Level of Angler

Larry Dahlberg is a Shimano pro and host of "The Hunt for Big Fish," which is a fishing show at Versus TV. It is one of my favorite fishing shows. Larry is one of the most serious multi-species anglers. He does not only catch big fish but also make his own lures. Yesterday, I heard him saying about "phaseof angler"

1. Try to catch any
2. Catch the limit
3. Aim to catch bigger one
4. Know how to catch in his/her own way

He might want to say the fourth one when he was presenting lure making. I thought about the level of anglers, and here is my version:

1. Novice: Catch whatever one can.
2. Intermediate: Catch only what one wants.
3. Advanced: Chase for bigger ones
   
4. Guru: Happy enough to be at the shore whether catch or not.

I may fall into level two and try to move on to the next level three. It is not easy. Which level are you at?

By the way, there is a similar fishing show at Animal Planet: River Monsters. Biologist and extreme angler Jeremy Wade is the host. In many aspects, these two shows are similar. They even fished the same water for the same species: Indian Gonch. Jeremy's show is more science-based, while Larry talks more on fishing techniques and tackles (and Jack link beef jerky :-<). Both are great multi-species fishing shows!

Kevin VanDam rules!

KVD won 2010 Bassmaster classic. Without any tiny doubt, he is the greatest bass angler of our time. When I saw his fishing show, I was stunned by his professionalism. He paid his attention on every detail of his tackles. He even replaces all hooks of his new lures. He re-balanced all lures by himself, too. He fully deserves the title of king.

Young KVD's picture. He might be a born-fish catcher.
(Picture from KVD's article)

By the way, Mike Iaconelli ended up at sixth place. His fishing show, "City Limits" resumed at Versus TV.

Professor Shooter

Once I dreamed to become a professor. Now I am preparing for different career though. Teaching must be one of the most rewarding job. But working condition in academia is very frustrating. In particular, in so called "research" college and university. Research university is a place where extremely smart people gather together to prove that he/she is smarter and better than his/her colleagues. One source of frustration is that they don't share common goal of their organization. Each member has own goal and compete each other. Of course, there is collaboration among faculty members, but pretty limited. That is my observation. I would rather go to an organization where all member work together for common goal and share team spirit.

Sometimes frustration in academia bursts in extreme form. An assistant professor of University Alabama shot three faculty members to death over her failure in getting tenure. Very sad and unfortunate incident. Here is a related New York Times article. There must be some behind stories that we do not know. But under any condition, it should not have happened. The assistant professor should have lived a real life, not a life in academic wonderland.

The Science of Ecological Economics

This morning I received email from my former advisor; an article we worked on long time ago finally was published in Annals of The New York Academy of Science. Good news on a very day of career fair. I updated about the article at my "Research Related." This article is basically a content analysis of Ecological Economics journal. Nine of us did some tedious "coding" work together on selected journal articles. The article shows how Ecological Economics have evolved in the given time. If you are interested, here is a citation and article link.

Luzadis, V., Castello, L., Choi, J., Franco, C., Greenfield, E., Kim, S., et al. (2010). The science of ecological economics: a content analysis of ecological economics, 1989-2004. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1185, 1-10.