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Johann joins the NSA » Eclectic Echoes
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Author Archives: Eric

Johann joins the NSA

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Last week was very busy for us here. I volunteered to help out one of the people at the University who was in charge of organizing and putting on the NSA conference and the Benthic Ecology Meeting which were held back to back in Providence. Ostensibly I was supposed to be there primarily for IT support, but ended up helping with a variety tasks from stuffing bags helping people overcome issues with their presentations, to making lunch runs. Truth be told it was exhausting, but very fun – of course now I am paying the price for missing a week of school and school work…but it was worth it.

The organizer of the conferences knows Johann’s love of science and was very generous, providing Johann and Tammy with passes to get into the event and attend talks. As a family we attended a number of the talks, but the whole family ended up volunteering behind the scenes, stuffing programs and helping hand out newsletters, sell raffle tickets, etc… On Thursday the closing NSA evening event and opening Benthic Ecology Meeting event was a viewing of the IMAX movie Volcanoes of the Deep Sea with opening introduction by NSA member and deep sea biologist Richard Lutz. Richard also had a 20 minute question and answer period afterwords with several questions from the few kids in the audience including a pair of insightful questions from Johann.

We all had great fun, especially meeting some of the wonderful people involved in the meeting and attending it including Kathy Johnston, Richard Lutz, Sammy Ray, Roger Mann, Ken Chew and many, many others.

Johann and Tammy were invited back by everyone to the Saturday evening event to close the Benthic Ecology Meeting – a Beach Party in the hotel ballroom. Johann had a blast with playing volleyball with all the scientists and grad students. It was great fun and hilarious to watch the beach balls fliying into the chandeliers. (My legs are still killing me from all the running and diving.) They also had “Benthic Twister”, limbo contests, a Hawaiian shirt contest and a hula hoop contest. Who knew Tammy could hula hoop for hours straight?!

The highlight of the evening however for Johann was his receiving a certificate of appreciation and participation from the organizer. He had a photo taken with all the volunteers as he received his certificate. We will hopefully be able to get a copy of the photo soon to post. The certificate is now going up over his study desk. As one of the PhD students said “Wow, he’s gonna have a better C.V. by the time he’s in high school than I have now!” Heck he’s gonna have a better one than I do!!

Filed in Education, Family, Science, Shanti-School, UCONN | Tagged | Comments (3)

New Real Estate

Friday, April 4, 2008

It looks like both Dad and I have some new digital real estate.

My father is a professional photographer and now has a web site to show some of his works. I love his bear series of photographs and hope you will too. The cool thing is that he is also providing some facts and conservation information about some of these magnificent animals. I often have to wonder if the work he will do as a photographer will have more impact in informing people’s opinion about nature and conservation than my plans as a scientist or science communicator.

My own photography has taken a back seat to school and I do miss it. I especially love doing underwater video and photo work. If I could make an impact by producing a book or being on the team that produces a book on the beauty of underwater life similar to the magnificent and inspirational books Reef by Scubazoo or The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss, I would jump at the chance. I love underwater photography even more than doing nature photography above water.

Speaking of science communication, I will now be participating in a multi-author blog called The Other 95% (TO95% for short). It is a site mostly dedicated to talking about invertebrates and the latest news, science publications, jokes, videos, etc. related to inverts.

I just put up my first posting there, about recent discoveries of social and complex mating rituals in a species of octopus. I hope you will look at it and enjoy. I took this on in part to help myself become a better writer and in part to help spread the beauty of inverts, especially cephalopods.

Filed in Art-&-Craft, Education, Family, Photography, Science, Web, Wildlife | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Traveling Mint Paints

Friday, March 21, 2008
A handy sized travel watercolor paint set made from an empty mint tin.

Debby’s cool mint tin traveling watercolor paint set.

I stumbled across an excellent idea at Drawing the Motmot and thought that it would appeal to many in my family besides my wife and I.

My folks find themselves traveling often with my father being a professional photographer and my mother an artist. My mother, who has traveled quite literally since her birth, loves to spend hours enjoying nature, sketching, and painting scenes, while my father does his photography. Unfortunately, like Debby, by the time her gear allowance comes up, there is often very little room for paint sets and easels, especially if there is an airplane involved. Debby came up with a great little portable paint-in-miniature watercolor kit that fits in a purse or cargo pocket!

Tammy and I will be making a few of these for trips in our local area. Tammy loves to do watercolors and is excellent at it. Although I am nowhere near as talented as she is, I enjoy painting if I have the time. Johann loves painting and is very keen to paint during our nature walks now that spring has come.

I could spend hours going through some of Debby’s posts, especially with her beautiful sketches and travel tales… but, unfortunately, I must focus on school projects right now!

Filed in Art-&-Craft, Family, Wildlife | | Comments (1)

Thai Peanut Soup?

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Since we decided to have Ramen noodles tonight, I thought a nice Thai Peanut Sauce would be great:

Thai Peanut Sauce Soup

  • 150 g crunchy peanut butter
  • 180 mL coconut milk
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 small onion
  • 2 Tbsp fresh lime juice
  • 1 Tbsp brown sugar
  • 1 tsp curry powder
  • 3 crushed dried thai peppers (or to taste)
  • fresh coriander
  1. Chop & mix everything but the milk and peanut butter.
  2. Blend everything together 1 minute or until smooth.

Simple quick recipe, yes? Except we were out of coconut milk. Unfortunately, this isn’t South Caye, Belize with coconut trees, so we took a family walk to the local grocery and got some bagels and canned coconut milk. In the store I read the ingredient list and the amount — 13.5 fl. oz. | 60mL. So I picked up three cans figuring a touch shy won’t hurt, besides we never go completely by any recipe.

We got home and I chopped everything choppable and added everything to the food processor. In goes the peanut butter and all three cans of coconut milk.

Hmm… smells good, but that’s a bit thin. Oh well, tastes good, though not as sweet or as spicy as I like. Still this will work well.

As I’m sitting down reading the email from my independent studies professor, Tammy was working through how a sauce recipe could turn out so thin. She figured it out and said:

“Um, Eric, each can is 400 mL. The recipe only calls for 180 mL…you put in all three cans?”

I don’t know where I got that 60 mL from! And I never double checked afterwards! Doh! Fortunately, Johann noticed it tasted similar to Tom Kah Gai, so it became Thai Peanut Soup with a simple addition of warming for a couple minutes.

Tammy looked at the can again and figured out what must have happened. I read the front of the can and it said 13.5 fl. oz. I read the nutrition label for anything Tammy might be allergic to. At the top of the label it states that one serving is 57 mL. I somehow missed the next line that said there was 7 servings per can. And I know I totally missed the 400 mL next to the 13.5 fl. oz. on the front of the can.

Tammy said now I know how it feels to be given only partial information on important issues where huge misunderstandings could have been avoided, not to mention a lot of heartache, if I had just included that one piece of key information!

Filed in Family, humor | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Women Scientists

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

There is a meme out there for naming women scientists. Well with Johann’s scientists cards and his love of science history as well as science, we felt like playing along. So here are some of the scientists that we came up with, most of them off the top of our heads:

While most of these we came up with without resources, it helped for some of them that Johann has his “Scientist Trading Cards” list, which all of these ladies are on. I figure his lists are the equivalent to “class notes” for us. When we have time maybe we can do a part two… that and go back and hyperlink these to bio pages and lab pages. ed. Done!

Oh and for the record Penny Boston and Diana Northup have some of the coolest named study subjects (at least for Johann): Snottites and phlegm balls.

S’not funny. That’s what they study… no really.

Filed in Science, Shanti-School, Web | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

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