Posts filed under 'Department of the Drama'
Ah, the British Library. In one room: Shakespeare’s First Folio, Thomas More’s last letter to Henry III, Lewis Carroll’s diary, the Gutenberg Bible, a letter from Darwin to Wallace, a letter from Newton to Hooke, Shakespeare’s mortgage, Magna Carta, a page from Edward VI’s diary (very bad handwriting), the manuscript of Jane Eyre. I got goosebumps! The British Library is also holding a special exhibition of religious texts, called “Sacred.” The Lindisfarne Gospels alone are worth the tour, but I began to go into shock after an hour of world-class illuminated manuscripts.
My favorite document - and this surprised me - was actually a little 1609 quarto of Shakespeare’s sonnets. It lay open to 116, probably his most famous sonnet, and one of my favorite poems. Have a guess at the first two lines?
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
admit impediments. . .
Sonnet 116 is actually mislabeled in the British Library’s copy - the 6 is flipped, to read 119. But there was no mistaking one of the finest love poems ever written:
Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
July 29th, 2007
Today I visited Darwin and Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. Newton was there too, but he was being all standoffish behind an iron railing (possibly to deter enthusiastic fans of The Da Vinci Code, but more likely for some liturgical reason).
Quick: what’s Charles Darwin’s middle name? That’s ok - I didn’t know either. (It’s Charles Robert Darwin).
For the record, the weather in London was lovely today. Tomorrow, though, probably not so much. But I’ll be in the British Museum, so it won’t matter. (happy noise)
P.S. At least a quarter of the people on the plane over here were reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In my side row, all three of us were reading it! Unfortunately the flight was much, much longer than the book.
July 27th, 2007
I woke up yesterday in Idaho, today I’m in Seattle, and in a few hours I fly to London. Woohoo. I’m somewhat sleep deprived and I still have to pack my bags, so I’m going to drop this link and run. Let’s just say I will never read the phrase “the birds and the bees” in quite the same way again!
Lust Erotic Boutique, Copenhagen (Illustrations by Johannes Bojesen, for Grey Kobenhavn)
July 25th, 2007
Dear readers, I’m in need of advice. I love Trivial Pursuit, but I have the original questions long memorized (long live Avery Brundage!), and some of my friends have the same problem with subsequent Genuses. When I went online to buy the newest edition of the game, unhappy reviews said the questions have been dumbed down significantly in recent incarnations.
I want something hard, preferably harder than the original, that’s NOT mostly pop culture. I’d rather strain my brain recalling presidents and Nobel Prize winners, not what color Madonna’s hair was in Desperately Seeking Susan.
I do like Cranium, but I want something that works well in small groups. Any other ideas - either for good editions of TP, or for other games?
July 10th, 2007
PZ Myers at Pharyngula just generated an interesting thread, “we don’t have physics envy, but we still have to deal with physics snobbery,” about whether biology is regarded as a lesser discipline, compared with “harder” sciences like physics. PZ references this post at Biology in Science Fiction, which in turn references this excellent post at Northstate Science.
It’s quite true that non-biologists seem to feel qualified to hold forth on topics such as alien life, evolution, and medicine. . .why? Is biology really so much easier than other sciences, so you don’t even need a formal education in it? (Why the heck was I studying for all those years?)
I’m conflicted about this issue. If there is a hierarchy of sciences, I admit, I do think physics has an edge - simply because it’s more fundamental. Physics squeezes in closer to the cogs and cam-shafts of universal truth than biology can, which gives me a knee-jerk fascination with/admiration for physics (mdvlst is not allowed to comment on this issue).
But is biology “easier,” a soft science, teetering on some slippery slope to the - gasp - humanities? Hardly! The common idea that biology is mere “memorization of facts and terms” is complete baloney. No science consists solely of memorization. In biology, you do have to memorize lists of terms and structures and genes in order to proceed with hypothesis testing, because you’re dealing with complex, unique systems - a particular eukaryotic cell replete with proteins and organelles, an ecosystem with constituent organisms, etc. You have to know a sufficient number of parts before you can build meaningful predictions about the system. But such “naming of parts” does not make you a biologist.
Further, even “naming of parts” goes a lot deeper than people realize. Since I taught anatomy - a class almost entirely about naming parts - I’ve encountered many non-biologists claiming to “know” anatomy already, on the strength of a high school course. (They do not similarly claim to “know” physics.) Yet I’m certain these people would fail my easiest anatomy exams - they claim to know all the bones of the human body, but have no idea where or what the ethmoid or sphenoid are. They couldn’t begin to draw the circulatory system, or point out the cells on a slide of cartilage.
That’s ok - I didn’t know every single bone either; I learned them in order to teach them. But why do people so readily assume there’s no more to anatomy than they dimly remember? Why do they think biology is shallow and easy? Why do physics students arrive for the first day of class with paralyzed looks of dread, when my biology students arrive cocky and contemptuous, then grow astonished and resentful when biology turns out to be hard?
I realized way back in college that as a biologist I would never be considered a “real” scientist by many of my fellows. One friend made a point of reminding me frequently that chemistry was much more rigorous than biology - just in case I forgot my place in the hard science/soft science caste system. Whatever; I found biology more interesting and exciting than chemistry. Plus, biology is squishy!
But it’s not just about people disrespecting my field, or inventing biologically implausible alien races, or the regrettable case of Scully from The X-Files doing a Southern blot in an impossibly short time with an unamplified sample to prove she had alien DNA, or the aliens had human DNA, or whatever that storyline was. Unfortunately, the idea that biology isn’t an especially rigorous science reinforces all sorts of problems - from school boards that give equal weight to intelligent design and evolution, to uninformed decisions about health care (trust me, college students know laughably little about conception and contraception), to policies about scientific research (on stem cells, for example) made on unscientific, partisan grounds.
Why is biology so vulnerable to disrespect? Do people think “life” is not a sufficiently scientific concept, and thus the “study of life” is a fuzzy sort of science? Is it familiarity breeding contempt - we’ve all got bodies, after all? (We’re all made of atoms, but that doesn’t mean people think they understand atomic theory). Is it some sort of inborn affinity for macroscopic plants and animals, but not for the invisibly small, which gives people a proprietary sense of familiarity with “biology”? I just don’t get it.
July 1st, 2007
Oh no, I’ve been tagged with a blog meme! I generally tiptoe past memes when I encounter them; as they drowse in the hot summer sun, they are unlikely to retaliate - unless prodded with vintage medical paraphernalia, of course. Alas, the Evilutionary Biologist got me anyway (I knew there was a reason he spelled his name that way) and now I have to tag eight more hapless bloggers!
Here are the rules:
- We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
- Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
- People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
- At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
- Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
Eight random things about me. . .
1. I never learned to type properly. Instead I hunt and peck with two fingers (at 50+ wpm).
2. I have a phobia of the circulatory system - not shots, or isolated blood, but veins and arteries. This is one of many reasons I am not a medical doctor (nor a phelebotomist, John)! I’ve not only passed out while donating blood, I’ve fainted on the floor while setting up my own physiology lab. Fortunately my students were not present at the time.
3. I was the 1st runner-up in my hometown Junior Miss pageant, thus earning the privilege of riding on parade floats wearing princess dresses for an entire year. And I know the secret pageant wave!
4. But I do not know my left from my right, unless I glance at my hands while making pencil-clutching gestures. (No, the “L” mnemonic doesn’t work, because I read just fine backwards - both hands look like “L”s to me).
5. I am addicted to jogging. I have to jog several miles every day or I get bitchy (that means bitchier than usual). The farthest I’ve ever jogged is 13 miles, but I have no desire to run a marathon: it seems quite painful.
6. When I took a French class in elementary school, I had a small crush on the instructor (a high school student - he probably wasn’t even that cute, but hey, he know French). I was too embarrassed to say “je t’aime” to him, and would only say it to the poster of a large purple octopus on the wall. So you can see the cephalopodmania started early for me. I have no idea what everyone else’s excuse is.
7. I have a pet corn snake who is afraid of (live) mice.
8. I once built a little apparatus to aerosolize crack cocaine for fruit flies. Sadly, they did not seem to enjoy it: they convulsed and died. For the record, I didn’t inhale - my drug preference is alcohol, specifically cocktails. And I’ve never had a hangover. That’s actually three random facts at once, so this meme is done!
I will tag Morbid Anatomy, Snail’s Eye View, Curious Expeditions, Dandelion Diva, Hungry Hyaena, Witless Wanderer, Cabinet of Wonders, and Simplistic Art.
C’mon now - most of you don’t write much about yourselves on your blogs, which is why I’m curious to hear some Random Facts! But if you have some no-personal-stuff rule, or you detest memes, you’re exempt. (Though at least consider participating. Those lumbering memes are safer when satiated!)
PS sorry if anyone has already been tagged!
June 28th, 2007
Normalcy
One Size Does Not Fit All
, 2002
Beverly Naidus
A while ago, I promised to share my impressions of Gina Kolata’s Rethinking Thin
. I finished the book last month, but I wanted to let my response percolate before posting. The biology of metabolism is one of my hot-button issues, and I had high hopes for this book. With a hefty subtitle like “The New Science of Weight Loss - and the Myths and Realities of Dieting,” I expected a forceful argument, perhaps even a jeremiad, against those dietary myths. The book is, somewhat disappointingly, not a jeremiad. But it is interesting, and, I hope, part of a gradual shift in attitudes toward metabolism.
The fruit of Kolata’s research is partly a history book, recapping America’s obsession with weight loss from the 1800s on. As a history of dieting, it’s eye-opening: the same kinds of diets have been recycled for over a hundred years. You thought Atkins was new? Not so much! It’s also partly a review of the latest obesity research - but that research points too many directions, and is far too complex, for a review of such brevity to satiate scientifically informed readers. Thirdly, it’s a sensitive portrait, though a somewhat superficial one, of dieters who embody a statistical inevitability: failure to keep lost weight off. Their initial euphoric success and subsequent depression are what tables and figures in scientific papers never capture.
In introductory classes, I often assign non-fiction books that model how science should be practiced, while also demonstrating how real-world preconceptions, politics, and personalities inevitably derail perfect objectivity. Rethinking Thin is a book in that vein: Kolata takes on preconceptions about fatness, some deeply ingrained in our culture, and discusses how research has been directed and constrained by those preconceptions. Occasionally, the prose goes off the deep end:
Without phen-fen, Carmen was at a loss to control his weight. “I stopped, and the weight came back,” he recalls. What to do? He had no interest in trying another water-cooler diet, so, like the swallows of Capistrano who, legend has it, return each year to an old ruined church where they had been saved in the past from an innkeeper who destroyed their nest, Carmen returned to Jenny Craig.
But aside from a few inexplicable clunkers like that one, the book is pleasantly readable. It’s full of engaging details, like Chicago teen Yvonne Blue’s 1926 diary (”Three months in which to lose thirty pounds - but I’ll do it - or die in the attempt”), or the “Dr. Atkins of his day,” Horace Fletcher, who advocated weight loss through “divine mastication” (chewing), which was popularly called Fletcherizing.
What Rethinking Thin is not: a diet book. It is not a how-to book, nor a consumer report recommending one diet over another. And it is not - as some reviewers have suggested - a license to give up and be fat. There’s an important distinction between acknowledging the substantial genetic influence on obesity, and abdicating personal responsibility because of it.
For readers who have struggled with weight issues, much of this book will seem disturbingly familiar. Several individuals in the book confide their intense feelings of relief when they realize that other people have the same difficulties with food that they do. (My response to the book was also very personal, as will become obvious from this review). But though catharsis is pleasant, the people who should read this book are the people who don’t struggle with weight loss - especially health professionals who advise patients on dieting. I doubt many will read it, since a problem that one does not share (and an entire nonfiction book about that problem) is generally much less interesting than one’s own problems. I understand that if you’re naturally thin, it can be hard to relate to someone who is fat - you wonder why they don’t simply eat less. You may even have contempt for their lack of self-control. But the fact is, losing weight is not the same challenge for everyone, and the biology backs that up.
If you don’t struggle with your weight, consider this: do you congratulate yourself on avoiding unhealthy foods that you don’t like? Probably not, because you don’t have to resist cravings or desires to do so. It’s much harder to avoid your favorite foods - the ones that make your stomach growl and mouth water! So wouldn’t it be harder to resist food in general, if you experienced a constant, 24/7 struggle against gnawing hunger - the same sensation you’d have if your favorite food was sitting temptingly in front of you?
The truth is, some people really are hungry ALL the time. I know this because I’m one of them. I don’t know what “eating until you’re full” feels like. When I say “I’m full,” it means “I’m not going to continue eating now, because it would be imprudent/indelicate/unnecessary.” But am I still hungry? Heck yes! My stomach growls pretty much all day, at night while I’m trying to sleep (fun), while I’m jogging. . . talk about embarassing.
Why does this happen? I have no idea, but I think it’s genetic. Kolata’s book presents consistent evidence that “the children who are going to get fat are those whose biological parents are fat”; 80% of adopted children with two obese birth parents became obese; only 14% of the children with nonobese parents did. Metabolism is genetic. Body shape is genetic. But does a genetic “hunger overdrive” give me license to eat food nonstop and gain ridiculous amounts of weight? Absolutely not! I may be at a disadvantage, but I’m still responsible for what I eat. I get the distinct impression that people who decry or deny the “genetics of weight” (and blame Rethinking Thin for promoting it as a cause of obesity) fear that genetics will mean a complete abdication of personal responsibility. I don’t agree at all: clarifying the role of genetics helps to give an individual control, by defining the parameters of their problem. However unreasonable or destructive, constant hunger is a real, physiological impulse that some people have to resist. Telling these people “it’s all in your head” isn’t helpful. What’s wrong with “I realize you feel this way, and it’s not your fault, but if your goal is to be thinner, you need to develop strategies to control this hunger” ? Wouldn’t the latter advice be more constructive than denying the problem exists?
Guilty
One Size Does Not Fit All, 2002
Beverly Naidus
You can probably sense that I’ve had a few unpleasant run-ins with nutritionists myself. In fact, I’ve been reprimanded for “lying” about my food intake, because according to those one-size-fits-all medical charts, it’s simply impossible that I weigh what I do, exercise as much as I do, and eat as little as I do. If I estimate my basal metabolic rate (BMR), I should be eating almost a thousand more calories each day than I do! I’ve kept meticulous food/exercise diaries that would make a dietician’s head spin, because the numbers don’t add up.
How do I explain this? Simple. These BMR estimations don’t work for everyone, because not everyone’s metabolism runs at the same rate. (If I assessed my BMR directly by measuring oxygen consumption, it would be much more accurate, but I’ve never had the pleasure of an expensive VO2 test). Rethinking Thin recounts seminal studies that demonstrated this decades ago - subjects’ bodies readily buffered experimental changes in caloric intake, revving up or slowing down to maintain weight near their set point. Naturally thin subjects had to eat a truly shocking amount of food to put on weight; they couldn’t keep it on! Why, then, is it hard to accept that people’s metabolisms are heterogenous to start with? I’d have gotten my weight under control much faster if the nutritionist I saw ten years ago had said “huh. You must have a slow metabolism. It’s not fair, but you’ll have to eat less than the recommended amount. Let’s work on doing that, in a healthy way.” (I’m sure there are nutritionists somewhere who say things like that, but I’ve never had the pleasure to meet them).
So how much do I eat, when I’m trying to lose a few pounds? I never give a number anymore, because of the knee-jerk response I get. I’ve been called anorexic, despite being well on the chunky side of the bell curve. (”Do I look anorexic?” usually silences those critics). I’ve also been accused of crashing my own metabolism (and causing my weight problem) by eating so little my body goes into “starvation mode.” Aside from the unlikelihood of being in “starvation mode” while having plenty of energy, plenty of fat, and running several miles a day, I only started eating substantially less in my late twenties - after I got the confidence to define my own diet based on what felt right, not what I was told to do. Since then I’ve lost weight, not gained it.
The only proven way to lose weight is to 1) reduce calories and 2) increase expenditure through exercise. Yet society seems reluctant to endorse option 1, as if there is an unforgivably slippery slope between endorsing a low caloric intake, and promoting Nicole Ritchie-style emaciation. Why our society persists in defining beauty by supermodels who are extreme outliers on the curve of human morphology, and what that does to young girls’ self-esteem, is another post entirely. Kolata points out that despite the revisionist conception of Marilyn Monroe as a curvacious “size 12,” the sex goddess was really only 115 to 120 pounds - hardly today’s 12; but Rethinking Thin spends only one chapter on the changing history of body images. This is disappointing but understandable - it is a different issue, and an important one, that deserves its own conversation. Especially in a holier-than-thou age where talking heads on Fox News accuse 17-year-old Jordin Sparks, winner of American Idol, of setting a bad example simply by existing:
When I look at Jordin, what I see is diabetes, I see heart disease, I see cholesterol. . . .she’s a vision of unhealth. (Meme Roth)
Jordin is 5′ 10″ and according to People, a size 12.
Although I would never endorse eating disorders, or the bizarre delusions of people who think 17-year olds should be pilloried on national media outlets, I would argue that some of us can responsibly reduce food intake pretty far, and in fact need to do so, if we want to be a socially acceptable size or have an athletic build. By denying this, health professionals enforce all-or-nothing choices that are fodder for eating disorders. If you can’t get to a healthy weight by dieting in the “approved” way - and not all of us can - you might give up completely and be unhappily fat, or stop trusting medical advice at all, take extreme measures, and hurt yourself in the process. Your self-esteem shouldn’t be about numbers on a scale (bathroom scale OR food scale); it should be about cardiovascular, mental, and immune health!
This brings me to a group of people who get suprisingly scant coverage in Rethinking Thin: devotees of caloric restriction. Kolata touches on the origins of counting calories, first popularized by early twentieth-century diets books like How to Live by Fisher and Fisk, or Lulu Peters’ Diet and Health, with Key to the Calories (1918), which recommended a diet of 1200 calories per day:
You will be surprised how much 1200 calories will be if the food is judiciously selected. You may be hungry at first, but you will soon become accustomed to the change. I find that dry lemon or orange peel, or those little aromatic breath sweeteners, just a tiny bit, seem to stop the hunger pangs; or you may have a cup of fat-free bouillon or half an apple, or other low calorie food. (L.H. Peters)
According to Kolata, “Diets became stricter and stricter, with doctors, around 1928, recommending eating just 600 to 750 calories a day to cure severe obesity.” Who eats that much? Some practitioners of caloric restriction eat almost that little - and do very well.
Caloric restriction (CR) is a diet plan in which the caloric intake is reduced by at least 20% from the recommended amount. CR definitely works, and not only to lose weight. In lab animals, it also significantly extends lifespan - a benefit which may or may not apply to humans. (Health and longevity are the stated goals of CR - not weight loss per se).
But disappointingly, “caloric restriction” isn’t even in Kolata’s index. Her book is about popular diets and the science behind them; despite the efforts of CR proponent and diet guru Roy Walford, CR is hardly popular. It can be grueling, and Americans love their food - drugs like Alli, which have limited benefits but let you eat, will always be more attractive. CR is also controversial. The Mayo clinic is hesitant to recommend CR. And a Slate article last month compared CR to anorexia. (Of course, this is the same publication that ran this story in February, in which 1500 calories a day were termed “starvation.”)
So what do we do? For the genetically unlucky, is obesity inevitable - something we can only combat with starvation? Animal models haven’t answered that question. Carl Zimmer, writing about mouse genetics for Discover, describes Gary Churchill’s efforts to find the elusive fat gene:
Rather than focus on a single gene, Churchill and his colleagues decided to explore the entire weight-control network. They selected a big, lean strain of mice and mated them with small, fat ones. The offspring of this union grew to many different sizes and weights. Churchill and his team then measured how large the animals grew and how much of their body weight was fat versus muscle. They also measured how the fat was spread out on each mouse. Like us, mice tend to accumulate fat in certain places, like their haunches and their bellies. Finally, the scientists scanned the genome of each mouse for hundreds of markers to see which ones were linked tightly to each trait.
The map they came up with looks like a flowchart from hell. Churchill’s group identified a dozen sites in the mouse genome where genes are influencing the body weight of mice. But the genes have different effects. Some make mice large-bodied, and being big makes mice more likely to get fat. But they also found genes that had separate effects on both body size and fat levels. In some cases, the same gene could make a mouse both big and lean. Other genes influenced only how fat the mice were, with no effect on their body size. Still other genes determined the size of different fat pads. One region of mouse DNA appears to make mice fat overall while actually making the fat pads on their haunches smaller.
This sounds very much like human beings, doesn’t it? The genetic “flowchart from hell” could be why one diet doesn’t fit all; why the Atkins diet may work for your aunt but makes you get fatter; why your friend who never exercises is still thinner than you are. It’s why some people put fat on their thighs and some deposit it on their midriffs.
Can we fight the flowchart from hell? Kolata seems doubtful, and this is where I am most disappointed with her book. In the end, the dieters she’s tracked don’t keep their lost weight off, and the book concludes in a tone of sadness and powerlessness. Kolata even speculates that the obesity epidemic could be inevitable - some unforeseen consequence of a modern lifestyle which we can do little about. She never says we’re definitely doomed to be fat - just that, for many of us, we’ll have a constant struggle to avoid it, and almost all of us will fail (a grim reality borne out by statistics).
I agree that no diet will be a quick cure for the obesity epidemic. I hope Kolata’s book persuades a few more people of that, or at least conveys the hardships naturally heavy people face as they fight their own bodies. But I wish her book had reframed the obesity problem more optimistically, as an individual problem, with individual solutions. To paraphrase Tolstoy, every naturally thin person is alike, but every heavy person is heavy in their own unique way, for their own reasons - genetic and otherwise. If we accept that, we might see more creative ways to approach obesity.
June 25th, 2007
I’ve been out of it lately, for stupid reasons that I ought to be handling better. I’m just so tired. My life has been in a state of uncertain flux for too long, and I’ve gotten way off-balance.
As I was browsing some unfamiliar blogs (great for when you’re tired but paradoxically have insomnia) this insightful post at Old English in New York grabbed me. It revisits that late-night dorm-room question: if you could live forever, would you choose to do so? Reflecting on her answer, MKH turns to the wisdom of Dr. Who.
That’s right, Dr. Who. Then The Wanderer, which always reminds me of Tolkien:
- How that time has passed away,
- dark under the cover of night,
- as if it had never been!
The comments further invoke the X-Files and Chaucer’s “Pardoner’s Tale.” I saw Highlander in there somewhere, too. And the Fall. And Rilke. Oh, what a grand and rambling tour.
MKH’s conclusion:
Maybe we’re just hardwired genetically to reject our mortality, to strive to live beyond it no matter the cost — but there’s another side to that struggle that seems to recognize that, were it different, we would — whether in one thousand years or one billion — get tired.
Tired. I know that feeling, and I haven’t finished this life.
Yet ironically, nothing perks me up like a Dr.Who-Chaucer-X-Files mashup. So now, after soberly contemplating the entropic destruction of all I know and love, I feel much better!
And although I’d still take a bye on immortality, I could see how it might be tolerable - if one is guaranteed a very large library, and an eclectic circle of immortal friends who can, as Harriet once put it to Lord Peter Wimsey, “talk piffle.” That might be worth it.
June 8th, 2007
This is so self-indulgent, I have to apologize in advance. But I couldn’t resist posting Lily Burana’s description of the redoubtable, delectable Hugh Laurie in House, M.D.:
Constantly described as “brilliant but flawed,” House speaks to the part of us that wants to believe that we are so amazing, people will withstand our dread obnoxiousness to bask in our brainy, radiant glow. (Salon)
Damn right!
Although Burana’s piece is fluff, it captures the silly, navel-gazing indulgence of the celebrity crush quite well. Hugh Laurie isn’t Gregory House. Everything, down to the American accent, is an act. Right? Right.
But then Laurie goes and says something like this to Men’s Vogue:
“Probably, I fear happiness because I don’t know what follows,” he ventures. “To say ‘I’ve accomplished something,’ or ‘I look around and I see that my life pleases me,’ that would feel like a kind of death. If things ever were good enough, I wouldn’t know what to do afterwards.”
Damn right!
Sigh.
May 30th, 2007
Good advice. Sometimes I think I should give up trying to plan my life, and just do whatever xkcd says.
See the full comic here.
May 24th, 2007
I finally acquiesced to the inevitable, and am posting from a new laptop. My Powerbook G4 is still alive, but it makes an intermittent clicking sound like a Japanese beetle, freezes up routinely, and has a battery life of ten minutes. It’s been running virtually nonstop since I bought it in 2002, so I don’t blame it at all. I’m significantly slower than I was in 2002, and my joints click too.
Somewhat disappointingly, Macs haven’t changed much in the past few years. My new MacBook Pro looks almost exactly like the G4. A few things are different - a higher-res screen (which I shall try to keep clean by NOT eating whilst typing), a new (silver!) keyboard that I have to punch with some force to avoid dropping letters, and a built-in webcam, which seems like fodder for a scary movie. (If it turns itself on while I’m blogging at 2am, I’m putting tape over it). But on the whole, now that I’ve migrated my files, I feel exactly like I’m using my old computer. This is probably an ideal user outcome - except there is a doppelganger of my laptop lying on the bed. And I somehow spent several thousand dollars. Creepy.
Naturally I have to keep the old laptop, clicks and all. The emotional attachment is too great: I wrote my thesis on that laptop! (Which wasn’t fun for either of us). But I’m sure it’s giving me reproachful looks as I type on this new keyboard.
I’m sorry, ok? It’s not you, it’s me.
Explodingdog posted a tribute to his defunct Powerbook G4 which shows I’m not the only one to get emotional over breaking up with a laptop.
May 10th, 2007
April was a cruel month indeed. I travelled round trip from West Coast to East Coast three times, in three consecutive weeks, with no more than two days between flights. That’s what one does when all the places where one might be spending the next several years extend invitations to visit, but in the most inopportune sequence possible. When I wasn’t in the airport or on a shuttle, I did get to see some lovely things - the header for this category is a find from deliciously gothic Yale. (I also saw their Gutenberg Bible, and Ralph Nader. Make of that juxtaposition what you will.)
Those who read this blog regularly may remember that I sold my house and put everything into storage the last week of March. My plan was to get back to civilization (and sushi). In fact, I’m already in a civilized location, though it’s only temporary. If April’s vicissitudes are any indication, it’s going to be a bumpy road. I’m not at my best, which is unfortunate, because on May 1 I had to finalize some major decisions about the next four years of my life. . . I hope I made the right choices. I know I’m going to be on the East Coast by September, but I’ll feel calmer when everything is completely settled.
Anyway, now that some of my personal Drama is out of the way, I AM going to paint! I swear, I am. In fact, I’m actually inspired to execute some large mixed media work that’s been percolating for a year and a half. I need materials from storage (clothes trumped Art when I loaded my car last time) so I’m going to have to drive a few hundred miles to get them. But such are the demands of Art. And fortunately Art does give back. It’s the best form of self-medication, with the possible exception of running. Between Art, running, and my four best friends (you & your phone bills know who you are), I may still be sane by September. Stay tuned!
May 8th, 2007
Yahoo and Gracenote have teamed up to create a searchable database of official song lyrics.
I’m shocked that this took so long. Clarifying song lyrics was one of the first satisfying uses I found for the internet. It’s immensely frustrating when you aren’t sure what an artist is saying, and are too poor to buy the album (or your favorite artist is so excessively, proudly artistic, when you do buy the album, you find the liner notes consist of baby photos and haiku). I never thought the Clash was “rockin’ the cat box,” but I have been guilty of appalling lyrical misconceptions, and sometimes third-party lyrics appear to have been posted by people more confused than I am.
To test this new database, I settled on the three songs that pretty much define my state of mind at the moment. It’s disappointing that my psyche can be captured in pop song lyrics - I would rather nothing less complex than a sonnet, or at least a villanelle, would do. But since it can, here are my three:
She said I think I’ll go to Boston
I think I’ll start a new life
I think I’ll start it over
where no one knows my name
-”Boston“, Augustana. This is annoying: it’s actually one of the top ten lyric downloads at Yahoo today. I am so unoriginal! I will stifle my urge to point out that I was listening to this song and putting it on mix cds a year ago, before it got heavy airplay and a piano-smashing video on VH1. Oops, I guess I didn’t actually stifle that urge, did I?
You’ll rescue me, right?
In the exact same way they never did
I’ll be happy, right?
When your healing powers kick in
You’ll complete me, right?
Then my life can finally begin
I’ll be worthy, right?
Only when you realize the gem I am
-”Precious Illusions“, Alanis Morrissette. A good test because it was popular a few years back. Has Yahoo made the effort to fill in the back catalogs of major artists? Apparently yes. I can now rest assured my whining is accurate.
Bible and beads
stacks of degrees
Reaching forever
So you take all the things that you felt then and never did show
With a picture in your head of somebody that you never did know
Put ‘em all in a box and you leave ‘em down Cinnamon Road
All the money in the world ain’t never gonna let you go
-”Cinnamon Road”, Shawn Colvin. Predictably, this song’s not in the database, despite being a newer release, by an artist that did have a bona fide hit a few years back (”Sunny Came Home”). If Shawn Colvin is too obscure for Yahoo to include all her songs, I shudder to think of an adjective befitting most of my music library. . .
Hopefully they’ll grow the database; for now, consider it a sort of beta version.
April 27th, 2007
For everyone sleeplessly pondering this right now (or is it just me??) - proof that Harvard is better than Yale.
Whew. Glad that’s sorted. Now I can relax and eat some Triscuits.
April 4th, 2007
It’s been quiet here on the blog lately, because I had to move out of my house. I closed the sale yesterday and filed the last paperwork this morning. I’m emotionally attached to this house - I did most of the work on it myself - and I’m pretty depressed about losing it. So this post is a completely self-indulgent before-and-after farewell to my house. I’ll be back on line with more science & art over the next few days.
Even though I chose to sell by deciding to quit my job and move out of the area, I still feel like the entire process was out of my control - not least because I moved out of a three-story house with two-car garage into . . . my car. (And a small storage unit). I went from homeowner to homeless yesterday. Not exactly the type of change I thought I’d be making at 30. According to the Holmes/Rahe life event scale, moving is only slightly more stressful than a vacation, but I don’t buy that for a minute. Moving is awful.
The main problem is, I have too much stuff. As an artist and biologist, I’m a hoarder twice over. If I mapped a distribution of my possessions (based on volume, not weight), it would be at least half books (about 50% science, 25% art) and at least one quarter art supplies (LOTS of paper, frames, stamps, paints, random found objects). I’m anxious over the prospect of lacking easy access to these things - which is silly, because I can be creative with a simple kit of watercolors. At least I should. But I feel like part of my brain is stored externally in my library of reference materials, tools, and inspirational objects.
On the other hand, my nesting instinct sucked most of my creative energy for the past two years. It’s much easier to paint a room than to paint a photorealistic insect. It’s also pretty darn cathartic to knock holes through walls, knowing they’re your walls, so you can fix them or not as you like. It obviates some of the need for artistic therapy. I hope that maybe, now that I’m out of the house, I’ll be able to rechannel my creativity toward art.
Whenever I get too self-indulgently whiny about losing my house, I read a fabulous sonnet, composed for me by my friend Libby. It goes in part:
Farewell, Oh house! I leave thee better far
Than when I found thee, though I had not done.
I had not masked each blemish, blot and scar
With paint, nor yet set down my caulking gun . . .
Her poem captures all the self-indulgent drama that is home renovation (it’s really about creating a smashingly impressive nest and showing it off) along with the genuine emotional investment (so I talked to my house. Using archaic diction. So what?)
The absurdity of the whole process is that you are never done. The only way to be done with an old house is to sell it and let someone else take over, caulking gun in hand. And so I did. I wish them luck, and I hope they love the house as much as I did.
Before/After
March 29th, 2007
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