They are building a lot of things on campus right now...a new student housing place for the School Of Med people and a telemedicine building. (Note: Wendy and I had to google it when we first heard of that one, because telemedicine sounds like telekinesis or something and we weren't sure what it is or why it needed its own building.) I just heard last week that they're thinking of building of another building for our program (we already have a building named after that family...I guess the family/foundation is very wealthy & philanthropic) and should that ever get completed (not going to happen during my stay at here) our lab might move there.
Mostly I just look around that the School of Med area and wonder where the heck they're going to stick another building. We're pretty full. Unless they want to cross the highway and build it in the eastern campus, I suppose.
I also had spare time this weekend, most of which I used yesterday to read GAME OF THRONES. (Bits of it are unexpectedly gruesome. I mean, I really did NOT need that depth of detail for what the scars look like. Or the sounds people make when tortured.) I've also sorted through my accumulating pile of already-read mail that I've yet to deal with, and uncovered a very nice cheque that needs to be cashed as well as the Chase letter telling me to activate my debit card. A visit to the bank is in order. Or at least an ATM machine.
The weather is really good here today and made me regret the fact that I now live in a place where it's not possible to go more than what feels like five steps without stepping off of a curb and worry about being run over. (Sun's out = crowded beach, unless I want to go really early, which I couldn't today because I had errands to run that I'd prefer to get done before there is a crowd.) As it is I've opened the windows and the door to let the wind through, and enough of it had gone through to knock fridge magnets (and the papers they were holding up) onto the floor (a lack of foresight on my part, I guess). It feels nice though.
Tried a cereal called "Wheat-fuls" from "Mom's Best" brand. It's like the regular frosted wheats except...more bland. I don't know how else to describe this, but I've never been so bored by cereal before. It's a novel experience.
In addition, I've been composing a list of things I've been meaning to get, but never got around to buying, for whatever reason (some of which being that I need to do a bit of background research before buying and I've just never found the time). I've been considering steadily working my way down the list once the quarter is over, except yesterday I'm suddenly struck by the idea of whether or not it's wise of me to accumulate worldly goods, given that I have no idea where I'll end up (except it will not be here) or how many times I'll have to move in the future. Yes, there's storage space, but is it really a good idea to collect so much knickknacks when I'm not even certain if there'll be someone around to help me move in the future? Not to mention given how much thought I tend to invest before buying something (except essentials such as food and such), even if that something is not something I need, per se, (e.g. a certain book), I'm not going to be willing to just sell it whenever I have to move. (If I can part with it so easily there's a much lower chance I'd buy it in the first place.)
Then I think that maybe I'm thinking to much, and if I really wanted to get something I should just go ahead and buy it. I still have at least three years to enjoy myself before worrying about storage spaces, after all. Except this line of thought usually end with me clutching my head and thinking, "But this is such an irresponsible line of thought!"
...Yep. I don't think I'm suited for commercialism. Or whatever this things is.
20100523
20100518
In which life stabilizes, and I confuse the PI
After the insanity the past week I arrived at Saturday evening with the dumbfounding discovery that I have finished all my "must do" items and that the weekend wasn't over yet. In fact, Saturday wasn't over yet. I hope this will be what it's like once the quarter is over. Life will be wonderful. My tablet will no longer be gather dust. I will get a chance to read something fun that doesn't include words like "minor allele frequency".
I don't think I've gone out since the last time Lucy and I went, before quarter started. I miss fries. I cannot understand why the professor didn't pass out the paper that's due on Friday until this afternoon (but at least my presentation is over, I just have to write a review for it).
Nevertheless, the lack of immediate and time-consuming sources of stress means that I'm feeling pretty cheerful today (despite of our UV box breaking yesterday). A lot of weird little things that happen in life that otherwise would've amplified my stress on a bad day merely amused me today, to the point that when the PI asked me how I was doing, I answered, "Pretty good!" and then when he remarked that I was smiling I replied something about how odd things are happening and they're amusing and left him standing in the lobby, looking like he can't make up his mind whether to be amused or confused.
(Eventually he did try to come and find out what on earth is the matter with his grad student. I used the opportunity to try to get him to explain my partial copy of the polytene map since the lecturer utterly failed to cover it. My PI's handy that way. For certain things he's like a walking encyclopedia that likes to wander by with his mug of tea, though he is easily distracted. Which may not be a good thing.)
Other than that, I have a bruise on my knuckle and I have no clue how I got it. The street in front of my apartment is being re-paved. My mice DID get shipped last week (yay!), the person in charge just forgot the email me. My classmate has created a new acronym that I will use diligently in my studies now, called YFDO (Your Favorite Diploid Organism).
Over and out.
I don't think I've gone out since the last time Lucy and I went, before quarter started. I miss fries. I cannot understand why the professor didn't pass out the paper that's due on Friday until this afternoon (but at least my presentation is over, I just have to write a review for it).
Nevertheless, the lack of immediate and time-consuming sources of stress means that I'm feeling pretty cheerful today (despite of our UV box breaking yesterday). A lot of weird little things that happen in life that otherwise would've amplified my stress on a bad day merely amused me today, to the point that when the PI asked me how I was doing, I answered, "Pretty good!" and then when he remarked that I was smiling I replied something about how odd things are happening and they're amusing and left him standing in the lobby, looking like he can't make up his mind whether to be amused or confused.
(Eventually he did try to come and find out what on earth is the matter with his grad student. I used the opportunity to try to get him to explain my partial copy of the polytene map since the lecturer utterly failed to cover it. My PI's handy that way. For certain things he's like a walking encyclopedia that likes to wander by with his mug of tea, though he is easily distracted. Which may not be a good thing.)
Other than that, I have a bruise on my knuckle and I have no clue how I got it. The street in front of my apartment is being re-paved. My mice DID get shipped last week (yay!), the person in charge just forgot the email me. My classmate has created a new acronym that I will use diligently in my studies now, called YFDO (Your Favorite Diploid Organism).
Over and out.
20100514
...
Dear classmate,
Please do not send me half-hearted efforts at powerpoint slides (two slides! I spent time waiting for two slides?) with the excuse that you're sorry you can't do more because you are "busy". We are grad students. We are, by definition, busy. I think for a group project, which involves other people, we at least deserve a better excuse.
Also...
Dear undergrad,
Please don't use "antibodies" and "antibiotics" interchangeably. They are very much not the same thing. It makes me sad every time you confuse the two.
...
Well life, that about sums it up. But the week's almost done! Cheers!
At this point, the highlight of my week is finding out that Anna's going to be at the same SfN thing in November as me. (Mail me your abstract title at some point Anna, so I can find out when you're presenting when the session book comes out.) Definitely something to look forward to.
Please do not send me half-hearted efforts at powerpoint slides (two slides! I spent time waiting for two slides?) with the excuse that you're sorry you can't do more because you are "busy". We are grad students. We are, by definition, busy. I think for a group project, which involves other people, we at least deserve a better excuse.
Also...
Dear undergrad,
Please don't use "antibodies" and "antibiotics" interchangeably. They are very much not the same thing. It makes me sad every time you confuse the two.
...
Well life, that about sums it up. But the week's almost done! Cheers!
At this point, the highlight of my week is finding out that Anna's going to be at the same SfN thing in November as me. (Mail me your abstract title at some point Anna, so I can find out when you're presenting when the session book comes out.) Definitely something to look forward to.
20100513
ZMG a break?!
Surprisingly this week is approaching the Week of Insanity Around Midterms Period in terms of stress and barely controlled chaos. I am reduced to list-making to account for the eventfulness of the days so far:
1. Kitchen faucet leak: water will spray out SIDEWAYS along the spout when turned on. Discovered on Friday. Called Landlady Saturday, temporarily dealt with duct tape (still leaked, but at least no longer spraying) leading to...
2. Mystery cleaning: giving permission for repairman to enter, returning home Tuesday to find the kitchen sink mysteriously cleaned and that the sink that always clogged a little no longer clogged. The faucet was still leaking.
3. Presentation Friday morning: GROUP presentation tomorrow morning. We didn't get the material assigned to us until Monday morning. I just found out yesterday evening that at least one person in my group of three (supposed to be four, but that person never showed and no one knows who that person is) has yet to read the paper. (I'm waiting to hear back from them right now.)
4. TAing duties: Problem sets due today. To sum it up in a word: grading. (Which I do not have my pens for right now but will shortly after this hour is over.)
5. SfN flailing: abstract deadline today at 2pm. Sent final draft to PI on the 4th of May (because I knew this week may be insane and I didn't want to deal with it this week). Found out YESTERDAY at 5:30pm that he can only sponsor one person and so he has decided for me to join SfN and submit my own abstract, probably because the student membership is cheaper than the postdoc version. Joining requires sponsorship of two PIs, CV, and forms. Managed to find sponsors & get all forms together and submitted by 9pm yesterday. Submitted my own abstract by 10am today, which happens to be my TAing day (8am-12pm occupied with TAing related stuff) (yes there is no one at my office hour, which is why I have the time to do this, which I wanted to do last night but had NO TIME FOR). There was a lot of frustrated flailing involved.
6. Mice: Still. Has. Not. Been. Shipped. WTF people. Because of age constraints between cohorts if they don't get shipped within the next week I'll have to forfeit my first round of data. Considering each round takes about 6 months to generate this makes me feel a bit like crying. But at least...
7. Faucet got fixed yesterday: No leaking, no spraying, yayness.
8. Need to present poster at Genetics Retreat: Which is on my TAing day. Which requires me to set up my poster at 8:30am. Which required emailing back to explain that I am gone from 8-12 that day. (Still waiting to hear back.) Which also requires me to finish my poster in two weeks. Which involves sorting through my gigabytes of data into figures on top of dealing with the lamprey tissue samples that just arrived this Tuesday.
9: Randomly: Smog check at some point. In between all the rest of the insanity.
I think I deserve pearl tea.
1. Kitchen faucet leak: water will spray out SIDEWAYS along the spout when turned on. Discovered on Friday. Called Landlady Saturday, temporarily dealt with duct tape (still leaked, but at least no longer spraying) leading to...
2. Mystery cleaning: giving permission for repairman to enter, returning home Tuesday to find the kitchen sink mysteriously cleaned and that the sink that always clogged a little no longer clogged. The faucet was still leaking.
3. Presentation Friday morning: GROUP presentation tomorrow morning. We didn't get the material assigned to us until Monday morning. I just found out yesterday evening that at least one person in my group of three (supposed to be four, but that person never showed and no one knows who that person is) has yet to read the paper. (I'm waiting to hear back from them right now.)
4. TAing duties: Problem sets due today. To sum it up in a word: grading. (Which I do not have my pens for right now but will shortly after this hour is over.)
5. SfN flailing: abstract deadline today at 2pm. Sent final draft to PI on the 4th of May (because I knew this week may be insane and I didn't want to deal with it this week). Found out YESTERDAY at 5:30pm that he can only sponsor one person and so he has decided for me to join SfN and submit my own abstract, probably because the student membership is cheaper than the postdoc version. Joining requires sponsorship of two PIs, CV, and forms. Managed to find sponsors & get all forms together and submitted by 9pm yesterday. Submitted my own abstract by 10am today, which happens to be my TAing day (8am-12pm occupied with TAing related stuff) (yes there is no one at my office hour, which is why I have the time to do this, which I wanted to do last night but had NO TIME FOR). There was a lot of frustrated flailing involved.
6. Mice: Still. Has. Not. Been. Shipped. WTF people. Because of age constraints between cohorts if they don't get shipped within the next week I'll have to forfeit my first round of data. Considering each round takes about 6 months to generate this makes me feel a bit like crying. But at least...
7. Faucet got fixed yesterday: No leaking, no spraying, yayness.
8. Need to present poster at Genetics Retreat: Which is on my TAing day. Which requires me to set up my poster at 8:30am. Which required emailing back to explain that I am gone from 8-12 that day. (Still waiting to hear back.) Which also requires me to finish my poster in two weeks. Which involves sorting through my gigabytes of data into figures on top of dealing with the lamprey tissue samples that just arrived this Tuesday.
9: Randomly: Smog check at some point. In between all the rest of the insanity.
I think I deserve pearl tea.
20100506
For a pretty penny
This the Thursday after the midterm, so I had two students come to my section and (so far) none to my office hour. Instead I've some time to marvel about the things people do for money and what they're willing to risk for it.
People should be more than familiar with my rant about inappropriate use of antibiotics by now. This morning I just got another fun talk from a practitioner (formerly ER & OR)who gave us a case study in which a girl decided to go off and take antibiotics for her cold. She did get better after a few days, mostly due to the fact that mild cold/flu only lasts a few days. What's important was that later when she got appendicitis and had to get her appendix removed, she had a fairly normal mild infection that, when treated with the fairly standard antibiotics that they give you for this sort of infection, got worse. By taking antibiotics when she didn't have to, she had effectively selected for the resistant bacteria growing on her so that, when she does develop a wound, it'd be those bacteria that's infecting her. She nearly died from the subsequent treatment to get rid of those resistant bacteria, but thankfully she didn't.
This I know. What I didn't know was how much antibiotics they're routinely loading into animal feeds. For the large companies that tend to house animals in far too crowded conditions, this is the only way they can prevent half of the animals from dying from infections born of unsanitary over-crowded conditions. Right now some analogues of the antibiotics that doctors reserve as a last line of defense for bacteria that are resistant to all your regular antibiotics is going into cattle feed on a regular basis. People who work in these company's meat packing factories have been found with higher percentage of antibiotic resistant bacteria on them than normal people. You draw the conclusions.
Meat is not a significant portion of my diet, but for this reason alone I think it's worth it to shell out a few extra bucks for the company that produce meat not loaded on antibiotics. Net income is somewhat less important than death, I'd think. If you're dead, your money's not going to be of much use to you, is it?
(Oh and I found the link for the treatise on the problem with sticking antibacterial agents/antibiotics on every thing, from Center for Disease Control. Seriously, normal soap is good enough. Normal soap (well a cleaner, more expensive kind) is what we use in lab to lyse (burst open) bacteria cells. Well technically it's possible that some day there may be a bacterium that'll be resistant to normal soap, but compared to antibiotic resistance that's like...looking for someone who's resistant to an atomic bomb vs looking for someone who's resistant to bubonic plague: 1/3 rate of survival for the later, currently known rate of survival for the former is zero. ...unless you count the Indiana Jones miracle, which I don't. Lead-lined fridge so would not be helpful to you in an atomic explosion, no matter what the movie says.)
On a not so seriously note, the TruGreen ad banner makes me think of the book GREENER THAN YOU THINK.
People should be more than familiar with my rant about inappropriate use of antibiotics by now. This morning I just got another fun talk from a practitioner (formerly ER & OR)who gave us a case study in which a girl decided to go off and take antibiotics for her cold. She did get better after a few days, mostly due to the fact that mild cold/flu only lasts a few days. What's important was that later when she got appendicitis and had to get her appendix removed, she had a fairly normal mild infection that, when treated with the fairly standard antibiotics that they give you for this sort of infection, got worse. By taking antibiotics when she didn't have to, she had effectively selected for the resistant bacteria growing on her so that, when she does develop a wound, it'd be those bacteria that's infecting her. She nearly died from the subsequent treatment to get rid of those resistant bacteria, but thankfully she didn't.
This I know. What I didn't know was how much antibiotics they're routinely loading into animal feeds. For the large companies that tend to house animals in far too crowded conditions, this is the only way they can prevent half of the animals from dying from infections born of unsanitary over-crowded conditions. Right now some analogues of the antibiotics that doctors reserve as a last line of defense for bacteria that are resistant to all your regular antibiotics is going into cattle feed on a regular basis. People who work in these company's meat packing factories have been found with higher percentage of antibiotic resistant bacteria on them than normal people. You draw the conclusions.
Meat is not a significant portion of my diet, but for this reason alone I think it's worth it to shell out a few extra bucks for the company that produce meat not loaded on antibiotics. Net income is somewhat less important than death, I'd think. If you're dead, your money's not going to be of much use to you, is it?
(Oh and I found the link for the treatise on the problem with sticking antibacterial agents/antibiotics on every thing, from Center for Disease Control. Seriously, normal soap is good enough. Normal soap (well a cleaner, more expensive kind) is what we use in lab to lyse (burst open) bacteria cells. Well technically it's possible that some day there may be a bacterium that'll be resistant to normal soap, but compared to antibiotic resistance that's like...looking for someone who's resistant to an atomic bomb vs looking for someone who's resistant to bubonic plague: 1/3 rate of survival for the later, currently known rate of survival for the former is zero. ...unless you count the Indiana Jones miracle, which I don't. Lead-lined fridge so would not be helpful to you in an atomic explosion, no matter what the movie says.)
On a not so seriously note, the TruGreen ad banner makes me think of the book GREENER THAN YOU THINK.
20100503
Um.
Dear Diary,
Today my PI compared a microsome to a "small New England farming town". And then it spiraled out from there to cell-specific protein functions and bells in belfries and support beams. I couldn't help it. I laughed.
Seriously, though. Small New England farming town? How does he come up with these things?
Sincerely,
-S
Today my PI compared a microsome to a "small New England farming town". And then it spiraled out from there to cell-specific protein functions and bells in belfries and support beams. I couldn't help it. I laughed.
Seriously, though. Small New England farming town? How does he come up with these things?
Sincerely,
-S
20100501
Not as exciting as Orlando, I guess
I'm catching up on online-journal entries right now and decide to do another one of those meme things, also taken from Lucy's LJ.
Pick 20 movies/anime/video games/literary works/etc. and put their summaries from Better Than It Sounds and WITHOUT CHEATING have your friends guess:
1. A confused young man starts to understand his life for the first time after he has an operation, only to have it slip away from him after his favorite animal dies.
2. A reclusive, unloving hermit is forced to go on a quest to rescue the rest of her kind after a jive-talking butterfly hints that they've been taken prisoner by a lightly carbonated energy drink. Over the course of her adventures, she learns how to love, but eventually gets better.
3. A satire of Victorian society in which a lawyer travels to other dimensions, and is arrested for trying to start a new religion. Oh, and the women of the protagonist's homeworld can accidentally stab people by sneezing.
(Victoria should know this. She recommended the book to me.)
4. Young man fights in the Second World War, goes home, gets married, is abducted by aliens, goes home, dies. Not necessarily in that order.
(Pretty sure Kate knows this. My highschool classmates' seen me carry this around, near the end of my junior year, I believe.)
5. Mentally-challenged man rescues ham from poor white trash out to avenge family honor.
(Okay, freshman year high school literature. You guys know this one.)
6. Humanity is saved by the common cold.
7. In a totalitarian world, a man has philisophical discussions with himself, has sex whenever he is alone with his girlfriend for longer than ten minutes, then gets tortured.
8. Extraordinarily Empowered Girls kill zombies with bells.
(I'm pretty sure this book was also pointed out by Victoria at some point.)
9. German college student's asshole professor sends him and his class off to World War 1; he and the rest of his class all die.
(High school literature, soph. year. Malvina really likes the other book the author wrote.)
10. The son has his girlfriend and identity stolen by the long lost brother he never knew he had. Except the brother is actually him.
(I think you've read this, Lucy, based on my recommendation. The author is something of a favorite.)
(Lucy, you're on the right track.)
11. Elderly brother and sister adopt an orphan who loses her temper, lets her imagination run away with her, holds a grudge, and generally gets into trouble. Everyone is charmed.
(Kate, you own this book.)
12. In The Future, there's no crime, poverty, war, disease or old age, and everyone gets to have lots and lots of sex. But the Noble Savage says it's bad. Two other people, who are among the smartest people on earth, go on a quest to stop being happy.
13. A squadron of insane soldiers try to not die in the war. Paradoxical bureaucracy gets in the way of that.
(Senior year in high school. Everyone who had the same lit class as me should know this.)
14. Guy kills old lady and her sister to prove his ideas. Turns out he was wrong.
15. A teenage girl is drafted into her grandfather's job, which conflicts with her efforts to save a handsome young man from his new guitar.
16. Boy named after a mouse helps locals improve their drug-filled sandpit, despite unfriendly wildlife. The government disapproves.
(Think: classic sci-fi.)
(...and sand?)
17. A centuries-old war hero, accompanied by a cocoon and their daughter the Internet, travels to to the home of a young girl, where he marries her after discovering that trees are actually pigs.
(Victoria should know this. One of the other book in the series was recommended to me by her.)
18. Television turns people into idiots. One guy rants at length about this.
(Okay not the best summary possible. Um...freshman year high school literature. Author is a favorite. Think...fire?)
19. A baby is switched at birth, which causes great problems later on. Meanwhile, a cynic with a fondness for antique cars, a rare book dealer, a Granola Girl, a man who breaks things, one of the last witch-hunters in Britain and the witch-hunter's landlady attempt to prevent four rather sinister bikers from causing The End Of The World As We Know It.
20. Young man suffers from mental illness, hallucinates, desecrates a grave, then murders his family.
(Hint: It's a play. You guys know this. Yes, all of you. At some point. Should've heard of this.)
(Wow I haven't laughed like that in a while. What were these people thinking when they summarized the books?)
Pick 20 movies/anime/video games/literary works/etc. and put their summaries from Better Than It Sounds and WITHOUT CHEATING have your friends guess:
3. A satire of Victorian society in which a lawyer travels to other dimensions, and is arrested for trying to start a new religion. Oh, and the women of the protagonist's homeworld can accidentally stab people by sneezing.
(Victoria should know this. She recommended the book to me.)
4. Young man fights in the Second World War, goes home, gets married, is abducted by aliens, goes home, dies. Not necessarily in that order.
(Pretty sure Kate knows this. My highschool classmates' seen me carry this around, near the end of my junior year, I believe.)
5. Mentally-challenged man rescues ham from poor white trash out to avenge family honor.
(Okay, freshman year high school literature. You guys know this one.)
8. Extraordinarily Empowered Girls kill zombies with bells.
(I'm pretty sure this book was also pointed out by Victoria at some point.)
(High school literature, soph. year. Malvina really likes the other book the author wrote.)
10. The son has his girlfriend and identity stolen by the long lost brother he never knew he had. Except the brother is actually him.
(I think you've read this, Lucy, based on my recommendation. The author is something of a favorite.)
(Lucy, you're on the right track.)
11. Elderly brother and sister adopt an orphan who loses her temper, lets her imagination run away with her, holds a grudge, and generally gets into trouble. Everyone is charmed.
(Kate, you own this book.)
(Senior year in high school. Everyone who had the same lit class as me should know this.)
16. Boy named after a mouse helps locals improve their drug-filled sandpit, despite unfriendly wildlife. The government disapproves.
(Think: classic sci-fi.)
(...and sand?)
17. A centuries-old war hero, accompanied by a cocoon and their daughter the Internet, travels to to the home of a young girl, where he marries her after discovering that trees are actually pigs.
(Victoria should know this. One of the other book in the series was recommended to me by her.)
18. Television turns people into idiots. One guy rants at length about this.
(Okay not the best summary possible. Um...freshman year high school literature. Author is a favorite. Think...fire?)
(Hint: It's a play. You guys know this. Yes, all of you. At some point. Should've heard of this.)
(Wow I haven't laughed like that in a while. What were these people thinking when they summarized the books?)
No gorillas
Slept for about ten hours last night and had a dream about discussion section (TAing eats your brain, I swear), one about my mom and I having The Conversation (ended well, which made me a little sad because this is literally of the "dream on" category), and one about earthquake (possibly due to the very large truck driving past). I have been bouncing between moods so fast this past week that by Friday I was starting to feel vaguely bipolar. When my PI asked me how I was doing late Friday afternoon (I warned him to not expect anything from me in terms of data production this week) I stared at him blankly for a moment before replying "...I'm not sure."
I mean, if you take the average I suppose this is an okay week?
At the very least, I got everything that needed to be done this week done on time and done to the best of my abilities. Whether that is good enough or not remains to be seen (I found out Thursday evening that my current genetics course instructor does give out Cs and if you get one you fail the course. As in you have to retake it) (then take into account that I've been getting 3/5 on my paper reviews since I've been using the standards that I've been taught my freshman year & in my other classes and that is apparently too tough and detail-oriented for this class -- which I have no way of amending now because the teacher didn't start passing back our one-per-week reviews until last week). Grading the midterm turned out took only five hours, instead of six. Either way I was feeling a tad brain-dead near the end. On the plus side, the students who are coming to my sections are now doing fairly well on their problem sets which totally made my day when I tallied up their score. The point is: I made it through this week, therefore I won this battle, at least.
The program director's gone and decided that everyone on the training grant (four students per year) needs to present a poster at our June 3rd retreat. I have just finished the SfN abstract on Monday (am now waiting to hear back from two people about co-authorship) and was properly horrified to find out that I have four weeks (counting the next two weeks with a presentation/project due each week) to sort through 2Gb of data into some semblance of publication worthy figures. It's doable, which is one of the reasons why I didn't say "no" right off the bat, so I suppose I'll be working on that as soon as my presentations are done. (Guys, what software do you use to put together a poster? Wendy said she used Powerpoint. I use Open Office, which allows you to work on .ppt files, but which means if I give them the .ppt file and they open it in Powerpoint I'll lose part of the format.)(Maybe I'll borrow the lab comp/lounge comp?)
Finally, one of the post-docs (the one who saved me from the weird guy at the bus stop the other week) has gone AWOL these two weeks and now I finally have all the information AND can tell people about it. (Also, what's with all this thing where people tell me things I'm not supposed to know and then ask me to keep the fact that they've told me and the fact that I know a secret AND the situations where people ask me things that don't need to be kept secret and then asking me to keep the fact that they asked a secret? It's getting kind of hard to keep track of what I'm supposed to know, what I'm supposed to tell, who I'm not supposed to know knows and who was supposed to know but doesn't want to be known that they know straight.) (Gah. I can keep a secret, but this is getting to be a bit much.) What has happened with the post-doc is that his wife is pregnant (we were very surprised since she always gave off the air that she didn't want kids), and that the morning sickness got so bad with her that she got admitted to the hospital for severe dehydration. (She couldn't stop throwing up, and so he ended up spending a lot of time at the hospital.) She's just gotten better later this week and was allowed home, having lost around 24 pounds in mass due to morning sickness. (For the record? I met her before at lab outings and she's about my size. 24 pounds is a LOT in terms of percentage of body mass.) We all signed a get-well card for her and are twitchily hoping that everything will be okay.
And now: tea.
I mean, if you take the average I suppose this is an okay week?
At the very least, I got everything that needed to be done this week done on time and done to the best of my abilities. Whether that is good enough or not remains to be seen (I found out Thursday evening that my current genetics course instructor does give out Cs and if you get one you fail the course. As in you have to retake it) (then take into account that I've been getting 3/5 on my paper reviews since I've been using the standards that I've been taught my freshman year & in my other classes and that is apparently too tough and detail-oriented for this class -- which I have no way of amending now because the teacher didn't start passing back our one-per-week reviews until last week). Grading the midterm turned out took only five hours, instead of six. Either way I was feeling a tad brain-dead near the end. On the plus side, the students who are coming to my sections are now doing fairly well on their problem sets which totally made my day when I tallied up their score. The point is: I made it through this week, therefore I won this battle, at least.
The program director's gone and decided that everyone on the training grant (four students per year) needs to present a poster at our June 3rd retreat. I have just finished the SfN abstract on Monday (am now waiting to hear back from two people about co-authorship) and was properly horrified to find out that I have four weeks (counting the next two weeks with a presentation/project due each week) to sort through 2Gb of data into some semblance of publication worthy figures. It's doable, which is one of the reasons why I didn't say "no" right off the bat, so I suppose I'll be working on that as soon as my presentations are done. (Guys, what software do you use to put together a poster? Wendy said she used Powerpoint. I use Open Office, which allows you to work on .ppt files, but which means if I give them the .ppt file and they open it in Powerpoint I'll lose part of the format.)(Maybe I'll borrow the lab comp/lounge comp?)
Finally, one of the post-docs (the one who saved me from the weird guy at the bus stop the other week) has gone AWOL these two weeks and now I finally have all the information AND can tell people about it. (Also, what's with all this thing where people tell me things I'm not supposed to know and then ask me to keep the fact that they've told me and the fact that I know a secret AND the situations where people ask me things that don't need to be kept secret and then asking me to keep the fact that they asked a secret? It's getting kind of hard to keep track of what I'm supposed to know, what I'm supposed to tell, who I'm not supposed to know knows and who was supposed to know but doesn't want to be known that they know straight.) (Gah. I can keep a secret, but this is getting to be a bit much.) What has happened with the post-doc is that his wife is pregnant (we were very surprised since she always gave off the air that she didn't want kids), and that the morning sickness got so bad with her that she got admitted to the hospital for severe dehydration. (She couldn't stop throwing up, and so he ended up spending a lot of time at the hospital.) She's just gotten better later this week and was allowed home, having lost around 24 pounds in mass due to morning sickness. (For the record? I met her before at lab outings and she's about my size. 24 pounds is a LOT in terms of percentage of body mass.) We all signed a get-well card for her and are twitchily hoping that everything will be okay.
And now: tea.
20100429
20100425
Why we can't cure the flu
Occasionally for my classwork I stumble across a project that contains information that I can share that people will care about. I mean, sure, I think making haploid fish is cool, but unless you're doing mutagenesis in zebrafish, the chance that you'll care about haploid fish is pretty slim. Flu though, I think everyone can relate to. I can relate to it, which was why I picked the topic, given that our theme for this quarter is host and pathogens interactions, which is so far from my area of interest (genetics / neuroscience) that it was hard to pick out something that won't lead to me banging my head against the desk over some aspect of immunology. (I'm terrible at immunology.)
So, the flu, also known as influenza, is a type of virus. I'll take another moment to broadcast the crusade that most of the people in the medical field have been engaged in for the past decade, which is "antibiotics don't work on cold / flu". Antibiotic is for bacterial infection. Cold and flu are caused by viruses. You need antivirals.
Given this is the case, you say, why aren't people just popping antivirals left and right every flu season? The answer to that is evolution, actually. A virus particle is mostly just a protein shell, which gets the virus in and out of cells, and protects the nucleic acid enclosed in that shell, which codes for the proteins. Influenza codes for 11 proteins. It's a small, simple system for a small simple organism, which means replication doesn't take that long. (We have gazillions of proteins and a cell cycle of around one replication per day, so starting from one cell it takes US a lot longer to procreate than a virus, which is much, much simpler than a cell, and much smaller (image: the small blob with the cheerios stuck on it is the virus, the ocean-covered mini-planet is your cell).
What does this mean? This means that a virus has no proof-reading mechanism or correction mechanism like we do, because it's so simple, which means each time it makes a copy of its genes to give to its progeny whatever mistake it made during copying is just going to get passed on. Take into account that a virus replicates extremely fast under optimal conditions (read: your cell), and that the location of the mistake is random, the chances that a random mistake will be a mistake that'll mutate the protein that our antiviral targets are pretty good.
While all this is happening, you have to wonder about our immune system. I mean it has to be pretty good, right? Because otherwise we wouldn't be here. We do have innate immunity that can recognize viral particles, namely the proteins exposed on the outside of a virus. If we develop antibodies against them, we won't get infected. If the virus somehow makes it past that stage (hey, innate immunity takes time to develop), we also have cell-mediated immunity, which can recognize proteins that will only be exposed once the virus has made its way into your cell (and shed the cheerios). If we develop antibodies against these, we can still get infected, but our symptoms will be less severe. Our cells will be able to clear the virus from themselves but they won't be able to prevent the initial infection.
(In case if you're curious, this is how flu shots work. There're two types of vaccines. One with killed viruses so your body gets a chance to be exposed to the viral proteins without being exposed to a live virus, so basically it'll have the time to come up with working antibodies without the risk of infection. However, the downside is, the virus is dead, which means when your body first sees it, it sees only the dead-virus-appearance and even though you won't get sick, you can still serve as a live incubator for virus. Or something. I'm a little shaky on the details on this one. The other type is the live virus vaccine, which means that yes your body gets to see a less virulent strain of the infective virus. It takes a bit longer for your body to cope with this one because it's a live virus and it does infect things a little, but it also means your body can go "ZMG VIRUS!" from the moment the real disease-causing-virus makes its way into your mucosal lining of your airway.)
And THEN you take into account that one of the antiviral targets we use is targeted against an exposed protein, neuroaminidase (needed for the baby viruses to bud from your cells so they can infect your other cells) (viruses like to share). Proteins exposed on the surface of a virus evolve extremely fast. That's why you have to get a flu shot every year. Both the immune system and the antivirals are essentially selecting for viruses with mistakes in their genes that allows them to not be killed by your immune system or your drugs. Which means that yes, we have viruses resistant to antivirals right now so we try to keep a lid on it by not using antivirals until we absolutely have to (decrease selection means that all viruses are created equal, and a smaller fraction of it will be antiviral resistant and so your immune system has a better chance to win against it) (as opposed to antiviral all the time which means all the non-resistant viruses will be killed off and the only viruses left will ALL be resistant). (By the way, this is another reason why med people get so pissed about people adding antibacterial drugs to practically everything; we're running out of working antibiotics, folks.)
Does that mean we're doomed? No. Our immune system is quite good if you consider humanity as a whole. Immune system of the host is constantly evolving to keep up with the pathogen; we have people who are naturally resistant to HIV. In addition, we are doing more research to find better targets for antivirals than just hemagglutinin and neuroaminidase (the two main protein exposed on the surface of viruses and the fastest evolving proteins) (random FYI: the names H5N1 and H1N1? Stands for Hemagglutinin class 5 Neuroaminidase class 1 -- their outer-shell is used as a way to classify viruses and does correlate with how infectious the virus is). I'll be doing a presentation the week after next week on a paper by Konig et. al, where they figured that since the virus proteins are changing so fast, why don't we target human cell machinery that the viruses steals to replicate with drugs instead? And they managed to find some targets that will not kill human cells (very important to check for, as I'm sure you'll understand) that if targeted, will reduce virus infectivity. Pretty cool, I think.
If anyone wants more information, PLoS (open-access to all) has a pretty decent review article here, called "Pandemic Influenza: the Inside Story". It's got relatively little tech-babble compared to the other stuff I've been reading.
And one last thing? After all this talk about no gold bullet for the flu, you know what's a tested and proven way of flu-prevention? Hygiene. Cover your mouth when you sneeze / cough, people! (And wash your hands...etc.) As someone who braves the public transit twice a day AND works in a biology lab, I'm at the point where I involuntarily flinch when someone sneezes on me. Vitamin C can also help a little by giving your immune system a little boost, but I've seen too many people randomly over-dose themselves on vitamins to feel comfortable endorsing it. It doesn't need endorsement.
So, the flu, also known as influenza, is a type of virus. I'll take another moment to broadcast the crusade that most of the people in the medical field have been engaged in for the past decade, which is "antibiotics don't work on cold / flu". Antibiotic is for bacterial infection. Cold and flu are caused by viruses. You need antivirals.
Given this is the case, you say, why aren't people just popping antivirals left and right every flu season? The answer to that is evolution, actually. A virus particle is mostly just a protein shell, which gets the virus in and out of cells, and protects the nucleic acid enclosed in that shell, which codes for the proteins. Influenza codes for 11 proteins. It's a small, simple system for a small simple organism, which means replication doesn't take that long. (We have gazillions of proteins and a cell cycle of around one replication per day, so starting from one cell it takes US a lot longer to procreate than a virus, which is much, much simpler than a cell, and much smaller (image: the small blob with the cheerios stuck on it is the virus, the ocean-covered mini-planet is your cell).
What does this mean? This means that a virus has no proof-reading mechanism or correction mechanism like we do, because it's so simple, which means each time it makes a copy of its genes to give to its progeny whatever mistake it made during copying is just going to get passed on. Take into account that a virus replicates extremely fast under optimal conditions (read: your cell), and that the location of the mistake is random, the chances that a random mistake will be a mistake that'll mutate the protein that our antiviral targets are pretty good.
While all this is happening, you have to wonder about our immune system. I mean it has to be pretty good, right? Because otherwise we wouldn't be here. We do have innate immunity that can recognize viral particles, namely the proteins exposed on the outside of a virus. If we develop antibodies against them, we won't get infected. If the virus somehow makes it past that stage (hey, innate immunity takes time to develop), we also have cell-mediated immunity, which can recognize proteins that will only be exposed once the virus has made its way into your cell (and shed the cheerios). If we develop antibodies against these, we can still get infected, but our symptoms will be less severe. Our cells will be able to clear the virus from themselves but they won't be able to prevent the initial infection.
(In case if you're curious, this is how flu shots work. There're two types of vaccines. One with killed viruses so your body gets a chance to be exposed to the viral proteins without being exposed to a live virus, so basically it'll have the time to come up with working antibodies without the risk of infection. However, the downside is, the virus is dead, which means when your body first sees it, it sees only the dead-virus-appearance and even though you won't get sick, you can still serve as a live incubator for virus. Or something. I'm a little shaky on the details on this one. The other type is the live virus vaccine, which means that yes your body gets to see a less virulent strain of the infective virus. It takes a bit longer for your body to cope with this one because it's a live virus and it does infect things a little, but it also means your body can go "ZMG VIRUS!" from the moment the real disease-causing-virus makes its way into your mucosal lining of your airway.)
And THEN you take into account that one of the antiviral targets we use is targeted against an exposed protein, neuroaminidase (needed for the baby viruses to bud from your cells so they can infect your other cells) (viruses like to share). Proteins exposed on the surface of a virus evolve extremely fast. That's why you have to get a flu shot every year. Both the immune system and the antivirals are essentially selecting for viruses with mistakes in their genes that allows them to not be killed by your immune system or your drugs. Which means that yes, we have viruses resistant to antivirals right now so we try to keep a lid on it by not using antivirals until we absolutely have to (decrease selection means that all viruses are created equal, and a smaller fraction of it will be antiviral resistant and so your immune system has a better chance to win against it) (as opposed to antiviral all the time which means all the non-resistant viruses will be killed off and the only viruses left will ALL be resistant). (By the way, this is another reason why med people get so pissed about people adding antibacterial drugs to practically everything; we're running out of working antibiotics, folks.)
Does that mean we're doomed? No. Our immune system is quite good if you consider humanity as a whole. Immune system of the host is constantly evolving to keep up with the pathogen; we have people who are naturally resistant to HIV. In addition, we are doing more research to find better targets for antivirals than just hemagglutinin and neuroaminidase (the two main protein exposed on the surface of viruses and the fastest evolving proteins) (random FYI: the names H5N1 and H1N1? Stands for Hemagglutinin class 5 Neuroaminidase class 1 -- their outer-shell is used as a way to classify viruses and does correlate with how infectious the virus is). I'll be doing a presentation the week after next week on a paper by Konig et. al, where they figured that since the virus proteins are changing so fast, why don't we target human cell machinery that the viruses steals to replicate with drugs instead? And they managed to find some targets that will not kill human cells (very important to check for, as I'm sure you'll understand) that if targeted, will reduce virus infectivity. Pretty cool, I think.
If anyone wants more information, PLoS (open-access to all) has a pretty decent review article here, called "Pandemic Influenza: the Inside Story". It's got relatively little tech-babble compared to the other stuff I've been reading.
And one last thing? After all this talk about no gold bullet for the flu, you know what's a tested and proven way of flu-prevention? Hygiene. Cover your mouth when you sneeze / cough, people! (And wash your hands...etc.) As someone who braves the public transit twice a day AND works in a biology lab, I'm at the point where I involuntarily flinch when someone sneezes on me. Vitamin C can also help a little by giving your immune system a little boost, but I've seen too many people randomly over-dose themselves on vitamins to feel comfortable endorsing it. It doesn't need endorsement.
20100424
Well...this week sucked
I do have both days off this weekend (yay!), but somewhere between the lack of a similar luxury last weekend (and possibly the weekend before that as well) and the need to stay in lab past 7:30pm after getting to lab at 7:30 am and having all but one experiment fail/do badly on me, and having to deal with an entire series of mishaps in animal transfer paperwork, I was ready to declare war on life. I didn't, mostly because I didn't have enough energy at that point to bother, but I had briefly considered wanting a do-over of the week only to realize that no, no I don't, because I've done my best given the circumstances and a do-over would only mean that I'd have to suffer through the week again.
No thank you.
(By the way, by "not enough energy" I meant I tripped and fell getting dressed in the morning and nearly fell asleep on the bus in the evening, missing my bus stop and making it necessary to walk back in the rain.) (Speaking of which, what is with this whether? It's nearly May in Southern California and I'm still wearing sweaters.)
Next week will be equally gruesome, since TAing means that I have to help put together the midterm, take the midterm (timing myself so the teacher'd know how long the exam takes and adjust according as well as figure out which problems are just not working out), grade the midterm (we are doing one TA per problem and have to do a long grading session all together, approximating six hours), on top of running a two-hour review session (with another TA so I'm not totally by myself the entire time, thank God) and grading another problem set. At least I don't have to stay past 6:30pm on any given day, I think.
Wendy's baby came home on Tuesday, so now she's mostly gone from lab. The baby's fine, though apparently he does this thing where if he eats too fast he'll stop breathing. Supposedly (according to the doctor) this is normal. And you can restart his breathing by rubbing his back.
I just think it sounds scary as hell.
No pre-med tried to kill me for giving them their grade for four weeks and counting now. I have gotten used to making up a plan of attack before each section and prodding students to respond during discussion section. TAing, I think, is strangely rewarding. Or at least strangely involving and I feel like I'm being sucked into it because I catch myself making lesson plans at the most random moments. I think I'm learning as much from this as my students. Admittedly in my case this would've been a lot easier if a) we are not dealing with a professor who's teaching for the first time (some days I feel like I'm re-teaching half of the lecture) and b) I'm not also taking two classes (about 4 papers to read and 1 homework assignment per week) and working full time in a lab on top of that. Speaking of which...
Oh God. Two hours. I need to finish making the lesson plan.
No thank you.
(By the way, by "not enough energy" I meant I tripped and fell getting dressed in the morning and nearly fell asleep on the bus in the evening, missing my bus stop and making it necessary to walk back in the rain.) (Speaking of which, what is with this whether? It's nearly May in Southern California and I'm still wearing sweaters.)
Next week will be equally gruesome, since TAing means that I have to help put together the midterm, take the midterm (timing myself so the teacher'd know how long the exam takes and adjust according as well as figure out which problems are just not working out), grade the midterm (we are doing one TA per problem and have to do a long grading session all together, approximating six hours), on top of running a two-hour review session (with another TA so I'm not totally by myself the entire time, thank God) and grading another problem set. At least I don't have to stay past 6:30pm on any given day, I think.
Wendy's baby came home on Tuesday, so now she's mostly gone from lab. The baby's fine, though apparently he does this thing where if he eats too fast he'll stop breathing. Supposedly (according to the doctor) this is normal. And you can restart his breathing by rubbing his back.
I just think it sounds scary as hell.
No pre-med tried to kill me for giving them their grade for four weeks and counting now. I have gotten used to making up a plan of attack before each section and prodding students to respond during discussion section. TAing, I think, is strangely rewarding. Or at least strangely involving and I feel like I'm being sucked into it because I catch myself making lesson plans at the most random moments. I think I'm learning as much from this as my students. Admittedly in my case this would've been a lot easier if a) we are not dealing with a professor who's teaching for the first time (some days I feel like I'm re-teaching half of the lecture) and b) I'm not also taking two classes (about 4 papers to read and 1 homework assignment per week) and working full time in a lab on top of that. Speaking of which...
Oh God. Two hours. I need to finish making the lesson plan.
20100421
Earth Day?
In honor of which I'll show up briefly to link everyone who hasn't seen it to the great octopus thief!. (As in an octopus who steals, not as in someone who stole an octopus.) Cheers.
20100419
Not cool. NOT COOL at all.
Came into lab at 8ish this morning and discovered that my wireless internet was not working. Subsequent checks told me the LAN connection's up, I can connect to other non-protected networks, and that other people can connect to the protected networks just fine. (This is discovered, of course, in the 5 minute interval between my experiment.) It finally came about that the certificate for authentication, which was not supposed to expire until October, expired/got corrupted and so I had to went through the whole setup/config part again. (Not cool.)
What with the actual experiments I have to get done this morning, I finally got internet just at 10:25am. Then the PI came out to talk (well mostly to wonder where Wendy is and for that I can't help), and I think I mentioned this, but he's such a dork. Lucy, you'd love him. He just made a reference about book1 of HP and how Hermione was saying (in the scene of Logic with all of Snape's potions) how a lot of wizards are very bad at logic and how that's like people taking genetics for the first time-- a lot of smart people just can't do it, since a lot of the genetics problem is very logic based (well more of the analysis part than the molecular part).
What with the actual experiments I have to get done this morning, I finally got internet just at 10:25am. Then the PI came out to talk (well mostly to wonder where Wendy is and for that I can't help), and I think I mentioned this, but he's such a dork. Lucy, you'd love him. He just made a reference about book1 of HP and how Hermione was saying (in the scene of Logic with all of Snape's potions) how a lot of wizards are very bad at logic and how that's like people taking genetics for the first time-- a lot of smart people just can't do it, since a lot of the genetics problem is very logic based (well more of the analysis part than the molecular part).
20100416
Meme
Taken from Lucy over at lj, who gave me the color green. So now, in no particular order, I name:
1. mint / mint flavored things
2. glow in the dark things, preferably the non-radioactive kind
3. green...tea (though I like the green tea variety that isn't actually green when brewed as well...)
4. plants
5. environmentalism, or should I say nature-friendly things? Either way, go green!
6. cucumber / cucumber scent (cucumber / watermelon = summer & childhood)
7. jade (I can't really explain it, except point toward my heritage, maybe)
8. the color green (heh almost forgot)
9. hummingbirds, and around here they're usually green (they are awesome; how many birds do you know can hover in midair?)
10. the ocean, when the sun's at a certain angle and it's partially cloudy. I can spend HOURS staring at it when it's that color but I never have the time.
1. mint / mint flavored things
2. glow in the dark things, preferably the non-radioactive kind
3. green...tea (though I like the green tea variety that isn't actually green when brewed as well...)
4. plants
5. environmentalism, or should I say nature-friendly things? Either way, go green!
6. cucumber / cucumber scent (cucumber / watermelon = summer & childhood)
7. jade (I can't really explain it, except point toward my heritage, maybe)
8. the color green (heh almost forgot)
9. hummingbirds, and around here they're usually green (they are awesome; how many birds do you know can hover in midair?)
10. the ocean, when the sun's at a certain angle and it's partially cloudy. I can spend HOURS staring at it when it's that color but I never have the time.
20100415
Bleh
It's 11:30 in the morning. I am exhausted. I am covered in chalk. And I have just spent about half an hour emailing people because of students who have turned in their problem sets to the wrong section.
Meanwhile, have a zebrafish development video:
It's over 24 hours. (Isn't it cool?) For those of you who vaguely remember my dissertation, the vestibular system develops in zebrafish at 20 hours.
Meanwhile, have a zebrafish development video:
It's over 24 hours. (Isn't it cool?) For those of you who vaguely remember my dissertation, the vestibular system develops in zebrafish at 20 hours.
20100412
This is why I try to take the earlier bus
Today a completely strange guy managed to get his hands around my throat. To be sure he wasn't trying to harm me. He was trying to show me how to defend myself, despite of my pointed disinterest and gradual progress in ignoring/edging away. In fact he was trying to get me to grab his head, which I declined to participate, leading to him grabbing my wrists and putting my hands on his head, which surprised me enough that he went ahead with the demo in "how to escape choke-hold". He let go immediately when I pushed at his hand though, so all in all it was fairly harmless in my scale of Things That Happen During Public Transit, and no one had to get kneed anywhere painful (well he was standing that close and I kind of strongly dislike strange people touching me).
The main reason that I'm making a post about it though, is that the post-doc from my lab was passing by and came to my rescue. (All six foot something of him, I was duly impressed.) I believe this is the first time someone "rescued" me from anything (unless you count my mom's various attempts, successful and not, to rescue me from my various mishaps as a child).
I still haven't figured out how I feel about it though. It's somewhere between amusement, embarrassment, gratitude, and bafflement.
The upshot of it all was the guy thought I was a boy (for which I am grateful -- it's ALWAYS worse when they know you're a girl), which the post-doc, by claiming "She's not interested", sort of let slip. Oh well.
The main reason that I'm making a post about it though, is that the post-doc from my lab was passing by and came to my rescue. (All six foot something of him, I was duly impressed.) I believe this is the first time someone "rescued" me from anything (unless you count my mom's various attempts, successful and not, to rescue me from my various mishaps as a child).
I still haven't figured out how I feel about it though. It's somewhere between amusement, embarrassment, gratitude, and bafflement.
The upshot of it all was the guy thought I was a boy (for which I am grateful -- it's ALWAYS worse when they know you're a girl), which the post-doc, by claiming "She's not interested", sort of let slip. Oh well.
20100411
...
Dear Diary,
This has been an exhausting week. I hope the rest of spring quarter is not like this one or I may not live to see June. I think I'll go to bed now, on the account of a) exhaustion and b) hoping that next week may arrive sooner this way. Hope springs eternal, after all.
Sincerely,
S
This has been an exhausting week. I hope the rest of spring quarter is not like this one or I may not live to see June. I think I'll go to bed now, on the account of a) exhaustion and b) hoping that next week may arrive sooner this way. Hope springs eternal, after all.
Sincerely,
S
Animal rights, you're doing it wrong
Recently I've received this sort of email:
...etc etc.
One of the things that always bothered me, in terms of logic, is how those people can think that hurting people is okay in order to make a point about hurting animals. I mean, aren't humans, Home sapiens sapiens, a species of animal? Or was there some sort of recent groundbreaking anthropological discovery that I'd completely missed? So how can they justifying hurting one species to make a point about hurting other species? Or does our species get ignored? (Isn't that specie-ist? Which is not a word?) Is it because we have the ability to take care or hurt other species? Are all animal right activists vegetarians? If they are not, does that mean the doing research on chick and fish is okay because they're species that we'd eat? What do those people do when they have pest infestation at their home? Oh wait, that brings me to...
...point B. How some of them really, really need to review the tree of life (I'm going to take a big leap of faith and assume that not all of them are allergic to the concept of evolution). Humans are classified under kingdom Animalia. So are mice, chicken, cows and such, but also fish, flies, lamprey and worms. Do they pick what species they are willing to consider animals based on cuteness? That's unfair. Those animals didn't choose to look the way they do. (Besides, if they could comprehend that "cute" meant they'd probably think the human standards are pretty stupid.) (Just a statement of fact: different species have different criteria on what's attractive. Blue-footed boobies, for instance, view brightly colored foot as the epitome of beauty.)
Finally, the part that always makes me wince: what some of those people try to do to "free" the animals. We hear stories about it after some of the people have been apprehended by the police, and after Finding Nemo I live in horror that some people might think flushing fish down the toilet is an excellent & simple way to set the poor fish free. (It isn't.) Oh and then there are the people who set lab mice free by releasing them in a nearby park or something. On the whole lab animals tend to be very strange and inbred. They are raised in a sterile environment (seriously, my mice are cleaner than I am, considering that I brave the public transit twice a day -- we're all required to gown-up like we're entering the OR to enter our vivarium), they are fed and watered daily and has never had any needs to fend for themselves. A lot of them have traits, not even taking into account the mutant animals, that make them unsuited for living in the wild. (White mice don't blend particular well on anything but snow, and if it's snow then the mice won't make it anyway since they have too much bare skin exposed, they need to be in partial hibernation or something for heat and energy conservation.) My mice get their cages checked for cleanliness twice a week, are fed a diet that's probably more balanced than what most of my classmates eat on a monthly basis, and believe their world is a rectangular box where the wind comes from the dark side of the cage and food and water comes from the sky (the holder is located at the top of the cage). Putting them into the wild is akin to sentencing them to death. Release the chicks? We have coyotes around here. They aren't going to make it very long.
The last line that I should mention is that, given the big hubbub that always happens whenever some medical trial fall through in a bad way and people end up either sick or dead, is it really a good idea to drop out the only link we have between cell culture trials and human trials? Everyone I know who works with animals hates the part where we have to sacrifice the animals, but we do it because it's necessary. For instance, we really do need to know if the animal is getting sicker because a drug has managed to leak across the blood brain barrier into the brain when it's not supposed to, or if the animal's getting sicker just because it's old and old animals tend to develop all kinds of diseases (in mice it goes very similar to the way it goes in humans). And no, we can't wait until the animal's died. First of all, the fact that the animal is sick and we can't cure it (because we don't know what's wrong) means that by letting it live, we are prolonging it's agony. Second of all, diffusion (for a lack of a better word) occurs very rapidly within the body. Depending on the drug, the half life may only be an hour (prolonging half-life is a part of biomed research though), and for some of them, they will only go to certain parts of the body when they're at a critical dosage. The brain starts to decompose the moment the circulation stops. At thirty minutes it's reduced to mush (yeah my dissections are always fun) (yes I'm being sarcastic). There is no system where an animal is monitored 24/7 by people that would allow us to collect an animal the instant its heart stopped beating etc etc. And this is just to list a fairly simple example with very few difficulties.
Seriously, people.
TO FACULTY AND STAFF
This notice is to advise you of the upcoming World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week from April 17-April 26, 2010.
We want to remind you to be especially mindful of security during these 10 days. Within the past several years there have been several instances of university research laboratories in California broken into by animal rights extremists. The activists not only destroyed valuable research data, computers and laboratory equipment, but also stole information including researchers’ home addresses, phone numbers and names of spouses. This information was later utilized to send threatening letters, deface personal residences, and instill fear amongst research staff and their families.
Several years ago, we have received several bomb threats directed at animal research labs on campus. This resulted in the evacuation of several campus buildings and ultimately led to the discovery of a fake bomb device and subsequent arrest of those responsible. In addition, a number of attacks at personal residences of some of the faculty and staff have been investigated.
We ask you to follow correct security procedures and measures at all times but especially now – please read and follow these tips:
...etc etc.
One of the things that always bothered me, in terms of logic, is how those people can think that hurting people is okay in order to make a point about hurting animals. I mean, aren't humans, Home sapiens sapiens, a species of animal? Or was there some sort of recent groundbreaking anthropological discovery that I'd completely missed? So how can they justifying hurting one species to make a point about hurting other species? Or does our species get ignored? (Isn't that specie-ist? Which is not a word?) Is it because we have the ability to take care or hurt other species? Are all animal right activists vegetarians? If they are not, does that mean the doing research on chick and fish is okay because they're species that we'd eat? What do those people do when they have pest infestation at their home? Oh wait, that brings me to...
...point B. How some of them really, really need to review the tree of life (I'm going to take a big leap of faith and assume that not all of them are allergic to the concept of evolution). Humans are classified under kingdom Animalia. So are mice, chicken, cows and such, but also fish, flies, lamprey and worms. Do they pick what species they are willing to consider animals based on cuteness? That's unfair. Those animals didn't choose to look the way they do. (Besides, if they could comprehend that "cute" meant they'd probably think the human standards are pretty stupid.) (Just a statement of fact: different species have different criteria on what's attractive. Blue-footed boobies, for instance, view brightly colored foot as the epitome of beauty.)
Finally, the part that always makes me wince: what some of those people try to do to "free" the animals. We hear stories about it after some of the people have been apprehended by the police, and after Finding Nemo I live in horror that some people might think flushing fish down the toilet is an excellent & simple way to set the poor fish free. (It isn't.) Oh and then there are the people who set lab mice free by releasing them in a nearby park or something. On the whole lab animals tend to be very strange and inbred. They are raised in a sterile environment (seriously, my mice are cleaner than I am, considering that I brave the public transit twice a day -- we're all required to gown-up like we're entering the OR to enter our vivarium), they are fed and watered daily and has never had any needs to fend for themselves. A lot of them have traits, not even taking into account the mutant animals, that make them unsuited for living in the wild. (White mice don't blend particular well on anything but snow, and if it's snow then the mice won't make it anyway since they have too much bare skin exposed, they need to be in partial hibernation or something for heat and energy conservation.) My mice get their cages checked for cleanliness twice a week, are fed a diet that's probably more balanced than what most of my classmates eat on a monthly basis, and believe their world is a rectangular box where the wind comes from the dark side of the cage and food and water comes from the sky (the holder is located at the top of the cage). Putting them into the wild is akin to sentencing them to death. Release the chicks? We have coyotes around here. They aren't going to make it very long.
The last line that I should mention is that, given the big hubbub that always happens whenever some medical trial fall through in a bad way and people end up either sick or dead, is it really a good idea to drop out the only link we have between cell culture trials and human trials? Everyone I know who works with animals hates the part where we have to sacrifice the animals, but we do it because it's necessary. For instance, we really do need to know if the animal is getting sicker because a drug has managed to leak across the blood brain barrier into the brain when it's not supposed to, or if the animal's getting sicker just because it's old and old animals tend to develop all kinds of diseases (in mice it goes very similar to the way it goes in humans). And no, we can't wait until the animal's died. First of all, the fact that the animal is sick and we can't cure it (because we don't know what's wrong) means that by letting it live, we are prolonging it's agony. Second of all, diffusion (for a lack of a better word) occurs very rapidly within the body. Depending on the drug, the half life may only be an hour (prolonging half-life is a part of biomed research though), and for some of them, they will only go to certain parts of the body when they're at a critical dosage. The brain starts to decompose the moment the circulation stops. At thirty minutes it's reduced to mush (yeah my dissections are always fun) (yes I'm being sarcastic). There is no system where an animal is monitored 24/7 by people that would allow us to collect an animal the instant its heart stopped beating etc etc. And this is just to list a fairly simple example with very few difficulties.
Seriously, people.
20100410
In no particular order
My PI is ordering modified mouse stem cells for me. From Europe. (And the consortium's name sounds like "Yukon", leading to the scenario where I was laughing about Yukon mice and confusing my poor PI, who didn't understand what was so funny about mice.) So I can make a mouse. (Okay so the stem cell core will be doing most of the work -- I mostly just cross and genotype the mice, but even so....) This is not sci-fi folks, this is my life.
He saw fit to forward me parts of the paperwork (yeah stem cells across borders can be difficult), which I don't exactly appreciate, but maybe it makes him feel better to have someone to complain to so I'm not going to say anything.
--------
The aftershocks are still going on, I've counted, so far, Monday night, Tuesday night, Thursday morning, and Friday night. There may have been more that I missed. I hope they'll be done at some point because I need my sleep.
-------
While grocery shopping just now, two girls came out of the grocery store chatting just as I was finished refilling my gallon-sized water bottle from the machine located next to the store's entrance. They stopped upon seeing what I was doing and gaped. The conversation between them went along the lines of:
"Wait what's that?"
"Whoa it's water."
"It's water?!"
"It's water! Sick!"
These two are within five years of my age and they look like they are from this area, so I'm not entirely sure how it's possible that they never noticed the (giant, gurgling, frequently used) water refill station outside of the doors to most grocery shops before today. But yes, water bottles can be refilled! And recycled too, did you know?
I left before I started laughing.
----------------------------
There was something using the classroom before my section. As a result I was waiting outside of the door with the students before class started and the look on their faces when they realized that I was the TA was...well, no one has ever made quite that expression at me before, that's for sure.
-------------------------------
In conclusion: long week. Have to be in lab both days this weekend and again next weekend. I can only hope that at some point I'll have the weekend off again. That'll be nice.
He saw fit to forward me parts of the paperwork (yeah stem cells across borders can be difficult), which I don't exactly appreciate, but maybe it makes him feel better to have someone to complain to so I'm not going to say anything.
--------
The aftershocks are still going on, I've counted, so far, Monday night, Tuesday night, Thursday morning, and Friday night. There may have been more that I missed. I hope they'll be done at some point because I need my sleep.
-------
While grocery shopping just now, two girls came out of the grocery store chatting just as I was finished refilling my gallon-sized water bottle from the machine located next to the store's entrance. They stopped upon seeing what I was doing and gaped. The conversation between them went along the lines of:
"Wait what's that?"
"Whoa it's water."
"It's water?!"
"It's water! Sick!"
These two are within five years of my age and they look like they are from this area, so I'm not entirely sure how it's possible that they never noticed the (giant, gurgling, frequently used) water refill station outside of the doors to most grocery shops before today. But yes, water bottles can be refilled! And recycled too, did you know?
I left before I started laughing.
----------------------------
There was something using the classroom before my section. As a result I was waiting outside of the door with the students before class started and the look on their faces when they realized that I was the TA was...well, no one has ever made quite that expression at me before, that's for sure.
-------------------------------
In conclusion: long week. Have to be in lab both days this weekend and again next weekend. I can only hope that at some point I'll have the weekend off again. That'll be nice.
Long post, or, hold on to your hats, m'dear
Remember back when I used to warn people about things before springing them on them? I know I do that considerably less nowadays, for a variety of reasons. Well, consider this your warning. This post will be long. It might make you uncomfortable / give you information you'd rather not know. You are advised to pause in your consumption of food and beverage at the risk of choking, etc.
Ready? (Okay, now my own level of anxiety has just gone from zero to sixty. Wonderful. Breathe. I can do this.)
So today I'm going to make a post about my sexual orientation, to put an end to the pondering and guessing and what-have-you for one thing, and because I want my friends, most of whom follow this on a semi-regular basis, to know.
That means that yes, I'm not really heterosexual. Strictly speaking I am asexual, though I am capable of having romantic feelings toward either gender. I have had a crush on a guy. I have had a crush on a girl. They are similar feelings and it is definitely a crush, and a very junior high girl sort of crush at that. It is, frankly, a little painful, a lot embarrassing, but also kind of fun. (It's really something to feel like your day has just improved, all because someone smiled at you.) (Yeah, I've said: crush. Believe me now?)
For those of you who have known me for a while this might not have been a surprise, given that I have asked at least some of you to explain to me, at one point or another, what a crush is, what constitutes a romantic relationship, and showed an appalling lack of comprehension at what "hot" and "sexy" really means when describing someone physically. (Pretty, beautiful and handsome I get: I have had art classes and am well familiar with the standards of beauty and how it's dependent on culture and society. "Sexy", though...do people really look at other random people and think about whether or not they'd have sex with that person?) For those of you who consider that I might just be a "late-bloomer" I'd like to acknowledge that yes, that is a possibility and I've considered it. I did reach puberty slightly later than the average girl. I did also have my first crush much later than the average girl. That is why I have waited two years to see if anything, in terms of my romantic interest and understanding towards others, would change at all. They didn't, and so, here I am.
This is, however, not the exactly two year anniversary of the day when I pieced all the clues together and thought "oh my God, you must be kidding me". Today is the day when I finally got the clean bill of health back from both the doctor (okay, a nurse practitioner; it's close) and the psychologist. I am considered normal in the professional opinion of both, which I find, against all logic, to be a sort of relief. I know sexual orientation variation is not a disease, though abnormal hormone &c can affect it. I have always believed that I am (give and take a few issues that I know about and am working on -- both doctors agree that I have excellent self-awareness) normal. Still, no one ever grows out of their insecurities, and I'm no exception. Sometimes, alone in the dark and pondering over the things that I've messed up that other people seem to do effortlessly, I do also have my moments of "what is wrong with me?". No matter back in the corner of my mind it is, it's good to be able to put that insidious fear to rest.
Which brings me now to my main point of concern: my parents. I plan to tell my parents. It's the right thing to do. They will have to know at some point (my mom simply because she is my mom) and now that I'm actually emotionally prepared to date, I am not going to be discriminating between the genders and so it seems only fair that they be prepared for that. I plan to tell them on my birthday, since they often try to be nicer to me on my birthdays. (Also, so I can have the time to find more information, such as pamphlets about sexual orientation our mother tongue so they can actually see it's not just their only child going mad. AND, in addition, to give myself enough time to get enough of the freaking-out out of my system so that I no longer feel like throwing up every time I imagine the scenario.) I'm not sure how it will turn out, since although they are decent people and my mom is much more open-minded than my dad, they, as a byproduct of how they are raised and what they have gone through, have a fairly traditional set of values. I am not going to get disowned. That doesn't mean that things won't get ugly. I don't know how long it will take them to come to terms with this or how comfortable they'll be able to be. I do know that traditional values, in their case, means that the first things they'll wonder is whether or not I'll should go see a doctor or a psychologist. That's the main reason why I went to see both, even braving my instinctive suspicion toward psychologists (my first time with one ever! Whee). I have started to make my opening moves. I don't dare hope for a checkmate. I don't WANT to checkmate if heavy casualty is needed to get there. I will play my game to the end though, and see this through.
In summary, the timeline went something like this:
1. Concern about sexual identity.
2. Research about sexual identity. (Go to this site if you're still curious about that asexual means. Reading the comments of the people there is one of the first things that cued me that I'm on the right track. I can identify with them.)
3. Concern about possibility of developmental delay, wait two years.
4. Confirmation of sexual identity.
5. Pondering dating. Decides that dating could be good.
6. Resolve to share information about this to friends and family.
7. Waffles, freak out, repeat.
8. Braces self and went to see doctor and psychologist.
9. Share with friends online.
I could've emailed, I suppose, but then I know I'd fret over who to tell and who not to tell &c and then I'd have to worry about the issue of obligation. Most people that I consider a friend has this url. My disclaimer is this: unlike email, if this is making you uncomfortable and want to pretend that you've never read this, I will honor your wishes and never bring up anything about this or whom I'm dating unless you bring it up. It's not hard. I'm a fairly reserved person by nature, as most of you know. I will post the next few days so this post gets snowed under and remove this post in a week from today. I don't keep track of who checks this blog or how often. If I emailed however, I do know who should've received the email. What's worse: you'd know I know. I feel like it might make you feel like you are obliged to respond. You aren't. I am providing the information. You are not obliged to deal with it if you don't want to.
I could've called, too, which would've raised the same concern as email. In addition, calling people up and going "Hey, guess what..." ? No. Just...no.
I do think most of you are going to be okay with this eventually though. A good portion of you are probably going "WTF" right now (I did warn you, choking hazard and everything), which I can totally sympathize with given that I went through my own WTF stage about two years ago. But I do know how lucky I am to have the friends that I do, and believe me when I tell you this:
This entire ordeal? Scary. All of it. There's a lot of self-incrimination, self-pity, and self-doubt at one point or another. I've lost sleep over it at some point in the beginning. I've freaked out. Cried. I gave myself a mild panic attack while waiting for the doctor and when the psychologist (after we figured out that the only help I really need from her is some advise on how to deal with my parents) asked me to imagine and describe the worst case scenario in coming out to my parents -- it would've been so easy to break down right then. (The scenario may be imagined but the pain is very real. My parents will always have the most power in hurting me and making me hurt myself, simply because they are my parents and I love them.) ...so whenever I imagine the scenario, as I've mentioned, the bottom drops out of my stomach. Last time I did that (yesterday), I couldn't finish my lunch. (I did end up drinking a lot of tea, though.)
However, I am typing this out now to let you guys know. I'm currently deeply anxious and feeling a little shaky, but I finished my dinner and had three of those little prune-plum hybrid things afterwards. My faith on this front is not something I would've expected, or had, back in high school. For that, no matter what the fall out in the next few months will be, I will always be grateful.
Oh and just so you know, despite of the fact that I am comfortable enough with this aspect of myself to write a post on the internet, I'm not at that point where I'm okay with people teasing me about it yet, however well meaning they may be. At a word, I'm twitchy. Partly because okay, I'm nervous, and partly because I've come to the realization within the past six month (well since I've started working full time in a lab, so I guess that's almost a year now) that I'm going to have to foray into the world of internet dating if I do want to date. This is based on the fact that I don't go to bars or go out like my classmates do in their little groups, and I'm not going to venture out by myself, after dark, and that I don't have the time to try anything else. The people I meet daily are...well...there're very good rules about dating people you have to work with, and most of the people I can be interested in are in a long-term relationship, anyway. (On the plus side, I'm much more adept at fending for myself online than in real life, and this way I'm planning to set up a systematic approach so that I can even be scientific and compare across dating sites and gender in terms of response and overall experience.) (I won't graph it though, I'm strange, but not that strange.)
How's that for mind-blowing? Hopefully I haven't made anyone's brain hemorrhage, or anything equally horrific. Again, I did warn you all, but if you're reading this then you've made it through this entire monster of a post. Thank you kindly for your time and attention. This took me hours. I am exhausted. I will try to sleep now.
fin
P.S. I'll take any questions now.
Ready? (Okay, now my own level of anxiety has just gone from zero to sixty. Wonderful. Breathe. I can do this.)
So today I'm going to make a post about my sexual orientation, to put an end to the pondering and guessing and what-have-you for one thing, and because I want my friends, most of whom follow this on a semi-regular basis, to know.
That means that yes, I'm not really heterosexual. Strictly speaking I am asexual, though I am capable of having romantic feelings toward either gender. I have had a crush on a guy. I have had a crush on a girl. They are similar feelings and it is definitely a crush, and a very junior high girl sort of crush at that. It is, frankly, a little painful, a lot embarrassing, but also kind of fun. (It's really something to feel like your day has just improved, all because someone smiled at you.) (Yeah, I've said: crush. Believe me now?)
For those of you who have known me for a while this might not have been a surprise, given that I have asked at least some of you to explain to me, at one point or another, what a crush is, what constitutes a romantic relationship, and showed an appalling lack of comprehension at what "hot" and "sexy" really means when describing someone physically. (Pretty, beautiful and handsome I get: I have had art classes and am well familiar with the standards of beauty and how it's dependent on culture and society. "Sexy", though...do people really look at other random people and think about whether or not they'd have sex with that person?) For those of you who consider that I might just be a "late-bloomer" I'd like to acknowledge that yes, that is a possibility and I've considered it. I did reach puberty slightly later than the average girl. I did also have my first crush much later than the average girl. That is why I have waited two years to see if anything, in terms of my romantic interest and understanding towards others, would change at all. They didn't, and so, here I am.
This is, however, not the exactly two year anniversary of the day when I pieced all the clues together and thought "oh my God, you must be kidding me". Today is the day when I finally got the clean bill of health back from both the doctor (okay, a nurse practitioner; it's close) and the psychologist. I am considered normal in the professional opinion of both, which I find, against all logic, to be a sort of relief. I know sexual orientation variation is not a disease, though abnormal hormone &c can affect it. I have always believed that I am (give and take a few issues that I know about and am working on -- both doctors agree that I have excellent self-awareness) normal. Still, no one ever grows out of their insecurities, and I'm no exception. Sometimes, alone in the dark and pondering over the things that I've messed up that other people seem to do effortlessly, I do also have my moments of "what is wrong with me?". No matter back in the corner of my mind it is, it's good to be able to put that insidious fear to rest.
Which brings me now to my main point of concern: my parents. I plan to tell my parents. It's the right thing to do. They will have to know at some point (my mom simply because she is my mom) and now that I'm actually emotionally prepared to date, I am not going to be discriminating between the genders and so it seems only fair that they be prepared for that. I plan to tell them on my birthday, since they often try to be nicer to me on my birthdays. (Also, so I can have the time to find more information, such as pamphlets about sexual orientation our mother tongue so they can actually see it's not just their only child going mad. AND, in addition, to give myself enough time to get enough of the freaking-out out of my system so that I no longer feel like throwing up every time I imagine the scenario.) I'm not sure how it will turn out, since although they are decent people and my mom is much more open-minded than my dad, they, as a byproduct of how they are raised and what they have gone through, have a fairly traditional set of values. I am not going to get disowned. That doesn't mean that things won't get ugly. I don't know how long it will take them to come to terms with this or how comfortable they'll be able to be. I do know that traditional values, in their case, means that the first things they'll wonder is whether or not I'll should go see a doctor or a psychologist. That's the main reason why I went to see both, even braving my instinctive suspicion toward psychologists (my first time with one ever! Whee). I have started to make my opening moves. I don't dare hope for a checkmate. I don't WANT to checkmate if heavy casualty is needed to get there. I will play my game to the end though, and see this through.
In summary, the timeline went something like this:
1. Concern about sexual identity.
2. Research about sexual identity. (Go to this site if you're still curious about that asexual means. Reading the comments of the people there is one of the first things that cued me that I'm on the right track. I can identify with them.)
3. Concern about possibility of developmental delay, wait two years.
4. Confirmation of sexual identity.
5. Pondering dating. Decides that dating could be good.
6. Resolve to share information about this to friends and family.
7. Waffles, freak out, repeat.
8. Braces self and went to see doctor and psychologist.
9. Share with friends online.
I could've emailed, I suppose, but then I know I'd fret over who to tell and who not to tell &c and then I'd have to worry about the issue of obligation. Most people that I consider a friend has this url. My disclaimer is this: unlike email, if this is making you uncomfortable and want to pretend that you've never read this, I will honor your wishes and never bring up anything about this or whom I'm dating unless you bring it up. It's not hard. I'm a fairly reserved person by nature, as most of you know. I will post the next few days so this post gets snowed under and remove this post in a week from today. I don't keep track of who checks this blog or how often. If I emailed however, I do know who should've received the email. What's worse: you'd know I know. I feel like it might make you feel like you are obliged to respond. You aren't. I am providing the information. You are not obliged to deal with it if you don't want to.
I could've called, too, which would've raised the same concern as email. In addition, calling people up and going "Hey, guess what..." ? No. Just...no.
I do think most of you are going to be okay with this eventually though. A good portion of you are probably going "WTF" right now (I did warn you, choking hazard and everything), which I can totally sympathize with given that I went through my own WTF stage about two years ago. But I do know how lucky I am to have the friends that I do, and believe me when I tell you this:
This entire ordeal? Scary. All of it. There's a lot of self-incrimination, self-pity, and self-doubt at one point or another. I've lost sleep over it at some point in the beginning. I've freaked out. Cried. I gave myself a mild panic attack while waiting for the doctor and when the psychologist (after we figured out that the only help I really need from her is some advise on how to deal with my parents) asked me to imagine and describe the worst case scenario in coming out to my parents -- it would've been so easy to break down right then. (The scenario may be imagined but the pain is very real. My parents will always have the most power in hurting me and making me hurt myself, simply because they are my parents and I love them.) ...so whenever I imagine the scenario, as I've mentioned, the bottom drops out of my stomach. Last time I did that (yesterday), I couldn't finish my lunch. (I did end up drinking a lot of tea, though.)
However, I am typing this out now to let you guys know. I'm currently deeply anxious and feeling a little shaky, but I finished my dinner and had three of those little prune-plum hybrid things afterwards. My faith on this front is not something I would've expected, or had, back in high school. For that, no matter what the fall out in the next few months will be, I will always be grateful.
Oh and just so you know, despite of the fact that I am comfortable enough with this aspect of myself to write a post on the internet, I'm not at that point where I'm okay with people teasing me about it yet, however well meaning they may be. At a word, I'm twitchy. Partly because okay, I'm nervous, and partly because I've come to the realization within the past six month (well since I've started working full time in a lab, so I guess that's almost a year now) that I'm going to have to foray into the world of internet dating if I do want to date. This is based on the fact that I don't go to bars or go out like my classmates do in their little groups, and I'm not going to venture out by myself, after dark, and that I don't have the time to try anything else. The people I meet daily are...well...there're very good rules about dating people you have to work with, and most of the people I can be interested in are in a long-term relationship, anyway. (On the plus side, I'm much more adept at fending for myself online than in real life, and this way I'm planning to set up a systematic approach so that I can even be scientific and compare across dating sites and gender in terms of response and overall experience.) (I won't graph it though, I'm strange, but not that strange.)
How's that for mind-blowing? Hopefully I haven't made anyone's brain hemorrhage, or anything equally horrific. Again, I did warn you all, but if you're reading this then you've made it through this entire monster of a post. Thank you kindly for your time and attention. This took me hours. I am exhausted. I will try to sleep now.
fin
P.S. I'll take any questions now.
20100405
FYI: continued
2nd aftershock around 4:30am this morning. Third at around 6am-ish. As that Monday and Friday are the only two days when I DON'T have to wake up at 6am this is currently making me cranky. (And yes they are getting weaker.)
20100404
FYI
Was just in an earthquake. Seems large enough that there will be aftershock. Phone line too busy to reach anyone right now, but I'm okay and the apartment's still standing. Don't worry.
[edit 15:55]
M6.9 origin in Baja. Lucy, did you feel it where you were / are you okay? (I know you're pretty far. Indulge my paranoia.)
[edit 16:07]
Am now following #earthquake site:twitter.com under Google. And being amused. People are strange. Have just received call from Lucy, we're both okay (it's pretty weak where she was).
[edit 16:24]
Okay, got aftershock #1.
[edit 15:55]
M6.9 origin in Baja. Lucy, did you feel it where you were / are you okay? (I know you're pretty far. Indulge my paranoia.)
[edit 16:07]
Am now following #earthquake site:twitter.com under Google. And being amused. People are strange. Have just received call from Lucy, we're both okay (it's pretty weak where she was).
[edit 16:24]
Okay, got aftershock #1.
20100403
The extended week
TAing makes me feel like an undergrad again, because the first few days of class means looking up classroom locations and searching for books. Well, there's the addition of booking in hours and room for discussion sections and office hours that's definitely new but, in conclusion: lots of running around and paperwork this week. After the first two days I've reached the conclusion that I seemed to have been going about things backwards.
Take example A, picking up the books: I was emailed by the professor to go to a certain place on Monday to pick up the texts needed for the course. So I went and I did, despite of some minor confusion in which the people thought the books were there and the computer system didn't. A few hours later, I received an email from the system announcing that my books are ready. Shortly after that, another email from the TA coordinator informing us of a new computer system that we need to get through to pick up books.
Or there's example B, booking a room: I needed to book a room before Wednesday, for reasons that don't need to be explored at this juncture. So I did, using the school of med system that I had access to, and then I emailed my room and reserved time to the professor, as she had requested. Shortly after that she asked me to send an email to all the TAs in our course with instructions on how to book a room, since she had no idea how it's done. I did that, explaining I used the school of med system, which didn't require login, so maybe all university affiliates can use it and if that fails, each department also has their own reservation system they can try out. A few hours after that, I got an email from the TA coordinator instructing us how to book rooms. No one cared that I already booked a room or how I did it, which was a relief. I am not inclined to switch over to the other system either, because 1) ALL the bio sci TAs has to go through that system, so time slots are under heavy competition, probably and 2) more paperwork, which I did not need.
At this point I may have said something to Wendy along the lines of, "I think I'm doing everything backwards. Why am I doing everything backwards?"
(Am I strange, sir? A crab, sir?)
We got some classic papers in genetics, which was a definite eye-opener, since these are genetics papers before they had the tools for genetics (think 1940s), which meant that they made a lot of assumptions (that they had no way of testing out the validity of) and math models (which are complicated enough that some took others ten years to solve afterwards). Mike might've liked it. I didn't. I spent a lot of time squinting at various equations and wondering how they got their ratios of Greek letters from the fact that the mean equaled the variance in a Poisson distribution. There must be some derivation involved, right? Right? (If anyone's curious, one of the papers is the famous Luria & Delbruck fluctuation test. Yes, that Luria and that Delbruck.) (Huh, I just found out that it's famous enough that Wikipedia has an entry on it. Without the scary equations, even.)
Someone in my lab got an advertisement from a very well-known chemicals / lab equipment company this week promoting the sale of "lithium salt bugger". I was asked if "bugger" is an actual word and, thinking back to my knowledge of the UK vocabulary (and Mr. Rushton, I might add), I hedged "...not really", and suggested that maybe it's a very grave typo. Upon the blank looks, I explained that it'd make more sense if the ad had read "lithium salt buffer". Then my labmate and I spent some time contemplating whether or not we ought to email back this nice & prestigious company and let them know that they'd been trying to sell "buggers". (There's always the possibility that it's a nod to ENDER'S GAME or something, I suppose. Is there a special anniversary date this week?)
(Beta. It's called a beta.)
Yesterday there was a very angry lady on the bus who called someone who had answered "a Texan" when asked where she'd come from "a disgrace to their heritage" and "stupid, this is why everyone thinks Texas is stupid, because you are". I mean geez, lady, who died? Yes, the effects of the Manifest Destiny wiped out countless Native Americans (she was white, by the way) and that most Americans have some sort of European ancestry, but that is still no reason to explode like that. Careful now, because you come across a bit mad and people might take exception to that, like you did to that poor person on the bus.
I thought I slept until 9am today only to open my eyes and discover it's 7:30am. Such is the effect of getting used to getting up at 6am. I have a four hour TA training session later and stuff I need to do in lab, so this week's not over for me, yet!
Take example A, picking up the books: I was emailed by the professor to go to a certain place on Monday to pick up the texts needed for the course. So I went and I did, despite of some minor confusion in which the people thought the books were there and the computer system didn't. A few hours later, I received an email from the system announcing that my books are ready. Shortly after that, another email from the TA coordinator informing us of a new computer system that we need to get through to pick up books.
Or there's example B, booking a room: I needed to book a room before Wednesday, for reasons that don't need to be explored at this juncture. So I did, using the school of med system that I had access to, and then I emailed my room and reserved time to the professor, as she had requested. Shortly after that she asked me to send an email to all the TAs in our course with instructions on how to book a room, since she had no idea how it's done. I did that, explaining I used the school of med system, which didn't require login, so maybe all university affiliates can use it and if that fails, each department also has their own reservation system they can try out. A few hours after that, I got an email from the TA coordinator instructing us how to book rooms. No one cared that I already booked a room or how I did it, which was a relief. I am not inclined to switch over to the other system either, because 1) ALL the bio sci TAs has to go through that system, so time slots are under heavy competition, probably and 2) more paperwork, which I did not need.
At this point I may have said something to Wendy along the lines of, "I think I'm doing everything backwards. Why am I doing everything backwards?"
(Am I strange, sir? A crab, sir?)
We got some classic papers in genetics, which was a definite eye-opener, since these are genetics papers before they had the tools for genetics (think 1940s), which meant that they made a lot of assumptions (that they had no way of testing out the validity of) and math models (which are complicated enough that some took others ten years to solve afterwards). Mike might've liked it. I didn't. I spent a lot of time squinting at various equations and wondering how they got their ratios of Greek letters from the fact that the mean equaled the variance in a Poisson distribution. There must be some derivation involved, right? Right? (If anyone's curious, one of the papers is the famous Luria & Delbruck fluctuation test. Yes, that Luria and that Delbruck.) (Huh, I just found out that it's famous enough that Wikipedia has an entry on it. Without the scary equations, even.)
Someone in my lab got an advertisement from a very well-known chemicals / lab equipment company this week promoting the sale of "lithium salt bugger". I was asked if "bugger" is an actual word and, thinking back to my knowledge of the UK vocabulary (and Mr. Rushton, I might add), I hedged "...not really", and suggested that maybe it's a very grave typo. Upon the blank looks, I explained that it'd make more sense if the ad had read "lithium salt buffer". Then my labmate and I spent some time contemplating whether or not we ought to email back this nice & prestigious company and let them know that they'd been trying to sell "buggers". (There's always the possibility that it's a nod to ENDER'S GAME or something, I suppose. Is there a special anniversary date this week?)
(Beta. It's called a beta.)
Yesterday there was a very angry lady on the bus who called someone who had answered "a Texan" when asked where she'd come from "a disgrace to their heritage" and "stupid, this is why everyone thinks Texas is stupid, because you are". I mean geez, lady, who died? Yes, the effects of the Manifest Destiny wiped out countless Native Americans (she was white, by the way) and that most Americans have some sort of European ancestry, but that is still no reason to explode like that. Careful now, because you come across a bit mad and people might take exception to that, like you did to that poor person on the bus.
I thought I slept until 9am today only to open my eyes and discover it's 7:30am. Such is the effect of getting used to getting up at 6am. I have a four hour TA training session later and stuff I need to do in lab, so this week's not over for me, yet!
20100328
A third of you is daffodil
After a short (but exhausting) week, I abandoned post on Friday and went to Lucy's. Originally we were considering going to the Santa Ana botanical conservatory, but between the traffic and the week I felt more inclined to lie on the floor than move, so we didn't. We did got see the new Alice movie. Depp was creepy / mad as always, and between the nonsensical words in the original work and the accents, I only caught about 50% of the lines. Even so, I really liked the movie. It feels like it'd be good to watch alongside Gaiman's Mirrormask. Oh and there're fun moments in the dialogue (the fear about the decline of aristocracy is very great).
We did also play a bit of Sims (the game has been neglected of late on both of our parts, for various reasons). Nick and Alice had again, spontaneously developed A Relationship (though even Lucy admits that this round was ... strange). It's reassuring for me to know this because that means that when I originally created those characters and have them develop a relationship in the story they are actually compatible. Is this what it means to be soulmates? I don't know. Though I do know the part where Alice, still in her pajamas, walked up to Nick in the computer room and jumped him (and the events leading up to that) had me covering my eyes and muttering "I can't watch this". (But it all worked out, so hey....)
Speaking of the Lunatics. Lucy has apparently spotted yet another blond "Zach". We pondered what this means (why are there no brown-haired versions? He'd be happier with brown than blond). And whether or not it'd be too creepy of she took a photo of him for me. (We decided that the answer was "yes".)
Saturday I felt energetic enough that we made our way to Solvang and tried to determine whether it's better to be danish or donut. (Lucy picked danish, I haven't decided yet.) I liked the architecture (all very quaint & picturesque, complete with rolling green hills) and the food (well except the sour cabbage, which Lucy informed me was an acquired taste, and the cooked carrots, which I have never liked and probably never will). Lucy picked up more fridge magnets and we took a bunch of photos, which I've now uploaded to Facebook (and consequently chose to do this over reading, because uploading and labeling photos requires more...activation energy, if you will, than reading). The stores there sold all kinds of random knickknacks, including a bookstore with a fact-book that claimed everyone is 1/3 daffodil. I didn't read the explanation for how the author(s?) came to this astonishing conclusion, but was very amused anyway.
Finally, I was introduced to GLEE (the tv show), which I liked for reasons that I have yet to be able to satisfactorily explain to myself. I don't particularly like the characters, or the drama. The music has bits that I like and bits that I dislike. I fail to find it funny as a comedy. It's not the first show about underdogs and misfits becoming something special. Maybe it's the overall undertone of optimisms, or possibly just the odd moments of emotional honesty in between all the other over the top stuff that's going on. (Or maybe it somehow appealed to the third of me that's daffodil.) I think I need to watch more episodes to know. Maybe I'll like it less then. Or maybe the fact that I probably won't have the time to watch it before the end of the quarter will just kill off the enthusiasm because my attention span would've waned by then.
Which reminds me to say: insanity starts tomorrow! (Cheers.)
We did also play a bit of Sims (the game has been neglected of late on both of our parts, for various reasons). Nick and Alice had again, spontaneously developed A Relationship (though even Lucy admits that this round was ... strange). It's reassuring for me to know this because that means that when I originally created those characters and have them develop a relationship in the story they are actually compatible. Is this what it means to be soulmates? I don't know. Though I do know the part where Alice, still in her pajamas, walked up to Nick in the computer room and jumped him (and the events leading up to that) had me covering my eyes and muttering "I can't watch this". (But it all worked out, so hey....)
Speaking of the Lunatics. Lucy has apparently spotted yet another blond "Zach". We pondered what this means (why are there no brown-haired versions? He'd be happier with brown than blond). And whether or not it'd be too creepy of she took a photo of him for me. (We decided that the answer was "yes".)
Saturday I felt energetic enough that we made our way to Solvang and tried to determine whether it's better to be danish or donut. (Lucy picked danish, I haven't decided yet.) I liked the architecture (all very quaint & picturesque, complete with rolling green hills) and the food (well except the sour cabbage, which Lucy informed me was an acquired taste, and the cooked carrots, which I have never liked and probably never will). Lucy picked up more fridge magnets and we took a bunch of photos, which I've now uploaded to Facebook (and consequently chose to do this over reading, because uploading and labeling photos requires more...activation energy, if you will, than reading). The stores there sold all kinds of random knickknacks, including a bookstore with a fact-book that claimed everyone is 1/3 daffodil. I didn't read the explanation for how the author(s?) came to this astonishing conclusion, but was very amused anyway.
Finally, I was introduced to GLEE (the tv show), which I liked for reasons that I have yet to be able to satisfactorily explain to myself. I don't particularly like the characters, or the drama. The music has bits that I like and bits that I dislike. I fail to find it funny as a comedy. It's not the first show about underdogs and misfits becoming something special. Maybe it's the overall undertone of optimisms, or possibly just the odd moments of emotional honesty in between all the other over the top stuff that's going on. (Or maybe it somehow appealed to the third of me that's daffodil.) I think I need to watch more episodes to know. Maybe I'll like it less then. Or maybe the fact that I probably won't have the time to watch it before the end of the quarter will just kill off the enthusiasm because my attention span would've waned by then.
Which reminds me to say: insanity starts tomorrow! (Cheers.)
20100320
In which there was a massive attack of time management
I have to be in lab both days this weekend, due to a slight misunderstanding when I'm working with a postdoc in which we thought that the protocol took three days when it took four, and I was planning to add on another day to it for something else I'm doing, so it ended up needing five days and we started on Wednesday.
As a consequence I am currently in lab, waiting for the timer to go off so I can start the next round of incubations.
This week's been pretty good, all things considered. I ended up plotting out my experiments, once again, only to realize that there were a few images that I need to have taken that I haven't yet and so had to tack on a few extra hours of quality time with the microscope. There was three hours of minor panic on Wednesday morning regarding some misunderstanding with the vivarium paperwork, but luckily that sorted out alright too. I turned in my final on time, neglected to read my paper for journal club, and took part in the baby shower we (meaning the lab members and I) threw for Wendy. (I suspect my concept of what a "normal" baby shower is is nice and skewed by now, given I've only attended two and they're both lab-hosted ones.)
...and there is still no spring break for grad students. Stop asking.
...though I am taking next Friday off to go see Lucy (and possibly visit that nice botanical garden). I felt fairly justified, considering that I've had to come in on the weekends for something like three weeks straight and that after next weekend I have to come to campus on Saturday, again, to attend a TA training session of all things. (Yep, they do train us. Or at least they do try.) (Que horror?)
I have to present at lab meeting next week. I need to put together my powerpoint slides (I've decided to save trees and not do printouts, given how many images I have.) I also need to do the pilot run on my sequences on Daemon's linux OS sometime this weekend.And possibly clean my apartment again. Somehow I did manage to remember to fill out the Census form that I got and drink tea.
My PI continues to be strange, as usual, though he did bring us earl grey chocolate from Chuao's (yep that fancy chocolate place) which I figured most of you will probably approve. (He also classified RNA extraction procedure as being split between "crunchy" and "squishy", e.g. worms are squishy and flies are crunchy.) (...yeah I don't know, either.)
As a consequence I am currently in lab, waiting for the timer to go off so I can start the next round of incubations.
This week's been pretty good, all things considered. I ended up plotting out my experiments, once again, only to realize that there were a few images that I need to have taken that I haven't yet and so had to tack on a few extra hours of quality time with the microscope. There was three hours of minor panic on Wednesday morning regarding some misunderstanding with the vivarium paperwork, but luckily that sorted out alright too. I turned in my final on time, neglected to read my paper for journal club, and took part in the baby shower we (meaning the lab members and I) threw for Wendy. (I suspect my concept of what a "normal" baby shower is is nice and skewed by now, given I've only attended two and they're both lab-hosted ones.)
...and there is still no spring break for grad students. Stop asking.
...though I am taking next Friday off to go see Lucy (and possibly visit that nice botanical garden). I felt fairly justified, considering that I've had to come in on the weekends for something like three weeks straight and that after next weekend I have to come to campus on Saturday, again, to attend a TA training session of all things. (Yep, they do train us. Or at least they do try.) (Que horror?)
I have to present at lab meeting next week. I need to put together my powerpoint slides (I've decided to save trees and not do printouts, given how many images I have.) I also need to do the pilot run on my sequences on Daemon's linux OS sometime this weekend.And possibly clean my apartment again. Somehow I did manage to remember to fill out the Census form that I got and drink tea.
My PI continues to be strange, as usual, though he did bring us earl grey chocolate from Chuao's (yep that fancy chocolate place) which I figured most of you will probably approve. (He also classified RNA extraction procedure as being split between "crunchy" and "squishy", e.g. worms are squishy and flies are crunchy.) (...yeah I don't know, either.)
20100314
I don't understand
Dear Diary,
Today when I returned to my car after purchasing a baby-shower present for Wendy I discovered that someone has left a half-eaten lollipop stuck to the hood of my car.
It was very sticky.
Sincerely,
S
Today when I returned to my car after purchasing a baby-shower present for Wendy I discovered that someone has left a half-eaten lollipop stuck to the hood of my car.
It was very sticky.
Sincerely,
S
20100312
In which twitchiness is most unhelpful
There is too much to do. That is my conclusion right now. I realize that I am going to get very little done in terms of experiments during next quarter and so, in a fit of conscience, decided to try to round up everything in the next two weeks so that I will not be in the middle of things when the madness descends.
And now I am suffering for having made that choice.
Okay, it's not that bad. This is mostly me being grumpy about having to deal with all these other stuff on top of lab, including a final full of essay questions. Yep, there's lots to be done this weekend (need to stop by lab AGAIN tomorrow), but for tonight I need a break and so I'm going to eat dinner and watch an episode of Due South, pay my phone bills, and go to sleep.
Oh and there will be tea. Tea makes everything better.
And now I am suffering for having made that choice.
Okay, it's not that bad. This is mostly me being grumpy about having to deal with all these other stuff on top of lab, including a final full of essay questions. Yep, there's lots to be done this weekend (need to stop by lab AGAIN tomorrow), but for tonight I need a break and so I'm going to eat dinner and watch an episode of Due South, pay my phone bills, and go to sleep.
Oh and there will be tea. Tea makes everything better.
20100306
Then they will all go crazy and die
I am currently 170 pages into A Game of Thrones and considering whether or not I should start a Twitter account just so I can note random thoughts as I go on (and make predictions, those are always fun). The book's good. It's intricate enough to keep me engaged, fairly good pace in terms plot, even if it still lacks something in terms of thematic grittiness. The most annoying thing so far is the length of description for scenery. I have now made the promise to myself that unless a particular setting is especially crucial to either the development of the characters or plot I will not spend paragraphs rhapsodizing about the view from the shore or the mystery of decaying trees in any story I write from now on. Just...no. My favorite thing, aside from a plot that actually understood that not everything can be split into right vs. wrong, is the characters. Mind you, I don't like most of them, especially Sansa (I like her even less than I like the antagonists). It's perhaps very telling that I identify the most with Lord Stark (second place is a tie between Tyrion and Snow). The lack of female characters at this point is not due to the fact that the females lack strength of will (which is a nice surprise) but the fact that all of them so far, despite of their strength, are still ruled by their passion and none of them seems capable of just being logical for a scene. I've also concluded that at least half of the Starks are going to die. I suspect that the queen will probably die too. Or the king. Or both. The odds of royal family's survival, at this point, isn't looking too good either. Daenerys might live. And grow a backbone, which would be nice. The beggar king lacks crucial survival instincts but might live out of sheer perversity (it'd suit him). Tyrion might live to mock everyone from his corner, but seriously, with all the foreshadowing I think the royal household will be the death of the Starks.
In other news: PI got me a external harddrive that's 500G and smaller than my hand. And strawberry soda is very good. It is still shedding season at the Animal Shelter.
In other news: PI got me a external harddrive that's 500G and smaller than my hand. And strawberry soda is very good. It is still shedding season at the Animal Shelter.
20100304
Okay, this is alarming
My PI mentioned something to me today (about my pippetman preferences) that we talked about, once, the first day (or around that time) I joined the lab and hasn't mentioned since. Given that the conversation that started this was a sort of throw-away type of exchange from early-mid May of last year, now I live in paranoia that everything I've ever said in front of him will come back to haunt me later. Anna's linked me to this comic from OpenWetWare. After much debate, my labmates and I have decided that our PI is a hybrid... between "Control Freak" and "Science Wonk".
He is awesome, but he is also rather freakish.
Well, good luck to the recruits tomorrow.
Also: Anna? Trust me when I say that after all of this is over, in the future seeing other recruits getting interviewed will only inspire vague feelings of nostalgia. Your time will come, grasshopper.
He is awesome, but he is also rather freakish.
Well, good luck to the recruits tomorrow.
Also: Anna? Trust me when I say that after all of this is over, in the future seeing other recruits getting interviewed will only inspire vague feelings of nostalgia. Your time will come, grasshopper.
20100303
Second recruitment weekend starts tomorrow (the recruits will be arriving throughout the day tomorrow). I didn't get an email with the necessary information, so I assume I will not be involved this time. I did get an email for the social events concluding each evening though, but since I don't drink alcohol and loud music plus crowd is a sure-fire way of giving myself a migraine, I probably won't be attending.
Watching recruits wander through lab on Friday should be entertaining, though. It's my other source of excitement aside from living vicariously through my friends who are going through the interviews these weeks.
Speaking of schools: I had an enlightening conversation with my PI about schools today (it stemmed from neuroanatomical atlases -- just don't ask me how). I have been told that switching to a different state at some point in my academic career is a good career move, because it shows potential employers that you're not just fixed in California and they have to be more competitive in terms of recruiting you (as opposed to knowing that you're limited to the choices in Cal anyway, I suppose). Today I found out that my PI will be happy with just a change of institution. And that it can even be one of the research institutes right up the street. I also found out that Cal Tech is apparently a very small school and very "spotty", and that Boston has a good academics environment. I am currently going to take his words for it, since he went to Cal Tech for grad school and then did post doc at, I think, MIT. Given what kind of person he is, if he thinks Cal Tech is spotty, I should probably be avoiding the place.
Today one of my classmates helped me carry stuff. Without even saying anything (e.g. asking me if I need help, or have me ask for help). It was very nice. Apparently guys like that still exist.
Watching recruits wander through lab on Friday should be entertaining, though. It's my other source of excitement aside from living vicariously through my friends who are going through the interviews these weeks.
Speaking of schools: I had an enlightening conversation with my PI about schools today (it stemmed from neuroanatomical atlases -- just don't ask me how). I have been told that switching to a different state at some point in my academic career is a good career move, because it shows potential employers that you're not just fixed in California and they have to be more competitive in terms of recruiting you (as opposed to knowing that you're limited to the choices in Cal anyway, I suppose). Today I found out that my PI will be happy with just a change of institution. And that it can even be one of the research institutes right up the street. I also found out that Cal Tech is apparently a very small school and very "spotty", and that Boston has a good academics environment. I am currently going to take his words for it, since he went to Cal Tech for grad school and then did post doc at, I think, MIT. Given what kind of person he is, if he thinks Cal Tech is spotty, I should probably be avoiding the place.
Today one of my classmates helped me carry stuff. Without even saying anything (e.g. asking me if I need help, or have me ask for help). It was very nice. Apparently guys like that still exist.
20100228
...
Did it seriously rain like an reenactment of Noah's arc yesterday? Because the sky is very, very blue today.
The rose from a couple weeks ago appear to have finally recovered! There're new leaves and everything.
The rose from a couple weeks ago appear to have finally recovered! There're new leaves and everything.
20100222
Whoa baby whaaa?
I found a lot of interesting things today and my mind was reeling to the point where I accidentally dumped a container of CDs on my head of all things, while in lab, before giving myself a paper cut that is currently making it hard for me to type. (Then again, it wouldn't be the first time I bled all over my keyboard. It's less damaging, at least, than getting coke all over the keyboard.)
On rare occasions I feel brilliant. Most of the days I still feel like an idiot.
I should start with the worry hovering over the entire lab all of last week: Wendy's fine! Actually she came in today and did two hours of mouse work in the vivarium. I spent some time explaining that most people in her condition would be home, resting. She pointed out that since her baby (boy, born late last Wednesday) has to stay in the hospital for a few months, she doesn't have to take her maternity leave until the baby comes home and so in the mean while she can try to get all her stuff down so she can graduate. I explained that people usually go from hospital rest to home rest before going to work. She pointed out that since the baby's early she recovered fairly quickly, that there's nothing she can do at home except sleep (which, isn't that the point of rest?), and that she has mouse embryos to dissect tomorrow, and genotyping to do. I...just.... Well, at least she seems fine, despite of the massive amount of bruising on her arm from the IV (she has small veins; I can sympathize). She showed me the tag they put on her. Apparently baby-stealing is a common enough problem that they tag the parent and tag the baby right after birth and if you take the baby outside of the door it'll beep -- the door, not the baby. Like an errant library book or, as Wendy pointed out, a shirt from the store.
I had an odd mental image of babies with barcodes stamped on them. (Why not? I've been tagged with something that DID have a barcode on it before.)
So right. Next up is something that I found out about the recruitment process of grad school! Our recruitment weekend ended Saturday evening, everyone flew out at different times Sunday (or really late Saturday night). Around late Sunday I got an email (which I didn't read until this morning) asking me to a) give some feedback on the weekend and what can be changed for the better, in terms of organization &c. and b) review / rate my recruit.
I felt very twitchy the entire time I was filling out the form, and not just because the name of my recruit happened to be "Anna". I was asked to rank the acceptance (from high priority to low priority to don't accept), as well as to describe the strength and weaknesses of the recruit (e.g. communication skills, interest in research &c.) along with anything exceptional (and I have no idea what's considered exceptional). Somehow I suspect all the PIs that had interviews are also asked to fill out these forms (which makes me wonder how they can fill it out, considering that most of them didn't give us the time to talk during interviews at all) ("quiet", "relatively quiet", "managed to squeeze in one question", "fell asleep"?). Right after this, we were asked to send a nice email to our recruits (after all, we are trying to "recruit" them) to conclude this entire thing. On one hand I'm pretty sure my classmates and I will not be putting anyone in the "don't accept" category (unless you really are psycho and talking to you has made us fear for our lives -- in that case we don't want you in SD, we want you as far away as possible). On the other hand, I do feel that since the job of the hosts are to take the recruits out, talk to them, and show them around in a nice, relaxed atmosphere, is it really fair to rate this interaction as one would an interview?
This bothers me.
Thirdly. The collaborator that I've just spent a month and a half waiting for and committing academic stalking via email for (yeah the one who never answers his email or if he does, never includes the information I need, such as his protocol index) gave me all the information I needed today, in under two minutes, because I got so fed up that I went and called him instead of sending him increasingly more frantic emails. He was very nice over the phone and even gave me his cell phone number (I called his lab, figuring that someone there must know where he is, and he picked up) in case I need to reach him again. And then the rest of the paperwork for animal transfer was submitted in under fifteen minutes, approved right after lunch, and ready to go by five pm.
I waited a month and a half for this.
People are truly complex and so very, very, annoying.
Though now this means I might have more behavioral data in a few months, finally, and that's kind of exciting.
I had "The War of 1812" by the Arrogant Worms stuck in my head today, for no apparently reason. It was a little disconcerting to keep catching myself singing the chorus part under my breath while I was cutting my cryostat sections (how is it that I use three different types of razors, two types of tweezers, and three types of surgical scissors regularly, and still manage to injure myself with a sheet of paper, by the way?). Considering the lyrics, I wonder if someone might mistake me for a terrorist at some point and try to report me. Well, if I suddenly disappear off of the face of the earth you guys will know what happened.
On rare occasions I feel brilliant. Most of the days I still feel like an idiot.
I should start with the worry hovering over the entire lab all of last week: Wendy's fine! Actually she came in today and did two hours of mouse work in the vivarium. I spent some time explaining that most people in her condition would be home, resting. She pointed out that since her baby (boy, born late last Wednesday) has to stay in the hospital for a few months, she doesn't have to take her maternity leave until the baby comes home and so in the mean while she can try to get all her stuff down so she can graduate. I explained that people usually go from hospital rest to home rest before going to work. She pointed out that since the baby's early she recovered fairly quickly, that there's nothing she can do at home except sleep (which, isn't that the point of rest?), and that she has mouse embryos to dissect tomorrow, and genotyping to do. I...just.... Well, at least she seems fine, despite of the massive amount of bruising on her arm from the IV (she has small veins; I can sympathize). She showed me the tag they put on her. Apparently baby-stealing is a common enough problem that they tag the parent and tag the baby right after birth and if you take the baby outside of the door it'll beep -- the door, not the baby. Like an errant library book or, as Wendy pointed out, a shirt from the store.
I had an odd mental image of babies with barcodes stamped on them. (Why not? I've been tagged with something that DID have a barcode on it before.)
So right. Next up is something that I found out about the recruitment process of grad school! Our recruitment weekend ended Saturday evening, everyone flew out at different times Sunday (or really late Saturday night). Around late Sunday I got an email (which I didn't read until this morning) asking me to a) give some feedback on the weekend and what can be changed for the better, in terms of organization &c. and b) review / rate my recruit.
I felt very twitchy the entire time I was filling out the form, and not just because the name of my recruit happened to be "Anna". I was asked to rank the acceptance (from high priority to low priority to don't accept), as well as to describe the strength and weaknesses of the recruit (e.g. communication skills, interest in research &c.) along with anything exceptional (and I have no idea what's considered exceptional). Somehow I suspect all the PIs that had interviews are also asked to fill out these forms (which makes me wonder how they can fill it out, considering that most of them didn't give us the time to talk during interviews at all) ("quiet", "relatively quiet", "managed to squeeze in one question", "fell asleep"?). Right after this, we were asked to send a nice email to our recruits (after all, we are trying to "recruit" them) to conclude this entire thing. On one hand I'm pretty sure my classmates and I will not be putting anyone in the "don't accept" category (unless you really are psycho and talking to you has made us fear for our lives -- in that case we don't want you in SD, we want you as far away as possible). On the other hand, I do feel that since the job of the hosts are to take the recruits out, talk to them, and show them around in a nice, relaxed atmosphere, is it really fair to rate this interaction as one would an interview?
This bothers me.
Thirdly. The collaborator that I've just spent a month and a half waiting for and committing academic stalking via email for (yeah the one who never answers his email or if he does, never includes the information I need, such as his protocol index) gave me all the information I needed today, in under two minutes, because I got so fed up that I went and called him instead of sending him increasingly more frantic emails. He was very nice over the phone and even gave me his cell phone number (I called his lab, figuring that someone there must know where he is, and he picked up) in case I need to reach him again. And then the rest of the paperwork for animal transfer was submitted in under fifteen minutes, approved right after lunch, and ready to go by five pm.
I waited a month and a half for this.
People are truly complex and so very, very, annoying.
Though now this means I might have more behavioral data in a few months, finally, and that's kind of exciting.
I had "The War of 1812" by the Arrogant Worms stuck in my head today, for no apparently reason. It was a little disconcerting to keep catching myself singing the chorus part under my breath while I was cutting my cryostat sections (how is it that I use three different types of razors, two types of tweezers, and three types of surgical scissors regularly, and still manage to injure myself with a sheet of paper, by the way?). Considering the lyrics, I wonder if someone might mistake me for a terrorist at some point and try to report me. Well, if I suddenly disappear off of the face of the earth you guys will know what happened.
20100220
Huh, there goes another week
The quality of food from Costco always surprises me because I'd think that it's, well, Costco. The giant stacks of boxes of socks and soap are not exactly what anyone would associate with gourmet. Yet somehow there're pretty good stuff there. My recent discovery is their Belgian chocolate cups, especially the dark chocolate ones. (Which reminds me to note that I finally remembered to try that chocolate soda that Lucy brought over the last weekend and it tastes like carbonated chocolate milk. It's...unsettling. I think I might just let it set out until all the CO2 goes so I can pretend it's chocolate milk.) (Yes it's still slightly carbonated, even after a week. Impressive, isn't it?)
The night with my recruit went well. We had, against all odds, things in common, such as being one of the few applicants of our year who hasn't obtained our bachelor's and liking Neil Gaiman's work. We went out for Thai food and I warned her that it might rain, because SD always rains on recruitment weekend. This turned out to be true, but at least the rain was this morning, and brief, so that most of the outdoor events that were planned for Friday and Saturday should've gone fine.
In fact, that evening went so well that when I got the desperate email asking for the hosts to volunteer a second time since we have over 40 people coming the second weekend, I agreed to host another student.
The interviews with the PIs were on Friday, so I got to see my PI as well as one of the neighboring PIs wander past with the recruits (recognizable by their red-bordered name tags). Afterwards when I asked my PI how the interviews went, he commented that all the students had potential, but since this is recruitment he couldn't really ask them any of the hard questions. (There you go, Anna, apparently the PIs have some sort of unspoken codes of conduct for recruitment weekends.) Of course immediately after this comment I had a moment of incriminating doubt about my PI, because somehow the comment made me recall with horror every single oral exam I've ever had to take and I didn't really expected that from him. Then I realized I couldn't actually remember him ever asking me really hard questions. Therefore it's possible that either he was really desperate for a grad student when I joined (Wendy's graduating, once a PI's lab has emptied of grad student it'll be harder for him/her to get another one -- admittedly not as hard as a PI who's never had a grad student), or that he was joking. The jury's still out on this one.
We still haven't heard anything from Wendy yet (and by "we" I'm referring to my labmates and I). I've talked to one of her friend on Wednesday and was informed that she was fine. However, then we got an email from her husband saying how the baby could be expected any day now. Six months is so much shorter than what it should be. Admittedly modern medicine has gotten very good with premature births and one month ahead of time is almost guaranteed to be problem free, but even so.... It's not even six, to be honest. It's five and some.
My labmates and I are currently in the habits of crossing our fingers at each other when we talk about this. I feel like I should be crossing my fingers now but that would impede typing.
Parents are coming today. I cannot stop them. It should be nice and awkward.
The night with my recruit went well. We had, against all odds, things in common, such as being one of the few applicants of our year who hasn't obtained our bachelor's and liking Neil Gaiman's work. We went out for Thai food and I warned her that it might rain, because SD always rains on recruitment weekend. This turned out to be true, but at least the rain was this morning, and brief, so that most of the outdoor events that were planned for Friday and Saturday should've gone fine.
In fact, that evening went so well that when I got the desperate email asking for the hosts to volunteer a second time since we have over 40 people coming the second weekend, I agreed to host another student.
The interviews with the PIs were on Friday, so I got to see my PI as well as one of the neighboring PIs wander past with the recruits (recognizable by their red-bordered name tags). Afterwards when I asked my PI how the interviews went, he commented that all the students had potential, but since this is recruitment he couldn't really ask them any of the hard questions. (There you go, Anna, apparently the PIs have some sort of unspoken codes of conduct for recruitment weekends.) Of course immediately after this comment I had a moment of incriminating doubt about my PI, because somehow the comment made me recall with horror every single oral exam I've ever had to take and I didn't really expected that from him. Then I realized I couldn't actually remember him ever asking me really hard questions. Therefore it's possible that either he was really desperate for a grad student when I joined (Wendy's graduating, once a PI's lab has emptied of grad student it'll be harder for him/her to get another one -- admittedly not as hard as a PI who's never had a grad student), or that he was joking. The jury's still out on this one.
We still haven't heard anything from Wendy yet (and by "we" I'm referring to my labmates and I). I've talked to one of her friend on Wednesday and was informed that she was fine. However, then we got an email from her husband saying how the baby could be expected any day now. Six months is so much shorter than what it should be. Admittedly modern medicine has gotten very good with premature births and one month ahead of time is almost guaranteed to be problem free, but even so.... It's not even six, to be honest. It's five and some.
My labmates and I are currently in the habits of crossing our fingers at each other when we talk about this. I feel like I should be crossing my fingers now but that would impede typing.
Parents are coming today. I cannot stop them. It should be nice and awkward.
20100218
...what happened?
This week has been fairly insane so far, despite of the fact that it's a short week. Well, short week by the standards of anyone not involved in graduate school. I spent Monday in lab, after all, as did many of my lab mates. Experiments to run, etc.
Wendy, my labmate, ended up in the hospital on Saturday. I found this out on Monday, when she called the lab while I was down in the vivarium. She went into contractions two and half months early and now they've got her on IV and enforced bed rest. Meanwhile the rest of us have taken to sending her massive amounts of email and plotting when will be a plausible time to sneak in to see her without causing her unnecessary stress. Oh and taking care of her mice. She has a lot of mice (currently I think almost half of the cages in our vivarium are hers). There's a collective air of "omigod I hope everything will be okay" going on at the lab right now. Add in the fact that Dorothy's taking the week off and we've just had a post-doc who'd left a few weeks ago, the lab seems very quiet and subdued this week.
I am picking up my recruit from the airport tonight. At some point I will blog about this, in the aftermath. Meanwhile I just want to note that some of my classmates tend to group together for these sort of thing (i.e. a couple hosts go out together with their recruit as a group), while I'm doing this one-on-one tonight. It is probably a good thing. One-on-one people tend to think that I'm weird, but can be fun to talk to. In a group setting all that people get from me is weird and quiet.
My parents still want to come this weekend. I should probably call them at some point.
I am WAY behind in updating my lab notebook.
And cryostat sectioning.
My life needs more tea at the moment.
Sunday was fine though. Sunday was FUN. Lucy and I went to the Wild Animal Park in SD, as I'm sure many of you have seen the photos for already. We tracked down flamingos, were wowed by the crazy creations of mother nature in the animal world, and fed birds. There was also a balloon safari that resembled a giant float grapefruit in the sky, which I've taken to use as my landmark for pinpointing directions while in the park. The native plants section of the park was a slight disappointment but, as Lusine had pointed out, the fact that they HAD a plant section is impressive (their conifer arboretum was quite good though, with streams and ferns and everything). And they had bonsai. I have no idea why but ...bonsai.
We also got to see the baby elephant that was born at 3am the day that we were there. Lucy claimed that she was going to "die from the cute". (He was a very large baby. Then again, she was a very large mother.) There was also a theatre proclaiming 4-D shows, which after much debate, we were forced to conclude that no time traveling was involved (such shame). I think they meant 3-D plus motion which okay, is 3-D plus an extra sensory so I guess they thought 3+1 = 4? Except this is like adding things on the Cartesian coordinates to imaginary numbers -- that's NOT how it works. If they're doing motion as one of the experiences, then the 3-D is purely visual effects which is ONE sensory input so it's really 1+1 =2. ...but anyway, much lolz was had.
We also saw a kid who reminded us of Zach, at the age of ...what? 7? 8? Despite of the fact that he was blond (oh so very irredeemably blond). At least the skinny pale boy in glasses part still fits, leading me to conclude that whatever people thought of Zach post-puberty, he was very cute as a kid.
Okay classes now.
Wendy, my labmate, ended up in the hospital on Saturday. I found this out on Monday, when she called the lab while I was down in the vivarium. She went into contractions two and half months early and now they've got her on IV and enforced bed rest. Meanwhile the rest of us have taken to sending her massive amounts of email and plotting when will be a plausible time to sneak in to see her without causing her unnecessary stress. Oh and taking care of her mice. She has a lot of mice (currently I think almost half of the cages in our vivarium are hers). There's a collective air of "omigod I hope everything will be okay" going on at the lab right now. Add in the fact that Dorothy's taking the week off and we've just had a post-doc who'd left a few weeks ago, the lab seems very quiet and subdued this week.
I am picking up my recruit from the airport tonight. At some point I will blog about this, in the aftermath. Meanwhile I just want to note that some of my classmates tend to group together for these sort of thing (i.e. a couple hosts go out together with their recruit as a group), while I'm doing this one-on-one tonight. It is probably a good thing. One-on-one people tend to think that I'm weird, but can be fun to talk to. In a group setting all that people get from me is weird and quiet.
My parents still want to come this weekend. I should probably call them at some point.
I am WAY behind in updating my lab notebook.
And cryostat sectioning.
My life needs more tea at the moment.
Sunday was fine though. Sunday was FUN. Lucy and I went to the Wild Animal Park in SD, as I'm sure many of you have seen the photos for already. We tracked down flamingos, were wowed by the crazy creations of mother nature in the animal world, and fed birds. There was also a balloon safari that resembled a giant float grapefruit in the sky, which I've taken to use as my landmark for pinpointing directions while in the park. The native plants section of the park was a slight disappointment but, as Lusine had pointed out, the fact that they HAD a plant section is impressive (their conifer arboretum was quite good though, with streams and ferns and everything). And they had bonsai. I have no idea why but ...bonsai.
We also got to see the baby elephant that was born at 3am the day that we were there. Lucy claimed that she was going to "die from the cute". (He was a very large baby. Then again, she was a very large mother.) There was also a theatre proclaiming 4-D shows, which after much debate, we were forced to conclude that no time traveling was involved (such shame). I think they meant 3-D plus motion which okay, is 3-D plus an extra sensory so I guess they thought 3+1 = 4? Except this is like adding things on the Cartesian coordinates to imaginary numbers -- that's NOT how it works. If they're doing motion as one of the experiences, then the 3-D is purely visual effects which is ONE sensory input so it's really 1+1 =2. ...but anyway, much lolz was had.
We also saw a kid who reminded us of Zach, at the age of ...what? 7? 8? Despite of the fact that he was blond (oh so very irredeemably blond). At least the skinny pale boy in glasses part still fits, leading me to conclude that whatever people thought of Zach post-puberty, he was very cute as a kid.
Okay classes now.
20100214
20100206
Don't make the apocalypse in a test tube, kids
Dude. Dude. I cannot believe that the word "biohacker" is currently being used. It is oddly applicable and all the more scary for it.
Before I denounce all and sundry I should point out that I am, in principle, not against the biohackers. I can see where they are coming from. The fact that you practically need a PhD and massive amounts of funding (millions of dollars, and I have no idea what the current ROR grant award rate is, so don't even ask)to do any kind of research in biology does bother me. I am all for a cheaper way of doing things and the fact that you can buy the same blender (Warring) from your local store that would costs something like ten times more to buy from a biology research tool&appliances catalogue is utterly ridiculous. It is a blender. It chops things. It's even made by the same company and has no differences in settings and motor voltage so why, people? Why?
(Our lab's microwave that we use for experiments probably comes from Fry's or something. It's cheaper.)
That's not even taken into account the PhD thing. Do you really need a doctorate in your field in order to do good science? Clearly not. Plenty of important discoveries were made by people who have never worked in a field that their knowledge contributed to. Dendrochronology is an example of someone contributing from a different field of science altogether. Lorenzo's Oil and, slightly less so, Something the Lord Made are both good stories (in movie format, even!) about people who are not PhDs who have made significant contribution. Having all that scientific knowledge wrapped up and kept under seal, away from the public, is in fact dangerous. It is the public, after all, who makes the decisions about policies. It is the public's voice, the collective "We" (no dystopia jokes please) whose voice is heard. Therefore isn't a little scary to think that about a third of America still doesn't believe in evolution? Uninformed public is dangerous, but what is more dangerous is a public that has been misinformed. In an age of internet and too much information, both accurate and inaccurate, floating around, is it really a good idea to keep what has been scientifically proven restricted to journals that only scientists would probably ever pay to subscribe to? I have somewhat more faith in humanity than Hobbes, but even so, considering what we are capable of doing right now in the field of biology, I think the imbalance of flow of information is getting to be too great. Something's gotta give. (Greener Than You Think is a satirical account of what could, in theory, happen when the scientific knowledge, for whatever reason, just failed to make it across to people -- a salesman in this case. I always wondered if it might've gone better of the biologist in that story managed to appeal to the salesman better and explained why he had to do things a certain way.)
(Which reminds me to mention again how wonderful PLoS is. Really. I love it. If I had more time I'd read more articles from it besides the ones the PI keeps on forwarding to me.)
Now my issue with biohackers (aha, you say, here it comes, but hear me out) is this. As with the original use of the word hackers in the field of computational sciences, the general public tends to lump the word "hacker" and "cracker" together when the two groups of people are in totally different camps. Similarly, with the ease of ordering and shipping (we get our DNAs Fedex'ed, I think people's worked out how to ship all kinds of things via Fedex now) I worry about the possibility of "biocrackers". I feel like I should remind people that unlike comp sci stuff, bio sci things can literally grow and multiply and take over the world. Anyone who's paid any attention at all to news must know of the possible issues people have with antibiotic resistance in bacteria, GMO, as well as the use of animal in research. All these issues arise from a time when the biologists can pretty much just do whatever they wanted, without having to go through protocol approval and acquisition paperwork. (The original discovery of allergy shots? The MD just went out there and injected volunteers. No prior testing on animals or approval of procedure by an elected committee.) Although these have resulted in a lot of awesome discoveries, they also lead to a lot of abuse and environmental dangers in the future. Who could've predicted the frequency that bacteria swap DNA with? The rapid rate that antibiotic resistance can be passed through all different strains? Who could've predicted that increasing yield in crops can also lead to out breeding and "superweeds?". Or those issues with pesticide? For all that I will grumble and complain about the song and dance we have to go through to get anything new done, I also agree that, to an extend, those procedures are necessary. Therefore, your local backyard biohacker, who does not have a protocol approved by a committee who will ask in detail about what happens in case of cross contamination, spills, and a plethora of possibly dangerous things that can go wrong, can in fact get into some serious trouble, not only for the biohacker but for everyone.
There is only one planet earth, people. (Maybe if I repeat this enough time some of the more recalcitrant folks out there will finally realize that their net income each year matters slightly less than the end of the world?)
So my issue is this: not the hacking, nor the backyard, but the fact that we have no way of knowing whether or not the hackers have had any training at all in dealing with research biology. Whether or not, for instance, they know the differences between biohazards level 0 to 3 and that you can't pour biological waste down the drain or into the trash -- there are rules with 10% bleach and 70% ethanol (now a controlled substance that we have to get our PI to sign in order to buy -- sometimes the safety committee can get overly zealous, yes), depending on what you've used, that apply. We don't know whether or not these hackers know that when you mix certain reagents, a small percentage of it can get aerosolized so the area that you work has to be contained -- all our labs have constant air filtering and are at a negative pressure so whenever we open the door, air is sucked into the lab, never out. We don't know even if these hackers know the basic protocols of what to do in case they spill acid or base and let's face it, theory is very different from reality. Back when I did my safety training the people used to tell stories of this poor guy from physics, who'd never done any lab work, and how he spilled acid on himself and how he then poured base on himself to try to neutralize it on his skin. (For the record, people: do not do that; go stand the affected area under the DI water immediately for 15 minutes instead, that way you might actually avoid third degree chemical burn.) What we need, in addition to possible background checks to make sure the person is a hacker and not a cracker, is this: some sort of system (I suspect it will have to be volunteer based because I cannot foresee a lot of the university committee people voluntarily going out to do this) to make sure that everyone can attend a standard safety training session the first time they order stuff to do biological research. It'll be fairly simple, containing information that can probably fit onto a small packet, but it will have to be a training session because people are more likely to pay some attention that way than if they were handed a packet that easily fits into a recycling bin. You don't need to be a professor to give that kind of training sessions -- anyone who's had any sort of lab experience at all can do it. They can get the packet. Or the powerpoint. Whatever. It will have to contain information such as what to do if you spill things on something / someone and why you must make sure you don't carry whatever critters you've made on your bench with you when you leave and accidentally unleash the apocalypse upon the world.
I'm exaggerating a little, of course. Organisms are surprisingly resilient. Even a doomsday scenario like the one in Oryx and Crake a few humans still made it through, and that was for something that's targeted against humans. So in reality a doomsday scenario will probably only result in decimation of humanity and lots of general difficulties such as lack of clean food, water, and hazmat suits.
So the second half of my title for today's entry is, in reality, "...but if you must, makes sure the tube is capped and you know what to do with it afterwards."
End rant.
Yeah, can you tell this has bothering me a lot since yesterday?
Before I denounce all and sundry I should point out that I am, in principle, not against the biohackers. I can see where they are coming from. The fact that you practically need a PhD and massive amounts of funding (millions of dollars, and I have no idea what the current ROR grant award rate is, so don't even ask)to do any kind of research in biology does bother me. I am all for a cheaper way of doing things and the fact that you can buy the same blender (Warring) from your local store that would costs something like ten times more to buy from a biology research tool&appliances catalogue is utterly ridiculous. It is a blender. It chops things. It's even made by the same company and has no differences in settings and motor voltage so why, people? Why?
(Our lab's microwave that we use for experiments probably comes from Fry's or something. It's cheaper.)
That's not even taken into account the PhD thing. Do you really need a doctorate in your field in order to do good science? Clearly not. Plenty of important discoveries were made by people who have never worked in a field that their knowledge contributed to. Dendrochronology is an example of someone contributing from a different field of science altogether. Lorenzo's Oil and, slightly less so, Something the Lord Made are both good stories (in movie format, even!) about people who are not PhDs who have made significant contribution. Having all that scientific knowledge wrapped up and kept under seal, away from the public, is in fact dangerous. It is the public, after all, who makes the decisions about policies. It is the public's voice, the collective "We" (no dystopia jokes please) whose voice is heard. Therefore isn't a little scary to think that about a third of America still doesn't believe in evolution? Uninformed public is dangerous, but what is more dangerous is a public that has been misinformed. In an age of internet and too much information, both accurate and inaccurate, floating around, is it really a good idea to keep what has been scientifically proven restricted to journals that only scientists would probably ever pay to subscribe to? I have somewhat more faith in humanity than Hobbes, but even so, considering what we are capable of doing right now in the field of biology, I think the imbalance of flow of information is getting to be too great. Something's gotta give. (Greener Than You Think is a satirical account of what could, in theory, happen when the scientific knowledge, for whatever reason, just failed to make it across to people -- a salesman in this case. I always wondered if it might've gone better of the biologist in that story managed to appeal to the salesman better and explained why he had to do things a certain way.)
(Which reminds me to mention again how wonderful PLoS is. Really. I love it. If I had more time I'd read more articles from it besides the ones the PI keeps on forwarding to me.)
Now my issue with biohackers (aha, you say, here it comes, but hear me out) is this. As with the original use of the word hackers in the field of computational sciences, the general public tends to lump the word "hacker" and "cracker" together when the two groups of people are in totally different camps. Similarly, with the ease of ordering and shipping (we get our DNAs Fedex'ed, I think people's worked out how to ship all kinds of things via Fedex now) I worry about the possibility of "biocrackers". I feel like I should remind people that unlike comp sci stuff, bio sci things can literally grow and multiply and take over the world. Anyone who's paid any attention at all to news must know of the possible issues people have with antibiotic resistance in bacteria, GMO, as well as the use of animal in research. All these issues arise from a time when the biologists can pretty much just do whatever they wanted, without having to go through protocol approval and acquisition paperwork. (The original discovery of allergy shots? The MD just went out there and injected volunteers. No prior testing on animals or approval of procedure by an elected committee.) Although these have resulted in a lot of awesome discoveries, they also lead to a lot of abuse and environmental dangers in the future. Who could've predicted the frequency that bacteria swap DNA with? The rapid rate that antibiotic resistance can be passed through all different strains? Who could've predicted that increasing yield in crops can also lead to out breeding and "superweeds?". Or those issues with pesticide? For all that I will grumble and complain about the song and dance we have to go through to get anything new done, I also agree that, to an extend, those procedures are necessary. Therefore, your local backyard biohacker, who does not have a protocol approved by a committee who will ask in detail about what happens in case of cross contamination, spills, and a plethora of possibly dangerous things that can go wrong, can in fact get into some serious trouble, not only for the biohacker but for everyone.
There is only one planet earth, people. (Maybe if I repeat this enough time some of the more recalcitrant folks out there will finally realize that their net income each year matters slightly less than the end of the world?)
So my issue is this: not the hacking, nor the backyard, but the fact that we have no way of knowing whether or not the hackers have had any training at all in dealing with research biology. Whether or not, for instance, they know the differences between biohazards level 0 to 3 and that you can't pour biological waste down the drain or into the trash -- there are rules with 10% bleach and 70% ethanol (now a controlled substance that we have to get our PI to sign in order to buy -- sometimes the safety committee can get overly zealous, yes), depending on what you've used, that apply. We don't know whether or not these hackers know that when you mix certain reagents, a small percentage of it can get aerosolized so the area that you work has to be contained -- all our labs have constant air filtering and are at a negative pressure so whenever we open the door, air is sucked into the lab, never out. We don't know even if these hackers know the basic protocols of what to do in case they spill acid or base and let's face it, theory is very different from reality. Back when I did my safety training the people used to tell stories of this poor guy from physics, who'd never done any lab work, and how he spilled acid on himself and how he then poured base on himself to try to neutralize it on his skin. (For the record, people: do not do that; go stand the affected area under the DI water immediately for 15 minutes instead, that way you might actually avoid third degree chemical burn.) What we need, in addition to possible background checks to make sure the person is a hacker and not a cracker, is this: some sort of system (I suspect it will have to be volunteer based because I cannot foresee a lot of the university committee people voluntarily going out to do this) to make sure that everyone can attend a standard safety training session the first time they order stuff to do biological research. It'll be fairly simple, containing information that can probably fit onto a small packet, but it will have to be a training session because people are more likely to pay some attention that way than if they were handed a packet that easily fits into a recycling bin. You don't need to be a professor to give that kind of training sessions -- anyone who's had any sort of lab experience at all can do it. They can get the packet. Or the powerpoint. Whatever. It will have to contain information such as what to do if you spill things on something / someone and why you must make sure you don't carry whatever critters you've made on your bench with you when you leave and accidentally unleash the apocalypse upon the world.
I'm exaggerating a little, of course. Organisms are surprisingly resilient. Even a doomsday scenario like the one in Oryx and Crake a few humans still made it through, and that was for something that's targeted against humans. So in reality a doomsday scenario will probably only result in decimation of humanity and lots of general difficulties such as lack of clean food, water, and hazmat suits.
So the second half of my title for today's entry is, in reality, "...but if you must, makes sure the tube is capped and you know what to do with it afterwards."
End rant.
Yeah, can you tell this has bothering me a lot since yesterday?
20100204
Genuinely flawed
Hosting a speaker for lunch today was surprisingly fun, despite of the fact that there was a moment of panic this morning when one of the students who had originally signed up came down sick and I had to swap in someone else in her place. The seminar speaker seems to like me too, which was strange, considering that I was much more myself than I perhaps should've been. Then again, coming back after New Year's I've broken almost every single rule I've ever made for myself, about the things I cannot say to other people and emotions I can't show. It had seemed simple enough at the beginning. Well-meaning enough. Doing and saying certain things will only bother people, be a burden to them, so I won't. I want to become a better person than I am, so the way to start, simply, was to pretend to be a better person. There is a difference. My thoughts are still my own, I just don't share them.
Yet somehow, despite of the fact that I have said, no, no more, if I want to be kind I must reach the state where I can feel kind and despite of the fact that I am showing people, co-workers and classmates who have never seen this side of me, that I can be petty, sarcastic, impatient, vindictive, whiny, and so much imperfections somehow people seem to like me the better for it. Is it because it makes me easier to relate to, despite of my relative strangeness? Does it make me seem more normal? Or is it that something genuine, even if it contains so much ugliness, is still attractive? Why is it that forcing others to cope with facets of personality that they do not like worthy of like? Somehow the math doesn't quite add up -- keep adding negative numbers will never give a positive result. Or at least it shouldn't. Perhaps I am only a foil of others, since we like to see faults that we can laugh at in others, many television programs being examples. It is all very confusing.
Still, all this serves to make me realize how much I appreciate honesty.
....
A post-doc from my lab left this Tuesday. She went back to northern China to a part that, after south Cal, will be like moving to Siberia. I am not a little awed by her courage. I also miss her. She was very nice to me.
Yet somehow, despite of the fact that I have said, no, no more, if I want to be kind I must reach the state where I can feel kind and despite of the fact that I am showing people, co-workers and classmates who have never seen this side of me, that I can be petty, sarcastic, impatient, vindictive, whiny, and so much imperfections somehow people seem to like me the better for it. Is it because it makes me easier to relate to, despite of my relative strangeness? Does it make me seem more normal? Or is it that something genuine, even if it contains so much ugliness, is still attractive? Why is it that forcing others to cope with facets of personality that they do not like worthy of like? Somehow the math doesn't quite add up -- keep adding negative numbers will never give a positive result. Or at least it shouldn't. Perhaps I am only a foil of others, since we like to see faults that we can laugh at in others, many television programs being examples. It is all very confusing.
Still, all this serves to make me realize how much I appreciate honesty.
....
A post-doc from my lab left this Tuesday. She went back to northern China to a part that, after south Cal, will be like moving to Siberia. I am not a little awed by her courage. I also miss her. She was very nice to me.
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