After spending all of yesterday (as well as part of the evening) obsessing over my cloning experiment, my subconscious provided me with a dream that involves baking. Very specifically about putting shredded coconut in frosting. The baking part I understand because, all jokes aside, baking is really a lot like setting up an experiment in a molecular biology lab. Even the frosting I can understand. But why, I wondered during breakfast this morning, why coconuts? Not knowing bothered me.
Possible explanations, I concluded while brushing my teeth, are the following:
Zebrafish >> tropical >> coconuts
Fruit fly >>coconut oil (via information retained from classmate's talk) >> coconuts
What makes somewhat less sense is the connection with mice, because:
Mouse>> ??? >>coconuts
(For the record, the mice I work with are black in color.)
The mind is a truly mysterious place.
20120319
20120318
Anderson predates the 8th, but does Disney?
About half way to falling asleep last night, I find my thought turning to the Disney sequel to the Little Mermaid, more specifically, to the fate of the villain. (Villainess? Villainette?) I was horrified to realize that what effectively happened to her is that she is trapped, alive and with full-awareness, in suspended animation (no pun intended), for presumably all of eternity somewhere in an abyss of the ocean.
I reflected that, if I were trapped in my head but with full awareness of my surroundings, I hope someone would have the mercy to kill me. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It is a fate, I think, worse than death. I would go mad from it, in the clinical sense, and given how the villain (villaine? villaina?) wasn't exactly the most mentally stable to begin with, this strikes me as an Extremely Poor Solution. Forever, in a chunk of ice, can easily be translated to "bidding her time". And as various stories done by other authors can tell you, there's nothing quite so terrifying as someone who's mind is broken, who's vengeful, and who's willing -- and can afford to -- bid his / her time.
Triton is immortal, but forever is a long time. A lot of things can be done in forever. Glaciers have crept across continents and melted in less time than forever. How long would a block of ice (even magical ice) last, in the face of forever?
Unless this is a hedged bet on another sequel, in which I applaud the writers for a job well done.
Admittedly I can pretend that the Lord of the Seas tracked down that block of ice some time later on, preferably before she went mad, thawed her out and gave her a fair trial. Certain to my knowledge no canon exists to contradict me. And then she will probably serve time in an underwater prison, but maybe they'll have craft classes (complete with the underwater equivalent of safety scissors) and she can learn underwater basket weaving.
And then I fell asleep.
I reflected that, if I were trapped in my head but with full awareness of my surroundings, I hope someone would have the mercy to kill me. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It is a fate, I think, worse than death. I would go mad from it, in the clinical sense, and given how the villain (villaine? villaina?) wasn't exactly the most mentally stable to begin with, this strikes me as an Extremely Poor Solution. Forever, in a chunk of ice, can easily be translated to "bidding her time". And as various stories done by other authors can tell you, there's nothing quite so terrifying as someone who's mind is broken, who's vengeful, and who's willing -- and can afford to -- bid his / her time.
Triton is immortal, but forever is a long time. A lot of things can be done in forever. Glaciers have crept across continents and melted in less time than forever. How long would a block of ice (even magical ice) last, in the face of forever?
Unless this is a hedged bet on another sequel, in which I applaud the writers for a job well done.
Admittedly I can pretend that the Lord of the Seas tracked down that block of ice some time later on, preferably before she went mad, thawed her out and gave her a fair trial. Certain to my knowledge no canon exists to contradict me. And then she will probably serve time in an underwater prison, but maybe they'll have craft classes (complete with the underwater equivalent of safety scissors) and she can learn underwater basket weaving.
And then I fell asleep.
20120316
I need an econ refresher
Dear all,
Would someone please explain to me how it is that the .mobi (ebook) version of a book costs around 13$ while the used paper copy costs 0.01$? Is this a case of supply-demand? Because then...how is the supply limited? It's digital. Making a copy of a digital book doesn't take that much resources or energy, even compared to the making of mass-market paperbacks (which still requires paper making and binding and such). Most authors these days have their final transcript in digital format, anyway, and it's not that hard to convert .doc to ebook formats. I've done that before too. There are even free online software for these sort of things.
Perhaps it's because the paper-copy is "used"? But...it's digital. I mean how do you even tell apart "used" from "new" copies? But if that were the case, where can I get used digital books? Because seriously, I don't mind used books. Either paper-copy or digitally.
This mini-rant is brought to you by my visit to the library website. I'm one of those people who prefer not to buy a book until I've read it and know that I like it. I read fast. To entertain me for extended length of time requires something either massive or going to the library (whose schedule overlaps with mine by only two hours every week) every week. I have a kindle. I have gone through the entire SD library ebooks collection. There're just over 2000 books. There are five that overlaps with my to-read list (121 books so far). They all have wait-lists ranging from 6 to 36 people. Hunting on the internet has not helped much.
Help.
[edit 11:00]
New thought: I hate to default to thinking the worse of everyone, but I realized that it's possible for it still be a supply-demand situation where, because the supplier knows the demand is high, they can purposefully limit the supply in order to charge higher prices and therefore obtain more profit (and they don't even have to subtract printing and distribution costs for ebooks).
Thoughts?
Would someone please explain to me how it is that the .mobi (ebook) version of a book costs around 13$ while the used paper copy costs 0.01$? Is this a case of supply-demand? Because then...how is the supply limited? It's digital. Making a copy of a digital book doesn't take that much resources or energy, even compared to the making of mass-market paperbacks (which still requires paper making and binding and such). Most authors these days have their final transcript in digital format, anyway, and it's not that hard to convert .doc to ebook formats. I've done that before too. There are even free online software for these sort of things.
Perhaps it's because the paper-copy is "used"? But...it's digital. I mean how do you even tell apart "used" from "new" copies? But if that were the case, where can I get used digital books? Because seriously, I don't mind used books. Either paper-copy or digitally.
This mini-rant is brought to you by my visit to the library website. I'm one of those people who prefer not to buy a book until I've read it and know that I like it. I read fast. To entertain me for extended length of time requires something either massive or going to the library (whose schedule overlaps with mine by only two hours every week) every week. I have a kindle. I have gone through the entire SD library ebooks collection. There're just over 2000 books. There are five that overlaps with my to-read list (121 books so far). They all have wait-lists ranging from 6 to 36 people. Hunting on the internet has not helped much.
Help.
[edit 11:00]
New thought: I hate to default to thinking the worse of everyone, but I realized that it's possible for it still be a supply-demand situation where, because the supplier knows the demand is high, they can purposefully limit the supply in order to charge higher prices and therefore obtain more profit (and they don't even have to subtract printing and distribution costs for ebooks).
Thoughts?
20120315
Some sounds go straight to the subconscious
I was pretty tired last night due to the length of my day and sadly, it also was one of those rare days when the neighbor had a few and then fell asleep in front of his tv with the volume on full blast, which meant that I could hear the dialogues, not to mention the music and other sounds, perfectly clearly. Even more unfortunately he was watching something with a lot of gunfire.
Eventually I was forced to get up, grab a jacket, and knock on his door until he woke up and then request he turn down the volume. Then I returned to bed and proceeded to have an extremely lengthy semi-science-fiction nightmare where I was sent off to war. I spent nearly the entire length of the dream feeling ill-prepared and terrified and now I feel a bit like my eyeballs are going to fall out of my head.
Please tell me this isn't going to turn into one of those days.
Eventually I was forced to get up, grab a jacket, and knock on his door until he woke up and then request he turn down the volume. Then I returned to bed and proceeded to have an extremely lengthy semi-science-fiction nightmare where I was sent off to war. I spent nearly the entire length of the dream feeling ill-prepared and terrified and now I feel a bit like my eyeballs are going to fall out of my head.
Please tell me this isn't going to turn into one of those days.
20120314
Last night I had a dream during which I was helping Sherlock Holmes troubleshooting the wireless connection on his laptop. Looking back, he was probably more patient than is canonically accurate.
Also, this is probably the record for early arrival to work since I moved to PB. Awful, isn't it? I'm tempted to ask Santa to 48 hours of nothing -- no chores, no obligations -- to just sit around and sleep except, rather like the lyrics from the song "Stress" suggests, I'd probably hate it.
That's the tragedy of being a self-aware workaholic. You are very aware that you really have no one to blame except yourself.
Oh well.
Also, this is probably the record for early arrival to work since I moved to PB. Awful, isn't it? I'm tempted to ask Santa to 48 hours of nothing -- no chores, no obligations -- to just sit around and sleep except, rather like the lyrics from the song "Stress" suggests, I'd probably hate it.
That's the tragedy of being a self-aware workaholic. You are very aware that you really have no one to blame except yourself.
Oh well.
20120312
Common sense fail
Sometimes the Thesis Adviser seems so genuinely interested in the details of what I'm working on that I forget common sense and try to explain the details to him. I usually realize the mistake thirty minutes later with either a vague memory or no recollection of what I was working on before the discussion started and uncertain predictions as to when the discussion will actually end so I can go back and figure out what I was supposed to be doing (possibly when the timer went off ten minutes ago).
Today, for instance, I tried to explain to him why I stagger experiments a certain way to be efficient, and why that kind of efficiency works for me. Looking back I suspect I may have had better luck trying to convince him that genes are made of green cheese.*
--------
*A famous geneticist (possibly Nobel laureate -- I forgot) once made a comment along the lines of "the principles of genetics would still hold true even if genes are made of green cheese". (Yeah IDEK.)
Today, for instance, I tried to explain to him why I stagger experiments a certain way to be efficient, and why that kind of efficiency works for me. Looking back I suspect I may have had better luck trying to convince him that genes are made of green cheese.*
--------
*A famous geneticist (possibly Nobel laureate -- I forgot) once made a comment along the lines of "the principles of genetics would still hold true even if genes are made of green cheese". (Yeah IDEK.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)