Sweet, Chocolate-y Victory!!!

Last night marked The 1st Annual Tucson Homebrew Chef Competition. Experienced brewers from all over Tucson presented their best porters and stouts in a blind taste-test to a panel of world-reknown experts for rigorous and grueling comparison.

... Okay, so actually this was a house-party competition between 6 good friends. Coley and I brewed a beer together, and four of our other home-brewin' buddies each brewed their own competition beer. And around 60 of our collective friends came to judge (and drink lots of free booze).

Each party-goer ranked the five beers on appearance, aroma, and flavor (with the results from each of those categories being given increasing weight in the overall judging). Coley and I brewed a mocha porter, in which we used fresh, dark french roast coffee beans and dark organic chocolate. We messed up the brewing process and accidentally made it too thick and rich (didn't quite sparge enough), getting just over 2 gallons out of what was meant to be a 5 gallon batch. Our friends' brews included a chipotle-pepper porter, as well as one with maple syrup, vanilla and nutmeg.

In a surprise underdog ending, Coley's and my beer really cleaned up, sweeping each of the three categories as well as best overall brew!

Our prize was this awesome NASA stein (circa 1990). It has relief pictures of the first steps (giant leaps) on the moon, astronauts after a victorious landing in the ocean in rubber rafts, and a majestic scene of a rocket taking off into space. Having this prize come home with us is kind of ironic, considering we were the only contestants who don't study astronomy for a living. Of course, those guys will have the chance to take it home after The 2nd Annual Tucson Homebrew Chef Competition....

As we've only been home-brewing for about a year, this accomplishment is really a milestone for Coley and me. I must say, we never would have come this far without all the tutelage over the past year of our expert-brewing astronomer friends. We recognize that we have stood on the shoulders of giants.


Recipe for Suz and Coley's Mocha Porter:

Grains:

• 11.25 lbs American Pale 2-Row
• 13 oz English Chocolate Malt
• 6 oz Carapils
• 4 oz American Black Roast Malt
• 1 oz American Roasted Barley

Hops:

• 1 oz Northern Brewer Hops
  
• .75 oz Cascade Hops
  

Yeast:

• California Ale Yeast

Extras:

• ~ .5 lbs. Dark French Roast Whole Coffee Beans
  
• ~ 1 (small) stick of Newman's Own Dark Organic Chocolate
  

Let it Snow

On December 21st, my friend Sarah sent me this picture from a snowstorm that day in Massachusetts.


I was horrified! From my sunny home in Arizona, this looked like a totally different planet to me. It was hard to imagine my friends and family were really experiencing this kind of weather while I could step outside in a T-shirt to check how the jalapeno pepper plant on my stoop was growing. I worried about traveling home for the holidays. A wild ice storm might tear the wings off of my plane, which would then burst into flame mid-air and crash horribly to the ground. Or my dad's car could get buried in a snow drift on the way to pick me up at Logan airport. Or I might be lucky enough to make it home, only to get snowed in with my family. Stuck indoors, we'd die of starvation, and cobwebs would grow on our skeletons sitting by the fireplace with its stockings hung there with care.

On the phone, I told Sarah I was scared of coming home to all this snow. "Suz!" she scolded me, "you grew up here!" She was right that I was being ridiculous, of course. I made it home just fine and had a lovely Christmas with my family. The weather has actually been pretty mild, and even sunny my first few days here. Yesterday, my dad and I went cross-country skiing and snowshoeing respectively through the woods behind our house. We went over snow-covered eskers and past bubbling brooks, crossed those New England stone walls and through open pastures. It was beautiful! Now there's a fun outdoor activity you can't do in Tucson.


You can take the girl out of New England, and she might think New England is taken out of her.... until she comes home for a visit and remembers the totally different kind of beauty belonging to this place.

Incidentally, I g-chatted with another friend named Sarah today, who is a Tucson native and spending her Xmas there. She said that yesterday, it snowed in Tucson!

Wave of the Future Hits Geology, Baseball

One of my new geoscience friends was recently explaining to me a paradigm shift in the way people think about paleoclimate, from the way "The Old Guard" does science to the way "The New Guard" is doing it. Broadly speaking, The Old Guard sees a qualitative trend in some paleo data, and uses scientific intuition, developed over years spent in the field, to make some sweeping claims about the mechanism causing the observed effect, and that's that. But according to the New Guard, that's not enough anymore-- mechanistic hypotheses must be rigorously and quantitatively validated, or at least constrained. Climate modeling must be used to test one's claim to see to what degree it is consistent with the evidence in the data.

I couldn't help but automatically compare this New and Old Guard of geoscience to the evolution of statistical thinking in baseball (as cultivated by Billy Beane, and explained in Michael Lewis' book Moneyball). The old-school managers and scouts look for players with qualities like "a great body" and "good face" who embody their vision, from their years of experience, of a great ball player. Managers who espouse the new, sabermetrically-inclined view discard these traditional values. Instead, they do studies of the statistics of ball players to see which ones actually translate into wins for the team. Then, if they can find a fat player (and thus undervalued by the old guard) with a high OBP (which would manufacture more runs), then they can get this guy on the cheap to make their team stronger!

Now, this ain't a deep comparison by any means... I'm just excited to see people in all fields improving their field with some serious mathematics! Math is the wave of the future!

Self-Proclaimed "Mountain Snob" Cut Down to Size by Colorado Ranges

DURANGO, CO--

Suz Tolwinski, a resident of Tucson, Arizona, was recently humbled by mountains she saw during a one-month stay in Colorado. Tolwinski's permenant residence in Tucson is to the south of the Santa Catalina mountain range, which appears to have endowed her with some sort of expertise as to what constitutes "real" mountains.

"Usually, I scoff at the so-called 'mountains' championed by residents of other parts of this country," explains Tolwinski. "I was just camping with these other two chicks in Acadia National Park in Maine, and I'm like, dude, you call these things here mountains? Psshaw, more like molehills! And when I was driving up to Colorado through New Mexico, my car's engine barely noticed those Sangre de Cristo mountains. I mean, that range is really some weak-assed shit."

However, since her trip to Colorado, Tolwinski now admits to a new feeling of humbleness with regards to the rugged landforms. "When I turned the corner on I-25 near Denver and caught sight of those snow-caps, I nearly peed my pants," the 26 year-old said of her first view of the Rocky Mountain range. "These mountains could totally kick the Catalinas' butts, hands down. I mean they are, like, waaaaaay fatter and waaaay higher." Tolwinski's assessment is likely true. While the Catalina mountain range stretches along the northern length of the city of Tucson, and reaches a maximum height of 9,157 feet above sea level, the Rockies span nearly 3,000 miles from British Columbia to New Mexico, and top out at an elevation of 14,440 feet above sea level.

Tolwinski mentions the impression made on her by Coloradan mountains on her way out of the state, as well. "So like, I'm driving over this one range today, and when I cross to the other side of the peak- get this- it's FREAKIN' SNOWING. It's in the dang 30's, in the middle of August, with these icy hail-balls all over the road and my car is slipping all over the place. But by the time I get to the bottom of the mountain, it's like, back up in the 80's," Tolwinski said of the San Juan Mountains, part of the western slope of the Continental Divide.

Despite her exposure to mountains grander than the Santa Catalinas, it appears unlikely that Tolwinski will stop trash-talking other mountain ranges anytime soon.

Yeee-haw from ol' Colorader!

I'm in Boulder, Colorado for the month, collaborating with the super-nice and super-inspiring climate modeling experts at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). And it's impossible not to enjoy this visit. Boulder is liberal, outdoorsy, and hippy-ish, and at the same time well-to-do, posh, and yuppie-ish. So everyday I get my eyes full of gorgeous views of the Flatirons, and my lungs full of fresh air, while riding my bike to work on the safe network of wooded bike paths. But I can also enjoy quality sushi, first-rate cocktails, easy-to-find vegetarian food, and tours of charming historic hotels. The photo at right is from the NCAR website. It's completely impossible to do photographic justice to the setting of the lab, on top of a mesa and in front of the Flatirons, but their photographers got closer than I can.

This past weekend, Coley came to visit. We enjoyed the bars and restaurants at the vibrant Pearl Street pedestrian mall, a brick walkway where there's always something going on. In fact, usually, many things are going on there at once. In one weekend, we saw a street performer who can tell you the tiny bumpkin town you come from if you just give him the zip code (in foreign countries, too!), a Beatles cover band, live break-dancers, and young children climbing all over animal statues and playing in the water fountains. And that's just a fraction of the non-stop action that goes on there on any given summer day.

Coley and I also took a scenic drive up into the mountains. In just 45 minutes, we climbed almost 4,000 ft. up to the town of Ward (Coley's last name-- and soon to be mine!). We took the Prius up the mountain to get to this town, whose population was recorded as 169 in the year 2000 census. But there was no shortage of hardcore Coloradans biking from Boulder, to reach the 2 general stores and myriad lovingly- made junk sculptures that comprise this town. From Ward, we oogled the snowcaps on neighboring mountain tops for 20 minutes as we wound along the scenic peak-to-peak highway to Nederland. Nederland is another small mountain town, but at least this one had a video rental store, a couple restaraunts, and a supermarket. After exploring the reservoir there, we headed back to Boulder in half an hour through Boulder Canyon, following alongside the river that had carved out our path.

So there's no shortage of quiet boondocks and natural beauty around here, and also no shortage of social city fun. The only complaint anyone seems to have about Boulder this time of year is the heat-- but you won't hear any moaning from this Tucsonan!

My First Tattooing Experience...

...was my best friend Megan's fourth tattoo. Megan just finished her second year of medical school, and is rightly very proud of her achievement. To celebrate, she decided to get a swoosh of colorful stars bursting from her waist, down around her back and onto her "hiney." (That's how Megan and her med school buddy Shali kept referring to this region of her body, and so that must be the proper medical terminology.)

Look how excited Megan is (above right) before the tattoo dude pulled out any needles!!! I thought I was going to be really grossed out at the whole process, and possibly pass out on the floor. But actually it wasn't so bad. The tattooist was very professional and listened to all Megan's design requests, and told her when he was about to go over the most sensitive areas (the little bit over her rib cage seemed to be the worst part). Even during those parts, Megan didn't scream or cry. Instead, she repeated, "fire, fire, FIRE!, fiiiiii-yrrrrre!!!" Apparently some of the colored ink felt a little like burning.

Here's some proof that I was there and had fun watching, and totally didn't puke or pass out:
And here's (maybe the upper two-thirds of) the finished product!!! Megan loved the way it turned out. Each of Megan's tattoos tell a story about the time in her life that she had them done. The exuberant design of this one reflects her feelings of accomplishment at this stage of med school. I am so proud of her for all the work she did to arrive where she is today. In the next 2 years of her school, Megan does clinical rotations, where she gets to actually interact with patients and doctors and learn in a more hands-on way. She kicked ass at the book-learning part, but I'm excited that she's onto a part of the process that she will actually enjoy. GO MEGAN! You are so awesome (and now everyone who sees your hiney will know)!

A Step into a Russian Fairy Tale

Today, my brother Greg has invited all his friends to "step into a Russian fairy tale" at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. I really wish I could be there. My brother is a talented pianist, and he and two fellow musicians are putting on a program of music by Sergey Prokofiev. In Greg's words,

"The program will include the whimsical second sonata for piano and violin, the tenebrous opening movement of the fourth piano sonata, selected movements from the sonata for two violins, and a small handful of shorter works, including a selection from the ballet Cinderella arranged for violin and piano."

Prokofiev is Greg's favorite composer (and mine too, but I just take all my cues from big bro). "Proky," as we call him, lived from 1891-1953. His music bridges the end of the romantic era and the beginning of the contemporary era of music, really in such a badass way (example: the Allegro Marcato movement of Prokofiev's Badass Piano Sonata No. 2, played here by Yekaterina Ervy-Novitskaya) In addition to some piano pieces Greg has played, I am most familiar with Prokofiev's compositions for the ballets, Romeo and Juliet (which Greg took me to see at Lincoln Center for Xmas), and Cinderella (in which I once got to dance the title role!). (Here's a waltz from Cinderella, which may be included in the arrangement Greg is playing tonight-- St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.) In the former ballet, Greg always points out how the beautiful melodies are tinged by foreboding hints what's to come later in the story. Even the girlish, innocent themes when Juliet first enters the stage are laced with a haunting, dark feeling, a theme Greg tells me is typical of Russian fairytales. (Would love to link to some audio of that, but Greg stole that CD of mine!) Greg can explain how Prokofiev creates those kinds of effects musically in terms of the harmonies... and stuff.... but, that's about as good as I can recap.

My big brother analyzes music brilliantly and passionately. When we both lived in the same house, he would often sit me down by his side and turn on a recording of a piece, and we would follow the score along together as we listened. Greg would tell me interesting things about the structure of the pieces, and what he loved about them so much. One time, while teaching me about fugues, he made me raise my hand everytime I heard a variation of the theme come in. I consider myself lucky to have garnered a deep appreciation for classical music in this format. I am so proud of Greg for finding a way to share his passion with the rest of the world, too. If he sends me a recording of his concert tonight, I can't wait to post his music here, so even more people can hear it!

One of the two images in this post is a rendering of Sergey Prokofiev by Henri Matisse. The other is a photo of my genius brother. Guess which is which!