The Bay Area Fungus Fair Starts Today!

It's hard to believe that another year has flown by, but it's once again time for the Mycological Society of San Francisco's annual Bay Area Fungus Fair at the Oakland Museum of California. The San Francisco Chronicle's description of the event contains a line that probably comes closest to my own sentiments about it:

Wake up and smell the spores, people! It's finally, finally, finally time again for the unutterably fabulous Bay Area Fungus Fair...

The fair starts today and only runs through the weekend. This is the event that turned me into a mycologist; it marks a kind of anniversary for me. I wish I could be there this year!

More information on the Bay Area Fungus Fair can be had at the Oakland Museum of California's website:

December 6-7, 2008
Fungus & Fire
39th Annual Fungus Fair

After a forest fire, what is the first sign of life?

Fungi. Their tiny root-like fibers appear on the charred forest floor and begin to break down debris and release nutrients into the soil. This age-old process is crucial to soil restoration and the forest's revival.

Learn about the noble lives of mushrooms at the museum's annual Fungus Fair—Fungus & Fire, Saturday, Dec 6 (10 a.m.–6 p.m.) and Sunday, Dec 7 (12-5 p.m.). The fair explores the role of fungi and mushrooms in the aftermath of California's devastating forest fires...

If you're within 100 miles of Oakland, CA and you've never been to this event before, today's a great day to check it out for the first time. I've been around a few fungi, but the Bay Area Fungus Fair is the premier event for those who want to check out and learn about the incredibly diversity, beauty and even downright weirdness of one of this most unusual kingdom.

The Oakland Museum of California is located at 1000 Oak Street, the corner of 10^th. Here's a map.

Are you in the car yet?

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Sometimes I Wish I Believed in Hell

Sometimes I wished that I believed in Hell so that I could also believe that there was a special place reserved in it for jackasses who scrawled swastikas on Holocaust memorials.

Sadly, it happened this time in San Francisco.

Swastikas deface S.F. Holocaust Memorial
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer

The Holocaust Memorial in San Francisco's Lincoln Park has been vandalized for the second time in two months with swastikas penned on the bronze sculpture in the latest incident that city officials learned of Wednesday...

"The Holocaust," as the haunting piece by sculptor George Segal is titled, is made up of 11 life-size figures cast in bronze and then painted white. The figures are positioned behind a barbed-wire fence...

A vandal or vandals used a black ink marker to deface one of the figures, some plaques related to the sculpture and a nearby bench. The markings were similar, with the swastika drawn inside the Jewish Star of David symbol.

Last month, a swastika was scratched into the surface of the artwork, commission officials said. It has been vandalized other times, as well. Police were alerted to the latest defacement Wednesday morning...

Because I don't believe in Hell, all I can hope for is that the morons who did this are caught and given the harshest possible sentence under the law for their cowardly and inhumane act. Well, I can hope that they fall into a vat of honey and stumble into a hive of angry Africanized bees, too, but that's not nearly as likely.

Aside from the sheer hatred for others involved in vandalizing a memorial to victims of mass murder, one has to wonder what the point of doing it is in the first place. It's going to get noticed, after all (otherwise, why do it in the first place?) and fixed immediately. Other than making people possessed of something approaching mental health think you're a blatant anal pore, such an act changes nothing. It's not like someone is going to see your handiwork and think, "Gee, maybe the guy who drew the swastika on the depiction of a Holocaust victim has a point. I think I'll become a Neo-Nazi."

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A Little Joy Creeps Into America: Everyone Can Get Married in California

30 days from now, gay couples will be able to get married in California. The California Supreme Court has handed down the decision to overturn that state's ban on gay marriage. People who love one another and who happen to be of the same gender will now be able to do what people of opposite genders have always been able to do in California. The court appears to have used an increasingly rare tool called reason in making its decision:

"The California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples," Chief Justice Ronald George wrote in the majority opinion.

Allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry "will not deprive opposite-sex couples of any rights and will not alter the legal framework of the institution of marriage," George said.

Some of you who are old enough may remember when reason was commonly applied to the question of people's rights in a society that styles itself as just. This was a relatively common practice for some time until the more recent trend of applying personal fears and distaste elevated to a social level, a procedure often based on books written by people whose idea of "justice" was using rocks to bash in the skulls of people of whom they didn't approve (e.g., Leviticus).

Ed Harrington, the general manager of the [San Francisco] city's Public Utilities Commission, has lived with his partner for 35 years. In 2004, he performed marriage ceremonies for about 40 same-sex couples.

"You wait for this your whole life," said Harrington, who said he planned to call his partner and say, "I love you. What more do you say on a day like this?"

Why, that promiscuous bastard! How dare he belittle normal marriage by putting he and his partner of the past 35 years on the same footing as couples who have been together half as long. Clearly, it's not possible for two people of the same gender to love one another in the same way that those of opposite genders do.

I wish Ed Rehmus had lived to see today. I also wish that there weren't a bunch of moon-faced assassins of joy waiting in the wings for their chance to once again tear people's hearts to shreds in the name of their twisted, bloodthirsty deity. You know, the same one who tells them to stone people in the streets and once got some doddering goatherd to nearly slit his son's carotid artery:

The celebration could turn out to be short-lived, however. The court's decision could be overturned in November, when Californians are likely to vote on a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. Conservative religious organizations have submitted more than 1.1 million signatures on initiative petitions, and officials are working to determine if at least 694,354 of them are valid...

Liberty Counsel, which represented the group Campaign for California Families before the court in arguing for the state law, denounced the ruling and said it would ask the justices to stay its effect until after the November election.

None of those signatures are valid. Not a single one, because it's none of their business. It isn't their place to impose their idea of what a family is on anyone else. It has nothing to do with them. These people who push these petitions and those who sign them so that they can insert themselves between two people whom they've never met aren't valid people. And isn't it all cozy and Orwellian and ironic (sarcastic? sadistic?) that this organization working it's tuchis off to interfere with other people's lives calls itself the Liberty Counsel? What they want is exactly the opposite of liberty. I suppose that if their petitions fail they can always find plenty of rocks to throw.

For all their bleatings about how gay people marrying one another weakens "traditional marriage," they've yet to explain why the only state in which same-sex marriage is legal has the second lowest divorce rate in the country (2.2% in Massachusetts, unchanged since gay marriage became legal in 2004) while a state like Arkansas which, as far as I know is big on "traditional values," has a rate nearly three times that (6.0% as of 2005). It must be all those people from Arkansas who get a divorce and flee to Massachusetts to turn gay, I suppose.

Has Don Wildmon sent me a "Dear Manmeat" letter about this yet? I can't wait to get home and find out. He must be frothing at the mouth by now, no doubt praying for earthquakes and large jetliners slamming into buildings. They're so much more efficient at making the streets run with the blood of the disbelievers than are old-fashioned rocks.

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Whooping Cough Outbreak in California: Losing Herd Immunity?

There's been an outbreak of whooping cough (pertussis) at a private school in El Sobrante, California. If you're not familiar with a map of the state, that's a town a bit north of Berkeley and northeast of San Francisco. Apparently a number of people, both kindergarten-aged students and teachers, have contracted the disease.

Whooping cough outbreak closes school

A private school in El Sobrante is closed today because of an outbreak of whooping cough, authorities said.

Classes will not be in session today at the East Bay Waldorf School at 3800 Clark Road because a number of kindergartners and their teachers have come down with the contagious lung infection, authorities said.

In a letter to parents that was posted at the K-12 school, administrator Morgan Cleveland wrote, "You should be aware that because this is considered a significant outbreak, there is likely to be media attention..."

Most children are immunized against this disease as part of the childhood DPT (diptheria, pertussis and tetanus) vaccination. The disease had practically vanished from the United States as of just a few years ago because of this.

Unfortunately, hysteria about vaccinations has taken its toll. While I don't know for a fact how many of those who contracted the disease weren't immunized, I'm willing to bet it will be found that most were not, keeping in mind that the DPT vaccination doesn't last forever and should be readministered every 10 years or so. Many adults fail to do this, which would explain why teachers came down with pertussis in this case, but kindergarten children aren't old enough for their vaccines to have worn off.

There have recently been measles outbreaks as well, and in those cases a lack of immunization was to blame. If people keep up not having their children immunized because of vague, unsubstantiated worries about autism, for example, or for religious reasons (that religious exemptions exist at all is silly; that they can be so easily claimed is downright stupidity), eventually these outbreaks will turn into epidemics as the benefits of herd immunity are lost. In order for the benefit to disappear entirely, it would only require that about 9% of children aren't immunized in a given population.

Then again, there were plagues in the Dark Ages, too, and we came through those just fine... right?

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Is God More Powerful Than the Ghost of Normal Fell? Let's Find Out.

There's a preacher named Rocky Twyman who is presently traveling around the country praying, which in itself isn't particularly unusual. It's where he's praying and what he's praying for that are maybe just a little bit silly:

Pray-in at S.F. gas station asks God to lower prices

Rocky Twyman has a radical solution for surging gasoline prices: prayer.

Twyman - a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the Washington, D.C., suburbs - staged a pray-in at a San Francisco Chevron station on Friday, asking God for cheaper gas. He did the same thing in the nation's Capitol on Wednesday, with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in. Today he will lead members of an Oakland church in prayer...

"God is the only one we can turn to at this point," said Twyman, 59...

...he says anyone who wants to follow his example should keep it simple.

"God, deliver us from these high gas prices," Twyman said. "That's all they have to say."

...he says his prayer for gas-price relief from God is sincere.

"I've seen him work miracles in my life," Twyman said. "He told us that all we need to do is ask and believe. He can do it, and he will do it, but we have to ask him to do it."

Ummmm, yeah.

I'm a relatively empirically-minded individual, so I think an experiment is in order. While Twyman is praying to the Invisible Man in the Sky to lower gas prices, I'm going to make supplications to the ghost of Normal Fell to raise them. Fell, who was most famous for playing Mr. Roper on the 1970's hit TV series Three's Company, died in 1998. As far as I'm aware, no miracles have been attributed to him and nobody attaches any particular spiritual significance or beliefs to the deceased actor. He appears to wield no particular supernatural powers in the afterlife.

I hypothesize, however, that he's at least every bit as powerful as the deity to whom Rocky Twyman is praying for lower gas prices. By praying to him daily for gas prices to go up, I will test whether or not he is actually more competent at effecting change in the physical world through supernatural intercession. If the price of gas continues to increase overall during the next 30 days, we can conclude that the ghost of Norman Fell is, in fact, more powerful than Twyman's Jehovah of the Gas Pump.

Considering that the price of gas has been increasing by 2¢ per day here in Worcester, Norman Fell may already be at work!

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Michael Dowd and the Sense of Awe

I continue seeing Michael Dowd's quotes in various papers as he travels around preaching his "evolution theology." It's interesting. I'm not about to convert to any religion based on it, but one of the interesting parts to me is the sense of awe that Dowd is trying to communicate. I have what I think is a similar awe about life, the universe and everything; I get the same goosebumps, albeit without a need to posit anything supernatural being involved.

The latest such quotes are in conjunction with Dowd's current visit to the San Francisco Bay Area where he's scheduled to speak at several Unitarian Universalist churches. The Contra Costa Times published the story from which I've excerpted below:

Preacher mixes evolution with faith

... "The atoms of our bodies are literally stardust," he tells the rapt crowd. "The carbon and the oxygen and the nitrogen were formed inside red giant stars. The gold and silver and other heavy metals were formed in supernova stars that then explode" -- his voice reaches a crescendo -- "with this tremendous metal-rich stardust."...

So serious is he about his "responsibility to find more sacred, meaningful holy ways of promoting evolution" that Dowd has taken to criss-crossing the country in a van with his wife, science writer Connie Barlow...

When he heard a talk on "The Universe Story" his reaction was immediate and visceral.

"I had goose bumps up and down my arms and legs and I started to cry," he said. "From then on, I became very passionate about evolution..."

They stay in the homes of supporters, and he speaks to groups of Unitarians, Mennonites, Buddhists, Quakers and humanists. He has not been invited to address fundamentalist congregations, but he did meet with 125 moderate to liberal evangelicals at a conference in the Bahamas.

"We're going to see this evolution theology movement come into the mainstream," he said, chatting over a Formica table in a McDonald's -- the only place in San Francisco's Mission District with parking spaces large enough to accommodate his 20-foot-long van.

"We see the sciences as revelatory," he said. Fundamentalists believe "all the really important revelation happened in Biblical times, and we are saying no..."

Through the use of mythic, poetic language, Dowd believes he can inspire believers and non-believers to grasp evolution -- and the universe -- as a continuous revelation.

"Any God that can be believed in or not believed in is precisely not what I'm talking about," he tells a congregation in a video clip. "Do you get that? I'm talking about something that is undeniably real. whether you call it God or not is up to you..."

"All of nature is in an act of holy communion," he said. "It's always saying 'take, eat, this is my body.'

"It's not survival of the most ruthless, it's survival of the most cooperative. Mutual benefit is all throughout nature..."

If You Go

The Rev. Michael Dowd will "teach and preach" as he calls it around the Bay Area this month. He will appear at:

• # 7 p.m. Friday, Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 2950 Washington Blvd. in Fremont. 510-252-1477
  
• # 9:30, 11:15 a.m. and 2 p.m. Sunday, Unity Church in Marin, 600 Palm Drive, Novato. 415-475-5000.
  
• # 7 p.m. April 3, Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 300 E. Santa Inez Ave. in San Mateo. 650-342-5946

To be clear, I don't see anything particularly "holy" about nature. The implications of that word are unclear; what is holy and what is not holy? I think that's just a word that we humans like to attach to anything that inspires that sense of awe, that feeling of being something very small but capable of grasping little bits of something much, much larger than ourselves. The universe and all of its intricacies inspire such feelings directly among those of us, from whatever persuasion of philosophy we may come to it, who make some attempt to understand it. Religions are, in part, an attempt to make that which inspires such a feeling more comprehensible. In religion, motivation is ascribed to something that its creators place "behind it all." The interpretation of those motivations often becomes the work of some priestly class, whether that class be a formalized one or not. I think all of that is unnecessary and even confounding. If I may be so bold as to redefine the word "divine" for a moment, I think that there can be no better personal relationship with the divine than one in which one rolls up ones sleeves and plunges up to the elbows in it in an attempt to understand some aspect of it and communicate that one facet to others who are, in turn, exploring their own areas.

Who doesn't feel a certain awe at the realization that everything of which we are made was produced in the hearts of great cosmic fusion furnaces that once burned and then burst into showers of particles? Who hasn't considered the infinitesimal odds of each atom in our bodies coming together to create us as we are? Who can fail to perceive some connectedness to all of life and the universe upon arriving at the knowledge that at every instant we are exchanging discreet packets of energy with our surroundings, with all that we see and touch and many other things of which we will never be aware? It is nothing if not astounding. Inserting some abstraction in the middle of it, though, absolves us from doing the work needed to find answers. If we can never hope to know the omniscient will of some demiurge, of what use is any attempt to do so? There's a degeneracy in that way of thinking, a laziness and a hopelessness that I do not think should be our proper lot as a species. No knowledge is forbidden other than that which we forbid to ourselves. Dowd, I think, has come to something like this realization, but continues to couch it in religious terms. It may all be semantic games; it's too bad he's never really gotten his hands dirty with the details of any of it so far as I know.

Still, I think that if he ever came to Massachusetts I would want to go hear what he has to say firsthand. I think I should like to talk with him about it. His assertion that he isn't interested in a theology based on belief is interesting in itself; what he thinks the implications of this might ultimately be for religion would be worth hearing about in thinking on Dowd's message. If belief doesn't matter, why have particular religions at all? If there's no empirical support for various dogmas, why not simply do away with them in favor of direct experience? Of what use is any a priori prohibition, concept of "sin" or sacredness?

I may yet have the chance to check this out, though. It looks like he's doing a swing through New England in June, with stops in Rowe, MA and Willington, CT. Road trip, anyone?

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A Letter to Sally Kern: If Tucker Should Read This

This was written by Tucker who, at 17 or 18 years in this life, has developed more compassion and common sense than a hatemonger like Sally Kern will ever develop over the course of however long they malinger on the face of this planet. If you are not moved at least a little bit by what he's written in response to Kern's venom, please check that you have a pulse.

Rep Kern:

On April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City a terrorist detonated a bomb that killed my mother and 167 others. 19 children died that day. Had I not had the chicken pox that day, the body count would've likely have included one more. Over 800 other Oklahomans were injured that day and many of those still suffer through their permanent wounds.

That terrorist was neither a homosexual or was he involved in Islam. He was an extremist Christian forcing his views through a body count. He held his beliefs and made those who didn't live up to them pay with their lives.

As you were not a resident of Oklahoma on that day, it could be explained why you so carelessly chose words saying that the homosexual agenda is worst than terrorism. I can most certainly tell you through my own experience that is not true. I am sure there are many people in your voting district that laid a loved one to death after the terrorist attack on Oklahoma City. I kind of doubt you'll find one of them that will agree with you.

I was five years old when my mother died. I remember what a beautiful, wise, and remarkable woman she was. I miss her. Your harsh words and misguided beliefs brought me to tears, because you told me that my mother's killer was a better person than a group of people that are seeking safety and tolerance for themselves.

As someone left motherless and victimized by terrorists, I say to you very clearly you are absolutely wrong.

You represent a district in Oklahoma City and you very coldly express a lack of love, sympathy or understanding for what they've been through. Can I ask if you might have chosen wiser words were you a real Oklahoman that was here to share the suffering with Oklahoma City? Might your heart be a bit less cold had you been around to see the small bodies of children being pulled out of rubble and carried away by weeping firemen?

I've spent 12 years in Oklahoma public schools and never once have I had anyone try to force a gay agenda on me. I have seen, however, many gay students beat up and there's never a day in school that has went by when I haven't heard the word **** slung at someone. I've been called gay slurs many times and they hurt and I am not even gay so I can just imagine how a real gay person feels. You were a school teacher and you have seen those things too. How could you care so little about the suffering of some of your students?

Let me tell you the result of your words in my school. Every openly gay and suspected gay in the school were having to walk together Monday for protection. They looked scared. They've already experienced enough hate and now your words gave other students even more motivation to sneer at them and call them names. Afterall, you are a teacher and a lawmaker, many young people have taken your words to heart. That happens when you assume a role of responsibility in your community. I seriously think before this week ends that some kids here will be going home bruised and bloody because of what you said.

I wish you could've met my mom. Maybe she could've guided you in how a real Christian should be acting and speaking.

I have not had a mother for nearly 13 years now and wonder if there were fewer people like you around, people with more love and tolerance in their hearts instead of strife, if my mom would be here to watch me graduate from high school this spring. Now she won't be there. So I'll be packing my things and leaving Oklahoma to go to college elsewhere and one day be a writer and I have no intentions to ever return here. I have no doubt that people like you will incite crazy people to build more bombs and kill more people again. I don't want to be here for that. I just can't go through that again.

You may just see me as a kid, but let me try to teach you something. The old saying is sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Well, your words hurt me. Your words disrespected the memory of my mom. Your words can cause others to pick up sticks and stones and hurt others.

Sincerely

Tucker

If you should happen to see this, Tucker, good luck to you in college and by all means consider Massachusetts in your plans. This state isn't perfect by any stretch and sure, we have a share of morons who think like Sally Kern. We're also the only state in the country that allows gay marriage, if that's any indicator to you of how things work here. I live in what seems to be considered one of the more conservative parts of the state, but compared to what I've encountered in having lived in many places around the US I would have to say that it's still a place where people have generally figured out how to live-and-let-live. We certainly have more than our share of excellent universities, too. Having read your letter, I've no doubt you'll ace the essay portion of your application and I bet you're a hell of a good student.

When I heard Kern's comments, I have to be honest; I didn't think of the bombing right away. Tucker is 100% correct. For Kern to make such statements in a place where people are so recently and so intimately acquainted with the reality of terrorism takes her horrid bile one step even further into a realm of hatefulness that can be traversed only by the lowest and most selfish people in this world upon which, one way or another, we really ought to be figuring out how to live together. Kern dwells in a reeking darkness shared by a select few who use their public influence to call for evils to be visited upon fellow human beings for no reason other than their own distastes. Kern lives in a hell of her own making that she shares with people like Donald Wildmon and Pat Robertson — people who believe in a deity so fervently that they think they can give marching orders on their behalf and call down divine fury if they can just pray hard enough for the destruction of their "enemies."

You know what? There is a "gay agenda." It consists of wanting the very same things out of life that everyone who doesn't happen to be gay wants. That people like Kern and Wildmon can turn the insistence that everyone deserves the same rights, privileges and protections under the law into some scheme to overthrow civilization in favor of raping two year olds tells us much, much more about what lurks in the hearts of these foul and pathetic creatures than it tells us about the motivations of people who, whether through a coincidence of genetics or development or choice, for that matter, prefer members of their own gender to those of the other gender as lovers. That this makes any difference at all to anyone never fails to boggle my mind. It does nothing to anyone, it means nothing at all to anyone, except those involved.

I've had some experience with the "gay agenda." I have known an uncounted but surely large number of gay men and women who were in and out of all sorts of relationships in the time I knew them — just like the "straight" people I've known. Some were good people, I thought, some were people I wouldn't want trust or even associate with. Some were honest, kind, caring people and some were devious, thieving miscreants who gladly bit the hands that fed them. In short, gay people as a whole are no different, in my experience, from straight people as a whole or, for that matter, people who had no interest in sex at all (yes, I have met a few of those). They all wanted the same things out of life that I wanted; a comfortable living, to work, to live with their partners — in some cases in a legally-protected relationship — and to be allowed to contribute whatever talents they had to society, or to be greedy, selfish pigs who cared nothing for others and were engaged in an endless quest for self-gratification. Not a one, as far as I ever knew, wanted to rape two year olds or commit acts of terrorism or turn their country over to Al Qaida.

I knew two same-sex couples especially well. One was a couple of gents who had been together for better than 15 years when I first met them. One of them gave me one of the biggest breaks I ever had in my life. He recognized some talent in me and gave me an opportunity to exercise it and make a very good living in the process. He was one of the kindest people I have ever known. He and his partner were deeply in love; by all rights, they should have been allowed to marry if they so desired, although I don't know if they wanted to bother with it. When not working on their businesses, they volunteered to work on human rights issues. They were committed not only to each other but to the society in which they live. They were good people. In light of all this, should anyone care that they happened to be two men instead of a man and a woman, or two women, or what have you? I doubt either one of them ever did intentional harm to another human being in their lives.

I knew another couple of gents who had been together for more than 40 years. They lived in the same apartment on Polk Street for at least 30 of those years. One was an author and an artist who spoke at least seven languages and understood the most esoteric philosophies and the history of Western culture as few people I have ever known. They were dedicated to one another until the day that this author died, followed just over a year later by his lifelong partner. Even without a marriage contract, they shared their lives in exactly the same way that any couple might share their lives together. They stood by each other through all of the travails that we humans face in our lives and then a few more because of the simple and meaningless circumstance that they happened to be two males. Their commitment was no less for it. They were kindly, even jovial, characters who delighted in providing a free education to whomever wanted one and not once — not ONCE — did they ever ask for anything in return. These men were worse than terrorists how, exactly? Not only were they good people, they were far better people than Sally Kern, Donald Wildmon, Pat Robertson or Fred Phelps can ever hope to become. That latter group of insidious toxins that infect our society should have counted themselves blessed if such people as these four has deigned to spit upon them.

I am 42 years old. In all of that time, at least half of a lifetime in which I have lived in places like New York City and San Francisco (27 of those 42 years combined, in fact), in all of the times I have found myself wandering through The Castro or Greenwich Village, never once did I wish for a Sally Kern or a Fred Phelps to come and protect me from gay people. In the years since I first became aware of the existence of individuals like Kern and Phelps and Robertson, though, I have often hoped for someone who could protect me from them. People who want to love one another and be left alone will never be a threat to society. The sowers of discord and purveyors of hatred always have been and always will be.

If I were God, I would have long since prepared a sort of Moroccan Feast of these people. If I were Emperor of the Universe, letters to Pat Robertson would need be addressed to Fred Phelps' rectum. I suspect that they would be happier with that arrangement, truth be told.

If Tucker should read this, thanks for being so eloquent, for writing that letter that was such a threat to Sally "The Symptom" Kern that a cop had to stop you from delivering it to her office. Whatever your beliefs might be, I would prefer a million of you to be in this world than even one tenth of that vile hag who is beneath your contempt in every way.

A hyphal tip, too, to Reverend Big Dumb Chimp, in whose blog I first saw this.

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Green Fairy in Worcester: Absinthe Now Available Here

Who says Worcester isn't on the cutting edge? I've just learned this morning that absinthe, the fabled potion made from wormwood credited with inspiring everything from the genius of Picasso to the madness of Van Gogh, is available at two bars in the area. The Sole Proprietor right in town, as well as the Old Timer in Clinton, are selling it. It isn't cheap; $10 a glass at the Sole Proprietor and $9 at the Old Timer, but it's worth it just for the novelty. The stuff was illegal in the US until just last year.

Not that it stopped me from getting my hands on it. I knew two sources in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I've tried a couple of homemade versions in the past. In one case, I even tried uncut Artemisia extract, which was so bitter that I spent the next ten minutes making a noise something like a lovesick duck with a sore throat. Still, absinthe isn't bad when it's been properly prepared, and I'm sure the stuff they're selling here is better than the homebrews I've had.

The Green Fairy
Storied, once-banned absinthe catches on locally

Since last November, the drink list at the Sole Proprietor restaurant in Worcester has included a libation called “The Green Fairy.” If drinks could talk, what a tale the fairy would tell, providing she could remember the next morning.

Absinthe, the often emerald colored, highly potent spirit, banned for most of the 20th century in Europe and until 2007 in the United States for supposed madness-inducing properties, was called The Green Fairy by its devoted touts, whose number included so many artists and writers that absinthe’s nom de plume became the Green Muse...

"We don’t allow our customers to have more than two," said Nichols Quinn, night manager at the Sole on Highland Street.

"Absinthe is not a shot,” said Brian McNally, proprietor of the Old Timer in Clinton, which added the drink to its bar late last year. “No one is going to sit down and wax ’em back..."

Typically the alcohol content of consumer hard liquors ranges from 80 to 100 proof. The Swiss Kubler brand absinthe sold at the Sole is 106 proof. The Old Timer carries Kubler and a French brand, Lucid Superieure, which is 124 proof...

At the Old Timer, absinthe goes for $9 per drink. At the Sole, the price is $9.99...

At $10 a pop, I don't think many customers — even at the Sole Proprietor — are likely to want more than two. Still, I'm going to have to get myself over there one of these days. I'm not fond enough of absinthe to make it a regular thing, especially not at that price, but it's worth it just to be able to say, "I've drunk absinthe in Worcester." I'd imagine very few people can say that, and somehow I don't think all that many ever will.

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Tom Lantos Dies: Leading Congressional Advocate for Human Rights and Holocaust Survivor

If you know anything about California politics, you probably know something about Tom Lantos. Lantos was the only survivor of the Holocaust of World War II to serve in Congress, and that experience earlier in his life shaped his political career for the rest of it. Lantos was a champion of human rights and human dignity who spent his last years standing up for those values during an administration that spent a good deal of its time redefining torture to suit its purposes and attempting to find ways to thumb its nose at the spirit of the Geneva Convention.

At exactly the point in history when America could use a hundred more men like Tom Lantos, we've lost the only one we had. The 14-term Representative from the San Francisco Bay Area succumbed today to esophageal cancer at age 80.

Longtime Rep. Tom Lantos dies of cancer

(02-11) 10:45 PST WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor elected to Congress and for 27 years a champion of human rights as representative for a district stretching from San Francisco's west side to San Carlos, died today of complications from esophageal cancer, his office said. He was 80.

The San Mateo Democrat was diagnosed with cancer in December but waited a month before revealing he was ill. He died this morning at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland, a spokeswoman said.

Before he was diagnosed, Lantos was making plans to run in November for his 15th House term. Just last year, he joked he was "in the mid-point of his career," and until recently swam at 5:30 a.m. every day in the House pool...

Lantos put human rights at the top of his agenda throughout his congressional career, and many of the tributes pouring in today cited that commitment...

President Bush called Lantos "a man of character" who was "a living reminder that we must never turn a blind eye to the suffering of the innocent at the hands of evil men."

Lantos lost nearly his whole family in the Holocaust. When he was named chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee last year, he told The Chronicle that "in a sense, my whole life has been a preparation for this job."

Lantos was born in Budapest in 1928 and was 16 when the Nazis took the city in March 1944. Most Jews outside the Hungarian capital were sent to Auschwitz, while young Jewish men from Budapest were taken to forced labor camps.

Lantos was taken to a camp at Szob, a village about 40 miles from the capital, from which he escaped twice. The second time he made it to a safe house in Budapest, where his aunt had also taken refuge.

The Red Army liberated Budapest in January 1945, and Lantos began to search for his family. Most had died, but he managed to contact Annette Tillemann, a childhood friend who had gone into hiding shortly after the German occupation and escaped to Switzerland with her mother. Like Lantos, most of her relatives perished in the death camps.

The two were reunited in Hungary later that winter and married in 1950...

He was criticized in some quarters, however, for an unwavering support of Israel, and he wasn't afraid to be unpopular on a number of issues. As recently as October, he angered the Bush administration and some colleagues when he moved a bill through his committee that defined the killings of Armenians in Turkey in the early 20th century as genocide.

He also made headlines last year when he berated Yahoo Inc. executives during a congressional hearing over their involvement in the jailing of a Chinese journalist. Lantos told the executives, "Morally, you are pygmies..."

Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama praised Lantos as a man who "never wavered in his defense of freedom and opposition to tyranny," noting that Lantos referred to himself as "an American by choice."

Rep. Mike Pence, a socially conservative Indiana Republican, called Lantos "a giant in Congress ... who stood on the world stage with moral clarity and courage..."

"Chairman Lantos was an indispensable leader in the field of global AIDS and poverty," added Global AIDS Alliance executive director Paul Zeitz. "The fight against HIV/AIDS has lost a real hero. His leadership will be sorely missed..."

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San Francisco's Defenestration Building: Old Photos and No Future

There are a lot of strange things in San Francisco, and one of the oddest of that odd lot is the Defenestration Building at Sixth and Howard Streets. A hotel in bygone days, the empty building was grabbed by a bunch of artists who turned it into a kind of surreal circus where murals tout imagined sideshow acts as furniture leaps from the windows. There probably isn't another place quite like it in America; it's the kind of pointed surrealism one is more likely to find in Prague or Berlin.

The area in which the Defenestration Building stands, however, is rather blighted. There are lots of residential hotels (a more politically correct term if there ever was one), prostitutes, drug dealers and boarded store fronts. There's been talk for years about redeveloping the area and those plans are finally going ahead. This is a good thing. The bad part, however, is that it looks like the Defenestration Building is going to be torn down to make way for low-priced, high-density housing. That's too bad; I wish the powers that be in San Francisco would consider fixing the old hotel up and turning it into a neighborhood landmark. Instead of the area turning into another bland magnet for those who need a shoebox-sized apartment, a refurbished Defenestration Building in a safe neighborhood could be a draw for tourists and so help business to flourish while preserving one of those homemade oddities that make San Francisco such a unique place.

According to C.W. Nevius in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, though, the Defenestration Building is probably going to be rubble soon.

It looks like the old Hugo Hotel, that odd, decrepit landmark on Sixth Street at Howard Street, has finally reached the end of the line. Last week the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency announced it has begun the process of taking over the Hugo through the use of eminent domain. It will probably be demolished for space for affordable housing.

Locals will recognize the Hugo, which has been vacant for nearly 20 years, for the colorful murals on the downstairs walls and the weird pieces of furniture, including a couch and a large wooden dresser, poking out the windows. It is a quirky eyesore, both full of potential and run down...

I used to work within walking distance of the Defenestration Building and took a few photos of the place in April 2002:

It's probably even more run down now than it was when I took these photos almost six years ago. One more thing I won't recognize when I get back for a visit someday. A couple of years ago, it was the old Sniff Collective outdoor gallery in the Albany Bulb, now this. One wonders how clean and shiny a place really has to be before it's a good thing.

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A Name I Hadn't Heard in Years: Debbie Viess

Years ago, when I was quite new to the wonderful world of mycology, I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area and going out on my first mushroom hunts. One of my favorite places to foray was Tilden Park in the hills of Berkeley. I was also a new member of the Mycological Society of San Francisco and had bought my first book about identifying wild mushrooms, David Arora's excellent Mushrooms Demystified.

One of the first things that a new mushroom fancier needs to know, especially if he/she plans on eating anything found, is how to identify Amanita mushrooms at least to the genus. While going through Arora's section on those mushrooms, I learned of an edible species, Amanita velosa, the spring amanita. Not long after that, I found a couple of very nice specimens while scrounging about Tilden. At least, I thought they might be. Then again, amanitas are nothing for amateurs to fool with. Arora warns that they should be consumed only after positive identification by an expert.

Luckily for me, there was a woman in MSSF who went by the nickname Amanita Rita. When I brought my putative A. velosa to the next meeting, which was perhaps my second or third, I sought her out and asked her to identify the mushrooms I'd found. She confirmed that they were spring amanitas. Eager to try them, I took them home after the meeting, lightly sauteed them, and ate them. They were absolutely delicious; to this day, I still consider them high on the list of the best mushrooms I've ever had. Still, I then spent the rest of that night wondering if maybe the expert could have made a mistake. Was there some chance that I was going to die?

Clearly, Amanita Rita was correct about the identity of the mushrooms or else I probably wouldn't be around to be recollecting the experience.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my colleagues stopped off in San Francisco on his way back from Malaysia and attended an MSSF meeting (he's from the Bay Area and also used to be a member, though our paths never crossed there). I asked about Amanita Rita; I couldn't recall her real name. He hadn't run into her there.

As it turns out, Amanita Rita, whose real name is Debbie Viess, left MSSF some time ago to help start another organization, the Bay Area Mycological Society. The only reason I remember her real name now is because of an article that ran in The Marin Independent Journal today in which she's quoted:

"My specialty, the amanita genus of mushroom, includes some of the best edible species worldwide, as well as some of the deadliest mushrooms," said Debbie Viess, co-founder of the Bay Area Mycological Society. "The trick is knowing which is which. Unfortunately, it can be a 'one trial' learning process."

That certainly jarred my memory!

I'm sure that Amanita Rita doesn't remember me, but she's one of the people who is responsible for my decision to go back to school after a decade-long career in the business world with the goal of earning a doctorate in mycology. Her simple act of identifying my A. velosa and explaining to me how she'd done it was one impetus that propelled me to the point at which I'm at today. Funny how there are small things we do, perhaps all the time, that change people's lives... and we usually never find out about it.

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Worst Science-Related Reporting Ever

Alright, the title of this entry might be a slight exaggeration. Still, a story from California's Alameda Sun jumped out at me like a jumpy thing made of bricks this morning. I'm going to assume that the reporter, Eric Turowski, lacks a basic knowledge of biology and that he got stuck writing the story because the newspaper didn't have anyone else to do it.

That being said, Turowski surely could have done better than this!

Virus-Producing Fungus Missing from Laboratory

An inventory of viruses on hand at Roche Molecular Systems on the 1100 block of Atlantic Avenue revealed 0.5 milliliters of the fungus Coccidioides immitis missing. C immitis is the fungus producing spores that cause valley fever.

The virus was in a neutral state, suspended in water, and not a threat to health, according to Melinda Baker, director of global communications for Roche...

Valley fever is spread through the air by spores of valley fever fungus. The spores are particularly active during drought seasons, when the soil is disturbed. It is considered an emerging virus as more people move into places previously uninhabited, like Arizona. People with weak immune systems can become seriously ill from the infection. But 60 percent of infected people will develop no symptoms at all. Valley fever can be treated with fungus-killing medicines.

Now, if I weren't a mad mycologist, I probably wouldn't have noticed the story at all and it may seem a bit nitpicky of me to take the author to task. Still, there's no virus involved anywhere in the story whatsoever. There's not even a "virus-producing fungus," as the headline of the story implies. The fungus is only a fungus, and valley fever is caused by that fungus. What was suspended in water was a fungus, not a virus, and that what was in a neutral (or more properly resting) state.

It's not too hard to tell the difference between a virus and a fungus. A virus is an extremely small, nonliving entity consisting of a nucleic acid core (RNA or DNA, depending on the virus) and a protein coat. They can't reproduce themselves without hijacking the genetic machinery of a host organism. A virus is non-cellular.

A fungus is a eukaryote, meaning it has membrane-bound organelles organized inside of cells. Fungi are much, much larger than virions. They have cell membranes made of phospholipid bilayers and produce chitin as a cell wall. They have very large genomes which are composed exclusively of DNA. They reproduce on their own, sometimes sexually and sometimes asexually.

There are plenty of other differences, too, but these are basic ones that the smallest bit of fact-checking would reveal.

Like I said, this is something that most people don't really care about. I hate seeing my favorite organisms reduced to being called non-organisms, though. To see a noble and virulent fungus demeaned as a base and simple virus is just too much.

Virus-producing fungus, indeed! I suggest that this reporter be remanded to the custody of the Mycological Society of San Francisco for immediate re-education. Those folks know exactly what to do with fungus-deniers like Eric Turowski!

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Tarot Cards Fail to Predict Car Crashing Through Wall

Years ago, back when I was into all sorts of occult things, I lived just up the street from a shop called Ancient Ways. It was, and still is, a hub of occult/pagan/metaphysical stuff in the Bay Area. The store carries all sorts of magical supplies and gives lessons on how to perform feats of magic and do various kinds of fortune-telling.

All of which makes me wonder... with all of those protective talismans and fortune tellers and wizards lurking about, how would they miss an upcoming car crashing through the wall of the store on Thanksgiving? You'd think somebody's psychic spirit guide would have given a word of warning. Wouldn't something like that show up in your crystal ball at some point?

Nonetheless, a car came through the wall of the shop this past Thanksgiving. Thankfully, nobody got hurt... but a good deal of merchandise that was shelved along the wall was apparently damaged. I don't suppose the spirits provided enough warning for those who operate the place to move their stuff out of the way. The funny part of it to me is that the shop is still giving tarot card readings and instructions on how to practice ceremonial magic.

I mean, just because you don't foresee an automobile plowing through the place, that doesn't mean you can't tell the future or alter reality through supernatural intervention or sheer force of will, right?

I've screen-captured the current homepage of the store announcing the unforeseen accident as well as the lessons on how to be a psychic and/or wizard... right on the same page! It's a pretty big heap of woo, particularly considering that one might conclude that the woo doesn't work from the empirical course of events. I know, I know, "magick doesn't work that way." I can't begin to count how many times occultists of various stripes explained away the lack of reproducible results that way. I'm guilty of having engaged in that bit of wooful apologetics myself.

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It's Time for the Fungus Fair!

The Mycological Society of San Francisco's 38^th annual Fungus Fair starts tomorrow at the Oakland Museum of California. If you can get there, don't miss it. It's probably the best event of its kind anywhere. In fact, it was attending this event years ago that got me involved with mycology in the first place.

From the announcement:

Saturday Dec. 1, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Sunday, Dec. 2, 12–5 p.m.
38th Annual Bay Area Fungus Fair

Get down to earth at the Oakland Museum of California’s 38th Annual Fungus Fair, the weekend of December 1-2. Meet many wild specimens, from the beautiful and poisonous to the medicinal, edible, and just plain weird.

Presented by the museum and the Mycological Society of San Francisco (MSSF), the Fungus Fair is open 10–6 p.m. on Saturday and 12–5 p.m. on Sunday. For a program of lectures and events. (PDF)

The weekend event is a rare chance to pore over displays of remarkable native mushrooms and see how they can be used to dye paper and clothing, treat cancer and HIV, and add flavor to many foods. Attend a slide talk or use a microscope. Highly recommended for curious kids! Mycologists will be on hand both days to answer questions and identify unknown specimens for visitors...

Mushroom munchers can learn to recognize and prepare edible fungi from cookbook and food vendors and the Fair’s popular cooking demonstrations. Local chefs will prepare dishes with fresh fungi in an outdoor kitchen on Saturday and Sunday.

Fungus-Filled Family Fun! Mushroom crafts and Fair tours for kids take place on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.

Fair vendors will have fresh wild mushrooms, cultivation kits, books, clothing, posters, and other mushroom-centric items available all weekend.

Admission to the Fungus Fair is $8 general, $5 seniors/students with ID, and free for members, kids five and under, and Oakland City employees. A special two-day pass is available for $12 at www.museumca.org/tickets.

Were I not some 3,000 miles away, you can bet I'd be there.

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I Just Became Slightly More Likely to Vote for Hillary Clinton

I've been keeping an eye on the contenders for president, and nobody has really stood out to me so far. The closest I've come to a decision to date has been some waffling around Bill Richardson. I've looked at Obama because, hey, he's a rock star — or was — but I haven't been all that impressed, particularly when he's spoken in unscripted situations. Edwards? Eh. I'm not ready to support anyone who pushes faith-based values as part of his political platform, even if I do happen to agree with some of those values coincidentally. As far as the Republicans go, well, that's just not going to happen unless they start changing in ways I can't imagine them changing.

I've never been a big fan of Hillary Clinton. She gives me a bit of the willies, honestly. Something just doesn't seem right. I don't trust her. Then again, I generally don't trust politicians. It's always been a pet theory of mine that anyone egomaniacal enough to run for president should be disqualified on the basis of potential mental illness. Hillary gets under my skin a bit more than most.

Nonetheless, the likelihood of my voting for the woman has just increased due to some things she said during a tour of the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It turns out that she's actually capable of carrying on coherent, unscripted conversations about science with real live scientists (unless, of course, she was briefed beforehand about the benefits of using recycled denim as insulation, which I find a tad unlikely). Here's a bit from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

...Did growing plants on a roof instead of nailing down shingles sound goofy to her? Nope -- she understood the "urban heat island" effect, which means that the soil-and-plant roof will be 40 percent cooler than a typical top.

And how hippie-silly is using shredded blue jeans to insulate the walls? Not at all, she said -- aside from the recycling benefit, it snuffs the danger of glass-like fibers breaking down and polluting the air.

"It's exciting to tour someone who is so aware of the issues of sustainability, of green buildings and even the challenges of creating green buildings," said a shell-shocked-looking Chris Andrews, who as the academy's associate director led Clinton and Newsom through the $484 million structure. "I frankly did not expect that.

"I've led a lot of tours like this with a lot of officials, and believe me, this was pretty unusual to have someone understand what I was talking about."

Admittedly, this isn't rocket science... but after listening and reading what some of our current crop of candidates have had to say about any number of science-related issues, even this much is enough to get my ears pricked up. Clinton's next statement is largely political, granted, but I certainly find myself in agreement with it and she's the first candidate I've heard phrase this with something resembling passion for the subject:

"Scientists have been muzzled, information has been taken off of government-sponsored Web sites, the leaders of our country have dismissed scientific research and advancements," Clinton said. "There has been a concerted effort against stem cell research, a campaign against evolution. I mean, it has been relentless."

"It's important to have institutions like this, with such a distinguished history, that can perpetuate curiosity and intellectual inquiry. But it would help to have a president who actually supported science again."

All of which is true and addresses a number of the concerns I have about the future, if it couldn't be guessed from my almost daily explosions over the Creationist/"Intelligent Design" boondogglers and the like. And yes, it would be nice to have someone in the White House who didn't see evolutionary biology as some sort of witchcraft and understood the difference between a cluster of cells stored in a freezer and a human being. All of that is stuff I could certainly get behind.

This isn't to say that I'm anywhere close to making up my mind to vote for, or even support, Clinton in 2008. She has gained a grudging bit of respect from me, though. I wasn't expecting that to happen. I still disagree with her on other issues, and that's true of all the candidates. Still, her statements about science in general, and about the campaign against evolution in particular, gives me an inkling that she may actually be paying attention to what's going on on that front in the Culture War. It is, at least, a step in the right direction that she had the cajones to say so unambiguously.

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And Then It Hit Me...

I've been wrestling with the surname Shmulevich ever since Stanislav Shmulevich was arrested. It just a few minutes ago dawned on me from where I know that last name! It's the same as that of a Quality Assurance engineer I brought on board for a company called CGTime (which no longer exists) back when I was a Silicon Valley headhunter. I did a quick search for Igor on Google and found that the most recent info about him indicates that he's working at Documentum these days.

I wonder if Stanislav and Igor are related. You don't hear the name "Shmulevich" much in the USA, but I've no idea how common the name might be in Russia. All of this has nothing at all to do with anything other than my own resolving why the name seemed so familiar. It's a bit like finding my lost keys.

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Purgatory Chasm Foray

The foray and barbecue yesterday were great. The weather held up with storms not arriving until early evening. Even though they're secondary growth, the woods around the chasm contain a good deal of mycological diversity as well as a few skunks if my nose is any judge. Luckily for me, I didn't meet any of the critters up close as I trekked through the woods in search of specimens and neither did anyone else. About 30 people attended the foray, most of them members of the Boston Mycological Club and the Pringle Lab. Our own lab was a bit underrepresented on the foray; just Dr. H, AnWi and myself. Still, just about everyone from the lab managed to make it for the barbecue afterward. Being in the company of so many amateur and professional mycologists was most enjoyable; I haven't seen so many people at a fungus-related function since leaving the SF Bay Area and mycological society more than five years ago.

Speaking of MSSF, here's an item from the "it's a small world" department. It turns out that one of the people in the Pringle lab used to volunteer at the MSSF Fungus Fairs. I thought I recognized her, and it turns out that we had met at the very first Fair I attended in 2001, which set me on the path to where I am now! I remembered her in particular because of her name (Primrose; you just don't meet too many women named Primrose) and because she has a distinctive look about her generally. Moreover, it turns out that she lived less than a mile from LL and my house in El Cerrito. Actually, there turns out to be a lot of connection between mycologists here and the Bay Area; about half the people in mycological academe who were at the foray were either Bay Area natives or had spent years living there.

As far as yesterday's finds, the list of species is a very long one that I'm not even going to try to reproduce. There was a bewildering array of Russulas; there's always a bewildering array of Russulas, though. Some of the more noteworthy fungi found were Leotia lubrica, Amanita pantherina and A. inodora, Hygrophorus coccineus, Cantharellus cibarius, Craterellus cornucopioides, and Suillus spraguei... for starters. After foraying, participants brought back their finds for identification and inclusion upon a poster of fungal phylogenetics that extended the length of two picnic tables. Table talks were held discussing basic identification and evolutionary history and diversity. Time for photos now.

	George Riner gives a talk on identifying mushrooms, including chucking Russulas about to demonstrate their brittleness.
	David Hibbett discusses the phylogeny of Basidiomycota. We also had a similar talk on Ascomycota given by an expert whose name I can't spell...
	Fungal phylogeny
	Fungal phylogeny
	Fungal phylogeny
	Fungal phylogeny
	One of my finds, Cortinarius iodes. I came up with a number of others, but this was the most attractive of the bunch. Leotia lubrica is interesting but not terribly photogenic.
	A very small sample of the many Russulae gathered. All in all, attendees probably gathered more than a dozen species in this genus.
	Best guess on this one is Daedalea quercinus. Identifying fungi past genus while still in the field is difficult, and even that degree of specificity can be tricky.
	A few of the chanterelles found; Cantharellus cibarius and Craterellus cornucupioides.
	I've never been too interested in lichens, but this is the prettiest one I've ever seen. Cladonia cristatella is commonly known as British soldiers due to its coloration. It certainly stands out from the vast array of drab lichens one finds smeared on everything in the forest!
	Suillus spraguei, a slippery jack found in the northeastern US. Like other Suillus, it's not toxic, though I don't know if anyone would want to eat it. My only experience with eating a member of this genus was S. brevipes, and that had a consistency like soft scrambled eggs and a strongly fungal flavor. S. spraguei seems like it might be a bit firmer in consistency.
	Definitely Ramaria, and probably R. stricta. This is a relatively large specimen; it's about 5" tall. The coral fungi are an odd group; the morphology has arisen independently at least three times resulting in fungi that look very much alike but are no more closely related to one another than is a human to a cow.
	Another of the coral fungi, this one may be Clavulina or Clavulinopsis. In either case, it's not a near relative of Ramaria despite its superficially similar morphology. This is my favorite photo from the day.
	A few random polypores, these having the familiar cap-and-stem construction that we humans call a "mushroom." Funny thing about that structure is that it has evolved independently in at least six different clades that, again, look superficially very similar but are quite different from each other in important ways. For instance, these polypores are as closely related to the button mushrooms one buys in a supermarket as are dogs to ducks.

At the barbecue, there was much conversation about the research people are doing in evolutionary molecular biology. One of the most interesting projects going on is in the evolution of Scleroderma, particularly the result that the pileate-stipate genus Gyroporus appears to be nested in a gastrulate phylogeny even though evolutionary gastrulation appears to be irreversible in the fungi. Hmmmm.

One disturbing aspect I noticed; all of the students from the Pringle lab were women and all those from the Hibbett lab men. Could this be the start of some bizarre experiment to selectively breed the next generation of mycologists? Oly time will tell...

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Dot Commies: Where Are They Now?

Being a survivor of the Dot Com Boom of the 1990's, I always appreciate stories of what happens to Dot Commies after they leave that world. My choice was returning to school and pursuing my own lifelong dream of going into scientific research, and I suppose that's one of the more difficult paths one could take. I've never been very good at doing anything the easy way, really.

In today's San Francisco Chronicle is the story of a fellow refugee from the hi-tech world who found his happiness in quite a different domain than mine. He's found joy in cleaning boat hulls:

"I wasn't comfortable with all that structure [at the office]," he says. "Now I set my own hours and make my own decisions about things. And I'm outside all day..."

"There's no input down there. It's this dark water and the hull and your breathing sounds -- and that's all," he says. "It becomes very cerebral, in a strange way. Your brain isn't engaged with the boat cleaning, since it's pretty straightforward, so you're free to just think. Or have imaginary conversations. Or make plans. I even tried writing, in my head, for a while. Mostly just ruminating, though..."

"It's a little like that state just before you fall asleep. It's almost ... dreamlike. It's very peaceful..."

"At my office job, I'd been caught in this mind-set that I'd always be there, that I'd always be in these middling jobs doing things I didn't love... but once I made a change, I realized that change is possible. In fact, I really just wondered why I hadn't done so sooner."

— Brian Moran, from Quitters sometimes win: Jumping ship in order to clean them

Back when the exodus out of San Francisco and surrounding areas was going on as the bubble deflated, I had friends who planned on doing everything from opening a horse farm in Oregon to becoming a motivational speaker in Texas. I've lost touch with them over time, but I think of them again whenever I see a story like this one.

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