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Tuesday, May 31, 2005 A Book Meme (Via Belicove.com who, yes, tagged me.) 1. Estimate the total number of books you've owned in your life. Probably way too many. A couple hundred at least. 2. What's the last book you bought? Urban Shaman by C.E. Murphy. This is fiction. Not some new age voodoo. I think technically, this book should be coming out tomorrow, but I got my hands on it early. What did I get out of it? Well, there's this terrific description of this policeman captain that the heroine describes as "a superhero gone to seed." I think he ate too many donuts. 3. What's the last book you read? See answer to question #2. 4. List 5 books that mean a lot to you. This one is a hard one. It's like that question in that other book meme which asks you which five books you'd like to take on a deserted island. There are a lot of books that "mean" a lot to me (whichever way you take that) and to be fair, I think a lot of the books I've read have influenced me in some way or other. I could include a bunch of non-fiction books (like the first book on genetics I read or the classic college calculus text nicknamed "Tommy" or the molecular biology protocols by Maniatis), but let me just limit down to fantasy novels even though anyone regularly reading this probably can already guess what they are. Why? Because I feel like it. The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley - The ultimate "Heroine Who Kicks Butt" novel as well as my favorite. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis - My first real introduction into the fantasy genre. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien - There's something very laid back about this prequel to LOTR. And I loved the riddles which in some ways was the best part. Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay - The first fantasy book I read that was truly meant for adults. I was probably around 11 or 12 at the time. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman - After a long drought of speculative fiction, made me realize that yes, good fantasy is still being written. 5. Tag 5 people! I'd rather not. But if anyone reading this wants to do this meme, they're welcome to. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:48 PM : Sunday, May 29, 2005 Board Games and a Meme For some reason, I've been thinking back on board games. Specifically the one called Survive! It's a bit morbid--or maybe I just like morbid board games (Clue comes to mind)--with exploding volcanoes and waters infested with so many man-eating creatures. And then, in the end, you tally up points by looking underneath your people tokens. And some people are "worth" more than others. Hm. In reality, isn't that the truth, though? Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:47 AM : Saturday, May 28, 2005 A Meme Via Juvin.com, here's the DVD Meme. Warning: incredibly boring answers to follow. 1) Total Number of films owned on dvd: 0. 2) The last film I bought: See answer to first question. 3) The last film I watched: Kung Fu Hustle. Hilarious although a bit violent. 4) Five films I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me: The five films will probably change with my mood. But let's see-- The Lord of the Rings (It essentially is one movie isn't it?) The Red Violin (An absolutely beautiful film.) The Matrix (Forget the sequels. The first one is it.) Nosferatu (Deliciously horrifying.) The Scarlet Pimpernel (Okay, it's a TV movie, but I was reminded of this from a comment in one of the previous posts. And who can resist Anthony Andrews' rendition of: "They seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Or is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel!") Other people to "tag" with this meme: Go tag yourself if you like being "it". [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:30 PM : Friday, May 27, 2005 Linkage 11 Steps to a Better Brain. I'm sure many people would think medication that keeps you awake is a boon--after all, doesn't more awake hours equal more work done? But would others exploit this to make people work more? Yet in the same article, they say sleep-deprivation is bad. Also, I can't see myself eating beans for breakfast. The flu pandemic: were we ready? Nature has put up a (fictional) weblog about what it would be like if the world was hit by a flu pandemic. 'Sarcasm' brain areas discovered. This research isn't a joke--it may aid in understanding why the autistic can't tell the difference between sarcasm and normal communication. Natural-Born Liars. "Everybody lies ... every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception." [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:10 AM : Thursday, May 26, 2005 Spring Cleaning and Other Things It's been raining for the past so many odd days. Everything is wet and cold and depressing. I've also decided to get rid of some books currently in my possession--particularly, the ones which I've gotten from used book stores and book sales and I don't want to read more than once. Some of them I haven't read yet, so I know I have to get cracking. I want to get rid of these books soon. So I will be on a book reading marathon starting tonight (and possibly ending sometime next week if my sanity holds) and this blog will be even more book-centric than usual. On annoying eaters: Why do people have to be so loud when they're eating yoghurt or pudding? They sound like vacuum cleaners. And what's up with those other people who try to justify their atrocious eating habits with: "But I exercise every day!" If there's even a lapse, they're going to become bigger than a pig on a poke. Typology Test. Did it tell me something that I didn't already know? No. Desktop Cloaking Device. Hm. A gizmo for people with no self-restraint. What is your world view?. I scored "Materialist", but this doesn't mean I'm some hedonist seeking to obtain more and more stuff. This is the quiz's explanation: Materialism stresses the essence of fundamental particles. Everything that exists is purely physical matter and there is no special force that holds life together. You believe that anything can be explained by breaking it up into its pieces. i.e. the big picture can be understood by its smaller elements. Locus Awards Finalists. I've heard of most of them but haven't read most of them either. Bah. One needs an infinite amount of time to finish anything these days anyway. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:57 AM : The Thursday Threesome: Comment and Trackback Spam Onesome- Comment: Are there any blogs you regularly read and comment on? Is it just to say "hi, how are you?" or is there one site that just makes you have to join in the conversation? All of the blogs that I regularly visit are on my blogroll. But if you're one of those people who like to look at your stats all the time and you don't see me visiting (or can't tell), I'm probably reading you through Bloglines instead. I would like to think that most of the comments I make on various weblogs pertain to the corresponding post. However, there are certain sites that I feel more comfortable commenting on. On the weblogs I rarely comment--it's either because I don't have anything further to add to the author's insight or a previous commenter has said it far better than I ever could. The only weblogs (or individual posts) that I don't feel comfortable posting in are the specialized ones outside my realm of knowledge or interest. Example: I would not comment on an economics blog unless the author suddenly wanted to break things up and blog on his loud neighbors playing rap music. Twosome- and Trackback: Does anyone actually ever really use this function of their blog? Yes, people use that function. Just not me. Threesome- Spam: We all hate it! Anyone have any clever ways of dealing with it? Share it with us, please. Not really. But this question does remind me of a silly piece of sci-fi in the most recent issue of Nature about dead people and spam. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:11 AM : Wednesday, May 25, 2005 Grammar, Punctuation, And All That* Judging from the tone of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss most assuredly has had at least one apoplectic fit over the decline of syntax on the internet. I don't mean this in a bad way, of course. I think anyone with any respect for the written language has gotten a headache from seeing something like "LOL HaxX0rz!!1!!" in increasing frequency on the computer screen. Most of this primer focuses on the basic yet insidious mistakes with a wry sort of humor that one will either appreciate or denigrate with something on the order of "get a life!" Truss, however, is not the most anal-retentive grammarian no matter how much you read into her anecdotes. That honor is reserved for the library patron who checked out the book before I did and penciled in corrections. I will have to say that personally, I side with following grammatical rules. Without them, words would be strewn pell-mell across the page and no one reading will be able to make any sense of them. It's not so much order but clarity. A misplaced comma would be a terrible thing in an important sentence, festering misunderstandings and creating court battles. My feelings on punctuation: Apostrophe--My major pet peeve is people who have absolutely no idea how to use it in possessives and plurals. They think everything is interchangeable. It isn't! Comma--I'm more lazy about this one. I usually use it whenever there's a pause in speech. I'm a little more fanatical about the Oxford comma though. In a series such as apples, oranges, and pears I always put the second comma which is after the word oranges. The entire thing looks a little funny to me if it isn't there. Semicolons and colons--I use them whenever I feel like it. Maybe I should be more strict with myself about their usage and stop inserting commas wherever a semicolon is more correct. Dashes--I probably use too many of them even though I think it contributes to my writing style (whatever that is). Periods and quotation marks--In this weblog, I try to follow the British rule rather than the American one simply because it makes more sense. If I had a sentence that said Harry saw a "UFO". I would write that rather than Harry saw a "UFO." The idea that a period always goes inside the quotation is daft. Clearly, the period ends the entire sentence and not the quotation mark. *Any grammatical errors in this post are unintentional. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:43 AM : Sunday, May 22, 2005 Update On Recent Reading I have to admit, I have an inordinate amount of fondness for HWKB (Heroines Who Kick Butt) novels. My favorite book happens to fall squarely into this peculiar genre, The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, where the main character is a young woman who feels very out of place in a foreign land but ends up saving the day by dropping an entire mountain on an army of evil demons. Of course, this must be distinguished from other HWKB books (Heroes Who Kick Butt) where the male characters save the world and bed the sexy femme fatale. I don't particularly like those books--they seem nothing more than a parables of boardroom brawls and marriages to top-heavy trophy wives. Catch the Lightning by Catherine Asaro. This one has a heroine but I find it more like a traditional space opera than an HWKB. There's a one sentence summary of the book on the reviews front page which probably describes it the most aptly: "A young girl from Earth falls in love with a handsome stranger--and becomes a pawn in an interstellar war." The Earth the young girl comes from, however, is from an Earth in a parallel universe which the handsome stranger accidentally blunders into when his spaceship breaks down. There's telepathy and explosions and genetics and bad guys. My favorite part was when the characters spent some time at Caltech (abet a Caltech in an alternate universe), and the author actually got the details right--all the way down to the combination locks on the dorm room doors. The Grand Tour by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer is the sequel to Sorcery & Cecelia. Cecelia and her cousin Kate are up to their hijinks again--their adventures take off just where the previous book left off. The two have recently married and along with Kate's mother-in-law, Lady Sylvia, make plans for a Grand Tour on the Continent to (hopefully) visit all the ancient ruins that Cecelia's scholarly father suggested. Everything goes swimmingly until they arrive in France. A mysterious lady mistakes Kate for Lady Sylvia and presents her with a strange flask which had been used in magical rituals for crowning kings. Everything goes downhill from there--as usual--with highwaymen, murders, knitting codes, and not so coincidental meetings with the same people over and over again. The tone is not quite the same as Sorcery & Cecelia as this story is told through journal entries rather than letters, but like its predecessor, quite amusing fun. Patricia C. Wrede also wrote two other books set in the same alternate Regency England as Sorcery & Cecelia and The Grand Tour. In Mairelon the Magician, we meet Kim, a homeless girl disguised as a boy and living by her wits in London is hired by a suspicious-looking gentleman to break into Mairelon the Magician's wagon in search of a silver bowl. Mairelon catches her in the act, but instead of turning her over to the authorities, offers Kim employment and tutoring while he races towards Essex in search of the magic silver platter that comes with the bowl. Mairelon is actually a real magician and not just a stage magician who has been accused of stealing the magical objects, but he is trying to recover the set of silverware to clear his own name. Recovering the silver platter, however, is not as easy as it seems as the usually serene countryside is suddenly teeming with evil sorcerers, fops, cultists, ambitious social climbers, and a whole host of dubious characters--all clamoring to get their hands on the "sacred platter". Kim proves to be quite cunning and resourceful, but in the end, you'd be grinning as the entire cast makes fools of themselves over something that is (not quite) in plain sight. The Magician's Ward takes place approximately one year after Mairelon the Magician. The tone of the sequel is far more subdued as the main theme is more coming-of-age than adventure. Mairelon has formally taken Kim on as an apprentice, but for Society's sake, she has also become his ward. For a significant part of the story, it is Kim who struggles with her identity as a former street thief turned lady and there is much worrying about gossip, what is proper (or not), and social events. Meanwhile, a housebreaker sneaks into Mairelon's town house in search of a magical book that is a key to a treasure hidden by seven French magicians, and the magically gifted living in Kim's former (poor) haunts are disappearing left and right. Once again, it is up to Kim to save the day--but I found this particular episode more melodramatic than humorous. Crown Duel and Court Duel by Sherwood Smith is yet another duet of books with coming-of-age heroines intended for teenage readers. In Crown Duel, Meliara--"the barefoot countess"--and her brother have promised their dying father to uphold the Covenant of the Hill Folk and fight the tyrant king Galdran who wants to cut down the Hill Folk's rare colorwood trees for profit. Meliara is both foolhardy and courageous which lands her in many a scrape in the fight against Galdran. Court Duel, as the title suggests, lacks much fighting with swords and armies, but for Meliara, the danger doesn't lie so much with the blade but with court politics. Meliara prefers the country life of her home in Tlanth, but with the uneasiness stirring because of the lack of king, she heads to the capital. Despite being tutored on court etiquette by her brother's fiancee, Meliara constantly berates herself over her ignorance of what is expected of her and always questions who may or may not be the enemy to the throne. And on top of that, she is being courted by an Unknown who insists on sending her anonymous gifts and letters. I found both quite readable (I like both equally well, although I suppose those who are into the swashbuckling to like the first whereas the more romantically inclined might prefer the second). The only problem I had was with the magical aspect to the fantasy--when it was subtle, it was too subtle and when the Hill Folk finally came into play--they seemed more like an excuse to steer the plot one way rather than a fully integrated aspect of the story. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:50 AM : Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:49 AM : Thursday, May 19, 2005 The Mitochondria Eaters  From an aesthetic level, I find ticks themselves to be rather repulsive. But if you look inside this gruesome little insect--oh, how things get fascinatingly bizarre! In a way, a tick's hidden secret is even more horrible than mere blood-sucking. I'm talking about a carnivorous microbe that devours a eukaryotic cell's powerhouses: the mitochondria eater.On the lookout for intracellular pathogens such as Rickettsia bacteria during the 1970s, David Lewis examined a species of ticks, Ixodes ricinus, found in England under electron microscopy. He certainly found some bacteria, but they were doing something really weird--they invaded only mitochondria and not other organelles of the cell. Nowadays, there's still not that much known about this mysterious bacterium--it still doesn't even have a proper name. (Scientists are still calling it IricES1 for Ixodes ricinus endosymbiont.) What is known is that IricES1 belongs to a group of bacteria called alpha-proteobacteria and its niche is restricted to the eggs of the female tick. A bacterium will invade the mitochondria of the egg and eventually consume the entire mitochondrion matrix until there is nothing but "a swollen empty sac containing a rich population of bacteria." Luckily for the tick, the egg itself seems unharmed and when fertilized, will develop into a seemingly healthy tick. But with this predatory/symbiotic relationship restricted to the female germline, one can't help but draw parallels between this and other sex related symbiotic relationships such as Wolbachia and its myriad invertebrate hosts. But can this be something totally different or is this just one stage in the process of a bacterium becoming inexorably linked to its host? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:50 PM : Longing I was outside for a little while this afternoon and things looked like autumn with the bare branches and the slightly browning leaves. The sky overhead was scattered with small white clouds and heavy gray-blue clouds occasionally spitting droplets. Other pedestrians were craning their necks up to look at the hodge-podge clouds, heedless of the stiff breeze blowing hair over their eyes. I saw a particularly ominous cloud loom over a line of European pines (I know they're European because I overheard an old, blubbering biologist say with a bit of regret that nobody ever bothered to plant the native species) and I was suddenly struck with a fierce pang of longing for something that might never be. I wanted to lie on the steep grassy knoll beside those pine trees and to just watch the clouds racing by. I'd stay there, even if it started raining in earnest. But I ended up hurrying back inside to do those bits of necessary things and spending five minutes typing this out so I don't forget. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:01 PM : The Thursday Threesome: Full Moon Rising Onesome: Full-- Full? What meal fills you up the most during your day, breakfast, lunch or dinner? ...or is it the ice cream you're digging into as you wander around the blog world long past when you should be asleep? Not one in particular. Twosome: Moon-- Do you really think there's any truth to the popular idea that "things" happen when the moon is full? Come on, it's just us here... No, it's just superstition. Threesome: Rising-- ...and shining? : What is your normal wakeup time on Thursday mornings? ...and can you be described as a "Morning Person" or not? It depends. Considering my short answers today, not really. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:24 AM : Wednesday, May 18, 2005 Tangled Bank #28 Get the latest Tangled Bank, a collection of excellent science posts around the blogosphere, over at Chronicles of a Medical Mad House. None of my posts are up on this week's edition, but that doesn't matter. There are a ton of interesting things to browse over there for about the next two weeks. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:10 AM : Tuesday, May 17, 2005 This Week's Annoyances Yes, my neighbors again. They've gotten a dog. Which barks. This reminds me of my parents' neighbors who have a dog that they have left outside and never play with. That dog howled every night. My current neighbors--I don't think they can handle a dog. Now they play rap music, scream at each other, and scream at a barking dog too. Just as some people should be banned from having kids, some people should be banned from owning animals. Besides, according to the terms of the apartment lease, they're not supposed to have pets. I also hate all the ads with women in them when I go to the Hotmail website. With all the bikinis and cleavage, one would think it was a porno site, not an e-mail provider. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:48 PM : On Semi-Permanent Hold Giving Up On Books. Steve Leveen equates most people's reading habits as "the clean-your-plate" syndrome and concludes that people should have more of a "wine tasting" approach to choosing what books to finish. Supposedly, professional readers who retrain themselves with the 50-page rule finish more books than people who feel an obligation to slog through the whole thing. Well, of course professional readers would finish more books. They're paid to read. I would be interested in some cold numbers--do regular people who apply the 50-page rule finish more books than people who don't? When I consider my own reading habits, I think of it as a mixture of practicality and denial. Sometimes I read a book up to a point and for some reason I put it aside--of course I have every intention of finishing it, but just not at the moment. It's like not being able to finish dinner and boxing up the rest as leftovers which I could use for the next day's lunch or as a midnight snack. That can't be more wrong than simply chucking the whole thing in the trash instead, can it? I also have absolutely no compunction for starting books while I'm in the middle of others. I subscribe to a "free love" philosophy for reading--books are not like significant others. You don't have to be faithful to a story. The author of that mystery you're reading isn't going to come and beat down your door if you suddenly decide you're in the mood for science fiction instead. So Leveen does have a point although I'm not too sure his solution is the solution for everyone. I typically try to finish books even if they're horrible, but I have to say, my "cut-off point" (in quotations because I don't stop reading) is approximately 100 to 150 pages in. If I'm not completely hooked by then, the book is not getting my recommendation. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:55 PM : Monday, May 16, 2005 Children's Fantasy Early childhood is such a fuzzy thing--sometimes I wish I had been more diligent then in keeping some sort of journal. Without any sort of concrete accounting, how am I to know for sure that something or another had an impact or was a milestone? When was my first encounter with the fantasy genre? I remember being exposed to fairy tales quite a while back, but when was I actually aware? After some thinking, I have somewhat settled on the Chronicles of Narnia. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was probably not the first fantasy book I read, but it's certainly one that has stuck in my mind the longest. Perhaps of how I was exposed to it counted for my remembrance. My fourth grade teacher was in the habit of reading books aloud right after lunch time. He would turn off the lights and we were all supposed to be sitting quietly at our chairs as he read by the sunlight streaming through the window next his desk. A lot of the students used the listening hour as an unofficial naptime. I listened. It was sort of magical in a way. The teacher had a habit of leaning back in his chair so the bit of light from the window would highlight his white hair and ruddy face. His spectacles would glint. And I would watch the dust motes and imagine lions and fauns and Turkish Delight. So it was with a bit of trepidation that I glanced at the trailer for the latest film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It's very slick and glossy but it also reminds me very much of why I generally don't like film adaptations of novels in the first place. I am sure that the film will be fun to watch, but I don't think it would ever live up to the picture I had built up since my youth. It was only later that I discovered that some people consider the Chronicles of Narnia as religious propaganda, spoiling my reading of the final installment, The Last Battle. (Although I have to say, after finding out Orson Scott Card's Mormon background did not detract one iota of enjoyment of my reading of Ender's Game, so perhaps Lewis was a bit more heavy handed in his seventh book.) The Christian aspects of Narnia did not enter my mind at all when I read the first six books. It was fantasy. Make-believe. I did not suddenly find myself gripped with a reverence for God when I read about Aslan dying and coming back to life. I just thought it was how it was supposed to be in a land of magic. And certainly, I've grown ever more disillusioned by religion as I grew older so I can't agree that these children's books have any sort of brainwashing power. Then, there's the other extreme. Lately I've been reading somewhat obscure fantasy novels written for teenagers and searching for more information about them when I came across a site that proclaims to be a guide for Christians to reading fantasy. By the way it bashes the authors and books for every little thing (and of course, they would proclaim Harry Potter to be the Ultimate Evil), one wonders how they managed to read anything at all (let alone fantasy) without cringing. Perhaps if everything was on the par of "See Spot Run", then the reviewers behind that site would be happy. Anyways, I suppose the Christian aspect of the Chronicles is there, but I am no lit student desperate to bs a term paper for the next day. I choose to enjoy the books solely on their fantasy merit. Oddly enough, I am more partial to The Silver Chair (and after that, The Horse and His Boy and The Magician's Nephew) than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:50 AM : Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:49 AM : Friday, May 13, 2005 Science Linkage Bacterial Nanny. The European beewolf protects its young from fungal infection by spreading an antibiotic secreted from her antenna glands. This antibiotic is produced by a symbiotic bacterium, a new species of Streptomyces. The Euglenoid Project. All about the wiggling microscopic eukaryote, the Euglena. 'Refusal to share' leaves agency struggling to monitor bird flu. "Tracking genetic changes in bird-flu viruses is vital for early warning of a human pandemic. But...it is nearly eight months since the World Health Organization (WHO) last saw data on isolates from infected poultry in Asia. Affected countries are failing, or refusing, to share their human samples with the WHO's influenza programme in Geneva." This is how science is done. On the letters of Richard Feynman. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:22 AM : Thursday, May 12, 2005 The Thursday Threesome: Are we there yet? Onesome: Are--Are you planning on heading out this Memorial Day? ...or is it a 'stay at home and chill' kind of holiday for you? Memorial Day isn't until the end of the month, right? Anyways, I don't have anything planned. Twosome: we-- ....and who is "we" when you go traveling? Any preferences that you can state here in blogland < g >? We would be me. Anywhere away would be all right with me. Threesome: there yet?-- ...and when you get there, what are you going to do? ...or if you're staying in, what's on the menu? Are you cooking out or just opening a can of tuna? I have no idea. I'll improvise. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:24 AM : Tuesday, May 10, 2005 Lull Well, there's nothing too exciting to blab about this week. Oh sure, I could always find something to talk about, but the weather's been so nice lately even if I've been jerked awake before 5 AM because the sunlight is already breaking out. If someone wrote a strange conversation for contemporary fiction, would critics accuse it of being unrealistic? Recently, I overheard two thirty-something year old men discussing Desperate Housewives, vibrators, and the practicality of minivans. Is that what guys usually talk about, or was I just witness to a strange conversation? Last night, I was mentally tossing around a small idea that I thought would be good for a writing exercise. I've only been doing writing exercises lately--nothing serious. (The serious things, unfortunately, are still in the planning stages.) I wonder if the sort of lethargy I'm experiencing is similar to what other writers feel when everyone could care less about their work. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:50 AM : Sunday, May 08, 2005 Unconscious Mutterings
I don't know why it is, but I feel vaguely uncomfortable when someone in real life starts gushing to me about books they love. I'm fine with talking about books on a blog--maybe it's the distance of the computer and the internet that makes it easier. Maybe it's because I'm afraid of a certain disapproval, that they would feel put out if I said yes, I know all about the books they were talking about, I've read them years ago. And then some bubble-brained bookstore clerk has to ask me, "Are you buying this for yourself?" and then I have to restrain myself from giving a bad-tempered snarl. Of course I'm buying it for myself, and even if I said no, you wouldn't believe me. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:36 PM : Saturday, May 07, 2005 Books Are Girly I saw a man waiting for his wife outside a bookstore. He looked like he had been there a while. I can see a man waiting outside a clothing store for his wife. But a bookstore?! Hey, even if he didn't like to read, there are magazines in there with plenty of pictures. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:29 PM : Blogroll, Whatever Apparently, the blogroll controversy has flared up again. I'm too lazy to dig out all my old posts to check what I thought about the whole thing then, but I figured I could use this for some blog fodder since I don't have anything else in particular I want to expound about this Saturday. I admire the fact that some people can stick up for their principles and actually go around delinking and deleting their blogrolls--but I don't think it's so much that there's a malevolent old boy's club at work but that of the existence of an A-list. (Well, maybe there's a malevolent old boy's club at work, but let's disregard that for the purposes of this post.) Maybe not the same people will complain, but somebody will complain even if the A-list is made of women or actually diverse. My theory is that most people are lazy. Why bother expending effort to search out new blogs when there's already a neat little top ten list at one of those blog ranking sites? Why bother when that Famous Blogger has that list on the sidebar--he's Famous so those blogs must be good, right? I think laziness also explains why political blogs are so popular. People have different interests and normally, they might gravitate to all those obscure knitting or gardening or squaredancing blogs if they weren't all so obscure--but the political blogs are publicized and because people are too lazy to check if there are any other kinds of blogs, well, there you go. I think it's all a matter of control, too. Just as meddling mothers want to control their kids (even when their kids are forty-year-olds) and the self-righteous claim certain relationships are morally wrong (even when the individuals involved love each other), people want to control whether their sites are linked on other people's sites. Everyone else can do whatever they wish with their blogroll or lack of one and I wouldn't care a whit so long as people don't come along and dictate what I do with my links. The main thing is--people should care more about their own content than those links. Readers visit your blog because of your posts--those links are incidental and at most, only have importance for your own organization and the visitors who are bored and don't want to waste time on Google. (For those of you who don't already know, my own blogroll is on my links page. And no, I will not divulge my criteria for getting on--or getting off--that list even if it is completely random. Bookrolling is obviously a play on blogrolling, but unlike blog lists, my book list is far more updated and transparent. But this post isn't about books, so I think I'll stop here.) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:38 AM : Friday, May 06, 2005 Don't Take Your Mid-Life Crisis Out On Me Grr! I generally have nothing against bald guys or red convertibles, but why do they become a menace on the roads when you put them together? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:54 PM : Not Exactly Lost I am one of those people who have extremely vivid dreams. Not really pleasant ones though. If I had any pleasant ones, I've forgotten them. Last night (or rather early in the morning, 3 AM), I was jerked from a sound sleep because my neighbors were arguing loudly. I managed to fall asleep again before even bothering to put in ear plugs. In my dream, I was wandering around in an underground labyrinth that looked like a hospital. It was dark and eerie--dark greenish, actually. I was sprinting around and around, going up and going down, not sure where I was supposed to be going except that I was supposed to be going somewhere. And was something chasing me or was I supposed to be doing something to prevent the end of the world? I never have the same dream twice, at least not to my recollection, but the maze always seems to be a recurring theme. And there is always this sense of urgency--although for what, I don't know. I really want to get out of the maze, but how? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:07 AM : Thursday, May 05, 2005 The Thursday Threesome: This, and a Day Onesome: This--is the one thing you need to get finished today! What would that be? Oh, some stuff. I don't absolutely need to finish things today. There are some things that you can't finish when you want to because some control of it is entirely out of your hands. Twosome: and a-- project you'd like to get started on this weekend would be? I'm in the middle of some things right now. It would be rather foolhardy to start on another thing. Threesome: Day--Scenario: tomorrow is suddenly 'your day'--school is out, the kids are covered; you're shift is handled at work; you have no obligations! ...and you have gas and spending money. What are you going to do with your time? Drive to the coast. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:25 AM : Wednesday, May 04, 2005 Tangled Bank #27 Get your biweekly dose of excellent science blogging over at Buridan's Ass. As always, if you've done some science-related blogging, you can submit your work by going to the Tangled Bank website and perhaps it will appear in the next edition! [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:31 AM : Tuesday, May 03, 2005 Assorted Bits The Time Traveler Convention. Well, they say they only need one convention since everyone will just time travel to that particular date. But how can you go to a convention more than once? Won't there be some sort of paradox about meeting yourself? And what if no one shows up? Does that mean that the announcement for the convention never survives into the future? Judge A Book...By Its Cover. Some guy's collection of old cheap-o novels with weird covers he found at rummage sales. Are You A Republican? (via a couple of places) I had mixed feelings about doing a political quiz, but what the heck. I got 2%. And yes, that 2% bothers me. The other day, I was reading the lyrics to an album that was labeled with one of those warnings about explicit contents and I was wondering, what's really so bad about it anyway? Sure, there were Bad Words (about three in the entire album) and the songs weren't advocating violence or anything. Compared to some other stuff, it's like a Disney musical. I think those sorts of labels are rather ridiculous and fail to convey that music comes in a continuum and not nice little packages. One bad word will not make the listener go out on a rampage. However, if you were listening to the stuff my neighbor plays--you'd rather pour acid in your ear than listen to another stream of cuss words. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:17 AM : Monday, May 02, 2005 Super Cow  I know some people who loudly proclaim milk to be unnatural and eat rice pudding instead of yoghurt, but for most people, cow's milk is part of the daily diet. So it is of no surprise whatsoever when the dairy industry tries to use transgenic technologies to improve its product.Attempts to make transgenic animals were made ever since the 1970s, but it wasn't until 1980 that Gordon et al. developed the now widely used DNA microinjection technique in mice that the creation of such animals became more feasible. By 1985, scientists were able to make transgenic rabbits, pigs, sheep, and cattle. Nowadays, there are three methods for making transgenic animals. DNA microinjection is the most straightforward method--your genetic construct of choice is directly injected into an embryo at the one-cell stage. In a retrovirus-mediated gene transfer, a retrovirus is used as a vector to carry genetic material to the target cell. The drawback for this particular method is that it generates chimeras and you would have to waste time inbreeding those chimeras for several generations before you get an animal that's carrying your gene of interest in every cell. The third method is embryonic stem cell-mediate gene transfer where stem cells are genetically manipulated and then inserted in the embryo--again, this creates a chimera. Aside from obvious medical and industrial applications for transgenic animals, there are also agricultural reasons as well--such as the creation of disease resistant animals. For instance, the creation of an influenza-resistant pig would not only halt the spread of a disease through a pig herd but also prevent the virus from using the pig as a vessel to develop into a strain that might infect people. In the April issue of Nature Biotechnology, Wall et al. had this in mind when they made transgenic cows to combat a Staphylococcus aureus infection called mastitis. Mastitis, infection of the cow udder, is quite difficult to treat due to the location of the infection. Moneywise, it's quite costly to the dairy industry--$2 billion a year in the U.S. Infected cows have to be culled, because not only can the disease be transmitted to other animals, but bacteria can also get into the milk supply. But if conventional antibiotics and vaccines can't help, what can? One possibility is to try to increase the resistance to S. aureus in the cow. Wall et al. generated transgenic cows that were able to fight off infection. The transgene chosen for the task was lysostaphin, an enzyme that targets the cell wall of S. aureus and chops up the glycine residues holding it together. Normally, staphylococci infect the mammary gland and use milk as a nutrient. As they multiply and spread, they trigger an inflammatory response. In transgenic cows, lysostaphin is also secreted in the mammary gland. When these cows were experimentally infected with S. aureus, no bacteria could be recovered from the milk. The researchers point out that the bacteria were most likely killed upon contact of the secreted lysostaphin before they even had a chance to gain a foothold in the mammary gland to cause infection. Creating transgenic cows is certainly a way to make more disease resistant animals and the work of Wall et al. prove that this is possible--but is it the way to go about doing this? Aside from the public's qualms about transgenic animals in general--are there any problems concerning this approach? For one, lysostaphin is secreted in the milk. What sort of effect will its consumption be on a person? And more importantly--will this lead to the rise of lysostaphin-resistant strains of S. aureus? This is not an idle worry. S. aureus isn't called the superbug for nothing. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:30 PM : Kung Fu At Its Kookiest Over the weekend, I managed to catch a screening of Kung Fu Hustle--another hilariously funny movie. (Actually, I find all kung fu movies inherently funny so that might not count for much.) As usual, the subtitles fail to convey the subtlety of the actual dialogue (example: subtitle--"He's beaten to a pulp!", actual translation--"He's so beaten his mother wouldn't recognize him.") But no one is going to the movie to listen to dialogue. They want action. I pretty much had the theater to myself since everyone was next door watching The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy except for a couple of teenaged boys and an old guy. Perhaps it was the rating that did it. In the U.S., Kung Fu Hustle is rated R. I'd say a better rating would be PG-13 for all the obviously cartoonish violence. Since they did such a hack job with the subtitles, they might as well have edited out the cuss words too. Most American audiences (who I'm guessing have no knowledge of Chinese) wouldn't know any better anyway. But I didn't pay too much attention to the subtitles--it really is quite a funny parody/tribute to the kung fu and western genres. The most amusing thing about the film is not the special effects or what passes for the plotline but the sheer wonkiness of the characters that populate an alternate 1940s China. The bad guys are like a horde of Mr. Smiths from The Matrix with axes and ineptitude mixed in and the heroes are so unlikely, you'd probably keel over from laughing so hard. And those outlandish names for those equally outlandish kung fu moves...! My favorite character was the hair-roller-wearing Landlady--the only female character in the film who had any chutzpah. You can't beat a woman who can string up her philandering husband, execute a deafening "Lion's Roar", and chain smoke at the same time. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:56 AM : Sunday, May 01, 2005 Whoa Out of the blue, I receive an e-mail from a Famous Editor concerning my fansite on a famous anthology series and at first I dread opening it because what if it's some sort of cease and desist letter? But I needn't have worried--the Famous Editor actually thanks me for making the site and offers to help if I need any information. I've done nothing to promote the site. So much for laboring in obscurity. It feels really weird to be noticed. But anyway, if you have read any of the books and have some question concerning the series, well, now you can e-mail me and I can try to find an answer for you. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:50 PM : 42 and a Meme After hearing about some rather mediocre reviews--I didn't actually read any mediocre reviews or any reviews for that matter--I went to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy without any sort of expectation. Of course, I ended up giggling madly at parts of it and I'm sure the small boy sitting next to me probably thought I totally lost it. I knew about the Hitchhiker's Guide ever since I started reading science fiction (when I was nine or ten), but for some reason or other I put off reading it until college. I suppose that green thingeemabob on the cover put me off as it looked like it belonged to a very bad retro computer game. I actually read Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul before I thought about picking up any of the Hitchhiker books. As an undergrad in a university filled with geeks, it was inescapable to hear about the must read books of any true geek. Among those select books was the Hitchhiker's Guide. Everyone seemed to positively adore the series. So I finally read it and the next two books. I liked the first book although I didn't really see what the fuss was about, but it all went downhill in the subsequent novels. I really liked the movie and it is worth an hour or two of fun (although some would believe me incapable of having any fun). The demographic of the movie audience had a surprising number of young boys of the not yet adolescent type, but also typically, far too few females (I had the impression that they were dragged to the movie by the rest of their families). And before the movie started, I had to listen to the conversation of two ultra-liberal men sitting behind me complaining about the lack of female astronauts and some bung-headed governor in Colorado denying morning after pills to rape victims. Anyways, it is a given that no one can truly adapt a book to the movie screen, not even by an author himself. But one can surely try and I think Hitchhiker's Guide is definitely a noble effort even if it offends purists. My only nitpicks are the casting of Zaphod Beeblebrox--who I had never imagined as a ditzy him-bo--and the romantic subplot which somewhat spoils Hitchhiker's Guide's inherent wackiness. What's to love? The stylish animation for the Guide for one. It reminds me a bit of the retro style of Shag and it explains stuff for those not in the know without stooping to pedantic. The opening number is also quite fresh with its Broadway-esque "So long, and thanks for all the fish" as the dolphins leave earth after failing to communicate to man the imminent destruction of his planet. And who can forget, Alan Rickman's deadpan voiceover for Marvin, the chronically depressed robot. I didn't think Marvin sounded that way when I read the books, but the movie's interpretation is definitely worth considering. Unconscious Mutterings
[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:43 AM : |
