tarigwaemir

Stanley Hall, on the Feast of Blessed Apollinaris

No incentive to work. Maybe I should go home and eat, before attempting to poke at this data further.

Summary of this week:

1. I should not be allowed to write quiz questions. Not only did I make several mistakes in writing up a question on dominant epistasis--and in the process of trying to correct them, I made more mistakes--but I also answered another question on sex linkage incorrectly. Wow, who knew that I was so incompetent at genetics? To think I actually got an A in my undergraduate genetics course...all the way back in freshman year. -_- Anyway, all mistakes have been caught, so luckily it wasn't too much of an issue.

2. Violation of my personal space gives me a headache. Granted, my personal space boundaries extend much further than most people. -_-

3. Despite having a few eye-rollers in my Tuesday section, I think the class is starting to warm up to me. Also, my Friday section has become less quiet, and unlike my Tuesday section, the smart students seem to like me. I think it helps that I'm making an effort to connect names to faces; one student seemed flattered that I remembered her name when I called on her in section today. Another student, who isn't enrolled in my section, asked me if she could audit in addition to attending her actual section, which felt rather flattering. I don't think my explanations are clear to everyone (and given that I've made mistakes in three out of the four sections I've taught so far, I don't think I give off the impression of being particularly competent), but I think my successful explanations do get through to whatever subset of the class that happens to think like me.

4. I thought having office hours on Friday 4-5 PM would mean fewer students would show up, but in fact, I ended up having three students come to my office hours today, only one of whom was actually enrolled in my sections. The other two said that it was the only office hour they could make. I also had two extra office hours this week and a request for another extra office hour next week. -_- Why me? My labmate, who is teaching the same course, had no one show up to her office hour; now I wish I timed mine like hers. Steve says I shouldn't be such a pushover, and my P.I. says that I should not let my students walk all over me, but if someone goes out of their way to request an extra office hour, I feel I ought to give one as long as it fits in my schedule. (I don't know...I'm coming to realize that the undergraduate culture here is subtly different. How so, I can't quite articulate yet.)

5. Four samples treated exactly the same, and yet one looks perfect, while the other three failed. Argh. Will have to repeat. I'm worried that I don't have enough oligo-dT beads to isolate mRNA again. Also, a qPCR experiment with inexplicable results...I think I need to repeat it too. I am so behind! I still haven't gotten around to setting up sequencing reactions or troubleshooting my (still unsuccessful) transformation. At this rate, I might not have a candidate gene by quals.

6. It was Steve's birthday on Wednesday, so I baked him a cake on Tuesday. I'd never baked a cake before. I used a vegan cake recipe that I got from our former lab manager. I substituted malt syrup for vanilla, used brown rice vinegar instead of regular vinegar, and mixed white sugar and brown sugar since I ran out of the former, but the result came out edible! Miraculous. Here's the recipe:

3/2 cup flour
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 cup cold water
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Pre-heat oven to 350° F. Mix dry ingredients in bowl. Mix wet ingredients (except vinegar) in separate bowl. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix well. Add vinegar, mix well, pour and bake immediately for 35 min at 350° F.

A great addition you can do is to either swirl in peanut butter into the cake just before baking or make a fake frosting w/ peanut butter, soy milk and sugar (just add various amounts until it tastes good).

(Courtesy of Laurie)

I did try to swirl in peanut butter but they settled like chunks into the cake batter. I also didn't bother making an actual "fake frosting" but just spread peanut butter on top of the cake. Luckily, Steve likes peanut butter.

7. Ordered the Most Comfortable Shoes Ever, which arrived today and are indeed Very Comfortable.

8. I've decided I will not be going to lab tomorrow but will analyze data from home. I also plan to use the time to finish reading Queen's Play. (That wrestling scene with the Cornishman! Dunnett amazes me with how well she writes action; she notes down every detail without losing suspense. Also, Lymond doesn't quite wring my heart as much as he did in A Game of Kings, but then again, I still have a third of the book left.)

9. No progress on blind_go. Too weary to write. Clearly, I was not meant to be a writer. >_>

Yours &c.

Stanley Hall on the Feast of St. John the Silent

What I dislike more than feeling ashamed of handing in a shoddy assignment: not feeling ashamed of handing in a shoddy assignment. >_> Taking this genetics course was not actually a waste of time, but I treated it as if it was and set it very low on my priority list. Took a look at the final and already have sinking feeling that I'm going to also write it up at the last minute, gloss over details, and (at least for Prof. Cline's section) miss the point of the question. Speaking of Prof. Cline's section, one question (worth five points) asks: "What statement in the Perrimon paper betrays an ignorance of the literature as well as a failure to appreciate a potential pitfall of his experimental design?"

...

Granted, grad school courses are supposed to teach you how to critique papers, but doesn't the wording of that question just highlight exactly why we all found his section of the course to be so frustrating?

Sorry for all the exasperation. I had a major assignment due yesterday and another one due today (though we got an extension to tomorrow morning). I also have the aforementioned final due next Monday, plus I (rather stupidly) scheduled my move to the new apartment for this weekend (actual move will probably take place Friday night, with clean-up and settling in on Saturday). Despite my grandiose plans to guess systematically for this round of blind_go, I suspect it's not going to happen. (Apologies to those of you who were looking forward to stumping me for this round.) I feel as if I ought to be more stressed out but judging from the way I overslept this morning after having gone to sleep early last night, I'm in some sort of avoidant phase.

How I've been procrastinating: using my Google Reader Shared Items page as a del.icio.us stand-in. I could never get the hang of remembering to bookmark pages with the del.icio.us Firefox toolbar extension, but for some reason I am quite happy to use the "Note in Reader" bookmarklet. I use my other Google Reader account for science-related feeds; ask me if you want the Shared Items page for that account. (You probably don't, unless you share my research interests.) I probably will end up reposting some of the Shared Items in linkblog posts here, but the page is there if you're bored and want interesting links right away.

I also finished reading Zelazny's Lord of Light, where the setup was brilliant and the ending a little disappointing. More on that once I remember to update my reading blog.

A brief hiatus until I'm all moved in and my final is finished. By which I mean, I will actually endeavour not to read my friends list. If you see me posting or commenting on anything that isn't related to bibliophages and blind_go, tell me to stop. >_< Of course, I suspect this self-imposed silence will only result in my updating Twitter more often.

Yours &c.

Post-script: Just to say, posted the full list of recommendations at bibliophages for the theme "Fantastic Voyages" here.

Haste Street, on the Feast of St. Augustine

First day of classes. General consensus seems to be that Advanced Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is deathly boring. I wouldn't mind boring so much if the lecture didn't seem so unstructured. The professor gave a lecture on nucleotide metabolism today, and I honestly wasn't able to tell what the point of the lecture was. He didn't really go over the purine biosynthesis pathways; instead, he just pointed out various interesting aspects that didn't seem to tie together to make any overarching point (other than, "these metabolic pathways have various interesting aspects"). Advanced Genetics, Genomics and Development, however, was tremendous fun, though we had a lot of information thrown at us at a very rapid rate. (Well, at least it keeps me awake.)

Part of what may account for the pace is that all the courses are divided among three professors who teach more or less independently. There's a "final" after each third of the course. It feels more like sequentially taking three short five-week courses that are somewhat interrelated in topic, rather than taking a single course.

Anyway, I'm going to stick with the biochemistry course a while longer and see if it gets better. If it doesn't, I may have to drop it. I'm supposed to take one core course (out of three total) that isn't in my "division" (i.e. genetics, genomics and development), and originally, I'd intended biochemistry to be my "out-of-division" course, but if I drop it, I'm not sure what I'll take instead. Maybe I should just take neurobiology or cell biology next semester (but that would mean giving up the chance to take the computational biology class). Argh.

Took a typing test (link from aiwritingfic): 104.79 wpm and 434.48 cpm, with two errors. Personally, I think the writing sample was too short, and the sample I got had the sort of language I'm used to typing for papers, so I think my speed was inflated. (Previous typing tests usually place my speed in the 60-80 wpm range, depending on the sort of text I'm typing.)

Really cool meme from zoesque:

Give me a series and I'll tell you who on my f-list would play each character (in my opinion). Please be specific, though. If you say 'Furuba', specify 'Zodiac members' or 'Student Council', etc. unless it's a small enough series that I can actually COVER all of the characters without my hands falling off. You know my fandoms-- if not, ask.

Yours &c.

Lowell House, on the Feast of the Presentation at the Temple

( Kendo babble )

As for shopping period...You know, despite being the type of person who plans her academic schedule at least four years in advance, I have never had a college semester turn out exactly the way I expected. I suppose that's why we need a shopping period in the first place. Anyway, after long agonizing, I think I've finally decided on my courses for the semester.

To fill my last Core requirement in Literature and Arts B (visual or performing arts): "Bach in His Time and Through the Centuries". We haven't had a lecture from the professor himself yet, but the head TF played a videorecording of the St. Matthew Passion at the first class meeting. *_* Of course I couldn't resist. Anyway, Bach was the only composer I ever enjoyed playing on the piano, and I love listening to counterpoint, so I'm very much looking forward to this course.

I had a hard time finding a second course because I wasn't satisfied with either of the biology courses I shopped. "Introduction to Biostatistics" was going to be my backup option, but I found the class to be deathly boring. I went again this morning to give the class another chance and found myself nodding off and counting the minutes to the end of the hour. -_- As an alternative, I shopped "Ordinary Differential Equations" today and really enjoyed it because the professor is quite nice and a clear lecturer. The catch is that biostats is ridiculously easy (all lecture notes supplied in a spiral-bound coursepack, all exams both open-note and open-book), while previous experience has shown that I don't exactly find differential equations intuitive. >_> Also, statistics is probably slightly more urgent in terms of material I should learn for a future career in science. So I've been pestering my mother, my roommates, my post-doc and even Angelette for their opinions on the subject, but I think I've finally decided to go with differential equations. I took a look at the first two assignments today and found them thankfully straightforward. I still hate the thought of having to hand in problem sets during my last semester in college, but I suppose taking biostats instead wouldn't change that situation.

(Argh, I'm going to have to be fairly industrious to make up the material for all the classes I'm going to miss from being away at interviews. >_<)

I decided also to audit "Writing Asian Poetry". I'd be missing too many classes to take it for credit, but I really liked the small group atmosphere, and the professor was awesome. The course covers the Chinese quatrain (Li Po and Tu Fu), Japanese haiku (Basho), and Korean sijo (Yun Seon-do). The reading is light, and I figure it can help me keep my equilibrium over spring semester, which is always a stressful time. I suppose auditing brings my course load officially back up to four, but I'm officially taking only two lecture courses and thesis research. ^_^ Here's to an easy spring semester! Let's ignore the fact that I'm going to be spending my weekend trying to write my thesis.

Yours &c.

Lowell House, on the Feast of St. Benedict Bennet

I have all these mysterious documents saved on my laptop with file names like "blah.txt" and "stupidity.txt" not to mention really long note files where I do the typing equivalent of talking to myself out loud while working on a paper. I thought I should take the bits and pieces I liked and store them somewhere before I purged the rest.

( Excerpts worth saving )

On that note, I will go back to trying to "systematize" what we learned about developmental biology this semester.

Yours &c.

Lowell House on the Feast of St. John Damascus

( Meandering thoughts )

I think I should make a tag for incoherent rambling posts. -_- If you're wondering whether there was a point in any of the above stream-of-consciousness, please rest assured, there wasn't any.

Yours &c.

Lowell House on the Feast of St. Sidonius

The madness is starting all over again! blind_go, round two, sign up here. We've added a couple of twists: short!fic (100-1000 words), with up to five submissions from each author. We're also trying to put together a theme list as a community activity, so even if you don't plan on writing (and even if you do plan on writing), please give us theme suggestions here.

In other news, I went to kendo practice tonight (I usually skip Tuesday practices) because there was no practice this past weekend, and there'll probably be no practice this Saturday. I would like to say something like, "Yeah, kendo's a drug, and I need to get my fix," but actually it's more like, "Ahhh, I haven't practiced in over a week, I'm going to fall out of shape again, ahhh!"

Of course, I still need to finish my paper. Yes, the one due tomorrow. Well, at least I'm on an endorphin high from practice. ^_^ I'm doing something weird with my arms again, and I keep hitting men-gane so I still need to focus on extending more, but I feel like I've gotten over some sort of mental stumbling block. Not sure if it actually shows in my form though, since my fumikomi still sucks. Although I'm not landing on my heel or lifting my knee as much as before. There were abominably few veterans at practice today (only Brian and Jon, plus Kofi as the supervising alumnus), but I guess that's not too surprising. I was pleased to get a chance to hit kote...but was not so pleased to realize that I kept hitting off-target and forgot how to make a proper large swing. Sigh. ;_; (Debana-kote is my favorite waza, you see, although I don't try it very often anymore and have gotten rather bad at it.)

I had something to say...oh right. So, the following may just end up being one of those "null set posts" but I've been amusing myself by trying to come up with kendo analogies for each of the Chinese philosophers we've read so far.

( The Way of the sword via classical Chinese philosophy )

I had more to babble about, but paper-writing calls.

Yours &c.

Sherman Fairchild, on the Feast of St. Luke

Hm, I've never received a list of paper topics this specific before. O_O I mean, the professor even included notes about organization, e.g. "Then, in the last portion of your paper, give your best critique of Freud's treatment of sexuality." Although come to think of it, most of these notes on structure require incorporation of a counterargument, which makes sense. Hey, it means I'm writing a proper historiography paper again! I haven't done that since high school.

( Ramble, ramble )

That reminds me, xuande (玄德), which is Liu Bei's zi, is referred to frequently in the Daodejing, translated in our text as "Enigmatic Virtue". I suppose the term is supposed to contrast with the defined Virtue of the Confucians, which is verbalized as ren (仁) and yi (義)? Anyway, I've no idea if that throws any light on Liu Bei's character himself, but it's an interesting connection.

Prof. Puett is usually a great lecturer but he was extremely repetitive when it came to Laozi. I've been wondering whether it was due to the nature of the text, which is difficult to discuss analytically because one of its major points is that the real state of things defies division and analysis, or whether he was just unprepared.

I started reading Zhuangzi, who has so far won the prize for being the most confusing philosopher we've encountered so far. I would also venture to call him the most modern, insofar as his very use of language is meant to demonstrate its inability to communicate meaning. Almost a deconstruction of sorts? Although perhaps it's also a function of the translation because I have Thomas Merton's The Way of Chuang Tzu, which has translations of the verses, and it sounds a little less alien than the translation we have in the course text. I can see though why Zhuangzi influenced the development of Zen Buddhism because his writing is pretty much an endless chain of koan after koan. Seriously, it's quite mindbending. Oddly enough, he's my favorite philosopher so far. I liked Mengzi too, which only goes to show that I still fall for the idealists.

Yours &c.

Post-script: You know, it occurs to me that the question in biology that fascinates me most parallels the central problem of Asimovian psychohistory: how does one describe the behavior of a complex, interacting population of individual agents in terms of systematic rules? Except it's molecules I'm dealing with, instead of human beings. The crucial difference, I suppose, is that human beings are self-aware. (Although occasionally selfish gene theorists slip into language that seems to attribute sentience to genes as well. Tangentially, it occurred to me that Freud's whole theory of the pleasure principle as the driving energy behind all human behavior kind of mirrors the selfish gene theory of the "replication principle" being responsible for all biological phenomena. The ego as a construct for the id to fulfill its desires in a hostile reality; the organism as a construct for genetic material to self-replicate in a hostile environment.)

Lowell House, on the Feast of St. Constantius

( Some scattered thoughts on the Mandate of Heaven and the Analects )

Oh, while I'm talking about Ravages of Time, sweetxsangria, I put up a more complete version of the character guide with most of the missing pinyin from before. Still only covering the first ten volumes though. (Please let me know if you find any mistakes!)

And yay, blind_go answers are up here! I unlocked my post from several days ago with all my guesses for blind_go, if you're curious. Edit: Apparently being able to eliminate four fanfics (three of which I inadvertently knew through my mod privileges) makes a huge difference in your guessing percentage. O_O;;

Yours &c.

Lowell House on the Feast of St. Joseph and Companions

More blather about shopping period. Modern European Intellectual History is horribly intimidating, with huge amounts of reading (I just got the sourcebook, and it's nearly 700 pages long). The professor was probably my archetype of the Harvard humanities professor: extremely articulate, a little neurotic, and very passionate about his subject. My only qualm about the course is the amount of work involved; the professor says the main challenge is the reading since there would "only" be three "short" papers and a "straightforward" final examination. I'm not sure if I trust his concept of "short" and "straightforward", but after talking it over with my mother, I decided to take it anyway.

The reading list for this course includes most of the major thinkers of the modern era: Nietzsche, Freud, Lukacs, Adorno, Horkheimer, Heidegger, Weber, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida and Foucault. I figure I'd be able to say that I've had a proper liberal arts education after such a runthrough. But seriously, I really like the way the professor thinks, the questions he poses, and the way he contextualizes these ideas. If it were a pure philosophy class, I'd probably not find it as interesting, but the historical lens makes it fascinating. It's still intimidating though because I've never been surrounded by so many humanities concentrators in one class. I'll have to muster up the nerve not to drown in discussion sections.

Intertextuality failed to blow me away; the professor was nice but didn't thrill me, if that makes any sense. A shame because the course had an interesting reading list too (Byatt's Possession, Murakami's Kafka on the Shore among others), and I thought, looking through the syllabus, that it would be really neat to do a final paper on fanfiction (if that was allowed). The topics being covered are exactly the same questions arising in fandom meta. Nonetheless, the lecture was, well, not really scintillating. The only exciting part was interpreting the sparrow in Catullus' poem "Lesbia's Sparrow" as a phallic symbol, haha. It's a much easier course though (only two hours a week, no section, two papers), and I wondered whether I shouldn't go the route of keeping my sanity intact instead. But oh well, what is college for if not to take risks?

Structural Biology was boring. So much for my efforts to understand crystallography. I really shouldn't call myself a "biochemistry" concentrator; I'm really a molecular biologist/geneticist through and through. -_-

Anyway, so I'll be taking Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Thought, Modern European Intellectual History, and Developmental Biology. Plus thesis research, of course. Let's hope I'm not making a huge mistake.

Kendo practice tonight. By the way, the MAC is closed next spring. (ladydaera, klio911, did you hear about it yet?) It's just wonderful that the administration doesn't tell us ahead of time but waits for us to find out through the Crimson. Of course no mention of how club sports are utterly screwed over by this decision.

Yours &c.