In which we talk of feral squirrel monkeys

I finally caved the other day and resolved to start paying more attention to facebook (and then thirty minutes later my enthusiasm was diminished by the fact that there are feeds and add-ons that I just can't turn off, darn it). I even uploaded photos and set up email notifications, then promptly got swamped in my inbox when Lucy commented on the photos with all the speediness of someone who had just spent twenty minutes walking me through how to turn things off in my account.

It was entertaining, to say the least. I'm glad I didn't use my school email account for that one, since I get enough list-serve spam as it is. (I almost missed the check-in email from my SPAC adviser, who already thinks I have a strange habit of disappearing off of the surface of earth.)

I have finished all 352 pages of the book, thank goodness. It was a mercifully fast read, which is also aided by the fact that I skimmed about half of it. I'm not getting the silly thing, because we're discussing it next Monday and after that I will probably never again need to know who Robin (blonde and met the beauty prerequisite, of course) and Cliff (dirty blond and described as movie star handsome, or maybe it was music star...some sort of star) are. Unfortunately that meant that I had to get the book from the reserve (library copy already checked out and none of my upperclassmen had theirs around), which means I have only 24 hours with it before the next person gets it (grad privilege of 24 hours, otherwise I'd only have three). It's more scientifically accurate than Dan Brown, but Brown does a better plot. I was entertained by DA VINCI CODE. I can't say the same for INTUITION.

That was, of course, on top of the two research articles I had to read for the 8:30 discussion this morning. One of which is about feral squirrel monkeys. (The professor brought up an interesting point: where DID they get the "feral" squirrel monkeys? The authors are based in Baltimore, Maryland. Mental images of feral squirrel monkeys wandering through Johns Hopkins are surreal, but entertaining.) More specifically, about giving amphetamine to feral squirrel monkeys (yes I like typing "feral squirrel monkeys" as much as I like saying it). I cannot take the paper seriously, not just because of their choice of animal species, but also because it's just a ...really bad series of experiments. It's feral squirrel monkeys plus shoddy science. I felt bad for the monkeys. (There were also baboons involved, but they're not as ridiculous.)

Now there's only the stats final which was supposed to be posted on Monday but wasn't posted until yesterday, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, despite of the fact that the software we need to solve the problems expires this Saturday.

Oh well.

I still get to read extracurricular stuff. And drink lots of tea.

Life is still fairly good.