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Wednesday, April 30, 2003 Currently Listening Albéric Magnard, a French composer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wrote only four symphonies and a handful of other pieces during his short life. It is interesting to note that although he despised the symphonic poem, these four symphonies don't show the rigorous form that would be the opposite. Instead, they were written simply for the music--not for a story or for a purpose--but, as clichéd as it might seem, art for art's sake. Magnard was the son of a wealthy executive at the famous newspaper, Le Figaro. His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps, and he did for a while, long enough to finish law school. After that, he struck out on his own and fell in with the music crowd. It is his death, though, that is a bit of a mystery. People don't agree exactly how he died. Some say he died defending his home from the Germans during World War I, hands still clutched to his weapons, a bullet through his body. Others say that when the Germans torched his home, he perished in the fire along with several of his newly finished operas and compositions. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:04 PM : Tuesday, April 29, 2003 Tuesday Too? Some questions: Of course it's Tuesday; are you mad? No. I'm enjoying the nice weather. Wonder what? See today's previous post. Where is my next cup of coffee? Tomorrow morning, hopefully. What is my project for today? Your project or mine? If it's mine, I'm sort of dreading tomorrow. I have tons of things to do. What would I really like to be doing? I don't know about you, but I like sleeping. A lot. (Not that I get much anyway.) What should I be doing? There's some papers on my desk calling to me. Currently I'm trying to avoid them. How come I'm doing what I'd like to be doing? Curiosity. Why don't I have 118 games in a row? If I had 118 games in a row (or even one game) I would seriously be bored. Do you really care about freecell? It's on my computer (which is really old) and in all this time I haven't touched it. I swear. I haven't touched solitaire either. I like playing with the word processing programs instead. What do you really care about then? Myself. (What? Did you think I'd lie and be altruistic?) Are you going to spend your whole life trying to figure out what's important? Yes, generally. But this will not involve every moment of my life. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:37 PM : Thinking Aloud "I think it would be good to know if I would get Alzheimer's in ten years. Then I could go on a vacation before I forgot about it," he said. She smirked. "Don't forget to bring a video camera." I find it interesting that Alzheimer's and cholesterol uptake is governed by the same mechanism: regulated intramembrane proteolysis. This involves an enzyme cleaving a transmembrane protein so that the clipped off cytosolic portion can enter the nucleus to influence gene transcription. But signaling mechanisms aside, I question the current models that are being used for the disease. Alzheimer's is mostly a disease of the aged. In papers, scientists have characterized genetic mutations that cause early onset of the disease and have used mouse models that are admittedly short-lived. A vaccine that had been developed worked on the mouse model, but human trials were abruptly halted because of complications (primarily meningeoencephalitis). Maybe they should start working on proteolytic inhibitors instead. Perhaps Alzheimer's is a consequence of living so long. Maybe we should seriously consider a monkey model instead of a mouse model. Somebody should do a study analyzing Ab levels over time in humans. Since our brain cells don't divide and turn over constantly like skin cells, maybe the cellular machinery wears down during aging so it can't process the precursor to A b as efficiently. Whatever the case, I don't think testing things out on a mouse model with the Swedish mutation of Alzheimer's is going to have any relavence for most human patients. Not everyone has the Swedish mutation. Talking about excess deposition, it reminds me of two strange diseases, one called scleroderma which is the production of excess collagen. The other disease causes the body to become entirely ossified (osteopetrosis?) or turned into bone. I think I read a story about it several years ago in a magazine (Time? Newsweek? The New Yorker? Harper's?) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:46 PM : Monday, April 28, 2003 This morning I wondered what I would be doing instead of going to class if I was not who I am. If I had been less ambitious or more ambitious or had been interested in something completely different. If I had been given a different name. If I had been born a week earlier or a week later. If I had been born male. I wondered what my life would have been like if I opted to do something more menial, simple. Would I be a cashier at a fast food restaurant? Would I be a secretary? Would I be a bum living off my parents? If I had opted for something more (or less) challenging, would I be happy or miserable? Would I appreciate the details of life more or would I go through each day oblivious to everything around me? Would I simply not know any better? Do I know any better in the situation I am in now? Several months ago, I gave up waiting for Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits (by Robin McKinley and her husband Peter Dickinson, both mainly young adult fiction writers) to come out on paperback so I started prowling the bookstores for a hardcopy. Unfortunately, the bookstores around here don't even stock it in hardcopy. However I did finally manage to snag a copy that the library recently acquired. I've read three of the stories and have felt rather let down. They're nice for young kids, perhaps, as they might overlook the weak plotlines and descriptions. I didn't get into Peter Dickinson's writing at all and Robin McKinley's stories seemed forced. If she is trying to appease her fans or writing out of a sense of obligation, it shows. I would rather read really good books coming out every ten years rather than mediocre stories more frequently. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:16 AM : Sunday, April 27, 2003 Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:31 AM : Saturday, April 26, 2003 On Food When people ask me what kind of food I like, I usually hem and haw before I say something innocuous. "I don't have a preference. I'm not really a picky eater." But perhaps that is only out of politeness, because if I just think a little, I really am picky if the choice is left entirely up to me. I like bland things. If I have to cook my vegetables they should be boiled or steamed or baked. I like tofu without any seasoning. I like plain or vanilla yogurt. I like oatmeal (but not oatmeal cookies). I dislike most seasoning--hot sauce, fish sauce, gravy--because when other people cook, they drown the rest of the food in that stuff. I find fried and greasy food disgusting, but I will eat it if there's nothing else offered. These preferences were developed very early. When I was much younger and my parents took me over to other people's houses for dinner, I would be offered sauces and seasonings. I would refuse and in return I would get strange looks. Come to think of it, there are a lot of things I don't like--and I have a suspicion that it may be due in part to growing up westernized. I don't like ginseng. The durian, even forgetting its off-putting smell, is much too sweet. I despise ramen noodles. Those tin cans of pickled vegetables found in oriental food stores are a little too weird for me. I would rather eat foo gwa (which literally means "bitter gourd" in Chinese, and believe me, it's really bitter) by the bucket load. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:55 PM : The Popularity Problem, Again (Playing Devil's Advocate) The lone genius weblogger, a thought experiment. Gulker proposes the problem: how can we beat the power curve so that the smarter people, the geniuses specifically, gain more exposure? His human-moderated idea is not entirely fool-proof as there is a chance that the blogger version of Britney Spears might escape detection. Besides, determining a genius blogger seems like an extremely difficult task. It's not like distinguishing between your average Joe and a rocket scientist working for NASA or even something seemingly more subjective like Garth Brooks and Mozart. What we're looking for here is a skillful and thoughtful manipulation of words that provoke a reaction (be it emotional or intellectual) in readers. Personally, I would love for all the top bloggers to be geniuses, but I don't think the point of the web is to turn the average blog-reading experience into looking into an ivory tower. The popularity or non-popularity of particular sites may not be deserved, but it only reflects how the real world works and how like admires like. The genius may be well-known and respected, but people will still be fascinated by the empty-headed pop star since it represents the possibility that an average person can make it. Because wouldn't it be depressing to think that the only way to get noticed is through genius? What's clingy-er than saran wrap and kinkier than latex? Parafilm! I wish they sold it in supermarkets. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:16 AM : Friday, April 25, 2003 Woohoo! It's the 50th anniversary that Watson and Crick's paper came out on elucidating the structure of DNA. Although today passed unremarked by, well, everyone--it's understandable. The weather was summer-like and many people were out taking walks and lying on the grass soaking up sun. Yesterday, there had been snow. More links on DNA discovery found here. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:16 PM : Thursday, April 24, 2003 Damn That Spam Those spam people are getting trickier every day. I usually chuck any e-mails that don't pertain to this site, that I haven't been expecting, or from people I have never heard of before. Yesterday, I got e-mail from some Who's Who Historical Society--but that wasn't the real organization that puts out the real Who's Who in America that gets shelved in the library. (Besides, if you look at the fine print on the bottom of the e-mail, you'll find out that they got your e-mail address from some spam distributor.) And you know how some spam is from people with plausible names like John Smith or whoever? I suppose they figure if they send out enough combinations of common names, people will think someone they know sent them an e-mail. That happened to me today. I thought one of my professors e-mailed me! (What have I done? Did I fail a class?!) But no, it was some stupid porn site masquerading as a legitimate person! [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:40 PM : The Thursday Threesome: View From Afar Onesome: View- What is your favorite scenic site, either around your place, where you've traveled, or just that one special picture (like that Ansel Adams "Half Dome" shot)? When I was in grade school, everyone in the class was assigned a state and each of us had to write to the travel bureau to get information. I got Utah. Utah? What the heck is out there besides salty water and hordes of Mormons? Well, I got a travel brochure back and there were pictures of sandstone arches and standing stones. These gravity-defying natural monuments fascinated me. Unfortunately, I so far have not had the chance to visit. Twosome: From- How far is it from home to work? Are you a long distance commuter or do you just schlep on into the dining room/office? I am within walking distance. But like drivers who have to drive past construction, I have to walk past construction. Threesome: Afar- for the travelers out there, just how far have you gone? I mean, is the trip to Grandma's about it? ...or have you made it farther abroad? Not unless a trip to Grandma's is actually halfway around the world! I believe I've mentioned all of this before, but I am too lazy to look it up. One of my grandmothers lives in Vietnam. I've visited her once some years back. I use this site to calculate distances and Vietnam is about a thousand miles further than Hong Kong (which I've been to several times) and twice as far as Germany and Switzerland (the countries I've been to in the other direction). These are not the only places I have been to, but I will not list them all since it will probably make your eyes glaze over. However, I have not been to places south of the equator. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:09 AM : Wednesday, April 23, 2003 In response to a gender relationships essay: Hm. Interesting points, but I view this a little differently. True, there are differences between men and women, but I think that the belief that one gender is inferior to another is due more to the conditioning by society than biology. When a fetus is in its first weeks of gestation, it looks no different than any other fetus of the same age. Physiological changes only occur when there is a hormonal shift. "Animals for the most part wish to copulate more than they wish to be involved with offspring. This is biological." I would have to say this is only true in particular animals--like fish and insects--that produce a lot of offspring so that there's a chance that few survive. Dawkins' idea of the "selfish gene" supports this but there is a corollary. Certain "altruistic" actions can also be due to the selfish gene such as what many mammals do--taking care of offspring. This also increases the chance that genes will be passed on. Actually from this, I would think that intuitively males would benefit from monogamy not because of "copulation opportunity" (polygamy is better suited for that) but to increase the probability that his offspring will survive to reproductive age. Females may have the necessary equipment to have children, but unlike bees that can still have viable offspring from unfertilized eggs, humans cannot. An egg must be fertilized by the sperm. Both maternal and paternal elements are required. Experiments have shown that fusing two eggs together or two sperm together do not give viable offspring.** In this instance, both male and female are equal and essential and no one can claim superiority over the other. That said, I find your friend's comment disturbing. What basis does he have for saying that women assert control through manipulation? What statistic supports that? And if women are viewed as "desired commodities" that will only continue if things like female infanticide isn't abolished. **Note for those of you curious about this experiment: Fusing two eggs or two sperm together have been done in mice. No offspring resulted from such fusions as the resulting zygote died very early in development. The reasons for this are the maternal and paternal factors that the egg and sperm bring. These factors activate or inactivate particular genes that the corresponding gamete contains. If two egg nuclei or two sperm nuclei fused, then all those genes would be either on or off (not one on and another off) and the resulting phenotype would look like either the entire gene was deleted (i.e. off) or there was an extra gene (i.e. on). Actual deletions and extra chromosomes in humans are usually lethal so you can pretty much guess that this would do the same thing. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:08 PM : Three Things In Mind Aha! This clears up a lot of confusion that I've been having lately. Some people were saying that if you are starving, you will break down fats first. That's wrong. You start breaking up muscle first because it has the amino acids necessary for catalyzing the metabolic pathways--including the pathway for breaking up fats. So for people starving themselves, they're only breaking down muscle--something that people can't afford to waste. So what makes you woozy when you drink a beer? Apparently alcohol blocks gluconeogenesis in the liver--that is, the pathway for generating glucose. Your brain is notorious for using up most of your body's energy but it can use it only in one form--glucose. So alcohol stops the liver from creating glucose and the brain doesn't have it's normal supply of energy. I've been reading Brown and Goldstein's Nobel lecture (pdf) on the discovery of the cholesterol transport pathway. Awesome stuff, but it's probably more than a little technical for the usual folks though. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:04 PM : Tuesday, April 22, 2003 Last night was not one of the better ones. I awoke at three in the morning to loud clomping and slamming sounds. Apparently my roommates like to wear clogs and use unnecessary force on doors. They were also talking rather loudly. I couldn't get back to sleep and the rest of the day I spent in a light-headed haze. I'm still in a haze. I listened to more people relate similar stories about their roommates. Is there something in the water or air out here in the boondocks that make roommates go psycho? Or is this just an inevitable part of getting older--that one becomes more intolerant of other people's idiosyncrasies? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:11 PM : Tuesday Too: 1. How are you going to honor, or what are you going to give the earth on Earth Day? People should honor the earth every day, not just on one day. I know, it's a cop out answer. Well, I do recycle and reuse things. I use mass transportation--but mostly out of necessity and not from choice. The ecologists on campus should be all over this, but so far, I haven't heard so much as a peep from them. (And what's on the campus calendar today? Not a celebration for Earth Day. Nope. Just some philosphy thing.) It's also a bit depressing as I realize that in lab, I will be generating more biohazard waste today than you (the reader) ever will. 2. How come there's only one "real" question, and how come there are three Tuesday Toos in a row? I would guess that the answer is 42. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:06 AM : Monday, April 21, 2003 "Eh. He gives a lecture here at least once a year." This apparent nonchalance was directed toward Dr. C. Everett Koop--a Dartmouth graduate, well-known pediatric surgeon, medical school professor, and 13th Surgeon General of the United States. And no wonder. Although it was open to all biomedical Ph.D. and medical school students, there were probably less then ten grad students of my ilk in the whole auditorium. (I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. A few years ago, I went to a seminar where Venter announced the sequenced human genome, there weren't any other undergrads around. Not one.) There was no indication on what Koop would talk about, but I went anyway, partly because I was curious, and partly because this was, well, the former Surgeon General of the United States. I remember his image on billboards during the 80's and it is particularly interesting to note that during his term, conservatives accused him of promoting promiscuity and homosexuality when he stated that using condoms would help prevent AIDS. The title of the talk was "Everything That I Needed To Know About Medicine and Health I Learned While Eating Pizza In Medical School." As you can imagine, most of it was a mixture of dry humor, seriousness, and preaching about not smoking (did you know that the most effective way to get people to stop smoking is not the glamorous advertising but just having your doctor telling you point-blank, "Stop smoking or you're going to die"?). The salient topics being discussed, however, were public health, prevention, and chronic disease. A rather startling statement was, "Most Americans consider prevention to be un-American." I always thought prevention was supposed to be common sense--but Koop reasoned that people thought prevention was un-American because it gives them no choice. They're forced to say, "No." Instead, people want the freedom to make choices for themselves, even if they're bad ones like taking up smoking or not wearing a seatbelt or over-imbibing. But choices aside, in today's technology, people are living longer--some not due to good health, but to medicine's "success" at treating acute disease (which would kill the patient outright) so that patients will "only" have to live with chronic disease. However, chronic diseases pose their own problems, such as long-term care. How on earth are we going to care for the elderly population? I've read somewhere that very few medical students go on to specialize in geriatrics. The majority of nursing home care is abysmal. And family, certainly, won't be able to cover everything--especially with the aging baby boomer generation. Koop remarked that perhaps the baby boomers will help change the system, especially since there are so many of them and they are beginning to realize that, yes, they are getting old (about one baby boomer is turning 50 every 7 seconds). I could be like all those other grad students and say, "Eh, who cares about all this stuff?" and bury myself back into work, but the truth is, I have to care even though I'm not a medical doctor and don't plan to become a public health official. I have parents too, and I knew since I was very young and my grandmother was still strong enough to hold me in her arms, that I would have to take care of them when they are old. And in the end, when my turn comes, who is going to take care of me? An Additional Observation: So when Koop mentioned the CDC, I overheard medical students whispering to each other, "What is the CDC?" Good grief. What are they teaching in medical school nowadays anyway? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:09 PM : Sunday, April 20, 2003 Flame retardants pose poison risk to Americans. (via Dave Barry) In this article, the author cites an experiment where PBDE (polybrominated diphenyl ether), a flame retardant, disrupts brain development in mice. Well, I looked up a paper where another experiment was done--this time PBDE was added to a strain of cancerous breast cells expressing the estrogen receptor. This experiment showed that PBDE hyperactivated the estrogen receptor. Now I understand--hormone levels in pregnant women are messed up with PBDE. And didn't I say before that hormone levels affected brain development? Darn it, I've got to stop looking up everything. I need to read a trashy novel or meditate or something. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:41 AM : Unconscious Mutterings
And today, boys and girls, I will explain my answers since I've been explaining so many other things lately (so might as well do this too).
So my answers aren't particularly weird. Does this mean I'm not crazy? (An interesting paradox are the statements 'I am not crazy' and 'I am crazy' which when somebody says it, means the opposite. Personally, I think craziness is more about actions, like peeping into people's windows for no good reason, than words.) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:35 AM : Saturday, April 19, 2003 Update on my life: While I was coming back home, I caught one of the neighbors (you know, the crazy ones I always complain about) peeping into somebody else's windows. This is quite disturbing--on so many levels. As Promised: Evil Fava Beans Which May Not Be So Evil After All (As Well As Desktop Wallpaper) So the professor with the wacky white hair says: "Don't eat fava beans! They're bad for you. Fava beans contain divicine which cause oxidative stress on your red blood cells and if you have G6PD deficiency, you could get really sick and even die!" By saying a provocative statement like that without any additional explanation, of course I have to find out exactly what fava beans are doing to make people sick. I'm not so sure about the other students. Maybe they were wishing the class would end or maybe they were rolling their eyes thinking that the professor was off his rocker and that fava beans actually cause excess gas. Actually fava beans, or any sort of beans, will cause excess gas if you don't soak them in water. Certain types carbohydrates found in beans move to your small intestine which lacks the enzymes to digest them. Only the bacteria residing there will be able to break them down via fermentation--a process that will inevitably liberate gas. But we're not talking about gas. We're talking about this G6PD thing and red blood cells. Well, if you've ever taken a comprehensive biology course, you've encountered the metabolism pathway. And if you're actually in biology, you pretty much have the glycolysis pathway and the Kreb cycle burned into your brain. To make a tedious biochemistry story short, the goal of these pathways is to convert the glucose that you have ingested to ATP (adenosine triphosphate) which is the unit of energy used to power the processes in your cells. In the very initial step of the pathway, glucose is converted to glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) by the enzyme hexokinase. Aha! That's where the G, 6, and P come from. But how about the D? From G6P, the pathway branches. In one way, it eventually makes ATP. On another path, the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) catalyzes G6P through the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) and the resulting products are ribose-5-phosphate which will be used to make DNA and RNA and NADPH which will help reduce hydrogen peroxide. Now we're getting somewhere. G6PD is an enzyme that will be required to make NADPH. NADPH degrades hydrogen peroxide which is a strong oxidant--bad for the red blood cell because one of its primary functions is to carry oxygen because oxidants will cause the cell to burst. So if you don't make enough G6PD to degrade oxidants, you will be anemic. And what about those fava beans? The beans contain vicine and convicine which break up to divicine and isouramil when they're being digested. In turn, these two compounds will produce hydrogen peroxide and the accompanying free radicals which will cause oxidative stress in the blood cells. So if you are deficient in G6PD and you eat fava beans, you get favism. Amazingly enough, fava beans are particularly popular in the Mediterranean where there is a prevalence for G6PD deficiency. Why is that? Since most G6PD deficient people do not display symptoms until they eat fava beans (or do something to cause their blood cells to undergo stress) some researchers have speculated that this may help prevent malaria. Malaria?! Now what does that have to do with fava beans? Actually, it's a very reasonable hypothesis. Part of the malarial parasite's lifecycle is spent maturing in red blood cells. If eating fava beans cause the cells to go anemic, the parasite will be blocked in that pathway because they will no longer be able to use the red blood cells. And the wallpaper part? That refers to my desktop wallpaper which I changed recently. I was searching for botanical information on fava beans since I've never really eaten them before (you know, it's sort of like how some people have never tried eggplant before simply because it never crossed their mind) and I ran across a comment that said they used explodingdog pictures as desktop wallpaper. Cool idea! So now this picture is on my computer. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:18 PM : How male or female is your brain? On the Empathy Quotient Test: You have a lower than average ability for understanding how other people feel and responding appropriately. Most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20. On average, most women score about 47 and most men about 42. On the Systemizing Quotient Test: You have a lower than average ability for analysing and exploring a system. On average women score about 24 and men score about 30. Arg! I bombed both tests. Then again, those questions were, ahem, more than a little biased. Initially, I had believed I would score at least average on both the tests--or at least have a leaning toward systemizing--but no, these tests believe I'm an antisocial idiot. What I think the tests actually measure is how male or female you are considered in society's terms. In a previous post, I mentioned that you can tell how "male" or how "female" someone's brain is by actually looking at physiological differences and that these physical differences are affected by hormones during development. However, I don't think that having physically different brains prevents anyone preferring one type of thinking to another. Then again, even to have "types" of thinking in existence in the first place is a shame. It's much more interesting to know people with a gradient of rationalizing processes than to pigeonhole everyone into two distinct categories. Stay tuned, demonizing fava beans is next. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:02 AM : Friday, April 18, 2003 More Thoughts on (Non)Parallel Universes So according to this multiverse model thing, sheer probability says we have a double somewhere. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Stupid Star Trek stuff, you might say. Heard it all before. Yes, but just stop and think about that. If there is an infinite amount of space, I will have an infinite number of doubles. In some universes, I would have decided to go to any of a thousand other colleges in the world. Or I could have chosen not to. Or maybe some of my selves aren't even on Earth any more. Maybe technology there advanced so far that I'm now on the moon or Mars or some other planet and taking courses there. In some universes, I won't be blogging and in others, I might be living next door to the people on my blogroll. Hey, according to the theory, if it could happen, it probably is happening somewhere. Most people pride themselves on not acting on their impulses. But every time you make a decision, several universes split off depending on the choices you make. So somewhere, one of your doubles is a total slob or maybe incarcerated somewhere for a crime. Then again, you probably have a double who is leading the perfect life. It's not really uplifting to know this is not the perfect universe. Everyone's imagined some event and thought, Nah, it'll never happen. But then it does happen--somewhere else. Or what about the people who tell stories for a living. Heck, just consider writers. What if all these fiction stories were actually real elsewhere? What if what we are doing right now is a story someone is writing? What if we are somebody's idea of a cheesy fantasy novel? Oh man. Writers are gods. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:55 AM : Thursday, April 17, 2003 Redundant Observations I wish those crazy neighbors would call rather than just barge into the apartment looking for their friends. Sure, I think the phone is annoying, but calling your friend at two in the morning is still better than intruding in someone else's living space at two in the afternoon. (No wonder one of my future roommates is slowly going insane--she has to live with them.) Do you ever having one of those days where you can't say anything and it's not due to a lack of trying? It's not that I'm off in la-la land or that I was thinking of something else and surprised when someone asks me something. It's just that I want to say something and all that comes out of my mouth are nonsense syllables. It's as if there's a faulty connection between my brain and my mouth--sort of like having garbled TV reception. Addendum: How come whenever I read back on the various answers to the Thursday meme, people aren't even trying to be interesting? It's as if they're sleepwalking through the questions. At least I try to be (to some degree) funny, sarcastic, or unusual. I vow next week to have weird answers, or at least try to (most of the time, the questions themselves aren't conducive for weirdness). Of course, no one ever reads my answers so I might as well not do it at all. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:09 PM : The Thursday Threesome: Family Waffle & Grill Onesome: Family- Hmmm... It seems like this weekend is a get together time for some people. How about you? Do you have a family gig to attend this weekend? Hosting one? ...or are you spending the weekend doing weekend things? I live too far away (and have too little money) to do casual things with my family on the weekend. So I'm probably going to do what I usually do: sleep or work at the lab. Twosome: Waffle- Okay, here's the tough one: Waffles or Pancakes? You should hear the discussions in some households! ...and what about those Belgian things? Inquiring minds want to know! I'm not a picky eater, unlike some people. So either is fine since 90% of the time I'm not the one making them. As for those Belgian things, here is a website for those inquiring minds. And yes, geometry does not affect taste! Threesome: & Grill- The outdoor cooking season is close at hand! For those who live large outdoors, are we talking grilling or barbecuing? If you enjoy cooking outside, what is your specialty? ...and for the indoor crowd: do you cook anything reminiscent of outdoor cookery? Grilling? Barbecuing? The closest you'll see me to an open flame will be the bunsen burner on my lab bench cooking some bacteria involved in food poisoning. And for those of you who actually read through the meme or clever enough to skip through it, some links! Parallel Universes. The Multiverse Theory--no longer limited to hard core comic book fans. Assuming that there is an infinite amount of space, it is inevitable that the arrangement of particles will start repeating so at some distance, there is a copy of everyone somewhere. This is the Level I Multiverse. In the Level II Multiverse, the universal constants are different. For instance, in our universe, there are three observable dimensions. In another universe, they might have three completely different dimensions (or maybe three additional dimensions!). The Level III Multiverse differs at the quantum level. Although the author's talk about collapsing wave functions painfully reminds me of some quantum classes I took not too long ago, the easiest way to explain level three is via probability and symmetry. At every point in time, there is a decision that has to be made. The phone rings--do you pick it up or let the answering machine do it? Instead of really doing one or the other, you do both--but at that moment, two different universes split off with one of you getting the phone and the other one of you being lazy. This will also explain the seeming paradox of Schrodinger's cat. The cat is both alive and dead because there is a different universe for each of those states. And then of course, the Level IV Multiverse where anything can be possible due to shear mathematical variety. This means that there can be a universe which solely consists of empty polygons floating around. Or where pigs can fly. Or where humans are actually slimy cannabilistic worms. And perhaps, if the Level IV Multiverse can be proven, there is a universe somewhere where everyone lives forever. Metaphysically disturbing, no? Ophthalmodouleia Das ist Augendienst. (via Speckled Paint) This is an exhibit from Duke's medical library. Woodcuts on eye defects galore! William Morris Society. Some awesome 19th century design and illustration. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:41 AM : Wednesday, April 16, 2003 The History Behind This URL (Part 2 of 2) I don't remember when I was first exposed to fairy tales, but I do remember the first book of fairy tales I possessed. It was a large children's book with a glossy blue cover and contained exactly four stories: Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and The Shoemaker and the Elves. To be honest, I didn't really like any of the stories. What was up with the elves making shoes in the middle of the night? Why did Jack kill the giant who didn't do anything to him in the first place? Why is Cinderella so nauseatingly good? The only character I liked was Puss in Boots. The cat had a lot of moxie to convince his idiotic and moody master not to eat him and to outwit a dangerous giant. That particular book, however, was rather sanitized. The fairy tales I eventually discovered moldering the back of libraries were more interesting. Despite the gruesome depictions of murder, cruel and unusual punishment, and tribulations no one in their right mind would stand for--some of the stories, like Puss in Boots had rather ingenious characters. At the time, I also discovered in the same section books on mythology and superstition. To me, this was fascinating stuff, even more fascinating because it was obvious that no one had checked out these books in a very long time. It was amusing to read all the stories and folklore that people in the past have actually believed--it was truly the case of fact being stranger than fiction. And that brings me back to the URL, especially the part I never explained in the first place. Gamalei. I have no idea where the term originated, but I ran across it while searching for obscure occult texts in preparation for a Ditch Day prank. Basically, a gamalei is a magic rock. Recall the birthstones and those tumbled rocks you find in the museum with little cards that tell you all about it? Superstition has special properties imbued to particular rocks. The Hope diamond isn't exactly a gamalei--the curse of the diamond was put on it by someone. By contrast, the magic properties of a gamalei are somehow innate. So at the same time I was working on a story about magic rocks and I was looking for a domain name, I found it fairly appropriate. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:44 AM : Tuesday, April 15, 2003 The History Behind This URL (Part 1 of 2) Syaffolee. S. Y. Affolee. Sya. The name, Sya, has surprisingly spilled over into my real life. As I've mentioned before, my roommates can't pronounce the "th" sound in my name (they've told me it's way too difficult) and can only compensate with the "s". I can't complain. Some people have butchered the four letters in my name in far worse ways. At least when my roommates say it, it sort of sounds like my Chinese name in Cantonese, except without the "ng" sound--"See Nga". (In Mandarin, it sounds more like "Shu Ya" with "Shu" said with the tongue against the roof of the mouth.) My parents had attempted to do the Tiffany-Tyffani thing. Usually it's supposed to be "Nga See". But in a way, I'm glad they switched the words around, because Nga See makes me think of translucent soup noodles. The Affolee part came later. During high school, I was the news editor for the paper. This may sound impressive, especially on a college application, but in reality, I was just doing the dirty work. The editor-in-chief got to call the shots and I ended up attending frivolous affairs like football games and homecoming festivities that stretched my boredom tolerance to its limits. Perhaps it would have been more interesting if I had been allowed into one of those student council meetings where hush-hush cat fights between the cheerleader types would erupt, but like wrestling, I suppose that would have grown boring too. So with all this boring-ness going on, the paper needed extra stuff to fill leftover space. The editor-in-chief, in all her wisdom, suggested that the staff come up with something creative, like poems. For two days, I seriously contemplated on submitting a poem. Poetry is a totally different creature than a news article or an essay. It's deeply personal, in a way that an essay can never be, and so I needed a way to dissociate myself from that particular work. The initials were easy--after all, my name did mean "sea poem" but then I needed a last name. Submitting a poem to the school paper seemed like a foolish endeavor--so I looked up the word "fool" in the blue English-French/French-English dictionary I had bought at a dirt cheap discount store. I ended up not submitting any poetry to the paper. I realized that even though what I wrote was primarily concerned with imagery, nature, and vague philosophical and spiritual questions (nothing personally embarrassing), I was like the other teenagers who wrote love/angst verses in one very important respect: I was prolific, and 99.9% of it was dreck. The paper did end up printing some poems, although not mine. The poet who had contributed was one of the news reporters that I edited. In his spare time, he was an aspiring country music writer. So what did he write? Yep, mooning love poetry. Of course, I can't complain. It would have probably resonated better with the student populace than my obscure scribblings. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:03 PM : A Remark about the Weather For about thirty minutes this afternoon, I escaped lab. Now this is not what you think it is. I was in the middle of one of those steps in an experiment where you had to wait for some time before proceeding. So I took the opportunity to drop stuff off (not the story--I did that yesterday, nor taxes--I did that two weeks ago, these were boring bills) at the post office. If you ever look at the campus map, you'll notice that all the biology buildings and the medical school are situated at the very back. Of course, there's a shuttle that comes by every so often that could get you to the post office, but waiting would take as long as walking. And besides, I needed the exercise. I took the main road that passed the chemistry building, two churches, and a frat house that terminated at The Green, which is exactly what it sounds like, a vast green lawn. I was grouchy when I saw all the students decked in their summer finery and sprawled out on the grass doing nothing. I never remembered being that un-busy in the day and in the middle of the week when I was an undergrad. The weather, however, gave these unproductive students their comeuppance better than I ever could--because when I came back from the post office, I overheard a girl complain about sunburn. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:00 PM : Tuesday Too: 1. How would you explain the impossible? If I don't know the answer off the top of my head, I'm sure someone (somewhere, sometime) understands what's happening. 2. Invent, and define a new word for the dictionary of the future? I have "wibble" (verb, to jiggle messily) somewhere in the archives, but it's not exactly original. I'm not really a word inventor--rather, I'm a word pusher. 3. Was the media coverage of the war bias? Did you watch the coverage? Why, or why not? The media is biased in pretty much everything no matter how much they crow about objectiveness. I do not watch the coverage because it's depressing and I have other things to do. Muttering About World Building And So Forth Different people go about preparing for writing differently. There is no correct way of going about it. As for myself, I write as I do everything else--quickly, in spurts, sometimes at the last minute, cutting near self-imposed deadlines. I've tried world building before, but it has always turned out to be a failure. I never manage to get past the cursory maps that look like the scribblings of a two-year-old and the lists of new terms, timelines, and made-up history that I may be needing. World building is hard work and probably better suited to role-playing. Akin to world building is the character sketch. However, I have a strong suspicion that my idea of a character sketch (see the peculiar types) is not what other writers have in mind. Perhaps their type of character sketch goes on like a biography. "Character A was born on this year at Somewhere Town. His parents were so-and-so. He's five and a half feet tall with brown eyes..." And so on and so forth. I know some people who spend their entire time making character sketches and not doing any actual writing. They feel that they're not ready, that they haven't fleshed the character out yet. But isn't that what the story is for? If I wanted to write someone's biography, I'd find a real person and do some serious research. Of course, I'm not so adventurous as to jump into a project without any preparation. I jot down some plot notes. Like some writers who need a title before they start (I don't), my characters must have names before I start. I never haphazardly name characters, be the name common or obscure. I prefer obscure names, but most of the time, that never works out. You probably shouldn't name a character Zorkon if you're writing realistic fiction about teenagers living in the middle of Iowa. Half the fun is actually the writing process itself, especially if it's not forced. The other half is finding out where the story is going to end. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:34 AM : Monday, April 14, 2003 Peculiar Type #6 - Cards and Clues Mrs. Weckman's House of Cards was tucked away in a small alcove of Hillard's Alley--a tiny street branching from the central circle, the center of town. One of the card shop's neighbors was a pawnshop with a large hand-painted sign of three gold balls thrust from the building, approximately five and a half feet up so that non-short visitors stood a chance of koshing their heads against it. On the other side was a specialty shop selling incense and lava lamps among other hippie items--its window was decorated in black velvet and silver stars and books about goddesses and earth mothers. Ellen was in a hurry. She was short, so paid no attention to the pawnshop sign as she ran down the alley with her hand to her nose (apparently the specialty shop was having a musk and damask incense sale, a rather unholy combination) and her yellow raincoat flapping behind her. She was supposed to meet her cousin at the cafe three blocks away for lunch. And she needed to get a card for him even though he never explained why. Tom was funny about those kind of things. Unlike the window at the specialty shop, Mrs. Weckman's House of Cards had spread out stuffed rabbits, streamers, and glittery whirly-gigs against a sky blue screen. On the green door was a discrete bronze sign that simply said 'House of Cards'--'Mrs. Weckman's' had rubbed off years ago. The door gave an electronic ping as she pushed it open. "May I help you?" White hair and eyes as blue as the front window screen peered at her from behind a rotating rack of colorful stickers. Ellen took a step back in surprise, for a moment, she had thought that the old woman had appeared from nowhere as the cashier’s desk next to the stickers had been vacant. "Well." She shoved her hands into her raincoat pockets and thought of Tom and his vagueness. "Yes. My cousin needs a card." "We have plenty of birthday cards at the first aisle." She let out a breath. "I don't think he wants one of those. The problem is, he never said what kind he wanted, even when I asked him. He just told me that your shop would have what he needed." "Do you mind if I ask what your cousin's name is?" She supposed it would do no harm to give the old woman that small piece of harmless information. There must be hundreds of Toms in town. "Tom." "Ah." She sounded as if Ellen had given her a revelation from God. The old woman thumped out from behind the sticker rack with surprising speed, her oak cane tapping along the carpet like a third leg. “Right this way.” Now confused, she trailed the proprietress down one of the aisles to the back of the store. The back wall was lined with shelves overflowing with stacks of envelopes, cards, folders, notebooks, and filler paper. The old woman plucked a card off one of the stacks. “This will be what he will be looking for.” Ellen glanced doubtfully at the card, the picture of a yellow lily drawn in front. When she paid for it, the old woman winked at her and said, “Send your cousin my regards.” Back out in the alley, she checked her watch. She could still make it to the café on time if she walked. She took out the card from the white paper bag that the old woman had placed it in and opened it. Inside was a single line, handwritten. For anniversaries, forgotten. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:32 PM : Woohoo! Final human genome sequence released. With everything except about 1.5% sequenced, that's pretty darned good. Left-handers do it right. Hm. Since I used my left hand for some things and my right hand for others, does this make me more balanced? Or, since apparently the author thinks left-handers are balanced, does this make me less balanced because I also use my right hand? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:18 AM : Sunday, April 13, 2003 Human cloning currently 'almost impossible'. (via Blogdex) Apparently in monkeys and humans, current cloning techniques strip the cell of essential proteins that are involved in proper spindle formation. Without proper spindle formation, the chromosomes are scattered every which way. This is interesting because last term, I was rotating in a lab that is studying chromosome cohesion, important especially in genetic defects where chromosomes don't segregate correctly (such as Down's syndrome). How chromosomes stay together in germ cells is an incredibly complex matter involving scaffold proteins and chromosome-associated proteins whose interactions are still not clearly understood. So it appears that successful human cloning is still some ways off despite the crackpot claims of agencies like Clonaid. How to Wrestle Free from an Alligator (and more!) Yep, some very useful tips for James Bond wannabes. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:12 PM : This Doesn't Make Sense, But... Well, I guess I've been rejected again, this time by The Ageless Project because it's way past the ten days they said they would add a submitted site. I also know this site is not dead because there are new sites added since my last visit. It's discouraging. Is there a fundamental flaw in my writing? In who I am? Is there something about this site that screams "I am subpar"? Am I coming across as age-ful, age-centric, age-intolerant? Am I the antithesis of their premise for being ageless? I don't know. Maybe they just don't like me. I know I'm probably overreacting to something very small. There's a human behind every website and I won't begrudge people of making mistakes. Maybe it is the implications in my mind that has me going off at such an insignificant thing as not being admitted. If I'm not ageless, then I'm ageful. In fact, I was never ageless in the first place and I will never be. It is inevitable that I will grow old and die. And no one will remember me. Damn it. I sound so egocentric. I think I will shut up now. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:48 AM : Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:13 AM : Saturday, April 12, 2003 A Fast Rejection Remember last week when I mentioned that I mailed out a submission? I got my manuscript back today with a generic photocopied rejection notice. I'm positive I put my story in the correct format and that my story's genre matched with what they were looking for. But the thing is, I have the suspicion that they (the editors) didn't even look at it. I think I caught them during a time of backlog. Depressing isn't it? Well, about ten minutes after I read their notice, I shoved the manuscript (which is completely unmarked) into another envelope. It'll be off to a different publisher on Monday. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:47 PM : So I was talking to one of my future roommates who told me a bunch of her roommate horror stories. That put my whining about my current roommates totally in perspective because no matter how bad I think my life is, there is always something worse. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:12 AM : Friday, April 11, 2003 Dried Squid, Yum Methods in Neuroscience - Squid Giant Synapse. And besides food, the squid is a great experimental organism for neurobiology. Also see What is this octopus thinking? where "researchers have discovered spines lodged in octopus brains, the result of a meal going the wrong way." What I really find fascinating are these classical visual experiments where scientists studied animals that had part of their brain lesioned so they could only distinguish particular patterns. In Search of the Red Demon. "Under an orange moon, Jacquie and I are 75 feet deep in the Sea of Cortez waiting for demons to appear. As we search the black water below our camera lights, a green glow begins to move toward us. Bioluminescence is signaling the approach of a shoal of Giant Humboldt squid rising to investigate us. There’s no doubt they’re hungry…" Super squid surfaces in Antarctic. "It really has to be one of the most frightening predators out there." Fishermen Hook A Colossal Catch. "A colossal squid with eyes as big as dinner plates and razor-sharp hooks on its tentacles." Giant squid attacks boat. "Suddenly he saw something moving," de Kersauson said. "It was tentacles." Deep-sea monster caught on tape. "A ghostly, 23-foot-long creature glides through the deep sea, its gossamer fins billowing against the black water. Its arms, more than half its total length, trail behind like delicate threads." Cephalopod News. Yes! Just what I was looking for. Squid news. All the time. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:41 PM : The True Clash of Civilizations This is an interesting viewpoint on why democracy has taken a poor hold on Muslim countries, but I don't think this explanation is completely "true". Culturally based intolerance may play a role, but democracy in the United States did not establish because of this reason. It was only until the 20th century that women were allowed to vote and people became more liberal on views about race and sexual orientation. But is infusing Western culture really the answer? I don't believe that any culture is inherently better than any other. I think (and I may be wrong--sociology and political experts please correct me) that the problem may lie in the basic concept of a separation between church and state. In the west, there is this understanding that religion should not meddle with politics although lately one wonders if the blurry line between the two even exists anymore. In the Middle East, there was never a line to begin with. And if one side is firmly entrenched in the other, exactly how easy is it to uproot that side and strip it of its powers? People don't like giving up power. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:27 PM : Kite My eighth grade science teacher was a distant woman. I didn't really sense any driving passion from her about science or teaching. Then again, looking back with the retrospectoscope, her distant-ness was probably due to the fact that she was studying for a masters degree while she was teaching. I'm sure that would dampen anyone's enthusiasm for pretty much anything. One thing that I remember from her classes was the projects. The point wasn't that they were original, but that they were fun. Near the end of the year, we were studying aerodynamics and one of our projects for that subject was to construct a kite. The trick was that we couldn't just go out and buy a kite. We had to build it from scratch. Before then, I had never done any kite flying not to mention even physically touching one. This was before I realized there was even an internet (my parents only gave in and got AOL dialup at the end of my junior year in high school) so I headed off to the library to do some research. Unfortunately, I got there too late. All the books to kites were checked out--except for a tiny book with a fading blue cover. Inside were mostly words and minimal illustrations. I knew that there were plenty of different kites. I thought making a segmented kite would have been cool, but difficult. So I chose a simple design, one that looked like two squares turned at 45 degrees to each other to form an eight-pointed star. At the local home improvement store, I bought several thin dowel rods that were lightweight. These were cut and glued together to make the frame. Over that, I tightly taped over it colorful wrapping paper so it was like skin stretched over a drum. This paper is not the glossy kind found at gift stores. It's dull and brittle and used by stores to wrap purchased pottery and glassware--so I already had this around the house. I cut the leftover paper into strips and taped them to two corners of the kite as balancers. Strong white string (the kind found at the same home improvement store) was secured to these two sides by tying it to the frame. I did not use an entire roll of string, instead I rolled a good amount onto an empty toilet paper roll which was easier to handle. Before flying it at school (where the project would be graded on design and creativity and extra points would be awarded for actually working) I tested the kite in the back yard. One of the rules was that we could have no help in launching the kite. Since I had never flown a kite before, I had numerous failed attempts which had all resulted in the frame dragging along the grass. Finally, I tried holding just the string above my head until the kite dangled about a foot and a half from my feet. My other hand held the string but the roll was already reeled out for a couple of yards on the ground. The kite was pulled aloft when I ran for a few yards and the wind caught the kite from the bottom where the frame was visible. Once the kite had risen to half the height of a nearby tree, I could safely spool out the string until I got to the roll. With the control of a taut string twisting in my hand, it was a beautiful thing to see a red and white star dancing across a cloudless sky. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:16 AM : Thursday, April 10, 2003 The battle for American science. (via Private Ink) Proponents for intelligent design are a lot like trick magicians. They make you focus your attention on something else while they sneak in the important thing without your notice. Their goal is "to promote objective, evidence-based science education with regard to the origin of the universe and of life and its diversity." They say that there isn't enough evidence to prove conclusively that evolution occurs and that this makes Darwinism still a theory. But I wonder, exactly how much evidence is it going to take to prove to them any hypothesis grounded on the scientific method? My impression is that no matter how many graphs and tables are produced, their minds will be married to the belief that something else made everything possible. But that's the rub. Their requests for evidence is only a cover for something deeper, their belief and faith. A scientific theory is testable. I can see the results. Intelligent design, however, is a belief and not a theory. How can you test intelligent design? Do we have to interview God? How do we find deities in the first place? Through prayer? But then how do I know that you're really talking to a higher power and not schizophrenic voices inside your head or that you're simply following some baser instinct? I'm reminded of a recent discussion on Æmilius about whether or not we can prove that aliens exist. Aliens might exist in a different dimension, but how are we to test that? I would only understand biological and biochemical data because that is what the current level of technology is. If aliens only existed in another dimension and if in the future, there is new technology that is able to probe other dimensions then I would say that we could test for aliens scientifically and objectively. Until then, I will not say that there are or there aren't extraterrestrials--only that there is a probability based on calculations from what we know of Earth's conditions. My belief on whether or not there are aliens play no role in that probability. Perhaps this desire to meld belief and fact into intelligent design is only a wish for purpose. If something had been the driving force behind your creation, then maybe you were made for some purpose. (Although I sometimes wonder what creationists would think if God merely made humans for amusement, just as five-year-olds finger paint just for the heck of it.) With evolution, humans have no inherent "purpose" per se except as being the product of chance events. But then again, those random events arising from particular physical laws gave us consciousness and I see nothing wrong with creating my own purpose. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:41 PM : "Before, researchers had to do hard, labor-intensive experiments. But now, everything is revolutionized by the retrospectoscope!" Everyone laughed. Except me. I did not get the joke. What the hell was a retrospectoscope? I didn't ask because I had the feeling that class was not the best time for an explanation. Well, I searched and found the answer to what's a retrospectoscope. After I saw that, I felt really dumb. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:33 PM : Can anyone be a poet and force their work down the throats of the masses? As evidenced by weblogs, everyone can churn out crap but no one has to read it. Television is different. People watch it in expectation of something informative (biased or not) and not to listen to someone's impromptu readings. Sure, you can turn the TV off, but you might miss something. You might be able to record the program, but it's a hassle to wade through the junk to find what you want. The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld (via Reflections in d minor) My reaction: picture me as a horrified anime character with a giant sweatdrop beside my head. On another note: The Thursday Threesome: It's Daylight Savings Time Again Time to: Are you a punctual person, always on time? Or do people have to tell you that everything starts an hour earlier than it really does, just so you'll be on time? Or are you somewhere in between? This is also answered in a post on Tuesday. Usually no one has to remind me of the time change, but this year I was glad I glanced at the computer clock on Sunday because I had forgotten with everything else crowding in my mind. Spring: After a long week, what puts a spring in your step? How do you spend your downtime? I swear, the word "spring" is driving me nuts. Everyone's using it--at a greater frequency than before. In this case, I don't even think "spring" is the right word. After a long week, I need sleep. Sometimes I get it. Sometimes I don't. Forward: As we enter Daylight Savings Time and the clocks spring forward, do you like having that "extra" hour of daylight or would you rather just not mess with it? Or do you live in an area that doesn't follow DST? I personally think Daylight Savings Time sucks. It makes me feel guilty for leaving work before the sun has set. Yes, the lab has windows so I can tell what's happening outside. No, I do not dislike my work. I just get tired if I work longer and when I'm tired, I get cranky. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:24 AM : Wednesday, April 09, 2003 All right, I take my previous post back. Now that I think about it, I have read some Pulitzer Prize winning novels (date won prize in parenthesis): The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921), The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940), All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947), The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953), To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961), and The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975). One of the finalists for the 2003 prize was Servants of the Map: Stories by Andrea Barrett which I am currently in the middle of. I've also looked through the other finalists and everyone sounds familiar (I didn't know that Ursula LeGuin had been a finalist in 1997!). Anyways, I have little time or fortitude to attempt to plow through the entire list. If anything I chose has won a prize, I assure you, I picked it up purely by accident. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:16 PM : The Pulitzer Prize Winners 2003. Well, I don't recall ever reading any Pulitzer Prize winning novels during my whole reading career although I find this year's list a little interesting (the fiction winner's novel is in relation to a previous post). But I am wondering, at a cursory glance, why is there a member of the Los Angeles Times on the board as well as a winner from that newspaper? I am, though, in the middle of a Nobel Prize winning novel currently so unfortunately I haven't escaped all "pretentiousness". [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:21 AM : Tuesday, April 08, 2003 It's All Relative Until It's Relevant Knowing the time is important for classes and meetings. It's both embarrassing and humbling to be late. I wonder why so many people in my field are so punctual (I'm occasionally late and at those times I grumble silently about how some people are so perfect with their schedules). While I was an undergrad, biology majors were always in their seats at least ten minutes before lecture started while I stumbled in when the professor was already at the front of the room fiddling with slides and projectors. Other majors seemed to have no compunction at wandering in at strange times. I try to compensate by setting my watch ahead. But sometimes that doesn't help at all. My watch is ten minutes faster than the clock on my computer. My alarm clock is an hour faster than my watch (I never bothered changing it last fall, but when daylight savings time hit on Sunday, I changed it--not because I wasn't thinking--but because I was used to it reading an hour ahead). The library clock tower on campus, which sometimes plays Indiana Jones themes, is at least fifteen minutes faster. However, the clock in the biology lounge is ten minutes slower while the clock on the second floor of the medical school is slow by five. The clock on the sixth floor, however, is five minutes fast. The clock above my lab bench is also ten minutes slower than my watch. Of course, a couple days ago, my calendar was a whole month off. In a way, I find the whole confusing mess rather reassuring. It gives me the illusion of flexibility. If all my timepieces were controlled by some central mechanism, I would unquestionably be a slave to the clock. And if someone hacked this central mechanism to make a day disappear, who's to say that I simply didn't remember that day? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:43 PM : Tuesday Too 1. When was the last time someone surprised you? What did they do? When a toddering old man and his cane made way for me on a narrow sidewalk before I could do anything. Yes, I know I normally complain about rough-housing undergraduates who clog up the streets and selfish yuppie joggers that push me by when I obviously am carrying things that may make me fall. Yet I'm one of those people who open doors for old people and don't expect them to do anything in return--because face it--when you're old, you don't have much of a physical capacity anymore. Let's see one of those stupid yuppies open a door for me! 2. Alright then, it's similar to a googlewhack, but different. You must come up with two words, spelled correctly and within quotes that google will produce only 1 result for, and that result must be your site. Unless you're already a rather unusual wordsmith it might take you a couple of days for google to find a combination you invent and find no result for currently. I wish I had the monopoly over "decapitated mermaids", but alas, I'm not the only one who dreams of them. Off the top of my head, I know of "scalping cefalophones" because of my search statistics and "photoelectric dunderhead" from a previous Tuesday Too googlewack. Recently, I coined "kinky subgroup" and "pathetic smidgen". Here are some more I found just in my June 2002 archive (some may not be real words, but I included them anyway): latte raged wordage fascinating condone subjugating times gluttonic soupy occasion hairspray-petrified pendulous atmosphere hapless candleholder community squeals viscountess sings hardcore unkempt moneyed ink oilish mess dumbass sculpture scatterbrained commentary Hm. Looks like I spent too much time puttering around with this new google game. 3. Give a link to the funniest site you've come across lately; it may or may not be a weblog. Her! [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:06 AM : Monday, April 07, 2003 I think my rosemary plant is dying. I water it about once a week and I think I've finally gotten rid of those fast-breeding aphids, but it's still not doing too well. The tips of the leaves are turning black and the new leaves, the ones coming out at the top of the plant, are shriveled and gray. It's gangrene without the green--leaves have already fallen out lying at the base as untwitching amputated limbs. Perhaps it's due to the lack of sun (it has been rather gloomy the past couple of weeks)--so I've moved it to a sunnier location. It's depressing and disheartening. Maybe this makes me one of those wacko tree-huggers, but I've really grown attached to the plant. I've even named it unoriginally "Bob." That's crazy, you may say. Who on earth names his rosemary plants 'Bob'? And who cares about your stupid plant anyway? There are worse problems in the world. And you would be right. Hamster death matches are inherently more interesting. But humor me, I'm one hamster who would rather, for the moment, focus on a closer, concrete problem that I might be able to solve. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:59 PM : Sunday, April 06, 2003 More Musings While Staring At Blinding Snow If God were a little boy, we are his forgotten pet hamsters. And like real hamsters, some of us bite our cagemates' heads off in piques of insanity when we are left to our own devices. Updates on the Blogroll Due to Name Change: The links on the site may change, but no one really ever leaves my blogroll. Everyone who has ever been listed and then some are on my permanent bookmark list. So if you see on this site that I've suddenly dropped you, don't breathe a sigh of relief. You haven't escaped me yet. (As for why some links disappear then reappear, it is none of your business. Pay no attention to the silly graduate student behind the curtain.) Giant Steps. This journal is Sasha's new incarnation of the weblog These Foolish Things which is unfortunately defunct due to personal reasons. Updated sporadically. In The Pipeline. Formerly Derek Lowe's Lagniappe. A wonderful blog combining chemistry, medicine, and lab anecdotes. Oh, and the chemical reagents that smell the worse to me? b-mercaptoethanol and TEMED. Insignificant Thoughts. Not a name change, but a web address change due to the actions of stupid political hackers. Makahiya. Formerly Sheherazade. This is written by Sara at UBC. No, it is not my former roommate even though she has the same name. And yes, that is the same school my sister goes to. Neoluddite. Used to be Julie's Chaotic Neutral. Very cool blog with screencaptures and pictures as entries. This Thing Needs A New Name. Formerly Shadow Runes. Just one of those blogs I read because of how it's written and definitely not because of similar viewpoints. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:25 PM : Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:31 AM : Saturday, April 05, 2003 After two months, I finally have the pictures I took in Boston developed.  [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:28 PM : Whew. I got to the post office right before they were about to close without killing myself on the slick sidewalks. It's not exactly snowing fluffy flakes today--more like tiny ice particles. There are still joggers about as well as hordes of wannabe photographers wanting to get some white on film. The reason why I was at the post office was that I was finally mailing off a short story I had been working on for about two years. This isn't the first time I've mailed stories off before, but every time I do so, it always feels like I'm sending off a tiny baby to be swallowed by an angry man-eating bear. Sending a submission is a little like sending an application, but an application is more like a force of nature--you can't change your grades or your recommendations or what you've done in life the past few years. As for a story, you always wonder if there was something that you could have done better but were too myopic to have seen the mistakes. A reply won't come until several months in the future so I might as well start working on the next one. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:00 AM : Friday, April 04, 2003 Musings About Shaving When I was eleven, some boys made fun of me because I did not shave my legs. Later I asked my mother about leg shaving and she simply told me it was a hazardous preoccupation--shave off your leg hairs and they will grow back longer. Use hair-removing cream and damage your hair follicles. So I had to deal with not having the luxury of possessing hair color that blended into skin color. Of course, now that I look back on it, it's a little disturbing. I don't think those boys knew why women shaved their legs--all they knew was that everyone was doing it. Before that age, I never even noticed leg hairs. And now, all of a sudden there is this pressure to conform to societal norms which only got worse as I got older. Perhaps this is what some call the "infantization of society" where people revert to juvenile desires. Maybe it applies to some things, but I don't believe it does for this leg-shaving business. I think it's more likely it was due to the spread of a kinky subgroup's practices and that people do it just because everyone else is--not because there is a legitimate reason behind it. (Most people may think shaved legs are more attractive, but how much of this attraction is environmental conditioning and how much is innate?) What really aggravates me is that people want women to shave their legs (as well as everything else) whereas the same standard doesn't apply to men. Some may argue that shaving facial hair as well as other parts of the body is feminizing men but that doesn't sound like a logical argument if women are forced to shave off body hair anyway. So what is my assessment of this problem? Shaving off hair just to look good doesn't sound rational but neither do a lot of other things--like jogging during a blizzard. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:13 PM : Still Snowing Visibility is pretty much looking at the world through staticy-tv-tinted glasses. The ground is still a bit warmer than the snow so the snow melts just enough when it falls to create a slippery surface that could get your fool neck broken. Yet joggers are out in hordes (not surprising, they're always out in hordes--people in the backwoods are jogging fanatics), people are playing ultimate frisbee, and several (not just one aberrant individual) people were wearing shorts outside. Is playing a summer sport when you should be snowshoeing their idea of fun or are they trying to prove something? My idea of fun during a snowstorm is curling up with a mug of mint tea and reading a Hermann Hesse book while Bach is playing in the background. Yes, I'm a geek, but I don't have anything to prove either. Completely different: Hero. (Warning: direct link to high resolution QuickTime file) Wow. One can never see too many supernatural kung-fu movies (well, this really isn't supernatural or kung-fu, but people familiar with the genre will get the idea). Unfortunately, that ubiquitous trailer-voice guy is beginning to grate on my nerves. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:24 PM : Thursday, April 03, 2003 Busy So in between classes and seminars and lab (or rather afterwards) I attended my first monthly meeting of a writing group. I was pleasantly relieved that it was no where like a student group I've attended about two or three years back where people bandied about Xanth-like puns in sobriety. The place was out in Newport, a 30-minute drive from Hanover--longer since it was snowing--and was "cute". That is, it is in the backwoods surrounded by giant pines and growing snow drifts. The group met in a library that had been converted from an old clapboard house. It was homey and intimate--warm wood and yellowed lighting--the librarians even served coffee in little china cups placed neatly on a tray. I could picture a cranky old writer sitting in one of the upstairs rooms, tapping on a typewriter and telling whomever it was with the coffee to go away because he was on a streak. The writing group was all serious business, commenting on detail about problem passages in submissions. I liked that. It was so much more helpful than a simple, "That was good" or "That was awful." This just gives me more motivation to polish the stories I've already finished and finish the stories that I've started so I could get some feedback. Unfortunately, no one is going to see any of this work online due to copyright reasons, but that doesn't mean that I won't upload a story onto the site now and again. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:36 PM : It seems as if the people at The Back Porch are obsessed with spring and planting considering most of their questions (so far that I've been participating) have dealt with weather and plants. I may have won prizes for posters I made for 4-H back in grade school, but I am so not agriculturally inclined. The Thursday Threesome: April Showers Bring May Flowers Onesome: April Showers- What the heck? Snow again in the East (and other places) over the weekend? How are the heck are we supposed to get out into the garden? What's the forecast for this weekend where you are? Quit whining and make like the postman be it rain or shine. And just for you, I'll be the weather girl to bring you probable inaccurate forecasting by the meterologists (a fancy name for weather witch doctors). Weather for Hanover, NH: Today: Rain and Snow Showers Tomorrow: Snow Saturday: Wintery Mix Sunday: Partly Cloudy Twosome: Bring- Bring in the clowns! Yeah, do you get any help around the garden (house/apartment)? ...or when it comes to flowers, are you the Lone Arranger? As I mentioned before, I am not a gardener. However I have a lone rosemary plant that I got recently for company. It stays quiet and doesn't complain about lack of boyfriends all the time like certain roommates. It seems to be doing okay, but I am currently waging battle against the aphids that seem to be multiplying like crazy. Last night I had a nightmare about clowns. One old horny clown, actually. He was chasing me through the snow. I passed by two cowardly lions (from The Wizard of Oz) and a highway ramp. I also dreamed about decapitated mermaids and people growing from the ocean floor. Fun, fun, fun. Threesome: May Flowers- Ah, yes, posies and pretties for everyone to enjoy... How about you? What is your favorite flower? ...and not only to receive: what do you enjoy growing at your place? I do not have a favorite flower. And I do not grow flowers at my place. My rosemary plant has problems enough. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:44 AM : Wednesday, April 02, 2003 Y Chromosome In a lecture I attended today, the speaker touched on the subject of sexual dimorphism. Although many experiments have been done in rats, the results arising from these studies have corroborated observations in human physiology and behavior. In a nutshell, hormones produced early in development influence brain development as well as the organs in the reproductive system. If you look at cytological studies (pictures of slices of the brain) there are more neurons in a certain part of the brain in males than in females (and vice versa). [rambling] So I was digging around in the net looking for more info and I had come across something that mentioned that the female precortex was radically different than the male. The author mentioned something about how the X chromosome was activated in females for the development of precortex and that the genes on the X chromosome were positively regulated by testosterone. What I don't get is why this would happen to females but not males (because guys too have an X chromosome). Due to a "dosage mechanism" that is still not understood, everyone has only one X chromosome activated. In males, this is easy; they already have only one X chromosome. In females, one of the X chromosomes is randomly inactivated when a transcript called X-ist coats the chromosome so it becomes an inert Barr body. As far as I know, X-ist is independent of testosterone. Anyways, I found the online article frustrating because the only thing the author cited was a book by an anthropologist. [/rambling] The speaker cited several studies and anecdotes where despite social conditioning and physical differences, people retained their gender identity that was associated with how their brain developed in utero and the first few months. Although there is still no concrete evidence that biology influences sexual identity and not the other way around, the current data certainly leans in that direction. So perhaps the saying that "it's all in your head" may pretty well be true. But it probably also means that those evangelical religious diehards who think identity can be changed by sheer willpower may be fighting a losing battle. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:15 PM : And today we have some offsite linkage: Date-to-Day Conversion. Scroll down and you can figure out what day of the week that important something happened. SARSonline. You know the blogs that only talk about bees or sports? This one only filters news about the virus currently sweeping Asia and infiltrating the rest of the world, SARS. Very handy. Mr. Wong's Soup'partments. On 69 Chicken Street apparently. I'm not an illustrator and only have passing competence on photoshop, but it is interesting to see what other people have created. Check out the sheep squashed between the floors somewhere on the middle of the page. Written in the genes. An interesting article about genetic inheritance and language--although the language part seems more than a little speculative to me. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:07 AM : Tuesday, April 01, 2003 Not A Joking Matter My e-mail inbox was flooded today with reminders to attend a panel discussing the Patriot Act and its implications in the scientific community. Well, this must be pretty important if everyone is sending me this, I thought to myself. However, I was surprised and more than a little disturbed when I arrived and found perhaps around 30 attendees, a pathetic smidgen of the entire university community. I do not consider myself particularly political or even remotely like a pundit. I leave that to people whose passion for the subject leaves me scratching my head. No, I went because I wanted to be informed and this was one of the occasional times when I resurfaced thinking I might need to pay a little more attention to the world than being buried in lab. Perhaps that was the problem with the attendance to the panel--many scientists are too wrapped up in their own scientific projects to care what happens outside. (I suppose for some people, the mantra "publish or die" is more important than being deported. Or perhaps they think they don't need to worry about it after they've filled out the paperwork.) The difficulty and problems with the Patriot Act and legislation of its ilk is restriction and increased bureaucracy. Obviously increased security means that there are restrictions placed on who may conduct research and who has access to research materials and particular agents. The release of research and the movement of scholars are also restricted. In addition, there is no longer any privacy--the government is granted even freer access to records of students, faculty, and staff aside from the usual court orders for civil and criminal cases. The school's immigration office is placed in an awkward position: not only do the immigration consolers have to act as advisors, now they have to be enforcers. They cannot "buck the system" in any way--even if the laws conflict with their philosophies, prejudiced, complex and difficult, and perhaps even a little ethically murky--because if they did, they would jeopardize the status of all the school's foreign nationals. For instance, an Israeli student and her family went back to Israel for spring break. The immigrations office warned her that she most likely would not be able to get back into the U.S. because she was studying in a "sensitive" field (computer science). And sure enough, she was denied entry when she tried coming back. Early last year, the condor check was instigated. This meant a 30-day wait period for people entering the U.S. while the INS performed background checks. However, by the summer, the wait went up to 5 months due to backlog and excessive bureaucracy. Also last year, the special registration program was started in order to track individuals entering and leaving the country. First this was focused on "problematic" countries like Afghanistan, which were known to harbor terrorists. However, countries were added to the list every month and now special registration is required for anyone who is foreign (yes, that includes Canada!). Even with your paperwork in order, you can still be denied entry. This happened to one undergraduate who was detained for seven months and denied a visa by the visa-granting agent simply because of how he looked. The current climate, unfortunately, has revealed paranoia and racism. There have been people who have asked the school's immigrations office if they could see a student's visa simply because he or she looked foreign. The immigration official responded that they should not ask for the student's visa unless they asked everyone they saw for their visa. There has also been restriction of data. In March 2002, the government declared some data "sensitive" but not classified. However, this type of restriction was ad hoc, completely arbitrary and wishy-washy. This lack of definite distinction left everyone up in arms about how to approach the problem. Finally, just last month, 32 journals issued a joint statement saying that they would decline to publish any paper that may pose a risk. The culture of the scientific community is generally an open environment, which freely shares information and polices itself through peer review. Most scientists have a strong sense of how to discriminate between what may cause deliberate harm and what may not. Unhappily, current laws and edicts like the Patriot Act, the Son of Patriot Act, and the additional paperwork for immigration and tracking go against the grain of science's philosophy for free thought and information sharing. In the question and answer session, one man asked if there is any way that these laws would go away soon. Unluckily, no. Some may be eliminated with a different president since some are executive orders. Others will have to be repealed by Congress. Some may expire if there is any lack of funding. And yet others, like the Patriot Act, have a sunset clause. This means that the Patriot Act will expire on 2007 unless the legislators decide to renew it. Let us hope that there will be nothing from now until then that will result in the act's renewal. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:50 PM : For those of you confused or just don't get it, I was really born on a Tuesday and I don't have an older cousin named Ernestine. In fact, I don't have any older female cousins whatsoever. (I have one older male cousin though, but I don't think he knows that I exist. He hasn't talked to my grandmother or his father or his younger half-brother. I think his mother, my uncle's first wife, brainwashed him. Sigh, family politics.) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:12 PM : Fishy. I was born on a Friday. That was the day my older cousin Ernestine ran away with a trucker with fast hands and was never seen again. Here's the Tuesday April Fools: 1. Describe your most recent sexual encounter. APRIL FOOL! However, if you really want to do that, go ahead. I heard on the grapevine that the Raging Cow had a hysterectomy. Does that mean no more weird milk? Or does the weird milk get weirder? 2. Does your state/county have some form of legalized gambling other than the lottery? What do you think about on online gambling? Is gambling really connected to organized crime? New Hampshire: Besides the lottery, I am not sure. Tennessee: Last time I checked, doesn't even have a lottery (because the state is still hashing it out). So everyone goes to Kentucky or Georgia to get tickets. And I think there's also some gambling going on in the ferries that chug along the rivers from time to time. California: I'm pretty sure there's everything. But Las Vegas is better. 3. What is your greatest ambition? The usual. To buy some raisin bread and eat it too. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:51 AM : |
