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Wednesday, June 30, 2004 Something New So I installed Mozilla Firefox 0.9 on my computer today. Does anyone realize that it shows up as Netscape 7 on the referrer logs? Anyways, I'm liking it a lot so far. I don't know why I didn't ditch Internet Explorer sooner except that the other browsers and the older versions of Mozilla Firefox (which was originally Firebird) just didn't feel right. And for the record: I never liked Netscape. In some ways it was worse than Internet Explorer--for one thing, Netscape took a long time to start up. The coolest thing about Firefox is that it automatically blocks those pesky pop-ups. Besides hating the autoclave, I also hate pop-ups and blocking them without having to navigate the insides of the browser or installing something extra earns a gold star in my book. Addendum: Oh wow, when I went to do the spell checking in Blogger, the spell check box included a correction preview. That never showed up on MSIE. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:51 PM : I hate the autoclave. The technicians are on vacation for the next three weeks so I have to autoclave stuff. If there was a possibility that I could have fobbed off the chore to someone else, I probably would have, but now I'm stuck with it. It's not that I mind hauling things to and from the autoclave. I just don't like turning the machine(s) on and off. I'm always afraid I might not have closed the door properly or I pressed the wrong button or something just plain broke down. Because, of course, there's the possibility that the thing will explode. Especially while I'm in the vicinity. I blame this on the first person who taught me how to use the thing by telling me autoclave horror stories. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:24 AM : Tuesday, June 29, 2004 Belated Over the weekend, I saw the newest Harry Potter movie. All I can say is, "Eh." It's not particularly angsty, emotional, or scary. I wasn't awed or anything. Even though this is a genre that I would normally get excited about, the entire Harry Potter franchise just leaves me feeling, well, blah. Maybe this is just my age and dullness showing. I also saw all the episodes of an anime called King of Bandit Jing. I don't know what's with the literal translation--it should have been The King of Bandits, Jing or Jing, the Bandit King. Anyways, I found it excellent entertainment, especially if you're not looking for anything serious. The main character is Jing, an unassuming teenage boy who no one suspects is the Bandit King until it's too late. Jing is remarkably cool-headed, philosophical. His heists are more about challenge than profit. His sidekick is a lecherous bird called Kir. But besides chasing girls, Kir also doubles as Jing's weapon by latching onto the boy's arm and spitting out green fire. This anime is not about fighting, but the plotline is pretty non-existent. And taking into account the very strange fantasy/sci-fi settings, I concluded that the writers for this show were all on crack. Which was good, I suppose, since I wasn't in a mood to appreciate anything that made sense. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:59 PM : Sunday, June 27, 2004 Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:50 AM : Saturday, June 26, 2004 Reading Update: Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt The plotline of this sci-fi novel of post-apocalyptic Earth is that of the classic quest. The story starts in the Mississippi Valley in what used to be Memphis where the heroine Chaka, a young woman despondent over the death of her brother who died in an earlier quest to a place called Haven, receives a copy of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court from the sole survivor of that earlier quest before he promptly kills himself. Spurred by this event, Chaka gathers a band of unlikely travelers in another attempt to find Haven. In this future, humans are reduced to living in Middle Ages-like conditions except that the remnants of the past such as highways and train stations and even entire cities made by the Roadmakers are littered throughout the countryside. Haven, as myths from this fictional future say, was supposed to be a repository for books (extremely rare in this world) and the resting place of a fantastical underwater ship. Haven was also supposed to have the answer to why people escaped the cities and devolved technology-wise. I thought this story was only so-so; the author didn't do anything original with the archetypal quest plot, and although the characters weren't exactly flat, their development was rather predictable. Also, the answer to what caused the apocalypse? Mentioned liberally near the beginning and a total cop-out, the microbiologist in me grumbles at the virtual hand-waving that some airborne virus from the jungles killed most of the population. Abhorsen by Garth Nix The final volume of Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy starts out, literally, with a bang and there are no rest stops until the end. The nineteen-year-old protagonist from the second volume, Lirael, with her nephew Sameth and two talking animals, the Disreputable Dog and a grumpy white cat named Mogget who definitely aren't what they seem, race across the Old Kingdom and down south to Anglestierre (an early twentieth-century version of England where magic can't work unless a wind from the Old Kingdom blows in its direction) to rescue Sameth's friend Nick from a powerful necromancer intent on digging up an ancient evil. It's typical fantasy fare on the face of it, but it's world-building and character development at its best. I would recommend this book only if you've read the previous two, Sabriel and Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr. Lirael is not your typical fantasy warrior-woman. She's unsure of herself, doubtful, melancholy (sometimes suicidal), and desperately yearns to belong. Sameth is whiney and a little spoiled, but while Lirael is a round peg trying to get into a square hole, Sameth is the square peg already jammed into a round hole and trying to get out. In other words, he doesn't want to be what everyone expects him to be. And even if you despise coming-of-age stories, the fantasy world itself is worth it--who doesn't want to be an Abhorsen, making the dead stay dead with the aid of magical charter marks and bells? (Aside: I've noticed that the publisher is coming out with "adult" editions of the trilogy. Those new covers with the simple artist's rendition of charter marks are, to put it bluntly, ugly and puts me into mind of those adult editions of Harry Potter which are trying to appeal to the audiences that don't want to be caught dead with a kiddie book. If you don't want to be seen carrying a children's or young adult book, you really haven't grown up, have you?) And as for Mogget, the only character to have a solid appearance in all three books, readers won't be disappointed when his true nature is finally revealed. Currently Reading: All the books I've mentioned in previous weeks as well as How Dunk a Donut which is written by a physicist. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:17 AM : Friday, June 25, 2004 When Highway Robbery Pays What is self and non-self? That question might drive philosophers and psychologists mad with hypotheses about ego, id, and the consciousness, but nature has figured out a way to distinguish us from the rest of the environment. The immune system. Most of the time, we don't even think about this part of ourselves unless we come down with a cold or accidentally trip and skin our knees. But our immune system is constantly on guard like the stations at a border crossing. Inspection is also a lot like what happens at those border crossings. If you want to get from Country A to Country B, you present your passport for the immigrations official to inspect. All the cells in your body have a sort of passport to identify themselves as "self"--the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). The MHC is expressed on the cell surface; the MHC itself helps present antigens. The antigen is like the photo and name on the passport. If the antigen is a self antigen, i.e. the cell's own protein, then a passing immune cell like the T cell inspecting the MHC with its own T cell receptor (TCR) which acts like a passport scanner will let it go on its way. The TCR itself only causes the T cell to react and sound the alarm when it encounters a non-self antigen (like bacterial and viral protein). Most of the time, this works like a charm. This is because T cells have to go to charm school before they're let loose on the rest of the body. Charm school for T cells, however, is probably nothing like going to a finishing school in Switzerland. Immature T cells are sent to the thymus to be educated. As these T cells begin to express their receptors, the TCR is also tested for reaction with self antigen by a variety of antigen presenting cells. If the TCR binds to a protein made in your own body, the T cell that expressed that TCR would immediately get eliminated. The educators in the thymus know that it would be an extremely bad thing if the police force they're training starts killing off their own citizens. But sometimes it does go wrong, and as a result, we get autoimmune diseases like arthritis. There are some backup mechanisms to prevent this from happening, especially if a T cell that responds to self antigen somehow escapes the thymus. A T cell can't be activated just by the TCR getting into contact with an antigen presenting MHC. Other receptors and ligands must also come together at the same time in a process called costimulation. Another backup plan is the Fas receptor. In the thymus, this is a mechanism to kill off the T cells that don't come up to snuff. The eye cells also does this. If a rogue T cell wanders into the vicinity of the eye, the Fas ligand (which the eye cells express on their surface), will come in contact with the T cell Fas receptor. The result of this fatal meeting is the death of the rogue T cell. A recent paper in Nature Immunology by Perchellet et al. describe another way in which our body establishes immune tolerance. This new mechanism, however, is quite unusual. Rather than acting as the classic border patrol official, some high-affinity T cells become Robin Hoods along the highways of the body. The researchers used a mouse model to study multiple sclerosis, a serious autoimmune disease where the immune cells have gone haywire and have started attacking nerve cells. The problem arises when T cells start expressing a TCR that recognizes myelin--a protein that helps insulate nerve cells--escape from the selection pressures of the thymus and start proliferating. In studying the populations of immune cells in mice that make myelin and those that don't, the researchers found a curious thing. Normally, myelin (MBP, myelin basic protein) is only produced in the nerve cells. For educating the T cells, the thymus expresses a form of myelin called golli-MBP. Usually, this is enough to prevent any T cells that recognize myelin from getting out of the thymus. Sometimes, though, that doesn't happen. Perchellet et al. generated T cells that respond to MBP by exposing them to a virus that was engineered to make MBP. But even without the selection pressure of the thymus, this was still not enough to generate a multiple sclerosis-like response in the mice. What was happening? By observing the interactions of these T cells that could be activated by MBP, they found that these lower-affinity T cells were coming into contact with high-affinity T cells and the high-affinity cells are somehow stripping the other cell of their receptors without activating the lower-affinity cells or themselves. These Robin Hood cells perform the much needed backup service of preventing T cells that respond to MBP from proliferating, but they walk a very thin and dangerous line. This line of defense could easily break down--much like the Sheriff of Nottingham finally deciding to mobilize his evil henchmen. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:03 PM : Thursday, June 24, 2004 A Little Bit On Schoolwork Arg. I think I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The first phase of my qualifiers is almost done unless I get a total slapdown (or is that smackdown?) in the next week or so. The chair of my quals committee is optimistic though so...well, I'm not even going to try to speculate. You see, the qualifiers are at the least, extremely nerve-wracking and stress-inducing. Because at the end of the ordeal, you're either truly a Ph.D. student (which is why at the moment, I only call myself a grad student) or kicked out of the program with (possibly) the consolation prize of a master's degree. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:06 PM : Summer Reading Lists. (via 2Blowhards) Darn it, do you want me to read the entire library? I yearn for that period in childhood when I hadn't heard of recommended books and I got to wander around in a library or a bookstore choosing whatever I fancied. Actually, to some extent, I still do. I guess I should be glad I'm not taking humanities classes. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:25 PM : The Thursday Threesome Capricious: Governed or characterized by impulse or whim, lacking rational basis or likely to change suddenly Onesome: Characterized by impulse--Do you consider yourself impulsive or do you tend to think everything through before you make a move? On the whole, I am not an impulsive person. If I were, then I still wouldn't be able to elicit surprised reactions on the rare occasions that I am. I hope this doesn't make you think that I'm boring. (Or maybe it does.) Twosome: lacking rational basis--If you are impulsive, do you rationalize and justify your actions? Like, since that item you bought on a whim was on sale, you really saved money by buying it? No, I do not rationalize. I am fairly accepting of my own impulsive behavior. If someone else expects a rational reason for it, well, tough luck. Threesome: or likely to change suddenly-- When you make up your mind, does it stay made up or do you tend to change your mind at the last minute? ...or do you waffle back and forth until you're forced to decide? I make up my mind at the last possible minute. This annoys the heck out of people who like to get things done early. It does not mean, however, that I'm constantly waffling on my decisions--I just like to take my time about it. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:50 AM : Wednesday, June 23, 2004 Neighbors You know the one I mentioned before, the one who played obnoxious music? He moved out. The new neighbors moved in last night--I listened to them banging around as I fell asleep. Also, I know that they're neighbors and not just a single neighbor because I saw two names on the mailbox. I'm guessing they're a couple judging from the genders of the names (despite different last names) and the fact that their apartment is a mirror image of mine (only one bedroom). Yeah, I'm nosy like that. But I'll restrain myself from peeping in windows and knocking on their door to ask for a cup of sugar just to see how they decorated their living room. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:13 PM : Tuesday, June 22, 2004 Must. Rest. Brain. I could say that nothing of interest has happened to me lately. Except, is that really true, or am I just not very observant? Or maybe I'm just in some sort of funk. Also lately, I've been wondering why I haven't really written anything substantial (fiction-wise) for the past couple of months. Was it because one of my now ex-housemates is a literary snob and had torturous fits every time she was in one of her creative urges? Have I run out of ideas? Am I reading too much? Is it because most people who know I write probably think this is just some personal quirk, like stuttering? Or maybe I need a vacation. I probably won't get one until Christmas. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:16 PM : Monday, June 21, 2004 Blogging: A Web Diary Tour. (via Monkeyfilter) My favorite bit was when the Time staff writer who was consulted as the expert replied to a question about personal blogs: Who cares?! I could say the same thing about blogs with pointless, political ravings. At a bus stop across from the GAP, I observed many flip-flop-footed, chic, and anemic girls coming out of the store. I wondered if the GAP had a secret cloning facility in its basement. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:01 PM : Nose in the Air (Or Rather, T-Shirt) A recent paper in Behavioral Ecology suggests that human males do not solely use visual cues to determine if a female within their radar is "sexy." Okay, so this may fall into the range of "Well, duh!" but then again, the implied question of whether or not particular deviances (i.e. panty sniffing) are learned or just an exaggeration of something innate should cause certain people pause--because what exactly is normal? Instead of going into philosophical discussions of normality that I am neither qualified nor particularly interested in rambling about, I will say a little more about the study. Kuukasjarvi et al. wanted to challenge the assumption that men are absolutely clueless about when a woman is fertile during her mentrual cycle. In many primate species, females advertise their stage in ovulation by visual cues. For humans, this is concealed, leading to the hypothesis that if this was an adaptation in the female, then perhaps males counter-adapted by evolving ways to detect olfactory cues. In other words, ancient man developed the ability to sniff out the women who were at their peak fertility phase. In the experiment, the researchers had women in varying phases of their menstrual cycle as well as about half that were on oral contraceptives and half that were not, wear a T-shirt for two consecutive nights. Then the researchers had both men and women rate the T-shirts' odors for attractiveness. After putting the data through the statistical wringer, the study indicated that male raters preferred the odors of women near ovulatory phase in their mentrual cycles. This only applied to the T-shirts where the women were not on contraceptives. Apparently the pill affects hormone levels and eliminates the "attractive odors." So what are these odors and what exactly do they do? This study doesn't address that question specifically, but there are several possibilities. Odors from the human body can be affected by hormone levels. Steroid hormones are secreted through sweat glands. When these steroid hormones come in contact with bacteria on the skin, the bacteria convert them into odorous compounds. Another possibility is that the T-shirt sniffers weren't rating the odors per se, instead they could have been detecting pheromones via the vomeronasal organ (VNO). (Then, there are other people who argue that the VNO is vestigial and probably as useless as a sixth finger.) A third possibility is that body odor is affected by a person's major histocompatibility complex (MHC) type. MHC is involved in immunity and some hypothesize that people seek out mates with a different MHC type to prevent inbreeding. Of course, this doesn't say anything about some women's penchant for overwhelming amounts of perfume. Other Smelly T-shirt Studies: Singh and Bronstad, 2001. (ABCNEWS summary) Wedekind et al., 1995; Wedekind and Furi, 1997. (New Scientist overview) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:03 PM : Aw shoot. The biomedical library suddenly lost power. There was supposed to be a scheduled e-mail outage tonight but all electricity in the middle of a sunny day? Maybe something overheated. So I packed up my things and made my trek over to the nearest still functioning library. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:58 AM : Sunday, June 20, 2004 Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:51 AM : Saturday, June 19, 2004 Medical Literature Humor (via The Rabid Librarian via Dustbury). Instead of just putting down a list of PubMed citations, I'll actually put links to some of these articles. Aggarwal SK, Bhagirath V, Loubani M. MDs 'R' Us: holiday ideas for that special physician. CMAJ. 2003 Dec 9;169(12):1326-7. No abstract available. PMID: 14662682 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Borins M. Are you suffering from a laugh deficiency disorder? Can Fam Physician. 2003 Jun;49:723-4, 730-2. English, French. No abstract available. PMID: 12836856 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Boulis NM. Diversions. There was a young surgeon who swallowed a flea. CMAJ. 2001 Dec 11;165(12):1613-4. No abstract available. PMID: 11841015 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Patterson R, Stewart-Patterson C. The well-made bed: an unappreciated public health risk. CMAJ. 2001 Dec 11;165(12):1591-2. No abstract available. PMID: 11841009 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Horseman RE. Medical treatment that sucks. J Calif Dent Assoc. 2001 Nov;29(11):794, 793. No abstract available. PMID: 11806058 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] [No authors listed] How do you cross an armadillo with a porcupine and other problems that arise from naming proteins. By Caveman. J Cell Sci. 2001 Sep;114(Pt 18):3213-4. No abstract available. PMID: 11591809 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Greene AR. Computers, doctors, and toilet training. MedGenMed. 2000 Dec 11;2(6):E5. No abstract available. PMID: 11335855 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Shea SE, Gordon K, Hawkins A, Kawchuk J, Smith D. Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne. CMAJ. 2000 Dec 12;163(12):1557-9. No abstract available. PMID: 11153486 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Yeo M. To boldly go: we have to look beyond The Simpsons for a true medical hero. CMAJ. 1998 Dec 15;159(12):1476-7. No abstract available. PMID: 9988569 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Hall PF. Hissy fits revividus. CMAJ. 1998 Dec 15;159(12):1478-9. No abstract available. PMID: 9875255 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Osmun WE, Naugler C. The impact of hissy fits in primary care. CMAJ. 1998 Dec 15;159(12):1457-9. PMID: 9875249 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Cooke F, Morse R. Do you know your chocolates? Recognition survey among medical staff of various grades. BMJ. 1997 Dec 20-27;315(7123):1655-6. No abstract available. PMID: 9448530 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Koshland DE Jr. How to get paid for having fun. (warning: pdf file) Annu Rev Biochem. 1996;65:1-13. PMID: 8811172 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Stiehm ER. Being just a husband is no fun. Am J Dis Child. 1989 Dec;143(12):1401-2. PMID: 2589271 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Cantor WL. Are we all just stupid? Ear Nose Throat J. 2001 Feb;80(2):117. No abstract available. PMID: 11233343 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:49 PM : Reading Update Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World by Nick Lane. The first things I think about when hearing the word "oxygen" is breathing air, the periodic table, and torturous o-chem classes. But oxygen is so much more than some ephemeral, invisible gas that is essential for life. In Oxygen, Nick Lane paints a grand scale of what this molecule is about--from evolution to aging. Lane answers, in his free radical biased point of view, what exactly happens when you get radiation poisoning and how we got the levels of oxygen of today. And what about aging? Lane explains that aging is caused partly from free radical damage. That is, without going into the actual chemistry, leaky and/or damaged mitochondria (the energy powerhouses) of the cell release reactive oxygen species into the body which does physical damage to the cell itself as well as the DNA. That's why people keep on extolling the virtues of antioxidants like vitamin C. This book isn't so much eclectic as being divided into two subjects--I think you'd have to read the entire thing to really appreciate it but one could say that the first half is geared more towards evolution freaks and the second half for the health freaks. An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect by Sharman Apt Russell. With a quirky and humorous writing style, Russell whole-heartedly jumps into the magnificent, and to some frivolous, mania on butterflies. An Obsession with Butterflies is personal, accessible, yet scientific. You'll have way too much fun reading it before realizing you're actually learning something. Butterflies start out as the ultimate ugly ducklings--caterpillars, or "bags of goo" as the author affectionately calls them, that strip plants bare in order to get enough nutrients for their metamorphosis and more importantly, developing their germ cells. Butterfly sex can be surprisingly brutal--although some butterflies lure their mates with courtship and pheromones, Monarchs use the caveman routine: the male forces the female to the ground and then carries her off in flight. In some species, rape is the norm. Apollo butterflies capture virgins; after a violent mating, the male secretes and glues a sphragis (the butterfly equivalent of a chastity belt) over the female's abdomen. Some Heliconius species of butterflies practice a form of pedophilia called pupal mating. Which is what you'd imagine: the male butterfly waits around on a plant with females and right before she emerges from her pupal state, the male punctures the pupa with his genitalia to mate. Of course, the book isn't solely about butterfly lifestyles--the author also includes sketches of well-known lepidopterists like Vladimir Nabokov and current problems concerning these insects. Butterflies nowadays can help a scientist gauge ecological diversity as well be bred in butterfly houses for collectors. Engaging the Enemy by Nora Roberts. I don't exactly remember what went through my head when I picked this book up, but I think it had to do with a line on the back cover which in reality would never happen. Also--I should have looked at the original publication dates--because most novels in this genre written in the 1980s are pretty bad. Engaging the Enemy is actually a republish of two novels: A Will and a Way and Boundary Lines. The first one has the cliched plotline of an eccentric relative leaving a will where the hero and heroine could have his fortune if they lived together in his house for six months (of course, they hate each other in the beginning). The second story took place on ranches among cows and horses and the like while the hero dragged the heroine around like a macho caveman. Suffice to say, I didn't like either story and chucking it in the fireplace (if I had a fireplace) would be too good of a demise for it. Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind by David Quammen. The man-eater, the top predators, although fixed in our collective myths and imaginations as horrifying monsters that reduce humans (normally self-absorbed and self-dubbed as the pinnacle of the food chain) into prey, are disappearing. Quammen visits a variety of places in the world to find that the top predators are vanishing at an alarming rate due to human overpopulation, politics, and greed. The agricultural peoples living on the outskirts of predator country see the lion, tiger, or bear as both attached to the landscape and a necessary evil. A well-protected city dweller whose only brush with danger is the city zoo wouldn't understand that out on the edges of civilization, it really is life or death. These people's livelihoods--their herd animals--are constantly preyed upon as lions and the like have less space to hunt. People usually get eaten because they are foolish--they wander alone in bear country or swim in crocodile infested waters. The Siberian tiger rarely attacks humans (and usually only when you shoot it first) and prefers, rather, the yapping dog you've chained to your front yard. Quammen's concluding remarks are rather bleak--once all these top predators are gone and no longer in our psyches as something to be wary and in awe of, we'd truly be alone in the universe. In the middle of: I'm literally in the middle of Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road which I've been trying to finish for the past couple of months. Also thinking of starting of Stephenson's The Confusion sometime soon as well as Garth Nix's Abohorsen which is the last book in a fantasy trilogy with a setting vaguely reminiscent of WWII England. No foreseeable non-fiction in the near future (i.e. the coming week). [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:53 AM : Friday, June 18, 2004 Brief Notes: Gmail Swap. I finally got around to looking at the site and man, some people are desperate to get an account. Either that, or they're excellent scammers. But somehow, it just seems wrong to get something for just another e-mail account. My philosophy is just to give the invites away to anyone who wants them. 52 Books in 52 Weeks. Very similar to the 50 Book Challenge where you have to read 50 books in one year (I am not registered for this one, I just know about it). I've been keeping track of what I've been reading since August of 2002. As for 2004, so far I've completed 31 books--and they were by no means kiddie books. The shortest was probably around 250 pages. Longest, well over 1000. Blog Survey. Yet another graduate student doing his thesis on weblogs. But at least at the end of this one, you get to see the results (so far). Thousands of Blogs Fall Silent. I've been reading people's reactions to this all week. If this doesn't convince people to backup their work even before they post, nothing will. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:36 PM : Thursday, June 17, 2004 Recap One of the Thursday Threesome questions was: Do you believe in things that go bump in the night or anything supernatural? Most people who answered put down things about God and ghosts. One person answered, "Absolutely...anyone who doesn't is just afraid to question their own reality." What is the world coming to? As a scientist, I despair. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:16 PM : One RIP Down, At Least Three More To Go I had most of the audience in the 200(300?)-seat auditorium nearly falling out of their chairs laughing while presenting my research as an analogy of a deadly game of cops and robbers. This is going to be hard to top next year. To be honest, I didn't know if that analogy was going to work--trying to think of something funny to diffuse the boredom of a technical seminar is difficult to do. Besides, I don't consider public speaking one of my stronger points. Writing words is one thing; saying them is another. I'm okay in front of people. My main fear is forgetting what I'm going to say. I was very jittery the entire day. Not only was I worried about not remembering anything or the fact that the other people speaking are very comfortable in front of audiences despite their protests to the contrary, but that I would be asked a question that I should be able to answer but can't. Or that a question would be asked and there would be a suitable answer, but the questioner is more concerned about making you look like an incompetent. Some profs are like that--they have a seemingly sadistic glee in taking down the hapless student into a gibberish mess. In my case, a particularly evil question would be asking me to tell the difference between all the interleukin proteins (at least 30 of them currently, I think) or even worse, all the CD (clusters of differentiation) antigens (247 currently, not counting the further subdivisions like CD1a,b,c,d). The question would be vaguely tangential to my stuff, but it would still be grossly unfair. The bad part was the hour before the talk. I couldn't tell if I was just extremely nervous or flat out scared and anything anyone said just went into one ear and out the other. (Fifteen minutes before, one of the other students speaking told me, "You're smiling," amazed as if I could be so carefree under the pressure. I blurted out, "That's because I'm nervous!") During the talk, I totally zonked out everything else and concentrated solely on putting one word after the other. Afterwards I just felt drained and relieved. Thankfully, I didn't get any evil questions, but that doesn't mean that I'm exempt from them next year. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:28 PM : The Thursday Threesome: Things that go bump in the night Onesome: Things that go- What's the strangest contraption you've ever had to use to get from point A to point B? Hm. I don't know, you tell me. I've used/ridden in a car, airplane, train, boat, those ridiculous little yellow paddle boat thingies, roller skates, tricycle, bicycle, horse, camel (I think), pony, skateboard, truck, wagon (with hay), elevator, escalator, those walking walkways you find in large airports, airport trams, amusement park trams, museum trams, that amusement park ride where you're stuck in the air for hundreds of feet in a small metal cubical, subway, bus, shuttle, go-cart, rope, ladder, and a scooter. There might be some that I missed. I have not ridden in a helicopter, balloon, submarine, a segway, motorcycle, catapult, space shuttle, lawnmower, carriage that used to be a pumpkin, moped, or a ski lift. Also, there might be some that I missed here too. Twosome: Bump- Have you ever hurt yourself doing something you weren't supposed to be doing? No. I'm always doing what I'm supposed to be doing, even if certain people don't know it yet. Threesome: In the night- Do you believe in things that go bump in the night or anything supernatural? Supernatural: No, obviously. Things that go bump in the night: Depends. If it's the neighbor, yeah. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:29 AM : Wednesday, June 16, 2004 Open Thread on Feminism (via Blog Sisters) 1. Define "feminism". My ideal definition: A movement started by women in order to fight for equal rights. My opinion of what contemporary feminism has degenerated to: (Usually political) bashing for principles without looking at reality's details. 2. Was you mother a feminist? Yes, in some ways. In others, she is a traditionalist. 3. Are you a feminist? Yes, in its original intent. Probably not in the contemporary political sense. I would rather be called an equalist. I am definitely not a traditionalist. 4. When did you come to that conclusion (#3) and what factors entered into your decision? Probably some time in my teens. Maybe earlier. It's hard to tell when because it was such a gradual thing--a lot of contradicting factors contributed. In my childhood, I was expected to be a high achiever. Oh sure, my parents didn't punish me or got angry if I didn't do well, but it was something unstated. Other people expected things of me too and in some ways, I was just considered one of the guys. It was only until college that I solidified into an equalist and not a feminist. My undergraduate experience was both wonderful and stressful and that stress was only compounded by the very strange social atmosphere on campus (exacerbated by the 3:1 male to female ratio). There were some extremists on campus who demonstrated quite clearly that you have to be careful not to go all the way out or you'd risk becoming the thing you hated in the first place. 5. What are the top five women's issues that require immediate attention? In no particular order: choice, equal pay, equal treatment, political representation, societal mindset. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:20 PM : Tangled Bank #5 If you've reached this page and are bored because I don't have much to say for the past couple of entries*, head on over to Borneo Chela for a compendium of science posts. *I don't have much to say because I'm too busy to say anything in the first place. Yeah, I still have time to glance over at other people's blogs, but that's when after working several hours on my research-in-progress presentation I need a break or I'd go crazy. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:35 AM : Tuesday, June 15, 2004 If you haven't noticed already, Yahoo! Mail has increased the storage space for free accounts to 100 mb and increased the amount of data you can send to 10 mb. Is this in response to Gmail? Probably. Aside: Now that Yahoo! has upgraded, both Yahoo! and Gmail separately offer more space than my school. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:39 AM : Monday, June 14, 2004 Cell sorting day. Which pretty much meant that the whole day was taken up with one thing. My opinion on cell sorting? It's freakin' boring--I call it the bean counting of biology--today I resorted to talking about the weather and property values with the tech who operates the cell sorting machine just to keep myself sane. But what can I do? If you need to do it, you do it. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:36 PM : Sunday, June 13, 2004 Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:34 AM : Saturday, June 12, 2004 I am never going to get key lime pie flavored yogurt again due to purely aesthetic reasons. It looks like toxic sludge. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:44 PM : One would think that going home for lunch would be very easy. Instead, the traffic in and around the historic district (where I live!) is backed up like no tomorrow. A parade has blocked up the street in front of the apartment and I've had to find parking elsewhere for the time being. And while I was trying to get back home, I narrowly missed being bombarded by water balloons made by teenagers with a nasty streak. Is there some sort of holiday today? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:59 AM : Maybe that one time offer wasn't so one time. I've got more Gmail invites than ideas for what to do with them. Apparently Google gives you more invites whenever they feel like it. So if you want an account, send me a request here along with a link to your weblog or journal so I know it's not just some crank spammer and the subject line, "Comment on June 12 Entry on Syaffolee." First three respondants gets the invite. If you aren't one of the first three, you'll be the first one I send one to the next time I get invites. (This time, the offer doesn't have any deadline.) For those of you concerned with security issues: You should be concerned with security issues every time you get on the internet. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:11 AM : Bits and Pieces While I'm sitting here waiting in between steps of an experiment, I'm contemplating on not coming to lab tomorrow. This is due more to practical reasons than laziness--because tomorrow is the big commencement ceremony and I don't want to get caught up in the traffic and crowds and general craziness that such things entail. The problem is that my RIP, or research in progress, is due Thursday and I really want to get stuff done before then. To be honest, I don't think any of my current experiments are going to affect what I'm going to say in my RIP. Maybe in a month, yeah, but my RIP isn't due next month. Besides, I could work on it at home--not being in lab won't kill me. Someone told me that they thought I was unhappy because I'm quiet. Huh. I always thought that someone who was unhappy or depressed would show classic symptoms of attention-getting, to draw to the fact that they need help. Perhaps I should be upset that I'm so seriously misunderstood, but I can't work up the energy to be outraged. I guess that's just a symptom of my underlying personality--I keep to myself and I'm mostly laid back (or at least I try to be) even in the face of something that might cause rage in the average person. All I can say is, I'm definitely not unhappy, but if I told you I was happy and why I was happy, you'd think I was insincere. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:25 AM : Friday, June 11, 2004 Mikal at Belicove.com asks: If and when your hair turns gray, will you let the gray in or will you use an over-the-counter product to turn it away? I had answered that I would just let my hair go gray. I have no reason to hide my age. Aging is a natural process of life and I wouldn't want to look like a bottle of preserves. Besides, so far in my life, I have never relied on my youth or looks to get what I want or to get friends. Sure, people will treat a frumpled nerd differently than a beauty queen. There's no way around that no matter how politically correct you claim to be. But wouldn't it be better to just be yourself than worry constantly if your mask is still in place? Also, I don't get people's obsession with youth. When I was nine or ten and I saw an ad with some kind of model, my brain registered, this person looks like an adult. Then again, people who were in the grade above me, let alone high school, looked like adults. Now, whenever I see those kinds of ads I think, gosh those anemic girls look young. Do they have any idea that not only hunky guys but balding and paunchy old men are slavering over them? (Or maybe they do.) I go to the grocery store and high school kids are bagging the groceries and I think--even if they're eighteen, they don't look old enough to drive! But that is all perception. The middle-aged techs at the animal facility probably think I'm not old enough* to wield a dinner knife let alone dissection instruments. So I guess I find it a little underhanded that people would try to hide their age by coloring their hair. It's harmless, but I can't help feeling that people aren't being honest with me. It's like the woman who keeps on claiming that she is 29 for the twentieth year in a row--except more insidious. Who knows how many superficial old people with pretty hair are out there? *All right, so maybe I don't look that young, but I always feel like a mental idiot when people run around looking like they do know what the heck they're doing. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:08 PM : Thursday, June 10, 2004 Life, Mars, and a Cranky Student Outer space is cool. Or at least this is what people trying to fund space programs for various reasons are wanting you to think. I'm not saying that thinking outer space is cool is wrong, but it is my bias that it is almost an unfair obsession in the public mind. Then again, physicists complain that biologists get too much funding so who am I to argue. A personal experience as an example: As an undergrad I had done some summer research on Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum (a strange microbe thought to use the earth's magnetic field as a guide). At the end of the summer, I gave about a half-hour talk to an audience that was composed of academics, my chemist roommate (for morale purposes) and some laypeople. Almost immediately, people started asking, "Is this going to be helpful in trying to find life on Mars?" For the first second I totally blanked out because not only had I not been expecting that question but I had never mentioned or alluded to anything related to Mars or space. In retrospect, I could see how someone would think of Mars, especially if Mars was already on the brain. Magnetospirillum --> hordes iron --> some iron compounds are red --> Mars! But for goodness sake, couldn't they have just stuck to a topic a little more closer to what I had been talking about for 30 minutes? The speaker at the talk I attended yesterday probably could have fielded that question a lot better than I had. An undergrad had done some work at JPL examining contaminating bacteria in the clean rooms that NASA engineers used to build the Mars probes. The experiment was rather straight-forward: swab samples were taken from various places in the clean rooms as well as the surfaces of the probes. These samples were then cultured to check what would grow out. One would hope that in a clean room, everything would be clean (anyone entering one would have to suit up and take decontamination showers), but that was not the case. Several Bacillus species were cultured from those samples. Okay, so the clean rooms aren't so clean. But would these microbes survive the harsh conditions of space and end up colonizing a planet the probe might land on? Several "stress tests" such as gamma and UV irradiation were administered and at levels greater than that would kill your run-of-the-mill microbe, some of these Bacillus spores were still able to survive. So what does this mean? An alarmist will try to convince you that we have to worry about infectious alien microbes hitching a ride back to earth on a homecoming probe, but what is probably more likely is that an earth microbe is hitching a ride on the probe to places that no man has gone before. Well, why does that matter? you may ask. We're not going to affected. Oh, yes we are. If earth microbes get onto a planet, they could contaminate any data we try to get out of it. This is like mishandling glass slides with your bare hands. If you put that slide under the microscope, you won't be able to tell if the sample you're looking at is really the sample or just your dirty fingerprints. However, extremophiles in the bacterial world isn't a new concept. Bacillus species aren't the only ones able to withstand abnormal amounts of stress. Deinococcus radiodurans, which some hypothesize arrived on earth via meteorite even though more recent data suggests that it has evolved from terrestial ancestors, has been shown to withstand high doses of radiation. The key to understanding how bacteria manage to live under this condition is to look at how it protects itself. Is there something in its cell wall conferring protection? Or is there some more active mechanism? After the talk, I overhead a wannabe med student complain: "Why should we care? We're going to contaminate Mars anyway once a man lands there." True, but I think, scientific reasons aside, that we should keep the rest of the universe as clean as possible just on principle. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:00 PM : Whoa. I heard something explode. What the heck is my neighbor doing anyway? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:30 PM : The Thursday Threesome: School Bus Stop Onesome: School-- Since the school year seems to be over (your mileage may vary: some of you are already in summer sessions!): what was your favorite year in school? Yeah, the one you had the best time in or learned something special or had that learning breakthrough? Hard to say. Each year had its high and low points. Perhaps it was the senior year in high school. Yeah, there were all these pesky tests to take and I wasn't particularly in anyone's social circle to enjoy all those school activities centered on seniors, but I think what I liked about it was the expectations and the possibilities. It was the year when everyone was on the edge of something and I felt that I could do or become anything. You're on this threshold, on the verge of growing up, and you're acutely aware that even though you can't see the future, any choice you make might set it one way or another. Of course, I'm still in school and I still have choices, but they're far more limited now than back then. Twosome: Bus-- Hey, how did you get to school in the early years? Walk? Bike? Mommy van? Bus? ...and for those still attending, how are you getting to and fro these days? Depends on how early you're talking about. Preschool--of course my parents drove me. Kindergarten to part of second grade--walking (but that was when I lived close enough to school to do that). Onward, I took the bus, even during high school when it was considered uncool. In fact, I still take the bus, but you have to make an exception for today. I drove because I had to get to lab early. Threesome: Stop-- ...and when did you stop going to school? ...or did you? Are you still at it? Any plans to go back for those who are out of the system? I am still in school. However, I don't plan on still going to school after I get the degree I'm planning on, unlike some people who plan on law school after graduate school to go into patent law (eek!). [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:27 AM : Wednesday, June 09, 2004 Aw Crap. Looks like I'll be having dinner by candlelight without the dinner companion. Today was a perfectly wonderful day before the thunderstorm appeared out of nowhere. When I got home, my neighbor informed me that there was a tree down outside the apartment complex and that there is no electricity. At least I still have an internet connection and the laptop battery, but the battery doesn't last forever. And I had planned on finishing and posting another post about microbes too. Ah well, stay tuned for tomorrow. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:21 PM : Tuesday, June 08, 2004 Gene Swapping Perhaps our most intimate acquaintance with the flow of genetic information is our family--parents to be exact. If we expand this idea further, not just through a couple hundred years of genealogy but through eons, we get an overview, an evolutionary picture if you will, that will look the most familiar to us as a phylogenetic tree. The passing of genetic information from parent to offspring is vertical gene transfer. Another method of moving genes from one place to another is called horizontal gene transfer--from one organism to another of a completely unrelated species. If you picture this on a phylogenetic tree, the arrows would be going left and right instead of up and down. Molecular biologists know that this can be achieved artificially in the lab. A simple example of this involves a technique called transformation and the molecular biologists' favorite work horse, the E. coli bacterium. Disregarding the technicalities for the moment, the principle is this: the scientist takes the gene of interest (which could be from any organism*), mixes the DNA with some competent E. coli, and gives the cells a brief shock to make them take up the DNA. Horizontal gene transfer can also occur naturally. Up until now, pretty much all known instances of this were believed to occur with bacteria. In a way, this is not surprising--microorganisms seem to lead a much more adventurous sex life than your neighborhood pervert. This can be deadly--especially if you're talking about antibiotic resistance. A recent example of bacteria gaining antibiotic resistance by transfer of antibiotic resistance genes from another bacteria is that of Staphylococcus aureus or as the news likes to scare people with--the "superbug". What's so super about it? S. aureus is resistant to a whole host of antibiotics, but until recently, it could still be treated with one of the biggest weapons in the antibiotic arsenal, vancomycin. But due to a tryst with vancomycin resistant Enterococcus facaelis, certain strains of S. aureus (VISA/VRSA) can live just as happily with or without the antibiotic. A recent Genome Biology paper by Budd et al. presents evidence horizontal gene transfer may not be just bacteria-bacteria conjugation. In analyzing genomic sequences of many organisms, the group noticed that a gene encoding a protease inhibitor, a2-macroglobulin (a2M), used by eukaryotes to fight off infections was popping up in all sorts of bacterial sequences. The inheritance of the gene among bacteria did not correlate with vertical transfer, but did imply that perhaps horizontal gene transfer occurred between bacteria and eukaryotes. Did this gene transfer happen recently? The appearance of a2M is scattered throughout the bacterial kingdom--from the harmless aquatic species to the pathogenic--which suggest, as Budd et al. have, that this gene transfer happened a long time ago between a bacterial ancestor and one of our single-celled metazoan ancestors. Exactly in which ancestor the gene originated is still debatable. But all this discussion about seemingly indiscriminate gene swapping doesn't tell us one thing--what is it good for? The answer to that is rather self-evident for pathogenic bacteria. If a disease causing bacteria can obtain a host gene, perhaps it can use it to its advantage to evade the immune system and live in its preferred niche, be it me or you or the poor houseplant on the back porch. And what about apparently free-living bacteria? The paper proposes that they might not be free-living at all and that a2M might act as a colonizing factor, helping the bacteria cling to their particular environmental niche. Whatever the case, it gives us something new to think about. We may think we're clever in examining bacterial genomes for targets we can exploit, but the evidence points to the fact that these microbes have been mining our genomes to their advantage before we even showed up on earth. *There are, of course, some caveats to this. You can pretty much zap any DNA into E. coli, but it gets more complicated when you want to express your gene of interest in another organism. If you want to express a gene from Bacillus subtilis (another bacterium) in E. coli, you probably won't have any problems, but mammalian genes are another matter. Our genes are structured differently than that of bacteria. Bacterial genes are pared down and efficient whereas ours contain numerous introns that must be spliced out before the gene is translated. E. coli doesn't have the proper machinery to do all that splicing. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:07 PM : Venus, in transit. See webcams of celestial action at Exploratorium and European Solar Observatory. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:11 AM : This Morning: *Observed a smoking bicyclist. Talk about oxymoronic strangeness. *Overheard a woman gushing about her trip abroad. She really liked how the military trooped around the airports with submachine guns. (Silently, I disagree with her opinion.) *Why do men like wearing pink shirts? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:43 AM : Monday, June 07, 2004 Repetitive Pet Peeve I hate it when people just start talking in a foreign language to me (like this morning). Sure, it's nice that they feel that I'm part of their group but I think it's sort of rude talking in your own language in public. Besides, just because I'm Asian doesn't mean I understand you. Not all Asians are alike, even in a place where there is a paucity of them. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:03 AM : Sunday, June 06, 2004 Long Awaited (Or Maybe Not) Linkage Copper. A very pretty comic from Bolt City about a boy, his dog, and their (imaginary) adventures. For some reason, online comics are much more entertaining than the ones found in the newspaper. Or maybe the reason isn't so mysterious--newspapers tend to accept the tepid stuff that they believe the masses like. Gurus v. Bloggers, Round 1 and Gurus v. Bloggers, Round 2. Amusing. These are articles comparing websites of "gurus" (self-proclaimed information architects etc., etc., etc.) and bloggers (not just any bloggers, but ones into design). The competition seems a bit stacked, not to mention skewed, but it's no secret that the author is biased. At least if you're planning on a redesign, you'll know what not to do. Genome Valence. Huh, it sure looks pretty (pretty enough to make it into movies requiring technobabble gobbledygook) but so far no examples besides analyzing book texts to show how it really works. I guess we biologists are still stuck with ol' fashioned sequence alignments at the moment. No sex please -- we're Japanese. (via lots of people) Here's something interesting in the article: A few years ago, Tokyo Gakugei University sociologist Masahiro Yamada coined the phrase "parasite singles" to describe young people who sponge off their parents and use their rent-free incomes to splurge on designer goodies, expensive dinners and trips abroad. It came from the 1997 Japanese horror movie Parasite Eve and applies to young, live-at-home men and women alike, though Yamada says the most carefree of the parasite singles tend to be women; the men are more serious about establishing careers and moving out on their own one day. The first thing I wondered about was: is this phenomenon confined to Japan or is it more widespread? There are probably parasite singles in whatever industrialized country you look at, but I don't think the term applies to any young person I know. If people must move back home and "sponge" off their parents, it's because they need to regroup before launching themselves into a new direction. The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Cool! Now I can add this on my ever growing reading list. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:57 AM : Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:18 AM : Saturday, June 05, 2004 Reading Update: I haven't finished any books this week but I am in the middle of a bunch. Oxygen (Nick Lane) - I had to return this book earlier this week because somebody had a hold on it and I couldn't renew it. So I put another hold on it and hopefully I'll get it back in the next couple of weeks--I only have about a 100 more pages to go. It was sort of hard going the first couple of chapters, but it was really interesting once I got into it. The Silk Road (Frances Wood) - I'm liking this history about trade between the East and West. One could say I'm slowly educating myself about history from elsewhere. All the history classes I've ever taken were preposterously obsessed with the West, even the so-called world history classes. Monster of God (David Quammen) - It's a natural history about man-eaters, i.e. animals that eat humans when they have the opportunity. Includes lions, tigers, and bears. Too bad it's one of those vicious cycle kind of things: man encroaches on the predator's habitat by destroying forest and natural prey, starving and homeless predators kill and eat people because they're desperate, people kill the predators in retaliation because they think the animals are to blame, the predators decline in numbers until they are extinct. The Hot Zone (Richard Preston) - You know, with an endorsement by Stephen King on the back cover, I'm not even sure I want to read this. I admit I'm more on the psychological horror stuff rather than the blood and gore. But it's one of those morbid curiosity things and one would wonder why a microbiology student such as myself hasn't read sooner. I guess I find reading about biohazard level 4 infectious diseases in a dry, clinical paper more palatable. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:33 AM : Addendum: Campus addresses caterpillar problem. I guess that makes my previous post too little and too late. I suppose I should read the school paper a little more often. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:06 AM : A Student's Blather Ever since I moved out of college housing, things have been different. Oh, I still probably spend most of my time in lab juggling hybridization tubes, banging my head against red tape (this time at the animal facility instead of the DMV), and stressing over the process of qualifiers which seems to have no end in sight, but the rest of the time I feel like I've entered into this strange parallel universe. Living on-campus had been easier and lazier, even if I had to walk from place to place. One big change that anyone reading this could probably imagine is that I have no internet connection at home. I'm probably going to put in dial-up eventually so I can access e-mail (at least) but it's still a far cry from the high-speed LAN and wireless coverage provided in any sort of college housing. In some ways, I feel as if I've been transported back into the Dark Ages, but I guess I'll live. I've managed to wean myself from television after high school and still don't have an urge to watch TV even if someone was to give me one so I suppose the internet would probably go a similar route. Getting to school is another problem. Before, I could get up fairly late and walk to lab in under five minutes. Now, I actually have to plan. Even though I could drive to campus in about ten to fifteen minutes (if it isn't rush hour), I would still have to pay for gas which considering today's prices, is ridiculous. So I take the local free shuttle. The problem with that is that the last ride back is at 6 PM so I would have to get to lab much earlier than before. Also, riding the shuttle has its own stigma despite the rising gas prices--passing people give you funny looks when you're waiting at the bus stop like an elementary school student. (Aside: I could, of course, go off in a rant how people around here don't care about anything except for their own convenience, but what's the point when they wouldn't change their ways anyway?) The best thing about living without housemates, though, is that now, I can control my own kitchen. This may not seem like a big thing for those of you who don't cook or only know how to manipulate the microwave, but for me, it's the equivalent of getting your own computer. I can arrange my things in whatever way I wish. I only have to clean my own messes. I have my own fridge--now I can actually find my food instead of discovering that my carton of milk has been pushed into the back behind somebody's gigantic tuna casserole. I don't have to cram all my kitchen utensils into two tiny drawers or any of my non-perishable food into a corner. And when I have to cook, there is no one in the kitchen but me. Besides that, I have my own phone line (which basically means no one will be calling while I'm sleeping) and anyone coming into the apartment won't be strange people my roommates bring home with them--because I don't have any roommates. The last time I lived by myself was while I was as an undergrad--two weeks in a dorm single. I only moved out because stupid greasy grad students who weren't even my neighbors complained to me about my classical music. Nobody is going to complain about my music now because I simply don't have the equipment for wall-shattering noise output. So yeah, I definitely advocate living on your own even though there are some problems. This works well for me because I am perfectly content to be by myself. In fact, there are times when I need to be by myself. Gregarious people will probably need at least one roommate to maintain their sanity. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:52 AM : Friday, June 04, 2004 Questions I am tired of the superficial personal questions people who don't know me very well keep on asking me. Whenever they see me, they ask the same questions. Mostly it's the questions about graduate student life--the kind prospective students and their parents might ask me--that pop out of their mouths. One would think that after living here a couple of years, one would get an idea how most grad students eke out their existence. Maybe they're just waiting for me to give them an unusual answer, but most of the time, I get the feeling that they don't really care how I answer. They just ask out of some misconception of necessary social interaction. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:26 PM : Thursday, June 03, 2004 Thursday Threesome "When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do." -- Walt Disney Onesome: When you're curious- Is there a specific subject you're especially curious about? A person? A region of the world? An animal? A field of study? I'm curious about biology. If I weren't, I wouldn't be in the field. For me, biology is basically this big black box. Sure, you might say there are a kazillion books and research papers on the subject at the library, but if you were to put away the blabber and really look at it, we haven't even scratched the surface on how, let alone why, living things work. This is not to say that I'm not curious about the other sciences or literary criticism or even accounting, but it is my bias that the biological sciences hold the big questions for today. Twosome: you find lots of interesting- What do you consider your most interesting trait/ feature? You shouldn't ask me that. I don't find myself interesting. Someone else might have a different answer. Threesome: things to do- What's on your list of things to do everyday, whether you want to or not? Filing, phone calls, homework, chasing around after kiddos, cooking, cleaning, etc. E-mail, lab stuff, working on qualifiers, mundane household chores. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:44 AM : Wednesday, June 02, 2004 Tangled Bank #4 Bugs and drugs at De Rerum Natura. What's not to like? Tangled Bank is a collection of biology posts in the blogosphere--refreshing reading after the news. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:22 AM : Tuesday, June 01, 2004 An Army of Caterpillars While people in other parts of the country are worried about getting swamped with cicadas, up here in New England (New Hampshire to be exact) caterpillars are taking over, well, practically everything. I've heard from people that there are periodic outbreaks of these critters every couple of years (although one of my former housemates--who hates caterpillars--claims that there's going to be more next year). But as far as I knew, caterpillars aren't known for their periodicity. So what kind of caterpillars were crawling along walkways and welcome mats and raining down on hapless students opening doorways on unstable awnings? After rummaging through the online guide Caterpillars of Eastern Forests, I came to the conclusion that they were probably some type of tent caterpillar. Not very exciting if you're looking for pretty butterflies in the next couple of weeks. Tent caterpillars are actually the larvae of an uncolorful brown moth. And they're considered more of a pest than anything else since they defoliate anything green in their path. But finding out that a caterpillar invasion was nothing more than the annual pest infestation wasn't a total let down. At least it solved one of those childhood mysteries that for some reason or another I never got around to investigating. Besides eating all your greenery, tent caterpillars do an unusual thing: they make tents. No, they don't camp out in the mountains like your typical gung-ho outdoorsman, but they do make a cozy little home for themselves by weaving together a silken mats on the plant of their choice. When I was younger, I would see these huge grayish white masses dotting the treetops like the by-products of some Lovecraftian monster that was probably an ordinary house spider magnified a couple thousand times. Of course, the reality of my horrible imaginings is debatable depending on your point of view. Cute caterpillars that eat your trees are probably worse than an ugly spider. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:42 AM : |
