nipple fountain

you might recall my east for easter adventure. you dont have to wait in suspense any longer.... here are our actual photos!


here's me in from of the bauer tower of power! (not to mislead you, this photo was actually taken on a different day, but its the only one of me and the tower)


here's the compound near the laguna. notice the innocent-looking fountain in the center. its not until you really look at it that you notice... drumroll please....


the nipple fountain in all its "glory".


the little boy that lived on the compound.


me, excited to watch the sunset on the argentinian mountains while eating my empanada.

i bought a new camera and it should be here tomorrow!!! cant wait!!

ten commandments?

this is one of my favorite colbert clips. he interviews georgia congressman westmoreland who cosponsored a bill requiring the 10 commandments to be displayed in the house of representatives and the senate. i was surprised by his response when asked to recite the ten commandments....




my advice: if you are *for* an issue, especially if you are a congressman (!!!!), be sure you are at least slightly knowledgeable about the topic you are trying to impose on others!

(and please dont forget that little thing called separation of church and state.)

let's go east!

marcel is currently in the US so i'm borrowing his car! i feel a strange sense of freedom combined with laziness being able to drive a car anywhere. the first day i had the car, i took a few other carless astronomers to the store in town and we bought all the big things that are a regular pain to carry home. then rachel and i discussed taking a day trip on sunday... we decided: "let's go east!"

the trip turned out to be a lot fun and full of random adventures, eventhough it was easter sunday in this very catholic country! we passed thru a small town, vicuna, just beyond where the turn off is to the observatory. the main road passed right thru the town, but after i saw a tower a few blocks away, i decided to turn off the main road... we found the town square and discovered, to our delight, that they were having a little festival! we got out to walk around, shopped a little and listened to a band. we were pleasantly surprised that anything was open on easter, but the place was really hopping! vicuna is the birthplace of gabriel mistral... a famous writer with her picture on the 2000 peso bill. the guy introducing the band didnt even mention easter, he just mentioned her and the firefighters who were being honored. i thought that was strange... but even stranger is the fact that when i just googled "vicuna" i discovered the tower is actually called the bauer tower! cool!

onward.... we continued driving east thru the elqui valley. its a narrow valley with grape orchards running right up along the road, surrounded by rocky, colorful and steep mountains! i wonder what minerals are present in the surface layers of the rock to create such distinct sections of color!

eventally we found ourselves driving next to a bright green river. it looked so refreshing on the warm sunny day, that we decided to pull off the road and go for a swim! nothing is more refreshing than a skinny dip in a freezing cold river in the middle of a desert! it was a lot of fun!

after drying off in the sun like a couple lizards, we set off again. the two lane paved road abruptly ended and we continued along a dirt road, meandering thru the valley next to the now blue river. at this point we thought... why not go to argentina? the last chilean town on the map was juntas. we kept driving and wondered how far it was. i knew only knew we were climbing in altitude because my ears kept popping.

we finally reached a building, which turned out to be the entry/exit point for chile and made up the entirety of the "town" of juntas. we pulled up, got out of the car, showed the guy our passports and said that we just wanted to cross the border to walk around the first town in argentina. this seemed to go over alright for a few minutes, but then the second man we talked to demanded to look at all the paperwork for the car. we agreed that the car didnt belong to us, it was marcel's... and therefore, he said, we were not allowed to take it across the border unless we had a written note from marcel giving us permission, by name. damn damn! note to self, next time get a note to drive to argentina. check.

the man proceded to tell us of a "laguna" that was about 30 km up the road. we could drive to see it before reaching to the official border if we wanted. sounded good to us, so off we went!

the border was still another 80 km up the road. we drove the 30km along the twisty dirt road, only passing one car the whole time... and an empty truck parked at a farm with at least 50 goats hanging around unattended. we eventually saw a sign for la laguna and turned off the main road onto a steep little dirt driveway. we had to pass thru a gate with a sign saying "recinto privado". we thought this was a bit weird, but kept going. when we reached the end of the driveway, we realized that we were at the river at the bottom of the laguna... after we noticed the big rock dam! oops.

there was a small compound of houses on the river with men walking around outside, so we decided to ask. there were 5 or so rugged looking men, a little ~2 year old boy, a ton of friendly dogs and a mule. they all sort of gawked at us gringas as they told us that they were the keepers of the dam. they stayed there all winter, sometimes having to dig their way out of the houses thru the snow, in order to maintain the dam. they lived in this really simple set of ranch style homes that surrounded a single fountain. my mind drifted away from the conversation since i couldnt really understand all the spanish. my eyes noticed the details of the compound, the man pushing the mule out of the way as it encroached upon the conversation, the little boy shyly running in and out of a doorway, the fountain.... the fountain consisted of rocks stacked up in the center of the little pool and on top of the rocks was a big barbie-type doll... naked... with her hands reaching up into her curly blond hair, and water coming out of her nipples!! aaaahhhhh! i couldnt believe it! i laughed to myself as i wondered how long it had been there!

just then, rachel started walking away toward the door where the little boy was standing. i realized the man must have invited us in. i was a bit nervous about this move, but my curiosity quickly won! he invited us in to see pictures of the winter snow. there are feet and feet and feet of snow in the valley in the winter.... like a glacier coming down the valley! amazing that they survive the snow, the cold and the 6300 foot elevation without leaving for months!! next to the snow pictures was a pretty explicit girly calendar... not entirely unexpected i guess, but i really had to resist the little laugh i felt in my throat!

we thanked them for their stories and kindness, and continued up the road toward la laguna. when we found the gigantic body of water, we pulled over, ate the yummy empanadas we brought with us, and watched the beginning of the sunset on the water and the peaks of argentina...

after a little while we decided that we felt satisfied with our adventure and turned around to go home. we stopped in vicuna again for a yummy dinner of soup, salmon and cold vegetables. always in chile they serve some sort of grilled meat, chicken or fish with cold veggies like tomatoes, avocados and palm hearts. we arrived home around 10 pm, happy and exhausted!

UPDATE: nipple fountain pictures!!

global warming ate my homework

evolution... simpsons style:

jugo surprise!

living in another country provides endless entertainment. the most simple things often present surprising results. like today, i opened some orange juice that i bought yesterday and jumped with surprise when i poured into my glass a creamy-colored liquid with an orange tint!!

during our long flight to chile, marcel warned me about the "juice". i thought this was a curious quirk to highlight, but i listened with intrigue. he told me to be careful of the orange juice ("jugo de naranja") because oftentimes it is actually "nectar de naranja". nectar de naranja is a highly sweetened drink that happens to be orange. it doesnt really taste like orange juice, in my opinion it tastes like tangy sugar water. you can find actual jugo de naranja in stores, but its more expensive and you have to really look for it. i was craving real orange juice, so i spent time looking for it at the store yesterday.

amid the aisle of nectars, i found one box called "so natural naranja" that looked promising and since i couldnt find any jugo, i bought it. foiled again! the creamy liquid that i bought (think melted orange creamsicle) tastes alright, but i wouldnt call it orange juice. next time i'll have to make sure i see the word "jugo" on the packaging!

i'm your moon

i found another great ballad-style cover song so i thought i'd share it with you too (thanks to cadydidwhat for the find). this is a live performance by jonathan coulton covering "baby got back"!



i first heard of jonathan coulton last month when he guest starred in an episode of the show with ze frank, brilliantly covering many of ze's songs. great stuff!

and if that wasnt enough... i also found a song jonathan wrote called "i'm your moon", which is the first song i've heard regarding pluto's demotion to dwarf plant status.

my convexedness

the pop song "my humps" has to be one of the lamest songs i've ever heard. in her original video version, fergie flashes her scantily clad body to the head bopping beat, managing to take one's attention away from the ridiculousness of the lyrics.

in case you havent seen it yet, i share here a version of the song done by the surprisingly clever alanis morissette. i loved her first album way back when. it was great to sing really loud to while driving in the car or while slightly irritated at anything. great stuff, although i havent listened to any of her recent albums. in the video below, she sings the exact words of the original song, "my humps" in her own ballad-style. sometimes her vocals wail a bit irritatingly, but i think this video is pure hysterical genius!

star wars stamps

have you spotted an R2D2 mailbox in your town yet??

the US postal service is definitely celebrating the 30th anniversary of the legendary movies, star wars. for the second time in its 256-history, the postal service is offering a chance for the general public to vote on a stamp design. you can actually vote everyday if you like!


as you may or may not know, i'm a big fan of the original 3 movies. so this is the perfect reason for *you* to send me some real life snail mail!! i'd love to see these stamps in person and i love receiving tangible mail! :)

i think it's pretty cool that the postal service is doing this, but it also seems pretty random. i wonder who in the PR department is the truly serious star wars fan?

update: hometown baghdad.

just wanted to point out that the hometown baghdad series is up and running now. a new 3 minute episode comes out every mon, wed, and friday. i watch them at salon.com with the free day pass.

definitely worth a watch!

graffiti

cool graffiti from the ukraine

run around the world. twice.

NASA astronaut suni williams will become the first person to ever run a marathon from space. i think thats worthy of a new category in the old guinness book of world records (although master google told me that it's really called "Guinness World Records". that sounds weird.).

anyway, suni williams, shown in the above picture with a shrunken head, actually qualified for the 2007 boston marathon by finishing among the top 100 females in the 2006 houston marathon. she ran 26.2 miles in 3hr 29m and 57 seconds. 8 minute mile pace (on earth's surface)! that's awesome! she'll run the full boston marathon on a "stationary" treadmill. she'll circle the earth over two times during the race, moving over the surface of earth at more than 5 miles/second (=18,000 mph)!

the race is tomorrow, april 4th. give a cheer to the sky!

do you are?

last month i went to a bar called the "living lounge" for a going away party. two astronomers moved back to the US after several years here. i was sad to see them go because i liked them and their adorable little 2 year old daughter! in general, i miss playing with kids!

anyway, we were a big group and people working at the bar started giving away t-shirts and hats and other promotional items. i grabbed a t-shirt. the back of the shirt has the bar's logo and on the front, in sideways writing, it says

Do you are
where you
want to be
or where
you can?

huh? hahaha! what does that mean? in smaller print around that text it says "Make your own way let the others follow you. Do you follow the others or follow your own way?" that makes much more sense!

it reminds me of all the funny little printed paper my sister used to send me letters on when she lived in south korea. they were very cute! also... i wish i could read the true translations of chinese or japanese tattoos people permanently place all over their bodies. those must be hilarious!

nostalgia

i dont know if i'll ever get tired of these mario brothers spoofs! they crack me up.

legos...

Mario Bros. Lego
Uploaded by Bibi-de-Bibopof

live stage play...

link

beatboxing flute...

link

peanut brittle

a while back i posted a ~7 minute video about evolution...

in order to not be one-sided, i thought i'd offer this little 2 minute video disputing the validity of evolution.



[colbert-ism]

chuck missler makes an obvious point with that peanut butter prop. i, for one, have been grateful everytime i've opend a jar of peanut butter and not found new life! if those silly evolutionists were correct, you'd think we would have been able to grow at least one form of new life in one of those peanut butter jars that we've produced, packed, bought and sold over the last ~100 years! the next thing those crazy scientists'll be telling us is that quantum mechanics is real! ha! QM says there's a probability that if i sit on my couch long enough* (surrounded by the comfortable lighting of my living room writing blog after blog after blog on my new laptop), i will eventually fall through it. well, that would be pretty darned inconvenient now wouldn't it, scientists! sheesh! there are over 7 billion people on the earth... why havent we heard a single report about anyone falling through their couch!?!

[/colbert-ism]

* QM predicts i'd have to sit there many times longer than the age of the universe since the big bang++

++ if you belive in that sort of thing.

keepon keepin on

i've been having a not-so-spectacular day today. but then i found this video of the socially rhythmic robot, keepon, dancing to one of the best songs by one of my all-time favorite bands, spoon! keepon is definitely my new favorite robot! he is the result of a project developed by marek p. michalowski to study non-verbal interactions between kids and robots. i hope he's been as successful at his scientific study as he was at making me laugh heartily out loud! (thanks to rebecca, the skepchick.)

exacerbating inequalities

i admit that i don't remember hearing the name victor jara before arriving in chile. i read lightly about his influence in the chilean "cultural renaissance" in my travel guide book. my interest sparked when i saw that one of his most popular songs is called Te Recuerdo Amanda (see performance here).

i bought a compilation album of his as i waited out a long layover in santiago. the woman who completed the transaction was very excited to see that i was buying it, so i also became very excited to hear it.

his songs are relaxing and mellow, yet moving and intense, even though i don't understand most of the words. he reminds me of a chilean combination of leonard cohen and bob dylan. simple acoustic guitar behind deep folk melodies that sing of the political struggles of working people. this past saturday night i was charmingly serenaded with this song that bears my name... a beautiful rendition that nearly brought me to tears.

Te recuerdo Amanda, la calle mojada
corriendo a la fabrica, donde trabajaba Manuel
La sonrisa ancha, la lluvia en el pelo
no importaba nada, ibas a encontrarte con el
con el, con el, con el...

I think of you Amanda, in the wet street
running toward the factory, where Manuel worked
with a broad smile, the rain in your hair
nothing mattered, you were meeting up with him
with him, with him, with him...

Te Recuerdo Amanda tells a tragic story of two factory workers who meet outside during their breaks. innocent manuel joins the workers struggle and is killed, one of the many who never return to work after the break-ending sirens sound. it's a beautiful song and represents a good example of the political activism victor jara expressed through anecdotal tales of workers.

Jara's music helped found chile's nueva cancion (new song) movement which accompanied a revolution among the working class. they fought against the repression by the ruling upper class and eventually won with the victory of new president, salvador allende, in 1970.

Jara, along with singer violeta parra, continued to push for more rights for the people... placing himself as a target of the chilean right wing. On September 11, 1973, the chilean military staged a coup d'etat that resulted in the murder of allende, the appointment of (CIA-backed) augusto pinochet as dictator, and the arrest of victor jara. for four days, victor jara was held in the chilean stadium, beaten and tortured in front of other prisoners... and finally murdered, at the age of 38. he wrote a final poem, with broken fingers and wrists, smuggled out of the stadium in a fellow prisoner's shoe... "silence and screams are the end of my song."

he never stopped representing hope for the people, even though he suspected his death would result from the coup that september day in 1973.

it makes me think of my home and wonder who harbors such passion today in the struggle against the american neo-conservative right wing. why has it taken 6 years for the majority of the US public to really dislike the bush administration? how has pop-culture become so ridiculously indifferent to the growing social divide? when will we all recognize that the need to take responsibility for our actions by treating other people sympathetically should come before our overwhelmingly selfish pursuit of happiness through consumerism and consumption?

According to a UN study,

Today’s consumption is undermining the environmental resource base. It is exacerbating inequalities. And the dynamics of the consumption-poverty-inequality-environment nexus are accelerating. If the trends continue without change — not redistributing from high-income to low-income consumers, not shifting from polluting to cleaner goods and production technologies, not promoting goods that empower poor producers, not shifting priority from consumption for conspicuous display to meeting basic needs — today’s problems of consumption and human development will worsen.

… The real issue is not consumption itself but its patterns and effects.

… Inequalities in consumption are stark. Globally, the 20% of the world’s people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures — the poorest 20% a minuscule 1.3%.

so much that we easily take for granted.... i'm happy i've discovered victor jara.

milchstrasse

i admit, i like this observing gig! tonight is the last night of my 5-night official training run on the gemini-south telescope. i'm in charge tonight which is a bit daunting... so many things to remember on this complicated beast. luckily, it's partially cloudy. in general, moderately bad weather is the WORST type for observing because you constantly have to check for clouds and re-acquire guide stars and pause observations that are crappy, etc.... but for tonight it relieves the pressure a bit because i dont have to be as efficient as i would normally want. you have to be efficient when people tell you things like "this telescope costs $X to operate per second, so make every second count!" yikes!


overall, this observing run has been quite nice. despite the complication and stress of taking other people's data and trying to not break anything, it's really fun to run gigantic telescopes. since we're doing several different projects throughout the night, we look at things in our galactic neighborhood right before focusing on a galaxy as it was when the universe was only a couple billion years old!

and the night sky.... nothing soothes my soul like mountain vistas and hundreds of visible stars in the sky. the southern night sky has certainly lived up to all my expectations. the new moon denied us any of the sun's nighttime reflection just a few nights ago and it remains too dark outside to see my hand in front of my face. at first i can only see constellations that have quickly become familiar: the southern cross, upside-down orion, and of course the bright "evening star" venus... i cant recognize too many more southern constellations yet without the aid of a sky chart.


after a few minutes my eyes adjust to the darkness and more and more stars pop out of the blackness. i begin to see the elongated fuzzy patches that cross over the whole sky in a long straight line. i cant quite focus on all the elusive white speckles when i look directly at them, but what i see just off the center of my vision reinforces why our ancestors named it the great milky way. in german, they call it "milchstrasse" which translates to "milk street". what is the name of the milky way in spanish? "calle de leche"? anyone?

i love just going outside throughout the night and letting my eyes become acquainted with the immensity of space over and over again.

another fun aspect of the observing in chile is the food at the lodge! there are chilean chefs who cook meals for us each day. i work for about 14 hours a night this time of year and try to sleep for 7-8... so it's nice that they cook food i can eat! the food this week has been very good, but almost everyday there has been some food item offered that i couldnt identify. this isnt necessarily a bad thing, in fact it's kind of exciting! i've tried everything i've encountered so far (even the intestine that showed up on a grilled plate in La Serena last week. i had one tiny bite and i'll suffice it to say that i did not have another). one meat looked like a cornish game hen that had all the bones sucked out of it so it looked deflated then fried. it turned out to be chicken. there was one thing that i didnt ask about because the consistency was quite like tongue, and i thought it would be better not to know. there's always chilean salad which consists of tomatoes and onions in a bit of oil. i've also had some great desserts that contain lots of various fruits and syrups!

sometimes while observing i have a hard time sleeping a full 7 or 8 hours... due to the altitude, maybe? this run i've had no trouble at all sleeping, which must be due to some combination of the elevated stress level of such complicated observing all night long... and the fact that i've been eating soooooo much yummy food!!


UPDATE: this image, captured by miloslav druckmuller in argentina with the patagonias in the foreground, represents almost exactly what i saw when i first arrived in chile in january.

you can see the wonderful comet mcnaught in addition to the long stretch of the milky way. above the comet and a bit to the right you can see a little fuzzy smudge, and then another slightly larger smudge further up to the right. these are little irregular galaxies called the small and large magellanic clouds... only visible from the southern hemisphere!

the large magellanic cloud harbored the closest supernova in 400 years... supernova 1987a! all of us dorks celebrated the 20th anniversary of this spectacular stellar explosion on february 23rd. i tried to take more observations of the supernova last week, but the clouds prevented my success :(

pop?

are you a "pop" or a "soda" person? or maybe you generically call all sugary carbonated beverages "coke"?

if youre an english-speaking north american, then the term you use is most likely determined by where you grew up.

i'm definitely a pop person... and i've gotten quite a lot of slack for it since i moved away from "pop" central: the midwest! (i may have picked up the southern "y'all" but i'm not giving up the "pop"!!!)


the map comes from a website that attempts to investigate "the great "pop" vs. "soda" mystery simply by people answering a few questions online... so go do it! the blue shows the "pop" regions, the gold/yellow calls the sugary beverages "soda" and the red shows where people use the undescriptive term "coke."

the strong regional dependence of the name really struck me when i was 14. i went to visit my aunt who was living in south korea... this required many long plane trips. i flew from cincinnati (note the spelling), ohio to chicago, illinois then got on another big plane to soeul, south korea. the truth came to me on that long plane ride from chicago. the korean flight attendent came around asking if i wanted anything to drink. i asked "what sort of pop do you have?" and without hesitation he asked, "are you from cincinnati?"

i was shocked!! how could he possibly have known i was from cincinnati just from that simple question? it must be the "pop!"

that was only the first lesson i learned about the fascinating differences that exist between people living in different places... as it was the beginning of my first international trip! and i'm sure that flight attendent was familiar with the various flights that connected thru chicago that day... but i was still mystified by his amazing deductive reasoning!

protest sign

great sign seen at this weekend's protest march.

united for peace
photo link

hometown baghdad

this weekend marks the 4th anniversary of the invasion of iraq. since march 19, 2003, 3218 members of the american military have died... 2619 of those in combat. Over 24,000 injuries have been officially reported. How many iraqi's have died? some estimate over 60,000, but it's very difficult to know for sure.

i feel numb to these numbers. somewhere they started to lose their meaning. i'm disappointed in myself when my eyes glaze over the news headlines that read something like "x US soldiers die in iraq from car bomb."

maybe this is why i'm so intrigued by a new documentary series called "hometown baghdad". the series follows three men in their 20s - Adel, Ausama and Saif. the first three episodes were released today... on the 4th anniversary. i watched them at salon.com video dog and soon they will be shown on youtube for maximum exposure. from what i've seen so far, these documentaries deserve as much exposure as possible. i'm very curious as to the story they will tell....

awareness

just when i start settling into a satisfying comfort level in la serena, life decides to stick out its foot and trip me up... in the form of my purse being stolen last night!! it was not fun to reach for my camera at 4am* and realize my purse was no longer hanging from the back of my chair! of course, hindsight is 20/20, and i should have kept a tighter grip on my purse, but we were sitting at a table in the back of a not-too-crowded bar.

items lost: house keys, camera (sniff), wallet, chapstick, favorite pen.

the most hassle will be getting my chilean ID re-issued i think. i wanted to take a trip to argentina early next month, so i'll have to wait to get the ID before i leave the country. the house keys worried me for a minute, but it turns out that it's not very difficult to break into my house! i'm so ridiculously happy that i did not have my passport on me!

i was out with two chileans who helped me out with talking to a policeman we found downtown. the cop wrote down all the details on a blank piece of paper and assured me that i didnt need to visit the police station until next week when the official report would be filed....? it felt strange to walk away without any sort of documentation or a number or anything, but i was too exhausted to do question any further.

looks like i wont be able to publish new pictures for a while, but that means that i can sift thru the archive and finally display old shots! the good news is that i get to shop for a new camera. yippee! any suggestions on fabulous digi-cams? i had a tiny little canon powershot SD200 that i liked. no complaints really. it was perfect as a small quick click camera. but i'll definitely shop around to find something worthwhile!


*you might say, "wow, 4 am!? that's a pretty late night on the town!" that's true, but us astronomers enjoy a good night out! haha! and so do chileans as it turns out. plus, i needed to stay up late to get myself on a night schedule for the observing run that started tonight. new moon. it's unbelievably dark outside. perfect for exploring all the unfamiliar southern constellations. i'll never tire of seeing a galaxy (large magellanic cloud) extended in the sky with my naked eyes.