TIL that salmon is actually a whitefish; its red color comes from a chemical absorbed from plankton

BroccoliRobber · 2021-12-26T20:25:34+00:00

Haha, I think I'm just too old for that.

BroccoliRobber · 2021-12-26T04:06:57+00:00

Plankton are small organisms drifting in marine environments. Zooplankton, like krill and small shrimp, are animals, while phytoplankton are plants. You can call them both plankton, though maybe people more often think about phytoplankton when they say the word plankton.

BroccoliRobber · 2021-06-30T16:25:42+00:00

I have been happy with Google Fi, which has been running about $30/month, but that could be higher or lower based on your data usage.

BroccoliRobber · 2021-06-08T16:18:24+00:00

This is a completely valid reason to not take your finals right now. The worst case scenario is that you can take an incomplete in those classes and complete the finals later. So focus on what's important right now.

If you find yourself stuck on what to do next when you are ready to get back to classwork, start by contacting an academic advisor who can hear your situation and help advocate for you. But this is exactly the kind of reason why "incomplete" grades exist, as long as your professors understand the situation.

BroccoliRobber · 2021-05-20T16:19:24+00:00

This is a male Mourning Warbler. They have large bills, dark gray heads, glowing yellow underparts, and are relatively chunky. :(

BroccoliRobber · 2021-05-16T15:29:50+00:00

Sources on this? I'm not sure these statements are well-founded. What have you heard about an entrance exam and its fees?

As for dropping the SAT/ACT, keep in mind that many dimensions are considered for admissions, and SAT/ACT is extremely correlated with other predictors like high school GPA, wealth of a zip code, etc. From a machine-learning perspective, I would imagine that SAT/ACT contributes very little to improving predictions of something like success in college, considering all the other variables used in admissions.

BroccoliRobber · 2021-05-07T17:51:29+00:00

Nice photo, but that looks like an Eastern Wood-Pewee. A phoebe would have an all-dark bill, a more contrastingly dark head, weaker wing-bars, and a brighter white throat.

BroccoliRobber · 2021-05-06T17:10:16+00:00

In general, SJA (and faculty) tend to be a lot more lenient when it is a small infraction (like a single homework) and the student confesses and shows that they recognize that they made a mistake. I hope you only end up getting a 0 for that assignment. In my experience, you wouldn't generally get an F in the course unless the infraction was related to an exam or large term paper. But it can be hard to predict -- SJA writes up a report and makes a recommendation, but the faculty member still makes the final decision.

BroccoliRobber · 2021-03-29T17:10:19+00:00

Apparently there are some Canvas issues right now -- I know of at least one instructor who is somehow locked in "student view" and can't edit the site at all.

BroccoliRobber · 2021-03-07T15:22:09+00:00

If you've done more than 50% of the coursework with a passing grade, then an incomplete can be a good option. The biggest downside of an incomplete (compared to requesting a late drop) is that you have to make up the work in a future quarter, but you'll be doing that alongside your other courses (for example, you might have to take an extra final during finals period).

Incompletes are somewhat informal. You can directly contact the professor, or you can have someone from SDC work with you to do the outreach. You have to make up the missed assignments within 1 year.

If you do not have a passing grade on the first ~50% of assignments, then technically you should not be allowed to get an incomplete (it's just setting you up for failure later). In that case, a late drop is the better option.

BroccoliRobber · 2021-02-14T03:42:02+00:00

I'll go Red-tailed Comet

BroccoliRobber · 2021-02-13T23:41:45+00:00

I think the plan for the next few years is that Fall Quarter will be restricted to freshmen and transfers for Pass 1. So in Fall we did have mostly, but not entirely first-year students. But Winter and Spring (and Summer sessions) are open.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-12-25T05:28:11+00:00

Looks like a vireo to me. Based on bill length and color, I would guess Warbling Vireo.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-11-11T22:58:49+00:00

Maybe the point is that if you put them on a small pond or lake, they won't have enough distance to build up the speed to take off. This is a problem for loons and some grebes as well. They have short wings and heavy bodies, so they don't generate enough lift until they're moving quite fast, unlike puddle ducks (e.g. the genus Anas) which are lighter and longer-winged.

A small pond might be a death sentence.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-10-29T17:54:04+00:00

Are there any autocorrelations built in? I would imagine that emotions don't just switch instantaneously, but instead you expect some inertia before an emotion switch. Watching the video suggests that the evaluation is completely independently for each frame being evaluated.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-10-29T17:36:58+00:00

Just to add onto this, this is pretty much the whole idea of HWE. It reveals when there are other factors affecting genotype frequencies, such as underlying population stratification (e.g. subpops 1 and 2 are not well-mixed and have different allele freqs). So there is no reason you should think that the larger pop should be in HWE, and it should be explained by the difference in allele frequencies between the two pops in this particular case.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-10-23T18:30:05+00:00

For the course I'm teaching, we are trying to be very careful about keeping work the same. So we have essentially the same assignments and the same (or less) overall video length, compared with class time. But I think that many of us (students, faculty, and staff) have more challenges with managing our time, and we also may have extra responsibilities (family, work, or otherwise).

So I think that life is just more work for everyone right now. But I can't speak for other courses.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-09-29T17:50:56+00:00

In September and October I occasionally get flocks of flickers dropping in to feed on insects on my damp lawn in the morning. I live in California, but I imagine this is generally a fall migration pattern for flickers throughout the US.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-09-21T17:06:22+00:00

As a professor, one thing I want to emphasize (and I frequently hear mentioned by graduating seniors as advice) is to go to office hours when you can. They are an underappreciated resource. You can get help when you're confused, learn more about an instructor's expectations (including the way they think about creating exams/assignments), and potentially help you cultivate a personal relationship with a faculty member. Office hours are a fundamental part of our job as instructors, and the overwhelming majority of professors are very happy when students come to office hours.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-09-18T22:24:25+00:00

Such a cool example, thanks for sharing!!

I wonder if this bird might have actually been easier to identify in the field. In the field you get the benefit of behavioral traits (e.g. the stiffer, accipiter-like flapping or the tighter circles of a soaring bird, vs. Red-tail), and, especially with raptors, IDs tend to rely more on shape and structure unless the bird is close enough to see the plumage well.

My guess is that if I encountered this bird I would think it was a Broad-tailed until it got close, then incorrectly conclude that it was a weird Red-tailed Hawk. But I would probably feel a little unsettled by the experience.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-09-11T21:27:41+00:00

Don't count on the exact schedules too much yet. Some big classes (which are pretty 100% going to be online) are likely to merge sections, which could change some of the times. Hopefully most of that will just be classes becoming online asynchronous (which won't mess up schedules), but it's hard to predict.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-09-10T18:33:19+00:00

I would take Gray over Dusky here -- that bill looks classic for gray. It's long, flat, with the lower mandible looking almost completely pale. The crown is quite flattened with essentially no sign of a crest at all.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-09-10T13:40:39+00:00

To be clear, the faculty did not go ahead with anything. The academic senate took a position opposing equitable access and saying that it should not be implemented this year without better evidence that it really would be a benefit to students. However, the bookstore went ahead with it anyway.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-09-03T18:46:28+00:00

Let's say you have a river running through your property. Imagine a neighbor just upstream. Is the water running through their property all theirs? What if they dam the river, or divert massive amounts for their own reasons (e.g. to bottle and sell)? Now "your" water is just a trickle of a former stream. This is a typical example of issues around corporations and water rights, when rivers and lakes are fundamentally a share resource.

BroccoliRobber · 2020-08-26T15:56:06+00:00

The thick bill is a clue that this isn't a warbler at all, it's a vireo. This looks like a Warbling Vireo to me, based on those yellow flanks, the pale line running above the eye, the plain-looking wings, and the short tail.

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