Adventures in Onionism

The GZA and I saw Wild . It was pretty not-good. Not terribly bad, but also not good. There were only a few awful lines of dialogue that reeked of trite Oprah-esque 'live your best life' platitudes, so I wasn't exactly repulsed by anything, but I didn't get drawn in by anything either. Visually, the movie wasn't terribly impressive--it was largely filmed in central/eastern Oregon instead of on the actual PCT, and I could tell. The CGI fox also sucked. How hard is it to train a fox to stand there and stare at you for 20 seconds before running away? That's what every fox I've ever seen did without any training, so I can't imagine training one would be that much more expensive than crappy CGI. Anyway, you shouldn't visually expect Brokeback , or Sweetgrass , or Into the Wild. Story-wise, I actually like the book more than the movie. You got to know more characters, and became more invested in their story. Both the book and the movie are told non-l...

Jan 11: Tilden Orienteering ( BAOC ) Jan 31: Fremont Fat Ass 50K OR Ordnance 100K Feb 21: Montara Mountain 50K March 7: Way Too Cool 50K (lottery) March 21: 4MPH Challenge April 10-11: Zion 100M or Lake Sonoma 50M (lottery) April 18: Mokelumne 50M May 2: MeOw! Marathons June 6: Bone Tempest (off the radar) June 20: SF Solstice 24 Hour July 31/Aug 1: Tushar 100M Aug 22: Waldo 100K (lottery) Aug 29: Tamalpa Headlands 50k   Sep 5: Rogaining in Henry Coe Sep 12: Plain 100 Sep 19: IMTUF 100 Sep 25-26: The Bear 100 Oct 10-11: Euchre Bar Massacre That would be 16 ultras, including five 100-milers, with three Hardrock qualifiers in three weeks, and three insane off-trail bushwhacking events, plus a couple orienteering events. I've never done more than 8 ultras in a year before, but I am unlikely to get picked in all the lotteries. I'm not 100% sure about all these, but I'm quite excited about many. I will be teaching a course at USF on Mondays Spring Semester...

I've been busy the last two days with the annual meeting of my employer, the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences ( BITSS ). Thursday morning we did a training session on registrations, pre-analysis plans, the Open Science Framework , R, RStudio, git, GitHub, writing a project protocol, and the Harvard Dataverse. (Maybe we bit off more than we could chew in that session?) Thursday afternoon we heard from some of the leaders in the research transparency movement: Ted Miguel (Berkeley), John Ioannidis (Stanford), Brian Nosek (UVA/Center for Open Science), Jack Molyneaux (Millennium Challenge Corporation), Victoria Stodden (UIUC). Friday we heard about recent research in transparency, including my presentation of a draft of the Manual of Best Practices in Transparent Social Science Research. People seemed to really like it. My slides and the draft manual are all on my github account. If you're into research transparency, we're encouraging open partic...

Thanksgiving with gf and some hiking friends I haven't seen in too long. Pleasanton Ridge, American River, Truckee, Sierra Buttes, Downieville, North San Juan, Yuba River, Nevada City, Berkeley hills. Diablo Titan California Poppy One with gills One with slime The Destroying Angel Jack O Lanterns, not chanterelles Friends came over My little brother can fly Yuba Yuba Ewww Coral mushroom We camp Downieville Sierra Buttes Pleasanton Ridge Home