Britt's Blog

The Beloit College Center for the Sciences has officially received Platinum LEED Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The building has also won a Design Excellence Honor Award in Interior Architecture from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

In addition, they have fixed the pressure problems so that the front doors no longer get stuck closed in cold weather, my office now maintains a habitable temperature more or less year ’round, my motion-detecting, ambient-light-sensing indirect overhead lighting has always worked like it should, and they say they’re going to fix my blinds so that I can open the screens fully, which will make it much easier to to operate my operable window.

W00T to the Kettle Chips factory in Beloit, also, for their gold certification. They didn’t get platinum certification, but our building does not produce delicious, delicious potato chips, so I think it’s clear who the real winners are.

If you are not listening to RadioLab, why the heck not?

A recent episode The New Normal, encapsulates all that is awesome about RadioLab. Here we have some very sciencey animal behavior stuff, plus genetics of artificial selection, and then a very touching human interest story about a transgendered movie theater owner who becomes mayor of a conservative Colorado town, and to top it off a rumination on how we became human.

Awesome.

Via Unclutter, a story from a Duke University grad student who lives in a van.

This of course recalls the story shared on Car Talk by a young woman who discovered her beau, a Stanford medical student, was also living in a van. The story had a happy ending, and the two of them piled into the van for a road trip across the continent. [Unfortunately, the links to Car Talk show summaries are for memory-jogging purposes only, because, unlike every other public radio program in existence, Car Talk not only does not have a free archive, only their "top rated" episodes are available for pay from Audible.com. Get on the stick, Tom and Ray!]

All I can say, is thank goodness I picked science as a career. Science grad students are typically supported through assistantships, don’t pay tuition, and get a large enough stipend to afford a modest apartment of some sort.

Also, I don’t think these shenanigans would have worked in northern climes. If there’s a grad student at UW Madison living in a van at the current temperature of -2°F, I’d recommend dropping out and finding gainful employment.

This morning there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. I went out to run, and when I turned around and saw my shoeprints, I realized that I had left an interesting trail.

Actually, my feet were just about as cold as you might assume. I think I need to get the kind that actually cover the tops of your feet, or I’m gonna give myself frostbite.