An Ash tree on Cumberland Avenue that is being used to test for the presence of Emerald Ash Borers (Agrilus planipennis). The USDA is conducting the survey. More info about the survey here.

If you see what look like purple kites stuck in trees it is probably the USDA counting Emerald Ash Borers.

Windmills belonging to the Somerset Wind Farm. I snapped this photo on June 1st from a rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike as we drove to Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania to attend the funeral of Sara's Grandfather, John Laughlin.

Yesterday on the way to dinner Sara and I discovered a tiny little Eastern Cottontail in the road. It was limping on one of its hind legs. A passerby mentioned that they had seen another one in the area earlier, so I suspect a dog or other predator flushed a nest.

We were uncertain if the mother was still alive, and the kit was injured even if the mother still lived, so we decided to take it to get help.

We brought it home and placed it in a bin with some hay. It survived the night and we took it to Wildcat Wildlife Center just up IN-25 near Delphi. They will set its leg and tube feed it until it is well enough to be released.

Senator Barack Obama speaking at at Jefferson High School on April 10th. Sara and I managed to find some balcony seats way in the back. Sorry about the photo quality.

Nota Bene: I am going to start posting some backdated log entries.

The queue for tickets to Senator Barack Obama's town hall meeting tomorrow night at Jefferson High School.

Sara and I got up early and drove down to IUPUI for the 3rd annual Darwin Day conference held by CFI Indy. That event seems to go further downhill every year. What began as an interesting event with nuanced presentations and debates has degenerated into a boring training session for primary school teachers looking to collect certificates and graduate credit.

The primary reason that I returned this year was to hear Richard Carrier Talk about the creationism vs. evolution debate as it played out in ancient Rome 1800 years ago. Unfortunately he was sick and unable to attend. We did watch a video version of his lecture which was interesting even though there was no opportunity to ask questions.

Many of the other morning presentations, such as a hokey speech by a gentleman dressed as Charles Darwin were torturous to endure. In addition the conference was also plagued by technical issues most of the morning. As a result Sara and I bailed out before noon. Supporting the science of evolution is one thing. Wasting an entire Saturday on a poorly executed event is quite another.

Fortunately not all was lost. On our way out of Indy we noticed that The Flying Cupcake Bakery was open. We had been by before, on the recommendation of braingirl, but their hours are somewhat sporadic around the holidays so we had never actually made it in. We are glad we made it in this time. We had delicious gourmet cupcakes for lunch.

Later that evening the behavioral neuroscience crew got together to check out the newest bar in town, the Black Sparrow. It is a nice place with a very artsy/hipster feel to it. You can tell that the owners put thought into the design. There is lots of stencil art. Live DJs are common (The Soul Stewards played that night).

The cocktails are modeled on drinks popular during prohibition. Many contain whiskey and bitters of some type. Feel free to check out my photos of the evening including Sara's arm wrestling victory.

Sara's mother and sister visited us on the weekend of February 23rd. The girls had their hair done at Christina's Spa. They all came back looking even more lovely than usual.

After their spa session we stopped by the Purdue Armory and caught the tail end of the 2008 Rube Goldberg High School Regionals.

On February 24th we had some people over to make pizza's. They were delicious and fun as always.

Just last night we stopped by campus to hear Artist Ken Rinaldo from Ohio State talk about his Autotelematic Spider Bots. He has some weird artist ideas about trans-species communication and what constitutes consciousness, but the art was interesting.

The spider-bots seemed to do an OK job of avoiding one another and the walls, but it was evident that he hadn't worked out a number of important engineering problems such as battery life. I suppose that is why he is an artist and not an engineer.

Photos of the spider-bots are in the usual place.

February is a very boring month. There are a lot of hours spent in the house trying to avoid the cold. The motivation to go out and find interesting things to do drops in proportion to the temperature.

Nature did provide something interesting with a total lunar eclipse on the 20th.

Before that Sara and I celebrated Saint Valentine's Day with a nice meal and a quiet evening at home.

Concerning chestnuts:

We all know that early in the 1900s the American Chestnut, castanea dentata, was almost wiped out by a fungal blight. A while back I learned that there has been some significant progress made in breeding the few remaining American Chestnuts with disease resistant Asian Chestnuts such as Castanea Crenata and Castanea Mollissima. These hybrids appear to be disease resistant while tasting more or less like original American Chestnut.

Of course, I simply had to try a food that almost went extinct. I bought a pound or two of these chestnuts from my local grocer. I had intended to eat them with my family over Christmas, but the time never presented itself. So I decided to roast them after the holidays back at my house.

I expected them to pop while roasting in the oven. However when they didn't I chalked it up to their loss of moisture because it had been more than a week since they were purchased at the store. This was a dumb move on my part. I pulled them out of the oven, set them on the range, and, figuring that they weren't getting any hotter, began to inspect them with my face about half a meter away. This was an even more dumb move on my part.

As Murphy demands one of the chestnuts chose that precise moment to explode in my face. I am very lucky that I didn't suffer any eye damage. After I realized that I wasn't hurt I began laughing and Sara grabbed the camera for documentation. If you click on the picture you can get a nice large version showing bits of Chestnut flesh in my hair.

The Kinzig Lab has a postdoctoral student named Sam from northern England. She and her fiance, Chris, decided to get married on the 28th in superior court six in the Tippecanoe County Courthouse.

Sara and I attended and acted as witnesses. We also baked cupcakes for the reception that night at O'Bryan's Nine Irish Brothers.

Christmas 2007 was a great success. This year we spent the majority of the holidays with my family.

OK, these updates are coming in a completely random order now. On October 27th Sara and I braved the cold to watch the dedication of the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering.

Because of Purdue's long history with the space program sixteen astronauts attended the dedication including:

• Neil Armstrong
• John Blaha
• Mark Brown
• Eugene Cernan
• Richard Covey
• Drew Feustel
• Greg Harbaugh
• Michael McCulley
• Gary Payton
• Mark Polansky
• Jerry Ross
• Loren Shriver
• Janice Voss
• Charles Walker
• Don Williams
• David Wolf

It was moving to see so many parents holding their children on their shoulders so they could see the Astronauts.

Gene Cernan, the most recent man on the moon; Dr. France Cordova, Purdue's new President; and Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon spoke.