We’re in Madison, Wisconsin

We’re here so that LotStreetWiz can swim/bike/run the Wisconsin Ironman. Various offspring are holding the fort at home.

This time, we drove the short way: through Sarnia and Flint, past Detroit, through Chicago around the southern tip of Lake Michigan, west across the tip of Illinois and north to Madison. I think we’re about the same latitude as whence we started, perhaps 35 miles further south. This is the short route:

We did the long route in June.

We drove all day across the very glaciated landscape of the Great Lakes area. Along the way I noted various science attractions, such as a Museum of Archaeology in Michigan, a Glacial Lakes and Drumlins park, Rock Cut State Park, and a bog state park.

We were on the road for 13 hours so I’m going to get some sleep. We are staying at the Staybridge Suites in East Madison.

I’m in Wisconsin

LotStreetWiz and I drove to Wisconsin over the last few days: first from Toronto to Sault Ste Marie and then from the Soo to Madison. We’ve seen a lot of wildlife (an unfortunate amount of it roadkill), lots of rocks, and innumerable trees. I wish I’d brought my tree book. Someone is house-sitting for us, so the cats are not alone.

Tomorrow and Sunday, LotStreetWiz will be out biking. I need to buy a new camera; then I’m thinking of going to the Geology Museum.

I’m wondering if there are any science-bloggers in the area.

We’re in Wisconsin

We are in Wisconsin for the weekend. It’s the furthese west I’ve been on the ground. We are here for LotStreetWiz to ride over the Ironman course a couple of times. He’ll omit one 40-mile repeated loop so that the ride will be only about 70 miles. It’s good to get the feel of the course before a race. Each day he takes off to bike and I depart later to tourist around.

(This is what our hotel room looks like.)

We are about here in Madison, Wisconsin.

Planning your fast-food meals

I found an online version of the nutrition charts that you can get from fast-food outlets. I looked at the Tim Horton’s coffee shop site for warm meals - various soups, baked beans, or chili. If you want to plan your meals, you can select the healthiest two or three for your purposes. I also threw in one of the new “breakfast sandwiches”–the sausage patty & bacon on a tea biscuit.

The first thing I noticed was that all of them are pretty salty. But you can see that if you want to diet, the vegetable soup is has the fewest Calories; if you want a substantial meal without too much cholesterol, the baked beans are good, but they’re also the saltiest and by far the sweetest. The broccoli soup is rich and has almost 50% saturated fat. The split pea with ham seems like a good compromise, with less fat, less sugar, and more fibre.

One thing that’s not explained is the breakdown between “carbohydrate” and sugar: sugar is a carbohydrate, so is it included in “carbohydrates” or does the chart read “carbohydrate” when it means starch? UPDATE: Sugar is included: to find starches, subtract sugar.

I like the breakfast sausage because it’s hours before I’m hungry again; and from this chart I can see why: it contains about 1/4 of the calories and over half the fat I should eat in a day.

These are the Canadian values. The nutrition levels for U.S. stores are slightly different and seem to indicate a slightly larger serving of meat. Also, the U.S. nutrition charts give the calories from fat, which is useful: no more than 20 - 30% of calories should come from fat. And here’s a warning: the charts can be as much as 20% off in their nutrition analysis, which means that the calories, fat and sugar might be higher and the fibre, protein, and so on might be lower.

The interactive nutrion guides have a selection of the more popular foods; the PDF versions have more complete charts.

Recalled contaminated pet food goes to pigs

The pet food contaminated with melamine that was recalled after causing the death of pets has been sold to hog farms in the U.S.

See also “Chemical interaction harmed pets” or “More about pet-food recall.”

Stupid court!

The U.S. Supreme court has reversed the decisions of 3 district courts and 3 circuit courts and declared Bush’s 2003 ban on “partial birth abortions” to be constitutional. There’s no such medical procedure. The Center for Reproductive Rights says:

April 18, 2007: In a stunning reversal, the Supreme Court rules against women’s health and in favor of abortion restrictions. In its ruling upholding the Federal Abortion Ban case, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturned 30 years of precedent and announced that women’s health is no longer a paramount concern. The Center for Reproductive Rights said the Court’s decision paves the way for state and federal legislatures to enact additional bans on abortions as early as 12 weeks, including those that doctors say are safe and medically necessary.

Friday cephalopod: glass invertebrates

Rudolph and Leopold Blaschka, a father-and-son team, are famous for creating the glass flowers at Harvard mentioned by Marianne Moore in a poem. They also created about 800 glass sculptures of marine invertebrates both large and small. The octopus above is one of the Blaschka’s glass sculptures of marine life. Their techniques have been lost and their work can not now be duplicated.

Links to more information:

• Glass animals collected and cleaned
• Blaschka glass model project
• Rudolph and Leopold Blaschka
• Dublin Blaschka Congress in 2006
• glass marine invertebrates at Harvard
• glass marine invertebrates at Cornell
• William Warmus, photographer, has photographed the Blaschka marine invertebrates
• glass flowers at Harvard Museum of Natural History–more than 3,000 glass models of plants made over fifty years

Parrots in Irvine Park

Tramping around Irvine Park in Orange County, California, I saw and heard three green parrot-like objects that were flying from one sycamore tree to another. Eventually, one of them roosted where I could see it. I took this picture with my digital camera on maxiumum digital zoom. I presume they are escapers from captivity or perhaps naturalized. But I don’t know the species.

Upper Newport Bay

Back home, the wind chills are -22 C and the storm warnings are out.

In Newport Beach, it’s mild, with hundreds of birds feeding in the estuary. This is one of the three best places to watch birds in California.

Currently reading: "The Woman with a Worm in Her Head and Other True Stories of Infectious Disease" by Pamela Nagami

This is my current non-fiction book (other than the Big Book o’ Invertebrates, which is at home). It was published in the U.S. in as “Maneater” but the text is the same. Dr. Nagami is a doctor at the University of California. She has dealt with all manner of mysterious and troublesome diseases from parasitic infections to Strep A and Valley Fever. She has a chapter on the first cases of AIDS and the subsequent AIDS crisis.

You can read a review here.