Belief-O-Matic. (via Bud) This quiz says that I'm more of a neo-pagan than a nontheist (i.e. atheist/agnostic)? Pfft! Although I'm not too surprised about #5 since I remember being forced to go to church until I got to high school.
1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Theravada Buddhism (93%)
3. Liberal Quakers (93%)
4. Secular Humanism (86%)
5. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (83%)
6. Mahayana Buddhism (70%)
7. Neo-Pagan (68%)
8. Taoism (65%)
9. Nontheist (61%)
10. Bahá'í Faith (58%)
11. Jainism (55%)
12. Orthodox Quaker (53%)
13. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (51%)
14. New Age (50%)
15. Hinduism (49%)
16. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (48%)
17. Reform Judaism (44%)
18. Sikhism (44%)
19. New Thought (41%)
20. Scientology (38%)
21. Jehovah's Witness (37%)
22. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (36%)
23. Seventh Day Adventist (30%)
24. Islam (20%)
25. Orthodox Judaism (20%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (14%)
27. Roman Catholic (14%)
Gender Politics in the Blogosphere. There might be an equal number of men and women writing weblogs but the data suggests that men are heard more. Analysis of the blogrolls of the ten most popular weblogs reveals that men are consistently blogrolled more often than women. A commenter remarked that since the "A-list" is primarily manufactured by men, then women should just stop clamoring to get on it and form their own list. This is not so easy. I suspect that the number of readers are rather limited if you ignore all the Google searches and it would be difficult for a new "A-list" to get a foothold when the other "A-list" is already established.
I thought the number of Blog Sisters who responded to the survey was rather meager. If it was anything to go by, it was mostly a bunch of 40-year-old women who are well-educated yet think that they're not good enough to get on the A-list. It sort of correlates with the documentation of a blogosphere brouhaha where a female blogger apologized for ranting about how male bloggers only linked to her when she wrote about sex. Both indicate that women bloggers believe that this inequality in the blog community is due to their own fault.
I'm all for admitting one's own mistakes, but good grief, shouldering all the wrongs in the world is taking Chodorow's theory of mothering to the extreme. I'm sure there are people who are not popular even if they write like Pulitzer Prize winners. Weblogs are a lot like books. Bestsellers of both are manipulated by the establishment and to put it bluntly, most readers are too dumb and too lazy to find other stuff out there.
I think it was worth camping out in front of the ticket office during the morning. I had to listen to bible-thumping students attempting to be trendy by talking about their spring break where they did Bible study in London and tried converting southeast Asian immigrants to Christianity.
But I got tickets to that sold out Joshua Bell concert.
A quirky comedy remake? Okay, it sounds less depressing than the current stuff out there, I thought. I needed something funny to unwind during the weekend. Odd then, that when I entered the theater, it seemed as if I had entered a comedy of my own--the audience was mostly composed of little old ladies. Maybe they were all Tom Hanks fans. After all, Hanks did win a bunch of awards for something or other. Me? It might be blasphemous, but I've never really sat through an entire Hanks movie before this one.
Hanks plays G. H. Dorr, Ph.D., a professor of dead languages who is supposedly on sabbatical for studying the music of the Renaissance. He rents a room from Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall), a little old lady who likes to go to church and talk to the portrait of her dead husband which hangs above her fireplace. Dorr tells the widow that he is using her cellar to practice with his ensemble.
But the ensemble is actually Dorr's assorted criminal cohorts who are helping him dig a tunnel from the cellar to the bank vault of a casino. Closely watching the criminals' plans is the widow's cat, Pickles. However, when Marva catches Dorr and his gang red-handed, the bad guys decide to bump off the old lady. Unfortunately for them, Marva Munson is a much harder target than one would expect.
I found the film somewhat amusing, but mostly tepid. None of the characters really became anything more than their flat on-screen images. Dorr tentatively stepped out by reciting Edgar Allan Poe and Marva by temporarily contemplating using all the stolen money, but most of it was similar to the eye-rolling cheesiness of Hank's character's hiccuping giggle. The professor and his gang each had a singular weakness that was each man's downfall--that casino insider's penchant for waving guns around when he loses his temper, the demolition expert's irritable bowel syndrome, the general's chain-smoking habit, the dumb jock's dumbness.
So if a heist goes wrong, everything goes wrong. However, I can't help think that if most people wanted to rob a casino, they would have gone about it in a completely different and more circumspect way. Though one mustn't forget that this is entertainment. I guess I was more in the mood for something more sophisticated than slapstick and pandering stereotype.
I got out of lab today only to stumble onto a prospective student (for a different graduate program) and his parents. The parents grilled me about graduate life and academics here. I answered as best as I could. I hoped fervently that they would not view me as the typical graduate student although they no doubt would. I need a disclaimer tattooed on my forehead: Beware of Weird Student.
Chambers's Book of Days. A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar. I thought it would be cool if I made my own "book of days" but then I thought--nah. A weblog is like a book of days, abet in electronic form.
Book of Days. By Paivi Hintsanen. Interesting strangeness. Beware, it opens up on full screen.
Favicon. Deconstructing the design of favicons, the little images that comes with your bookmarked links. I personally don't like them. I'm more text-oriented and all those favicons just look like a mess of random stuff that was supposed to be in the closet instead plastered on my favorites list.
Digital Kitchen. I think they specialize in design and film making. Anyways, their work is very slick and distinctive. They have a bunch of TV show openings and advertisements (among other things) on site that they have produced. (I recommend the opening to Six Feet Under and an ad for the photographer Annie Leibovitz.)
Life on Mars - but 'we sent it'. Many of the probes people have sent to Mars were not sterilized properly. "[The microbes] are probably not going to survive in 200 kelvin conditions and in sulphuric acid, [but] maybe they could. And maybe we've just done a really terrible thing." Dun dun dun! Stay tuned for the new blockbuster about alien plagues that really originated on Earth.
The Net's Late Bloomers. Old people get on the net. I think that's great and quite brave of them. When I get old and there are regular transports to Mars, I'm going to be one of those luddites who will stay on terra firma.
The Panda's Thumb. A new group weblog written by evolution and science education proponents. Good stuff. Somewhat off-topic, this reminds me of one of my high school biology teachers. She wasn't great. She wasn't even good. She mispronounced terminology and gave people busy work. She refused to talk about evolution because she thought God made the world go round. (This is ridiculous, why would a biology teacher not teach a tenent of the subject? But this was Tennessee, so go figure.) I'm somewhat surprised she didn't spoil the subject for me--but then again, I spent the entire semester cowering in a corner and hiding behind a textbook. After all, she was the one in control of my grades.
Well, I finally finished Truman. It's just exploding with a historical story of a farmer from Missouri who became president and ushered in the atomic age. It's definitely not light reading, but it goes fast. And unless you're already a history buff, you learn a lot.
Onesome: Computer- What was/is your first computer? A clunky old Commodore or something a touch more modern?
The first computer I got to play around with was one of those ancient Apple II computers with those floppy disks that really were floppy. However, I'd say it was more my Dad's computer than mine. The first computer I got to use for my word processing madness was this really slow PC running Windows 3.11. I'm pretty sure it's slower than a Pentium I (but not quite sure of the specs). But I'd still say this one wasn't really mine either since my Dad was still fiddling with it. The first computer I really got to personalize is a desktop Pentium II (that now makes a lot of odd noises) that I got after my first term in college. I still have it, but I'm not using it right now.
Twosome: Anti-Virus- Have you ever had a computer virus? How bad was it? Or are you one of the lucky ones who have managed to avoid them?
Yes, I've had a virus. I took my laptop to the computer department and had the nice people there clean it up and actually install an antivirus program that actually worked.
Threesome: Software- What piece of software really made you more productive on your computer. ...or, as in my case, less productive?
The internet.
Err...
Well, the internet isn't software, but the browser I use certainly is. But most of the time you can find me at this site doing, uh, productive work. I'm still quite the word processing freak though so I always have notepad or something similar open.
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Other Links:
Why do people give up weblogs? They have reasons, just like everything else. I'm not sure I agree with any of those reasons, but then people don't really need to justify quitting to anyone else. They can just be bored and that's fine too.
In this modern world of antimicrobial cleansers and irradiated foods, people have developed this phobia toward microbes. Most don't even think twice about downing antibiotics either as suggested by the doctor or injected unknowingly into our food supply. But the truth is, we all live in an incredibly bio-dense world where our bodies--our cells--are constantly in flux, communicating, co-mingling, occasionally battling with other microorganisms. Despite what product propaganda might have you think, becoming a voluntary bubbleboy isn't all what it's cracked up to be.
Think of taking oral antibiotics as leveling an atomic bomb on the residents of your digestive tract. It's going to kill off everything--from the nasty bug giving you diarrhea to the other microbes who were just hanging out, maybe making your daily dose of vitamin K on the side. The problem is, we don't know very much about how microbes are beneficial to us. To say the least, a microbe making vitamin K isn't going to elicit much of a side effect compared to Salmonella you might get from undercooked meat. So people reason that if we use the antibiotic to kill off everything, we'll get rid of the bad stuff and if the good stuff is gone too, well that's too bad but we'll manage somehow.
But eliminating everything isn't all right. Like a nuclear blast, that antibiotic you've swallowed has unintended consequences. In various studies using the mouse as a model, the gut microflora is responsible for many aspects of our well-being--nutrition, digestion, immunotolerance, defense, prevention of immune system atrophy from lack of challenge. A recent paper from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences gives us another angle to look at host-microbe interaction by using another model besides the mouse, zebrafish.
Specifically, Rawls et al. used young zebrafish which are transparent until adulthood. Normally zebrafish, like any other organism with a gut, acquire microflora soon after birth. In this study, some zebrafish were raised as germ-free (GF). (To prevent any microbes from getting into the fish in the first place, the parents were killed and the eggs were fertilized in a sterile environment. The rest of these fish's lives were spent in a sterile beaker.) When the morphology of GF zebrafish were compared to conventional zebrafish, there was a striking difference. GF zebrafish, like GF mice in prior studies, had distinct abnormalities in the intestine. The frequency of shedding cells in the intestine which normally is quite often in the conventional zebrafish was reduced in the GF animal.
Using microarray technology, the researchers were also able to monitor the expression levels of many genes in the gut. Although there is the caveat that gene expression changes throughout fish development, some of the genes observed in the GF zebrafish had similar expression patterns as that of GF mice. Also, when GF zebrafish were infected with a single microbial strain, Rawls et al. were able to detect a specific host response in gene expression levels to the bacteria.
What is intriguing here is that the data gathered from zebrafish corroborate previous studies done in mice. Although fish and mammals are evolutionarily divergent, host-microbe interactions appear to be conserved on some level. This is very cool news. Zebrafish may turn out to be a relevant model to study how the microflora interacts with us. It may even be a more easier model in some respects. Not only are they're cheaper than mice but they are also transparent--providing a window to an aspect of microbe life that's still very murky.
So I got out into the "real world" today. It's not real world in most people's sense--I just call it the real world because I've temporarily stepped out of the bubble that one calls college. And it really is just a step.
I took the bus to the neighboring town. The ride itself, to say the least, seemed nightmarish considering I was having one of the more bad attacks of motion-sickness as the vehicle weaved through traffic. The other occupants were quite loud and crude (both male and female alike) spluttering F-words and other obscenities about every other syllable. They derided everyone who was different--the gay, the old, the handicapped, even some poor girl who had the "wrong" haircut and clothes. They spoke freely of people they knew who had molested children or pulled out a gun on someone, as if this was some matter of pride. And to top it off, the bus driver was blasting his radio which was set to a station filled with inflammatory right-wing talk.
If this is what people are like just outside the bubble, no wonder many people want to stay in the bubble.
The New Science Wars. "When a leading psychologist like Harvard's Howard Gardner calls the president's science adviser a "prostitute," it's a safe bet that all is not well in the realm of government science policy. Indeed, in the past month, the United States has been engulfed by a kind of "science war," one pitting much of the nation's scientific community against the current administration. Led by twenty Nobel laureates, the scientists say Bush's government has systematically distorted and undermined scientific information in pursuit of political objectives. Examples include the suppression and censorship of reports on subjects like climate change and mercury pollution, the stacking of scientific advisory panels, and the suspicious removal of scientific information from government Web sites."
It's one of those things where I wonder when I'll ever have my priorities straight. Whenever I enter some place with lots of books, whether it be the bookstore or the library, I invariably come out of the place with at least one text. I find myself thinking something along the lines of, "Oh I don't have to get cheese this week," and end up scrimping the money for yet another book.
This week, I feel sort of overwhelmed with these pages and pages of stuff, especially the ones I've borrowed from the library because they're due about a week from now (and there are only so many times you can renew them). Some people feel all right just reading a couple pages of a novel and then putting them indefinitely aside, but I just can't unless it's absolutely dreadful.
Maybe if I make a list, it'll give me more motivation to finish.
Currently I'm reading Truman by David McCollough, another biography of his that won the Pulitzer. I'm at the part where it's near the end of World War II and Germany has surrendered. Truman is getting these memos from people recommending using the atom bomb on Japan without warning on populated cities rather than at a remote location to technically show that they mean business. Exciting stuff, but I have about 600 more pages to go.
Other things I'm in the middle of are: a sci-fi novel, a horror novel, a book about writing non-fiction, a biography on Rosalind Franklin, James Watson's latest book about DNA (has pretty pictures but meant more for mainstream dabblers than people like me), and a huge tome on evolutionary theory by Stephen Jay Gould. I will count myself accomplished if I finish these before the summer.
I was flipping through an old copy of National Geographic (quickly passing the pictures of H.R. Giger-like deformed fetuses from nuclear fallout) when I halted at some bright blue pages. In the middle of the underwater photograph was a giant floating fish head with a suction-like mouth rimmed with parasites. The caption said something about the worse this fish could do to you was to give you a giant hickey.
Fascinatingly gross.
The floating head was an example of a Mola mola or ocean sunfish, found worldwide and is the largest bony fish on record. Although sunfish larva start out about one-tenth of an inch, by the time it's an adult, it may be as large as 14 feet across and 60 million times its starting weight. A researcher for sunfish, Tierney Thys, compares it to "the equivalent of a healthy, bouncing human baby growing to a weight equal to six Titanics."
The reason why the sunfish is so round is that it's completely missing its tail fin. Rather, its propulsion is aided by the clavus which is part of the dorsal and anal fin rays. Some people might mistake it for a shark because of its large dorsal fin, but it's quite harmless to humans (unless you want to eat it--the sunfish is poisonous, not surprising since it's related to the pufferfish) and its diet mainly consists of jellyfish.
Side note: Apparently the sunfish is also used in Chinese medicine although I couldn't find any sites that definitively said what it was used for. However, there are a few obscure studies on the prophylactic effects of Mola mola bile salts and lipids on lesions. Unfortunately, those studies are pretty old and I couldn't find any abstracts. Nowadays, the research is more focused on the Mola mola genome and the fish's migration patterns.
Sure, a lot of weblogs are filled with personal ramblings but at least they stick to one form most of the time. Maybe it's political punditry or a personal journal. Maybe it specializes in a particular topic. Maybe it's just link and commentary. Or maybe it's just memes. Or a certain combination of the above. Readers know what to expect.
However, I'm all over the place. Diffused. My thoughts bounce from one subject to the next and I'm forever putting down what strikes my fancy at that particular moment. It could be fiction, science, rants, links, memes, ruminations, the rare picture. The length of my posts vary like a yo-yo and any given reader would have to wade through all the noise to get to what they're looking for.
And why do I also get the feeling that I'm expected to write a certain way?
Maybe I'm temporarily off my rocker. I just have to get back into that mode of not caring that other people think I'm a crackpot because I'm completely veering off topic.
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Now for the Off Topic Stuff:
Monstrous Numerology Calculator. What I got: Name number--4, Destiny number--22, Personality number--4, Soul urge--9. Make of that as you will.
I'm rich and I'm living well. Shopping here is part of that. A report of the patronage of British supermarkets in the Guardian. I wonder how it'll pan out for American supermarkets and grocery stores. The nearest grocery store for me is this pretentious little place populated with yuppies, college students who are wannabe yuppies, old ladies who have too much money to spend on stale pasteries, and soccer moms with rich husbands and obnoxious kids. I detest it, but it's the only place to go within walking distance ever since the other cheaper grocery store closed out about a year ago.
Somebody please put me out of my misery. I just read the TA evaluations and some of the students hated me. I've become the kind of TA I despise.
(They loved the other TAs though. What have I done wrong?!)
Addendum: Well, I think I know what I did wrong and that was not to be gregarious enough. People constantly criticize me for being too introverted and I guess this isn't any different. But the problem is, this sort of criticism makes me feel very defensive (as opposed to immediately turning me into an engaging speaker). This doesn't mean that I should be coddled instead. Nobody is good at everything and maybe this is just another indication that this kind of stuff isn't in my future. But darn it, I just wish I could feel outraged without feeling guilty too.
Onesome: Blog: -- How long have you been a member of the blogosphere? ...and from a different angle: how long have you been on the Net?
Technically I've been in the blogosphere since 2001. However, if you compared the blogosphere to the solar system, I would be one of those small undiscovered objects in the Kuiper Belt. As for being on the Net, it probably began when I was a freshman at college (1998). I didn't do too much online before then because my parents were slow to get internet access.
Twosome: Design-- Do you do your own design work for your site? ...and if not, where are you finding templates you like?
Yes, I do my own design work. The nuts and bolts aren't very clever (any idiot could replicate it) but it gets the job done.
Threesome: Exchange-- ...and while we're on the Net, have you ever participated in any of the Net "exchanges" such as recipes, Christmas ornaments, site exchanges, guest blogging or related things?
The only exchange I've participated in was a journal exchange at The 1000 Journal Project. I haven't participated in any other exchanges, mostly because I know people will renege on the deal or do a half-assed job when they realize they've got me instead of some Famous Blogger.
Early man steered clear of Neanderthal romance. "If our early ancestors did breed with their Neanderthal cousins, they didn't make a habit of it, according to the largest-ever study of early human DNA." Also alluded to in the first link.
(Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything. Ack! After the second paragraph, my eyes began to swim with too many words. Deconstructing weblogs and homepages are, while not a completely worthless pastime, blown completely out of proportion. While it may be interesting to read in an FYI kinda way just to stay on top of what the blogging bigwigs are saying nowadays, I find it pretty much next to useless in helping me out in my obscure corner of the web. Mass amateurisation indeed.
The Maiden Name Debate. I say, let people do whatever they want with their names. Just don't socially penalize them. Personally, this just brings to mind some of my conservative relatives who not so subtly disapproves of my Dad not having any sons because of this whole name issue. Of course I don't give a damn what they think. If I ever have any kids, half of their genetic inheritance will be from me, no matter the current naming norms.
Well, here's something. I went snobjumping and visited some really different weblogs. I've added my own commentary which may or may not relate to the link at hand.
Glimpse of a Grrl. She mentioned that she was compulsive about saving all her e-mail. I've turned into a bit of an e-mail packrat myself. I only save the important stuff from my Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts, but I save everything from my university account. I back up everything once a month and then purge it from my computer.
Yrth Mirror. Apparently the author's last entry was this month, last year. I guess her new "cool roommates" convinced her not to get internet access. Or at least to quit blogging.
Surgical Strikes. Amusing blog from LA. I would like to know more about his weird Russian landlord and the mysterious neighbor who is apparently involved in the movie business.
Confessions of a girl in love. Another blog by a new parent. I'm glad she's still writing even though I typically don't read these kind of blogs (mainly because I can't relate) but I've noticed that a lot of times, people in the blog world have kids and then they suddenly stop blogging. Do babies really sap up that much computer time?
Mindspray. A DJ who teaches! Man, I would have loved that in middle school. It would have totally made up for that Fran Drescher-like science teacher who killed my eardrums every time she opened her mouth. Cool pictures too.
Chicky.net. A cam-girl site. Perhaps the tagline to the site, "I love myself today" says it all. I don't get this kind of stuff. Maybe I shouldn't try. Although the site does have a neat technical trick. If you mouseover a link, a box pops up with choices to more links. I don't think I'd ever need to get that complicated, but one does wonder how it's accomplished.
Living Can Kill You. A Canadian newsblog. Pretty obvious the author is into online journalism. The acronym of the title looks like "lucky." I wonder if that's intentional.
Here I Go Again. I admit I haven't read too much of this one. The writing style is that of the soap opera confessional journal. Ones with tons of OMG, LOL, and a sprinkling of profanity. The earliest journal entry mentioned a blog that was previously deleted. That's another thing I don't get. Why would people delete their stuff (I've kept everything since 2000)? Google has cached it anyway.
Autopsy Report. All about autopsy reports (the title doesn't pull any punches, does it?). It's a bit morbid for me though. And quite a fitting end to this snobjumping business isn't it, since the blogsnob ad was going back to the Here I Go Again blog.
It's interesting to read old science journals. One gets the feeling that the authors of the articles not only write differently but think differently. They feel more certain of themselves. Things are black and white. And there's a thread of optimism running between the lines--they are sure that science will triumph over all. Except these days it's more like: now that we have the science, what will we do with what it may bring us?
However, I can't help but think that something T.H. Huxley mentions in The Coming of Age of "The Origin of Species" (originally published in Science, Vol. 1, No. 2, Jul. 10, 1880) as being amazingly apt for today:
History warns us, however, that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions; and, as matters now stand, it is hardly rash to anticipate that, in another twenty years, the new generation, educated under the influences of the present day, will be in danger of accepting the main doctrines of the "Origin of Species," with as little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, twenty years ago, rejected them.
Scary, isn't it, how in our contemporary times so many people view science as is instead of taking the time to understand, say, how even a refrigerator works.
Aside: Of course, Science isn't exactly foolproof. In the same volume, published on July 31, 1880 was a blurb about "The Magnet in Medicine" which reported the wonders of magnetic theraputics which was resurrected by a certain Prof. Maggiorani. In experiments, the magnet was placed one or two centimeters away from the body since it was believed to act at a distance. As a result:
A large needle made to pass unawares through the flesh of the subject whose eyes are kept carefully bandaged, shows in an absolutely objective way the profound anaesthesia which the parts have attained. But the phenomena of sensibility are not the only ones produced; the magnet has an influence upon temperature, as the thermometer distinctly shows. It acts also on the molilité of the parts to which it is applied, provoking contractions of an intensity and of a duration which removes all suspicion of simulation. The physician must be a mere novice who could mistake a prolonged and voluntary contraction for a true contracture.
I wonder if by "novice" they mean a physician who isn't a quack.
Don't be humorless, pedantic, and controlling. Try not to say what one should have done because someone else did it better. Don't reminisce so deeply about the past that you risk turning your own brain into a time machine.
Today was final exams for the class I'm TAing. Everyone I've talked to has said the equivalent of "Yay! You're finished!" as if I had volunteered for a term of going down into the stinky sewers to fix the city pipes while everyone else stayed aboveground.
I didn't think it was that bad, but I'm definitely not saying that I'm calling it my dream career either. It's a lot of work, well, a lot of things require a lot of work, but it's just not the type of work I would want to do. It's sort of like philosophy. Not everyone would want to verbally theorize all day.
Anyways, it was a bit amusing taking up exams. Some students completely ignore you when you come by and ask, "Are you finished? You need to hand your exam in." Time's up and they're still writing. The other TAs and I just gave up and let one of the profs handle it. I had to stifle a giggle when the prof was trying to tug an exam away from one of the students and she screamed, "No! No! I'm almost finished!" all the while tugging back with one hand and furiously scribbling with the other.
That was my morning. I spent the rest of the day grading. Now if you'd excuse me, I've got to nurse my hand after liberally applying the red ink.
On this particular brisk spring day, the sky was streaked white--clouds drawn out to the breaking point.
It's the breaking point all right, fumed Jonas as he hunched his shoulders inward and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. His sixteen-year-old daughter had declared an emergency and requested, no demanded, that he get some cotton swabs right away.
As he marched through the parking lot to the store, he passed a redhead in a white tube top and a tight black mini-skirt. His ex had been like that at the end, flashy and easy, and he should have known better than to think that she was trying to patch things up. In fact, he should have been seeing the red flags a mile away when she started bringing home fishnet stockings and studded collars and loud makeup. And good riddance, he huffed. No responsible mother would run off with a tattooed motorcycle freak ten years her junior.
The redhead gave him a narrow-eyed glare and he quickly turned his gaze elsewhere least she thought him a freak. What's wrong with young women these days? he thought as he pushed open a door and walked into a milieu of frumpy women with toddlers, moody teenagers in baggy clothes, and clerks with fake smiles. Why don't they dress in sensible styles that don't show so much skin? Or are they so mindless as to follow the fashion on TV and lousy role models like his ex? He hoped fervently that his daughter realized that the "in style" was not for her. Otherwise, he would have to barricade her in her room before she even thought about shopping for clothes.
Jonas stalked through the aisles, eventually winding up among rows of fresh smelling lotions and feminine hygiene products. The cotton swabs were at the very end stacked above the cotton balls and cotton pads. He took one package, turned around, and nearly keeled over a shopping cart that hadn't been there a second before.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't realize..."
He eyed the lady in charge of the cart. Shoulder-length hair, wide eyes, laugh lines around her generous mouth. A looker all right, but he didn't buy her excuse. Women who ran people down with shopping carts were a threat to society. She should have been charged with reckless endangerment or whatever terminology the cops used for people who didn't drive between the lines. But with his luck, she'd only have to flutter her eyelashes and the cops would be at her feet rather than writing up a ticket.
"No problem," he found himself saying. And as she maneuvered the cart around him and he walked out of the aisle, he mentally kicked himself. The things I do to keep society running smoothly.
If you call me Sya or S. Y. Affolee, you know me online. If you call me Thea, you know me in real life. Or you read my about page before I changed it. (And now you know it too because you've read this post!) If you call me Ms. or Miss, you probably work at the bank or post office or some other service job. If you call me Dr., you don't know me at all and you're trying to sell me some biotech junk. If you call me by my Chinese name in Cantonese, you're probably related to me. If you call me by my Chinese name in Mandarin, you're probably one of those old nosy ladies from my childhood trying to check up on my non-existent piano career. If you call me Grendel, you probably attended Geeks U. at one time or another.
I thought about putting a colophon to this site, but what's the point? I don't really have that much to say about its construction. And another thing, if this doesn't look like this cropped screenshot, let me know. I haven't tested it out on other browsers besides MSIE.
A fellow graduate student recently remarked, "It's so difficult to get tickets to any of the cultural events around here because so many old people get all of them early." Although I emphasize with him (I've been hard-pressed trying to get tickets too) this only illustrates all too well why we "whippersnappers" shouldn't underestimate the elderly.
There's a lot nitpickers and economists alike could find to complain about in the over-the-hill population. They continue to drive when their reflexes have deteriorated. They're stubborn and set in their ways. They're a tax on the health care system and the younger members of their family. Some of them dress funny. And others may have taken the youth-obsessed culture a little bit too much to heart and have dressed up like teenagers. And at worse, they regress back to the point of infantilism. Many of these reasons, though, can be thought of as fears about aging. People don't want to lose control. They don't want look into that mirror of the inevitable future.
But older people aren't sacks of potatoes with a mouth. They're people who have been around for a while. They're wiser and if not that, at least they have more experience. They're living bits of history--something a textbook or a video could never replicate. But is this really the reason that we go on living for a couple more decades after our reproductive fitness has declined to zero?
Other animals don't have the benefit of social security checks, but that doesn't explain why after they produce their last offspring, they soon die. In the extreme case, there are insects that emerge into their adult forms for one day. They mate like mad, lay the eggs, then die. There is no such thing as old age for our six-legged friends. One theory on why humans have a longer life much past the reproductive peak is that it confers survival advantage to an individuals offspring. This makes sense if one thinks about it--some insects don't take care of their offspring, instead they let their eggs fend for themselves. Humans on the other hand are more social animals and take care of their offspring for far longer. First hand evidence are college kids. Theoretically, they're old enough to go out into the world by themselves, but in reality most of them still have some sort of financial support from their parents.
In a recent Nature article by Lahdenpera et al. (PubMed abstract) this group explores the fitness benefits conferred to the offspring of post-reproductive women. The grandmother effect was first proposed by George C. Williams in 1957 (Evolution, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 398-411):
In the human male and in both sexes of other animals, reproductive decline is a gradual process, as is the senecence of other systems. In the human female, however, it is rather abrupt, and some special explanation is required. At some point during human evolution it may have become advantageous for a woman of forty-five or fifty to stop dividing her declining faculties between the care of extant offspring and the production of new ones. A termination of increasingly hazardous pregnancies would enable her to devote her whole remaining energy to the care of her living children, and would remove childbirth mortality as a possible cause for failure to raise these children. Menopause, although apparently a cessation of reproduction, may have arisen as a reproductive adaptation to a life-cycle already characterized by senescence, unusual hazards in pregnancy and childbrith, and a long period of juvenile dependence. If so, it is improper to regard menopause as a part of the aging syndrome.
Lahdenpera et al. propose that the grandmothers become "helpers" by both taking care of their children and grandchildren, thus giving both survival advantages. They give experimental evidence to the theory through statistical sampling of two pre-modern populations in Canada and Finland. Controls for various factors such as age, offspring sex, geography, socio-economic status were taken into account by using a general linear model. From the data, both sons and daughters who had mothers living past menopause were able to raise more children to adulthood independent of wealth. However, less grandchildren were born if the grandmother did not live in the same place and a grandmother's beneficial effect to survival did not kick in until after the child was weaned.
Well, what about men? By just eyeballing some numbers, we can immediately see that men don't live as long as women (although there are articles trumpeting that the lifespan gap is narrowing). Williams also mentions this in his paper. Unfortunately, there is no "grandmother effect" equivalent in males because they are exposed to more risks such as fighting each other and spending too much energy on courtship displays.
PhoneCon. Forget about BloggerCon. Line me up for the telephone!
Chronicles of Earthsea. An interview with Ursula Le Guin. Question: "Perhaps you feel a bit out of step with your contemporaries?" Le Guin: "Why should a woman of 74 want to be 'in step with' anybody? Am I in an army, or something?"
Spicy Green Iguana. "The speculative fiction magazine resource site." Markets to submit your speculative fiction.
10 facts about Dr. Seuss. Huh. I didn't know that Dr. Seuss had gone to Dartmouth. So that's why they built that snow sculpture of the Cat in the Hat for the winter carnival. I had thought the undergrads here had an unnatural obsession with that really bad Mike Meyers movie.
Another dream: I dreamed that I accidentally inoculated myself with some bacteria from the lab. I began throwing up this weird brown goo. My housemates were laughing at me.
"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it." ~ Alfred Hitchcock
Onesome- The dinner: What's your favorite meal? Is it something you get out or can you get it at home?
Sorry to be a wash-out on this, but I don't really have a favorite meal. There are some things that I won't eat, but generally I'm not that picky. I figure it's like that pet care advice for rat owners. Don't give a rat a variety mix because it will pick and choose what to eat and only get limited nutrition. Rather give it one of those food blocks that contains all the rat's nutritional need. If all people were rats, I'm the one who views most food as food blocks.
Twosome- the theatre Admission: What's your favorite movie and/or play and why?
I could give the answer that my favorite movie is The Red Violin. Clever plotting and cool music and all of that. Or I could say Lord of the Rings because, well, it's both geeky and mainstream. But to be honest, both seem a bit fuzzy to me. I haven't had so much time to watch anything lately.
Threesome- and the babysitter: We've all been left with a babysitter at one point or another. Did you have a favorite childhood babysitter? What made that person special?
Babysitters were actually few and far between in my childhood. I remember the babysitters I had were strange old women. I actually felt that I had to entertain them and not leave them up to their own devices. (If left to my own devices, I would have been reading or watching TV.) My parents were usually concerned that if they left their kids alone, they wouldn't be able to protect themselves if someone broke into the house, not that they would open the door to any strangers.
My parents also cited some rule about not leaving kids alone until they reached the age of fifteen and that leaving younger kids alone was illegal. Does anyone know if that's true or not?
I got up to turn off the alarm, but I notice that it's one o'clock in the morning. I shrug. Maybe the clock is wrong. I don't bother changing it and head on back to bed. Except that's not where I go.
I find myself in a classroom at the top secret headquarters of Microsoft. The teacher is a wide-eyed monster with lavender skin with a penchant for ladies' legs. The students giggle moronically--in awe and brainwashed. Today's lesson is an examination of a sculpture of petrified shake-and-bake chicken. I don't get it.
Some of the students invite me to join them for dinner. The restaurant has a tavern like setting with dark wood paneling and low lighting. My new brainwashed friends are excited. Someone is joining us. Someone famous. A figure walks toward our table. It's a transgendered version of Bill Gates.
As I try to digest that bit of "fact", he/she/it suggests that we all go to the theater. The theater is an auditorium with seats ranging up in amphitheater style. The seats in front are filled and I climb the steps to the top. It's a long way up and suddenly I feel a little vertigo. I clutch the walls which suddenly move, rotating and spitting me out to the other side in a mirror image of the previous theater. Except here, people are dancing. I get lost in the tumult of raving bodies.
When I "wake up" I find myself lying on the floor of a hotel in front of an open mini-fridge. There aren't any tiny bottles of liquor in the fridge. But there are deli sandwiches in there, slowly rotting. I close the fridge and head to the shower thinking that might enlighten me. But as I'm drying myself with the towel, I happen to look in the mirror and a strange face stares back at me. I've somehow swapped bodies with a Hong Kong starlet!
While I'm trying to rub away what seems to be permanent eyeliner and eyeshadow, I hear the door to the hotel room open. I hear a man's voice saying that he's the date arranged by my parents. Oh no, my parents would never arrange a date for me. I yank open the bathroom door to see a short, fat, balding man (sort of like Danny DeVito and Wally from the Dilbert cartoon rolled into one) standing at the threshold. How the hell did he get the key in here? Once he spots me, he professes his undying love and then promptly flops onto the couch.
He asks me why I'm running late. I say I overslept. He accuses me of reading the entire night. Reading? I calmly inform him that I was at a party with some friends and that if he wanted to be sure, he can call them. He then bellows that I shouldn't lie to him. Lie to him? He doesn't have any right to demand that of me. I don't even know him. I open my mouth to give the ugly little man a piece of my mind when I really do wake up.
By the time you're at the place I'm at (or beyond) you've probably heard of the lac operon for the kazillionth time. So when someone starts on about how it is such a great example of [insert your favorite topic here] because its discoverers figured everything out without the help of modern molecular bio techniques you might as well sit back and snooze.
A lot of students find learning about the lac operon to be tedious. There's too many things to remember. It's a bit counterintuitive. If it's just thrown into the curriculum, you can't really relate it to anything else. And what's the point to memorizing it besides the fact that the work is really famous? Isn't there another example (although done later) that would illustrate the point better?
Maybe I'm just grumbling about this because I sat through a horrible rendition of the lac operon. As a TA, I don't have to worry about it (well, I do have to worry about it, except just not the extent that other people have to), but the undergraduates certainly do. It's just one thing after another that they have to memorize. I don't think any of the mechanisms will really click with them. At least not this quarter.
That's the problem with teaching a lot of things in college in "cram fashion". The lecture always runs out of time. What's wrong with learning a little bit well rather than drowning in a sea of information? The profs throw in too many terms, expecting the students to immediately pick them up and use them correctly. Is it too hard to make learning a bit more fun than repeating the textbook? I guess some profs don't like teaching at all or some just give up after a few years of negative reviews. Some might be a little overzealous and overwhelm students that way. It's sort of like a geek talking about his extensive collection of Magic cards. To an outsider, it's just a bunch of gibberish.
I'm not even sure if any of this can be improved. Some profs seem to take their evaluations seriously. Others don't give a damn, but maybe they don't have to since they're tenured. And there are just some things where teaching style probably matters just that much--and style like a lot of other behavior is fairly difficult to change.
I don't know any more. Maybe I'm just mad at the system because I'm a young idealistic TA. Maybe I'm mad because the system doesn't distinguish between people who can teach and people who can't as well as people who are or aren't willing to teach--that teaching is just a requirement. Well, this TA position is a requirement and I think that very fact probably turns many graduate students into cynical people who don't see the point in any of it. ("I wish I were in lab!" They constantly lament.)
Or maybe that requirement thing is why some people view TAing and ultimately teaching itself as a chore because everything that's organized into giving you training doesn't give you very much leeway in freedom of expression or style. Maybe that's why everyone complains while they're teaching and then give lip service afterwards to say how good the experience was. Maybe that's why so many profs get up to the podium with a pained expression on their face as if lecture was a one hour stomach flu that they have to endure and then hide from the students by talking to the chalkboard.
Or maybe I'm just going about this in the wrong way. Perhaps people just endure it because it's the flip side to the thing they really want to be doing.
Writers fight to keep cover prices. You know those suggested retail prices you see on the back cover of the book? Publishers want to abolish that and set prices according to how much they think they can sell and then give a percentage of that as royalties to the author. Right now, royalties are already set to that suggested retail price no matter how much the bookstores want to sell the book for. Philip Pullman's commentary, Books are not eggs, explains why he thinks this is a bad idea.
Blogs Can Be Infectious. This Wired article explains that memes actually start with a few obscure blogs. The more popular ones swipe the meme without attributing their source and everything spreads from there. This is an obscure blog, but it's more downstream of the initial infection. (Heh, sort of funny now I think about it. The popular blogs are pretty much the first to get "infected" with a meme somebody else started.) If I don't attribute a source, it's because I got the link from an impersonal aggregator like Blogdex or Daypop.
A bunny and a cat. Another funny flash film, this time narrated by a Japanese rock song. I have no idea what it's saying, but it reminds me of the old Warner Bros. cartoons where the skunk is chasing the cat who accidentally got paint spilled on her.
9:00 AM - One of the other TAs lamented to the rest of us that one of the profs in charge of the course (the prof who doesn't have a sense of humor) told him he couldn't be trusted. But he's afraid to confide in her that he's been absent-minded lately because he's been souped up on meds (doctor's orders). He's afraid because it's very possible that she will actually call his doctor and ask what the meds are for.
I wonder if she trusts the rest of us.
* * *
12:30 PM - Waiting in the cafeteria line, I overhear two undergraduates--one in chemistry, the other in psychology--declare that they want to go to medical school because they don't really like being in lab. They say they want to "live in the real world" and not be cooped up in a laboratory setting for the rest of their lives.
So they want to be cooped up in a hospital or doctor's office for the rest of their lives?
* * *
4:00 PM - I am feeling smug. The other TAs had warned me about the assignment that is due next week. They said that no matter how much they tried explaining to the students, they just wouldn't understand. I had approximately thirty students attend my office hours and had put most of them on the right track. (Don't you love it when a look of understanding dawns on their faces? Maybe I'm not such a bad TA after all.) And then one of the students who just came in asks me to explain one of the questions. "All I see are words and none of it is registering."
I want to pound my head on the desk. I need to record myself on tape and have all the students play it while they're sleeping for subliminal training.
* * *
5:00 PM - I walk in the rain. A woman in a sweatshirt and bookbag is walking her dog, a husky, on a blue leash. Three other dogs follow her around: a large shaggy dog (just like the one in the Disney movie where the prof turns into a dog, what was the title again?), a poodle, and a tiny hyperactive dachshund. The woman accosts a couple of nearby medical students trying to pawn off the three extra dogs on them.
As the rain continues to whip in my face, I smile. The first genuine smile of the day.
* * *
12:00 AM - I hear a knock on my bedroom door. I open it finding one of my housemates on the threshold. When she comes in, she urges me to close the door. Her hair is in disarray and her eyes have this wide, haunted look. In a hushed, nervous whisper, she gushes all of her paranoia and fears about the other housemates. I try to reassure her.
I don't know what to do about my housemates anymore. They're all paranoid about each other. They're probably paranoid about me too even though I haven't done anything. Maybe I should just get a sleeping bag and spend the rest of my nights in lab. At least I know where I stand with the hoods and centrifuges and microscopes.
I don't usually read this kind of non-fiction (except to look at the pictures) but I figured the book would be more appreciated by me than say, the other laptop-toting yuppies at the library. Anyways, I found out that the current incarnation of this weblog is probably violating a bunch of graphic design rules despite my desire to keep the thing simple. Here are "the seven design components" I came away with:
*Unity: All the elements in a design are in an "agreement".
*Gestalt: Is the design's unity more than a sum of it's parts? Does the viewer or the reader perceive more that what is physically on the page?
*Space: The use of white space. A lot of the book talks about the use of space--that one can never have too much white space, space partitioned symmetrically is "passive", and that space partitioned asymmetrically is "activated".
*Dominance: Something in the design must dominate. Otherwise, all the design elements will "compete" with each other and the viewer/reader won't know what to look at first.
*Hierarchy: The design should move the viewer from elements that are the most important to the least important. Sort of like newspaper headlines.
*Balance: The author calls this a state of "equalized tension". There are three types. Symmetry which implies classicism and constancy. Asymmetry is a more about contrasting elements which shows energy and vitality. Mosaic has many elements in equilibrium, but one has to worry that it would clutter up the entire design.
*Color: Good use of color provides purpose and emphasis. Black on white provides the most contrast and is easiest to read so if you're using another color bold the font/design to make it more visible.
These seven components of good design are really common sense tips to make things you want people to read to be clear. I am personally a little skeptical about the emphasis on activating white space by asymmetry, but what do I know, I'm not a graphical designer. Most of the time I go on instinct and personal taste.
Onesome: Night: -- Nights can be difficult if you need something from somewhere: what time do the stores shut down where you are? I mean, if you needed something more than a loaf of bread, is there any hope late at night?
If you mean within walking distance, then you'd be out of luck despite the fact that I am in a college town where it's typical that people stay up late. The crucial point is that it is a dinky college town surrounded by upscale residents who wish all the non-Abercrombie-and-Fitch-wearing students would just go away.
The nearest grocery store closes at eight.
Twosome: on the-- River? Hey, are there any rivers near you? ...or are you located out in the wilderness somewhere?
What, rivers aren't wilderness? The nearest river is the White River, the only indication that one is crossing over from New Hampshire to Vermont.
Threesome: Town!-- If you could have any "Night on the Town" you wanted, what would you like to do? ...and would you like some company or would you go it alone?
Probably some mundane stuff, like going to dinner and the movies, preferably with tons of people. Maybe it'll be interesting to go somewhere a little more exciting but these days, I'm not too worried about that. Actually, given the choice of "Night on the Town" and staying at home, I'd probably pick staying at home. You have no idea how many books I've got stockpiled.
Tim's Chemistry Exam. Heh. I would be mightily amused if any of the exams I graded were like this. However it would make the prof's head explode. (She doesn't have much of a sense of humor.)
Killington residents vote to secede from Vermont. First thing: Laughing maniacally. Second thing: Are they insane? It just doesn't make much sense to me except for the fact that these are a bunch of rich people grumbling about how much taxes they have to pay.
Chinese and American Cultures Clash in Custody Battle for Girl. Chinese immigrants, fallen on hard times, let another couple "temporarily" adopt their daughter until they can get things back together. But when they want to take their daughter back, the foster parents refuse.
My gut instinct is to say that the foster parents took advantage of people who didn't know English or how American law works very well. (And the foster parents already had kids themselves. Why would they want more unless they're trying to stick to some misbegotten principle that they would raise a child better simply because they are American?) My next thought was that maybe I felt that way because I'm inherently biased. So I switched the situation around and imagined slightly different scenarios and still came up with the same conclusion: no matter who the foster parents were and who the biological parents were, as long as the real parents weren't obviously crackheads or criminals, a child should go back to the biological parents.
Maybe in a utilitarian standpoint, it would be for the child's benefit to be raised with the more wealthy family. But this sort of stuff, especially in the real world, doesn't lend itself to the theoretical. Emotional attachment, pride, self-righteousness, and other nebulous qualities play a great part. And although it is cliched to say it, money isn't everything. At any rate, the kid's not going to know the whole story no matter who she ends up with.
Addendum: Now that I think about it some more, this kind of stuff really is messy. People don't like to relinquish hold on things (and this would include children--most adults probably consider children to be "things" because they don't believe they can think for themselves) unless forced. Think of surrogate mothers and parents who kidnap kids to live elsewhere. Who is right? Are they just letting their emotions get in the way or do they really believe what they're doing is for the good of everyone involved?
Constantly In Motion, Like DNA Itself. I'm just including this New York Times science fluff piece because the subject of the article was my undergraduate chemistry professor.
For Want of a Word. "Imagine how different politics would be if debates were conducted in Tariana, an Amazonian language in which it is a grammatical error to report something without saying how you found it out."
A language by women, for women. "Only men learned to read and write Chinese, and bound feet and social strictures confined women to their husband's homes after marriage. So somehow -- scholars are unsure how, or exactly when -- the women of this fertile valley in the southwestern corner of Hunan province developed their own way to communicate. It was a delicate, graceful script handed down from grandmother to granddaughter, from elderly aunt to adolescent niece, from girlfriend to girlfriend -- and never, ever shared with the men and boys. So was born nushu, or women's script, a single-sex writing system that Chinese scholars believe is the only one of its kind."
Great CSS Design. Mezzoblue has included a list of sites using CSS in a unique or efficient manner.
Treasury Department Is Warning Publishers of the Perils of Criminal Editing of the Enemy. "Writers often grumble about the criminal things editors do to their prose. The federal government has recently weighed in on the same issue — literally. It has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy."
Today is just one of those days. Maybe it's the warm weather and all the melted snow. Maybe it's because it's the beginning of the month. Maybe it's because the end of the winter term is drawing near. But at any rate, something triggered this explosion of people going bonkers.
It reminds me of previous incidents where I'd remarked, "It could be worse," and just shrugged it off. Others then accuse me of being too easy going and then give me the evil eye as if I've somehow obtained the secret to immortality. I just think that in their youth their parents indulged them instead of punished them when they threw tantrums. After all, aren't all these hyperventilations about how life is so unfair another kind of tantrum? Aren't they all desperate bids for attention?
I suppose it's not surprising. A lot of people are obsessed with themselves and can't understand the fact that other people have lives too. If only this "drama" thing weren't so entwined with human nature.
So I've taken up a new hobby for whatever free time I can squeeze out on the weekends. No, no, this time it's for real. I'm going to attempt to make a text adventure game using a story I've had in my head for a while. I once tried to make it into an interactive hypertext story, but HTML has its own limitations. The appeal of a text adventure game (alternatively known as interactive fiction or IF) is that as the player, you are the character in the story. As a writer, it's a way for me not to spoonfeed a story to the reader. The reader becomes the participant.
Anyways, making an IF game requires programming skills--skills that I sadly lack. Perhaps I should have voluntarily exposed myself to it when I was younger by reading my father's computer programming manuals, but the most I'd done was to pick up an "Internet Yellowpages" when I was bored. But I did teach myself HTML and some CSS (I know, internet stuff is totally different than C++, but please bear with me) so how hard could it be?
Most IF games, or at least the IF games I like playing, are authored in first tier systems that can be ported in many different platforms. So I figured I could learn Inform or TADS and set about reading the different online manuals for those systems. The problem, however, was that they assumed that the novice already knew something about programming. I knew nothing. In practice. In theory, I know what people are talking about when they're "compiling" or "debugging" but I wouldn't know how to execute those commands even if you held a flaming pitchfork to my neck.
So those are out, or rather temporarily until I learn the basics of basics (hopefully). In the mean time, I've been fiddling around with a second tier system (SUDS) which is very easy to implement (it's point and click idiot-proof) but not very popular or as flexible as one of the first tier systems. Nonetheless, there are some interesting things you can do with it, if you can warp your mind to think "logically" about it.
I just wish there was an easier way to do this. Are there programs where I can easily convert a game in one authoring system to another? Are there interpreters that can open games in different systems? Can I get someone else to write all the code while I can concentrate on the story?
And if making a text adventure game for fun doesn't make me an uber-geek, nothing will.
