She thought about it for a minute and then told me a remarkable story about her relationship with technology during the last 40 years living up the mountain a bit east of where we stood. She did not exactly answer my question, but made a point nonetheless.

“I pretty much stayed on the mountain. There are no phone lines. There is no electricity,” she said. “I have my iPhone and I can get 3G and I can get what I want and I have a little solar panel and propane and candles. I’ve been off the grid forever. Now, I have the small solar panel and I can turn on the light and charge my cell phone. I’m not used to it. My daughter tells me, ‘You can plug things in!’ And I say, ‘I don’t have anything to plug in.’ Blow out the lights, not turn out the lights, is my thing.”

Her boss, the chef Michael Jones, filled in the rest of Liz’s story on his blog (punctuation all his). “Liz lives in a trailer on the mountain with no power and no water…two horses, a goat and two dogs. Cats don’t count. She carries water in plastic buckets to the critters….and to her own self,” he wrote. “She pays child support to a scumbag in Missouri or one of those other M states or square states…..Her daughter that I know is an honor student at Davis…….Because she has no power or water, Liz hangs with us after working her 10 hr shift at The Store. We are her TV.”

I’ve ridden my bike out past Cachagua Road and I can attest to the beauty and isolation of the area. It was very near Jamesburg that, climbing a long hill, I passed a man in a cowboy hat and boots, his back to me, urinating. The two cyclists coming down the hill had a much better view and the man made no attempt to stand behind cover.

This particular excerpt reminds me of the photos I’ve seen and the stories I’ve heard about my mother-in-law’s family when they lived in the mountains above Big Sur – a kind of lifestyle that seems almost extinct.

Sordid Snout
The Herald
Feeble Grass Moth
Dead-wood Borer
The Betrothed
The Little Wife
Serene Underwing
The Consort
Dejected Underwing
Inconsolable Underwing
Tearful Underwing
Sad Underwing
The Penitent
Sappho Underwing
Youthful Underwing
Darling Underwing
The Sweetheart
Joined Underwing
Semirelict Underwing
Once-Married Underwing
Girlfriend Underwing
Connubial Underwing
Delilah Underwing
Steely Underwing
Wonderful Underwing
Sweet Underwing
Indomitable Melipotis
Merry Melipotis
False Heather Drasteria
Confused Zale
Once-charred Punkie
Blurry-patched Nola
Beautiful Looper
Sandstorm Tumbler
Tricolored Angel
The Laugher
Fingered Dagger
Fragile Dagger
Splendid Dagger
Afflicted Dagger
Hesitant Dagger
Night-Wandering Dagger
The Hebrew
Cadbury’s Mystique
Cherry Agate
Overlooked Paint
Asteroid Paint
Scribbled Sallow
Turbulent Phosphila
Boreal Sprawler
Shivering Pinion
Sloping Sallow
Roadside Sallow
Straw-eyed Tentmaker
Tawny Tentmaker
Smoky Tentmaker
Adorable Sallow
Subdued Quaker
Cunning Woodling
Stormy Arches
Explicit Groundcat
Disparaged Groundcat
Cynical Groundcat

Snot is your body’s best defense mechanism, a sticky moat of protection against invading bacteria, viruses, and fungi. When it comes to where your body is open to the outside world, snot (more properly, mucus) provides a barrier against these alien invaders.

As my junior high school algebra teacher, “Coach” High, put it, “You may think it’s mucus, but I say it’s snot.”

So what can this unusual library tell us? First, there is the simple parts list. The most common component was organic material, present in 40 of the 63 particles – exactly what is unclear, but it could be anything from pollen to sloughed-off bits of researcher. Quartz, found in 34 particles, came next, followed by carbonates (17 particles) and gypsum (14). “The minerals blow in,” says Coe. “They come from all over the world.” Other ingredients included air pollutants and fertiliser chemicals.

Anyone counting will also have noticed that there are already more components than particles. That is because most specks of dust are conglomerates, which means they may take an infinite variety of forms, much like snowflakes. The next obvious step was to find out what individual conglomerates looked like, but pinpointing exactly which speck corresponded to which spectrum wasn’t going to be easy. So Coe launched a competition. The first person to capture an electron microscope image of a particle that had already been analysed with infrared light would get to name it. And, if that was not enough, there was a free dinner on offer too. What student could fail to rise to that challenge?

Throw away that shiny new atlas you got for Christmas — it’s already out of date.

Volcanic activity in the Red Sea is causing the formation of a new island in the Zubair archipelago as lava is cooled by the surrounding seawater and solidifies. The underwater volcano responsible is located on the Red Sea Rift, where the African and Arabian tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart.

The Schrödingers from 18C are heading to Disney for Christmas. Kid says, “Hey? Can you check on our cat?” Kid gives me the creeps.

— Trelvix (@trelvix) December 24, 2011

“Nobody cares about science anymore. They want feelings instead of facts!” “How do you know?” “I got a hunch.”

— Zach Weiner (@ZachWeiner) December 23, 2011

From a year end compilation of scientific photos:

Rats don’t deserve their bad name, but this ball of fury won’t win over many murophobes. Russian scientists bred this aggressive rat strain to compare it with more docile creatures in a study on domestication that has teased out several genetic regions linked to tame traits.

Davis baking powder is a NY Metro area regional favorite. Hearth Club is currently being sold by Dollar Tree Corp both online and in brick-and-mortar Dollar Tree and their Deals stores for $1 for 8.1 ounces. Most of the store brand baking powder around here is also made by Clabber Girl Corp. If someone has access to a food chemistry lab, it should be fairly easy to assay the contents of the various brands. My guess is that they vary the portions of ingredients for each brand. But I have been wrong about these kinds before, i.e., except for Rumford, they could all be the same stuff.