They found my marbles!

A few months ago I had the chance to have an MRI taken. Wait, something in that sentence sounds off...

Yes, I "had the chance to". In other words, I up and volunteered to have my brain imaged and inspected by other curious students, and I was lucky that I had the opportunity to delve into my own brain!

Apples!

It only really feels like fall once we start picking apples from the three trees in our front yard.
I decided to share a few...

Synthesis & Characterization of Self-Assembling Nanoparticles for Applications in Site-Specific Drug Delivery

How's that for a title? I enjoyed an awesome internship this summer at the Biomimetic Nanostructures Lab, at the California NanoSciences Institute, UCSB. I got to make amphiphilic polymers - specifically, light-sensitive molecules - that are designed for site-specific drug delivery to cancers. I couldn't have asked for better mentors - thank you Mike Isaacman and Luke Theogarajan! Here's my final presentation:

http://csep.cnsi.ucsb.edu/kathryn-barron

Edible Gardens

This past summer my family has been creating an organic vegetable garden - in our back driveway. Yep, the driveway. That once mundane and lifeless patch of asphalt has been utterly transformed into raised beds of productive greenery. A few of the fruits and veggies on the menu this year are:

Zucchini
Squash (they look like little lemon-colored UFO's!)
Asparagus
Blackberries
Bell Peppers
Italian and Lemon Basil Plants
Oregano
Thyme
Pumpkins
Raspberries
Cucumbers
Grapes
Green Beans
...and lastly, Tomatoes. With a capital T.

I have to say the most incredible sections of our garden are those containing the tomatoes. This year we went all out and bought several varieties of heirloom tomatoes; Sungolds, Persimmons, Zebras, Siberian Blacks, tomatoes that could never be found (and probably wouldn't even be recognized) in most current grocery stores. I have been absolutely stunned at the variety of unique tastes, shapes, colors, and even leaves that each tomato plant produces. The disparity in quality between store bought and home grown produce especially strikes me when we harvest our collections of grape-sized Sungolds, Juliets, and other delicious heirlooms. Probably my favorites so far are the bright orange Sungolds (above) - so sweet they taste like candy - and the hefty Persimmons (below).  Every homegrown tomato I have tasted has far outstripped the watery excuses for fruit that are stacked up in waxy, muted red pyramids at the store. No, our tomatoes aren't perfect, they have stretch marks, bug bites, mismatched sizes, but every defect adds character on top of their already colorful, flavorful nature.

Street Art

Colored Building in Downtown S.F.

Tenderloin District Mural

Many people find graffiti offensive or unsightly, but after seeing walls done by the likes of Apex and Neon and Chez (pictured above) in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, I admit I have become a complete street art fan. Whether full-blown murals, or simple - and often random - street "doodles", discovering art in public spaces often makes my day.

Miniature Street Art! - Brattleboro, VT

Ghostly building, painted on a building. San Francisco, CA

Does Now Exist?

Faster than you can perceive it, it's over. We are always thinking and processing at least a few milliseconds behind a moment that is already gone. Even if time is not linear, there is no question that it is moving.

Okay, scratch that. Suppose it is actually us who move through time. Perhaps it is some sort of Brownian motion we experience through the temporal dimension, colliding with certain moments head on then rocketing onto a straight line crash course with another instant. It would make sense for the same forces that govern basic molecular motion through space to jumble and jostle us through time.

Imagine that from any given position in the time-dimension, two people are headed toward the exact same time frame. Arriving at the moment, they would bring a different perspective since, quite literally, they would come at the moment from a different angle. Interpretation would then be based on dissimilarities of location within the expanse of time.

This pinball game portrayal of time seems to assume that the moments already exist to bump into on the playing field (not to mention the question it raises of who set the marbles in motion). If this is the case, moments, experiences are predetermined. Something in me violently protests this thought. I would much prefer to think that time proceeds, or rather, we proceed with time, on a more interdependent level. Much like the apical meristem of a plant's roots, the very tip, the forefront of a growing force, where each cell depends on the growth of the others - time emanates from a past basis but instantaneously changes direction, alongside those who experience it.

The Spider and the Fly, well Honeybee

I am petrified by spiders. Just putting that out there. However, when I saw this vividly green, incredibly leggy creature eating its lunch today, I couldn't resist getting up close. There is something captivating about the contrast between the brutal image of the Green Lynx spider devouring a bee and the innocuousness of the rose on which it feasts. I am reminded of a passage from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
"I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering a splintered wreck I've come to care for, ... ,whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them."

What is color anyway?

In the paint section of some hardware stores, there's a place where you can test what your chosen color sample will look like under different lights. I've often wondered how one color can looks so different in varying light. The interaction between a single pigment and the light reflected off of it are so innumerable it seems an injustice to classify it as - or rather confine it to - just one color.

The way we perceive color starts when a photon, artificial or from the sun, hits an object - well, one molecule of that object. The properties of the reflected light, and thereby the color we see, depend on the wavelength of the original photon, the chemical make-up of the pigment molecule, and even the angle at which the light hits the object.

Variations in color can also be caused by the amount of light hitting the color. Our perception of color depends so much on abundant light that, lacking it, the color sensing cells in our eyes "turn off", leaving simple black and white perception cells with full responsibility for providing us with sight. The light we depend on to see color is itself unclassifiable. The full spectrum of light is an ever-changing blend of colors, seen or unseen, that has no boundaries.

Whether we try to categorize color by wavelength or chemical composition, we still can't seem to define it. Try explaining red to a blind person. To people, the concept of red is hard to grasp and explain because there are no limits to what red can be; it is impossible to mark the boundaries of color.

C H O C O L A T E !!

No other words needed (besides the recipe).

Cake:
6 eggs
3/4 c. corn starch
1 1/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 c. chocolate (chips or baking)
1/2 c. butter

Melt chocolate and butter. Add sugar, corn starch and eggs yolks. Beat egg whites until firm.
Fold into the chocolate mixture and pour into buttered cake pan. Bake at 350 for ~40 minutes.


*Alternate option: Bake batter in two separate pans to create a layered cake, and put your favorite fruit preserves in the middle!


Icing:
6 tbs. butter
2 1/2 c. chocolate
1/4 c. confectioner's sugar
1/2 c. cream cheese
1/4 ts. vanilla
4 tbs. cocoa powder


Melt the chocolate and butter, stir in cream cheese, cocoa, vanilla, and sugar (adding more to taste).

Can anything truly be perfect?

The very definition of perfection seems to be a contradiction. "Being free ... of flaws and defects" is a flaw in and of itself. Something classified as perfect would have to display every possible virtuous quality and no flaws.

Say there existed such a thing as the "perfect bird". Such a bird would, in fact, be flawed in two ways. First, the bird - even a perfect one - is still only a bird. The perfect qualities of other creatures (e.g. perfect underwater breathing) are unattainable unless the qualifications of the category "bird" were drastically changed. So the fact that a perfect bird is still an avian creature limits its perfection, and perfection will not tolerate limits.

Secondly, if such a bird were to achieve complete perfection, it would then encompass every perfect characteristic. It could not gain anything more and would be, by definition, unable to change. Such an unchanging bird would be immutably perfect. Can anything be perfect if it always remains in one condition; limited to that one state, cut off from change?

Also, if perfection is defined by the nature of flaws - of which the bird has none - what could the bird be compared to that would reveal such an ideal? This assumes that there could not exist an "anti-bird" for contrast, since an absolutely perfect bird could exist independently (not would, could). Even the concept of perfection alone, without the bird identification, seems impossible. In a world defined by opposites, such an absolute flawlessness could not be recognized. But does perfection have to be appreciated to be perfect? Perhaps some ideal manifestation exists, but as humans, we cannot discern it because we must compare and quantify, and cannot comprehend infinite or absolute.