Today my TA drew Casper (the friendly ghost) waving around a strip of cloth on the blackboard (which is green -- the board, I mean). He explained that Casper was stripping, and so it was the Casparian strip! (The Casparian strip is a layer of wax that is around a specific cell layer in the roots of plants so stuff in the dirt doesn't just randomly get in and out of the plants. Stuff, i.e. solute, movement is regulated, see?)
I didn't know which was louder, the laughing or the groaning. Lucy, you would like him. All things considered, this is the same guy who claimed that strawberry runners are popular in baseball because of all the stolen (stolon)(botanical term for the runners, i.e. modified stems) bases.
Meanwhile, life continues. Simba has discovered that I'm not wearing jeans this week and so he can get me to make funny noises by sinking his claws (they're starting to grow out again since when they were last trimmed) into my legs. Plant anatomy classes offered us pumpkins to take home today and so I took one that has the coloration and shape of a stunted basketball home with me. Kate's decided that it should be placed on the counter, where we can stare at it, and so this has been done. My scholarship application is due tomorrow and I am currently on my third cup of tea. I also have not done the dishes, despite of the fact that I have finished dinner more than five minutes ago. However there is no one around to critique my lack of promptness in terms of dish-washing, so all may be well still. Mike (the avocado, not the fictional character and most certainly not any of my classmates) was planted into a pot on Sunday and seems to be doing quite well out there on the balcony along with our -- excuse me -- MY moldering pots of bromate-heavy dirt. I plan to take the plant home with me at the next available opportunity, before the chemicals in the Davis water can get to it. I think I've grown fond of Mike, despite of the fact that I don't particularly like avocados.
Gosh, Halloween's on a Wednesday this year, isn't it? I should consider going into hiding tomorrow night.
20071030
20071029
可以这样说
一个学生的生活可以这么解释: 以他丢了的铅笔和一页一页的作业写出一个个等试来描述他在三维空间和四维时间中画出的弧线. 数字和字母支撑着他的天地. 他的家藏在横格本之间的某个地方.
一个朋友的生活可以这么解释: 以他所乐意付出的一切和他的笑容. 以回忆. 以玩笑. 以那些所有摸不到的东西, 和照片一起放进影集, 带在心里. 它们总会在那意想不到的一刻出现在面前.
一个人的生活可以这么解释: 以他的理想和他的需要在家友的支持下盖出他的梦, 建出他独特的一生.
一个朋友的生活可以这么解释: 以他所乐意付出的一切和他的笑容. 以回忆. 以玩笑. 以那些所有摸不到的东西, 和照片一起放进影集, 带在心里. 它们总会在那意想不到的一刻出现在面前.
一个人的生活可以这么解释: 以他的理想和他的需要在家友的支持下盖出他的梦, 建出他独特的一生.
20071026
Melange
Brace yourself, it's going to be one of those posts.
There are some resolutions to the pile of deadlines yesterday. The first one I think I'll mention is the problem set, which has caused me no end of headaches with its poorly worded problems and mistakes. It ultimately resulted in me attending the TA's office hour (well, part of it, anyway). I'm proud to say that I've managed to get the TA to clarify (i.e. give hints to the class for) one problem, to fix a rather important typing error (he gave us the wrong genotype, i.e. genetic makeup, of the plant) for another problem, and to cancel yet another, half-page long, problem entirely. Between Clare and I we've managed to get him to clarify a fourth problem and push the deadline for the problem set back one day. My accomplishment of the day(and how sad is this?)probably is walking the poor TA through why the genetic recombination frequencies that he gave us won't work, why they still won't work even if he got rid of the four highest numbers (which he suggested), and ended up with him checking with me for the right answers for the fifth problem. I felt bad for the TA, but he should've looked over the problem set before he handed it out in class.
I finished the rest of the problem set while waiting for my class.
To contrast with that I can mention some of my scholarship application woes, which most revolve around the advising service UCD provides where advisers read and comment on your application essays. The first day I went in the person who is charge was at a meeting, and the people at the front desk didn't know what to do, so they had me drop off my essay with my contact information with them. When I failed to hear anything back, I went in the next day only to find out, after more confusion with different people at the front desk, that the person who is in charge was actually going to be gone for a few days, and I was sent to someone else, who couldn't find the paper that I dropped off, and so she suggested that someone else had probably picked it up and asked for me to check again Friday morning. I have found out recently that a pre-graduate adviser has ended up with my essays and that I can get them back next Tuesday at the earliest, which is exactly one day before the deadline.
I am half way through my reading and have been instructed to abandoned degenerative primers. The plan is to go on with the primers that I have, provided that I don't find anything else too interesting this weekend.
Also, I biked into two bees today. The first one smacked straight into my forehead while I was about three minutes away from campus and buzzed quite angrily in my bangs for a few seconds before I could shake it off. The second one happened less than a minute later when another bee bouncing haphazardly off of the side of my head. It's... just one of those days.
But- (and there always is a 'but') I did learn why fats contain more calories than sugars today in terms of biochemistry. It is because fat molecules (well, mostly fatty acids) are far more reduced than sugars, and so have a lot more electrons. Therefore when you metabolize fat the change in Gibbs free energy (thermodynamics, can be calculated with an equation which I don't remember) is much more negative and more energy is released, so you get more calories out of fat. Compared to fat, sugars are partially oxidized already, and so contain less energy.
Which reminds me: midterm's on Monday. Cheers.
There are some resolutions to the pile of deadlines yesterday. The first one I think I'll mention is the problem set, which has caused me no end of headaches with its poorly worded problems and mistakes. It ultimately resulted in me attending the TA's office hour (well, part of it, anyway). I'm proud to say that I've managed to get the TA to clarify (i.e. give hints to the class for) one problem, to fix a rather important typing error (he gave us the wrong genotype, i.e. genetic makeup, of the plant) for another problem, and to cancel yet another, half-page long, problem entirely. Between Clare and I we've managed to get him to clarify a fourth problem and push the deadline for the problem set back one day. My accomplishment of the day(and how sad is this?)probably is walking the poor TA through why the genetic recombination frequencies that he gave us won't work, why they still won't work even if he got rid of the four highest numbers (which he suggested), and ended up with him checking with me for the right answers for the fifth problem. I felt bad for the TA, but he should've looked over the problem set before he handed it out in class.
I finished the rest of the problem set while waiting for my class.
To contrast with that I can mention some of my scholarship application woes, which most revolve around the advising service UCD provides where advisers read and comment on your application essays. The first day I went in the person who is charge was at a meeting, and the people at the front desk didn't know what to do, so they had me drop off my essay with my contact information with them. When I failed to hear anything back, I went in the next day only to find out, after more confusion with different people at the front desk, that the person who is in charge was actually going to be gone for a few days, and I was sent to someone else, who couldn't find the paper that I dropped off, and so she suggested that someone else had probably picked it up and asked for me to check again Friday morning. I have found out recently that a pre-graduate adviser has ended up with my essays and that I can get them back next Tuesday at the earliest, which is exactly one day before the deadline.
I am half way through my reading and have been instructed to abandoned degenerative primers. The plan is to go on with the primers that I have, provided that I don't find anything else too interesting this weekend.
Also, I biked into two bees today. The first one smacked straight into my forehead while I was about three minutes away from campus and buzzed quite angrily in my bangs for a few seconds before I could shake it off. The second one happened less than a minute later when another bee bouncing haphazardly off of the side of my head. It's... just one of those days.
But- (and there always is a 'but') I did learn why fats contain more calories than sugars today in terms of biochemistry. It is because fat molecules (well, mostly fatty acids) are far more reduced than sugars, and so have a lot more electrons. Therefore when you metabolize fat the change in Gibbs free energy (thermodynamics, can be calculated with an equation which I don't remember) is much more negative and more energy is released, so you get more calories out of fat. Compared to fat, sugars are partially oxidized already, and so contain less energy.
Which reminds me: midterm's on Monday. Cheers.
20071025
In which the deadlines builds up
I found out that there is a Zach in my plant anatomy class today. He looks nothing like the fictional character, of course (well, he is Caucasian, but that's about it), but mostly I was just pleased to encounter the name in real life.
Speaking of plant anatomy, I had to take a cross section of a pea sprout's root today, as close to the root tip as possible. Since the slide samples usually need to be fairly thin (within 5 cell layers is excellent) and the roots are colorless (white, therefore containing no pigment or chlorophyll), the resulting 1mm diameter slices are very, very hard to see. Both my lab partner and I each lost a slice today. In the end it was faster to try to make another slice than to look for the one that is probably still out there somewhere - its nebulous presence swirling down the drain with the rest of our lost plant tissues, t-blue dye, and DI water.
Need to do: scholarship application, study for midterm, project (breeding program for potatoes with high starch content, I THINK), problem set (less than 10 pages, cheers), thesis background reading (around 20 pages this week), design degenerative primers (first time for everything, right?), and thesis outline, etc.
Kate has just discovered the joy of fat crystal squirrels ("It looks like a chipmunk! She exclaimed, while I stared at her.) It came along with the one of the Christmas gift catalogs and has made her day - not to mention fat-squirrels-induced glee. I told her that I don't understand her and she told me that I haven't looked at it long enough to fully appreciate it and we wondered whether my amusement at how easily she is amused makes me easily amused as well and... yeah. Happy Thursday, everyone.
Speaking of plant anatomy, I had to take a cross section of a pea sprout's root today, as close to the root tip as possible. Since the slide samples usually need to be fairly thin (within 5 cell layers is excellent) and the roots are colorless (white, therefore containing no pigment or chlorophyll), the resulting 1mm diameter slices are very, very hard to see. Both my lab partner and I each lost a slice today. In the end it was faster to try to make another slice than to look for the one that is probably still out there somewhere - its nebulous presence swirling down the drain with the rest of our lost plant tissues, t-blue dye, and DI water.
Need to do: scholarship application, study for midterm, project (breeding program for potatoes with high starch content, I THINK), problem set (less than 10 pages, cheers), thesis background reading (around 20 pages this week), design degenerative primers (first time for everything, right?), and thesis outline, etc.
Kate has just discovered the joy of fat crystal squirrels ("It looks like a chipmunk! She exclaimed, while I stared at her.) It came along with the one of the Christmas gift catalogs and has made her day - not to mention fat-squirrels-induced glee. I told her that I don't understand her and she told me that I haven't looked at it long enough to fully appreciate it and we wondered whether my amusement at how easily she is amused makes me easily amused as well and... yeah. Happy Thursday, everyone.
20071024
Nonplants and waffles
I think, having read about Lucy's dreams lately, my subconscious has decided that I need to have more dreams of my own, and so I had a dream and, unfortunately, I was in the plant anatomy lab midterm again. The only thing that made the dream midterm different from the real midterm was that the TA, instead of asking us questions about the slides of plant stuff projected on screen, was holding up plant stuff for us to identify. This is, still, within the respectable boundaries of normality. At least it was until the TA held up a giant fuzzy microbe -- or specifically, a giant fuzzy microbe that looked exactly like the dinoflagellate (i.e. sea sparkle) that Kate's got me for my birthday -- and asked us to identify it.
My first thought wasn't even "wait, there's something weird with this." That was my second thought. My first thought was actually something along the lines of "but that isn't even a plant!" -- which is, yes, very sad. And then I realized that I'm dreaming and so this dream ended and another one began where I spent a lot of time running around between classrooms and being almost late for everything (FYI: if I dream at all right after finals and hard midterms they inevitably end up being stressful and school-related), and eventually I woke up thinking "I really want some waffles."
I didn't really understand it either, since at no point did any memory that can even be remotely related to waffles surface in either dream. I still crave waffles though, and I think I'll probably end up spending the rest of the day thinking about the strangeness of my waffle-inducing (why? I ask you -- WHY?) dreams.
finem
[edit 16:07]
You know what's a really SCARY name? Gamma-glutamylcysteinylglycine.
My first thought wasn't even "wait, there's something weird with this." That was my second thought. My first thought was actually something along the lines of "but that isn't even a plant!" -- which is, yes, very sad. And then I realized that I'm dreaming and so this dream ended and another one began where I spent a lot of time running around between classrooms and being almost late for everything (FYI: if I dream at all right after finals and hard midterms they inevitably end up being stressful and school-related), and eventually I woke up thinking "I really want some waffles."
I didn't really understand it either, since at no point did any memory that can even be remotely related to waffles surface in either dream. I still crave waffles though, and I think I'll probably end up spending the rest of the day thinking about the strangeness of my waffle-inducing (why? I ask you -- WHY?) dreams.
finem
[edit 16:07]
You know what's a really SCARY name? Gamma-glutamylcysteinylglycine.
20071023
On nomenclature, or not
Kate and I had a conversation the other day which began with her narration of how she was helping out with the decorations for something and how no one except her knew how to spell "piranha."
I said, very intelligently, something along the lines of "there's an 'h' in there somewhere, right?" which of course led immediately to hand waving and exclamations of "that's exactly what everyone else there said!" so I pointed out that, hey, at least I learned how to spell "cephalaspidomorphi" (zoology class, what fun), and Kate retorted that piranhas bit people. I argued something along the lines of that cephalaspidomorphi evolving earlier which was again turned aside by Kate's statement that piranhas bit people, which, I was led to believe, thoroughly trumps all other characteristics of any organism. I then remarked that with ideas like that, that must be where her rabbit gets her beliefs, which led to a good laugh since her rabbit DOES seem to think along the principles that while being Cute and Fuzzy is well enough, as far as modus operandi goes, Biting People is For The Win.
To be fair though, she hasn't bitten me at all since Kate came back. I think she's bitten Kate, but she always bites Kate, so I'm not sure if that counts.
Meanwhile, I have the bioenergetics midterm left. Today's lab midterm for plant anatomy is astonishingly hard, being that it contained a part where we had powerpoint slides of things we had to identify as well as a part where we were given two pieces of plant and had to prepare and dye the plant samples, make the slides, and then name all the tissue, cell, organelles, and visible cell metabolic products that we could see with a light microscope. (There are very many things.)
Eye twitch, I've concluded, is an inevitable occupation hazard.
I said, very intelligently, something along the lines of "there's an 'h' in there somewhere, right?" which of course led immediately to hand waving and exclamations of "that's exactly what everyone else there said!" so I pointed out that, hey, at least I learned how to spell "cephalaspidomorphi" (zoology class, what fun), and Kate retorted that piranhas bit people. I argued something along the lines of that cephalaspidomorphi evolving earlier which was again turned aside by Kate's statement that piranhas bit people, which, I was led to believe, thoroughly trumps all other characteristics of any organism. I then remarked that with ideas like that, that must be where her rabbit gets her beliefs, which led to a good laugh since her rabbit DOES seem to think along the principles that while being Cute and Fuzzy is well enough, as far as modus operandi goes, Biting People is For The Win.
To be fair though, she hasn't bitten me at all since Kate came back. I think she's bitten Kate, but she always bites Kate, so I'm not sure if that counts.
Meanwhile, I have the bioenergetics midterm left. Today's lab midterm for plant anatomy is astonishingly hard, being that it contained a part where we had powerpoint slides of things we had to identify as well as a part where we were given two pieces of plant and had to prepare and dye the plant samples, make the slides, and then name all the tissue, cell, organelles, and visible cell metabolic products that we could see with a light microscope. (There are very many things.)
Eye twitch, I've concluded, is an inevitable occupation hazard.
20071022
20071020
In which deadlines loom
The UCD registrar has informed me that the schedule of classes for winter quarter will be available next Monday and the registration for classes will begin a week from that date.
That gives me a moment in time where I tried to think in expletives. I didn't get very far, being distracted half way, already, by whether or not it'll be possible to schedule classes around labs or labs around classes.
Speaking of labs, I had my second lab meeting yesterday with my fellow lab members (consisting of three graduate students and three undergraduate students, four counting myself) and we discussed possible projects which mostly didn't include me since I'm sort of on my own project already (I THINK I may have two sets of possible primers now). The subject of the colonization of acidothermus (a bacterial that's the closest relative to the symbiotic bacteria that I'm working on) came up, since acidothermus only lives in hot springs and yet somehow they have colonized hot springs all over the place. One of the grad students suggested that it may have traveled on the feet of birds, which is how we ended up discussing the possibility of ecological studies, traveling to exotic places in South America, and swabbing the feet of flamingos.
I found the idea of swabbing the feet of flamingos amusing. Mike (yes there's yet another one - there are so many Mikes around it's beginning to alarm me), a fellow undergrad, asked whether or not we were serious, at which point all of us, Dr. Berry included, cracked up.
By the way - about the peppers - I'm beginning to think that my social sci friends may need to go and teach my biotech classmates. (How is it you guys know about this and they didn't?) You'd think, judging by their expressions when the professor was explaining about the peppers, that it was back in whatever century it was and Copernicus had just informed them that the orbit of the sun isn't centered around the earth. I was, personally, surprised that no one brandished words like "blasphemy" and "heresy" around. I guess this just goes to prove something that Dr. Rizzo, from my freshman year, had said: there will be people who can tell you the exactly DNA sequence for a certain trait in a plant, but who will have no idea what the actual plant looks like.
For what it's worth, I'm glad I've picked up some of the practical knowledge about plants before I went in depth about the molecular bio part.
[edit 17:40]
If you've typed the word "cells" hundreds of times when you're in a hurry does that excuse you from misspelling the word, even if you're majoring in biology?
Excuse me, I have to go and feel stupid now.
That gives me a moment in time where I tried to think in expletives. I didn't get very far, being distracted half way, already, by whether or not it'll be possible to schedule classes around labs or labs around classes.
Speaking of labs, I had my second lab meeting yesterday with my fellow lab members (consisting of three graduate students and three undergraduate students, four counting myself) and we discussed possible projects which mostly didn't include me since I'm sort of on my own project already (I THINK I may have two sets of possible primers now). The subject of the colonization of acidothermus (a bacterial that's the closest relative to the symbiotic bacteria that I'm working on) came up, since acidothermus only lives in hot springs and yet somehow they have colonized hot springs all over the place. One of the grad students suggested that it may have traveled on the feet of birds, which is how we ended up discussing the possibility of ecological studies, traveling to exotic places in South America, and swabbing the feet of flamingos.
I found the idea of swabbing the feet of flamingos amusing. Mike (yes there's yet another one - there are so many Mikes around it's beginning to alarm me), a fellow undergrad, asked whether or not we were serious, at which point all of us, Dr. Berry included, cracked up.
By the way - about the peppers - I'm beginning to think that my social sci friends may need to go and teach my biotech classmates. (How is it you guys know about this and they didn't?) You'd think, judging by their expressions when the professor was explaining about the peppers, that it was back in whatever century it was and Copernicus had just informed them that the orbit of the sun isn't centered around the earth. I was, personally, surprised that no one brandished words like "blasphemy" and "heresy" around. I guess this just goes to prove something that Dr. Rizzo, from my freshman year, had said: there will be people who can tell you the exactly DNA sequence for a certain trait in a plant, but who will have no idea what the actual plant looks like.
For what it's worth, I'm glad I've picked up some of the practical knowledge about plants before I went in depth about the molecular bio part.
[edit 17:40]
If you've typed the word "cells" hundreds of times when you're in a hurry does that excuse you from misspelling the word, even if you're majoring in biology?
Excuse me, I have to go and feel stupid now.
20071017
In which I face primers and more cat fur
It is, unfortunately, a Wednesday.
I intensely dislike Wednesdays.
All things considered though, the events today haven't been all that bad. The pacing of things have picked up, certainly, but that has more to do with the progression of the quarter than Wednesday in particular. At this point I'm pretty sure I'm just biased against the day for the principle of things. It would probably be better if I'm living with a bias for a specific date such as Friday the 13th, for example. Those come along far less frequently and would probably lead to a much more productive life than one where I spend every Monday dreading Wednesday.
But then, you know, that's just one more of my many idiosyncrasies.(Did you know that "idioplast" in botany means a cell that looks different from the cells surrounding it? I'm guessing that "idio" is the root.)
As far as lab work went, I got around to designing primers today which, to put it more accurately, wasn't so much me "designing" the primer as me selecting conserved regions of DNA, counting the nucleotides and combinations, and plugging it all into an online program (123 Genomics is your friend). There was some confusion about the sequence because one of the sequenced genomes was the whole genome, so I need to find out which part of it was the code for the enzyme that I needed. The whole process took somewhat longer than expected and I had to literally run off to my bioenergetics class. I missed the few vacation photos that the professor usually would show in the beginning of each lecture but that's okay, Angela told me that we had birds today, and boobies are no where near being my favorite bird (though you have to give them credit for having a name that is based on the word for "crazy person").
I found cat hair on my desk today, which is puzzling since I don't let Simba into my room. It may be one of those mysterious cat things. Or else Simba has learned how to walk through walls which, although it'd be pretty awesome, would also be kind of creepy and possibly highly annoying. Do I really NEED to be poked awake at 4am in the morning? I think not.
FYI: I just realized today in my plant genetics class that people outside of botany / horticulture / agriculture related fields, who don't grow things much, probably don't know that red bell peppers and green bell peppers are the same thing. Yes, you heard correctly, they are actually the same type / cultivar of plant. When the peppers ripen they turn from green to red. The professor said that that's why red bell peppers are more expensive -- because they have to stay out in the field longer and so run a higher risk of being damaged (bugs, diseases, etc., i.e. pathogens). She also said that that's why red bell peppers are generally sweeter which, personally, I've never noticed, but then I don't eat raw peppers that much and she does, so I'm going to take her word on that.
I intensely dislike Wednesdays.
All things considered though, the events today haven't been all that bad. The pacing of things have picked up, certainly, but that has more to do with the progression of the quarter than Wednesday in particular. At this point I'm pretty sure I'm just biased against the day for the principle of things. It would probably be better if I'm living with a bias for a specific date such as Friday the 13th, for example. Those come along far less frequently and would probably lead to a much more productive life than one where I spend every Monday dreading Wednesday.
But then, you know, that's just one more of my many idiosyncrasies.(Did you know that "idioplast" in botany means a cell that looks different from the cells surrounding it? I'm guessing that "idio" is the root.)
As far as lab work went, I got around to designing primers today which, to put it more accurately, wasn't so much me "designing" the primer as me selecting conserved regions of DNA, counting the nucleotides and combinations, and plugging it all into an online program (123 Genomics is your friend). There was some confusion about the sequence because one of the sequenced genomes was the whole genome, so I need to find out which part of it was the code for the enzyme that I needed. The whole process took somewhat longer than expected and I had to literally run off to my bioenergetics class. I missed the few vacation photos that the professor usually would show in the beginning of each lecture but that's okay, Angela told me that we had birds today, and boobies are no where near being my favorite bird (though you have to give them credit for having a name that is based on the word for "crazy person").
I found cat hair on my desk today, which is puzzling since I don't let Simba into my room. It may be one of those mysterious cat things. Or else Simba has learned how to walk through walls which, although it'd be pretty awesome, would also be kind of creepy and possibly highly annoying. Do I really NEED to be poked awake at 4am in the morning? I think not.
FYI: I just realized today in my plant genetics class that people outside of botany / horticulture / agriculture related fields, who don't grow things much, probably don't know that red bell peppers and green bell peppers are the same thing. Yes, you heard correctly, they are actually the same type / cultivar of plant. When the peppers ripen they turn from green to red. The professor said that that's why red bell peppers are more expensive -- because they have to stay out in the field longer and so run a higher risk of being damaged (bugs, diseases, etc., i.e. pathogens). She also said that that's why red bell peppers are generally sweeter which, personally, I've never noticed, but then I don't eat raw peppers that much and she does, so I'm going to take her word on that.
20071016
20071013
Further geekage
Because of course we can never have too much, right?
This's supposed to be a book meme copied from Makani along with the directions/descriptions:
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today, 30 September 2007). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
[My to-read list is still over 100 books long, by the way.]
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
A 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 (Though in my defense it was in Spanish and my Spanish isn't that great.)
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein (The introduction just got way too long.)
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
1984
Angels & Demons (Will never read willingly. I've enough of the style.)
The Inferno
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 (Chinese version.)
Gulliver's Travels (Chinese version.)
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 (Pride and Prejudice remains her best work, I guess.)
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 (If only to figure out why Kate keeps making those references.)
The Three Musketeers
Bastard out of Carolina
In retrospect that didn't seem so bad, after all.
This's supposed to be a book meme copied from Makani along with the directions/descriptions:
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today, 30 September 2007). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
[My to-read list is still over 100 books long, by the way.]
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
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
A 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 (Though in my defense it was in Spanish and my Spanish isn't that great.)
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein (The introduction just got way too long.)
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
1984
Angels & Demons (Will never read willingly. I've enough of the style.)
The Inferno
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 (Chinese version.)
Gulliver's Travels (Chinese version.)
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
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey (Pride and Prejudice remains her best work, I guess.)
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 (If only to figure out why Kate keeps making those references.)
The Three Musketeers
Bastard out of Carolina
In retrospect that didn't seem so bad, after all.
20071012
Licensed geek talking
The first disease that I can think of which links kidney problems with blindness is diabetes mellitus, but kidney isn't the cause of the problem. I can't think of anything else based on my knowledge of what the kidneys do (waste removal, promote production of red blood cells) (which I always found strange because to me it makes more sense if the liver's in charge of the promoting)(come to think of it, if certain wastes build up in the body that COULD cause blindness, but I'm not sure if this will occur before the other toxins have reached critical levels) so I've looked it up (courtesy of Google Scholar, which is handy) and there's an article (2005) about how there is a disease called Senior-Loken Syndrome where the patient'd get kidney disease (nephronophthisis - don't ask me how to pronounce this, I have no idea) and a form of blindness (retinitis pigmentosa). But then, this has been traced to a defective gene, and so kidney is, once again, not the cause of the disease.
So I'm sorry, Kate, but I honestly don't know.
Also, honestly, I find the fact that I've bookmarked pages like "Molecules to Go" and "123 Genomics" far more worrisome than whether or not my spelling is better when I'm talking - er, writing - science-speak.
While I am taking full advantage of my geek license however (and thank you, Lucy), I'd like to link you guys to something pretty. This, ladies and gents, is what I spend about six hours per week looking at:
Lab 3 photos - from last week. Medicago is alfalfa, and the stem's stained with t-blue, which is toxic. Come to think of it, all our dyes are either corrosive or toxic, but we're required to use neither gloves nor safety glasses. I guess at this point they just assume that we're neat-fingered...with, I suppose, good reason. After all, parts of those six hours require us to do cross sections and longitudinal sections of plant materials that are usually 1 cm long, with razors that can get "dull" just by touching it to a hard surface, such as a table. You either get to be neat-fingered or you get stitches on your fingers (which has happened to a student before, I heard), so that's ...really not much of a choice.
Lab 5 photos - stuff from this week. You HAVE TO scroll down and see the Tillandsia scale. It's the blue and purple thing that looks like a weird tropical sea creature. Tillandsia is the Spanish Moss, and the scales are what make the plant look whitish. The scales help the moss absorb water. The so-called scales are actually a type of trichome. (And Spanish Moss is pretty neat plant-wise too and no, it's not an actual moss. Kate wanted to keep some last time I dragged her to the conservatory, so we took a bit home but alas, our apartment is too cold and dry for the tropical plant.)
Oh God it's Friday.
So I'm sorry, Kate, but I honestly don't know.
Also, honestly, I find the fact that I've bookmarked pages like "Molecules to Go" and "123 Genomics" far more worrisome than whether or not my spelling is better when I'm talking - er, writing - science-speak.
While I am taking full advantage of my geek license however (and thank you, Lucy), I'd like to link you guys to something pretty. This, ladies and gents, is what I spend about six hours per week looking at:
Lab 3 photos - from last week. Medicago is alfalfa, and the stem's stained with t-blue, which is toxic. Come to think of it, all our dyes are either corrosive or toxic, but we're required to use neither gloves nor safety glasses. I guess at this point they just assume that we're neat-fingered...with, I suppose, good reason. After all, parts of those six hours require us to do cross sections and longitudinal sections of plant materials that are usually 1 cm long, with razors that can get "dull" just by touching it to a hard surface, such as a table. You either get to be neat-fingered or you get stitches on your fingers (which has happened to a student before, I heard), so that's ...really not much of a choice.
Lab 5 photos - stuff from this week. You HAVE TO scroll down and see the Tillandsia scale. It's the blue and purple thing that looks like a weird tropical sea creature. Tillandsia is the Spanish Moss, and the scales are what make the plant look whitish. The scales help the moss absorb water. The so-called scales are actually a type of trichome. (And Spanish Moss is pretty neat plant-wise too and no, it's not an actual moss. Kate wanted to keep some last time I dragged her to the conservatory, so we took a bit home but alas, our apartment is too cold and dry for the tropical plant.)
Oh God it's Friday.
20071010
When multiplication means the same as division
There was some confusion about cell replication today which, all things considered, is kind of sad (i.e. - all things meaning that this is an upper division class and most of us have been going through the cell cycle since before high school). But - fear not - there will always be confusion. For instance, today the TA informed us that after the first part of meiosis (meiosis I) there is, in fact, no cell division (cytokinesis) and, in fact, there's not going to be a cell division until the entire meiosis's done with and both the chromosome number and the chromatid number have been reduced by half.
We stared at him. I'm sure our expressions said, very clearly, that we thought that he had lost his mind.
Most text books depict a cell division after meiosis I. In fact, most text books SAY that there is a cell division after meiosis I. I've checked, having spent considerable time in-between classes today musing over the different images of the cell cycle that I've been forced to remember within the past however many years. There will still be confusion but, if I'm lucky, it will have dissipated somewhat by the time of the midterm.
Yeah, that's always good.
Bioenergetics is as enervating as usual. We learned about creatine today which is, as it turns out, a very important compound in the body and a medical diagnostic tool to boot. Creatine's a rather oddly shaped compound (though no more oddly shaped, I suppose, than any of the other things we've been looking at) that's responsible for maintaining a steady pool of ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) in the cell. It sort of functions as the molecular equivalent of an energy storage battery type of thing. Medically it's used to test (via blood sample) to see if someone's had a heart attack since cell deaths in the heart will cause a lot of the creatine kinases (enzymes that catalyze the reaction between creatine and ATP) to be released into the blood from the dead cells. So high concentration of the kinase (abbreviated CK, I think, on the blood test) is bad news.
Also, creatine has a constant turnover rate where the body steadily converts it to creatinine, a waste product that's processed by the kidney. Therefore, elevated creatinine level is a prelude to kidney failure.
Now see, all this would be so much more fascinating if I don't have to remember the structure of the organic compound. I had thought that memorizing the structure of the 20 amino acids was bad. Clearly, I thought wrong. It's a measure of how far I've come when I find myself looking back and feeling nostalgic about the days when the most complicated compounds I've got to know are things like sodium bicarbonate and dinitrophenol.
Those were the days.
And that concludes your five minute adventure into the wonderful world of biology. Congratulations.
We stared at him. I'm sure our expressions said, very clearly, that we thought that he had lost his mind.
Most text books depict a cell division after meiosis I. In fact, most text books SAY that there is a cell division after meiosis I. I've checked, having spent considerable time in-between classes today musing over the different images of the cell cycle that I've been forced to remember within the past however many years. There will still be confusion but, if I'm lucky, it will have dissipated somewhat by the time of the midterm.
Yeah, that's always good.
Bioenergetics is as enervating as usual. We learned about creatine today which is, as it turns out, a very important compound in the body and a medical diagnostic tool to boot. Creatine's a rather oddly shaped compound (though no more oddly shaped, I suppose, than any of the other things we've been looking at) that's responsible for maintaining a steady pool of ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) in the cell. It sort of functions as the molecular equivalent of an energy storage battery type of thing. Medically it's used to test (via blood sample) to see if someone's had a heart attack since cell deaths in the heart will cause a lot of the creatine kinases (enzymes that catalyze the reaction between creatine and ATP) to be released into the blood from the dead cells. So high concentration of the kinase (abbreviated CK, I think, on the blood test) is bad news.
Also, creatine has a constant turnover rate where the body steadily converts it to creatinine, a waste product that's processed by the kidney. Therefore, elevated creatinine level is a prelude to kidney failure.
Now see, all this would be so much more fascinating if I don't have to remember the structure of the organic compound. I had thought that memorizing the structure of the 20 amino acids was bad. Clearly, I thought wrong. It's a measure of how far I've come when I find myself looking back and feeling nostalgic about the days when the most complicated compounds I've got to know are things like sodium bicarbonate and dinitrophenol.
Those were the days.
And that concludes your five minute adventure into the wonderful world of biology. Congratulations.
20071008
Some sparks of humor
The other week a few classmates and I were sharing stories about the mishaps we've encountered with the new freshman population on campus. One incident, if I recall correctly, involved someone who came out after class to find that someone else had chained his/her bike to hers. The hypothesis was that the person was trying to loop the bike lock around the pole, but for some reason didn't think to go around the other bike that was already there and instead went THROUGH the other bike, causing much grief when the classmate came out and wanted to leave. With her bike.
There was a story where one of my old dormmate got run off of the side walk by a freshman on a bike. Another one of my classmates said that he'd stand around with a protest sign for that, if he could find the time for it.
Also, Kate remarked that the photograph in my textbook of condensed chromosomes that are dyed with florescent dye looked like glowey worms having a party as opposed to, I suppose, the un-condensed chromosome illustration on the cover of the textbook, which she said makes her think of spaghetti (and now I'm hungry and will need to go look for food afterwards).
(You know, I was well into high school by the time I finally learned how to spell "spaghetti." The "h" in the middle always confused me because I'd remember that there's a silent "h" but never quite remember where to stick it.)
But the brief thought on genetics reminds me of one of my professor's comments today, where she said that "breeding is like evolution on Speed." There were smiles all around for that. And the TA can't count, but that's alright, the professor's not the brightest with math either and she's very good natured about it and so I don't believe he'll suffer from his mistakes.
Which reminds me that I've made yet another spectacular mistake with negative signs yesterday, so I shouldn't be talking about other people's math skills at all.
Probability seems much friendlier in comparison. No negative signs.
There was a story where one of my old dormmate got run off of the side walk by a freshman on a bike. Another one of my classmates said that he'd stand around with a protest sign for that, if he could find the time for it.
Also, Kate remarked that the photograph in my textbook of condensed chromosomes that are dyed with florescent dye looked like glowey worms having a party as opposed to, I suppose, the un-condensed chromosome illustration on the cover of the textbook, which she said makes her think of spaghetti (and now I'm hungry and will need to go look for food afterwards).
(You know, I was well into high school by the time I finally learned how to spell "spaghetti." The "h" in the middle always confused me because I'd remember that there's a silent "h" but never quite remember where to stick it.)
But the brief thought on genetics reminds me of one of my professor's comments today, where she said that "breeding is like evolution on Speed." There were smiles all around for that. And the TA can't count, but that's alright, the professor's not the brightest with math either and she's very good natured about it and so I don't believe he'll suffer from his mistakes.
Which reminds me that I've made yet another spectacular mistake with negative signs yesterday, so I shouldn't be talking about other people's math skills at all.
Probability seems much friendlier in comparison. No negative signs.
20071007
A morning lost
The adoption fair for FFO this week has been shifted to Sunday and, after some consideration, I've decided that even though by technicality Sunday should present no more problem than Saturday, I would really hate having it (permanently) on Sundays.
Why? Because Sunday morning is the only day of the week where I feel comfortable sleeping in a little. Because Sunday morning is the time(my time) between finishing everything that's due on Monday and trying to get a head start on studying and prepping things for the next week. Because, in a sense, Sunday morning was peace.
Have you ever had a morning where you woke up completely relaxed, with your mind gloriously warm and blank while you stared at the light playing through the curtains? It is those few moments before your memory and your conscious (and your guilt and whatever else) kicked in -- those few blissful moments. I get them on Sunday mornings and, unless drugged, no other time. One summer when I was in high school I'd taught myself how to remember my dreams (enough to record them in detail the next morning) and to wake up instantaneously -- and had spent three consecutive months afterwards trying to forget how. Immediate wake up, I've learned, has it advantages, but it usually means that you can't go back to sleep afterwards, either. (Your day begins with your first moment of consciousness because you'd unthinkingly replaced the dial switch with the on / off switch.)
So Sunday morning is my moment of peace, and as much as I want to do my best for my foster kitties, I really would resent their intrusions into my Sunday mornings.
And no, my personal definition of peace is not just that moment in time. (Heavens forbid me from being so sensory deprived.)(Joking. Sort of.) Peace is more than any sort of a physical, sensual thing -- even the personal kind. But peace, like many other feelings, is something that can be triggered by physical, sensual things. It can be stored in things around us the way memories can, and so I say that peace is also the sound of rain on pavement and the smell of jasmine, tea or otherwise. World peace and political peace definitions aside, peace is also a sort of calmness, which I like to link to the image of the ripples on a quiet pond.
Peace, I think, should be a sort of pale, sage-green -- something cool and comforting that you can wrap around yourself at the end of the day.
I wish I could say that I have as good of an idea for happiness as I do for peace, given the two are, more often than not, inclusive. I do have some ideas of what it might be (and it would be more than the fireworks of laughter and ice cream -- so bright, but never lasting). What comes to mind when I try to pin it down in wiggling, tricky words is a series of snapshots (because I can't help thinking in pictures): sunshine on grass, home with the cream-colored futon and calla lilies, Borders the day after Thanksgiving. What I have are the lit lamp by the door when I come home late after a meeting, a cat purring by my feet where I sat in the dark (and so many other photographs that I try unsuccessfully to juggle together, like a puzzle with pieces still missing). It doesn't quite fit yet but one day, when it does, I'll let you know.
I do know that I think happiness should be the color of amber -- the warm honeyed hue with just a hint of gold.
And now I think I'll go and scrub out the bathroom. Excuse me.
Why? Because Sunday morning is the only day of the week where I feel comfortable sleeping in a little. Because Sunday morning is the time(my time) between finishing everything that's due on Monday and trying to get a head start on studying and prepping things for the next week. Because, in a sense, Sunday morning was peace.
Have you ever had a morning where you woke up completely relaxed, with your mind gloriously warm and blank while you stared at the light playing through the curtains? It is those few moments before your memory and your conscious (and your guilt and whatever else) kicked in -- those few blissful moments. I get them on Sunday mornings and, unless drugged, no other time. One summer when I was in high school I'd taught myself how to remember my dreams (enough to record them in detail the next morning) and to wake up instantaneously -- and had spent three consecutive months afterwards trying to forget how. Immediate wake up, I've learned, has it advantages, but it usually means that you can't go back to sleep afterwards, either. (Your day begins with your first moment of consciousness because you'd unthinkingly replaced the dial switch with the on / off switch.)
So Sunday morning is my moment of peace, and as much as I want to do my best for my foster kitties, I really would resent their intrusions into my Sunday mornings.
And no, my personal definition of peace is not just that moment in time. (Heavens forbid me from being so sensory deprived.)(Joking. Sort of.) Peace is more than any sort of a physical, sensual thing -- even the personal kind. But peace, like many other feelings, is something that can be triggered by physical, sensual things. It can be stored in things around us the way memories can, and so I say that peace is also the sound of rain on pavement and the smell of jasmine, tea or otherwise. World peace and political peace definitions aside, peace is also a sort of calmness, which I like to link to the image of the ripples on a quiet pond.
Peace, I think, should be a sort of pale, sage-green -- something cool and comforting that you can wrap around yourself at the end of the day.
I wish I could say that I have as good of an idea for happiness as I do for peace, given the two are, more often than not, inclusive. I do have some ideas of what it might be (and it would be more than the fireworks of laughter and ice cream -- so bright, but never lasting). What comes to mind when I try to pin it down in wiggling, tricky words is a series of snapshots (because I can't help thinking in pictures): sunshine on grass, home with the cream-colored futon and calla lilies, Borders the day after Thanksgiving. What I have are the lit lamp by the door when I come home late after a meeting, a cat purring by my feet where I sat in the dark (and so many other photographs that I try unsuccessfully to juggle together, like a puzzle with pieces still missing). It doesn't quite fit yet but one day, when it does, I'll let you know.
I do know that I think happiness should be the color of amber -- the warm honeyed hue with just a hint of gold.
And now I think I'll go and scrub out the bathroom. Excuse me.
20071006
一千只荧火虫
开学后第一个正式上课的礼拜过的比较忙碌. 每个学期都是这样, 何况这个学期又是本学年的开始, 所以乱七八糟的事更多的不用说了. 再加上点报大学的事 - 我应该为我这个学期少选一门课而感到欣慰.
总而言之: 地一周 = 俱乐部 + 买书 + 找教室 + 试验室安排 + 其它没有想象到的事(生活中充满了这些). 谢天谢地第二周的事相比来讲少多了.
妈据(她的电子邮件)说已经到了302, 并对时差感到困惑. 我只记得在有夏时制时北京的时间是美国的时间(12尽制)加三, 然后把黑白颠倒(这的白天等于那的黑夜). 没夏时制时要加四小时. 当然虽然说的容易, 每次我也得想那么几秒中才能推算出正确的时间.
复习继续! 大学的事在收到考试分数后正式开工!
总而言之: 地一周 = 俱乐部 + 买书 + 找教室 + 试验室安排 + 其它没有想象到的事(生活中充满了这些). 谢天谢地第二周的事相比来讲少多了.
妈据(她的电子邮件)说已经到了302, 并对时差感到困惑. 我只记得在有夏时制时北京的时间是美国的时间(12尽制)加三, 然后把黑白颠倒(这的白天等于那的黑夜). 没夏时制时要加四小时. 当然虽然说的容易, 每次我也得想那么几秒中才能推算出正确的时间.
复习继续! 大学的事在收到考试分数后正式开工!
20071005
A few words on chemicals
I've encountered many discussions (well, more than usual, anyway) about organic vs. inorganic things lately. It's not just food, because I think we can all agree that THAT discussion is getting a bit over-discussed now -- most people just settle for their view points and use the so called "discussions" not to listen to other people's opinions, but to browbeat others with their own. No, I'm talking about the other things -- the food additives, the pesticides, and so on. For the records, these are my thoughts on the subject matter:
Organic isn't always "safer" than inorganic. From what I can understand of it at least, many inorganic substances are easier to analyze, without the complicated mixture that permeates every single organic extract. You can get an inorganic food additive that may be safer than the organic kind because of the things that might show up, mixed in with the organic compound that you want. Inorganic poisons are effective, yes, but keep in mind we have some pretty effective organic poisons too -- mother nature, after all, has had a longer time to study chemistry than you and I. Taxol, for instance, is a cancer drug that is essentially a form of poison. It affects microtubule organization in cells and thus inhibits cell division. It's also an extract from yew trees. Foxglove extract is used as a vasodilator but in its more concentrated form will cause your heart to stop and no -- they are not there to poison us on purpose, they have these things in them to prevent themselves from getting chomped on by herbivores looking for a yummy green snack.
In other words: no, I don't think organic things are the miraculous cure-all harmless things that some people seem to think they are.
However -- and make no mistakes about it -- I am for the organic things. As I've said, mother nature has been at it for a longer time than we have, and has created, for her class projects, things of unimaginable complexity. For every single thing she has created that can be considered a poison, she has either an antidote or some other ways of take care of it. A dead foxglove, for instance, will not poison the land it was growing on. This is in contrast with many man-made chemicals that has no counter parts in nature and so can't be degraded or countered or whatever (DDT and diedrin come to mind). These things stick around and can't be reused and believe me when I say that our chemical garbage is kind of a big problem. Plenty of chemicals are as effective at causing mutations as radiation. Nature can clean up after herself. We are starting to learn how, but learning something is not exactly the same thing as doing it.
People buy organic food for this reason, though not everyone knows it. Organic foods don't have inorganic pesticides and growth hormones because those things are man-made and can build up in our bodies in lethal amounts, given enough time and exposure. But -- and I will repeat this -- people also shouldn't just assume things are fail-safe and fool-proof (personally I'm of the opinion that nothing in this world is truly fool-proof, anyway)just because they're labeled "organic."
My suggestion? Being an informed consumer. It's good for your body, it's good for your mind (in fact, you can go and impress people now with what you've learned about microtubules -- they are essential for cell division).
On a side note, organic phosphates in pesticide/herbicide/whatever doesn't actually mean it's derived from plants. It means organic in the sense of organic chemistry. The things that are considered "organic" by the common definition is usually listed as extracts of this and that.
Organic isn't always "safer" than inorganic. From what I can understand of it at least, many inorganic substances are easier to analyze, without the complicated mixture that permeates every single organic extract. You can get an inorganic food additive that may be safer than the organic kind because of the things that might show up, mixed in with the organic compound that you want. Inorganic poisons are effective, yes, but keep in mind we have some pretty effective organic poisons too -- mother nature, after all, has had a longer time to study chemistry than you and I. Taxol, for instance, is a cancer drug that is essentially a form of poison. It affects microtubule organization in cells and thus inhibits cell division. It's also an extract from yew trees. Foxglove extract is used as a vasodilator but in its more concentrated form will cause your heart to stop and no -- they are not there to poison us on purpose, they have these things in them to prevent themselves from getting chomped on by herbivores looking for a yummy green snack.
In other words: no, I don't think organic things are the miraculous cure-all harmless things that some people seem to think they are.
However -- and make no mistakes about it -- I am for the organic things. As I've said, mother nature has been at it for a longer time than we have, and has created, for her class projects, things of unimaginable complexity. For every single thing she has created that can be considered a poison, she has either an antidote or some other ways of take care of it. A dead foxglove, for instance, will not poison the land it was growing on. This is in contrast with many man-made chemicals that has no counter parts in nature and so can't be degraded or countered or whatever (DDT and diedrin come to mind). These things stick around and can't be reused and believe me when I say that our chemical garbage is kind of a big problem. Plenty of chemicals are as effective at causing mutations as radiation. Nature can clean up after herself. We are starting to learn how, but learning something is not exactly the same thing as doing it.
People buy organic food for this reason, though not everyone knows it. Organic foods don't have inorganic pesticides and growth hormones because those things are man-made and can build up in our bodies in lethal amounts, given enough time and exposure. But -- and I will repeat this -- people also shouldn't just assume things are fail-safe and fool-proof (personally I'm of the opinion that nothing in this world is truly fool-proof, anyway)just because they're labeled "organic."
My suggestion? Being an informed consumer. It's good for your body, it's good for your mind (in fact, you can go and impress people now with what you've learned about microtubules -- they are essential for cell division).
On a side note, organic phosphates in pesticide/herbicide/whatever doesn't actually mean it's derived from plants. It means organic in the sense of organic chemistry. The things that are considered "organic" by the common definition is usually listed as extracts of this and that.
The fuzzies
Last night was an event that reminded me of why I thought fostering only one cat (until Annie came back) is a good idea.
I had a busy day yesterday, being stuck on campus for nearly eleven hours. Simba wasn't very happy with me because of that and also because once I got home I didn't have time to play with him (the horror of horrors!) and then, to add insult to injury, I abandoned him (when I've already neglected him) to sit with the Scary Black Thing in the other room. Yesterday was, consequently, the only time in my history of fostering him that he scratched on the door for five minutes after I went to bed. Usually I get about two seconds of noises in the morning to let me know that he knows that I'm up and so would I please come out and pet him? But no, yesterday was scratching and whining after I closed my bedroom door for the night (and he knows it -- the benefits of being a scheduled person during socialization turns out not to be not so great a benefit during fostering).
Then of course, Lucy isn't happy with me at all. She stomped a lot last night and when I went in to check on her she just stared at me balefully. I got the distinct impression that she was blaming me (through no fault of my own) for Kate's disappearance. I was woken up this morning by the sound of rabbit teeth attacking wire cage, which was loud enough to be heard straight through the walls. Feeling somewhat peeved and -- alright -- vaguely guilty, I got up, went over, opened the window, fed her, and petted her, thinking that this might calm her down a little. She bit me, which promptly put an end to the petting session and any desire to let her out of her cage this morning. Socialization has taught me that I shouldn't let an animal out of its cage until it's comfortable with being petted inside of its cage (and Hippo had looked scary back when he hissed at me -- he'd hunker down in the corner of the cage, where it was dark, and the only things I could see would be the two yellow eyes and lots of white teeth). It would be funny if it turns out, in my entire experience of dealing with socializing feral cats, that my only scar is the result of a house-broken (sort of) rabbit. I wonder if this can be used as an advertisement for how tame our socialized kitties are.
Lucy is still making a lot of noise this morning and so, since she's shifted from staring to glaring, I bribed her shamelessly with her treats. Though, considering her reaction to my fingers, I probably will not be sticking my whole hand into her cage any time soon. I will make another attempt later with cranberries, though if she still hates me by Saturday Kate'll have to clean out the cage on her own.
Of course, all of this is taking place with Simba crying piteously outside of the door (just imagine what it'd be like having two cats simultaneously wailing!). I heard a loud thump from the living room area last night, but further investigation, coupled with watching his antics this morning, has forced me to conclude that it was probably Simba falling off of something while he was pouncing.
Ah, there's the stomping again. My cue with cranberries on top. Heh.
[edit: 10/6 13:46]
Lucy hates me.
I had a busy day yesterday, being stuck on campus for nearly eleven hours. Simba wasn't very happy with me because of that and also because once I got home I didn't have time to play with him (the horror of horrors!) and then, to add insult to injury, I abandoned him (when I've already neglected him) to sit with the Scary Black Thing in the other room. Yesterday was, consequently, the only time in my history of fostering him that he scratched on the door for five minutes after I went to bed. Usually I get about two seconds of noises in the morning to let me know that he knows that I'm up and so would I please come out and pet him? But no, yesterday was scratching and whining after I closed my bedroom door for the night (and he knows it -- the benefits of being a scheduled person during socialization turns out not to be not so great a benefit during fostering).
Then of course, Lucy isn't happy with me at all. She stomped a lot last night and when I went in to check on her she just stared at me balefully. I got the distinct impression that she was blaming me (through no fault of my own) for Kate's disappearance. I was woken up this morning by the sound of rabbit teeth attacking wire cage, which was loud enough to be heard straight through the walls. Feeling somewhat peeved and -- alright -- vaguely guilty, I got up, went over, opened the window, fed her, and petted her, thinking that this might calm her down a little. She bit me, which promptly put an end to the petting session and any desire to let her out of her cage this morning. Socialization has taught me that I shouldn't let an animal out of its cage until it's comfortable with being petted inside of its cage (and Hippo had looked scary back when he hissed at me -- he'd hunker down in the corner of the cage, where it was dark, and the only things I could see would be the two yellow eyes and lots of white teeth). It would be funny if it turns out, in my entire experience of dealing with socializing feral cats, that my only scar is the result of a house-broken (sort of) rabbit. I wonder if this can be used as an advertisement for how tame our socialized kitties are.
Lucy is still making a lot of noise this morning and so, since she's shifted from staring to glaring, I bribed her shamelessly with her treats. Though, considering her reaction to my fingers, I probably will not be sticking my whole hand into her cage any time soon. I will make another attempt later with cranberries, though if she still hates me by Saturday Kate'll have to clean out the cage on her own.
Of course, all of this is taking place with Simba crying piteously outside of the door (just imagine what it'd be like having two cats simultaneously wailing!). I heard a loud thump from the living room area last night, but further investigation, coupled with watching his antics this morning, has forced me to conclude that it was probably Simba falling off of something while he was pouncing.
Ah, there's the stomping again. My cue with cranberries on top. Heh.
[edit: 10/6 13:46]
Lucy hates me.
20071003
In which biochem wins again
I woke up this morning in the mood to write, I thought, a passionate yet logical essay about conservation biology and some of the dangers our current ecosystems are facing that many people aren't even aware of. It was not the sort of mood that I can swap for fiction-writing mode (sorry, Lucy), nor was it the sort of thing that's a precursor to scientific papers. It was ranting, albeit a slightly more coherent kind.
I was in the mood. I was in the mood during breakfast, still in the mood while I changed the cat litter. I paid attention in plant genetics and thought about how to incorporate what I was learning into my argument ("when it comes to the environment humanity often behaves like a spoiled child - making a mess without a thought about how to clean up after itself afterwards"). I formulated the paragraphs in my head during lunch, concluded I had some time in the afternoon where I could nip over to the computer lab in Hutchinson hall, and thought I had at least enough time to type up a basic rough draft.
Then I had bioenergetics, and I couldn't think about anything except enzymes for two hours afterwards. Metabolism does that to you. The thought of enzyme is like a incipient bacterial disease: at first there is just barely a thought, lurking insidiously in the back of your mind and then - quite suddenly - they're EVERYWHERE and they crowd out all other thoughts until all you can think about are aldose ketose conversions and why on earth there are so many "ases" (enzyme names always ends in "ase", e.g. kinase, isomerase, etc.) around. Thoughts about the paper and the environment were pushed out. I tried reading an environment-related book for a while but that produced no result except an almost irrepressible urge to lie down and take a nap somewhere. There was no doubt about it - my mood was ruined.
Which is why I am not writing a rant on environment today, after all.
And apparently Kate is still reading this. Hi Kate!
I was in the mood. I was in the mood during breakfast, still in the mood while I changed the cat litter. I paid attention in plant genetics and thought about how to incorporate what I was learning into my argument ("when it comes to the environment humanity often behaves like a spoiled child - making a mess without a thought about how to clean up after itself afterwards"). I formulated the paragraphs in my head during lunch, concluded I had some time in the afternoon where I could nip over to the computer lab in Hutchinson hall, and thought I had at least enough time to type up a basic rough draft.
Then I had bioenergetics, and I couldn't think about anything except enzymes for two hours afterwards. Metabolism does that to you. The thought of enzyme is like a incipient bacterial disease: at first there is just barely a thought, lurking insidiously in the back of your mind and then - quite suddenly - they're EVERYWHERE and they crowd out all other thoughts until all you can think about are aldose ketose conversions and why on earth there are so many "ases" (enzyme names always ends in "ase", e.g. kinase, isomerase, etc.) around. Thoughts about the paper and the environment were pushed out. I tried reading an environment-related book for a while but that produced no result except an almost irrepressible urge to lie down and take a nap somewhere. There was no doubt about it - my mood was ruined.
Which is why I am not writing a rant on environment today, after all.
And apparently Kate is still reading this. Hi Kate!
20071002
At least they don't scream
Classes continue and I seem to have acquired this week, along with some formidable reading assignment sheets, a huge number of notes and handouts that I have to print. I am not complaining, mind you. Even if I use up one ink cartridge per quarter (which has yet to happen, even with the considerable abuse administered by the communications & ethnicity class I took last fall), the cost is still considerably less than it would've been had the teacher, say, insisted we buy a supplement book (which does happen for some classes).
The printer is slaving away, even as I'm typing this (and the table is shaking because of it). I think I have over 200 pages to print this quarter (some of which I can foster off of the campus printers) (60 sheets, to be exact, as the student account so loves to remind me), but even so, it's still sadly more economical than the cost of textbooks.
Speaking of economics, Lucy, you would've liked my plant anatomy class' TA. He is tall, somewhat dorky (okay, very dorky), and warned us on the first day of the lab that he will be telling us lots of bad jokes. He overheard me mourning over the coleus plants today (after we make the incision for two of the treatments we have to remove the head of the plant as well as all leaves, so I was remarking on how sad the plants looked) and he commented that at least the plants don't scream. Which made me twitch, just thinking about it. He also said that if we forgot our lab equipments we can borrow our partner's, since that's what lab mates are for - and then he promptly started singing something that along the lines of "that's what mates are for" while the class looked on with baffled amusement. (And no he's not British.)
Simba attempted to climb up my leg today. I discouraged him firmly, but I doubt it will register in his furry little head. There is a flavor of the myth of Sisyphus to trying to train a cat.
The printer is slaving away, even as I'm typing this (and the table is shaking because of it). I think I have over 200 pages to print this quarter (some of which I can foster off of the campus printers) (60 sheets, to be exact, as the student account so loves to remind me), but even so, it's still sadly more economical than the cost of textbooks.
Speaking of economics, Lucy, you would've liked my plant anatomy class' TA. He is tall, somewhat dorky (okay, very dorky), and warned us on the first day of the lab that he will be telling us lots of bad jokes. He overheard me mourning over the coleus plants today (after we make the incision for two of the treatments we have to remove the head of the plant as well as all leaves, so I was remarking on how sad the plants looked) and he commented that at least the plants don't scream. Which made me twitch, just thinking about it. He also said that if we forgot our lab equipments we can borrow our partner's, since that's what lab mates are for - and then he promptly started singing something that along the lines of "that's what mates are for" while the class looked on with baffled amusement. (And no he's not British.)
Simba attempted to climb up my leg today. I discouraged him firmly, but I doubt it will register in his furry little head. There is a flavor of the myth of Sisyphus to trying to train a cat.
20071001
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