The Hierarchy of Blogging. (via Monkeyfilter) He forgot to put an arrow indicating the fact that the bloggers who publish pictures of their cats on Livejournal in Spanish L33tspeak with a big pink pagecounter (and use lots of smileys) look down on me because I don't have a cat, Livejournal, big pink pagecounter and have no idea how to do Spanish L33tspeak with smileys.
It's Halloween and the little kiddies are out in force with their bad costumes and their best begging-for-candy faces. The town's fire department/police department is holding free horse rides for the kiddies. Or at least I assume so because I was concentrating on the road and the cars rather than the crowd of people.
Anyways, earlier today another student and I went down to Manchester for the Nanowrimo kick-off party. Lots of familiar as well as not-so-familiar faces in the writer frenzy. I just had a great time listening in on the crazy conversations. One Nano-er had self-published her 2001 novel and another had self-published a poetry chapbook which they self-promoted during the party (they got some sales too, which I thought impressive). I also took some pictures--which I might get around to posting them when I get them developed.
A small part of me wished that everyone would have talked about their novel plots a little more. You know, so I wouldn't inadvertently copy someone. Or they could have talked more about how they were going about doing the novel this year--the unfortunate thing is that most people attending were already Nano veterans so that kind of thing was more "old hat."
I did get a Nanowrimo emergency kit though. Altoids, here I come!
So in less than 24 hours, all hell is going to break loose because I will be plunged into the madness called Nanowrimo. I know I made some promises of some sort about not talking about writing on this blog, but well, tough luck. I'll be jabbering about writing anyway. So if you want some amusement during November, you can watch me crash and burn over at Writing Sya. (Hint: The link that says "journal" is actually a blog and not a rip-your-heart-out diary.)
This morning, in a half-awake, half-asleep state, I stumbled into the library elevator because I was too lazy to take the stairs. As what King Louis XV called "The Flying Chair" rumbled to life, my brain slowly cleared and I realized I was staring at a green placard with the room directory. At eye level were the words:
Stud Rooms
"What the crap?" I thought. But before I got around to contemplating what that actually meant, the flying chair spat me out into the stacks, bewildered.
Random Stuff (Because I Couldn't Think of a Better Title)
Scraping frost off the car windows is a pain in the arse. What I need is a super-duper powered hair dryer. At least I got some exercise--but that doesn't mean I liked it.
Also, I have now figured out why the parking lot during the weekdays is always full no matter how early I come to school. The med students with their ridiculously shiny SUVs have early morning classes.
Daptomycin, an antibiotic that kills gram-positive bacteria by messing with their ion channels, has now been approved to be used for VISA (vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus). As a pessimist, I'm wondering when the bug will start developing resistance to the "new" (actually it's been around since the 1980's but people were still working out the side-effects) drug. Some people just don't understand the word "overuse."
Hoarded Ordinaries. A weblog by someone who lives in Keene, New Hampshire. I had a good laugh at this entry: Not-quite-sex in the not-quite-city. Apparently she also went to the Pumpkin Festival, but she has pictures up. (Whereas I still have to get mine developed. Yeah I'm such a luddite, but I don't have money to buy a digital camera right now.) And while I was just content with soaking up the atmosphere, she and her friends were trolling the streets for hunks.
I absolutely hate the note card method. Everyone is gushing over it like there's no tomorrow. I'm assuming that's the case because a lot of people learn by note card method. I can't learn that way. What I do is read a chunk of text and just memorize the heck out of it. So how do I outline a plot? I do actual outlining. And maybe some free-writing. In a notebook. No note cards. Note cards tend to get lost and you only get to see one card at a time. Sure, you can rearrange them, but that requires space. And I never have space.
Besides, real geeks don't use note cards. Note cards are for wannabe-yuppies and self-absorbed artists who wear black all the time.
Cooking to Hook Up: The Bachelor's Date-Night Cookbook. It's basically a "What kind of girl are you?" quiz. Blech. I don't want to be blatantly pigeon-holed. But what do you expect from a site shilling a dating book for guys desperately trying to get laid?
Which File Extension Are You? (via Shawn Allison) Okay, this pigeon-holing isn't so obvious but I like this quiz better than the first quiz because it's gender neutral and just plain bizarre. My result: "You are mp3. The kids love you. You get along with just about everybody except the music industry. You really make yourself heard."
Can't tell a cause without a scorecard. (via Dustbury) Going overboard about this stuff doesn't even begin to describe it. On another note: Why do people have to decorate their clothes, their cars, their houses, the trees in their backyard with a kazillion ribbons? All this ribbon wasting isn't going to convince a passerby to join your cause. It's like those religious nuts who preach on corners. They're very loud and vocal but in the end, you just know they're doing it to show off and not to educate other people.
Dressing the Victorian Lady from the 1850's. (via Reflections in d minor) Well, I suppose it's enormously restrictive compared to today's standards, but during the Victorian era people were absolute fanatics about covering stuff up. I heard they also covered table and chair legs in the fear that it would give randy people Bad Ideas.
Top Ten Things Never to Send Your Favorite Writer. To me, writing a fan letter to a writer seems strange. I guess the problem is, even though there are writers whose work that I like, I don't have the temperament to be an obsessive and/or dedicated fan. The only time I ever wrote to an author was in elementary school for an assignment. As I recall, I wrote something to Gary Paulsen. I got a typed form letter back--which was more than what some other people got (i.e. nothing).
Top 101 Web Sites. (via The Modulator) Atrocious navigation. I have an idea! Someone should go through every one of those 101 websites and list them on one easy to access page along with some snarky commentary where appropriate.
Using Movable Type for slideshows. (via Kottke) Arg! Please don't make weblogs into Powerpoint presentations. Powerpoint is part of my own personal Axis of Evil (which includes television and the local DMV).
* * *
So I was googling "Syaffolee" the other day and came upon the Blogshares profile of this site. Someone had voted +5 for personal and -5 for journalism. Well, duh! I'm not a journalist; I'm not even pretending to be a journalist--the closest I've been as a journalist was in high school when I was the news editor for the school paper. And I don't think that counts in real life anyway.
Onesome: Roll-- On a roll lately? What have you been up to where things just keep falling into place (maybe you're a Red Sox fan)? Yeah, what's working (even if it's just the TV)?
One of my projects in lab after many weeks of frustrating troubleshooting.
Twosome: Top-- Top of the world? What's the highest point you've ever been? No, the airliner doesn't count, I'm talking about standing somewhere . Have you made it to the roof? ...the Eiffel Tower? Mt. McKinley? How high is high for you?
I've been on the CN Tower.
Threesome: Desk-- Hey, what type of setup do you have for your computer work? Are you working from a laptop while sitting on the couch? ...or maybe you have a high tech workstation/hutch combo with mood lighting and soothing music? No? How about the kitchen table? Where do you post and work from?
I am working at a desk on a laptop. Sorry, but I don't have anything interesting about the surrounding environment.
I just wanted to turn in one of those stupid little forms you could print out from the DMV website to the local DMV, but nobody would take it. They kept referring me to the other person who referred me back to the first person. Incompetents! I ended up mailing the damn thing.
And never drive behind a New Hampshire Municiple truck. They cover up their break lights so you can never tell when they're slowing down.
Also: Why did someone someone e-mail me a link exchange request thinking that my website was about birds? I'm a microbiologist, damn it!
Hm. I just got an invite to a grad student party that involves alcohol and pumpkin carving. I think I'll pass. I don't think alcohol and knives mix very well. Besides, I've already overdosed on pumpkins this past Saturday.
I'd rather go to a Nanowrimo kick-off party. You know, a boring and geeky get-together of wannabe novelists ranting about word counts and plot points. The craziest thing that could happen would be something like someone getting inspired to put busty lesbian ninja pirates into their story.
A while back, I was talking with another student and she stopped me in mid-blabbing to ask, "What's a prof?"
It turns out that she had never heard anyone say "prof" (short for "professor") before until me. Is that weird or what? I thought everyone knew about the abbreviated word "prof".
Of course, I never address a professor as "Prof"--I always call him/her "Professor (insert last name here)" or "Doctor (insert last name here)" or even "(insert first name here)" if we're on a familiar basis.
The city of Keene, on the outside, looks like a lot of other American towns. Suburbania has crept in with its Rite-Aids and strip malls and ugly gas stations. It has even crept into the very historic heart with the Subways and Starbucks. But briefly, yesterday, the historic heart expelled any signs of modern corporate blandness for something a bit older, chaotic, and wild. The weather, in the balmy 40's, was perfected with a roiling overcast sky and dried-blood-colored leaves crunching with the consistency of freshly laundered reciepts and grocery lists forgotten in pant pockets under my sneakers.
The rough layout of the festival is that of a crooked cross. I crept in through the bottom of the cross and immediately plunged into a flock of white tents with local merchants hawking maple, fudge, and honey. Shiny silver rings and crosses glued on dyed tumbled stones. Armpit purses and headbands. Belts, bells, balloons. Paintings and holiday trinkets glittering like filmy gold leaf.
And the pumpkins! On the local radio, the announcer lady cheerily announced this year's goal of surpassing last year's 28,000+ pumpkins with 30,000. At the ends of the festival cross arms were plywood and metal towers rivaling the church steeple. These towers were filled with carved pumpkins. Happy faces, sad faces, scary faces, funny faces. Intricate carvings, grotesque carvings, carvings with the addition of spiky toothpicks. Simple carvings with nothing but a letter were actually part of a series of carved pumpkins spelling out the names of local businesses and their associated web addresses. (Ah! Pumpkins co-opted for commercialism!) More pumpkins lined the streets and overfilled an empty fountain in the center square. Pumpkins of all shapes, sizes, perfections, and colors. There was no such thing as too few pumpkins as more people streamed into the festival with carved pumpkins in boxes, arms, wheelbarrows, strollers, and stacked on the head. A station had been set up for pumpkin carving and a crowd was busy stabbing, slicing, sawing those hapless orange gourds. An orgy, a sacrifice of pumpkins! It's enough to send a plant activist into a dead faint.
Food vendors also lined the streets and on my empty stomach (I had arrived a little past noon, without lunch) everything smelled smokey and tantilizing. I ordered a bowl of scalding clam chowder and I stood on a grassy corner, surrounded by tiny grinning pumpkins eating and observing the crush of people oozing past me. A number of people were dressed in costume--mostly predictable. Young girls as Snow White. Young boys as super heroes. A troupe as the characters in the Wizard of Oz. Teenagers as horror-slasher-flick villans and devils. Older men as Dracula. Plump young women as busty tavern wenches. And thin middle-aged women as vampy witches with skin-tight cotumes to match their demeanor. The only original costume I spied was an orange iMac.
There was also entertainment in the form of performances like an audio play, a choir, Andean pipes. The local theater was showing free cartoons and the Three Stooges. A stage was set up for a succession of local bands. I only stuck around to observe two boy bands: one in which all the members were thin fashionable young men with longish dark hair and screaming guitars surrounded by teenaged female groupies and the second in which all the members were dressed as hicks in button-down shirts and baseball caps and had an audience comprising of beer-bellied and moustached thirty-somethings and their frizzy-haired wives.
I did what any visitor would do. Take pictures of pumpkins. And satisfied with that, I headed back to the parking lot only to see a gaggle of my fellow graduate students just arriving, each of them glued to the side of their girlfriends/boyfriends. At that moment, reality intruded--I was no longer part of a crowd having a grand time but someone so awkward and strange (the third wheel, the odd aunt, the black sheep) that it wasn't even funny. I wondered briefly if they pitied me for going alone. I hope not.
Balé Folclórico da Bahia. "The state of Bahia is the heart and soul of Brazil and the epicenter of Afro-Brazilian rhythms. Balé Folclórico da Bahia’s 38 dancers, musicians and singers are internationally renowned for their boundless energy, brilliant costumes, explosive drumming and exuberant dancing." I went to one of their performances--at the entrance, people were handing out earplugs because it was going to be loud. You bet: drums amplified by amps and microphones. The dancing was extremely energetic and the dancers even jumped off the stage and got audience members dancing in the aisles. Even though I was sitting in the second row, I remained stolidly in my seat--I'm terribly self-conscious when it comes to these things. Some sequences were wonderfully acrobatic and ethnically flavorful. Other sequences were obviously influenced by Modern Dance. I don't understand Modern Dance--which to me looks as mechanical as step aerobics.
Here's one result I saw on someone's blog: "You are DNA. You're a smart person, and you appear incredibly complex to people who don't know you. You're incomparably full of information, and most of it is useless."
Comment: No, no, no! Most of it isn't useless. You only call it useless because you don't know what it does.
My result: You are water. You're not really organic; you're neither acidic nor basic, yet you're an acid and a base at the same time. You're strong willed and opinionated, but relaxed and ready to flow. So while you often seem worthless, without you, everything would just not work. People should definitely drink more of you every day.
Comment: Seems worthless? I certainly feel that way at times.
1. Blackout:: Electricity 2. Platinum:: Bars 3. Leather and lace:: Doily 4. Court:: Order 5. Mind your own business:: Nosy 6. Gambling:: Sucker 7. Lily:: of the Valley 8. Evasive:: Answer 9. Turn-on:: Turn-off 10. Suspect:: Line up
The walls are painted off-white. But that's not what you notice because on top of the paint are pictures and posters and shelves. The entire east side is covered with windows that open outward into a slim balcony.
The north part of the room has a lab bench with a microscope. Beside the microscope are a couple of glass slides, some agar plates with streaks of bacteria, a spiral bound notebook, and a pen. There are some shelves above the bench with some bottles of solutions labeled by a hurried hand. Underneath the bench are some metal drawers. At least one of the drawers contain science papers, photocopied from elsewhere, stapled at the corner, and filed in alphabetical order according to the first author's last name. There is also a stool in front of the microscope, but no person is occupying it. Just a thick molecular cell biology textbook. The north wall is papered with posters of science-related diagrams.
A door to the rest of the house is located on the west side, but it is closed. There's a calendar tacked up on it (with pictures of cute, fuzzy animals) with X's marked on days gone. Under the doorknob is a plastic trashcan with bits of crumpled paper and some discarded post-it notes. To the right of the door is a blackboard with small bits of colored chalk littering the edge. Someone has written half of a poem and has drawn a rather strange face in green underneath. Underneath the blackboard is a cardboard box taped shut. It's labeled "Used" but used what?
The left of the door segues into the south part of the room. The south wall is just a wooden shelf--wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. There are all sorts of books imaginable, from non-fiction, fiction, serious, trashy. On the west corner is a stuffed armchair with a blanket; both so well-worn that the real color is smudged away and all that is left is gray. There's a red rug and on top of that a three-legged footrest. Beside the chair is a plain metal reading lamp and a canister filled with umbrellas. Behind the chair, the wall is taped up with newspaper and magazine clippings.
Ah, and back to the east with the windows. The drapes are a pale beige and they are pulled back to let the light in. One of the window doors is opened to the balcony which has a telescope (for spying on people) and a wooden bucket containing pebbles, two slingshots, and four paper airplanes. The balcony overlooks a residential street where no one has bothered to close their blinds. The railing is wrought iron, twisted into grotesque shapes. Someone has superglued a plastic gargoyle to the corner.
History of Weblogging. Warning: 12 mb quicktime file. I guess this is an interesting documentary clip on the history of weblogging but the problem I see here is that it goes back way too far. Weblog gurus seem to have co-opted historical figures who may have published opinions and written daily accounts of their lives, but these people are more like essayists and diarists. The term weblogging to me implies something that is on the internet. Essayists and diarists can be webloggers if what they write is on the internet. Otherwise, they're just essayists and diarists.
Mobile phone risk revealed. "Using a mobile phone for ten or more years doubles the risk of getting a type of benign head tumour, a Swedish study has found."
Coke versus Pepsi: It's all in the head. "The preference for Coke versus Pepsi is not only a matter for the tongue to decide, Samuel McClure and his colleagues have found. Brain scans of people tasting the soft drinks reveal that knowing which drink they're tasting affects their preference and activates memory-related brain regions that recall cultural influences. Thus, say the researchers, they have shown neurologically how a culturally based brand image influences a behavioral choice."
Wired moose. "It's not uncommon for bull moose to challenge inanimate objects to a battle during the rut when testosterone has taken over." I think this statement has wider applications to males in general.
Implantable tags beam back medical ID. "A US company this week got the green light to implant tiny chips in people's arms in order to instantly access their medical records. The move highlights how this unassuming technology is now sweeping into everyday use." The pessimist in me says: dystopian sci-fi future here we come.
Auras may be generated in the brain. Okay, I know I've been posting way too many Nature news articles, but they're so interesting! Next time someone comes up to me and says that aura reading is spiritual/mystical/gobbledy-gook clap-trap, I can point out that this is just some brain abnormality on their part.
The Mona Lisa experience. I've seen the Mona Lisa once. I found it somewhat unremarkable and it isn't so vivid in my memory as other places that I've been in France. Ah, if only I had a blog back then--there were so many very cool niche places that no one else (not even any of the other students in my tour group) had ever noticed.
Onesome: Lights!- What do you think of the trend to light up houses for *every* holiday? It used to be just Christmas and maybe Halloween, but lately the stores have been full of Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day lights. Oh, and Thanksgiving/Autumn and...
I think it's actually quite crazy. Waste of materials. Waste of energy. Waste of time. But that's just me. People can do whatever they want with their houses and I could care less.
Twosome: Camera!- What's your preference? Digital or film, black and white or color, portraits, candids, or just whatever catches your eye?
I have a regular camera and I buy color film because it's cheaper than black and white. Otherwise, no preference (since I'm not a photographer).
Threesome: Action!- Do you have a favorite sport? Do you follow the local high school or college team, trek to the kids' games each weekend or are you all about the pros?
I do not follow any sports. It just doesn't interest me. These days, people seem to be completely obsessed with baseball. Why can't anybody be obsessed with writing?
In reading about the giant Mimivirus which was recently sequenced, I came across a very strangely named bacterium named Wigglesworthia. Did some microbiologist have a sense of humor and decide to name a new genus after Dr. Evil's cat in Austin Powers? Alas, that isn't the case. I got my W's and B's mixed up as the cat's name is actually Mr. Bigglesworth.
Wigglesworthia was discovered by Serap Aksoy in 1995 at Yale. The bacterium was named after Sir Vincent Brian Wigglesworth. In entomology circles, Wigglesworth was known as "the world's greatest insect physiologist" with a specialization in insect hormone action (invertebrate endocrinology). So why is a microscopic bug named after a guy who specialized in macroscopic ones? Well, it turns out that Wigglesworthia was originally isolated from the gut of the tsetse fly--medically important because it is the vector for sleeping sickness--one of the insects meticulously described by Wigglesworth.
As a gut bacterium, it isn't all that surprising that from genome analysis we see that Wigglesworthia is related to the Enterobacteria which includes the laboratory workhorse and human gut bacterium E. coli. Wigglesworthia, however, has lost a lot of its genes while co-evolving and becoming more dependent on the tsetse fly. In fact, it has one of the smallest bacterial genomes sequenced: less than 770 kb or one-sixth of that of E. coli. The bacteria live inside specialized cells of a U-shaped gut organ called the mycetome. Wigglesworthia isn't completely getting a free ride though--the fly requires the bacteria for survival.
One reason for the tsetse fly's dependence on Wigglesworthia is nutrition. Genomic studies have revealed bacterial genes that encode pathways for vitamin biosynthesis. This also has an interesting impact on fertility. In tsetse flies that do not carry the endosymbiont, fertility is dramatically reduced. Fertility can be restored if the flies are given a B vitamin supplement. How does this work? The young actually inherit the mother's endosymbiont. Scientists speculate that Wigglesworthia may infect the larvae through the mother's milk. Since the tsetse fly is a major carrier for sleeping sickness, Wigglesworthia might be a key tool to help control insect populations.
And after saying that, I feel like a clichéd deadhead. But really, it was gorgeous--on Friday, it rained, but by Saturday morning everything looked limpid and sloe-eyed, sort of like a woman who's been sniveling and bawling her eyes out for the past hour and now she looks all red and puffy but her mind is clear. The sky was a swirl of silver-gray trying to be blue but not quite making it, clouds white on top, dark on the bottom, moving west to east fast.
The air itself was brisk, cool but not cold. Wind whipped up any of the stray hairs that escaped from my ponytail. If you took in a deep breath of air, it smelled almost crystalline and sweet. New Hampshire is in the full grip of fall--if you drive down 89, the sky looks like a splotchy, gray-blue layer cake. The road swerves into hills that are carpeted with trees in red and gold. If you happen to be driving behind another car and the wind decides to pick up, the loose leaves from those trees get swept down to the road to mix with the churning wheels. After all that turbulent jostling, the leaves fly out from beneath the car as a shower of sparks--one can imagine that car as a mechanical fairy leaving behind a trail of pixie dust.
It was also a wonderful weekend for going book crazy. I had discovered that a tiny, out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere town approximately thirty minutes south of Hanover was holding a book sale. It was sponsored by the town's library, but all the books were trucked out to the main room in the town hall (which doubled as a church). Once I got there, I discovered that they were going to sell the books $1 per bag the next day. So mostly I looked and just picked the books that I really wanted to have before someone else snatched them up. An amazing find on Saturday: an entire set of the Anne of Green Gables series in pristine condition for two bucks.
So today, I went back to the book sale and got there fifteen minutes before the frenzy was going to start. I scoped out the books and wondered more than once if I was slightly mad. What sort of person goes to book sales and load up on more books than a normal person could read in a lifetime? Lucky that I read fast, I suppose, because I do intend to read all the books I acquire. I don't buy books just to possess them. I ended up stuffing two bags with as many books I could cram into them. All of it I ended up paying $2 worth of dimes because I was trying to get rid of my extra change.
I got a lot of literature type books--you know, the ones that won prizes but most people never bother to read--as well as some genre books that caught my eye. A sample: The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth (a cookbook with no pictures, I figure I'll wing it if I decide to try any of the recipes), Beyond Einstein (a physics book), Essentials for the Scientific and Technical Writer, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg.
I guess if I can restrain myself, it'll be a while before I go into a library with the intent of checking out a book to read in my (rapidly dwindling) spare time.
A post-doc upon hearing about a new culinary device which is essentially a hybridization chamber rigged to a vacuum pump with the ability to marinate a chicken in ten minutes: "So it's anaerobic? I wonder what kind of bacteria you can grow in there."
Overheard from a man who hears his biological clock ticking: "I want kids. That's more important than getting married. I don't need to have a wife to have kids."
From a med student annoyed with her classmates: "You know those pre-meds who were in your undergraduate biology classes? You know how they are, right? Well in med school, they're worse."
A mother talking about her college-bound son who visited the campus of Colgate University: "So his host turned out to be this rather attractive young woman who showed him around. She also took him to meet a bunch of her attractive friends. Not surprisingly, he was completely sold. An excellent way to get new recruits, don't you think?"
Cooking For Engineers. A blog for those who like to cook and have an analytical mind. I definitely love the table-recipes.
Hero Machine. (via somebody from Nanowrimo) A flash application where you can rig up your own fantasy character for your role-playing games or your fantasy novel. I find it similar to playing with paper dolls. Amusing for the first ten seconds or so, but silly any time after. Besides, I'm one of those people who doesn't need a physical visualization for characters. I can do it in my head just as well.
I saw a thirty-something-year-old woman still wearing the jacket she got from high school as well as the same hair-do from that era. I knew she was thirty-something because her jacket said "1990". Is this incredibly funny or incredibly sad? I felt incredibly cruel just to have even noticed this. I hope anyone over the age of eighteen reading this post have not worn their high school jackets once they've gotten out of high school. Yeah, those things are probably expensive and you might as well get as much wear out of them as possible, but really, get with the times. At least wear a jacket that doesn't shout out when you graduated. Or maybe this is just me--I always viewed high school as a four year long blurry phase, not the highlight of my life.
And can't my neighbors be quiet? Do they even know the meaning of the word "quiet"? Listening to shouting matches in the wee hours of the morning is not my idea of a fun time. Actually, to be honest, I think it would be better if they played their rap music at 4 AM. I could sleep through that (it's rhythmic, after all). I just don't like it when the neighbors are arguing and the only word coming out of their mouths is the F-word. It's not that I'm a prude--I'm only offended because they've replaced the beautiful variety of language to one single guttural sound.
I am also not amused with young women who jabber away for the sole reason of filling in silence. I think I've mentioned this pet peeve before, but there it is, for those of you who don't know. I like silence and if you talk with no purpose except to kill silence, you will have gained my eternal irritation. I'm also not amused with the jabbering women's klutzy boyfriends who light up cigarettes in small, enclosed spaces and then bean me on the head simply because I'm in their way.
I'm actually toying with the idea that people are annoying because they have a life or want a life. You know, a social life. People have wants and needs. I'm not denying the fact that people do. But when those wants and needs intrude upon my wants and needs (and really, I have very little of those)--oh, if only there was a way that I could whap some sense into them without getting into any trouble. But do people care if they've trampled over someone else to get to their wants and needs? Nooo. Whatever people say, life is a Darwinian rat race. I might as well gird myself with crankiness and plunge forth into the teeming morass. Pleasantness has no place with the self-centered.
Stats about all US cities. (via Pharyngula) An interesting resource. The demographics of where I live isn't so surprising. I think I was more interested in the crime statistics. What can I say, I'm a bit morbid.
Publisher to put science journals online. "German science publisher Springer Science + Business Media will start in January to put all back issues of its 1,250 scientific journals on the Internet, some of which date back to 1886." Ooo. Old journals. Have I told you that I browse old science journals in my spare time? Well now you know--that I'm an even bigger geek than you thought I was.
A Puzzle for the Autumnal Equinox. "Every now and then you come across a scientific hypothesis that is so elegant and powerful in its ability to explain that it just feels right. Yet that doesn't automatically make it right. Even when an elegant hypothesis gets support from experiments, it's not time to declare victory."
The 20 greatest equations. My favorites? Maxwell's equations, Schrodinger's equation, and the Ideal Gas Law. E=mc2 is way overrated.
The Long Tail. A Wired article on the economics of hits vs. non-hits. I normally don't listen to or read bestsellers anyway.
Prof Pursued by Mob of Bloggers. I know that this got to be more than an annoyance for the prof in question, but who can't love the title of this article? I'm imagining a middle-aged prof with glasses and a sweater that went out of style in his grad school days being chased by a bunch of rabid geeks with laptops and monitor tans across a campus courtyard. And I'm giggling like mad.
Technology's gender balancing act. "Technology has come a long way since the washing machine, but somewhere along the line it lost relevance to women. Now gadget makers are striving to win back the female market."
Interview: Philip Pullman. "The learning curve from teaching to writing has taught Philip Pullman a simple lesson: children don't want literature, they want to be told a story." Basically, Pullman is saying that writers these days are too concerned with being literary and hip. As a reader, I say, right on. When I'm reading something, I want to be entertained, not be bored to death with clause construction and pomo ranting.
Grand rounds #3. Yes, I'm terribly behind, but I'm terribly behind on a lot of internet things. So for those of you interested in medical things, go read. I'm just amused that Kottke seems to have noticed this meme. He never noticed these kinds of memes before.
I've been spending some time at the Nanowrimo forums and I've noticed some interesting threads. Here's one on types of speculative fiction which sums up the major sub-genres nicely. It's not all inclusive, of course, but such lists can't be. People create new sub-genres all the time. There's another thread on male vs. female main characters. There's an argument that readers like male main characters better because both genders can identify with external issues and that female main characters aren't as popular because males find it difficult to sympathize with a woman's internal conflicts. The argument, in my opinion, is just a stereotypical excuse for something more fundamental. The reader can identify with any character if the writer describes the character well. If the writer does this badly, then the character comes out inscrutable and at worst, fake.
Who are novelists voting for? How many people vote for which side isn't all that interesting. It's the reasons that they give for their choices which really struck me. No matter who they're voting for, they all sound completely brainwashed.
Catching Up on the Petblogging. Gotta love that picture. The kitty looks like he's spaced out--nothing between the ears.
The myth of 'security moms'. (via Dustbury) Yeah, you've got to wonder, are there really women out there who are so scared out of their wits that they'll mindlessly let someone with a macho image implement policy that will "protect" their children? Yeah, there are probably some women out there with that kind of mindset but I should hope that most women aren't so passive and dumb, even if they're scared.
Half verbal, so to speak. Hm. I also scored the same range as Dustbury. Also, I took the SAT twice and I scored the same exact thing both times. That's about as specific as I will get about my score.
People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid. Um, yeah. And this is surprising, how? If you know anything about biology, you'd have already known that.
The Genome in Black and White (and Gray). I'm waiting until someone designs an easy method to test all the genetic markers for a particular disease. I'm not subscribing to the idea that a drug might work based on what you look like.
A new addition to our home. Aw! More cute animal pics, this time of a pregnant mouse. Not sure people where I live would appreciate rodents, though, not with the recent hantavirus scare.
Nobel peace laureate claims HIV deliberately created. She may have won a Nobel Prize, but that doesn't mean she knows anything about virology. I guess that's what ultimately gets me mad about such things--people have this notion that if you believe something is true, regardless of the facts, then it must be true. They might not want to admit it, but they're living out a fantasy-land in their heads.
No Internet for two weeks? How 28 people coped. If other people weren't so dependent on the internet and if my work wasn't so dependent on the internet, I could cope with no internet access. What I mean is--e-mail, catalogues, and search. Nowadays, who wants to waste a day sending a notice via snail mail or rummaging through paper catalogues or even asking a librarian who's probably too wired now to even remember how to look up things in the old days.
Onesome: Kitchen- What's your favorite room in your place? Do you migrate towards the kitchen, or prefer to cozy up in the living room?
I don't have a favorite room.
Twosome: Gadget- What's your favorite gadget type item and why?
I would say the computer, but it does too many tasks to be really considered a gadget. So I'll vote for the can opener. It's easy to operate and helps you get food. The corkscrew, on the other hand, is a pain in the neck. I can never get the physics right to pull out a cork--even with all the online videos I've watched of the procedure.
Threesome: Store- What's your favorite store, even if you never actually buy anything there?
Bookstores. Because I always end up buying something from there.
I swear it was not my fault that I got lost about a kazillion times. Don't worry, no one's blaming me. At least I didn't have any passengers this time.
On Saturday, I went to a Gem and Mineral Festival that was being held at the Sunapee Resort in Newbury. First, I got lost. Well, that wasn't strictly true--I knew pretty much where I was, it was just those darn road signs that totally threw me. They never indicated what route was what until at the particular junction so I would always pass it before realizing what I did. Anyway, once I got to the festival, there were lots of colorful, shiny, and sparkly stuff, to be sure, and I'm not one to deny that some of it attracted me. However, a loud voice inside my head kept telling me that all the beautiful colors were probably the results of dyes. I guess that somewhat spoiled the experience although I did get a few tumbled stones.
This morning, I got lost again. At first, I had planned on attending a Pumpkin Festival in Manchester but soon scrapped that after closer examination of what the event entailed--which was mostly activities aimed toward the kiddies. But I decided to go to Manchester anyway--mostly because I wanted to practice driving on the freeway/highway/interstate/ whatever-you-call-those-nasty-roads-which-speedsters-go-90-mph. The highway wasn't the problem. It was rather tame and mindless. But whoa, when you get to Manchester, there's a problem.
Maybe I'm directionally impaired or something. I saw a sign that said, "Next 4 Exits, Manchester" but I only saw two exits to go into the city. I nearly headed into Boston had I not seen the interchange for another highway which I knew was too far south of where I wanted to be. (Although Boston is a cool place, I'm not ready for the crazy traffic of Boston--I might never be.) Then, once I got into Manchester, I got confused by all the roads that went by several different names. It might have helped if I had a road map of the city with me, but I managed to wing it.
So yeah, if you're desperate to get somewhere on time, please don't ask me.
Maurice Wilkins. "Maurice Wilkins, who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA's structure, died [October 5] aged 87. Wilkins was still a staff member at King's College London, where he had worked since 1946."
Notions of beauty. An interesting article about what we perceive as beautiful according to art movements and media.
Who really dunnit? A bunch of Australians who've published their crackpot theories about Christianity is decrying Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, for ripping off their stuff. Hey, even though I thought Brown's novel was highly overrated, as a fiction author, Brown can base his plots on anything he likes.
How Things Work. A weblog where the author answers reader-submitted questions on the physics of every day life. A very cool read.
BiologyBrowser. A portal for the biology-minded. Another cool tool.
Towards tag-based bookmark management in web browsers? Plasticbag proposes a new organizational method for arranging bookmarks. Sounds needlessly complicated to me. I put all my bookmarks on my homepage (the page that first loads up when I open my browser--it's located on my computer) and it's arranged via Dewey Decimal System. Except for my science links that I use all the time. I've placed these on a page called lab.html and it's just one click away.
Topobo. "Topobo is a 3D constructive assembly system embedded with kinetic memory, the ability to record and playback physical motion." Neat!
Use the Subject Line. There are some Very Important People who never send me e-mails with subject lines. This annoys me to no end, but I can never find a way to tactfully tell them what they're doing wrong. Lucky for them, I don't have a spam filter on my university account.
At These Web Sites, It's a Man's World. I don't visit those sites at all so I don't particularly care. But if you're into the Gawker Media stuff, there you go.
Need a New Job? Check Out a Blog. What I'm worried about is when they start bringing psychologists onto the scene. You know, the employer will get a psychologist to look up a potential employee's blog and evaluate his/her temperament before deciding to hire. I mean, what would a psychologist say about me?
Genome Model Applied to Software. It's a bit unnerving to think that as a biologist who has some familiarity with bioinformatics, I also know a little on what software might be coming out.
I Hate ITC Garamond. I don't really see anything bad with that particular typeface, but I do have my own pet peeves regarding fonts. I absolutely despise Comic Sans. It's an unprofessional and immature typeface.
A pedestrian was nearly run over by a car on a crosswalk near where I live. I was darkly amused that a police car was right there and immediately went after the careless driver.
I've been having really strange and disturbing dreams. Like spiders and electrocution. It doesn't help that I've woken up in the middle of the night for the past week. I guess my neighbors are hitting another schizophrenic patch in their relationship once again.
Onesome: Wild-- Whoa! ...wild times lately! Florida and neighboring states have been blown away; the Northeast has been deluged; California is shakin' again; and the Pacific Northwest is getting ready to erupt. Okay, what's too wild for you? What will you live with and what do you want to stay far, far away from?
Everything's too wild for me. I want to stay as far away from everything as I possibly can. Maybe except for snow. Snow is okay in small quantities.
Twosome: Blue-- Blue Delft? Off the wall: What color are your day to day dishes. ...and does anyone in this crowd have some really nice stuff you like to break out for the upcoming holiday dinners?
What color are my dishes? That seems like a stalker-ish question. All I'll say is that my dishes are mismatched. I won't say how they're mismatched.
Threesome: Yonder-- Oh, man, science fiction is reality: the private sector has reached space and is getting set to visit on a regular basis. Would you like to go out yonder? I mean, if the group with the five-seater offered you a suborbital flight, would you be up for that?
I don't know. Maybe, if the price is right and it's a destination I want to go to.
I'm feeling a little tired and burned out. Not to mention stressed. So aside from the meme-ish stuff (its regularity will be an indication that I'm still alive) and barring anything that gets me really mad, I'm going to take a break from the internet. Well, I wouldn't be totally cut off from the computer. I'll still be browsing around on PubMed and TIGR and a variety of science journals, not to mention Nanowrimo and the blogs that have made it onto my daily to-read list, but with not so much regularity. I do not know when this break will end.
* * *
Secret of radiation-proof bugs proposed. "By comparing bacteria with different sensitivities to radiation, the team found that the most resistant bacteria tend to store up high levels of manganese and relatively low levels of iron. By contrast, the bacteria that shrivel up at a hint of radiation have little manganese and more iron."
Girls Go From Hello Kitty To Hello Debit Card. This is bad. Not only does this spoil kids but also teaches them to be irresponsible. I also think the same thing about allowances. There's more to life than just buying stuff.
On reBlogging. I'm confused. (Or maybe it's because I'm sleep-deprived that everything is going over my head.) Is reBlogging a blogging company or does it mean somebody blogging something that's been blogged about before? And it also makes me think of re-fried beans. Oh, my head hurts.
A man who pricked his finger and smelled putrid for 5 years. If you can't access this article, you can also go to the Ig Nobel website and look under 1998. Apparently, a Brit working in the food industry dressing chickens pricked himself in the finger. His finger then promptly developed a very strong odor. After several skin biopsies which showed nothing wrong, the doctors hypothesized that several Clostridial species (bacteria normally found in the GI tract) had taken over the man's normal skin flora and the smell was the byproduct of bacterial metabolism. No treatment worked for the patient. Unfortunately, he had to wait several years for the infection to go away by itself.
National Dinner Tour. Hm. So if people called some number in the photo of a catalogue, they get a dinner with some guy that I've never even heard of? I always thought those phone numbers were fake anyway.
The cockles of my heart are currently warm. I'm not so cynical as to believe that this is an advertisement for Amazon, but something in this post really bothers me. I mean, sure, go ahead and complain if you don't get a DVD player delivered--but only if the company took your money and never gave anything back. I've ordered stuff from Amazon before and never got the product because they couldn't get a hold of it--but then again, they never billed me for a product they couldn't send. And a DVD player for an eight-year-old kid? Hey, if I were an aunt (which I could be someday), I wouldn't be so crazy as to spoil the kid rotten like that. It's not that I wouldn't love the kid, but I remember being an eight-year-old kid once upon a time. And an eight-year-old kid does not need a DVD player no matter how hard you rationalize. (Now if the kid was 15, it'll be a different story.) Of course, this is coming from a person who didn't get a portable CD player until she was in grad school...
Dining at Daniel. Ooo. This sounds cool. One day, I want to be an unhip young person dining at a posh restaurant just to see the reactions of the restaurant employees to non-posh customers.
Would you want this clown teaching biology? Oh boy. This will definitely get a lot of biologists in a dander. But I'm not surprised. One of my high school biology teachers thought that way. Admittedly, I spent part of my time growing up in the Bible belt--but I didn't turn out to be that kind of grad student.
I've seen her a couple times before--no wonder some people remark that they've seen me walking around campus when in reality, I'm stuck in lab about 98% of the time that I'm in school. This bothers me more than the fact that there's someone out there who looks just like me. People will see my doppelganger wandering outside and they'll wonder why I'm shirking my studies (mainly slaving away at the bench). I don't want to give people the wrong impression even if it's not me giving that impression.
Besides, my doppelganger is too trendy for anyone who really knows me to really mistake her for me. She has meticulously cropped short hair and those nifty wire-framed glasses. I used to have short hair--about a year and a half ago--and I do not wear wire-framed glasses (mine are a clunky black plastic, I privately call them librarian glasses). And she was wearing hot pink. I wouldn't be caught dead in hot pink.
What annoys me about gabby, ignorant old ladies is that they are so smug about their ignorance. I didn't say anything--gabby old ladies also tend to rip you into shreds if you dare contradict them--but I was, to say the least, pissed off. See, one of them said concerning the person who got infected with hantavirus: "And he was taking arthritis medication at the same time! You can't trust those hospital people."
The old lady then proceeded to imply that the person got deliberately infected. Arg! Prescribing arthritis medication has nothing to do with viral infection. The medication, however, could have contributed to the susceptibility of the person getting infected since the arthritis medication was suppressing the immune system. People have got to stop blaming doctors for everything that goes wrong with their bodies. They had no idea their patient was going to come in contact with a dangerous virus when they prescribed the medication.
Besides, I have not heard from any credible news source that the infected person was taking any medications.
