utenzi

I needed to walk a MTA form over to the Technology Transfer office Today. Since that's on the other side of campus from where I work, I did the walk at lunchtime and combined the walk with a side trip to the Battle Branch Trail . The picture there to the left is the Forest Theater, slightly ice covered at the moment. Getting that picture was a mite treacherous due to the fore mentioned ice. In case you're curious, Battle Park is named for Kemp Plummer Battle. Who the hell is he, you ask? He was president of UNC from 1876 to 1891. And yes, that was a long time ago. This second picture shows the trail I was walking on. I didn't have much time so I just looped around on the Deer Track Trail, and then got back to the lab lickity-split. The trail was very icy but except for the hilly sections, the footing wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Still, I wish I had been wearing hiking boots. I didn't fall but I did slip around a bit and it was because I was wearing smooth...

This has been one long and very hot week. The temps have been hovering near 100 the past few days and might have hit triple digits once or twice. Walking across our hilly campus today to drop this weeks worth of books off at the library got me soaking wet with sweat. It's brutal out there! The books on the left are the ones I'm bringing back. I'm going to take out a few more by Karin Slaughter. I'd read two book by her before but hadn't remembered her name. Now I'm going to read her books more systematically. Back to the weather topic: while I might complain about the heat, the pictures below are of people who really should complain. Construction workers and athletes that have to train outdoors. I took the two pictures while walking across campus. The UNC football stadium is having some cosmetic surgery and this is a bad summer for it. At least if you're doing the work. I'm glad I was just taking a mile and a half walk. Doing real labor outside is just ...

I ride into campus to work each day on a bus. Sure, it's the "green" thing to do but that's not really why I do it. The real reason is because there's virtually no on-campus parking for regular workers and what is here is extravagantly expensive. Why, you ask? Because the entire time I've worked here there's been at least 5 buildings going up at any one time. And since there's not much open space on a campus this old, those buildings are frequently going up on what used to be parking lots. But at least the top administrators, doctors, and students have places to park. Thank heavens for that. ;-) Nothing green about all that damn construction. Hell, it's not even easy to walk across campus. You constantly have to take short-cuts through buildings to avoid fenced off areas. Seeing such a large amount of construction makes it difficult to believe that the state is in such a budget crisis. Of course it's a lot easier to remember when you glance at...

Ty Lawson and Tyler Hansbrough lead Number 3 UNC past Number 6 Duke. Again. Lawson scored a game leading 25 points in a game that was dominated by UNC at the start. Unfortunately Duke grabbed control and overcame a 10 point deficit to gain the lead through the nasty middle of the game but UNC finally took back the lead to silence the Cameron Crazies with a score of 101-87. It was a good game, well illustrating the intense sports rivalry between the two schools. A rivalry that HBO Sports is exploring in their new documentary BATTLE FOR TOBACCO ROAD : Duke vs. Carolina. The show premieres Monday, Feb 23rd at 9PM EST. Be there or be square. And don't forget to watch the next UNC game either. It's an away game at Miami and starts at 7:45 pm on Sun, Feb 15. Speaking of HBO, I was watching one of thier "free weekends" a month ago and was quite impressed with their series Big Love . Not so impressed with the series Flight of the Conchords . Both were rolling out their new se...

I read an article in the Durham paper today about a bus that UNC supports to aid applied science education here in NC. It really sounds like a great program and I've got a portion of the article below. Go to the address listed at the end if you want to read the entire article. You'll need to sign up on their page if you do that but it is free to do so. This is the website for the Destiny program . The site is interactive and very well coded. This program started in the Spring of 2000 with a 5-year grant for $1.6 million from Glaxo Wellcome. This money paid for a 40-foot bus, full of state-of-the-art equipment for wet laboratory experiments, Internet exploration and carefully honed curriculum materials as well as funding to run the program for the 5 years. Since that original funding, the program has continued and due to the popularity of the program a second bus has been added. Additional funding has come from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Aeronautics and Space ...

On Sunday my girlfriend and I decided to do some walking for exercise and to look at the lovely scenery that a blustery day in early March so readily provides. LOL Well, this might not be the best time of the year for scenery but we dressed warm--it was 40f and very windy--so it wasn't so bad. We first went to UNC in Chapel Hill since I had to drop off some things at my lab. We parked on one end of campus--and parking was already becoming difficult due to a HUGE basketball game being played later that day. The game was between the UNC Tarheels and their crosstown arch rivals the Duke University Blue Devils. In the spirit of things, after Ren and I walked across the campus of UNC, we drove over to Durham and walked around on the Duke campus. Ren, being a UNC grad, shivered a bit here and there. I think it was the prospect of actually walking in the land of the damned--but maybe it was just the blustery wind. Here's a picture of a duck we came across in the Sarah Duke Gardens. Fo...

Here's two pictures I took a few days ago when we got some snow here in Eastern NC. By northern standards it was a laughably small accumulation but that's not how it seemed to people here. A lot of people didn't go to work and many schools canceled classes. The picture below is where I work at UNC. My lab is on the second floor. It'd been snowing for a couple of hours by the time I got into work but only about an inch was sticking to the ground in Chapel Hill at that point. It kept snowing for another 3 hours then transitioned into freezing rain. Since I grew up in upstate NY it all seems silly to me. We'd not have a delay in school even if a foot of snow dropped overnight. About the only thing that would delay or cancel school was if it got real cold. Once it got more than 30 degrees below zero (farenheit) the furnaces had trouble keeping up and they'd cancel. It's rare for the temperature to drop below 10 degrees here. By contrast, the town that I grew up...

I was watching a basketball game the other day (UNC defeating Clemson 77-55) and I was contemplating how the announcers would often remark on a player's focus when shooting from the free throw line. It reminded me of a conversation I had with my brother regarding Tiger Woods last summer. He mentioned how focused Woods was when approaching the tee and I said that it was quite possibly the opposite. From what I know of how the brain works--and that's definitely not my area of expertise--one of the dividing lines between talented amateur athletes and the professionals is probably how much the professionals can avoid focusing consciously on their activity. I know that sounds stupid but hear me out. We tend to think that we control our body's movement. Sure, there's a lot of evidence that events take place that way. We want to raise an arm--and that arm goes up. Wink an eye or tap a toe--same result. That sounds pretty convincing. A simple version of how these things take pl...

Yesterday Ren and I walked across the UNC campus , which she once attended, and took in the sights. Since the kids are still on Winter Break it was pretty quiet. To the left is a picture of an old goat. It seems an odd statue to have around but according to Ren it's actually a male sheep (who would pick a sheep for a team mascot???), not a goat. That's the football stadium that you can see behind the goat Ram. The picture below is from the Arboretium. It's a Chinese Fir and was quite striking. I'm afraid the picture just doesn't do the tree justice. Sorry, tree--I tried. These next two pictures are of Ren and I at The Old Well, which is a landmark at UNC. I'm the one with the camera bag on my back. :-) This last picture is here due to Carmi . He likes to post pictures of grungy industrial looking pictures so here's an example of that sort from UNC. It's the air treatment plant behind the hospital at UNC. The Belltower, another famous landmark, is just...