Unbelievable: driving with no license, no insurance

This is the car that slowly backed into me in a parking lot. I was laying on the horn for a good 3 seconds before he hit me, but he didn't respond. He didn't speak english, didn't have a driver's license and didn't have insurance. License plate 3AGF461. Happily, I couldn't find a single thing wrong with my car and was spared the annoyance of calling the police on this feckless kid (not to mention the annoyance of car repairs). The situation managed to be plenty annoying as it was though.

operation "back to normal": step one

i went hiking saturday with the roommate and beastie. click the picture below for more pix, including a really cute one of bad dog. we walked up chantry flats road, which is closed to cars, for the reason you see below. it's a pretty spectacular slide.



one of the members of my advancement to candidacy exam committee was unpleasant in the exam. he's a very bright guy, and a good scientist, but he's generally perceived to be abrasive. i took a class with him, and although i always came away impressed with his lecturing and intellectual skills, i didn't feel that i benefited from the ways in which he tried to help guide us to the conclusion he was teaching. the class seemed roughly divided between people who got his way of thinking and people who didn't. i talked with someone who took the class a different year who had the same problem i did. so i think i'm going to replace him on the committee with someone who i am better able to understand. it might be a little bit difficult, politically speaking, but i'm sure it will work out. at first my adviser was opposed to my firing him, but she came around.

advancing

today, i passed one portion of my advancement to candidacy exam. i presented a proposal for my thesis work to a committee of four professors. they asked me questions, i left the room, they conferred, i went back in, they said i passed. i'm numb. the other portion is a written, general knowledge exam in june.

the neuroscience of economic behavior

As I've worked in research, my resistance to a lot of things has decreased. For example, my view of the morals of the pharmaceutical industry has become more nuanced and less negative. Similarly, taking money from DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to learn how the intention to move a limb is encoded seems ok to me, even though that research will ultimately probably be applied to some kind of prosthetic weaponry, either connected to the user or a remotely controlled robot-weapon. In part, I am sifting through the new moral universe in which I find myself, but in part I have learned enough to see the value in things I didn't value before.

That said, I'm really nervous about the study of neuroscience of economic behavior. A major application is advertising, understanding how people make decisions. Even when one has an intellectual knowledge of how and why sex, for example, sells, it's hard to resist. As we as scientists become more knowledgeable about the most basic decisions in the brain and become more knowledgeable about how to influence motivation, it seems that it will be even harder to resist the siren call of consumerism.

Here's an example of recent work ( caltech press release, pubmed entry) that on the face of it is warm and fuzzy. in the experiments, two subjects undergoing brain imaging repeatedly play a game in which trust is rewarded. they find that subjects risk increasing amounts as the game progresses.

"Neoclassical economics starts with the assumption that rational self-interest is the motivator of all our economic behavior," says Quartz. "The further assumption is that you can only get trust if you penalize people for non-cooperation, but these results show that you can build trust through social interaction, and question the traditional model of economic man."

"The results show that you can trust people for a fair amount of time, which contradicts the assumptions of classical economics," Camerer adds.

To me it suggests that people can be manipulated easily, building up their trust and then taking them for a big hit. This is supported by the large number of people who are swindled countless ways in confidence scams.

I suspect that my concern for the potential applications of this work may result primarily from the fact that I don't find most of the data intellectually interesting. I'm willing to deal with the devil to answer questions I think are important and compelling, but not for this.

Sin City and SRL

In a busy night, I went to the movie Sin City at the Arclight, and also to a Survival Research Labs (SRL) show. I enjoyed Sin City a lot. Visually, it was stunning. Mostly filmed against a blue screen (which I think was green in this case), the movie is almost entirely black and white. There are a lot of digital effects, which mostly work, but when they don't, it's jarring. The snow scenes were staggeringly beautiful. The image above is from the graphic novel the movie is based on. The author was the co-director. The plot was overwrought, which I guess is what you get with noir. The actors were good, even the sexpots.

I saw the movie with PI at the Arclight. The Arclight is the pinnacle of movie experience. You buy tickets in advance online for no extra fee (although the tickets are at a premium: $11). Your ticket reserves a particular seat. There are people in the parking structure guiding you to open parking. When you arrive, there is a quick and easy way to obtain your tickets. In the theater, an usher shows you your seat. The seats are incredibly comfortable, with lots of leg room. You don't have to get up, or even move much, for someone to get by. We saw the movie digitally projected. I don't know if it made a difference, but the movie was luscious looking.


SRL is a pyrotechnic robotics group that likes to make interesting artistic robots and set things on fire. If you click on the picture above, you'll go to a gallery of pictures from the show. They are not great pictures.

I was alerted to the show by my daily read of boingboing. I love when I read international blogs, and they talk about stuff going on near me. I've been reading boingboing since I lived in San Francisco, but I've found it to be a good LA reference.

For the show they closed off a street in the warehouse district just east of downtown LA. People climbed up onto the top of many of the surrounding warehouses. Given the amount of drinking in the crowd, that made me nervous.

I had a good time there, although I would have enjoyed myself more if I could have seen more of the show. There were 4 or 5 rows of people in front of me, and people around me, all of whose conversations I was subjected to before the show started. After all my complaining about how mainstream LA is, I was reminded that mainstream people haven't cornered the market on insipid conversations.

The best robot in the show had a horizontal auger that spun as it moved. Unfortunately, I think the auger was not the actual wheel of the robot. The show was also really loud, which I liked (I had earplugs), and there was lots of fire, which everyone liked. I could feel the heat of flames that were 40 feet or so away.

A piece of something came flying in my direction at one point, probably a piece of wood flayed off wooden the horse by another robot. It bounced off the ground in front of the barrier, then came flying upward. I had plenty of time to duck, but it was exciting.

I've been wanting to see an SRL show for a while, but I wasn't entirely happy to be at the show. Was it because I was tired? Was it because of the company? (My own.) I think it was mostly because I was surrounded on all sides by a crowd. So here's my advice if you're going to a show: Get there early enough to climb a warehouse or annex some other comfortable viewing place. Don't drink while you're on top of the warehouse (GP excepted, well, maybe not), because you have to climb down afterward. Bring earplugs. Bring eye protection. Enjoy.

I had a weird interaction with him a guy who I'm pretty sure was breaking into cars parked on the street I had parked on. I left the show early, but it ended right as I was walking away. When I got to the street my car was on, there was a guy sitting in a car, looking around with a flashlight. He was a nervous-acting guy who looked like he could use a shower, shave, haircut and laundry, and I made certain assumptions. He told me he was keeping watch on the cars, and I asked if he wanted to sell me a bridge too. OK, I didn't do that. He kept one hand in his pocket, and I wasn't too happy about that either. By then I had committed to walking down the street, and there were other people coming from the show. As I was getting into my car, the guy asked me for money. Idiot.

Earlier in the night, a man had held a door open for me and asked me for money. I was really annoyed by that, and it reminded me of how my daily experience has changed. It didn't used to bug me.

First day of school

HC insisted on taking a picture of me in what I wore for the first meeting of the discussion section I'm leading. She thought it was hilarious, and even funnier that I didn't get what was funny.

Spontaneous sculpture

At DM's birthday breakfast, HC ordered some kind of eggs benedict. The spout on the one on the left reminded us of Aplysia, pictured below, a sea animal that is commonly used to understand connections between neurons.

PJP2

The New York Times has a great (and brief) audio-visual retrospective of John Paul II's papacy, which includes this stunning picture, among others. For most of my life, John Paul II has defined the papacy itself. The possibility of a more liberal pope and/or one from a third world country is intriguing. I haven't heard anything about the possibilities of a liberal pope. Commentators do note that the selection of JP2 was a surprise. Choosing a pope seems rare enough that it's hard to handicap.

work work work

today i came into the lab at 9:50 am to toss some stuff on the burner, metaphorically speaking, and then i went to a birthday breakfast celebration for DM, a postdoc who helps me enormously. i enjoyed it, but i felt a little off the rest of the day. i messed up a couple of things, luckily nothing that i couldn't fix. one part of what i'm doing involves leaving something overnight, and i really want to get to that step. if i don't, then i'll have to do the few steps tomorrow and not continue until sunday. i'm not completely sure i will work all weekend, but it seems like a good idea, since it's the only weekend i'll be here between now and my advancement to candidacy exam.

in summary

it really bugs me when people say "in summary" and then introduce a new idea. i'm reading a generally great review in a stellar publication, but it has this bone-head error. i'm sure the review that we recently submitted also has some problems like that, so maybe i shouldn't get so chuffy.

the little corner grocery is closing for a while. it's a pathetic little place, stocked in the fashion of a third world store. there are wooden shelves painted white, mostly empty. it is staffed by a woman who looks beaten down by life, makes terrible sandwiches, and smells like cigarettes. i only go to this store when i'm desperate, and then only for ice cream. i'll be interested to see what happens with the store. you wouldn't think it would be hard to succeed as the closest convenience store to campus. all they have to do is stay open later than the on-campus mini-store, and they've got it made.

in summary, i'm going to walk the dog back to work later, run in and start some bacteria growing. it's a much nicer way to drop back to work than to have to drive. i'm glad for that.

biolunch

the students in my program have to give a lunchtime presentation once every two years. today i gave my first one. i practiced the talk in front of other people (well, with RS it was over the phone, but you get the picture) three times, plus a little informal touch-up with a couple people in the lab. i presented it alone to myself fully twice. these repetitions helped. i'm trying to put more zing in my tone, expressing excitement about the work and trying to make it infectious. that and talking smoothly are my major presentation goals.

the presentation itself went reasonably well. i was happy with it. i wasn't quite as 'on' as i would have liked to be. also, there were several transitions that weren't especially smooth, but generally i'm happy with it. i'm pleased at how the effort i put into it paid off.

i just took mac out for his evening walk. it's 63 degrees out tonight, and spring has arrived. the weather is perfect for putting on a light fleece and enjoying its softness on skin, but there is no chill. on our short walk down the block, we walked through several clouds of tantalizing and sweet scent, wafting from various trees and bushes. sublime.

tv: chicklets

tonight's tv viewing menu:

csi (rerun)
lost (new)
alias (new)
eyes (new)

i love jorja fox on csi, but she does this funny smile thing where her big two front teeth with a gap between them look like chicklets (big rectangular pieces of white gum).

this is a terrible picture of her, but it's the only one i could find that shows the chicklet smile.

on alias, the plot required the computer geek to go out and do action spying in the field. they put him in the nice leather jacket just like they usually put the hottie (michael vartan) in, and i swear they gave him the michael vartan haircut, gel, and stubble too. then they lit him the way they do michael vartan. most of it worked quite well, making the computer guy look better. unfortunately, when they put the dramatic lighting on him, it just emphasized his visually less appealing qualities.

i watched the premiere of "eyes." it gets two thumbs up from me. the writing and acting is terrific. the plot moves along and, for tv, is reasonably fresh.

warning: what follows is not a tv-related observation.

i was in a medical building today with a ton of therapists' offices in it. the elevator has instructions for getting help if it gets stuck. at the bottom of the instructions is "do not panic."

1 - does that help anyone?
2 - does the presence of that admonition have anything to do with the number of therapy offices in the building?
tv: chicklets

The Impala! The umbrella!

The tears are still drying on my face. Here's the story: six years ago a man was on the phone leaving a message about being late to a meeting when he witnessed a minor traffic accident. His hiccup-inducing narration of the aftermath was eventually converted to an mp3, and it's recently gotten a lot of attention. Really, you must listen to this voicemail message, but do not operate heavy machinery while you do.

the burn journals

procrastination is the name of the game right now. i've been making some progress on my presentation for wednesday, but i just had to post about this book, 'the burn journals' by brent runyon. i finished it over the weekend.

it's about a young teenager who repeatedly tried to kill himself and ended up burning himself terribly. the book focuses on the events leading up to the fire and the first year after the fire. it seems emotionally true, devastating, but true. i recommend it. i really like how it represents the difficulty of knowing one's own motivations, even while terribly regretting one's actions.

terry schiavo

it's painful to me to read the misinformed stuff people are writing about the schiavo case. there are several facts that are frequently ignored: 1) brain imaging shows that most of her cerebral cortex has atrophied; 2) there is no argument that she had told to multiple people that she would not want her life to be prolonged in this way; 3) her husband did not decide her fate. instead, he asked the court to evaluate what she would have wanted and this is what court after court decided and upheld.

her father reports that she followed a balloon they brought into the room. her mother reports that terry has smiled in response to her mother's presence. videotapes were made and "carefully viewed" by the court, which found that her responses were not consistent or reproducible.

"...despite the irrefutable evidence that her cerebral cortex has sustained the most severe of irreparable injuries, we understand why a parent who had raised and nurtured a child from conception would hold out hope that some level of cognitive function remained. If Mrs. Schiavo were our own daughter, we could not but hold to such a faith.

But in the end, this case is not about the aspirations that loving parents have for their children. It is about Theresa Schiavo's right to make her own decision, independent of her parents and independent of her husband."

-- The 2nd District Court of Appeal, June 2003

i'm pleased that all the courts have come to the same decision, even in the fact of such intense pressure from the executive and legislative branches. it makes me confident that the facts are strong. i can understand how terry's parents' reason could be overwhelmed by their emotion, but i'm really disappointed by the actions of congress. it's not supported by the majority of people in the US. is it a congressional kowtow to the religious right? that's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

in which I socialize outside of my home

last night i hung out with the lovely and talented MM, my design-y friend who lives in SF. he had just sent his mom and niece back to san diego.

we went to see D.E.B.S. which is a funny stupid movie, and just my style. that said, i think it's really likable in general, unlike most movies i like. so i recommend seeing it. hear me?

i really hate hearing anything about the plot of a movie before i see it, so i'm not going to talk about that here. one weird thing about the movie was how freakishly thin the leads are. i'm used to seeing thin girls, i thought, but these guys are scary thin. their thighs look like my arms. scary. also, they weren't toned, which i'm also not used to seeing. it looks like they don't work out.

after the movie, we went to hama sushi, on 2nd street between san pedro and central. it's downtown, just inches away from a sketchy neighborhood. but it's a very nice place. small. the sushi chefs are great. it seemed mixed pretty evenly between whities and japanese-speaking japanese people.

then i took MM back to his hotel (a lovely place that i recommend) and went home. funny how all the driving around was definitely part of the evening. we wanted to drive together so we could spend more time together. we got to talk a lot, cruising along the highways and thoroughfares of the city. i realized that i drove 72 miles last night though, not counting the times i missed my cross-street. i now see the advantage of having gps navigation system. not only do you know better where you are, but it facilitates your relationship with your passenger.

here's the list of mileages
24 miles to mike's hotel
4 miles to the movie
9 miles to the restaurant
11 miles back to mike's hotel
24 miles back to pasadena

Exercise Inflation and a moment of lab competence

From the abundant wittage at chez miscarriage:

The first thing I noticed when I exercised this week is that they've made exercise a lot harder since I last did it.

In spite of my recent mood improvements, I haven't exercised this week. I did take a nice long walk with woofie Saturday morning though. That was lovely and reminded me that I want to do more of it. It was raining. I was wearing a windbreaker. Bad dog and I got wet, but I didn't mind. In fairly warm weather, I like walking in the rain. My experiment from Thursday continued on its fantastically perfect route. Amazing. However, I'm having a problem with one readout: my kalirin antibody is giving me barely any signal. I can't really progress without that, so I'm increasing the concentration of the antibody and letting it incubate for the rest of the weekend. Take that!

I don't remember what day it was, but I think I may have had a breakthrough this week. I had a moment in the lab when I was looking at some inconclusive results. I thought, "you can't beat me. I can lick this problem." It was as if I had absorbed a threshold amount of confidence and knowledge. I was enjoying trying to figure out what was going wrong. Troubleshooting is something I like doing. Maybe I should consider being a method whore, learning and mastering a bunch of methods.

Crazy dog lady

I'm not a crazy dog lady. Really. Right? Isn't this picture of my beast so cute and funny that it doesn't make me a crazy dog lady to put it up on my blog?

critical television watching

casting: you know you're looking at an african scene shot in the us when many of the black actors are light skinned.

commercials: men looking for lawn care supplies pick up chain saws. i'm thinking, what? then, as i write this, i think about people like harriet whose yards contain trees. still, it seems like a good idea to hire a professional to do anything that requires a chain saw. and who is the audience of this show, anyway?

weight issues: on alias, substantially overweight male actors get to portray attractive, smart, active characters, e.g. the actors greg grunberg and victor garber. they do so convincingly; both characters are quite appealing. greg's character suffers a bit from the nice guy/fat guy conflation, but no one thinks victor's character has anything soft or kind about him. the actors get the full-on flattering treatment in camera angles, haircuts, and wardrobe. it would be nice if female actors had those kind of roles available in general and on this show in particular. there have been some great established actresses on the show, but as far as i can remember they've all had knockout bodies. i'm thinking of lena olin and patricia wettig in particular. i can't think of a heavy women who has been on the show.

lethal methods: on alias, an assassination was carried out using a method similar to the one i used on a mouse today. it's not the part where they wrap the wire around the guy's neck; it's the cervical dislocation. i wasn't happy about the mouse killing today.

bribery: also on alias, information is sought in exchange for a dvd. based on the bribee's reaction, the dvd presumably contains some kind of pornography. based on the audio from the brief clip the bribee is shown, it sounds like it involves airplanes. i'm thinking, airplane related porn? yeah, that's obscure, but probably not illegal, except in alabama. don't take the bribe!

trends in old 4x4's: since season one (it's season four now), alias has occasionally used old toyota landcruisers. while i gave them props for it originally, it's not so fashion forward now as it was then. after the article in the nytimes special fashion section, i'm declaring it played out for now.

Casting pearls before swine

A lovely phrase RS reminded me of. Thank you RS.

In other RS news, she's running a half marathon Saturday. Go, RS!

Coming to Dinner

Looks like it's a nursing female too. I'd feel a little heartless siccing Mac on her. The bottom line is that I don't think there's anything I can do to keep her from eating my porch plants. I really love having the big shade tree envelop the porch.

Potluck or Massacre?

I'm not feeling bleak, but bleak things are appealing to me. Somehow they are comforting when I'm somewhat down. Right now I'm feeling ok, not great, not good, but not bad, and that's an improvement.

Anyway, here's what inspired me to write. I was reading a New York Times article about Terry Ratzmann's killing of his pastor and other members of his church in Wisconsin. The article reads like a straight news article of a tragedy, as I would expect. But here's how it ends:

Tapes of several 911 calls from church members reveal chaos, with people wailing and screaming in the background.

"Oh my, oh no, oh no, oh no, Gloria is dead, oh no, oh no, oh no, there's at least - how many are on the floor? - 5 to 10," the woman says. "Five to 10 at least, oh my, one of my friends is laying on the floor, I think she's dead. This is a massacre."

"All of a sudden we heard bang like a firecracker, but it was so loud and then again and again," the woman continued. "My husband pushed me down to the floor, my son. We all went to the floor, everybody.

"Right after this we're having a potluck and then an entertainment show this evening," she added. "I think it's all on hold."

Tell me that the last paragraph doesn't add a completely surreal aspect to the story. Just tell me that.

The roommate and I watched the movie Napoleon Dynamite tonight. It wasn't as good as I had hoped. It was a little slow moving for me. Once I started viewing it as an absurdist piece, I liked it more though.

martha, coke mules, and mom

i've been reading a blog called eurotrash. the current tag-line is "the whole detached-irony thing is very 1999." Here's a quote:

How delicious to think of Martha as a coke mule. I feel sure she would embroider a seasonal coke tote-bag for the occasion.

eurotrash manages to be sympathetic even in her sniping. today's entry was about seeing people who are desperately down on their luck and thinking of your mother. most of the homeless women i see here in pasadena remind me of my mother. their weathered faces and sunken features remind me of how she looked after she lost her front teeth and how she looked when she was sick with cancer.

Huntington Gardens

More animal butt stuff

yesterday was an abysmal day. terrible, awful. enough said about that. today is better.

i saw a funny article about inseminating elephants. you'd think it would be a no-brainer, like inseminating cows. nope.

Anza Borrego

i went to anza borrego today to look at what is locally called 'the bloom.' my SFSU old office-mate, a plant chemist, would rhapsodize about anza borrego in the spring. as promised, it was quite beautiful. click the picture the whole set. the pictures don't convey the silence and space. i was lying in the car after eating an apple, spacing out, when i caught an irregular motion out of the corner of my eye. it was the first of a long series of butterflies that were flying up the creek bed i was in. it was wonderful. it made me wish i had a camp cot. i wasn't about to lie on the ground, with all the ants that i saw and scorpions and snakes that i didn't see. nature's fine, to a degree.

Scientific Measurement

Last night I dreamed that a friend, a colleague, was explaining to me how his lab was measuring the female menstrual cycle to many digits of significance. He was as proud of this as of determining more digits of pi. It didn't seem that he was aware of the variation among women.

AH told me about a dream she had. The world was taken over by aliens. She had been told not to take anything from anyone. A girl handed her something AH thought was her camera. It rang, and it turned out it was a cell phone. When AH answered it, the aliens blanked her memory and a chip popped out of her head with her memory on it. She didn't remember if the chip was compact flash or another format.

How to spend a Saturday night

17 pictures for you
Originally uploaded by _buttercup.

A crew of people from my lab went to a body building competition. It was a hoot. Click the picture to see the collection of pictures from the event.

It rained; we improvised

DM, LW, HB

motivational speaker

who do you think is the first google hit for "motivational speaker"? tony robbins? tom peters? deepak chopra? steven whoever, of the 'seven habits' series?

yossi ghinsberg. who the heck is that? never heard of him (?) before. the first speaker result with a name i recognize is result 16, which includes bonnie blair, the olympic speed skater. number 19 includes lance armstrong. when i say includes, i mean, their name isn't in the title of the page. finally, at entry 26, tony robbins is mentioned, again, not in the title.

why did i think about looking this up? i'm having a little motivational trouble. i'm presenting two papers tomorrow night in a class. it's my second presentation for the class. i was happy with how the first one went. part of my problem with focusing on the presentation is that i find the papers boring. i can tell the conclusions to someone with no neurobiology in three (long) sentences.

1) we're looking at two parts of the brain: the amygdala, an area that's involved in processing emotion, and the orbitofrontal cortex (the part in front (frontal) by the eyes (orbital)), an area that processes rewards and punishments.

2) if you measure the level of activity in the amygdala, for both taste and smell, you see changes corresponding to different INTENSITIES of stimuli (the thing that's being tasted or smelled), but you don't see changes corresponding to different KINDS of stimuli (pleasant, citrusy, icky (that's science right there)).

3) on the other hand, if you look at the orbitofrontal cortex, you see the opposite: changes corresponding to different KINDS of stimuli but not different INTENSITIES of stimuli.

ok, if you gave up on that list, here's the one sentence version: changes in intensity are reflected in activity in the amygdala; changes in kind of stimulus are reflected in activity in the orbitofrontal cortex.

those facts are somewhat interesting. it's interesting that the brain really can treat intensity and kind differently. these results also imply that the KIND of stimulus is more relevant to punishment and reward/orbitofrontal cortex and that the INTENSITY of stimulus is more relevant to emotional processing/the amygdala. that's interesting too.

neither of these results says much (that i can see anyway) about how effective olfactory cues are at eliciting memories.

you might say, surely you left stuff out that people with a brain science background would be interested in. well, maybe. there's the part about how we can't really know that the results are right for a bunch of technical reasons, and how they need to be repeated and confirmed using other methods. but that's it. i swear. i should go rogue and present the paper on monkey butts.

well, enough complaining from me. i'm going to walk the dog and get the laundry out the dryer. that'll liven things up.

guess what? monkey butt!

today i went to a presentation that covered two papers. the first paper uses a method called future discounting. you measure a person's level of future discounting by telling them to choose between, say, $25 now or $50 in a week. you have them make choices like this for a broad range of amounts and times (a week, a month, a year), until you've characterized their level of future discounting. generally smokers and heroin addicts, for example, discount future rewards more than other people - they prefer the bird in the hand to the two guaranteed birds currently in the bush. heroin addicts discount future rewards more and more as the time since their last use of heroin increases.

in this paper they characterized people's future discounting, then showed them a set of pictures. each set of pictures was of either people of the opposite sex or cars, and either attractive or unattractive people or cars. then the experimenters remeasured the person's level of future discounting. they determined that men who had seen attractive women increased their future discounting significantly (pretty women make me generally want things now), and women who had seen attractive cars increased their future discounting significantly (pretty things make me generally want things now).

there are obviously problems with this research (how do you pick pretty? are all the people straight?), but it's provocative.

the second paper was called monkey pay per view. the monkeys had to choose to look at one of two targets. for one target, they would get some juice. for the other target, they would get some juice and see a picture. some pictures, like those with monkey butt, were valuable to the monkeys, and they would choose the target that allowed them to see that picture even if they got much less juice than the other target gave them. other pictures, like the faces of low status monkeys, were not valuable to the monkeys, but they would look at the pictures if the picture was accompanied by significantly more juice than the target that didn't make them look at a picture.

this research is not at all like my research, but it's interesting anyway.

Chocolate is like crack

My presentation on Thursday is about the affective aspects of taste. I think it's interesting, but the data looks a little shaky. Maybe I'll be convinced after I've gotten into it in more depth. The best paper I'm covering is called "Changes in brain activity related to eating chocolate: From pleasure to aversion." How great is that?

mac and i go hiking

click here to go to the beginning of the story, then scroll up to follow the posts chronologically. remember, you can get a bigger image if you click on a picture.

i was wet to the thigh

it wasn't too cold out, so being wet wasn't a hardship.

these boots deserve an homage. years ago, GP convinced me to buy them from sierra trading post. amazingly, they fit perfectly and are fantastically comfortable. today alone, they probably prevented lots of damage to my ankles.

mac was wet all over. i'll be surprised if he isn't sore. his feet looked ok the whole way.

this was the pay-off. unfortunately, when i was at its feet, the spray was everywhere and i didn't want to risk the camera from there. so this picture misses a lot of what it looked like. also, it misses how amazingly loud it was. standing at the base, the wind and cold took away my breath.

we forded all kinds of stuff that looked like this. mac was a hero and a trooper. i learned a lot about hiking in a river. we crossed the river at least eight times. at first i tried to cross it on trees and stuff. at one point it was impossible, and we had to wade across. after that, i decided my camera faced better odds with me wading across the river than with me trying to cross more precariously but drier.

The hiking story begins here

this is the river in millard canyon. it normally is much more tame than this. it's swollen by our recent rain.

mac and i went for a hike a mile or so up the river to the falls. i have never been before. on our way there, we passed through the campsite where i stayed after i had accepted caltech's offer, when i came down to look for an apartment. it was the first time i'd gone camping by myself.

My gray hair!

Seriously, you have to click on this picture to see the larger version. My hair is finally ready for its closeup. I think it has a friend, but the friend isn't as photogenic. If I have a whole head of hair like that, it's going to fantastic. I'll shoot for my Andy Warhol look. The hair is not only white, it's very rough in texture and kinky. Having had smooth straight hair my whole life, I'm ready for something new. I wouldn't mind waiting until I have a tenure-track position before going gray though.

When setbacks don't overwhelm

This morning I planned to go by the lab and transfer some bacterial cells from a small container into a larger container with more growth medium. What would normally have taken 10 minutes took 45 and a series of alternative routes. The cells are usually grown in a shaker, something that looks like a chest-refrigerator with a window on the door, as above (with someone's idea of a scientist using it). It keeps the cells at a set temperature, often 37 degrees celsius, and rotates your flasks, usually at 250 rpms. I don't know why bacterial cells like to be grown at such vigorous rotation; it seems pretty violent to me.

The shaker that belongs to our lab was full of flasks from another lab. When I went to look at a shaker on the floor below us, it was broken, clearing up the mystery of why our shaker was full of another lab's stuff. Using other people's equipment is essential to smooth operations, and we have used theirs before in a similar situation just last week. I asked a bacteria maven in our lab for advice, and she loaded me up with adapters for the flasks and sent me to a shaker farther away that is known not to have adapters for the size flasks I was using (2 liter). Then we couldn't find a screwdriver to swap out the adapters. A screwdriver! After I had decided to try to use a too-big flat head screwdriver, I found the screwdriver hoarder and the appropriate screwdriver. Stuff like this makes me want to emulate HC and build up my own supplies of things. I carry a decent set of stuff from home in my purse, but I was just walking bad dog - I had keys and poop bags and that's it.

Next, I went to the shaker, which involved taking a cart with my two 2-liter flasks, adapters, screws, screwdrivers and my emergency brandy two floors down on the elevator. Just kidding about the brandy. Our adapters didn't fit in their shaker. I went to the lab whose shaker it is. They didn't know where the adapters were, but eventually we found them. Then, I installed the adapters and it worked. If this had happened yesterday, I would have folded at the first setback. I'm doing better.

the mood tailspin persists

ug. i had a helpful talk with HC today, but depression is on me like a fog. i got up and swam, and i've been productive in the lab, and i've eaten well, but still with the well of sorry behind my eyes. still with the worst possible interpretations of everything. still with the grim outlook. still with the difficulty reaching out to people.

rule #7034

don't wait until you know enough to feel comfortable doing something for the first time. when you do it for the first time, you shouldn't feel comfortable. prioritize learning the things you really must know, and then go experiment.

this is a very hard rule for me. i just spent a lot of time trying to figure out how i could copy files with long filenames to the file server. apparently no one else was having this problem. the documentation says that the program is supposed to support copying files with long filenames from windows. finally, i went into the configuration file for the server after making a copy of it to revert to if i broke things, and deleted the entire section on how it handles file names. viola!

me vs unix

a few times i've tried to install linux on spare computers. recently i bought a $200 computer from outpost.com with lindows installed. i'm finding it pretty simple; they try to replicate a windows interface. there were a couple of problems that i couldn't resolve without digging into text files. my plan is for it to be my file server; i'm leaving it in my office.

it has taken a while to get the file sharing going. the lindows box runs samba. i was unable to access it without giving it a fixed IP address. the next problem was that i couldn't restrict access. that's the first thing that took me into the configuration files. now i'm having issues with long file names; i can't copy a long file name from a windows computer to the lindows computer.

once i get the dvd drive installed in the lindows box, i should have a pretty great backup system. i'll probably have to experiment to get it running smoothly. my goal is to have backups immediately available, and also archived to dvd and offsite. i also want a copy of all current data on both of my windows computers, so that i can use it when i'm not online. i'm online almost all the time, and i plan to use the active files directly from the lindows computer. this should solve my problem of trying to share files from home and the lab, a problem which i mostly solve now by keeping all my files on my laptop and walking that back and forth to work.

McDonald's opens a new restaurant every four hours

today was dominated by an unfortunate mood tailspin, surely the result of a combination of missing my recently seen good friends and the (for me) general stress of socializing. hopefully tomorrow will be better.

spinster pointed out that mcdonald's has trademarked "i am asian" and has a website at http://www.i-am-asian.com/ with text like this:

Whether we're celebrating one of our cultural holidays or enjoying a Big Mac sandwich, we're helping make the magic mix called America become even richer. And McDonald's is right there with us, everyday! We are proud of our cultural heritage.

remember, don't forget to acknowledge mcdonald's trademark any time you use "i am asian." oh, did i forget? where's that TM symbol, anyway?

kj and mac

Hunter S. Thompson (1939-2005)

from boingboing:

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - HST

The guy was a addict and a genius. I love his resilience, his ability to maintain his criticism at full volume year after year. From my own experience with angry addicts, I fear that the addiction and the resilience are interrelated. It is uncomfortable to be so angry for so long. Surely booze and other substances mask the discomfort, as well as generating their own tendencies toward anger. It's something we've seen with other great artists: madness or addiction, or both, limiting the impact of social marginalization, and facilitating access to creativity, vision, and righteousness. The social marginalization can even facilitate the artists' drive, with madness or addiction transmuting disconnection into persecution. I believe that we as a culture benefit from having artists and firebrands around. The question of personal cost is tricky. Do we lose artists in rehab, through medication? Do artists have access to rehab and medication? I have a friend who doesn't want to be happy, who says that his discomfort with the world feels authentic. I know that when I am not depressed, I am more resilient to the slings and arrows. Surely that resilience, the absence of extended meditation on the sorrows, limits my ability to address them.

Here's another quote, from his 2003 book "Kingdom of Fear."

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the
whole world--a nation of bullies and bastards who
would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not
just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with
hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and
that is how history will judge us...No redeeming
social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or
we'll kill you.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who
among us can be happy and proud of having this
innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine?
These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and
fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush?

They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali
locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for
all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the
American character. They are the racists and hate
mongers among us--they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss
down the throats of these Nazis.

And I am too old to worry about whether they like it
or not. Fuck them.

Well, Hunter, goodbye. You have my thanks and my sorrow for your pain.

A 24 hour trip to the Bay Area

The best place to start is here. Don't click on anything until the page is fully loaded and has moved the view away from the top of the page. Navigate up from there.

The rain was fierce from here on in.

The approach to Tejon pass, about 90 miles from LA.

The car doesn't have a name yet.

Later I stopped and took this picture. I was on top of a hill. It was identified by a "scenic overlook" sign on the highway. There was a semi-trailer and a pickup truck on the hill. Neither showed signs of life. I didn't feel unsafe, but It made me think of the luxury of traveling with a big dog.

Hey, whose car is that? It's mine! I wanted an Element with manual transmission, all wheel drive, side airbags, and silver paint with blue panels. Apparently people in LA don't want to drive stick shift cars. The the only Element in the state that matched my specs was in Berkeley. I flew up cheaply on Saturday afternoon, bought the car, socialized and drove back the next morning. Happily, I got to see Galen and Natalie, kj, and Mike, along with a little bit of International Bear Rendezvous weekend. Mike took me to Lone Star. I was the only woman at Lone Star, among probably 150 or so men. Being, as Mike says about himself, a hundred pounds lighter than everyone else in the room sure made me feel little and feminine.

Mike and I agreed that this is not nature (the trees with the pink blossoms are cultivated), but it was pretty enough to get me to pull of the highway.

I love the windmills. There are miles of them.

The weather on the 580 toward Modesto was good, and I got a preview of the green that was along the whole drive.

Waking up in San Francisco

The big picture

Today I finished one experiment and started another. That sounds like a logical progression, but really I started the experiment before I finished the one before it. I had gotten enough results from first one to know that I only got half the results I needed. I screwed something up with the other half, and I don't know what. You might say, think back. Did anything seem confusing? Well, happily (?), figuring out whether I screwed something up is not hard. Yes, I screwed something up. I screwed many things up. None of them really explain the fact that half of the experiment produced data and half didn't. HC and I have one plausible theory. In any case, I repeated the first half of the experiment today. I may never know what went wrong.

The picture above is an image of some of my results. They are part of the good half. There are two things a person might mean by "good results." One is that they get an answer to the question they ask. Here, I am asking, does this protein exist in this part of the brain? My question is answered. The bad aspect of the bad results I got was that they were completely uninformative. I did something wrong and didn't get any bands on my image. The other kind thing a person could mean by "good results" are results that agree with a person's hypothesis. It's understandable to have a pet theory, but, as MK says, you have to trust your data. If it's telling you something that's not what you expected, you need to re-think things. There's a middle ground of "good results," the kind that are confirming preexisting knowledge. Again, it's understandable to want your results to conform to accepted dogma, but if they don't, that's interesting too.

Just the Facts

This is a version of the picture above, cropped and manipulated to emphasize the difference in the three bands.

polyanna now?

i've been feeling definitively better, depression-wise, for the past couple days. looking back, it's amazing how depression twists my thinking and perceptions. i can appreciate people for who they are instead of blaming them for what i'm missing. case in point, SM, my office-mate. yesterday he was talking about syria and lebannon, laughing at how the US was trying to spin things to its advantage. i appreciated his view, and thought about what a luxury it is to be around people from all over the world. i get to hear interesting viewpoints without trying very hard. when i was depressed, this was completely overshadowed by my longing for people weirder (in a good way) than i am. i still think it would be good for me to meet some more people, but the need has a different tenor now.

emergency response time

my place is 4 blocks from a fire house. today AH and i were home for lunch when we heard a car crash. we looked outside and saw the cars in the intersection in unexplainable positions. ten minutes later, when i walked through the intersection on my way back to school, there were four emergency vehicles there and more arriving. it made me glad to live so close to the fire house. surprisingly, we don't get too much siren noise. my friend SM lives on the same street as the fire house and said that they often turn on the sirens directly outside his house, which is more disturbing than the steady approach and departure of the noise.

what to do on valentine's day

1) enhance the sex life and general well-being of mice.
holly, who is sweetly concerned for the well-being of our mices [sic], has picked the mice that are alone in a cage as the ones we're going to kill tomorrow, because living alone is very stressful for a mouse. we have three males and one female. you can't put males together in a cage without them fighting, but she did put the female in with a male for tonight. have a good night, little mice.

2) torture a loved one.
the ear medicine arrived today, and, with AH's help, i treated bad dog's ears. he was quite patient, but i know it hurt. hopefully they'll get better quickly.

3) find out that you've got no soul.
and i don't mean i can't dance. DM, who went to Aida with us yesterday, talked about getting chills during the performance. i was not that swept up in it. i liked it, but more cerebrally.

4) get sweet valentine's day cards from your family.
i was touched.

5) listen to the police helicopters of Los Angeles circle while you walk the dog.
unfortunately, this activity can only be carried out in los angeles. when i was considering moving here, a LA native warned me about the high amount of police helicopter (not black helicopters) activity here. tonight, mac and i were temporarily lit up by the spotlight which made 4 circles around the area during our short walk. they seem to have found what they wanted a few blocks from here.

ok, so 3 and 5 weren't so valentine's day oriented, but i like lists.

you've gotten tough, says ani

i just came from seeing ani difranco in concert. that woman can make some noise. it was just her and a guy playing the upright bass. she was really energetic. it was a fun excuse to get dressed up and see some flavor of "my people," people i might imagine to be rare in LA. there were girls who looked like they could have been at a brittany spears concert, lots of women wearing kind of drab clothes, and some women wearing clothes that i was excited to see: clothes that said queer, or fashion forward, or both.

there was a very loud woman behind me who would shout out in the middle of quiet slow songs "i love you ani!" and "i love the way you play guitar, ani!" i actually cringed the first time she shouted. i told myself it was ridiculous to cringe on her behalf, and that i should be able to let other people do their thing. but i cringed again in response to her next outburst.

there were a lot of lesbians at the concert. some of the brittany girls were hanging on each other, and i had the uncharitable thought to wonder if their motivations went beyond increasing their attractiveness to boys. something about their behavior suggested that its display was the most gratifying part of it.

the smoke (from the stage and a little from pot smokers) didn't kill my lungs or well-being. i did get a headache, but some advil helped that. again, my improved asthma meds come through. amazing.

although i was fairly misanthropic throughout the concert, i was happy to be there. there was no seating, but there was room to stand away from the crush of the crowd and still see ani. i think it was really good for me to go to the concert, given how stifled i've felt by pasadena lately. i really need to broaden my social circle. i need to hang out with some people who are weirder and more out-there than me in some hard-to-define way, people who will inspire me and let me feel on the normal side every once in a while. in the past i've found people through volunteer organizations, political organizations, karate, school. to accomplish it here, i think i must become part of an institution that is physically located closer to the center of the city. until i have a car, i'm not going to be able to commit to it. i don't even know what 'it' is yet.

bad dog, who i fed and walked before the concert, needs a quick walk. here i go out into the pasadena night, in my leather pants, mirror ring, and sparkly jacket. tomorrow i go to the opera. what a weekend.

Now I walk the camera as well as the dog

This morning's weather reminds me of dramatic Colorado summer weather. I wanted to capture the sun on the mountains and the way the mountains disappear into clouds that look ominous at the base but fluffy and harmless on top. The close-up below shows that better. I climbed the stairwell in my building to get a better angle for the picture. When I got to the top, the gate to the roof of my building was open, and I had more options than I had hoped. Often the best places to take pictures from in Los Angeles are parking garages. They are easy to access, ubiquitous, and the same height or taller than most other buildings.

A hedge of note

I still don't know what he was looking at.

"Bear with me"

This phrase recently has been adopted by the two physicists in my lab. Both of them have trouble explaining their work to the rest of us, because their work and English are both hard to understand. They have discovered that "bear with me" gives them a few extra minutes when the protests start. It's a perfectly appropriate idiom for them. The other day I heard one of them use it on the other, and it nearly killed me.

How to get no work done

i did hardly any work today. i got up, chased down and harassed the jackasses* who published my name change notice, walked woofie, went to the happy meds lady (more meds! that's what she said), went to lunch with the grad students in my lab including a rotation student who we were evaluating/wooing, went to the lab and moved desks around (i moved light stuff and got other people to move heavy stuff, my wrist/arm is feeling better but not that much better), went to the gym, got back to the lab and went to get burger and pie with hc. now i'm home. early tomorrow i'm due in court to say that i'm not trying to defraud anyone by changing my name. hopefully then they'll give me a piece of paper saying i'm legit with my not-really-new name.

*blogger wanted to change jackasses to Chickasaws.

last week i overheard a couple of professors talking about a talk they wanted to go to tonight. i just looked it up; art speigelman is speaking on campus. going to see him would probably help me feel less lost in the cultural wasteland of pasadena, and i would surely enjoy going to see him. on the other hand, i have a headache and am tired from my non-day, and i really want to stay home and watch alias and lost. if i had known about it earlier and made arrangements to go with a friend, i might have gone.

These peppers were sweet, but I was sour

for what seemed like an eternity, today and yesterday i've been watching the highlight (lowlight?) reels of every cringe-worthy thing in my life. mostly it's '[real or inflated] bad things i've done.' instead of commercials, i get '[real or inflated] bad things people have done to me.' it's loads of fun. and all the intellectual insight i can muster doesn't cause a break in the show. finally i got a little bit of work started and went to the gym, and that seems to have helped some. it's amazing to me how steadily that kind of mental story can chug along, and how devastating it is. i can't imagine what it's like for people who hear it more than i do. sorry for the depressing entry - i am feeling better tonight.

the uninteresting crippled murderer

today i learned there is a time to protect one's ego. i presented at today's lab meeting. remind me not to do a presentation in which i'm trying to figure out how to do an experiment. i thought it would be useful for me, and it was, but not as useful as i'd hoped, and more ego-bruising than i had feared.

metafilter lead me to this, a really good article about life in columbian barrios.

To say this of human beings is to say both the best and the worst. They can get used to anything. And I got used to it too. You find yourself thinking: if I had to live in El Distrito, I wouldn't stay at Kevin's but at Ana Milena's, where they have cable TV and that nice serving hatch from the kitchen to the living room... Similarly, I now found myself thinking: you know, this crippled murderer isn't nearly as interesting as the crippled murderer I interviewed the day before yesterday.

i've also been enjoying the blog called "Bad Mother" lately, which is by Ayelet Waldman, wife of the fantastic fiction writer Michael Chabon. now i'm dying to read her books.

my roommate AH asked if i would mind if she had people over tonight to celebrate a birthday of S, a mutual friend of ours. i had to ask her not to bring people over - we've had people over two out of the last three nights, and i need some time to wind down. i feel a little bad, but i think my decision was reasonable, between our recent hostessing and the lack of notice. the lack of notice was not AH's fault; S only decided today that she would be willing and able to take time from her research for a celebration. S has been working hard in preparation for a meeting on wednesday. sadly, i'm not even going out to the birthday dinner. i'll try to make an effort to take S out to lunch for her birthday. it's the first time she's ever had her birthday without her twin.

I had a party, and I didn't cry

Nearly shocking, right? There was lots of food. The Superbowl was watched. People came over and sat on everything with a horizontal surface. Mac was overjoyed. Mac licked the (lower, out-) side of the bowl of guacamole and a dish AH makes with cheese in it, called, wait for it, queso. The football game was good, but you already know that, or you don't care. We have enough food to eat exclusively junk food for a week. Tomorrow is the third week in a row that I'm scheduled to present at the lab meeting. Two weeks ago I FORGOT I was scheduled to present. Last week my boss wasn't at work that day, unbeknownst to the scheduler of the meetings. So tomorrow may be the actual presentation day. I've just spent a couple of hours working on the presentation, and the great news is that my hand and wrist don't hurt too much. I'll take some advil and hopefully wake up to a fully functional hand. Such joy.

Did I mention my new camera?

that kid toy/sculpture at caltech
Originally uploaded by _buttercup.

i signed up for blockbuster's movie rental service. for quite a while, i've had the same three movies. does that mean i haven't watched any tv in the past month? no. it means that the movies i've had have been "fog of war,"mystic river," and "jefftowne," all heavy movies that i haven't wanted to watch. i waste of money. i've felt i should watch them. even when i realize that i haven't watched them yet, it's hard to turn them on.

today i watched "mystic river." it was quite good. tim robbins was amazing, as always, but exceptionally good. soon, i'll be getting new movies. and the next round won't be as deep, you can count on that.

did the presenter of the live sag award updates just call hilary swank "hilary suede?"

today anne and i went to costco to prepare for tomorrow's superbowl party. it's been a hard couple days - my arm still hurts from mac's cat chase, and i'm terrible at dealing with pain. it's also hard not to use one's right arm.

hazards

when i got back to my apartment this morning from my walk with bad dog, there was a cat loose in my hall. mac went through the door first, saw it before i did, and took off after it, pulling the leash out of my hand. they went around the corner of the hall and them came flying back around to me. i tackled mac and put him in the apartment. then i went to find the cat. i was reassured by the fact there wasn't blood on the carpet. the cat had gone out the door that mac and i had just come in, which means the whole adventure happened so fast that the door didn't have time to close. when i found the cat out in the open stairwell, she was still breathing hard with dilated pupils, but seemed intact. i don't know if she's a stray or belongs to someone in the building. once i came back in the apartment and made sure that mac still had both his eyes and that his nose was intact, i realized that i strained my arm. so i've been icing and elevating it. i'm so alert to all kinds of hazards to dog and to people walking dogs in the outside world: skateboards, cars, squirrels, etc., but i was not expecting a cat in my hallway. i think bad dog enjoyed himself though.

later i found out that the cat belonged to my neighbor, who says it's the first time the cat had gotten out in 14 years. my neighbor was grateful that i told her that her cat was out and where to find her. i don't think she really took in the fact that her cat had a near-death experience.

Design inspiration for new Honda Element color scheme

If all goes well, this is my future new car.





Thanks to various old toyota sites for the toyota fj-55 pictures.

thoughts inspired browsing on amazon

the most wished for item on amazon's wish lists in the health and personal care section is the "Philips HeartStart Home Automated External Defibrillator (AED)." that makes me sad.

but, just to show how fickle i am, i'll also tell you about something that makes me happy. it's the reach access flosser. i've tried other flossing gadgets before, with no luck. i just have to floss the manual way, basically sticking both my hands in my mouth to floss. i have a hard enough time trying to get my mouth to open far enough to eat. but in any case, this thing is fantastic! i read about it on kevin kelly's cool tools list, which subsequently listed a link to a free sample which is still available. i can't recommend this highly enough. basically, it's as firm as a toothbrush, which makes it easy to poke the floss between your teeth. i have a couple of teeth that have crashed together like icebergs, and i can even get in those if i use my upper jaw to push down a tad on the flosser. so add it to your shopping list or fill out the online form for a free one, but do it, especially if you don't floss every day. this will make it easier, without getting spit all over your hands (or is that only me?).

The drawbacks of Club Caltech

Getting into a class can be difficult. Not because there are too many people in it. Not because there are stupid rules about which classes you have to take first. No, people are perfectly confident that you have the capability not to fall on your ass. No, the problem is Finding Where The Class Meets.

The schedule for winter classes listed the Graduate Seminar in Molecular Neuroscience as meeting in 101 Kerkoff at 7pm on Wednesdays. I went to the class meeting. I was a couple (no more) minutes late. There was no one there. The door was locked. Let me also mention that it was in a locked building. No one had left a door open or anything, I just happened to know the the key to my building also opened the back door to Kerkoff.

I went home and sent the professor, who I have met with in the past, an email.

hello david -

i was hoping to attend the first meeting of your grad seminar tonight, but i didn't find anyone at 101 kerkoff. i was a few minutes late; did the class relocate? if it's still possible for me to take the class, could you send me a syllabus?

thank you,
holly

The response, from his assistant:

Holly,

The class is on THursdays at 7 in 151 Braun, there was a mistake on the calendar, you should show up to tonight.

Gina Mancuso

Roberta's thoughts on the matter:

What ever happened to "i'm sorry?"

"you should show up tonight?"

how about "you should get some social skills, imbecile."

Thank you Roberta for representing my id in this story.

Last night I went to the class meeting. The professor knew nothing of the problem; he had been out of town until that morning. He was very apologetic and immediately started thinking about how to reach other people who may have been put off as well. Few people showed up (surprise), so I'm presenting next Thursday. I don't mind that, and I'm looking forward to the quarter.

Thank goodness for the options that come with class privilege

Darlene Jespersen was a highly praised bartender at Harrah's in Reno for almost twenty years, until Harrah's instituted a policy that all women had to wear foundation, concealer, or powder, blush, mascara, and lip color at all times. Darlene demurred, was fired and is now working in retail while the case wends its way through the courts. I'm glad I've got more employment options than that. It makes me furious. The requirement is a legal way to fire butch lesbians. Sure, some straight women choose not to wear makeup too, but they get called lesbians for their trouble. Likewise, a non butch lesbian may also not wear makeup, and get called butch for her trouble. We all might as well come around to support the rights of butch lesbians.

...wearing makeup made her feel sick, degraded, exposed, and violated. Jespersen felt that wearing makeup “forced her to be feminine” and to become “dolled up” like a sexual object, and that wearing makeup actually interfered with her ability to be an effective bartender (which sometimes required her to deal with unruly, intoxicated guests) because it “took away [her] credibility as an individual and as a person.

The legal challenge to the policy is that it places undo burden on women, since maintaining their appearance for work takes more time and money than it does for men. I'm curious what the other people who work at the casino look like. I doubt they are all young "movie-quality" hotties. Does Harrah's think that there are no gay people in the area? Guess what the closest major city is? Gay ground zero, San Francisco.

club caltech

my asthma, which is worse in cold weather, was terrible when i was east. i was using my albuterol inhaler there. it helped, but i noticed that it had expired in 2003. on my dog walk this morning, i walked over to the student health center. leaving mac on his long leash outside the doorway, i walked in far enough to let the coordinator know what i wanted and asked if i could wait outside. she said yes. shortly, mac and i were visited by a nurse who handed me an inhaler, made sure i knew how to use it, and admired the loveliness of bad dog. i am sad that i will be leaving the shelter of student health centers when i graduate from caltech and cross the PhD threshold. i suppose this level of service is a type of concierge medicine. being able to bring the dog and incorporate health care into a dog walk is the mark of a high standard of care for me.

500 year tsunami

I am horrified by the consequences of the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. The New York Times is reporting 50,000 deaths so far. It seems that some of the smaller islands moved as a result of the event. Another new horror is the unearthing of land mines:

A new danger emerged today: UNICEF said uprooted land mines in Sri Lanka threatened to kill or maim aid workers and survivors. "Mines were ... washed out of known mine fields, so now we don't know where they are," said Ted Chaiban, the Sri Lanka chief of UNICEF.

I'm afraid that we'll be seeing many more unexpected consequences of this disaster.

Yet another reason not to read the LA Times

Recently I've been willing to sound like a member of the so-called "liberal elite" and decry the newspapers published out West. I followed a link to the following article in spite of my reservations because the article mentioned a geographic change resulting from the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. In the second paragraph I found the following hideous sentence. And really, what does "recorded by scientists" mean? In my book, anyone who can record the magnitude of an earthquake is a scientist. Yeesh.

The quake was the largest since a magnitude 9.2 temblor struck Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1964 and was one of the biggest ever recorded by scientists.

Dolly-cious

Thursday night HC and I went to see Dolly Parton in Orange County. We got dressed up in my finest clothes, like kids playing dress-up.

Dolly was in great form. Apparently she hasn't done this kind of tour in a while. It was all kinds of stuff, old, new, popular, more obscure. I've been reading reviews from around the country about it, and it sounds like she makes changes based on region. In Georgia, she is reported to have said, after singing (John Lennon's) "Imagine", "I don't want to imagine no religion." After playing some enormous number of instruments on "Thank god I'm a country girl," in Orange County she said "Take that, Dixie Chicks." She is reported elsewhere to have continued, "How do you think they liked the election?" It's funny because I think of her as being very plain spoken and straightforward, so I'm a little surprised that she modifies her patter based on her audience. Naive of me, I guess.

The other dissappointment was the pre-recorded singing. I noticed it in the first couple songs, and not much after that. It's so commonplace now that I can't really hold it against her. She's certainly got the pipes; it's not like she's Madonna or something. She's 58. Still, I'd rather hear her sing imperfectly than hear recorded vocals.

Disappointments aside, she was fantastic, and I'm so glad I got to go see her.


dolly

better living through psychopharmacology

i was at ross to buy some clothes for my trip east. when i saw a man trailing a woman through the through the store while watching football on a mini portable tv, i knew it was time to head home and watch the game. i'm watching the broncos-chargers game.

saturday i played scrabble with one old person and 6 young people. the visit was part of a caltech program where students visit the nearby retirement home. it was a lot of fun, but seems a little pointless with so few old folks. but i liked the folk we had; she was fun and interesting. i also got to be the embarrassingly obsessive player, the one who knew that fo isn't a word but xi is. i was playing as a team with my roommate anne, so i managed to keep my competitiveness in check.

in the past week, i've come to the conclusion that my series of down moods have been part of a trend. it's such a hard thing to assess: is it just situational, etc. i've been really unmotivated for a while. i had a hard summer, but i attributed it to the house-buying pressure and taking time away from research to teach. other times i've attributed my foul moods to hormones. i think it's time to take an aggressive pharmacological approach to making some improvements.