I'm not sure how I feel being on the other side of a "recruitment" at a place where the students are not unhappy. People can tell it as it is without scaring people off.
I guess what I don't like about it is the forced mingling that I associate with past events. I've had too much experience with forced mingling and socializing as an undergraduate to appreciate any more the finer points of convincing advice.
But I have to consciously tell myself that this is different. For (certain types of) potential graduate students it's basically a job interview. Once you get accepted, the school is offering you money to attend. For a potential undergrad, (in certain instances) the administrators are attempting to lure in suckers who are willing to pay to learn.
And then, of course, I realize how contrary the means are despite the similar paths. But this leads to one conclusion: since learning has been associated with money, learning or education is a commodity. As an idealist, I find this disconcerting. Education should be a right, not a commodity! Unfortunately, this may remain the case as long as people are fixated on the haves and have nots.
* * *
On the other hand:
Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer. I'm not surprised. Why? Watson is always saying outlandish things in order to garner attention. Case in point, one of his quotes: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great." Of course everyone will disagree with him. That's why he said it. I'm not saying that the things he proposed are impossible, just that they're at the very least ethically dubious.
Sonic Doom. "An acoustic weapon disorients rioters and afflicts an invading army with nausea. It can create ‘ghosts’ and arouse animal passions. Fantastic? Jack Sergeant, delving into the possible uses and abuses of infrasound, isn’t so sure." It's not infrasound but my personal sonic doom is the telephone. It rings in the middle of the night disrupting me from my much needed unconsciousness. Am I the only person who sleeps around here?
There is such a thing as too much nerdiness. Oh yeah, just roll your eyes at me--I'm at Tech, the center of nerdom--but I'm not kidding. There are those people who keep asking annoying questions in class, but it's worse when they're actually not asking a question. They're just rambling about what they think they know. And the professors just nod and smile and privately think, "Stupid kid." This gets worse with graduate students.
Additional Commentary:
This appears to be universal. It's extremely bad when graduate students who think they know it all start arguing with the professor. (Argument is good--constant agreement is a sign of complacency--but just to argue to show off your brilliant "deductive" skills is just plain egotistical. Yes, I know you read a gazillion papers each week, but I do too and I don't claim to have an encyclopedic knowledge.)
On the other hand, maybe this egoism is a product of a brilliant mind. Perhaps my observations only give more evidence that I am only average. There are plenty of bright scientists out there who are, shall we say, a bit unhinged.
Mister Rogers dies at age 74. When I was younger, I felt like an aberrant kid for watching Mr. Rogers while everyone else was watching cartoons, exclaiming over the likes of Transformers, He-Man, and Jem. Was it wrong for me to be fascinated by the videos that Mr. McFeely brought with him about manufacturing every day things like crayons and shoes? I identified more with Daniel, the tiger with a watch at his wrist living in a clock, than strange equines in pastel colors.
Onesome. Big. Anything "big" happen to you lately? Come now, what's the biggest thing in your life these days?
No, nothing big. It's been quite ordinary, thank you very much.
Twosome. Band. I didn't do the band, but I did choir when I was in school. Tell us: what kind of extracurricular activities did YOU do when you were in school?
I'm still in school, but my extracurriculars have dwindled down into almost nothing since I have no extra energy to devote to something as draining as, say, going to regular rehearsals. But this is graduate school, so I guess it's okay to be obsessed with your work.
When I was in high school, I played the "intellectual and cultural geek". I played in an orchestra. I was also in the band for a little while--the marching band no less. It was fun learning the formations and dressing up in uniforms but I also learned to hate football (standing around in the rain took the cake). I was in the French and Latin clubs as well as the math club and the knowledge masters and quiz bowl where you had to answer pointless trivia questions. To this day, I'm not sure I really liked doing all of these things. They were more like a means to an end than actual enjoyment.
Threesome. Music. Our topic of the week is music, so why don't YOU share little about your personal tastes in music. Favorite band? Favorite song? Have a song you love to sing along with but hate to admit it? Now's the time to fess up!
I am generally fine with any sort of music, except perhaps country, but I can tolerate that too for short periods of time. I don't have a favorite band or song nor do I sing along, mostly because most of the music I listen to don't have lyrics. I'm a film music buff and if that's not around, I listen to western classical: mostly solo piano, solo cello, chamber music, orchestral music, or opera. If I had to pick, I'd go with Mendelssohn and Chopin's solo piano works.
The aftermath was a mixture of denial, anger, and longing.
Of course I didn't explode or whine. On the surface I probably looked the same as all the other days before--the people around me would be hard pressed to say definitively how I act when I'm ecstatic or depressed. I don't throw tantrums or cry. Instead, I bury myself in work.
I know it's wrong to suppress my emotions, but I know no acceptable alternative. I don't want to be known as the complainer--moody, tempermental, malingering. I don't want to disgust people. I don't want to be the person who makes people roll their eyes and say, "Oh God, there she goes again." There are too many of those people in the world already.
* * *
Interesting:
The New York Times: Genetics. It's an excellent collection of articles detailing the recent history of science, beginning notably with Watson and Crick. The lay person will probably get the gist of them. I read them mostly for amusement value, to see how many scientists mentioned that I recognized (all of them) and to chuckle when my alma mater and one of my former professors was mentioned. I guess it's sort of akin to a politician's intern browsing the politics section in the newspaper.
Johnny Cash music video. (via Metafilter) I don't really like country music, but the Hurt video was very cool. From what I can tell, the song is a remake from the Nine Inch Nails version. One reason why I thought the video was noticable was that it shows The House of Cash which is a major landmark if you're driving north to Gallatin. When I had been living there, I took the whole thing for granted. It was closed to the public, next to a rather seedy new age glass decor shop and an overpass notorious for speed-watching cops. Across the street was Trinity Music City--an attraction that rivaled the fictional Willy Wonka factory. I never saw anyone go in or come out.
Show and tell was probably the first exposure many people had to public speaking. It was probably easy and fun, too, for many of these people. You got to talk about the thing you were most interested in be it a teddy bear or an action figure and you were always sure that someone would be interested in what you said (or at least what you're showing). I, however, found the entire ordeal boring, frustrating, and intimidating. I was still proud that I could count to a hundred in English or read the days of the week or write the first letter in my name. Who cares about show and tell? I began bringing in the same thing week after week and the teacher began to worry that something was wrong with me.
Teachers always find something wrong whenever I'm forced to stand up in front of a group of people. It's not that I'm afraid of the audience, I'm afraid of the teacher because they're usually the only one paying attention. Of course, they find it their job to criticize me in front of the class after I give my spiel to make an example of me. "Speak up!" "Don't talk to the paper, talk to the audience!" "You lecture like a professor!" Ouch.
I'm doing a little bit better now. No one tells me to speak louder or to get my face out of the papers (powerpoint helps, obviously, as well as the laser pointer which makes me feel like I'm aiming a saber at the audience). I'm not sure if I still lecture like a professor although I definitely don't stutter. I used to practice speaking to an empty room every time I had to do a presentation. I would make note cards. I would attempt to memorize. I don't do that anymore. If I'm reasonably comfortable with the material, it's a good bet that once I start talking, I won't stop too soon even if I'm winging it.
But still.
Public speaking courses should become required.
Links: Blogarama. Yet another blog index. The Worst Breakfast Ever. Ugh. That's disgusting. The only thing I need in the morning is caffeine. Daypop Top Word Bursts. This is the first time that I actually consider some piece of metadata actually interesting. Witness the collective (un)conscious! Fainting Goats. Like we need any more tipped over farm animals. Simple Vandals or a Unique Social Movement? "[T]rolling is an unwelcome yet unavoidable aspect of modern communications. The application of collective behavioral research techniques, however, show a possibly emerging social movement."
One Writer's Secret. Yeah? You could have avoided all the dramatics if you did at least one thing: backup. Not all writers like the freedom entailed from having posts mysteriously disappear. That's why I save all my entries on a word processing document first. (And if that makes my writing more pedestrian, so be it. I never claimed to write like The New Yorker.)
Top 50 Interesting Recent Blogs With Context. Whatever. It's just like those popularity indices that list the sites with the most links, like Blogdex or Daypop. If I wanted interesting I'd either check out random obscure blogs or read the people on my blogroll.
Prokofiev and propaganda. So music can be scary because of its political underpinings. So what? That doesn't mean that you can't appreciate it. This column was a bit of a serendipitous find, surprising in that I was listening to a recording of Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges (the Russian version, not the French) this morning which isn't so absurdist as being one giant fairy tale where princesses die and the bad guys get away. Besides, I liked the passage where the characters were laughing in time with the music. I'd imagine it's very difficult to do that and sound believable all at once.
En février luisent les hautes neiges. Les bois velus serrent un peu de nuit. Au ventre des collines, un paysan plié pousse une mule vers un clocher fantôme. Dans le silence alors tout se ferme dans les clôtures: meules et ruches, granges, greniers et bergeries fourbues, couvant des soufflés chauds et des odeurs de laine. Une brebis bêle au créneau, vers la charrette délaissée, quelques tonneaux, quelques fagots éparpillés dans la cour que piquent les merles. L’unique feu brûle dans la maison où devant l’âtre, assises, des femmes jusqu’aux cuisses se retroussent, montrant jupons et bas de fil, tandis qu’au ciel dans un parfum de chou fument les linges. Plaisir secret, pauvre richesse! Ailleurs grondent les guerres et les rois don’t les rages du moins s’émoussent dans l’hiver. Souffrir décroit. Vivre est au Coeur cache de la saison. Dans la forêt l’homme coupe du bois. Une vieille en fichu se glisse sous la haie, lui porte la nouvelle: l’enfant est né, un fils, il est dix heures. Sur la plaine éblouie le soleil rayonne d’un plus vif éclat.
In February the snow is deep. The gnarled woods hug a bit of the night. Over the hill’s curved belly a stooped peasant is driving a mule towards a spectral steeple. And in the silence everything shuts itself in behind wattle fences: hayricks and beehives, barns and lofts and ramshackle sheep-folds brewing warm breath and a smell of wool. A ewe bleats through a cranny towards a cart—shafts at rest—a few barrels, scattered bundles of kindling strewn in the yard where blackbirds are pecking. The only fire burns in the house where some women sit in a row by the hearth, their skins tucked up, underskirts showing, and yarn stockings; over their heads, rags on a line steam in the odor of cabbage. Secret pleasure, poverty’s wealth! The wars and kings snarl somewhere else—that fury has at least to abate in winter. Suffering decreases. Life itself is the hidden core of the season. In the forest a man is felling a tree. An old woman wrapped in a shawl, slipping along the fence, is bringing him news: the child is born, it’s a boy. It is ten in the morning. On the dazzled plain the sun shines with a livelier light.
You know you've gotten acclimated to the weather when you're outside in just above freezing weather wearing a t-shirt and sweating. (I can't believe I was that stoic. Or stupid.)
Caring for Your Introvert. "Introverts are not necessarily shy...rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring." Exactly! I hate it when people are telling me how quiet I am or that I'm shy or that I need to talk more. I talk when I'm good and ready! It's annoying when all the extroverts out there tell me to get out more and open my mind and to go to social gatherings to meet new people. I'm not against meeting new people. Nor about having an open mind. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't the other way around, because extroverts always blab and never listen to the other side of the story. And you know, that gets really tiring. If I wanted to listen to a lecture, I'll go to a class or a seminar where I actually learn something.
Just Shut Up. (via Blogdex) I wonder if this was influenced by the above article? Anyways, this column is not about burying your head in the sand. It's about the proliferating drivel out there on pro-war, anti-war, and pseudo-profundity. I liked it because I would never have the temerity of telling anyone to "shut up" especially if something's written and I have the choice of not reading it.
It's just one of those days when every minute is occupied--one of those days when I leave the house and my roommates are still sleeping. And when I come back, they would already be back in bed.
No, no. I'm not going to start doing memes every day. Just Thursdays.
The Thursday Threesome: New Paint Smell (Reminds me of a paper I've read today that observed the phenomenon of foursome schmooing. You can tell I have yeast on the brain.)
Onesome: New - Hey, it's close enough to spring (even though the East Coasters have been getting hammered) to ask what's on the "to do" list for March. Do you have plans for changing anything around in your home or apartment? ...or are you ready to just get out of the place once the weather clears?
March is Deadline Month. I won't be able to do any housecleaning or home improvements at all. If possible, I will be even more stressed out then than I am now. At least my roommates and I are relative neat freaks--it wouldn't be too hard to coerce one of them to do the vacuuming instead.
Twosome: Paint - ...any refurbishing or refinishing projects just waiting for the warm weather? That trim that needs painting or that one room with that horrible carpet? ...or do you have something you just dream about doing?
No. Not really. I don't dream about refurbishing anything either. All my dreams lately have been nightmare chase scenes.
Threesome: Smell - ...and lest we forget the gardeners out there: what spring madness do you have planned in the plant world? New flowers for the windowsill? How about that garden where the snails took over last year? ...or does a quick dusting of the artificial ficus cover you for another year?
I have no plans for plants, artificial or otherwise.
Oh yeah. Biology documentaries and grad students go real well together. Especially if you add in lack of sleep. And beer. Betting on schmooing yeast and virulent phage. Dead cells that can't tell stories. References to Marie Antoinette. Beef production and Jack-in-the-Box. Scientists with bad hair. Blatant self-promotion.
It started quite slow, understandably perhaps, as the scene was set with a coup in a small middle Eastern country and the introduction of the characters in an elite girls' boarding school in England. The teachers at the school are then systematically murdered as a would-be thief searches for a cache of jewels that was inadvertently smuggled into England because the pilot of the dead heir of that small middle Eastern country hid the cache in his niece's belongings. Poirot, surprisingly, doesn't figure into any of this until the very end when a 15-year-old girl has already solved half of the mystery.
I wouldn't say that this is among the best of Christie's work--I figured out half of the puzzle before the answer was revealed, and I suppose I wasn't surprised that the character that I disliked the most turned out to be the killer. But I didn't find the title quite apt, the killer blended quite well with everyone else thus it should have been A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
If you've never read Agatha Christie before, I suggest beginning with And Then There Were None (originally published as Ten Little Indians). It's a classic in and out of the mystery genre. Besides, if you read it during a dark, stormy night, you might be able to scare yourself silly.
I never mean to eavesdrop on somebody else's conversation, but well, sometimes I can't help it, especially if the talkers in question have naturally loud voices.
Anyways, I overheard two women discussing a meeting that they were going to. One of them mentioned that it was a good thing that one women in their group had kids because otherwise, it would be a bad thing. Apparently some people who were going to the meeting frowned upon childless career women.
Society, of course, doesn't frown upon childless career men, but this was quite a turn-around. What happened to the idea that career driven females had no time to reproduce and raise children? Is it now the norm to expect women to do everything--to hold down a good job and bring up a bunch of kids single-handedly? I'm not deriding the women who do choose to do everything, if anything, I find it incredibly admirable. But this does not mean that it's something that every woman should do.
And where are all the men in this equation? True, some of the males may be helping out equally in the rearing of offspring department, but perhaps there are less benign implications.
Perhaps society is still holding on to the notion that women should have kids (despite what they want) even if career women are commonplace.
Geek Humor for the Day: Typically in haploid yeast, the a receptor is located on the a cell type. When the a cell secretes a factor, this factor binds to the receptor on the a cell which causes it to undergo a mating response. Student: So if an insertion for the a receptor is included in the mutant a [yeast] cell, doesn't the cell mate with other a cells? Prof: Well, it schmoos* and everything, but I don't think it goes all the way. Student: ...!
*Schmooing - when yeast cells undergo the mating response
I suppose it's true, being a self-ascribed geek doesn't lend itself to saying anything else. But I have to wonder about this cruelness and bullying that the author of the above article keeps referring to. I didn't see first hand any nastiness between cliques (although there were plenty within), and even though voting for class president was inevitably a popularity contest, there was no overt backstabbing.
Every situation is different. Sure, the cliques were mutually exclusive, but that didn't mean that they all acted like autonomous countries contantly at war with each other. Despite being a bit of a loner and a wallflower and a geek, I was, in a way, popular because everyone knew who I was (leaving aside the fact that my type of popularity was more like where everyone knows there are overhead lights but never notices unless the light suddenly blows out) because I was in a minority clique. To be more accurate, the minority cliques were popularity cliques. This included the political and jock cliques as well as the nerds (there were a few exceptions, but these exceptions mostly consisted of people who were popular on their looks alone and nothing else).
By far, the majority were the masses, the "regular" Joes and Janes who simply cared about getting through the day and not grades or sports or the student council. If anything, high school resembled more like pre-Revolutionary France than Lord of the Flies. The aristocracy were the minority cliques and the peasants were everyone else. I'm sure all those other people had cliques of their own, but being part of the minority, I was too far removed from that to notice or care. I'm sure that if anyone who used to be a nerd, jock, or politico were asked today, they wouldn't know either.
So if I had to reclassify the nerds, I wouldn't say that they were persecuted (this may have been different for the "nerds" of the masses), instead there was more of a weary respect--sort of like how people had a respect for the aristocractic religious sect for their religious knowledge. The nerds may have been made fun of, but only behind their backs.
What I found interesting was that the dog-eat-dog situation applied more aptly when there are only nerds around. When this occurs, the nerds segregate themselves according to obsession, much like grouping numbers because they're even, odd, prime, or divisible by five. And because there's no real way to quantify someone as being better than another because everyone is equally socially inept, the battle turns to which obsession is "cooler" than the other.
In other words, what do you like better, painting still lifes or juggling?
In other news: Google Buys Pyra. I was surprised. At least Blogger wasn't bought by AOL.
I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I got tickets for The Night Air: Sufi Trance Music but it sure wasn't the eclectic mix that I heard tonight.
Perhaps I was thinking more of a Dadawa type genre. Anyways, the initial atmosphere was spoiled by a fat guy who decided to sit right in front of me (despite the multitude of better, free seats elsewhere) which resulted in me moving, the poetry readings of the 13th century mystic Rumi by one Professor Cook that sounded more like hell and brimstone fire preaching than emotional musings, and the white guys in the percussion ensemble who wore the traditional African-American costumes (which unfortunately had the same effect as white guys wearing blaring Hawaiian t-shirts). The guitar soloist stuck in the middle of the program who wrote an ode to his dead dog did not help either.
However, the guest drummer made up for the rest of the mediocre fare. Glen Velez with his "dancing hands" made genius work out of simple tamborines (a Japanese tamborine tuned down to "bass" and a Lebanese tamborine called a riq) and the Irish frame drum or bodhran which skimmed with moist fingers while vibrating created a buzzing sound not unlike that of playing wine glasses. I also found his overtone singing fascinating. It's not "real" singing per se, it was more like expelling air out of pursed lips and clenched teeth so the human voice imitated the static of a synthesizer. Anyways, more traditional singing came from his duet with Lori Cotler where they performed some songs on their upcoming album.
Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, And do not drop in for an after-loss: Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scoped this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe; Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, To linger out a purposed overthrow. If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, When other petty griefs have done their spite But in the onset come; so shall I taste At first the very worst of fortune's might, And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.
Although the animation wasn't as pretty as X (mentioned in a previous post), it certainly had a lot more substance plot-wise. It got me thinking on the concept of the "soul" but all I've come up with are questions. What is the soul (or "ghost" as the movie referred to)? Is it something metaphysical, beyond our bodies? Or is it connected to our brains and their firing synapses (as hypothesized by one of my former neurobiology profs and Francis Crick)? Will we still be who we are if we had different memories? Or is who we are defined by our actions?
I don't have any answers. I don't think anyone now has an answer to the question of the "soul" that everyone (let alone myself) would accept. It's too complex for our current crude tools to examine. Some might argue that we shouldn't try to find out what the soul is--that it should be left to the unknown. But wasn't that what some people in the middle ages said about not exploring the unknown because you would fall off the edge of the world?
Eye-candy and documents don't have to be mutually exclusive: The Guido Mazzoni Collection. It's a gallery of scans of pamphlets and very old books from Duke. These type of sites are fascinating--I was glad I stumbled onto this one because Cornell's online archive had disappeared a while back. Rare Book & Special Collections Reading Room. This is from the Library of Congress (which one day, I hope to visit and just spend the whole day there oogling all the books). There's some very beautiful scans on site, especially check out William Blake's The Book of Urizen. The Barren Lands. It's a digital collection from the University of Toronto of J.B. Tyrrell's Expeditions for the Geological Survey of Canada. It's impressive--both extensive and exhaustive.
Related to world-building: Castle Arcana. Explore a spooky house in the middle of nowhere. Very cool. SUDS. I thought it would be interesting to create a text adventure myself since many games out there are rather puzzle-oriented rather than literate-oriented. I don't know any programming so this seemed like a good place to start. TADS. Eventually, though, I'd like to learn how to code my own games without relying on mouse-clicking. But being a non-programmer, learning something as foreign as this seems very daunting. I half-hope my desire for making text adventures is a passing phase.
I suppose it's that authority problem again. That might have explained the reason why students had to trek from classroom to classroom instead of the more efficient method of professors moving from classroom to classroom. This began in the fourth grade and still has not stopped--the more extreme case being the beginning of this year when all the students grumbled about waiting for the shuttle at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning to catch a ride to the medical center where one class was held.
But no, this is not going to be a rant about authorities and efficiencies and waiting about in the dark, in the freezing cold. This is about sixth grade and birthdays.
By sixth grade, I was getting used to this whole changing rooms business although I personally found it annoying. If they wanted us to get exercise, shouldn't they have left us in gym class for half an hour longer? At any rate, the school had three sixth grade classes and we rotated to each of the three teachers: my homeroom teacher with the whiskers on her chin and mismatched pumps who taught social studies and spelling, a thin, silver-haired but prune-faced teacher who taught English and reading, and the kissy teacher who taught math and science.
Of the three teachers, I feared the kissy teacher the most because of that adjective I used to describe her--she was definitely kissy. She had a fad of hers in which when any of the students had a birthday, she would smear on the hot red lipstick and lay a visible smacker on the student's cheek. I feared this because 1) it would be terribly embarrassing and 2) I'm as far from the touchy-feely type as you can get.
One of my accomplishments that year was evasion. I contributed this to luck (that the teacher forgot or never noted down my birthday) and keeping a general low profile (i.e. never telling anyone when my birthday was). By the time someone finally outright asked me about my birthdate, it was far too late for the kissy teacher or anyone else to do anything.
Of course, now that I think back on it, this must have been several magnitudes more embarrassing for the kissy teacher's son who happened to be in the same grade. Just imagine having your mother kissing every kid in sight indiscriminately! That just does not compare to my own mother who only remotely approached that sort of "wide-spread love" by passing out homemade cookies to all the kids in the neighborhood.
This afternoon, despite the coughing and sneezing and nausea, I went out into the cold and snow to do some errands. My misery, I thought, was perfectly personified by a large shaggy black dog, tall up to my waist, perhaps as heavy as me (possibly heavier) waiting at the door. Falling snow speckled his black coat with silver. There was no collar on his neck. A stray? He looked up at me with soulful brown eyes--and at that moment, I wished with all my heart that it would have been possible to take him back home with me.
Recent Reading: Idoru by William Gibson. The central premise, can love be possible between man (a Chinese-Irish rockstar named Rez) and software (the idoru, Rei Toei), was an interesting idea but unfortunately was not developed as it could have been. Instead, the story revolved around two characters who are representatives of larger organizations that want to prevent this union--Chia McKenzie, a 14-year-old girl who was sent by Rez's Seattle chapter fan club to Tokyo to find out the truth of the rumors, and Colin Laney, a data specialist involved in creating media scandals. I found myself more interested in the technology behind Chia's Sandbenders (virtual reality communication) and Laney's special ability to detect "nodal points" which helps him identify potential targets for scandal. Rez and the idoru turned out to be rather peripheral, cardboard characters--Rez, the self-abosrbed music idol with even more outside detachment than the otaku--and Rei Toei, the all knowing AI who acts just as self-absorbed and childish as her human lover.
Intellectually, I know that if I swallow those garishly colored capsules I will get better, but it doesn't really ease my peace of mind. It's probably this invincibility complex that every younger person secretely (or not so secretely) harbors in his heart--that he can't ever get sick, that he can overcome any obstacle.
So taking those pills is like admitting defeat, that you can't fight the virus without a bit of chemical help.
Hopefully those pills will work soon as I sit here, grouchy, headachey, coughing, sniffling.
Links: Popdex. Like every other egotistical blogger, I checked out my citations. All I can say is that they had better work on their algorithm to weed out misleading referrals from people who stick in weblogs.com and rss feeds in order to generate more hits for themselves.
N.C. Congressman OK With Internment Camps. Good God, this is frightening, especially since this guy is in a position of power. The problem is that they never look at it in someone else's shoes. What would he say if people decided to put old white guys over 50 into internment camps because they're a threat to society?
First notes for 639-year composition. 639 years from now, will anyone remember why the organ is still playing? Perhaps by that time, people will wonder about any possible significance of the piece besides being "As Slow As Possible." Maybe people might think there are hidden messages encoded in the piece--like people today who think Bach encoded occult messages into his music. Of course, this is assuming that the organ won't be destroyed in the next six centuries.
Yesterday, I was trapped in a convention center in the middle of ski-resort-land attending seminars. Okay, so maybe I wasn't "trapped" per se as I got to listen to a lot of cool, cutting edge research on molecular pathogenesis (a.k.a. studies about organisms that cause human disease). One interesting talk centered on the weird form of pink eye that I mentioned last year. This form of conjunctivitis was not your run-of-the-mill itchy eye, nope, this was caused by the rather uncommon Streptococcus pneumoniae which is more serious (take my word for it, very gross pictures were shown of the disease during the talk which was conveniently timed right before lunch).
I found it curious that despite its mini-outbreak proportions, the majority of people infected were only undergraduate students. An extremely small percentage of graduate students were infected. Health care workers, maintenance crew, administrators, staff, and others did not get infected. One possible reason that was postulated was undergraduate living habits such as not cleaning contact lenses and sharing glasses. Not surprisingly, people living in a fraternity or sorority were more likely to contract the disease than others.
What was interesting was the sequencing analysis. Students had contracted either one of two strains, one from California and one from New York. Both of these strains had caused outbreaks many years ago in those respective states but then had all but disappeared. Last year's outbreak also eventually petered out (partly due to antibiotics) even when the students went home to various parts in the country for spring break. However, a few months ago, these two strains appeared again in another outbreak in the middle of Maine. So the question is, where are these strains coming from? How is it spread, and why is it flaring up in isolated areas? Where is it residing when it isn't causing any disease?
However odd the epidemiology for conjunctivitis is, there are more interesting and deadly diseases. Particularly diseases used as biological weapons. I had the fortune of listening to a professor recounting stories he had heard from associates who had first hand experience. He once had a Russian colleague who had worked at a secret research installation in Siberia during the Cold War. Most people believe that the remaining strains of smallpox were under high security at Atlanta's CDC and in Moscow. However, the strains in Moscow had been secretely moved to the laboratory in Siberia where scientists were working on possible uses for smallpox under the government-fed delusion that the other side was also working on the same thing. In order to cover-up the smallpox immunizations of the communities around the laboratory (in case there was an accident), people were vaccinated via a shot in the rear instead of the arm in the belief that no one would look there.
In another case, this time around the era of the rise of Castro and the Bay of Pigs, the United States government decided to use biological weapons to help take over Cuba. They would use one of three diseases depending on the amount of time they needed. One would act in a few days. The second could act for two or three weeks. And the third could act for a month or more. However, none of these diseases would be lethal, just bad enough to make the victim to wish that he were dead instead. With the populace immobile that way, a country could easily be taken over by an outside force. Some minds might find this particular method more "humane" since no one is killed, but I certainly don't find it ethical. These diseases won't be a weapon in the gun sense, but they are definitely torture agents.
Another obvious example is anthrax. However, the professor had the interesting view that the previous anthrax scare (via snail mail) was less due to bioterrorism and more for a political statement by the as-yet-to-be apprehended party. He argued that if bioterrorism was intended, a much more efficient method should have been used; one milligram could be used to kill hundreds if not thousands of people. He used the example of an experiment which used monkeys. On a ship, cages of monkeys were left on deck outside. Other monkeys were located inside the ship with the doors sealed. One milligram of anthrax was sprayed outside which not surprisingly killed all the monkeys sitting outside on the deck. However, all the monkeys inside the ship were also killed.
To add salt to the wound, don't think that anyone is very prepared if a delibrate outbreak happened. I've heard of an emergency exercise in Colorado to check the preparedness of the community in case bioterrorism struck. In this example, the hypothetical disease used was the bubonic plague. The exercise, however, had to be stopped on the fourth day (it was intended to last for ten) because it was estimated that by that time, the plague would have reached China. A far cry from self-containment.
There is a saying about taking things in moderation, that too much of anything can be bad. Sometimes I wish this weren't true.
Case in point: there are those who spend all their free time sleeping because they are so efficient at what they do that they can set apart large chunks of time to feed their subconscious. Then there are those who have the stamina to get by on very little sleep--thus setting apart large chunks of time to get more work done. My own efficiency level is precarious: I can't sleep whenever I want or I'll never get anything I needed done finished and I can't go on sleep-deprivation or I'll start hallucinating.
Work hard. Play hard.
That's the motto for some people--simply a variation on that slogan about playing hard because life is short. It's as if doing more meant you could overcome mediocrity and become superhuman.
I toyed briefly about the idea of changing physiology so that sleep wouldn't be needed or that the brain would be more efficient at thinking and organizing. But then I remembered that this particular path has been trod before. People are already different in their habits--people who need less sleep brag about their endurance, people who finish work early brag about their efficiency. The rest of us ordinary folk simply seethe with jealousy as this inherent superiority ladder emerges. Sociologically it might be devastating to evolve so quickly.
But the message seems clear, that what we basically need to do is more. And at times like these, it's as if doing more is physically impossible--that I am forever destined to remain the slide rule as others upgrade to faster processors.
In an empty lab, no one could hear me think. Only the whir of centrifuges and the humming of refrigerators keep me company.
Darkened rooms. Unoccupied desks. Blank computer screens. Pipettes, empty flasks, ependorph tubes in multi-colored racks scattered along benches. It's as if the conversations earlier that day had never existed.
At that moment, I am suffocating in the silence, alone in the universe.
My father is in Vietnam celebrating his mother's birthday. My grandmother is a steel-haired, tiny woman. I met her once, many years ago, but it was an awkward meeting. I knew no Vietnamese and the smoke from her cigarette stung my nose and made my eyes water. She did not appear interested in me; I, a young uncomfortable teenager, was a foreign stranger, maybe to be ignored like all other foreigners. So I was surprised when my father and my father's cousins told me that she was excited to see her grandchildren. She has a funny way of showing it, I thought.
He looks like her and I look like him--but I don't feel that I look like her. Perhaps the resemblance has been diluted through the generations as well as a hardy tenacity which she has and I don't. She has lived in Vietnam her whole life, a peasant Vietnamese girl who married a Chinese businessman and bore him children at an age that I still considered myself a child. And when war broke out and her two sons left the country in search of a better life, she still clung to her home village even when her only daughter ran away, attempting to escape, only to disappear into the South China Sea.
Even though I do not know her very well, I admire her. One does not have to be famous or heroic or be martyred to earn respect. She stuck to one place and managed to survive. That takes determination and guts--two qualities which I am ever in search of in my aimless journeys.
With three minutes left on the timer at the corner of the computer screen, I decided to take a quick browse through my blogroll list. That was where I found the news on Blogsisters of the Columbia accident. I couldn't say I thought of anything at that moment when I read those words except that it was a tiny bit of reality that had somehow seeped into my rather surreal day. The timer hit zero as I stood there at the computer terminal thinking of nothing and I was forced to close the window.
Walking out into the side lobby of the library, I noticed that the clock said 3 o'clock. The librarians sat at their desks barely looking up and the people browsing the stacks were off on their own little world as I had been. Outside, the grayed sky was a weak drizzle, the high-rises cloaked in a dream-like mist as if my previous attempts at peering into my memory somehow materialized physically.
I took the T to the aquarium. The crowds had thinned out even more than before. A woman, the subway train driver, screamed at the passengers to not hold the door open when it was closing. Her voice echoed into the terminal like aftershocks. The passenger sitting across from me frowned.
Past an Irish pub and an Italian resturant, I walked under a bridge where steam rose from the ground. The harbor was silent except for the cries of gulls. The only people at the dock were an old man in a bright yellow raincoat walking his white terrier and a woman all in red, the red feathers in her red hat drooping into her eyes as she rushed past. Three small boats sailed toward shore. No sails were in sight, but the masts swayed as the vessels bobbed on the waves, tilting right, then left, in an erratic rhythm only known to the sea.
I sat on a metal bench and took out a French krueller. Birds flocked overhead, shrieking and formed a semi-circle around me. The seagulls chased away the fat pigeons, and among the seagulls, a dominant bird emerged, hopping toward the others so that they backed away. The bully fluffed up his feathers and uttered a warning caw every so often. Opportunists. Scavengers. I placed the pastry back into the bag and strolled away.
At the IMAX, cuddling couples ate all of their popcorn before they were even admitted into the theater and Harvard medical students spoke of philosophy as they waited in line. I watched the movie, alone, and found myself crying when the hero was snatched by flying fiends from his childhood companions. I don't cry at movies, let alone in public, and bewildered, I wandered out afterwards back into a strange city under a dark weeping sky.
I'm currently at the Boston Public Library where my time is limited (not surprising considering the ratio of computers to populace in this place). The "visit" actually began before I got off the bus. I was sitting in front of a young father who was pointing out the landmarks to his young daughter while the bus was making it's way toward South Station. The first thing that struck me was the architecture--squashed, but brightly colored despite the drab atmosphere. There was also a lot of construction going on which made everything uglier, post-apocalyptic even.
But once I got off, all bets were off on any planned itinerary. I ended up just wandering around aimlessly, snapping pictures, watching people, examining the very different surroundings. First I walked through Chinatown, which today, was not as crowded as one would expect. I think that's because it's not the tourist season. Afterwards I had lunch at this bagel sandwich place run by Hispanics which was right across a gigantic Borders (four stories tall, all filled with media) and watched pigeons perching on statues and flying off gilded roof-tops.
Thanks to Gina, I recognized Fanueil Hall when I bumped into it. Quite interesting!
It was then that I thought about looking for some place with internet access (just to let you know that I was okay) and after asking around (an amiable map seller, a raspy-voiced subway teller) I took the outbound green line to find the library. But it was not the library that I first saw when I emerged from the ground, but a church with a statue in front of it's founder, waving a sword with a cross behind him. Anyways, I'll have more impressions tomorrow when I get back to Hanover.
