published works
The Key Reporter
“Nobel Laureate Awarded for Chemistry”
John B. Goodenough (ΦBK, Yale) made crucial contributions to the development of the lithium-ion battery. (19 December 2019)
“Revolutionizing Gene Editing with Bubbles”
Nabiha Saklayen (ΦBK, Emory University), Co-founder and CEO of Cellino Biotech, is bringing her revolutionary cellular modification technology to the public. (13 December 2019)
“Lessons from the Stars: An Interview with Adam Frank”
Astrophysicist Adam Frank discusses astrobiological clues for navigating Earth’s climate crisis. His book Light of the Stars received ΦBK’s 2019 Award in Science. (10 December 2019)
“Investment in Scholarship Bears Fruit (and Robotic Fowl)”
Doctoral candidate Ryane Logsdon (ΦBK, University of Rochester) discusses her research and her presentation at the upcoming 34th annual Asilomar Conference. (3 October 2019)
“Coordinating the Services of State”
Josh Fryday (ΦBK, UC Berkeley) prepares for his new role as California’s Chief Service Officer. (4 September 2019)
The Triton selected articles
“UCSD Turns Out at Second March for Science”, 20 April 2018
“UCSD Professor Nathan Fletcher Running for County Supervisor after Five Years of Teaching”, 10 April 2018
“Animefest 2018 Draws Hundreds to UCSD”, 21 February 2018
reel exclusives
fragrant refuse (i)
A possum carcass has rotted on a street adjacent to my house. My mother says that it has been there for weeks on end, and nobody has seen to its removal. Since I returned home from Scotland at the turn of June, I have had to walk, run, or drive around it. I could drive down the street in the other direction, but that would mean passing my neighbor Mr. Hubbard, who is a mean and miserable old bastard who flaunts the restraining order against him and disturbs our peace by yelling profanity at passing cars even though two young boys live next door, and so I do not want to antagonize him. I was talking about a possum carcass.
Yes, the carcass as I know it began as recently killed. That is to say that an ecosystem of flies hovered over it constantly and its juices seeped down the young black pavement. On my jogs, I would try and hold my breath, but I never knew it to stink. It had no eyes then; nor does it have eyes now. Its mouth hung agape. Its back arched slightly and with every passing auto, the weight of tires flattened it more and stretched it more so as to accentuate this arch.
But by now, a little more than a month after it first caught my attention, the carcass is well desiccated. It has shifted further to one side of the road, where a motorist can consistently run it over with minimal effort or effect. Flies no longer make their home in it. Its fur has caked onto the body or rotted away. It is paler and yellower. What hasn’t changed is the expression of shock-that’s-not-soured-to-horror affixed to its eyeless face. I have taken to calling it ‘Flat Possum’ like Flat Stanley, the children’s book character that we sent to loved ones for a trip around the world. As I set off to Arizona, I toyed with dropping Flat Possum onto Mr. Hubbard’s front porch, packaged and well stamped.
Picture the Interstate. Westerners are conditioned by advertising to desire the spectacle above all other stimulus and I’ll not change that here. See one hundred and fifty miles in both directions. The pavement first: some sections are sleek and black like what Flat Possum rests on; other sections are glued together by tar, as if made of pieces of other dead roads. It’s late June, so the Pacific winds blow over the hills and through the Bay and down the valley corridors, a final cool breath before the still summer heat. The wind blows south and east, so the stench of waste dumps and cow slaughter facilities do not waft across the Interstate with such intensity. Sometimes, though, they filter through my air conditioning. Notes of death and vomit and chocolate.
But picture the trees that line the road, dead and burned. Most likely scarred by fire, they’ve twisted and bent their leafless limbs toward the passing autos like hands reaching for escape from the most boring highway in California. The stretch of I-5 between the Bay Area and the Grapevine rewards the distracted, as I can attest to safely, having ridden it to school and back for four years. How many would-be influencers have pursued fame in L. A. via Bakersfield? How many myopic engineering students have sought fortune and corporate bussing in Silicon Valley via Fresno? Do they also smell chocolate?
The radio provides only modest entertainment, and I had forgotten to take the time to establish a Pandora playlist. So it’s replays of ‘Old Town Road’ and ‘Night Moves’. As you head further afield in California’s southeast, you’ll get at best what I call Dad Libertarian talk radio. The kind of platform by and for the ineffectual posturers, performative curmudgeons, and lives critically unexamined that’ll tell you sure, the Administration has its faults, but just listen to that hogwash about tuition-free university and who’s going to pay for it? Who’s going to pay for it? The rhetorical equivalent of no u. Consider admiring the sound of the wind as it swirls the dust of the Mojave into little tornados.
Veterans of I-5 will have seen the turnoff for Kettleman City. It sits about halfway between 580 into the East Bay and Bakersfield. As you pull in beyond the gas stations and Popeye’s, you’ll find the wooden building that houses the town gift shop, a cafeteria, and an astroturf dog park. You will struggle to find a more perfect satirical museum of the mythical ‘neglected Americana’ as this store.
The first wares you notice as you walk in are the Christmas decorations piled in the corner with hefty discounts. Soft Jesus pop emanates from invisible store speakers. Turning pedestals are stocked with mountable living room slogans, as much ‘Thankful Every Day, Blessed Beyond Measure’ as ‘Isn’t divorce similar to buying a woman you hate, a house?’. Behind the counter is a cross section of a sequoia tree measured to be thousands of years old, replete with historical events marked with brass plates on the tree rings; did you know nothing interesting occurred between the fall of Rome and the establishment of Jamestown, except the invention of gunpowder? You’ll find ceramic hands for palmistry whose middle fingers read ‘Saturn’ and ceramic heads for measurements in phrenology. Upstairs by the patio door are mounted heads of a moose, a bison, and an elk, and the rodeo jockey mounted in turn on the bison head; beneath them is a sign that reads ‘Witness the Whitless Quartet’. A shooting gallery in the next room offers a row of electronic rifles to fire at an old wooden gas station, which is inhabited by a rusted-out Ford with Pixaresque windshield eyes. The balcony outside houses the domestic detritus of the last century, now sold as bric-a-brac to passersby. Snag a ragged community center chair for a mere thirty dollars.
I returned to my Jeep and started in on yesterday’s pizza. In the parking lot were two other vehicles. One a mini van carrying a family of young children, their grandma and her Yorkie. The other a Ram pick-up belonging to a couple slightly older than me. I watched the couple make several trips into and out of the shop carrying, among other things, a cow-crossing sign, a metal watering can with a long, thin spout, and vintage bottles of 7-Up and Coke. They have paid upward of $200 for what appear to be the trappings of an Instagram influencer’s fantasy farm. Admittedly, it’s an aesthetic that’s well suited to the platform.
Is that the function of these shops? Political inclinations aside (however the presence of Christian muzak, prominence of firearms, and wooden wifebeater slogans emphasizes these ideologies), the prices that these wares command favor the coastal well-to-do. Travelers who are more likely to look out on the wooden complex from the safety of the gas stations and think, if they spare it a thought, ‘O, well isn’t that cute?’ Then they’ve forgotten about it by the time they throw a U-ee and head for the on-ramp. It’s a Californian dynamic: those of the conservative white interior that push for Jefferson while catering to the money and those of the cosmopolitan coast who have the money but decorate their homes to make it seem like they haven’t. Hell, maybe a possum carcass would make a tasteful rustic welcome mat.
The first vista that I came across on the road lies in the mountains southeast of Bakersfield. On Highway 58, near the community of Cameron is Tehachapi Pass. In late June, it retains the characteristic lime-green floor, evergreen trees, and straw-brown hills that you’ll find in the best of California’s landscapes. But that’s not what you notice first.
Along the peaks of the mountains are wind turbines. Hundreds of them, in four great rows that taper along the rims. They are part of the Alta Wind Energy Center. For a half-dozen miles, you take them in as a collective, sometimes focused and sometimes all at once. The wind is fierce enough that you roll up your windows to retain aerodynamism and keep from being pushed into the other lane. But the stiff wind makes the turbines each run at a pace, each independently of the others. It is as if a massive, invisible serpent weaves along the tops–the ghost of Jörmungandr. A day’s drive from there, you can know how it feels to reach the end of the earth.
two gaps in two walls (ii)
‘What draws you to the outcrops on the rim’s edge? The chance to renew your senses with the Hint. To get in touch with the ghost[s] of time and climate that you know you’ll never understand. And that’s enough.’
– Odometer: 177,805
The title of this piece refers primarily to the hypothesis that when you have reached the center of the Canyon floor, a look round yields these: two divine cliff faces that buckle and bend for miles in both directions and two holes bored into these faces. I must preface that I have not tested this hypothesis. Not in full. I have entered the Canyon (or, the Canyon bade me enter them) and descended 2000 feet into them, but that is only about 2/5 of the way down. They have impressed upon me that they are the greatest place on the planet; I will return in due time. Prepare and descend to the bottom, which round-trip requires two days. But there is another set of walls and gaps, one more accessible to all.
Most tourists who visit the Grand Canyon visit the South Rim, which boasts virtually all of the park’s amenities and overnight accommodations. Most who visit the South Rim will come from the south and have driven through the town of Tusayan, perhaps stopping for a piss in its pristine visitor center as I do before moving on. Because as far as you know, there won’t be toilets in the park within easy reach for some time.
On you go up AZ64, bladder and bowels placated. The road is mostly single lane, with two or three dedicated stretches of a passing lane. For it is on single-lane roads that Americans may become true egalitarians: every driver has the speed and capabilities only of the slowest and most deliberate among them. Visitors from abroad, especially, often cannot read American Speed Limit and interpret the number on the sign to be their ceiling (in fact, of course, on straight and level road the signified limit is really +5–10 of the signifier). In effect, the Maserati is no greater than the RVAmerica. There is anticipation for small gains in the queue, as there is anticipation for the edge of the world toward which we’re all heading.
The road north is mostly flat. A few rises and dips but nothing in the geography gives anything away. Early summertime means the grass is still straw-green and the trees are in their full bloom. Mid-morning at 7000 feet is cool. I had imagined that I would be languishing in a baking desert, with only grey scrub brush and tumbleweed to stare at; that I would see the maw of the earth open and park my overheated automobile and stand by it. But ahead, only more trees and mountains. No maws.
You pay the thirty-five-dollar entrance fee at the big brown booths and get your map. Another mile and you turn right to stay on the highway. I follow a non-fluent pick-up as we lurch among the trees.
This is how I first encounter the Canyon:
As I drive to keep from tailgating the pick-up, I round a bend. On the other side of the road are parked cars and people and children weaving among them and heading away from the road. It doesn’t occur to me until I pass a few of these cars that there must be something to see, if folks are taking the time to stop. Beckoned by primordial social cues, I glance to my left.
What I experience next is a brief period of acute cognitive dissonance. To clarify: reality dupes me. The previous twenty-four hours consisted of my driving through many different environments and elevations, from arid valleys to grassy mountain passes to chaparral. But connecting each dash of the lane markings over the hundreds of miles was the thread of spatial continuity. I saw my surroundings change in real time and I grew to expect. Now I turn a corner and pass a glance, as I had done many times before–and there is no longer forest on that side of the road, where prior there was. Now, there is merely nothing, a nothing that I would later discover to measure about ten miles.
As if to punctuate this nothing, or maybe to give nothing form, is flesh. The wizened flesh of an ancient waterway. Craggy and stark and ochre and umber. It is far. It seems a painting and in my faltered sense of reality, the visual medium is precisely the manner in which I perceive it. Simultaneously, it is present. I could, in theory, occupy the space before it and gather the flesh along my palms and lodge its dust into my fingernails. Could I read the years, if I ran my hand along every mile of the Canyon?
And so on for the next twenty-five miles to my campground. The tree-lined highway giving way to brief stretches of timeless awe.