Update + meme
Mar. 12th, 2008 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirHaste Street, on the Feast of St. Theophanes the Chronicler
Ow, ow, ow. Have had headache for most of day--like a knitting needle being stabbed into the upper left corner in the back of my skull--probably because I stayed up until six this morning to prepare for Methods and Logic. Methods and Logic being the course on how to read and write scientific papers with student-led discussions; my turn to lead discussion this week, and of course we have the best papers: experimental evolution paper from the Lenski lab, controversial paper about how genes required for a pathway may not show corresponding changes in transcription from the Davis lab, and paper on the genomics of rose fragrance genes. Nonetheless, no matter how awesome the papers were, I still dragged my feet until one in the morning before I finally started being productive. -_-
Hence, my attempt to gain enough knowledge of statistics in under five hours to sound like I knew what I was talking about when explaining terms like the Bonferroni correction and Fisher's exact test. The upside is that contrary to my previous prejudices, I've now decided that statistics is actually a wonderful subject. It makes so much sense! I was thinking that I would have to enroll in a biostatistics course sooner or later to force myself to learn the material, but maybe I'll have enough motivation to study the basics on my own and take a more advanced course on, say, stochastic processes later. ^_^
There's a building being torn down on campus: yesterday, as I passed by, its walls were being gouged by a crane while two hoses sprayed it with water. Quite the sight--and I wasn't the only one who thought so, since there were several people watching and taking photos. Why is destruction so aesthetically pleasing anyway? Something about the clumps of concrete hanging like beads on warped steel cables curved and fraying while the building slowly crumbles. Iris and I passed by the remaining corpse today and paused a moment to admire its silhouette against the darkening sky. Disassembled, dissected, its innards exposed to view--but the building still had a sort of stately dignity, perhaps even more dignity than it did as a squat nondescript gray hall before. The same sort of calm, quiet pride one senses in the presence of ruins.
The reading list for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bibliophages can be found here, longer than ever despite the fact that we only had three recommenders for this round. (If you were curious about any of the books on the poll I posted a while ago, I actually did manage to write a brief blurb for all of them.)
And finally, that meme that's been going around the friends list: Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.
A timely meme, since![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tokyofish just told me last week that I should post more often. To be honest, if I don't blog about something, it's usually because I don't really have any thoughts to share on the topic. I can think of only a few exceptions to that rule, but of course, now's your chance to get me to blog about them.
Yours &c.
Ow, ow, ow. Have had headache for most of day--like a knitting needle being stabbed into the upper left corner in the back of my skull--probably because I stayed up until six this morning to prepare for Methods and Logic. Methods and Logic being the course on how to read and write scientific papers with student-led discussions; my turn to lead discussion this week, and of course we have the best papers: experimental evolution paper from the Lenski lab, controversial paper about how genes required for a pathway may not show corresponding changes in transcription from the Davis lab, and paper on the genomics of rose fragrance genes. Nonetheless, no matter how awesome the papers were, I still dragged my feet until one in the morning before I finally started being productive. -_-
Hence, my attempt to gain enough knowledge of statistics in under five hours to sound like I knew what I was talking about when explaining terms like the Bonferroni correction and Fisher's exact test. The upside is that contrary to my previous prejudices, I've now decided that statistics is actually a wonderful subject. It makes so much sense! I was thinking that I would have to enroll in a biostatistics course sooner or later to force myself to learn the material, but maybe I'll have enough motivation to study the basics on my own and take a more advanced course on, say, stochastic processes later. ^_^
There's a building being torn down on campus: yesterday, as I passed by, its walls were being gouged by a crane while two hoses sprayed it with water. Quite the sight--and I wasn't the only one who thought so, since there were several people watching and taking photos. Why is destruction so aesthetically pleasing anyway? Something about the clumps of concrete hanging like beads on warped steel cables curved and fraying while the building slowly crumbles. Iris and I passed by the remaining corpse today and paused a moment to admire its silhouette against the darkening sky. Disassembled, dissected, its innards exposed to view--but the building still had a sort of stately dignity, perhaps even more dignity than it did as a squat nondescript gray hall before. The same sort of calm, quiet pride one senses in the presence of ruins.
The reading list for
bibliophages can be found here, longer than ever despite the fact that we only had three recommenders for this round. (If you were curious about any of the books on the poll I posted a while ago, I actually did manage to write a brief blurb for all of them.)And finally, that meme that's been going around the friends list: Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.
A timely meme, since
tokyofish just told me last week that I should post more often. To be honest, if I don't blog about something, it's usually because I don't really have any thoughts to share on the topic. I can think of only a few exceptions to that rule, but of course, now's your chance to get me to blog about them. Yours &c.
