Polish Man in New World

I simply have to diarize that Thrilling Tuesday (19 June 2018). That Tuesday didn't start anything special. Following one month or so of Christina's unflattering comments on my hairstyle I arranged a meeting with a hairdresser. Here we come - the roller coaster starts accelerating. The hairdresser turned out to be a rock/jazz band singer and I could not stop asking for more details. Is there anywhere a place on Earth, except for New Orleans, where singers recruit their fans by trimming their hair :) ? Anyway, here is one of the videos of  that rock & roll hairdresser Barbarella Blue (like all well-established Kardashian-like stars in USA Barbarella Blue has Instagram too):  A chatter with Barbarella made me come late to viewing World Cup game at the Botany Lab, Tulane University. Fan W. set up the projector and the live channel before I came. Few colleagues joined us in supporting Poland against Senegal. What a disgraceful game it was for Poland! One deflection off P...

Book about Simona finished. Story of  prof. Simona Kossak could make a good script for Hollywood movie. Simona studied animal psychology first in Krakow, then in Bialowieza and became life-long advocate for protection of the last primeval forest in Europe - Bialowieza forest in Poland . She never separated animals from humans because, well, we all share very similar behavioural traits. For example, Simona trained men as if men were tigers. In her opinion, men are no more than sperm sacks carried around on two legs. Men are programmed to inseminate as many women as possible but as with tigers they can be trained. The key skill in the process of training is to make men (tigers) believe that they are always right. Once the tigers trust their master they will obey and walk by woman's leg like cuddly savages.  As I was enjoying Simona's biography (Thanks Monia!) I also came across stories of female humans  who were less skilled in training tigers and/or they could ...

T o be successful is to be able to retain enthusiasm between the failures (Churchill probably said so).  Philosophy that explains how important failures are in one's ability to grow may apply to humans as  well as to any organisms on Earth. Last week I had a chance to help one of the graduate students Dr-to-be Stephen Formel in the field element of his PhD project. While collecting mud for his glasshouse experiment we also ventured into one of the island ecosystems of Bay Jimmy - oil contaminated part of the Gulf of Mexico .  To our surprise oil-contaminated soil did not stop mangroves from establishing but what managed to kill them was the very short period of freeze that happened last winter in Louisiana . Apparently, the xylem vessel that transport water into mangroves canopy are of weak design ( broad vessels with thin walls ), just like pipes in the whole of New Orleans - they burst open while temperature fall below 0C (32F). The mangroves do not give up t...

If you were to USA and you have not experienced passive-aggressive behaviour then you haven't been to USA. It still is a "Struggle Street" for me as I do not know how to navigate the passive-aggressive situation. Do you go back as if you hit the dead end street or move forward and attack the dead end wall? I ask myself this question on a quite a regular basis. It is not unusual that for example  a huge truck drives over my feet on a pedestrian crosswalk (green light for me) and the drivers sends a broad smile and says "Oops, I am sorry". I can respond to an aggressive person, I can respond to a nice person but I am still puzzled where I have to deal with a smiley light-weight abuser. More, American Street is loud. Expect smiley light-weight abuses daily. Shop-assistant/cashiers shout out " Hey !!!" right after I paid  and I still turn around to realize that this is how employees start conversation with another employee - standing shoulder in shou...

It's OK to flirt and make yourself look like a fool every time there is room for choice and mutual understanding. It is getting uncomfortable when sexual signals come from someone with power. It sucks completely when you are stuck in an abusive situation and can see no way out just like the wife of ex-deputy Prime Minister of Australian Barnaby Joyce . Natalie Joyce agreed to pose with two gay guys after her husband's lovechild-affair-with-staffer got out. She did it to keep her husband in power. God give her power! But in fact, #MeToo campaign has gone bee-knee too viral and one step ahead of itself. #MeToo shifted the power imbalance between the sexes and men began to feel terrorized. Suddenly, any attempt to pick someone up, look into eyes for a second longer is considered an act of sexual assault. French woman were first ones to object to that in their famous  #AntiMeToo campaign . God bless French Women! Sexually charged or not, #MeToo campaign seems to be one of the m...

When a local Teddy Bear comes off the skateboard due to icy conditions on the roads this definitely means a panic in New Orleans. State of emergency to be precise. State of Emergency. A real panic was caused by air temperatures falling below water-freezing level (30°F or 0 ° C). The schools were shut down, the classes were cancelled, the pipes were getting frozen, and all locals were advised to stay home. Mind you, we live in subtropical Louisiana where few dare a thought of insulating the water pipes. Icicles on local fern. T he only way to prevent freezing water from blowing up your pipes is to keep your water running entire night until you go mad or until the temperature goes above 0c or 30F. As in this famous torture   dripping can make you go insane.....drip, drip, drip, drip, mad, mad, mad. So... a sinking swamp city of New Orleans is not only exposed to rising sea level, hurricanes, but suffers from frostbites too. So... what would you do in the coastal...

" What the fuck is going on? " - it is a citation from super charismatic Dr Jack Gilbert - microbial ecologist who decided to ID all microbes present on Earth in an ambitious called Earth Microbiome Project . There are more microbes on Earth than stars in the entire cosmos. To be precise, estimated number of cellular microbes in the biosphere of the Earth is around 10 to 30th power (10 + 30 zeros) the number of stars is estimated to be 10 to 22nd power ( Purdom and Francis 2009 ). And we, Louisiana Phraggers Team , are a part of the research project that aims to contribute to Earth Microbiome Project by hunting microbes related to invasive success of local grass Phragmites australis .  Phragmites is mostly the dweller of wetlands ecotones zones  - zones of high disturbance level that mark border between high wave/hurricane/human activity and more intact wetland ecosystems. And of course we do have our hypotheses we want to test: H1: Increases in soil salinity w...