I ran the Madison Half Marathon yesterday with a time of 2:30:22! Due to the heat, the full marathon was cancelled and our friend Mike ran with me. He was great companionship and although it was hard, we had a blast - I'll definitely do it again!

Right around Halfway I asked Nick to meet me halfway with a second water bottle. There were plenty of water stations, but I had trained with these and they were cold :)

Willy St. This was about the point that I started to feel some pain (in my knees and feet).

Machinery Row Our old frisbee friend Mike was going to run the full marathon but it was cancelled due to the heat - he ran with me instead and was great company. We stuck right with the 2:30 pacesetter and chatted most of the way.

John Nolen Drive This was the beginning of the hardest part - no shade, last 5K, hot, and cranky.

Our friends Stacey and Adam met me at Machinery Row with this great sign! The crowds in general were great and it was wonderful to have friends cheer me on :)

Mile 10! From here on out was uncharted territory for me - my longest previous run had been 10 miles!

Olin Park Did I mention no breeze?

Mile 11.5 Starting to get cranky.

Firehose! I spent half a mile staring at that firehose, waiting to run under it - it was the best feeling in my entire life.

Last Hill The last half mile was uphill - Mike was surprised to see I kept my word (I actually enjoy uphills) and not only made it up without walking, but sped up our pace and passed a lot of people.

Finish! Given how many people were at the start line, we actually started 7 minutes after the first runner, so the time is a little misleading.

2:30:22! I am very impressed my posture here! I didn't walk once, kept pretty much a 11:20 pace, but sped up to 8:50 for the final half mile (UPHILL).

Finishers! That chocolate milk was the best chocolate milk I ever tasted. 78 degrees at the finish line, btw.

Finisher! I have to admit - it was hard, but *so* much fun!

Local News Story:

http://host.madison.com/wsj/sports/running/runners-battle-heat-in-half-marathon-after-madison-marathon-canceled/article_77692ccc-a827-11e1-b1d2-001a4bcf887a.html

And Local News Official Pictures: http://host.madison.com/wsj/sports/running/photos-madison-half-marathon/collection_0d6d3dee-a828-11e1-95ff-001a4bcf887a.html

On Thursday we had to say goodbye to Yoshimi. Her spirits were still very good, but she had started hiding more, and was clearly uncomfortable. With a long, hot, holiday weekend coming up we decided that it was time to enact the "a week early is better than a day late" policy.

We spent that night and the next morning with her and then had a pretty awful experience at the vet. Our Vet is amazing, but everything that could go wrong went wrong. Yoshimi didn't go through any more pain than she would have if they had gone right, but we ended up having to give her an injection right into her heart because she tore up a vet tech that tried to insert her catheter and the sedative didn't work.

Nick has been my rock in all this - his counsel, opinion, support, and affection for Yoshimi made me feel like I wasn't alone in this. And, for once, I think that the fact that we took her home for a few weeks was a very good idea - we all enjoyed that time immensely.

In the meantime, we still don't know what is wrong with our house and are waiting for autopsy results to give us a better idea. They say they will be very thorough, but it may take up to three weeks for test results. In the meantime, it is very sad living in a house without cats - except for living in the dorms for two years, I have always lived with cats. The house is lonely and quiet and cold. But, we can't, in good conscious get any more pets while we live here.

Yoshimi has really really grown to like this string:


And she's always loved these windows:


And she has recently really enjoyed this window seat:


Nick took this timed shot when I was at work:


This is Yoshimi's original adoption sheet - she was supposedly named "Brenda" - this is what she thinks of that:



Being mischievous:



At the vet :(

When Illness Makes a Spouse a Stranger
By DENISE GRADY, The New York Times, May 5, 2012

He threw away tax documents, got a ticket for trying to pass an ambulance and bought stock in companies that were obviously in trouble. Once a good cook, he burned every pot in the house. He became withdrawn and silent, and no longer spoke to his wife over dinner. That same failure to communicate got him fired from his job at a consulting firm.

By 2006, Michael French — a smart, good-natured, hardworking man — had become someone his wife, Ruth, felt she hardly knew. Infuriated, she considered divorce.

But in 2007, she found out what was wrong.

“I cried,” Mrs. French said. “I can’t tell you how much I cried, and how much I apologized to him for every perceived wrong or misunderstanding.”

Mr. French, now 71, has frontotemporal dementia — a little-known, poorly understood and frequently misdiagnosed group of brain diseases that eat away at personality and language. Although it was first recognized more than 100 years ago, there is still no cure or treatment, and patients survive an average of only eight years after the diagnosis.

( Read more... )




A Crocodile Too Huge to Fit on the Family Tree
By SINDYA N. BHANOO, The New York Times, May 7, 2012

Giant crocodiles, far larger than any known to date, lived in Kenya two million to four million years ago among our human ancestors, according to a new report.

A fossil of one specimen, 27 feet in length, shows that it is not closely related to the Nile crocodile, as some scientists had thought, said Christopher A. Brochu, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Iowa and the new study’s first author.

Although the two crocodiles look similar, the ancient species has a different skull and jaw formation from the Nile crocodile.

“There’s this misconception that crocodiles are these living fossils that haven’t changed,” he said. “This is something different, a species of a true crocodile, but different from anything known.”

( Read more... )





Zombie-Ant Fungus Has Its Own Killer Fungus
By SINDYA N. BHANOO, The New York Times, May 7, 2012

Like something out of a horror movie, the zombie-ant fungus attacks and invades the brains of carpenter ants. Possessed ants march to their death, and the fungus lives inside the exoskeleton.

Now, a new study reports that the zombie-ant fungus itself faces attack by another fungus.

This secondary attacker, a white fungus, is “looking for its own lunch, and it thinks this dead ant is a nice thing to eat, along with the fungus that’s eating the ant,” said David Hughes, a disease biologist at Penn State and one of the authors.

This attack prevents the spores of the zombie-ant fungus from spreading and infecting other ants in the colony, Dr. Hughes said.

“Looking at the colony, it’s a good thing for the ants,” he said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

( Read more... )

Easter Weekend at Nick's Mom's:



Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Duke University:

Meet my new friend:



Well, the frog is a new friend, but so is little Jesse - a baby in Arkansas in the late 1840s, whose mother wrote an incredibly detailed daily account of his first three years. Unlike poor Doris from my UCLA baby books, Jesse lived to a ripe old age, despite a sickly childhood.

Oh, and the frog. If you aren't familiar with archival work - when you are working with old books you use a foam cradle (to keep the binding supported and not lying flat) and a "frog" (a cloth weight) to keep the pages down while you read or take pictures. This archives has a sense of humor :)

Yesterday, I took a break from researching to go to a talk that sounded interesting, “Slave Medicine and the Banality of Evil.”

I have to say, I don't usually find historical talks given by physicians that interesting, but this was not only fascinating, but it also gave me some really great ideas about teaching race and medicine in the future.

A brief summary of the talk: Starting with a physician's bill, Halperin discussed the role of doctors in slavery - from ship physicians who got paid more if slaves arrived here alive and healthy, to plantation physicians who were kept on retainer by slave owners to treat their slaves. He then transitioned to the issue of the "banality of evil," a term you are probably familiar with from Hannah Arendt and the Nuremberg Trial. Arendt's point is that while we often ascribe evil to sociopaths (like Hitler), the greatest evil is when ordinary people participate in evil because they think it is normal. In regards to physicians who treated slaves, they partipated in the perpetuation of a system that they saw, perhaps more than any other class of persons, how evil it was and still considered themselves objective, above politics, and "doing no harm."

When I teach this subject the go-to topic is the Tuskeegee Syphillis Study - we try to break student's (especially pre-med students') belief that it was an isolated incident (in fact, it is *very* represenative of medicine at the time) and that physicians and medicine reflect the society they live in. The analogy to Halperin's talk seemed obvious at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized his example was so much more powerful - his physicians wanted their patients to live and be healthy - the Tuskeegee physicians wanted to bring their patients to autopsy.

It's easy for students to black box the Nazis or Tuskeegee as an exception carried out by evil people, but physicians who treated slaves? They actually gave their patients the best care they could (it was in their financial best interest to do so) - in order to send those slaves back to work...

Hopefully this will be my last long distance research trip. On the one hand I love them - being totally immersed in my work and sometimes being able to site-see (depending on archive hours - this trip - not so much, since the archives are open 9-9) - on the other they are isolating and stressful (what if I don't get everything done! I must see all the things!). One thing though, I'm getting really good at packing for them:







- Carry-on bag that can fit the narrow way into an overhead bin (with detachable satchel for carrying my research supplies once I get to my destination, which holds my netbook, power supply, wallet, mp3 player, phone, earplugs*, and kindle)
- Clothing: research clothes (interchangeable, layered, and adorbs), workout clothes (yoga and running), and comfortable but compact shoes.
- Yoga mat (yes, believe it or not, there is a travel yoga mat in there)
- Toiletries (I never stress about these - I can always buy stuff when I get there and leave it behind - much better than worrying about ounces and baggies)
- Jewelry (one set that works with all outfits)
- Bag of electronics (the red and black striped one): camera, batteries, battery charger, memory cards, card reader, laptop lock, headphones, mic. (next to my netbook, the most essential part of research)
- Water Bottle
- Reusable coffee mug
- Not pictured: running shoes and heavy sweatshirt - largest items worn for actual flight rather than taking up room in suitcase.

This archives (Sallie Bingham - Look, it's me!) has a great locker room and reading room, so I can easily access my things without bringing too much into the reading room and having a place to store them when I take breaks (really great food options on the Duke campus, by the way). Like most archives, you are only allowed your computer, camera, pencil, and paper in the actual reading room.


*I cannot stress enough how important ear plugs are - especially on take off and landing when you are not allowed to use electronic devices to block out the noise of screaming children, chatty teenagers, or lonely old women.

My parents were both raised strict Irish Catholic - so they raised me atheist. When I was around 8 we were driving near my grandma's and my mom pointed out St. Bridget's church and said that's where my brothers were baptized. I asked, "why wasn't I baptized?" She replied, "you'll thank me when you're older."

After spending Easter Weekend at Nick's mother's I can finally admit, you were right mom - about that.

Something to store away for motivation during the half-marathon:

Watch Kathrine Switzer on PBS. See more from Makers: Women Who Make America.

Last night was a nice night of climbing. I'm pushing to move up to more consistent 5.9s and I found a fun problem to work on.

Another climbing gym once nicknamed our climbers "Boulders Shoulders" and in the below video you can see a Boulder regular, Katie, who my climbing partner and I often stare enviously at. She's at the beginning briefly, but climbing for realsie at 3:44. It also gives you an idea of what climbing outdoors in Wisconsin is like.

You know what cheers me up? When, after a departmental brown bag on teaching, a professor walks up to you and says "you know, I just kept thinking during brown bag, I wish Bridget was teaching for me this semester."

Running: Running has been going well - this is my first repeat week. I realized this week that my appetite hasn't changed at all, which is weird, but my sleeping habits have - I need a lot more sleep than I used to, which makes 6AM yoga very hard. On the other hand, I am so glad I am training with a plan - I haven't skipped a run once and no injuries!

Wearing: It's a rainy day here in Madison, which means I will cheer myself up with my new dress!



Planning: Another side effect of the running program - it takes a lot of time. You have to set aside, between the run and the shower after, at least 90 minutes twice a week and two hours once a week. Combined with working two jobs, writing a dissertation, traveling for research, rock climbing, yoga, and some standing commitments it is very hard to schedule anything with friends. For example, I owe a friend dinner - but finding time to do all of this, plus *make* a home cooked meal before 9PM at night? We've settled for 5:30 on Sunday before my house is descended upon by Game of Thrones fans (apparently we're the only people in our friends group with cable - Kendra has a key to our place and just stops by to set the dvr for random sporting events... but at least she buys me mani-pedis).

Dissertation: Yesterday was spent writing about The Velveteen Rabbit - there is surprisingly little written about children's literature and illness... I see an article in my future.

Yesterday I...

Had a great run, ending the last mile with...



Made this for dinner...



and watched this (zombie attacks shark, conquistador zombies, and the slowest eyeball skewering ever. Brilliant!)



Nick is back home for his grandmother's open heart surgery - which went well!

I finished week 7 of my half marathon training yesterday - a real milestone because I am officially more than halfway to half marathon mileage and the longest distance I have every run (previously the longest distance was 10K).



I had a moment last week, running one of my shorter mid-week runs, when I realized very viscerally that I could totally run the half marathon. Up until yesterday every run has been very good, if slow - I end each run feeling great, haven't had any injuries, and am generally enjoying myself. Yesterday was the first run thus far that I really felt tired and sore after. In addition to being the longest run so far, it came a week after a ramping down of the program for a 5K race.

I usually don't run with other people or run without music, but yesterday Clark went with me and we kept a pace we could talk at as we ran up to Maple Bluff and back - part of the half marathon race route.



As you can see by the chart, I'm over half-way done - but the Madison Half Marathon isn't until the end of May, so from this week out I will be doing each week twice, so that the plan lines up with race day. Next week Clark and I are thinking of running out to Picnic Point and back.

Finally finished the best of 2011 mix - who wants a copy? Comments screened so you can post your address.

1. Relax - Das Racist
2. Romance - Wild Flag
3. Lonely Boy - The Black Keys
4. Not Enough - J Mascis
5. Benediction - Thurston Moore
6. Barely Legal - Real Estate
7. Alex - Girls
8. Montezuma - Fleet Foxes
9. Santa Fe - Beirut
10. Oblivion - Grimes
11. Need You Now - Cut Copy
12. Tripped an Fell In Love - Yacht
13. Polish Girl - Neon Indian
14. Killin the Vibe - Ducktails
15. Green Aisles - Real Estate
16. Dreamin'- The Twerps
17. I Walked - Sufjan Stevens
18. Midnight City - M83
19. Eyes Be Closed - Washed Out
20. French Exit - The Antlers

My friend Stacey gave me part of her SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast) in order to make my own Kombucha. It starts by boiling some water and dissolving a cup of sugar completely.



Then brew some tea (I chose some plain ol' Green).



Let it brew and cool to room temperature.



Then I poured it in this crock, which Stacey lent me.



And added the SCOBY (it grows to the size and shape of it's container and this was in a mason jar-like container beforehand).



Then I let it sit for a week, covered with an old pillowcase.



I forgot to take a picture of it before I took it out, but after a week the SCOBY had grown to the size of the crock and the whole mixture smelt faintly like apple cider vinegar. Here is the SCOBY in it's new home, which I hope to use for future fermentation.



I strained out the SCOBY to save for the next batch and bottled my Kombucha for a second fermentation. I'm planning on trying it tomorrow!

What I came home to on my pillow last night. Adorbs.



(we met on St. Patrick's day three years ago)

Artifacts Show Sophistication of Ancient Nomads
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, March 12, 2012

Ancient Greeks had a word for the people who lived on the wild, arid Eurasian steppes stretching from the Black Sea to the border of China. They were nomads, which meant “roaming about for pasture.” They were wanderers and, not infrequently, fierce mounted warriors. Essentially, they were “the other” to the agricultural and increasingly urban civilizations that emerged in the first millennium B.C.

As the nomads left no writing, no one knows what they called themselves. To their literate neighbors, they were the ubiquitous and mysterious Scythians or the Saka, perhaps one and the same people. In any case, these nomads were looked down on — the other often is — as an intermediate or an arrested stage in cultural evolution. They had taken a step beyond hunter-gatherers but were well short of settling down to planting and reaping, or the more socially and economically complex life in town.

But archaeologists in recent years have moved beyond this mind-set by breaking through some of the vast silences of the Central Asian past.

These excavations dispel notions that nomadic societies were less developed than many sedentary ones. Grave goods from as early as the eighth century B.C. show that these people were prospering through a mobile pastoral strategy, maintaining networks of cultural exchange (not always peacefully) with powerful foreign neighbors like the Persians and later the Chinese.

Some of the most illuminating discoveries supporting this revised image are now coming from burial mounds, called kurgans, in the Altai Mountains of eastern Kazakhstan, near the borders with Russia and China. From the quality and workmanship of the artifacts and the number of sacrificed horses, archaeologists have concluded that these were burials of the society’s elite in the late fourth and early third centuries B.C. By gift, barter or theft, they had acquired prestige goods, and in time their artisans adapted them in their own impressive artistic repertory.

Almost half of the 250 objects in a new exhibition, “Nomads and Networks: The Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan,” are from these burials of a people known as the Pazyryk culture. ( Read More )



Refining the Formula That Predicts Celebrity Marriages’ Doom
By JOHN TIERNEY, The New York Times, March 12, 2012

In 2006, Garth Sundem and I confronted one of the great unsolved mysteries in social science: Exactly how soon will a given celebrity marriage blow up?

Drawing on Garth’s statistical expertise and my extensive survey of the literature in supermarket checkout lines, we published an equation in The New York Times predicting the probability that a celebrity marriage would endure. The equation’s variables included the relative fame of the husband and wife, their ages, the length of their courtship, their marital history, and the sex-symbol factor (determined by looking at the woman’s first five Google hits and counting how many show her in skimpy attire, or no attire).

Now, with more five years of follow-up data, we can report firm empirical support for the Sundem/Tierney Unified Celebrity Theory.

( Read more... )



Things Adult Medicine Could Learn From Pediatrics
By PERRI KLASS, M.D., The New York Times, March 12, 2012

Twenty-eight years ago, I wrote about drawing blood for the first time, about the pain of the patient and the self-doubt of the medical student. In my first clinical experience, I was learning a strange new color code: red-top tube for blood chemistries, purple top for hematology, green top, yellow top, and so on.

In pediatrics, I soon discovered, the colors were the same but the tubes themselves were much smaller. And instead of those big needles I had learned to use on adults, we used butterflies, tiny needles with plastic wings to keep them stable.

I thought: If you can get enough blood through a small butterfly needle filling a small tube to do the necessary tests, why must we jab big needles into adults and fill comparatively huge tubes to do the same assessments?

It wasn’t the last time I wondered why children were treated with more concern than adults. And now it seems that attitudes long taken for granted in the care of children might be working their way up the life span to become more standard for adults.

( Read more... )

Great advice for climbing - and life:



Wicked Gravity
Chris Weidner: Five tips to climb your best this spring
By Chris Weidner, Boulder Daily Camera, 03/13/2012

Over the winter I decided to try to make the next few months the best climbing season I've ever had.

I researched different training methods, interviewed climbers of all abilities and read countless magazine and online articles. The tricky thing about climbing is that there's no tried-and-true process or workout regime that works for most people like there is in running and cycling, for example. It's more complicated than that.

I was reminded that attitude, strategy and the mental aspect of climbing are at least as important as physical strength, and probably much more so. In fact, much of the advice I found has little to do with physical training.

I began with a list of what I thought were the most important concepts for climbing improvement. As I whittled it down to the following five tips I also realized that, with a little creativity, these tips are applicable to a lot more than just climbing.

Put people first.

The greatest thing about climbing is that it requires an extraordinarily deep level of trust between partners. Our ropemates literally have our life in their hands, and vice versa, every time we climb. That's amazing, yet terrifying. And it's why the climbing objective should always be secondary to the people with whom we choose to climb. After all, they have an enormous impact on our entire climbing experience, including our performance.

Decide what you want, and get after it.

Why do you climb? What do you want out of it?

No matter how hard you climb or how seriously you take it, goals help drive and steer your motivation. Define your goals as specifically as possible. Make them lofty yet attainable, and set a time frame to achieve each one.

Dream big. Expand your comfort zone. Rise to the level of the goals you choose.

Learn to deal with fear.

Whether fear of falling, fear of failure or something else entirely, fear holds climbers back much more than we want to admit.

Controlling fear in climbing is a lifelong process. The crux is differentiating the rational fear that keeps us alive from the irrational fear that prevents us from A) having fun and B) reaching our potential. Our fear is irrational when a relatively safe situation feels life-threatening. Like when the rope is properly anchored and secure on your harness, but the thought of falling makes you want to scream, sob and pray all at the same time.

The first step toward mastering fear is to acknowledge its presence. Next, try to identify your irrational fear and learn all you can about it: when, where and why does it sneak into your mind? Finally, once you know what you're dealing with, you can begin the coping process.

P.S.: If climbing never scares you, I recommend quitting immediately.

Variety is the psyche of life.

Even the most obsessed climbers switch their focus occasionally. Follow your enthusiasm, and when it dulls do something different. Go bouldering at Flagstaff, climb long routes in Eldorado Canyon, clip bolts in Boulder Canyon. We even have a world-class variety of indoor climbing in "Valmont Canyon" where four gyms are located within a mile of each other.

Mixing things up is not only good for your mind, it will stress your body in different ways, which aids recovery and wards off injury. Sometimes (gasp!) we need a break from climbing altogether. There's nothing like a little time off to stoke the psyche.

If only there was something else to do outdoors in Boulder ... .

Be flexible.

Like most things, climbing rarely goes according to plan. Embrace climbing's ups and downs (literally). It won't always be fun; you won't always climb well; you will get frustrated. But don't take it too seriously. With the right people, a few goals and a psychological strategy, you may just have the best season of your life.