Today was the first day of class in my first year of grad school. The swarms of undergraduates all across campus and clogging the halls of the Valley Life Sciences Building brought back memories of my own life at college (was I ever that young and excitable?). Cynicism aside, I'm more excited by this coming semester than by many of my college semesters. I was worried that after a year and a half at Kyoto University (where grad students don't take courses), I'd be unable to handle sitting in a huge lecture hall, but the first lecture of Evolution was engrossing. Given the current political climate in this country, the lecture concerned itself primarily with Intelligent Design and its flaws, but ironically this dovetails nicely with the historical context of Darwin's work. Presumably in most other countries, they talk about how revolutionary Darwin was and then move on to talk about evolutionary theory itself, and I've always wondered how this emphasis on religious challenges to evolution must seem to international students. I'm reminded of the assertion of a Japanese professor I know, that most Japanese biologists don't actually think natural selection is the primary agent of evolutionary change. (Neutral mutations and genetic drift, thanks to the influence of the great Japanese geneticist Motoo Kimura, is a popular alternative.) Such a situation would be unthinkable in the US, where thanks to organized creationists, scientists in all fields know there's a battle going on, and what side they're on.

This past weekend was the annual field trip for our department, ESPM (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management), to Samuel P. Taylor State Park in Marin County. I'm not sure exactly why this patch of land became a state park, but it has a really swish 50-person campsite with outdoor sinks, ample shade, and really nice restrooms, which was why 40 of us were there. During the day on Saturday we broke up into smaller groups; mine went hiking through the southern part of Point Reyes National Seashore to a place called Arch Rock. It was a flat, 6-km hike one-way through riparian woodland and Douglas-fir forest, eventually terminating on top of the namesake arch-shaped rock that juts out into the Pacific. There are spectacular views of surrounding cliffs and a little stream clogged with watercress that spills out onto the beach, but being composed of very small rocks, the beach was not very amenable to barefoot wading. It was great to go back to Point Reyes; I hadn't been there in ten years. The field trip was a great chance to meet other students in the department, and I was glad to see that there were a few others who thought of themselves as ecologists/evolutionary biologists foremost, and shared my mild reservations about being identified with an "environmental science" department. Fortunately, the Integrative Biology department is just across the lawn and the Ecolunch introductory meeting that I attended today should be a great way to keep in touch with what's going on in that department.

I'm continually amazed by what's available at Berkeley Bowl. Yesterday's discovery was the Japanese candies: they have freshly made dorayaki (I'm not quite sure what they are; since they contain eggs I've never been able to eat them, but it is anime character Doraemon's favorite), and imported yokan (red azuki bean-flavored, solidified gelatinous sweet bars). Sorry, my descriptive abilities are kind of weak. You'll just have to go find them yourself and take a look. They're in the Asian foods aisle.