Priorities...

Last month was a tough one, as should clearly have been evident from my low blogging output. Our entire lab was burning the midnight oil on a big collaborative data analysis project, and the shear amount of time I was spending on work was basically making my brain mush. Thus my normal diet of perusing geeky websites and blogs has suffered, along with my reading of science-related books. Most of my free time has instead been directed towards pursuits of a more escapism bent (e.g., escaping into the fuzzy haze of alcohol, or escape into the wonderful world of blasting evil aliens¹).

These all feed into one another, you know. Reading science books gives me ideas for blog posts, as does reading and commenting on other blogs. Sure, I could talk about some of the awful fantasy novels I've read in the past few weeks, but who'd want to hear about that?

Actually, given my normal blog readership, I doubt that fantasy would be too low brow (don't take offense, I'm the one reading the books!). Also, given that it's technically Monday, allow me to spew forth a micro-rant. Is there anyone who actually likes to read fantasy novels in which the characters are constantly saved from impossible situations via crappy Deus Ex Machina tropes? Have you ever reached the end of a book and realized that the main characters didn't actually accomplish anything, but were rather miraculously saved from every situation by [INSERT DRAGON/MAGIC/LEGENDARY TOILET SEAT/NATURAL DISASTER/ETC. HERE]? Also, doesn't it bother anyone that the Evil Dark Lord™ who managed to conquer and subjugate all but a plucky young band of mismatched heroes + Love Interest™, is otherwise completely incapable of doing anything right?

Ok, I'm done. I promised myself I wouldn't read any of those books anymore, but I've been trying to save on expenditures this month and have been going back to the 'To read' pile - most of which is made up of fantasy novels I'd purchased years ago.

Anyways... sorry, back to the topic. So yeah, gotta get back into reality and immerse myself in science reading again. In order to facilitate this, I finally picked up a copy of Thomas Henry Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863). This is a book I've been wanting to read for a while, and given that it's quite brief, I hope to be able to have a book club post about it soon.

Also, I've mostly run out of aliens to shoot.

¹As a good friend of mine says to me at least once a week: "I can't believe you're a doctor."

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P.S. Also, like TheBrummell, I've unfortunately been forced to turn on comment word verification due to the mysterious rise in the amount of crazy comment spam.

Pure Insanity...

Having survived the 'snowpocalypse', I emerged from my apartment yesterday with the intent of making my way to the Barnes and Noble down the street. The going was tough, but I eventually made it, only to be greeted by the craziest book I've ever seen! Please, please read the synopsis if it's the only thing you do today:

Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls: The Conspiracy to Genetically Tamper with Humanity

Nigel Kerner, Bear & Company, 2010

In 1997 Nigel Kerner first introduced the notion of aliens known as Greys coming to Earth, explaining that Greys are sophisticated biological robots created by an extraterrestrial civilization they have long since outlived. In this new book Kerner reveals that the Greys are seeking to master death by obtaining something humans possess that they do not: souls. Through the manipulation of human DNA, these aliens hope to create their own souls and, thereby, escape the entropic grip of the material universe in favor of the timeless realm of spirit.

Kerner explains that genetic manipulation by the Greys has occurred since biblical times and has led to numerous negative qualities that plague humanity, such as violence, greed, and maliciousness. Racism, he contends, was developed by the aliens to prevent their genetic experiments from being compromised by breeding with others outside their influence. Examining historical records, Kerner shows that Jesus, who represented an uncorrupted genetic line, warned his disciples about the threat posed by these alien interlopers, while Hitler, a pure product of this alien intelligence, waged genocide in an attempt to rid Earth of all those untouched by this genetic tampering. Despite the powerful grip the Greys have on humanity, Kerner says that all hope is not lost. Greys exist wholly in the material world, so if we follow the spiritual laws of reincarnation and karma, aiming for enlightenment and rising above the material--a state the Greys are unable to reach--we can free ourselves from their grasp.

THIS is why I hate conspiracy theories...

Not-so-Monday Rant: Genre Adulation...

Work continues to be a massive time-sink. Not only am I heavily involved in helping out our lab in a large collaborative project, but I also seem to be hitting some road bumps in terms of getting my own project off of the ground. Hopefully I'll get this stuff cleared up real soon. I missed last week's 'Monday Rant', but given that something's been bothering me a bit for the past couple of weeks, I figured I'd write up a Sunday rant instead.

I have a rather cynical personal philosophy about entertainment 'media'. It goes something like this: 90 - 95% of everything is crap. This goes for movies, books, games, music, etc... you name it. Now a movie or music critic may take offense at this and argue that actually, if we assume that the quality of any product lies along a normal distribution, then it could be argued that most products are of 'average' quality, while only some are 'great' or otherwise the aforementioned 'crap'.

Obviously I'd disagree. Allow me to use an analogy to illustrate my view. Have you ever heard the joke about the two people who are running away from a bear? The first turns to the second and says, "I don't think we can outrun this bear!" The second then replies, "I don't have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you." Similarly, if I have a limited amount of funds, why in the hell would I ever choose to spend my money on anything but the best quality products I can afford? Of course, we don't always know what the 'best' quality products are - we don't have perfect information - but that's where the 5-10% not crap thing comes in: there may be a range of 'bests' but you're generally pretty sure of what doesn't fall into that category.

Back to entertainment. Most entertainment media are not a huge investment. Buying a CD or going to see a movie are typically activities in which you can afford to waste money (by trying out an untested band/film). However, as the investment increases, I generally become more discerning.

That was a very long-winded introduction to the topic of today's rant: genre adulation. Genre adulation is what happens when a person loves a category of film/music/etc. so much that they fail to recognize that 90% of it is crap (this applies to everything, remember?) Having grown up involved in geeky subculture, I've had the opportunity to witness a lot of this first hand. I myself used to read any fantasy novel no matter how dreadful. And some of them were positively AWFUL. In addition, there are always the anime nerds, the Japanese videogame nerds, the sci-fi nerds, the sports nerds, etc.

All of this being said, this doesn't really affect others, does it? I mean, who cares if an overweight, pasty, white kid flunks out of university because his stint as president of the anime society took up too much of his time and money¹? If their obsessions were completely internalized and never leaked out to their public personas, then people who loved all six Star Wars movies (and the books - even The Truce at Bakura and the abysmal Courtship of Princess Leia *shiver*) wouldn't get on anyone's nerves. However, some people who demonstrate such 'fandom' generally let that sort of stuff seep into every aspect of their lives.

This is compounded with the fact that genre adulation completely breaks down the marketplace of ideas. If a company knows that it will sell tons of fantasy novels, no matter how awfully written they are, then there's no incentive to spend money on hiring talented authors. As mentioned above, I was certainly guilty of this sort of obsession in my youth; until I begin noticing novels with frequent grammatical/spelling errors. How much effort are you really putting into publishing if you're putting out books where the names/genders of major characters keep switching around because of typos?

While the market angle is certainly a bother, another fundamentally messed up aspect to unbridled adoration of certain genres is that it can be really creepy. The prime example of this is Japanese Animation. 'Anime' as it is known by its fans, gets a really bum rap, which, unfortunately, it often deserves. I know I'm sticking my head out here, but there are some really, really good animated films to have come out of Japan. Hayao Miyazaki is one of the greatest film makers of all time, and his work rivals anything that Disney has to offer. Going a bit 'lower brow', some of the anime 'classics' like Ghost in the Shell and Akira, are pretty amazingly imaginative pieces of work. On the flipside, there's a world of difference between Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away and Sailor Moon. If a 30 year-old guy had 100s of tapes full of Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony, saying that he was really into 'the culture of animated films' wouldn't make you feel any better².

Any genre, series, band, etc. that has never released anything sub-par is either a) very special, or b) very young. I love Martin Scorcese's films, but I still think that his remake of Cape Fear was pretty crap. I've heard it said that being overly critical of a series/genre may cause it to disappear, thus if you like most of it, it makes sense to support all of it. I suppose that if you enjoy spending your money on mediocrity, that makes sense. However, I've got a sneaking suspicion that neither science-fiction, anime, country music, nor Joss Whedon are suddenly going to go away because the fans decided to 'vote with their dollars' and not buy some particular underwhelming piece of dross being foisted upon them. To each their own I suppose, but remember, if you keep buying the crap, they'll keep shoveling it down your throat.

¹Back in the day it would have been money spent on VHS tapes and material for cataloging their impressive collection of umpteen thousand hours of Sailor Moon fansubs. Nowadays it would probably more likely be money spend on external hard drives to store all of those stories about pre-pubescent girls riding giant mechanized robots.

²On a side note, this actually drives me nuts about anime fans. I've heard so many times that fans of the genre want it to be respected in the mainstream. They want North Americans and Europeans to understand that in Japan, there are cartoons made for adults. Fair enough, but people aren't going to begin accepting grown men watching foreign cartoons about half-naked 15 year old girls when they don't accept grown men watching ANY domestic cartoons about young girls. There's an argument to made about anime as an art form and its general acceptability to Western tastes, but pick your 'effing battles for Darwin's sake!

Monday Rant: Pseudointellectualism...

For much of my Ph.D. I worked at the bench, often listening to podcasts for up to 6 hours a day. Towards the end of my work, however, I became entirely focused on computational data analysis and thesis writing, and thus my podcast listening dropped precipitously. Now that I'm back on the bench in my new lab, I've got more opportunity to listen to my iPod than ever before, and I've been trying out quite a few new shows.

I've come to realize something about my preferences though: they're rather black-and-white. I really only like shows that a) discuss serious topics and feature interviews with actual 'experts', or b) don't take themselves seriously at all but rather seek to entertain. The shows in the middle, e.g., non-experts trying to have serious discussions about particular topics, tend to irritate me. This is mostly due to pseudointellectualism.

There are 2 types of pseudointellectuals that I find particularly aggravating. The first is obvious: It's absolutely annoying to listen to people try to sound intelligent about topics they really know nothing about. I tend to listen to a lot of podcasts about 'nerdy' stuff like videogames, science, geek culture, technology, etc. and unfortunately some of these geeks really seem to think they're authorities on everything¹. It's not particularly interesting to listen to a bunch of former English/Journalism majors have a 1-hour round table discussion about how they'd improve the fiscal strategies of major electronics firms. Having listened to these types of podcasts for a good ~4 years now, I can confidently say that most of these folks have no idea what they're talking about, and furthermore, couldn't predict the future of technology 6 months out let alone long-term trends. I don't understand why so many shows about 'nerddom' feel like they need to go 'off the rails' and talk about subjects far outside their ken. If you're a podcast about comic books, talk about frickin' comic books and leave discussions about Marvel's corporate strategy to Disney.

The second, and personally more aggravating version of pseudointellectualism - and the one that happens to be far more prevalent among the podcasts that I listen to - is the attempt to somehow objectively quantify personal opinion. I sorry to hear that you didn't like Avatar, but no matter how many polysyllabic words you manage to produce, or random references to classical literature you can come up with, you're never going to be able to convince others that your opinion is somehow an objective evaluation of reality. This is because preferences are not objective.

Not everyone likes him, but I've always enjoyed reading Roger Ebert's writing, for example. I don't agree with every one of his reviews, but at least I know where he's coming from. I respect his opinions, and I understand his preferences; I don't read his work because I think that he has some kind of ability to objectively score a film the precise number of stars it 'scientifically' deserves. Furthermore, Ebert acknowledges the non-objectivity of personal opinion all the time; the point of a review is to inform the public opinion, not to reflect it.

The 'Overthinking it' Podcast, which unfortunately suffers from a bit of both of my lamentations of today, made an interesting point during an episode to the effect that the internet is really just a bunch of people (i.e., 15 year olds) who think they know everything, arguing all the time. Allow me to indicate at this moment that the irony of this statement in the context of my blog is not lost upon me. Be that as it may, I'd like to think that the ultimate mark of the pseudointellectual is the belief that there are simple solutions to complex issues that much better-trained, more highly educated people have spent a lot of time thinking about without clear resolutions. This is really why I'd much rather hear either discussions about the issues retaining all of their complexity, or shows that avoid serious discussion of the issues in favor of levity.

It's really ok to admit that you're not an expert on everything.

¹For more detail, go see a previous rant of mine regarding 'sci-fi power', or the fact that many sci-fi nerds seem to think that reading science fiction suddenly makes them geniuses.

And we Walked off to look for America...

Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And we walked off to look for America

-Simon And Garfunkel, America (1968)

I had an eye opening conversation with an American friend of mine about the social atmosphere among postdocs at the US National Institutes of Health. During the talk, he made a point about the fact that he doesn't always feel that foreign postdocs are interested in meeting or talking to Americans. Rather, foreigners tend to hang out with one another. At face value this appears to be easily explained; however, consider the following: 1) foreigners don't necessarily hang out with people from their own countries, and tend to speak English with one another anyways, 2) there are very, very few people who are postdoc-ing at this institution who are from the Washington area. Even Americans here are likely far away from home.

It's interesting to think about the fact that most postdocs at the NIH are foreigners (they quoted a value of 65% during my orientation). It's a strange twist of irony that Americans can feel like strangers on their own soil.

We proceeded to talk about why foreigners may naturally congregate with other foreigners - presumably any foreigners. When you think about it, it's kind of a weird thing: we've come to the United States for employment and training purposes, and we're also granted an opportunity to learn more about another culture. Could you imagine postdoc-ing in Europe (assuming you're from America) and being completely uninterested in learning anything about the local culture?

I think that this is a multi-layered, complex issue that certainly involves elements of feeling more comfortable with people sharing your experience of moving to a new country. However, I also think that this very point about culture plays a significant role as well.

I honestly have to agree with my American friend in his assessment that most foreigners' general impression of American culture skews towards the negative. I've actually met more than one person whose sole reason for postdoc-ing in the States is because of the career opportunities it will open up; otherwise they'd never have dreamed of living here.

Sometimes I'm shocked by how Americans can be surprised by the stereotypes they get labeled with. A recent NPR 'Planet Money' podcast featured the host saying that he couldn't understand why all foreigners think that all Americans are completely obsessed with making the most money that they possibly can. Obviously not everyone fits this stereotype, but if you think of the American media that makes it out into other countries, it's not surprising that it exists. Think of the lengths that people will go to to prositute themselves on 'reality TV' for a chance at fame. Or furthermore, as many commentators have remarked, many foreigners are baffled by the tone of the discussion regarding American healthcare reform in terms of dollars and cents.

It's unfortunate that in many ways, America is an easy country to 'hate'. For instance, you can tune into the powerful conservative media here and hear them regularly say rather offensive things about other nations. America is also rather well known for its pride, and it's not shocking that some people interpret this fierce pride as snobbery.

However, it's much more unfortunate that a country of ~300 million people has such a vocal minority of people in the media as ambassadors. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck actually do not represent the opinions of the majority of Americans. And say what you will about American media, but not everyone is chomping at the bit to embarrass themselves for 15 minutes of fame.

The outside world's view of America was substantially tarnished by 8 years of an unpopular presidency coupled to a perhaps even more unpopular war. I hate to think that this kind of stigma is often applied to individual American's themselves.

I'd venture that most foreigners here actually do not actively avoid hanging out with Americans. I've met quite a few people here who, like myself, very much enjoy the atmosphere of the area, and are quite interested in experiencing more of American culture (see the Turduckening, for example). But, there are certainly those who aren't afraid to let people around them know that they're only here for the postdoc.

I know from my own experience in Canada that there's a lot of ill-will among non-Americans about the US. Before now, I'd never thought about how that it would feel to bear the brunt of that negativity, especially on American soil.

I'm hoping that the phenomenon of foreigners hanging out with other foreigners is mostly due to our interest in learning about different cultures from people who are sharing our experiences, and not because of a dislike of the locals. All of the Americans that I've met since coming here have been awesome, and I think that they deserve better than that.

Monday Rant: Fat...

It's been a while since I've had a good rant¹, thus I'm bringing back the tradition of ranting every Monday. Today's rant: my unhealthy obsession with fatness.

I was a fat kid. Tales of Fat-Carlo and his mean-spirited bastardliness abound, and the world is a better place without him. This may sound weirdly harsh, but I assure you, dropping a little over 3 stone in one summer was the best thing I ever did.

Seriously, how many people who complain about their weight constantly do you know? I know a lot, and you probably do too. I'd venture that there are very few people who are overweight who are perfectly happy with their own perception of their bodies. I wasn't - in fact it bothered me constantly. Here's a secret: people actually treat you differently when you're fat. Trust me, I've seen both sides.

It may very well have to do with the fact that being obese is a surefire sign that you don't have a lot of discipline. This probably looks like a controversial statement, especially in an age where everyone is looking for so called 'fat genes'. This also happens to be an age where everyone's worried about the adverse psychological effects of negative self-image (it's ok to be overweight), while every single piece of media is presenting ideal body types that scream that it is not, in fact, ok to be overweight. Was I overweight because I was genetically predisposed to be so, or because my parents didn't enroll me in sports? No. Actually, I was overweight because I ate too damned much and sat on my ass playing videogames all the time.

So here's the deal: I got fit, which improved my self-confidence as well as my interpersonal relationships, presumably including my attractiveness to the opposite sex². This in turn led to me being a happier, generally less morose individual, thus improving my overall quality of life.

The only downside: I am now completely obsessed with fat. My girlfriend complains about it all the time - I always think I'm fat. However, I'd argue that I'm not entirely wrong on that count: I did put on quite a bit of weight in the last 2 years of my Ph.D., but I'm already about 1/2 way to having lost it all again.

It's not only my girlfriend though, my new friends here in the States, specifically those of the female persuasion, have begun remarking about how I act like a girl when it comes to eating at restaurants or bars. I should note that they're the ones applying the gender stereotypes, not I! So what if I never buy anything at the grocery store without checking the nutritional information? And what's the big deal if I generally avoid beer, or desert? I've stared down the gullet of the beast, and that, my friends, is a long, dark, and greasy road.

There is such a thing as eating disorders, and there's also such a thing as being too thin. I suffered from the latter at the beginning of my M.Sc.:

It's absolutely weird to look at pictures of myself with hair...

However, nowadays I have fallen prey to neither. I eat healthily, and I'm certainly bigger than I was back then. Sometimes I wonder if people aren't really upset with the fact that I'm being so nitpicky about calories and fat, but that rather, by choosing to eat the healthy alternatives, I'm pointing out their own personal lack of discipline?

Oh well, I'm not going to change. I may stress out a bit now and again about my ever fluctuating weight (welcome to adutlhood?), but at least I'm happy.

¹To be honest, there hasn't been very much that's been ticking me off - imagine that!

²I haven't tested this in a controlled environment, but I now have abundant data supporting this conjecture...

That was quite a nerdy joke.

We Work Hard, We Play Hard...

As a follow up post to my previous lament, 'The Scientific Life', I'd like to talk about another more positively social aspect of my time since coming to the NIH. Through conversations with people who'd spent time at the National Institutes of Health, I'd gotten the impression that the place wasn't very 'social'. In a way, this is somewhat true: unlike a university, there isn't a meaningful 'student life' atmosphere to the place. Furthermore, since it's primarily made up of postdocs, most people tend to be workaholics (e.g., there are very few 1 hour group lunches).

However, that's not to say that there's nothing going on. There is an organization of postdoctoral fellows that put together regular parties and happy hours. It was at one such party that I met many of the friends that I hang around with regularly nowadays. Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, our little group is almost entirely made up of internationals - I suppose that there's something about moving to another country that ups your gregariousness so that you'll make some friends. So far so good.

So good in fact that I've been doing a hell of a lot more 'social activities' (i.e., drinking) in the first 3 months of my postdoc than I did during my entire Ph.D. (that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it sure feels like it). Last night, a gang of us hit The Reef, a small night club in Adams Morgan that happens to be filled with aquariums containing tropical fish. I haven't been to a nightclub in at least 4 years, but one nice thing about hitting the dance floor here is that it's not packed with awkward 19 year olds (though awkward 21 year olds aren't really much better...).

It's nice to be socializing with fellow committed scientists¹. This is because it usually results in the nerd quotient being turned up to 11. We've begun this weird tradition of drawing out strange schematics on the tables of bars or restaurants, assuming that they're covered in paper. For instance:

The above insanity resulted from an attempt to understand the chronological relationship between a couple of movies. In order to calibrate our scale, we had to throw on a couple of known movies, of course. Thus was born the standard Ben-Hur to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home scale of chronology. A physicist in our group also suggested that we add a perpendicular line to the standard timeline in order to add on films that existed in universes completely different from our own, such as The Lord of the Rings. This of course made Star Wars difficult to classify, because technically it should be in the same universe... never mind.

So yeah, part of the reason that it's difficult to find time to blog, read books, or play videogames is because of work. But that's only part of it. As mentioned above, I'm also very busy going out there and doing stuff. A cold beer (or 5) after a hard day's work is a treat indeed. I guess the motto of the postdocs that I've met is: We Work Hard, We Play Hard.

¹I've ranted before about how many graduate students aren't 'committed'. I also didn't consider myself a scientist as a graduate student; more of a scientist-in-training.

P.S. Thankfully the C&C Music Factory was able to remain solvent due to the generous support of TARP funds...

The Scientific Life...

It was at the end of my M.Sc. that I decided that I wanted to spend my life doing science. I'm sure that some people were able to make such a decision at a much younger age (Stephen Jay Gould famously claimed that he'd known that he wanted to be a paleontologist since visiting the Natural History Museum in New York as a 5 year old) however, I was not in that position. For one thing, after having spent two years in the lab, I'd had the opportunity to meet a few postdocs and for the most part, they tended to be rather bitter, joyless people¹.

Given the number of hours that postdocs put into their work, it's perhaps not surprising that they can occasionally be negative. A topic that's already come up a few times even in my short experience as a postdoc has been whether having your own lab is worth the insane amount of effort it takes to obtain it. Competition is fierce, and while it's certainly doable with sufficient effort and determination, it's a rather daunting process to attempt to crack academia when you know that there are people willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING for their work. Everyone I know works hard, but I think that most scientists enjoy having some life outside of the lab!

I have to admit that the whole 'science is horrible' lament feels a lot worse when you lay it out on the table like that: it's easy for a group of grad students or postdocs to get all morose and whiny when sitting around a table over beer. However, the same people typically don't seem to have the same problems when sitting in the lab doing actual work. This could mean one of two things: either it's not so bad when you're in the midst of doing the kinds of things you love, or you only realize how crazy hard you've been working when you sit down to reflect on the last time you actually took a day off. Perhaps it's a bit of both, though I'd obviously prefer to think it is the former.

I'd like to think that there's more to having a successful life in the sciences than pure research output. There's also the ability to communicate one's work and convince others that you're valuable enough to hire. These things take 'people' skills - something you won't learn by burying yourself in your work. Hopefully I'm not being naive, but even if this is nothing but a fiction, it's a pleasant one that helps keep me sane. I've been working quite hard so far, but I've also been enjoying myself very much, so there's no sign of a grizzled old bitter version of myself popping up anytime soon.


¹I've met quite a range of differently tempered postdocs at this point. Many (most?) are quite well-balanced.