know of in the area. So they are a puzzle as to how they came to be here. The "smoky" display is produced by the persistent, reddish-purple flower stalks of the much branched, poofty (technical term) inflorescences. Our neighbors have the best view, and that's how it goes. Several other ornamentals plants perform better for neighbors than for us.

Algal architecture

Here is a new concept: algal culturing architecture, real green architecture.  Could your abode grow both your energy and your food (Soylent green?  Chlorophytobits?  Algal patties?).  TPP has his own algal culture chamber, our lily-lotus pond (the banner picture shows one end).  And the better the algae grows the faster the greenish-brown, bio-slime accumulates on the filter pads and they need cleaning.  Although curious, TPP has never put the bio-slime under a microscope, but experience with fish tank filters and their microbial communities suggests it will be a microcosm of wee beasties where unicellular algae are the community's producers, although leaves falling into the pond are probably a significant source of energy. The actual problem is that our pond is too productive (and gets too many leaves), meaning more bio-slime, and more frequent filter cleaning.  Clearly some system integration is needed, and if only so that the filters don't need cleaning so often. TPP is happy to give away the "food". 

Maps in books quiz.

Here you go a nice little Friday quiz via the Guardian.
The quiz shows you 10 maps; you pick the book it's from (multiple guess).  TPP got 8 of 10 right, but Mrs. Phactor hasn't reported in yet and she's dynamite with maps, and she's read way more books too ( "That was a hard quiz.

I just got 5 and two of them were guesses!").  Hmm, TPP must read more books with pictures.  Have fun. Report in.

Student debt. Are universities responsible?

Student Debt Isn’t the Problem. Colleges Are.

We need to make universities responsible for their students’ outcomes. It is egregious that students, parents, and taxpayers are the ones who suffer when colleges don’t do their jobs while the colleges in question are left untouched. We simply can’t let them get away with it anymore.

So says Reihan Salam, a columnist at Slate.

Dear Reihan, respectfully, what a tool you are!  Do you think students are purchasing a degree? What do you think our university is an online degree mill?  At real universities you purchase the opportunity to learn, and while we can lead students to opportunities, we cannot learn it for them. 

You see this is the funny thing; when students do what you ask of them, they get good grades, they learn, and when they do this enough they get a degree.  BUT (notice how big the but is) they don’t always do that.  The list of reasons, some delivered with teary eyes, would fill a book. 

In Salam’s opinion, the college “simply can’t get away with this anymore”, students paying money, going into debt, and then not getting their degree.  This is something colleges "get away with"? You know the students who do accomplish a degree actually don't want us handing them out to just anyone who has paid their money.  Does Salam think the university is mugging students, taking their money, and then locking them out of classrooms?  Not providing them with opportunities?  We have students who think like this, and it’s never their fault.  One guy over the course of two semesters gave me the greatest gamut of excuses ever for a single student, and it turns out he was doing this with other faculty, and when we started checking stories he was caught out, and then summarily thrown out, and Salam thinks it’s the university’s fault he didn't get a degree. Now student debt, the result in public institutions of the withdrawal of public support, sometimes over 2-3 decades, sometimes rather abruptly, is a policy decision done with budgets to shift the fiscal responsibility to the student (and their family).  And politicians can do this without passing a bill saying that they're going to do this, and this even allows the politicians to dun the university for raising costs too. And how is it that taxpayers are suffering since the portion of their taxes going to public education has been reduced from 62% to 18% of the costs over TPP's 35 years in the business here in Lincolnland. So Reihan, our university isn't getting away with anything, if fact when you factor in the loss of state support, and the unfunded mandates the university gets handed, the real costs have risen less than the cost of living, and our salaries are proof of this.  Too bad Reihan doesn't understand how universities work, and he should be responsible for knowing because he chose to write about us.  Hope Slate doesn't let him get away with this anymore.  It's irresponsible.   

Addendum - OK, TPP will cut Salam a bit of slack when it comes to student advisement.  Some of it is poor, admittedly, but even good advice is often ignored, and Salam seems to think students arrive at university knowing what they want, what they are interested in, and what they need. 

CHIGGERS! ARRRGH!

TPP hates chiggers; chiggers love him. Hate is a strong emotion, and there are very few things, very few people, that can elicit this emotion. Chiggers make the grade. Now those of you who belong to the PETTM (pet'em - people for the ethical treatment of thrombulicid mites) are just a lost cause as far at TPP is concerned.  An infestation of chiggers is what happens this time of year when you mow the grass, and the ichiest bites are the dozen or so on the insteps of my feet. As a PG (plant gardening) blog, the location of the other primary infestation will not be shown or discussed. It was after all early June, and that's when chiggers appear, that is when the infest-your-body life stage appears.  Turns out tropical Australia has a similar critter that produces "scrub itch". They liked TPP too.  Turns out they like other people even more and at least one biologist seeking plants that produce predatory mite domatia gathered an even bigger population of chiggers than anyone has ever seen before.  His body looked like it was covered with red freckles, that itch. Damn, it was hard to even look at.  So every year it's the same; TPP has to learn an initial lesson.  Turns out Ms. Phactor had forgotten her lessons too.  Wonder about all those neighbors who visited our yard for a picnic?

Ubergeek to dork in a blink

TPP entered his local coffee emporium this morning having ridden his BikeE from home and thus was in need of caffeinated fuel for the rest of the morning. Your position on this bike, while very comfortable, does not allow you to turn around, so you need a rear-view mirror. TPP wears a small rear-view mirror that mounts onto the frame of his glasses (left side). Many people are unfamiliar with such a device, and while waiting for his coffee, another patron, a stylish lady, walked up, looked at my mirror and said, "Wow, someone with Google glasses, right here!"  TPP: Sorry to disappoint, but it's just a rear-view mirror for riding a bike.  Her admiration for my happenin' techiness faded in an instant. What would she think if she knew TPP doesn't even own a cell phone?

Early summer flowering slump

Early June is a quiet time for our gardens; late spring plants are done and real summer-flowering plants just haven't begun. Two weeks ago, festoons of columbine and Mrs. Phactor's iris cheerfully were coloring the garden, and now they are done (time to deadhead the bloody columbine!). This is not now because of our late spring unless the plant died back because of the winter cold.  Right now the deviation from regular flowering dates is less than 2 days. Our last and latest flowering Rhododendron is in flower, but it's usual big display is limited this year to about half a dozen inflorescences. The bay magnolia is in flower; you can smell it as soon as you step out of the back door, an almost intoxicating fragrance. Friends were coming over for a dinner party and it was actually hard to find some nice flowers for a table bouquet.  Finally combined a stalk of a big pink bell flower (C. punctata) with some almost there snowball hydrangea; they look lovely together. First time to try the bellflower in a vase; herbivores have always before eaten it off. All it took were land mines and a deep monster-filled moat to keep the bun-buns away. Waterlilies have started to flower; our pond has 4 varieties, 4 colors. Does it seem TPP complains too much?  Actually, quite a few plants are coming into flower, but in comparison to the profusion of spring it just seems a quite time.  Oh, the lamb's quarter, oxalis, and Asiatic day flower are doing so very well it's depressing. Today the Phactor's are hosting a neighborhood picnic because our gardens are large enough and many of the neighbors seem to enjoy an opportunity to visit once every year or two, and several new families have joined the hood. 

Does a pet share your bed?

A rather shallow study concludes that you get a better nights' sleep if you don't let a pet sleep on your bed.  You must be kidding?  Like it's your decision!  Like it's your bed!  Yes, the kitty-girls do sleep with the Phactors, mostly in the winter, and usually one at a time; most non-sibling cats won't tolerate a second cat on the bed. Tuesday night the cat who is scared of thunder slept with us for comfort as storms rolled through the area.  Last night was very cool, so the cat who likes the warmth of snuggling slept with us. Yes, one of our cats, a big lug of a Maine coon cat used to take up a lion's share of the bed at times and he snored or at least breathed very heavy, and he could push you out of bed too. And one likes to check to see if you are really asleep my poking your nose with her paw.  And you might think that banning such activity would allow you to sleep better, but what planet are you from?  How many times do you think you'd have to throw a cat off the bed only to have them return the second you drift back off to sleep?  Well, cat tossing will keep you busy instead of sleeping.  OK you say, just close the bedroom door.  Sure, if you like sleeping without air flow in an ACed isolation chamber of a bedroom, maybe, but if the Phactors closed their bedroom door, which probably doesn't latch anyways, there would be two cats working very hard, and noisily, trying to open the door, and whining and crying when they can't.  One of our cats is surprisingly persistent and quite confident of her ability to open doors. If pulling doesn't work, try pushing, especially using both front feet.  Jump up and grab the door knob. Pull the door against the jam over and over: bump, bump, bump...  Stand up and use your front paws to scratch at the door vigorously. Try sleeping though some of that. The only thing that TPP can conclude is that this "pets off the bed" advice is from a pet-less nimrod whose knowledge of the real world is so limited that taking their advice on anything is not advised.  Yes, and make sure a soft blanket remains on the foot of the bed because we's likes it there.  Did TPP cover everything?  (A cat is looking over my shoulder, and if this isn't written right, TPP won't be getting a decent night's sleep.)

Making sense of a messy natural world

It's a mess out there!  Or perhaps more accurately, it's complicated out there. Nature involves interactions, and they are so diverse that as a biologist you begin to wonder if you can make any sense of it at all. So two projects are underway to see if some of this messiness can be sorted out. A couple of prairie plants are involved, one being studied by a student and one being studied by TPP and his colleague. In both cases the plants interact with animals in two different ways that together determine the reproductive success of the plant. Both plants require bee pollinators, primarily bumblebees, so plants in a patch sometimes get better pollination by living in proximity to other individuals who help make this a foraging patch that attract more pollinators and provide more pollen to each other. But at the same time, other insects feed on the flower buds, flowers, young fruits, and seeds, and perhaps growing in a patch allows such insects to find you more easily, and that which aids in pollination might be detrimental in terms of loss of flowers, fruits, and seeds. To make matters even more complicated, although not part of this study, our plant is a hemiparasite that requires plant hosts. As you may guess, you expect that perhaps there is an optimal clustering for reproduction, one that provides decent enough pollination but that does not overly expose the plant to the deprivations of other insects, and of course all of this may depend upon weather events and other factors as well. This is why evolution is necessary.  Organisms must be able to adapt to all of this change, this diverse mess of interactions. And if by chance you get any signal at all out of all of the back ground noise, you become quite convince that you have figured out something quite real about how all of this operates. Now multiply all of this by the number of species in the community, and you get some idea about how many interactions are taking place all the time. None of this operates in a clock-work manner, rather out of the whole emerges the appearance of organization. And then you see one more thing, something that you had never noticed before, and you begin to realize that you've just scratched the surface. One of the weevils that feed on the flower buds of this wild indigo are very cryptically colored and it had never occurred to TPP before that it had camouflage coloring. Even a small prairie patch has several lifetimes of things to study. Wait, isn't TPP retired? 

A bit of water relief

Recent rain "events" have simply missed us, so after a pretty good soaking rain almost two weeks ago, we've had virtually none, although people only a few miles away got soaked. In general it takes a minimum of 1/2" of rain a week to keep plants going, and that's well established plants.  New plantings need more, and since our gardens have plenty of new plants, hose-dragging has been a major activity.  A lot of plants are in their growth phase, so now is the time to provide some fertilizer and keep soil moisture at a decent level.  Last night some spotty storms dropped a couple of showers, but only about one quarter of an inch, half of what we needed this week. Of course, rain or the lack thereof also affects our prairie, and two weeks ago we were slopping around in standing water, not the ground looks as dry as a bone. Of course the prairie is still nearly a meter tall in some places, and our plots are getting hard to find. As night time storms roll in, one of the kitty-girls who is scared of thunder usually alerts us to an approaching storm.  Even the water lilies needed some water because the lily pond has to be kept at a certain level to keep the pump and filter system working. Nothing worse than watering your water lilies.