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Saturday, May 31, 2008 Lookee Here Here are some science blog-related events happening in Boston in a few days. One of them is free, open to the public. I might even show up for it for a little while just to check it out (even though I'd have to run off soon for a morning poster session). [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:17 AM : Thursday, May 29, 2008 Memes Booking Through Thursday: What is Reading, Fundamentally? Suggested by Thisisnotabookclub: What is reading, anyway? After finishing Proust and the Squid, which is all about the neuroscience of reading (review coming possibly later this week!), I would have to say that reading is the interpretation of visual symbols--that is, words--and gleaning some sort of meaning from them. Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? If the definition above is to be taken at face value, then everything except for audiobooks would be considered reading. Are they all reading? Only some of them? Definitely not audiobooks. That's listening. Your eyes aren't doing anything. What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading” — why? "Reading" means interpreting words, visually. This includes reading road signs like "Next Exit" or "Springfield 20 miles." If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? The iffy ground here, I think, is that of graphic media like comics etc. where words are juxtaposed with pictures. If you are reading the words in such media, then yes, you are indeed reading. But if you are only looking at the pictures, then that is not reading. For example: reading to kids. The adult who is reading the book out loud is the person who is reading because the adult is the one interpreting the words. The child is the one listening, not reading. I would only consider the kid reading if he/she was also looking and interpreting the words printed on the page. Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? If something only exists as an audiobook, I might listen to it. I'm not too big on audiobooks, though, because oftentimes, the narrator can either make or break it regardless of how well the prose is actually written. I would not subject myself to a voice I can't stand. Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance. I think I pretty much outlined my definition above. Reading is the visual interpretation of words. How I came to that stance--probably because I've always associated reading with books. The Thursday Threesome: Life Goes Faster Than You Think Onesome: Life Goes Faster-- than you want it to sometimes. Is anything moving just a little too fast for you lately? Yes. Everything is going too fast. Too much to do. Lots of deadlines. Twosome: (Faster) Than You-- can pull a search? ...anyone know where the subject and title for this week's T-3 came from off the top of their head? No? It's worth a quick search... Er, Google says it comes from the lyrics of a Kenny Chesney song called "Don't Blink."* Threesome: Think-- ing about Summer? Time at the beach? Vacation plans? ...or not: has the fuel price thing put a hold on some plans? ...or are you thinking of alternate forms of travel for Summer fun? I'm traveling next week, but not for fun, exactly. It's more like professional development. As for later this month, I am going somewhere more vacation-related. Where precisely? I'll blog about that later. Meanwhile, you can guess. *These questions involving song lyrics are not very interesting because they are always out of my expertise. And it's especially not interesting if it involves Google. Any idiot can Google. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:53 AM : Wednesday, May 28, 2008 Science Linkage Tangled Bank #106 is over at Ars Technica's Nobel Intent. Go read about virtual reality, chemicals in plastic, and brains! Speaking of brains... The brains of dead Russian geniuses. Nice touch that the founder of this brain bank suddenly passed away after the inception of the bank and had his brain put in the collection. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:16 AM : A How-To for Increasing Book Sales? I'm probably not the target audience for Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel  . Sure, there might be tips here that are helpful for the beginning writer, but this is probably more for midlist authors stuck in a rut. And frankly, how many midlist authors are there anyway? A lot, you might say. Well, even if there were ten thousand midlist authors, this would still make for a fairly niche how-to book.Most writing how-to books are written by writers. What made me pick this book up was that this one was written by an agent. Writers always emphasize the "craft" and on writing a story that you want to tell. An agent on the other hand, well, I was expecting Maass to concentrate on what was saleable from his perspective rather than the ephemeral fantasies flitting about in the head of a would-be novelist. Instead, he basically states that it's a crapshoot. Agents and publishers don't really know what will sell, he says, because the breakout novel will have its origins from the word of mouth. And to start that word of mouth, a writer has to write to the best of his ability. However, that doesn't prevent Maass from spewing out a formula disguised as tips to good storytelling. So exactly what is Maass' idea of the anatomy of a breakout novel? Well first, you've got to have some sort of "high concept", a provocative premise that will make people sit up and take notice. Secondly, stakes must be involved. No lulls allowed! There must be tension throughout the whole book! Then of course, there's believable world building, larger-than-life characters to populate the dramatis personae, plot with non-stop conflict, and then some sort of theme to tie all this together. Whew. That sounds busy. It makes one want to read something not so action-packed and emotionally thrilling--like the thesaurus. Most of the excerpts from representative breakout novels didn't strike me as interesting either. Where the heck are all the excitement he's been expounding about? If they were indicative of those novels as a whole, then I'm really mystified about why some novels break out and others that are more well written aren't. (Or maybe it's just an indication that my literary tastes aren't mainstream.) I don't really know what to make of Maass' advice. Maybe it'll help some people, maybe it won't. But at least he does make his annoyance with authors who "phone it in" clear. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:08 AM : Tuesday, May 27, 2008 The Long Road: Swamp Thing to Lab Poodle Film and television make it look so easy. A patient comes onto the scene dying of some mysterious illness. Or a sudden virulent outbreak spread by a cute monkey hits a bucolic everytown. Then in comes our hero-scientist-medical doctor who figures out what's wrong and saves the day in twenty-four hours. Hurray! If only. It's dramatization, folks, and if this was really how science worked, we'd have already solved the problems of AIDS, cancer, and why left socks always disappear into the dryer.
However Mycobacterium ulcerans, the causative agent for Buruli ulcer, was not culturable in the lab until recently. Because transmission of the disease always occurred near or at aquatic environments rather than through person-to-person contact, Portaels et al. hypothesized in 1999 that predatory aquatic insects were the responsible vector. This was supported by the observation that M. ulcerans inhabited the salivary glands of Naucoris cimicoides, a type of waterbug. In this March's issue of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Portaels and her colleagues were finally able to culture M. ulcerans isolated from another aquatic arthropod, the water strider. The researchers collected the insect specimens in an area with a high incidence of Buruli ulcers in Benin and Togo. The insects were then frozen, diced, homogenized, and fractionated. The resulting sample was put in a special broth supplemented with egg yolk and grown for 3 months. (For typical microbiologists, this is eons. Compare this to the lab workhorse E. coli. Inoculate some broth in the evening, and the next morning, voila!) However, to isolate M. ulcerans rather than other faster growing contaminants, Portaels et al. used an animal model. Once the bacteria were injected into the footpad of a mouse, M. ulcerans would have the opportunity to proliferate while other microorganisms not adapted to living in mammals would die. To prove that M. ulcerans was successfully passaged in mice, the bacteria were identified by histological staining of infected tissues, PCR analysis, and mycolactone (a toxic lipid produced by M. ulcerans that kills fat cells* and inhibits the immune system) analysis. So about six decades after its first description, M. ulcerans is now culturable in the lab. It's great that now we have lab strains to study this disease. But still, it's not so straightforward. As the researchers point out, the vector that carries the disease is still unidentified. The bacterium was isolated from the water strider, but the water strider doesn't bite people. Rather, the insect probably harbored M. ulcerans because it ate other insects which were infected. And as most microbiologists will point out, lab strains are good models for studying disease, but they won't be the same as clinical strains. Who knows how the bacteria have changed to accommodate itself in a murine host from its primary isolation in a waterbug to a succession of passages on mice feet. *Hm. If anyone attempts to find a use for this, I bet one of the first commercial uses would be an alternative to liposuction. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:57 PM : Monday, May 26, 2008 Summer Reading Answers Last week, I posted some book descriptions. Here are the actual books: -a writing how-to book written by a successful agent Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass -non-fiction on the neuroscience of reading framed by a literary metaphor Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf -the winner of the World Fantasy Award, published in 1974 The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip -a 162 page book by the author of the Paradys tetrology The Dragon Hoard by Tanith Lee -non-fiction NYT bestseller on corpses Stiff by Mary Roach -the English translation of a German ursine text Bears: A Brief History by Bernd Brunner -also known as "the mannerpunk classic" Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner -a paranormal romance with an oxymoronic title Demon Angel by Meljean Brook -a historical fantasy on food The Stars Dispose by Michaela Roessner -non-fiction about Charles Babbage with a cover quote referring to Dava Sobel The Difference Engine by Doron Swade (not to be confused with the novel of the same name by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, although I have that one sitting around here somewhere, too) -urban cultural history by the author of a delightful little book about the screwdriver City Life by Witold Rybczynski I've already finished a couple of them. If I manage to finish all of these before the summer is out, I might post another "guess the book" list from my to-be-read pile. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:28 AM : Sunday, May 25, 2008 Currently Listening To I don't know about other soundtrack fans, but I listen to soundtracks whether or not I've seen the films. My favorites include John Corigliano's The Red Violin and pretty much anything by George Fenton. Anyone else have a favorite soundtrack? Or do most people ignore them? Recently on my playlist: -Atonement - I like the use of the typewriter as an instrument. -Enchanted - Lots of references/motifs from previous Disney films. I'm guessing it will make more sense with the movie. -I Capture the Castle - Also scored by the same guy (Dario Marianelli) who did Atonement. Mostly playful and light-hearted, sometimes melancholy. Probably the only one I would recommend out of this list. -Immortal Beloved - The usual popular Beethoven fare. It would be cheaper to get one of those best of CDs in the classical section. -Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Er, John Williams at his mediocre best? -Nim's Island - I only know Patrick Doyle from his scores of Shakespearean films, other costume dramas, and Eragon. This is sort of interesting, but it gets bogged down in the latter half. -The Golden Compass - Mostly disappointed. Alexandre Desplat did better work in The Queen. -The Spiderwick Chronicles - The only track I liked was the Closing Credits. -The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - It sounded more like the sequel to Kingdom of Heaven than the first Narnia movie. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:59 PM : Friday, May 23, 2008 Links for the End of the Week Who Gets To Be American? A Jeremiad. Ding at Bitch Ph.D. points out the idiocy of a columnist who believes only those who have "sacrificed" and have the bloodlines to prove it should be Americans. This reminds me of an anti-immigration bumper sticker I read while walking home that told people to "go home." Of course I'm mad. But I'm also mostly exasperated. Everyone in the US is an immigrant or has descended from immigrants. Just because your family has lived in this place longer doesn't mean that you deserve it more. In the Basement of the Ivory Tower. I don't think this is a failure of college. It's a failure of earlier education. People shouldn't be coming out of high school with such deficits. I'm also struck by the fact that this English professor seems to think that biology is all multiple choice. I've had very few multiple choice exams on a college level. Maybe just four, now that I think of it. A lot of it was oriented more toward critical thinking and problem solving. Sometimes (gasp!) even creativity was involved. Research and Education Careers and the Mythical 40-hour Workweek. Recently, an undergrad came to work in the lab, expecting that there would be hours. You know, the 9 to 5 kind of thing. She was very surprised when people told her that there weren't. Rather, people went to lab to get things done. Personally, I can be in lab for 24 to 36 hour stretches. And I still feel guilty for not being in lab enough. It isn't because other people are putting undue pressure on me (actually, I think most people think I'm nuts) or that I'm inefficient, but that I have workaholic tendencies and I don't have a social life. As for people who do have social lives and families, good for them. Whether or not they get their work done is their own business--as long as they don't foist their stuff on me. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:49 AM : Thursday, May 22, 2008 Memes Booking Through Thursday: Books vs Movies Suggested by Superfastreader: Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie? Movies, for a lack of a better description, are just there. It may be beautiful, exciting, thrilling, yadda yadda, but in the end, it's somebody else's vision of the story. A book, however, can be interpreted in as many ways as there are readers. You can imagine the setting in any way you see fit, only limited by the author's vocabulary rather than budget constraints. A book can also explore inner motivations far better than film. It's the same for documentaries and non-fiction books. I like documentaries, but if it's based on a book I've read, then it feels dumbed down in comparison. Simply put, there's detail in text that can't be transferred to a passive visual medium. The Thursday Threesome: Anna's Tax Wholesale Sale Onesome: Anna's Tax-- Okay, what is the most onerous tax you've ever run across? Yes, alcohol and tobacco can fit in, but I was thinking of some regional quirk... I've only spent money on the usual things like food or books, so no, I haven't come across any taxes that seemed weird. Twosome: Wholesale-- or retail? Do you prefer to drive to the wholesale stores to save over the regular store prices? ...or does the handy 5000 pack of macaroni and cheese not work for you? It's only me, so I wouldn't know what to do with 5000 packs of macaroni except maybe donate 4990 of those packs to the local food bank. I usually go to the local supermarket and just get enough to tide me over to the next week. Threesome: Sale-- Do you have 'Tax Free' sales in your area? Every so often one of the hardware places has a "We Pay the Sales Tax" weekend. ...and hey, 8% is 8%! I have no idea. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:27 AM : Wednesday, May 21, 2008 What About Book Jackets? When bookcovers DON'T sell books. "My suggestion to publishers is a variation on the step-back idea. For the outermost cover, a sensual image could be used to grab shoppers’ attention. But that cover would be perforated, enabling sensitive readers to tear it off and reveal a second cover, one with an inoffensive design that would allow them to enjoy the books in public without embarrassment."(emphasis mine) Wow. Way to go. If that ever happens, people who denigrate romance novels as "bodice rippers" won't be so inaccurate anymore. Besides, even the thought of tearing off covers--no matter how awful they are--really horrifies the bibliophile in me. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:57 AM : Monday, May 19, 2008 Summer Reading I don't know what it is about the beginning of summer, but I always feel optimistic that I'm going to get some reading done before the fall starts creeping up. Here are some vague descriptions of books I'm going to attempt before the end of summer. Can you guess what they are?* (Hint: They are not listed on the bookrolling page.) -a writing how-to book written by a successful agent -non-fiction on the neuroscience of reading framed by a literary metaphor -the winner of the World Fantasy Award, published in 1974 -a 162 page book by the author of the Paradys tetrology -non-fiction NYT bestseller on corpses -the English translation of a German ursine text -also known as "the mannerpunk classic" -a paranormal romance with an oxymoronic title -a historical fantasy on food -non-fiction about Charles Babbage with a cover quote referring to Dava Sobel -urban cultural history by the author of a delightful little book about the screwdriver So what are you reading? (Or are you going to put all your books in storage and go to the beach instead?) *Answers posted next week! [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:47 PM : Friday, May 16, 2008 Toe Cleavage In Lab Is A No-No The Cleavage Controversy. Personally, I don't really give a damn what other people wear or don't wear. Shirtless frat boys frolicking in the soccer fields? Red-lipped bank tellers flashing their perky chests as they count out twenties? Stilettos on ice? Dingy looking baseball caps on backwards? Whatever. Except in lab--then, it's a safety issue rather than anything fashion, gender, or social-related. But this is just me. Other people, however, have hang-ups. It's disingenuous to say to people that your fashion choices are a form of your expression and that if they have a problem with it or for some reason misinterpret nonexistent signals, then tough cookies for them. Like birds and plumage, clothes are signals to most people. Being professional, particularly in a business setting, is all about appearance. Ask the average person and they will have preconceptions about young men in baggy pants and bling, people dressed in black, and the old lady in her Sunday best. Until society as a whole manages to quash its fixation on the body and concentrate more on the mind (which I doubt will happen any time soon), fashion choices will have their consequences. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:55 PM : Thursday, May 15, 2008 Two Links (a.k.a. My Target Audience Is Apparently Googlers Who've Clicked the Wrong Result) Publishers Weekly Reviewers Now To Be Paid Even Less. Hm. I'm just thinking about how much I've been paid for my short stories and the somewhat leech-like approach of publishing academic papers and still, those reviewers are making more than me, word for word. But whatever the kind of writing, writing is a sucky money maker. Unless you're already famous, you definitely don't do it for the money. (An additional "hm": I write reviews. On this site. So that means I've been writing them for free. Mostly as an outlet because real life doesn't give me much opportunity to talk about my choice of books in any sort of meaningful manner. Not that anyone online reads my reviews anyway.) NaComLeavMo. (via BlogHer) In theory, this sounds like a cool activity--who wouldn't like to get comments? But in practice, this is very hard. Not the actual typing of the comment, but the motivation. Some blogs leave me feeling intimidated--due to a mix of subject matter I know little about and a cadre of regular, rabid commenters. Take, for example, the list of participants for this thing. I have almost nothing in common with infertility and mommy bloggers (or even the "minority" of political, knitting, or cooking bloggers). And I have no doubt that they'd find my little online exercise pointless.* *Rant redacted. I'm really disgruntled that this is just a one month thing. Sure, there will be a flurry of posts, but after the month is over there will be NOTHING. And stupid, contentless comments like "I LUV THIS POST!!!11!!!" don't count. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:46 PM : Memes Booking Through Thursday: Manual Labor Redux Scenario: You’ve just bought some complicated gadget home . . . do you read the accompanying documentation? Or not? Do you ever read manuals? How-to books? Self-help guides? Anything at all? It depends on whether or not I've used the gadget before. And how patient I am at wading through the documentation. If I've used it before, no. If I haven't, I'd probably only read the relevant bits of information in the manual. And yes, I've read manuals before--or rather just parts of them. (For instance, I don't read the troubleshooting section unless I actually have something to troubleshoot.) It's the same with how-to books. I only go to the section that is relevant to me. Self-help, I don't read them. As for anything at all--I'm not sure what you mean by this question. Is it rhetorical? Well sometimes I go to the internet to search for help. The Thursday Threesome: Mark My Words Onesome: Mark--ing devices? What do you use to mark things up around the house, school, work, wherever? Does the Sharpie rule? ...or do you believe in the sanctity of the pencil? Geez, when did I last use a pencil? Maybe last year on an exam? Or maybe I did it in pen. Anyways, when I'm labeling things in lab, it's always in Sharpie. When I write something down, it's in black pen. Or it might be in some other color if I've found that all the black ones have mysteriously disappeared. Twosome: "My-- day starts off best when I......" I'll let you fill in the blank at your place! ...am awake. Threesome: Words-- of a feather clump together? Nah, but hey: what word pairings do you use routinely? Are you into alliteration? ...pithy comments? 'Down home' sayings? Give it up for Thursday! On this blog, I use a lot of transition words like "at any rate". I don't have any particular fondness for the phrase, but it is the lazy way out when I'm trying to finish a post quickly. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:59 AM : Wednesday, May 14, 2008 Science Linkage Tangled Bank #105 is now up at The Beagle Project Blog. Go read about dogs, bananas, and platypuses. (And please don't correct me on the spelling. I already looked it up in the dictionary.) Fold It! A game about protein folding. I wonder if this could be used to hook the kiddies onto science early... The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (via Notebookism) "These images of Darwin's notebooks are taken from microfilms; excised pages are taken from a colour microfilm made in 1982 in conjunction with the editing and transcription for the definitive edition." [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:01 AM : Tuesday, May 13, 2008 A Link A wife rating scale from the 1930s. Wow, that's pretty whacked. I think if anyone got a "very superior" score, I'd suspect a mass of seething resentment writhing just underneath the surface, ready to explode without a moment's notice. Addendum: Here's the entire test. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:04 PM : Only How, Not Why (A Haiku) The small brown rabbit Pounds across the fraught pavement Like swift water wheels. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:08 AM : Monday, May 12, 2008 And I Thought I Was Living Under A Rock Mass market genre surprise. I'm stuck mostly in lab and yet even I know that the vampire romance glut has been around for quite a while. I'm thinking since 2003 for some reason. At least that's when I started noticing that the used book stores had stockpiled enough Christine Feehan novels to rebuild the Berlin Wall. As for PZ wondering if Sturgeon's Law applies to this genre, I have no idea. I mean, theoretically, I should. I've read enough to say with some certainty. But the vampire books that I've read partially or managed to read all the way through and dislike had one thing in common--they were all trying to be serious. Maybe this is the problem--with me as the reader anyway. Vampires and seriousness simply don't mix in my head. They're like emo teenagers who are just plain annoying. Perhaps that's why I'd rather read funny and comedic vampire stories. Besides, by not examining the shelves at the conventional bookstores, he's totally missing the next new wave to sweep the book section at his local Wal-Mart. It's dragon-shifters and magic tattoos. And sexy demons! Now wouldn't that be a sight next to all those bibles. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:37 PM : The Door Swings Open I recently finished The Door by Margaret Atwood.Oh no, you might moan. She's read yet another book of poetry? Hasn't she learned that this writing format isn't her thing since she hated the previous two books of poetry she's reviewed? Of course not. Just because two Pulitzer Prize winners completely failed to impress me doesn't mean that I'm going to write off the entire genre. First off, I really enjoyed reading The Door. Atwood is wry and vivid--with a deft hand at verbal construction. Every word is deliberate, articulate, meaningful. Reading each poem is sort of like the Monty Hall game show, except there are no goats behind the doors, just cars, gems, something shiny and interesting. Well on second thought, if there was a goat, it would be a magic goat that could probably tell the future. The collection is partially inspired by nursery rhymes and fairy tales. I particularly liked "Owl and Pussycat, some years later"--an ode to the practicalities of happily ever after. No one wants to hear about the problems, the narrator laments. Instead: The worst is, now we're respectable.Many of the poems are also contemplations of life/death, as a poet and writer, as a daughter worrying about the decline of her parents, the passing of pets, nature's cycle. One of my favorites is "The Last Rational Man" which crystallizes one of the collection's themes of reason's futility against madness. But really, it's the language that hooks me. From "Reindeer Moss on Granite": In the rain they go leathery,There is a CD, included with this volume, of Atwood reading a selection of her poems. At first, her rather monotone voice isn't exactly charismatic. While her poems are full of barely restrained energy, the reading seems just restrained. But after tracks 4 or 5, her voice sort of grows on you. It's dark, sometimes darkly humorous. Definitely worth a listen. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:32 AM : Sunday, May 11, 2008 Life Is Nothing But Leitmotifs Except when I'm particularly bored, I pay little attention to personality theories. I'm familiar with Freud and Jung and those silly Myers-Briggs tests on the internet, of course, but I never really felt there was anything behind any of that stuff. After reading Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are by Daniel Nettle, I'm beginning to understand the why of personality development, but I'm still not convinced of the purpose of finding all of this out--except perhaps to give high school guidance counselors another tool to shoehorn students into predetermined career paths. (Wouldn't it be better to just let people choose their own paths and make their own mistakes rather than trapping them in a possibly miserable situation if you're wrong?)Nettle posits in the introduction to Personality that life is nothing but a series of leitmotifs which can be predicted by an individual's personality. Unlike other personality theories like the Myers-Briggs, Nettle touts the five-factor model developed by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae which has been determined by statistical observations--when different traits were analyzed for correlations, they clustered into five groups heretofore labeled as extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness. Because humans are social animals and we need to act in certain ways to ensure cooperation and survival, the main thesis of the book is that personality is an outgrowth of evolutionary fitness. An obvious question then is: If humans need certain cooperative behaviors for survival, then why don't we all have the same personality? Why, in reality, is there a continuum--from introverts to extroverts, staid to flaky, co-dependent to psychopathic? Nettle answers that because the environment itself varies and may require different strategies for survival at different times, the existence of different personalities within a population is necessary. He argues that there is no bad or good personality--all personalities have their benefits and drawbacks depending on the situation. Examples: Most people would associated excessive neuroticism with anxiety and depression. But you need to have some neurotic tendencies to help you keep alert for dangers. If you're not neurotic at all, you might miss certain warning signs and walk straight into a life-threatening situation. One might say that a lot of openness is a good thing; openness correlates with artistic ability and creative thinking. But sometimes, it's not--schizophrenics, psychotics, and believers of wacko religions tend to have high scores for openness. Almost without exception, Nettle seems skeptical of any environmental influences on personality. He points to studies that show that similar family environments have no effect on personality (anecdotally, anyone with siblings could probably attest to that) as well as birth order. It's possible that personality is influenced by the environment in a manner like that of the crest development of the water-flea Daphnia--by outside hormonal and environmental cues. However, in trying to explain the differing personalities of identical twins, the author leans towards the gene network theory. Because environment can influence outward characteristics like height, the tweaking of those factors may have a downstream effect on personality. Nettle ends with some techniques for "changing" your personality if you're displeased with it. It really isn't so much "changing" as it is behavior modification. One is finding alternative outlets for your personality. Say you're an extrovert who gets high off sky diving. But sky diving is dangerous--so you find an another activity that gives you a similar high (maybe participating in cooking competitions on television) that isn't so dangerous. Or you could do something called "running against the spin"--which is not even starting a destructive behavior (like excessive drinking) in the first place. One weakness of Personality is that it's written as a popular science book. I would have liked a bit more science (the abysmal correlation values that were cited didn't help any)--but as it is, one would have to go to the notes to look up the references if one were inclined to read the actual experiments. But then again, too much science would bore the heck out of a general audience--so I guess it's a fine line to tread. At any rate, I had the impression that the text had quite a bit of hand-waving even with some intriguing theories. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:24 PM : The End Is Nigh! (Psst! It's Actually Over) I started Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens a little over four years ago with almost no expectations about the plot (except that it was about the apocalypse and it was supposed to be funny). Well, I finally buckled down this semester to finish the darn thing--during lunch breaks and in between fuming about the opinion pieces in the student newspapers. For me, I didn't really start getting into it until the Antichrist turned eleven.Due to the bungling of a satanic nun, the Antichrist gets misplaced at the hospital. So instead of growing up in a properly malicious environment, the Antichrist, now named Adam, is raised in a perfectly normal human home in a small British town. As the apocalypse draws closer (all omens foretold correctly in The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter), Adam speaks with his friends about the state of the world, unaware that his thoughts and speculations are put into reality (The rising of Atlantis! Trees taking over cities! The disappearance of nuclear reactors! The sudden easing of international tensions!). Meanwhile, the ambiguously gay duo who have been stationed on earth as agents, Aziraphale (an angel) and Crowley (a demon), rush around in their bumbling manner trying to figure out why the apocalypse isn't proceeding as expected. The Witchfinder Private Newton Pulsifer stumbles upon Agnes Nutter's descendant Anathema Device and romance blossoms between the two supposed adversaries even while they try to decipher Agnes' cryptic clues about the end of the world. And after getting significant packages from the International Express, the Four Horsemen head off to wreak havoc...on their motorcycles. The eccentric characters were funny--like slapstick--but the normal characters were even funnier, because the authors emphasized how oblivious and self-centered they were. Despite all the strange things suddenly happening in the world, most people didn't even consider that the apocalypse was going on. Instead, they just chalked it up to somebody else messing up somewhere. Or that they were just hallucinating. It isn't all comedy, though. There's an obvious thread showing that nurture triumphs over nature--if Adam had not been raised as a human boy, he might have been the Antichrist as everyone thought the Antichrist was supposed to be. Also, the theme of balance pops up everywhere. Humans have the capacity for both evil and good and one cannot exist without the other--so as Adam probably reasoned, what is the point of having the war to end all wars when the outcome would be so unbalanced anyway? Adam gives the example of the whale. It is evil to kill whales, but without that, how can there be the good of people saving whales? Perhaps a subtler (and also funnier) scene illustrating this is that of a demon devouring a cadre of telemarketers. Now, eating people is definitely an evil thing. But some good came out of that too--people are no longer annoyed by unnecessary telephone calls. I would recommend Good Omens, with one caveat. Don't expect this novel to be the funny to end all funnies. In other words, don't read any reviews if you haven't read this book (er, it's probably too late for that warning if you've already gotten to this part of the post). Comedy is such a subjective thing--something that would send someone into peals of laughter might only raise my eyebrow (or rather, eyebrows, since I can't do the one eyebrow thing). That said, Good Omens is funny--dry, British wit funny with footnotes!--but expect to do a little thinking, too. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:38 AM : Saturday, May 10, 2008 Crayon Scribblings from a Three-Year-Old That's how I feel about Red Bird , the latest poetry chapbook by Mary Oliver. The language is simple, sparse even, and the structure repetitive. I will quite concede the fact that maybe I was not in the right frame of mind when I read this. But many of the poems were permeated with a certain egocentrism--more than other poetry at any rate--and I was wondering if this wouldn't be better served as a monologue.The subjects of the Oliver poems are of a naturalistic bent. The collection itself is bracketed by the motif of the red bird which flits throughout the works as a beacon. The poems themselves are rather dark--speaking of night and winter. Even when the setting is spring or summer, it's in the early morning when the darkness is still clinging with tenterhooks. It's the inexorable river images of passing time, the mentions of civilization's disastrous byproducts in the more political pieces, and the dark edges of self-contemplation in the cycle "Eleven Versions of the Same Poem" that emphasizes life as depressing and unpleasant. The only thing that saves life from being truly depressing and unpleasant is the "red bird". Sometimes, this symbol doesn't appear as a red bird at all. It could be aspects of the red bird--like flute players, roses, the coming dawn, the tongue of a panther, apples, berries--which are all vibrant and energetic and as indicated in the collection's final poem, "Red Bird Explains Himself," the soul. It's not surprising that Oliver writes that the soul is essential for life. With frequent references to God, it is not hard to imagine that perhaps her religious upbringing/beliefs have influenced the philosophy of her work. But whatever meaning she was trying to convey, I was not keen on her style. Red Bird is rather blunt word-smithing that sometimes seem unnecessarily enigmatic. It's like an adult's simulation of a child's drawing of a cat in crayon. Upon first glance, you can't really tell what it is, but after an explanation (in Red Bird's case, the last poem of the collection), it becomes obvious in a strange deliberate way. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:27 PM : A Note About the Haiku on This Site If you've noticed, I've started posting some haiku on this blog. I strongly suspect I'm quite bad at poetry (despite my name), but I've recently found that this form is a much more succinct way for conveying my thoughts at a particular moment--the essence of which would be diluted with a more long-winded post. Taken literally, my haiku are actual scenes from my life, on the day that it was posted. As for the meaning, the interpretation is up to the reader. (I've started a list of haiku here. Also found on the links page.) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:06 AM : Friday, May 09, 2008 Short Pyromaniacs (A Haiku) Small boys throw fir sticks Into a sparking bonfire. The adults stand back. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:13 PM : Thursday, May 08, 2008 Cinderella, the Pumpkins Are Inside the Coach (A Haiku) Three stout girls in glitz, One clutching a small chic dog, Get into a truck. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:50 PM : Acquisition of the Lab Building (A Haiku) In the frisky breeze, A proud goose sits on the roof Loudly claiming turf. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:17 AM : Memes Booking Through Thursday: Manual Labor Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library? I read them, occasionally. As for grammar and punctuation, if you've read one, you've read them all. I don't mean that they're the same--the execution is different, of course, so reading any of these for pleasure means you're reading for the author's style--but the rules are the same. And if all the rules are the same, what's the point in owning all these books? Since I write in my free time, one would think that I would have a bunch of writing guides in my possession. In reality, no. I mean, sure, there are the few writing guides like Stephen King's On Writing or Strunk and White that I would even recommend to non-writers, but on the whole I view most of the offerings in this genre as useless. Writing style is a personal thing, and I'd rather muddle along by myself than follow somebody else's how-to. As of this moment, I have on hand one dictionary, one thesaurus, one grammar and punctuation book, and three writing guides (the aforementioned King, Strunk and White, and one on Nanowrimo which I just thought would be cool to have since I've been a long-time participant--not that I follow any of Baty's suggestions). And frankly, that's probably all I need to have. The Thursday Threesome: Fife and Drum? Onesome: Fife-- Barney? ...a musical instrument? ...the number after 'four'? What came to mind when you saw this week's title? Musical instrument. Specifically, what came to mind was a medieval ensemble playing in a Renaissance fair. Or something like that. Twosome: and--do you recall a painting of a fife and drum set with a flag? No? Maybe one of our American History majors can link it in... I vaguely remember the painting. I don't remember the artist though. Threesome: Drum--lines? Do you love them? ...or do you even know they exist? I'm wondering if this is an "Eastern" thing... Why is drumming an "Eastern" thing? Sure, there are Japanese taiko drummers, but aren't there drums in marching bands too? Marching bands solely consisting of drummers? Oil drummers in the Caribbean? There are drums and percussion instruments in every culture. I like certain kinds of drumming, but it's not one of those things which I go crazy over or even consider seeking out. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:56 AM : Wednesday, May 07, 2008 Yet Another Booklist ...containing many books I have not read. The following are "the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded." (via Dustbury) Bold = books I've read Underline = books I've read for school Italics = books I've started but haven't finished/are in the middle of reading * (asterisk) = books I own but have not started reading yet Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Anna Karenina* Crime and Punishment Catch-22 One Hundred Years of Solitude Wuthering Heights The Silmarillion* Life of Pi: a novel* The Name of the Rose Don Quixote Moby Dick Ulysses Madame Bovary The Odyssey Pride and Prejudice Jane Eyre* The Tale of Two Cities* The Brothers Karamazov Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies War and Peace Vanity Fair The Time Traveler’s Wife The Iliad Emma The Blind Assassin The Kite Runner Mrs. Dalloway Great Expectations American Gods A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Atlas Shrugged Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books Memoirs of a Geisha Middlesex* Quicksilver Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West The Canterbury Tales The Historian: a novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Love in the Time of Cholera Brave New World The Fountainhead Foucault’s Pendulum Middlemarch Frankenstein The Count of Monte Cristo Dracula A Clockwork Orange Anansi Boys* The Once and Future King The Grapes of Wrath The Poisonwood Bible : a novel 1984 Angels & Demons* The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise) The Satanic Verses Sense and Sensibility The Picture of Dorian Gray Mansfield Park One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest To the Lighthouse Tess of the D'Urbervilles Oliver Twist Gulliver’s Travels Les Misérables The Corrections The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time* Dune The Prince The Sound and the Fury Angela's Ashes: a memoir The God of Small Things A People's History of the United States: 1492-present Cryptonomicon* Neverwhere A Confederacy of Dunces A Short History of Nearly Everything Dubliners The Unbearable Lightness of Being Beloved Slaughterhouse-Five The Scarlet Letter Eats, Shoots & Leaves The Mists of Avalon Oryx and Crake: a novel Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed* Cloud Atlas The Confusion Lolita Persuasion Northanger Abbey The Catcher in the Rye On the Road The Hunchback of Notre Dame Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values The Aeneid Watership Down Gravity's Rainbow The Hobbit In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences White Teeth Treasure Island David Copperfield The Three Musketeers [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:31 PM : Tuesday, May 06, 2008 Arg! I finally get the software working, but now all my bookmarks on Firefox are wiped out after my last restart. And the two programs aren't even related to each other... Well, at least I have all my most important sites saved on an html file. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:49 PM : Just Leave the Phone Unplugged Rejecting the model in 'model minority.' I agree with Angry Asian Man's assessment. Anyways, on an unrelated note: Sometimes when I leave my landline plugged in (most of the time I don't--people who really want to get a hold of me use e-mail), I get these targeted telemarketing calls in Mandarin. I tell them I don't speak Chinese, they stammer, and then I hang up. And I totally know why I get those phone calls too. It's because of my last name. Of course, if they knew how the English transliteration of my last name came about (i.e. Vietnamization of the Cantonese pronunciation), the last thing they should be doing would be calling in Mandarin. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:18 PM : Throwing The Phone Out The Window Is Useless I hate calling tech support. After calling an 800 number, I get transferred to tech support. I try to state my problem as succinctly as possible. They cut me off and go into a condescending spiel that is of absolutely no help at all. Once there's a break when they're taking a breath to rant some more, I reply "Okay, okay, I'll try that. Thanks." They finish their spiel smugly. I say my thanks yet again even though I feel far from thankful and end the call. On the off chance that their directions do work, I try it. Of course, the suggestions have never worked and I'm completely averse to calling again. I wonder what drives them over the edge--maybe to them I sound as clueless as the kind of person who didn't even check if the computer was plugged in. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:27 PM : Sunday, May 04, 2008 Walking Home on a Sunday (A Haiku) Both black and yellow, Two silent wasps wage a war On noon-hot concrete. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:00 PM : Saturday, May 03, 2008 Brief Book Reviews The Arcanum by Janet Gleeson - It's eighteenth century Europe, the start of the Age of Reason, and a young apothecary's assistant performs a trick, apparently turning lead into gold. This bit of slight-of-hand eventually lands Johann Bottger into the hands of Augustus the Strong and life-long "imprisonment." But between his efforts in transmuting gold, Bottger eventually hit upon the formula for recreating Chinese porcelain--a different sort of gold that nonetheless fattened Augustus' pockets. Gleeson's account of the development of Meissen porcelain and the secrecy behind its formula or arcanum can be pretty suspenseful at times. As progress in European porcelain crept onward, one can't help wonder which greedy backstabber was going to hit next. I thought this was a fascinating intersection between chemical science and history (and would probably make a kickass film of period drama--I mean, it's got everything--sex, violence, espionage, grudges, greed, you name it). Highly recommended.Escape from the Antarctic by Ernest Shackleton - I like very few stories which pit man against nature--unless it's something completely unavoidable like man against disease. Unfortunately, the majority of the more famous nature stories which get made into movies feature guys climbing mountains. Completely uninteresting. The whole subliminal "mine is bigger than yours!" thing totally doesn't work for me. Survival stories, however, have held a certain morbid fascination ever since I was introduced to Gary Paulsen's Hatchet when I was ten. I think it's because there are more factors coming into play other than something like falling off a mountain. There's exposure, temperature, weather, starvation, psychological issues, lack of navigation or rescue, and infighting. Escape from the Antarctic has all of these things although the sparse prose only hinted at the psychology and infighting. As the first World War ravaged Europe, Ernest Shackleton led the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition in hopes of crossing the Antarctic. There were two parties, one which laid out supply dumps and the second which would make the crossing. The second party was marooned on Elephant Island after ice crushed their ship the Endurance, 800 miles away from the nearest settlement, at the onset of winter. At this point, Shackleton made the desperate decision to split the group: the less fit men would remain at base camp while Shackleton and five other men would seek help. Shackleton's account is matter-of-fact and a testament to his leadership. But it does not detract from the amazing feat that these men managed to get help across 800 miles in nothing more than a twenty-foot boat.[posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:29 AM : Guy Geek vs Four-Year-Old Girl (A Partially Overheard Conversation) "Boys don't have babies." "That's correct. You're well on your way to becoming a biologist." "Then how come your stomach's so big?" "That's because I'm fat." "How come you're fat?" "I'm fat because I eat too much. I take in more calories than my body needs so [insert long-winded jargon laden explanation] which upsets my metabolic homeostasis." Pause. "That's weird." [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:45 AM : Friday, May 02, 2008 Belated? Heck, Yeah. Tangled Bank #104 is up at Dammit Jim! I see there are a fair number of bacteria-related posts--which totally makes my microbe-loving heart swoon. My only excuse for not posting this earlier is that I've been swamped with end of the semester exams, projects, presentations, and all that other insane grad student whatnot. Lunch is supposed to be stress-free. This afternoon, I was perusing the student paper intending to be amused by typical undergraduate silliness when I came upon the opinion section. One of the undergraduate journalists wrote an anti-science screed which painted science as godless, evil, and morally corrupt. To say that I'm livid is an understatement. This is the first time I'm even considering writing a letter to the editor. It is true that science is godless. Science isn't a religion. But godlessness has nothing to do with evil or morality. Science gives us technology that could be used for bad purposes, but it can also be used for good. In the end, it's a tool--nothing more. It's like a screwdriver. In person A's hands, the screwdriver might be used to build a house for a low income family. In person B's hands, it might be used as a murder weapon. This doesn't make the screwdriver good or evil. If you want to blame something, blame the people wielding the tools and not the tools themselves. Anyways, the main point of that article was that scientists are going to try to do things simply because they could. And the author implied that this curiosity is morally suspect and that it's a slippery slope towards a future where humanity is enslaving sentient chimeras created from test tubes. Man, it sounds like he's read too many dystopian sci-fi novels. At any rate, it really ticked me off that scientific curiosity was labeled as bad. If that was true, most people today would be longing for the Dark Ages. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:40 PM : Thursday, May 01, 2008 Er, Okay... I'm sitting in the front of the class, minding my own business, when another student makes a snarky remark and one of the professors in class totally blows his top. I don't know about the other people in that room, but I was cringing downward in my seat, making no eye contact, and mentally plugging my ears to the ranting. More cringing ensued when the student was kicked out of class. Geez, I'm too old to witness all of this hoopla. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:40 PM : Memes Booking Through Thursday: Mayday! Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do?? And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember…. Well, if it's an emergency, I probably won't be in any frame of mind to be reading. Most likely, I'd be sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, and tuning out airport music. But if I did have a yen for reading and my only option would be one of the airport newsstands (disregarding the closest airport which has absolutely nothing at all since it only has ONE gate), I'd probably go to the magazines first. Depending on what's available and what is closest to me, I'll look at some of the science-y mags like National Geographic or Discover and then maybe some of the more high profile news-lit magazines like The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and Harper's. And then I'll browse any cooking magazines. As for novels, airports usually only carry bestsellers and other mainstream books which I tend to avoid. I also avoid newspapers--simply because they're incredibly unwieldy. The Thursday Threesome: The Magic Month of May Onesome: The magic-- of Spring? Has it started yet where you are? ...or if you're 'down under', how is Autumn progressing? Spring? Sure, although I still half expect it to snow. Twosome: month of-- transition? Are you looking to be out of school? ...to have the kids out of school? No? Heh. How about just thinking about where you want to go this Summer? ...maybe within walking distance, -no? After the following week is over, I'll be able to relax--a little. As for the summer, well, it's going to be kind of stress filled since I will still be in school. Threesome: May-- I ask you if you know which song the title for today's piece was taken from? I'm thinking Laanba has a chance at it, but any fan of Dumbledore's original actor might know it... I have no idea. Someone with more time on their hands might be able to google it up. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:59 AM : |
