Map of the cyber-world

Among subjects that challenge the imagination for how to display it graphically, the Internet would certainly be a top contender for one of the most difficult.

I was intrigued by this story in New Scientist about a project to map the Internet. You can see a recent map here (a perfectly 700 x 700 pixel graphic). A much larger (as in, don't you even think of clicking without a very fast connection) map is here (this is a 4096 x 4096 pixel image). The homepage for this project is http://www.opte.org.

I'm not sure quite yet of how this adds to my knowledge of the Internet. It does change my view of the Internet, however, by making it beautiful visually, not just conceptually.

I do look forward to the project developing the ability to pinpoint your own website, so I can say, "Hey! I can see my webpage from here!"

Where’d it go?!

So here it is, a day with very little teaching, one phone interview (done), so I went into my lab and started to set up to do an experiment. I went down the hall to get some ice...

And the flipping ice machine is gone! Blast it! Apparently, it was taken away this time because it was leaking.

I am persevering and trying to continue with the experiment.

Approaching 40...

Not me... Well, me too, I suppose, but this entry’s title is in reference one of my favourite shows. Doctor Who debuted 23 November 1963. Doctor Who's 40^th anniversary story is, perhaps appropriately, only on the internet. It’s called “Scream of the Shalka,” and you can watch it here. They’ve done animated stories on the ‘Net before for Doctor Who, but they’ve picked up the animation quality for this one. This time, the mouths actually move! And characters blink! Definitely worth a look.

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Was planning on spending today in the lab trying to get equipment running, but the number I did on my lower back means that I’m largely reduced to sitting in one place quietly. Not conducive to lab work, which requires movement.

Hopping mad

Still mad. You know how when you get really angry, you get a little more energetic than you should, because you really want to punch something but can’t? Well, yesterday, I was starting a lecture, and jumped down the stairs – and landed bad. I messed up my back, which is still sore and spasming a little today.

And the moral of the story is: Don’t get mad. (Unfortunately, I can’t get even, as I'm mad about something that’s happening to colleagues, rather than me.)

Despite that, I think I gave kick-butt lectures that morning. I was pretty energetic despite the bad back. I think the bad back was about the only thing keeping me from going ballistic yesterday.

Very bad day

Bad day here. Very angry about something being done to a colleague. Ready to pick up chair and fling it at university administrators. Seriously considering looking for new gig.

And had a zit on my lip.

Good night, Dr. Griffin, where ever you are...

One of researcher I never had a chance to meet, but wish I had, died Friday: Don Griffin. His primary claim to fame was that he discovered how bats are able to navigate in the dark: namely, through echolocation. Prior to that, I’ve heard that people seriously suggested that bats were clairvoyant, because they couldn't figure out how they did this.

Now, let me play James Burke and show the connections between that discovery and my own career. Don Griffin, working with Robert Galambos, discovers bat echolocation. Following this discovery, Ken Roeder observed that moths behaved differently when echolocating bats were around. Later, one of his students, one Dorothy Paul, published two papers in Journal of Insect Physiology on the nervous system of noctuid moths. Dorothy Paul was my supervisor for my doctoral work.

But there's a second connection. Having found that moths were specifically listening for echolocating bats, other insects were found to be able to hear those ultrasonic cries. Crickets were one of those species, and a large part of my first post-doctoral position (with Gerald Pollack) was researching some of the auditory interneurons in crickets that respond to bat-like ultrasound.

So, the late Don Griffin is sort of an intellectual great-grandfather.

Another reason Griffin was someone I wanted to meet was that he was a thoughtful writer. In the last couple of decades, he wrote many articles and books on the prospect that we could scientifically study the minds of other species. He was one of the founders of the field now called “cognitive ethology.” And I should note that he was doing this at a time when many scientists have retired.

If an afterlife existed, I would hope that Dr. Griffin would finally have a chance to enjoy retirement.

The new catalogue in the post

My parents used to make a living selling as a distributor for Eaton’s, a Canadian retailer famous for their catalogues. The Christmas catalogue was particular fun to look forward to, as a kid, because there were all the cool toys. What was a little different from how many catalogues are done now is that you took a form to a local distributor who placed the order, which was then shipped back to the distributor. Very personal sort of interaction. Eaton’s had stores in big cities, but even in the big cities, people knew about Eaton’s catalogue.

Eaton’s had been in business for decades, and it was a real shock when they closed up shop. This precipitated one of many career changes for my parents, who were pioneers in life-long learning. Let me tell you, the idea of “you’ll have several careers in your lifetime” isn’t a new idea in my household.

Now, of course, the Internet has filled the niche that catalogues used to. But in case you needed living proof of just how far removed mailouts are from human involvement, read this short article here.

Work in progress

Snapped this quick picture as I was walking into work the other morning of the big, big crane being used to build together the Regional Academic Health Center.

T’will be a lovely building. The question remains, though, as to who will work in it.

Publishing

There's a nice article here about the process of publishing scientific articles. (Those with Real Player can listen to the original radio piece by clicking here.)

It's a topic that I've talked about from time to time in this journal. I've definitely had some of the experiences that this person is talking about. And I particularly liked the poem near the end, which made me laugh out loud.


Actually, I should be talking about it more, because I should be submitting more journal articles.

Can't talk now!

Busy writing lecture that needs finishing before tomorrow's class.

Have also been having fun dealing with application for the four jobs that are open in our Department. Review begins next week, so a lot of stuff is coming in.

This sucks.

My new computer, which I thought was going to solve problems, has turned into a problem creator in a very emphatic manner. Why else does one blog at 1:17 a.m. on a Friday night / Saturday morning?

First, the hard drive was completely [rude word deleted] and needed to be replaced. Tonight, something has gone wonky with the video card (I think). It's definitely not right, whatever it is. Back to tech support...

Fast times at SPI

South Padre Island, that is. Spent most of the day out there collecting animals, after I failed to gather any when I was out there for the weekend enjoying Sandcastle Days.

Meanwhile, the ice machine is back! Repaired in a record 8 days! I wonder who got leaned on, and how hard, to make a repair that fast this time. Of course, there's still the niggling question of how long it'll keep ticking. It's like some weird game of nerves -- man versus ice machine.

May we recommend...

Here's an article that merits a trip to the library.

The pioneering team of Gert Holstege, Janniko R. Georgiadis, Anne M. J. Paans, Linda C. Meiners, Ferdinand H. C. E. van der Graaf, and A. A. T. Simone Reinders have just published their research findings, "Brain Activation during Human Male Ejaculation" in the most recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience (Volume 23, pages 9185-9193).

Their summary reads in part, "Brain mechanisms that control human sexual behavior in general, and ejaculation in particular, are poorly understood." (Ain't that the truth.)

I see great opportunities here to do a follow-up study on females.

Finagle's Law

I am not the first to note that life is unfair.

I worked at home yesterday, because I was expecting a new computer to arrive at home. My S.O. was out that day, so she wasn't around the apartment to make sure it was delivered, so I stayed home. I waited and watched... but nothing came until 6:42 pm. So I had stayed away from work all day for nothing, really. While the day wasn't completely a waste, it wasn't the most productive day I'd ever had.

Anyway, the computer finally arrives. Boo-yah! I'm psyched. I take my 4.5 year old laptop off the desk and plug the new machine in, turn it on... and am treated with the most gawdawful sound I have ever heard a computer make. (And I've owned many computers.) Two long whines, followed by a "put your teeth on edge" screech. A message comes up saying, "Hard drive not found." Bad sign.

I phoned technical service. After several back-and-forth diagnostic tests, the fellow I'm dealing with comes to the conclusion, "I think your hard drive's broken." Not exactly surprising news there. I'm now waiting arrival of a shipment of a new hard drive from the computer company.

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Five days without ice. Round 2. The ice machine has been taken away for repair again.

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Oh, the meaning of this entry's title? Click here.

Normalcy reasserts itself

The ice machine lasted nine days.

Maybe eight.

It was working Friday afternoon. It was busted this Monday morning.

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This is HESTEC week here at UTPA. All the classes in the science building were cancelled, so I spent the morning in a symposium. The first, on mathematics, was quite good, describing a system for choosing start lanes in BMX racing. The problem was that in BMX racing, some lanes are better than others, and the old system allowed a contestant a chance of getting the worst lane repeatedly, pretty much killing your chance of winning.

Second talk was on nanotechnology and how organic chemistry might be used to make very, very small computer chips...

The third talk was the worst of the lot. It described remote sensing, primarily satellite imaging. It was a bad talk because there were no actual ideas. It was more a grocery list of satellites that provide remote data. And the slides had way, way too much text on them.

The final talk really picked up, though. This was from Jeffrey Glassberg, who is one of the creators of DNA fingerprinting and the current President (founder, too, I think) of the North American Butterfly Association. Lots of great pictures. He made the very interesting point that in places like the lower Rio Grande Valley, which is something like 90% Hispanic, the local membership in wildlife organizations, like the butterfly organization, or birding organizations, is almost the opposite of the local demographics! About 90% of local members are not Hispanic. Why that should be so is an interesting and difficult question. Is it just that the tradition of natural history is really one that was strong in England, but less so in Spain, and has really carried through Anglo-Saxon culture?

Life in the graveyard

Maybe I'm just a zombie.

Had my attention drawn to a couple of interesting articles (here and here) on the (short) life of "blogs" like this one. Interestingly, most are not like this one, because the majority never get a second entry! I feel somewhat proud in having kept this journal more or less up to date for almost a year and a half now. I've probably hit the survey's criteria for "abandonment" once or twice, though.

Otherwise how are things? I'm spending a lot of time trying to order stuff for my Honours students.

Got a letter of intent in to the Whitehall Foundation in on time, and received a confirmation from them.

The applications for the many jobs our department is hiring for are starting to trickle in. Hopefully, the trickle will turn to a river after our ad comes out in Science magazine this Friday (fingers crossed).

Also spent part of the morning trying to set up what classes I would teach next semester, finally confirming that I would be able to "reactivate" an old graduate class that hasn't been taught in some time.

It's five ice machine breakdown-free days so far, and counting. When we hit a month of continuous service, I'll be very happy.

South Texas freezes over!

Incredibly, our ice machine is back and working!

It took 40 days to get it repaired, which is probably a record for repair in the last year. Of course, it's still about four times longer than it ought to be.

I will be taking down my "When will the ice machine be fixed?" count-up calendars, and replacing them with something more akin to the calendars they have in factories. You know, that say "23 accident free days." This one will say something like, "23 breakdown free days."

How bad can it get?

Bad. Warning: this article on the worst jobs in science is not for those who has, as they might have said in Victorian England, "delicate sensibilities."

Tomorrow's Friday! Already?!?

Where has this week gone?

I swear I'm not a stress junkie, but I always have problems reorienting myself when big projects come to a close, and I have to start new projects. Work sort of eased up on me like that last weekend; I was even able to clean out a lot of stuff in my office for the first time... well, since I got there two years ago. Literally! I threw out stuff that had been sitting in a pile for two years.

But it's been a weird week; I just haven't managed to make headway on anything for me. Today, for instance, I spent almost the entire day in meeting, after meeting, after meeting. The first meeting was the most fun, in a way. The University of Texas system has a consulting group (the "WAG" -- the "Washington Advisory Group") going around to 8 of the universities getting input on how to strengthen research.

Yes, I ranted about how we can't get an ice machine fixed. Oh, I think we're up to day 39 with no ice!

After that came a curriculum committee meeting, where I tried to pitch a new lab-based neurobiology class.

Finally, a meeting with several people in computer science who are looking for computational problems to apply their expertise to. Not sure I was able to give them anything they can sink their teeth into yet.

Hope to get refocused on my research projects over the weekend so I can crack in on them Monday.

A role model returns

One of the reasons I wanted to be a scientist was because of fictional characters rather than real people. Mr. Spock, science officer? Cool. Buckaroo Banzai? I decided that I wanted to be him. Renaissance man, who was both brain surgeon and lead singer of a rock and roll band. Living life to the max, going in 20 directions and once, doing many things and excelling at all. That was my goal. To some degree, I’d like to think I succeeded. My career in science has taken me around the world, and I've got a chance to use lots of different skills. Still working on the rock and roll band, though.

One of my favourite science role models is making a return. Finally. Doctor Who is coming back to telly! (Okay, I never really say “telly,” but I'm going for that British feel, since Doctor Who is a British show.)

Dr. Who, for those who don't know, is the world's longest running science fiction show. This year is the 40^th anniversary. I was introduced to the character in Starlog magazine around 1978. I saw my first episodes – The Seeds of Doom, parts 3 and 4 (yes, I am a such a geek) – on a family vacation in Texas (of all places) after a long night in... Houston? – where we'd spent rather more time than we expected trying to find a hotel. And I was lucky enough that one of the local PBS stations that broadcast into southern Alberta took up the cause to show the series routinely. I made lots of friends though watching Dr. Who, and wrote a feature article for The Meliorist when the show hit its silver 25^th anniversary.

The Doctor represented so much of what I thought a scientist should be. Adept in solving problems of all sorts, whether it be preventing a Dalek invasion or a patching a piece of broken equipment. That “Renaissance man” aspect in particular is one I love (see comments about Buckaroo Banzai, above). Not taking the word of authority (scene from The Five Doctors: Soldier: “Sir, you’re not allowed in there.” Doctor: “Me? Not allowed? I'm allowed everywhere!”). Travelling the universe. Good companions. (And, incidentally, it is total coincidence that one of the longest running Dr. Who companions and my SO are both named Sarah. Though I do have a lot of fun when I get to say, “I'm the doctor, and this is my companion Sarah.”) And it's one reason why I sometimes suggest people call me “Doctor Zen” – it has the sort of same slightly cool ring as “Doctor Who.” At least it does to my vain ears.

I’m happy.

Oh yeah, I also got the revised version of a manuscript off in the post today. That also makes me happy (I’ve been working on getting this thing in print for two years and counting), but I’m holding off on any major celebrations until I get the thing accepted.