458. Dramatic Changes at the Whereabouts of 207 Hillview Drive... Blog Entry (Book Volume) #3

Picasaweb Blurb: Two Year Photoessay of 207 Hillview Drive; Not Your Stereotypical Graduate Student Household! What can I say?! Too much change all at once. Karl's moving out. Tina's moving in. Kyle and Lisa are getting married. Bentley the Ambassador Dog and Beastly Jacumba are around, and cancel out the effects of peace, order, and chaos around the house (;-). I am ending my fellowship and am in the exciting, edgy media job market because UCSB played with my psychology for TAships long enough. Dxmn Governator! And I say it's about time I reflect! Time to honor the place that has housed me in a two year roller coaster change in my life!



Picasaweb Blurb: Two Year Photoessay of 207 Hillview Drive; Let's Go Fly a Kite! It was the great alignment of all the stars, all the planetary systems, the Milankovitch cycles, the El Ninos, the spring burns of the sage brush... and somehow all these elements of the universe aligned such that all housemates co-existed within the same house in the closest of proximities and were all free to take a break all at the same time... to merely and most wonderfully enjoy the flying of a unicorn horse kite at the nearby park, most eagerly contributed to 207 Hillview Drive by Karl's father (I think)? What a witty man! He must know that graduate students are simply adult bodies with kid minds. We just are five year old kids flying kites underneath all the showiness of academic red-tape-prestige. The university exists so we can fly kites, and somehow, ironically, the university doesn't give us a lot of time to do that! (Featuring Karl, Kyle, Lisa, Michaela, and Joe!)

180.Julie Ekstrom's Tough Morning Crowd for her Ph.D. Dissertation

It is not that Julie's audience for her dissertation was particularly tough. It is just that it was a very serious ambiance to the whole occassion, from Julie's formal, professional talk--though she always has this very positive, upbeat aspect of her presentation!--and it was a cloudy, early Monday morning (Cinco de Mayo, it happened to be). I am not even sure if people were truly ready to "grasp" the notion of the "weekday" yet. I even was nervous, to even think a powerhouse committee of five was in the room--from Dr. Oran Young to Dr. Bonnie McCay (mispelled?) to Dr. Steve Gaines to a couple of other people I don't know so well. Just from that, I shuddered. I also was kind of overwhelmed because I knew quite a few people there who attended.

Coffee and pasties I am sure cheered everyone up. The room was very dark, but everything was very professional. Very, very professional. In some ways good, but in some ways tragic. I think creating a cartoon was a very pschologically relieving thing for me to do. And a light-hearted thing to do for quite a few other people.

179. Ph.D Dissertation of the Inspirational Julie Ekstrom in Ecosystem-Based Management Along the California Current

Today was indeed a special day! I was able to witness the Ph.D. dissertation defense of Julie Ekstrom, my roommate, who is about to move out of the house (boo hoo) and move on to Stanford! She (and my housemates) has helped me in so many ways, from letting me live in a house with $600 rent+utilities (with my own room) to all things academic. Julie, who's advisor is Dr. Oran Young (also my new advisor!), investigates the human dimensions of environmental change, which ventures into the realm of governance, institutions (rule systems), organizations... and now... environmental media (which I'll be focusing on). Julie has worked on the idea of mismatch / fragmentation between non-human ecosystem structure and human management systems. The beauty of her dissertation (for me at least), is that her frame of reference is ecosystem-based management, in which humans are INCLUDED. They are a part of the system of study. Therefore we must systematically investigate human structures and how they influence and interact with non-human ecological factors. So, I decided to emphasize this theme in the cartoon above, which I drew during her hour-long session of talk + question/answer session. I gave Julie pigtails though she had a ponytail primarily because of the complexities of drawing an aesthetic ponytail on an allometrically distorted cartoon bobblehead human.

The other wonderful component of this dissertation is that Julie tackled a dead-on USEFUL Ph.D. question, and through a series of interviews and "ground-truthing," she tried to adjust her law text-mining tool such that it can be user friendly to people who deal with ocean management and environmental law in general. Then again, Julie also mentioned the notion of discrepancy between "data" and "reality." Her parallel example was analyzing data from low-resolution satellites versus being on the ground to verify what vegetation or structures were present. Her text-mining tool doesn't show ALL pertinent information, but is a superb, conceptual starting point.

Drawing this cartoon was the least I could do for all of Julie's help! It was indeed an intense, serious session between Julie and the audience, and I thought this whole gig needed something light-hearted and environmental-media-ish. I also had two versions of the cartoon, one without marine invertebrates and one with marine invertebrates. After all, her case study was on ocean acidification, which affects the patterns of invertebrate calcification--overall shell formation.

Julie's work has so much potential, I can't wait to see future work blossom.

I decided to give Julie and Dan (fiance!) the original drawing, and I just have nice digital copies on my computer. Dan and Julie's father liked the cartoon, and there was mandate to have the image framed!