Sometimes, it's a breeze

Today has been a good, but busy, day.

My colleague Virginia Scofield has been in working with my student Anna (blonde version) and myself running experiments, and we've getting very nice and clear results. I was joking with them, "So, you reckon we can have a letter to Nature out by, what, end of October?"

And I had my student Anna (brunette version) in setting up an experiment. And Gloria and Nisha in the lab were in doing things. too.

I had a bit of a concern this morning when my students started to tell me that there was a problem with one of the questions in their online quiz, but it turned out to be a relatively trivial issue.

Today definitely beats yesterday, when I got sidetracked several times before I got to do anything. First, I tried to put in my new contacts, and could barely see out of one eye. I wear monthly disposible contacts, and this was a new batch, so I was convinced they'd just given me the wrong prescription. Turned out not to be the case, but that took two hours to fix in the morning before I even stepped into my office. Then, I got email from the Dean concerning the job advertisement for the faculty positions we're hiring -- that took another hour. Then I had a meeting at lunch. That meant I really didn't get anything started until 1:00 pm, and I was expecting Virginia to arrive around 3:00 pm to start some experiments! Fortunately, I somehow managed to finish the major tasks (writing a quiz) I had to do by the time Virginia arrived.

So, as Stevie Nicks once sang, "Sometimes it's a bitch, sometimes it's a breeze."

Unless it's the ice machine. That's never a breeze. I saw service people looking at it today, but I'm quite sure that today is day 16 with no ice.

A quick entry before bed

I'm up a little late tonight, working at home, getting a quiz ready for two of my General Biology classes to take Wednesday. My third class, Neurobiology, also has a quiz Wednesday, which I'll have to finish tomorrow -- in and around hosting a visit by my colleague Virginia Scofield, a graduate studies committee meeting at lunch (blast no, no noon workout again), meeting with students, writing budgets for students, writing an internal grant proposal, answering emails, marking off the calendar that will show we've been over a fortnight without a working ice machine, and I'm sure one or two other little tasks...

But now? Off to bed.

Annual purgatory

I like my job, but I hate documenting it.

It's the time of year when I have to submit a big binder for my annual tenure-track review. While I appreciate that there needs to be mechanism to establish that someone is doing his or her job, the amount of documentation makes performing this task an absurd extravagance of time. And they couldn't find a better time to ask us to submit them than the start of the fall semester?

On the plus side, while I was in the office printing emails (more documentation), I was also running back and forth to my lab to work with blonde Anna on some simple little experiments we were doing. And whaddya know -- they worked! Still very preliminary, but it was a good sign nonetheless. Particularly since my colleague Virginia Scofield will be visiting Edinburg next week; Anna and I wanted to make sure we could get this experimental set-up working so we could take full advantage of Virginia's trip next week.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: we're up to day 13 with no ice. The ice machine is still sitting in its spot in the equipment corridor, immobile, empty, and, I'm sure, sad.

My name on a T-shirt. Was bound to happen, really...

Yesterday I was talking to one of the seven (!) students I'm supervising this semester, one of my Annas. (I'm working with Anna A., who’s from here, I think, and Anna S., who’s from Germany). So we were happily discussing research plans, had been for several minutes, when I suddenly stopped, and said, “Does that shirt say, ‘Zen’?”

It was one of those bizarre, “A-ha!” moments. It was like how you sometimes you look at an optical illusion, and you suddenly see something that you didn’t see a second ago.

Her shirt was pink, with stylized clouds outline (at least, they looked liked cloud outlines to me) in slightly darker pink. Also in slightly darker pink was a sort of scaly ribbon, running and twisting around through the middle. At first, I first thought was a pink Chinese dragon. The shirt a slightly Asian feel – although the very definite pinkness of the shirt made it perhaps feel slightly less Asian than it would otherwise.

Anna hadn’t realized at all that her shirt said anything (“Doesn’t it say, ‘ZEM’?”), much less spelled out her supervisor’s name.

;;;;;

Today? I tracked down information I needed for my tenure folder, did some emailing regarding the International Society for Neuroethology website, made a trip out to the Coastal Studies lab to gather some tunicates, took care of the crayfish, introduced my student Anna S. to tunicates, and introduced my student Gloria to crayfish.
Oh yes, and wrote a blog entry. ;)

Sympathy for the chemists

We in the Biology Department share our building with the Chemistry department. We take up the first two floors, they take up the third floor. We have a lot of shared interests, shared facilities... and shared problems.

Their ice machine's busted too.

Which sucks for us, because sometimes we in Biology have been known to nick a bit of the chilly stuff from the chemists.

In other news, I have several things vying for my attention besides getting things together for my students. I have tenure-track review and merit folders to put together. The annoying thing about the merit folder is that they're normally used to determine a merit-based raise -- but there is no such raise this year due to state budget cutbacks. Yet we go through this compilation of data anyway...

And there's also an internal faculty grant proposal that is going to be due in a couple of weeks. I'm going to try to pull something together for that, but it won't be easy. But at least it'll be easier than getting our ice machine fixed.

That's eight ice-free days in biology and counting.

A distinct lack of chilliness

Today, we celebrate four glorious ice free days. And here's the photographic proof...

The light is low, so my little digital camera gives a fairly scratchy picture. But the cord dangling over the front, instead of being plugged into the socket, and the absence of anything white and frosty inside the bin is pretty much a dead giveaway.

The lab grows...

How did I end up trying to supervise seven people? Four Honor's students, two students supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute program at Louisina State University, and one entering first year student. It's all because I'm a big pushover who can't say no, that's why.

I met with all of them, except one of my Anna's, who I don't think is back from visiting her home in Germany. It was good to talk to all of them, although things are going to get really ratty really fast when I try to get their projects going.

;;;;;

The Ice Diaries, day 3: Ice machine still broken.

Ice machine 2, biologists 0

If we have a symbol of the problems that new tenure track faculty at this university face when they try to get research done... it is our ice machine.

An ice machine is not exactly a high tech piece of kit. Freeze water. Break up frozen water into little pieces. That's about it. Not so very complicated. But various people in our department -- including me -- need that shaved ice to do research. I need it to quickly and properly anaesthetize various critters that I work on (cold knocks out crustaceans, you see). In short, the ice machine is a mundane but necessary piece of scientific equipment in our department.

Our ice machine is broken. It broke yesterday.

Now, here's the thing. It's been broken a hell of a lot more than it's been working for the last year. We shall soon have enough data to publish a bloody monograph on the subject of ice machine breakdown.

Over the last year, a distinct pattern has emerged. Ice machine breaks. Ice machine is taken away, leaving bare pipe sticking out of the wall where it should be sitting. My colleague Mike Persans (who is a self-admitted pushy New Yorker) keeps after the maintainence people, asking when it's going to be fixed.

Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months.

The ice machine finally returns. It works for about a week, and breaks again. Back to square one.

It's like some weird battle of nerves between the machine and maintenance versus the biologists. I think we biologists are going to be the first to break. Because as far as we've been able to determine, there seems to be absolutely no sense of urgency or comprehension on the part of almost anyone else that we scientists need this thing.

It's gotten to the point that when I go to scientific meetings, or talk to friends, or whatever, about how my job is, I almost inevitably tell them about the ice machine. I asked one of my colleagues, "How long does it take to get an ice machine fixed at Harvard?" He answered, "They never break."

Since I've already been telling my colleagues about these ice machine woes, I have now decided that I will turn to one of my few remaining weapons in this battle: satire. After all, when polite requests, earnest pleas, outright begging on bended knees, patience, threats, and bribes don't solve a problem, maybe it's time to turn to public ridicule.

Maybe I can turn a profit on this. I can start a betting pool. "I'm tipping four months, one week for the next repair. Who wants some of this action?"

The university I work for, UTPA, has the goal of becoming a bona fide research institution. Great goal. Would help my career a lot. But this whole bloody situation with the ice machine just goes to show that a lot of people here do not have a clue what it takes to do research. How are we supposed to conduct experiments when things don't get fixed? In the competitive field of research, comparing a department where equipment doesn't break versus where a campus where the equipment doesn't work isn't a competition, it's absolute black comedy. Or perhaps grim parody.

Back to class

Not a bad first day. Only bad moment was in my neurobiology class, when someone pointed out that I had dates for last semester up instead of this semester. Whoops. Then, I discovered that some of the updates I had made to the class website were done too late before the class changed servers, so I had to redo some work.

End of an era

The University of Texas - Pan American can no longer boast of having the longest serving university president in the U.S.A. Our current president, Miguel (Mike) Nevarez, announced that he was going to retire in a year. He's been president 22 years. Made me think, "Do they even remember how to select a new president?"

The question over cake today, of course, was, "Who's going to replace him?" Hopefully there will be a good slate of candidates. Because I can think of at least one person who, if elected president, would seriously make me think of looking for a new gig. I'm sure any of my colleagues in the University reading this will snicker in recognition when they read that last sentence.

Class creep

...And by "creep," I mean "sneak up stealthily," not "reprehnsible individual."

The first day of the fall semester is this Monday. This means I'm spending the second half of this week preparing for classes. The tasks are routine and time consuming. Fortunately, they are not terribly mentally stressful, now that I'm teaching classes that I've done at least once before. It also means that with increased traffic around the university, I won't be able to skateboard into work any more.

I have discovered one thing this week that I'm pretty excited about, though. I'm a long time computer geek. To give you an idea of how long I've had a home computer, the first one I owned used cassette tapes for data storage. Awful. Slow and nothing remotely resembling reliable. The first 5.25" floppy drive I got was a revalation. Then came the 3.5" floppy diskette, which has had a surprisingly long lifespan in the computer age. Still pretty good for most thing, but they're definitely reaching the limits of their usefulness as filesizes invariably get bigger.

I'd had nothing but bad experiences with zip drives (every single one succumbed to "the click of death"). CDs had many great great, but were limited for a while because they were "read only," and still somewhat clunky. And while rewritable CD burners are common, they're still not everywhere. I need only look in front of me.

I think I've finally found the replacement for floppies, though. USB drives, a.k.a. flash drives or thumb drives. I got a small, cheap one this week to try it out. It's fantastic. You plug it into a USB port, and the computer automatically recognizes it and you can use it just like a floppy drive. They're solid state so don't seem to be susceptible to magnets, they're very small, and have good capacity. I got a 16 MB one for $10, but that's the real low end; 124 or 256 MB drives are available for more. Definitely my favourite new toy of the week.

Erika

It's hard not to be a little disappointed. All the build-up, the warnings, the University shutting down, the forecast of 15 cm of rain...
And it's just a cloudy day out.

Not particularly windy. Not particularly wet. Nothing really out of the ordinary. I thought I vaguely heard some rain and thunder early in the morning, but that's about it. I guess the storm went a little further south; it seems Mexico is getting the bulk of the rain. Now, I do admit that some of the news footage taken overnight from nearby South Padre Island looked a little more like what you'd expect a storm to look like. And I certainly don't mean to trivialize the seriousness of a storm.

First, Claudette veers north and comes nowhere near this place. Then, Erika seems to dissipate into not very much. I can only hope all my hurricane experiences are like these...

&nbsp

Some pictures taken from my apartment balcony around lunchtime.
I think I'll be taking the opportunity to stay in today, maybe clean up a little. Give myself a mental health day after two rather frantic days in the lab. Speaking of which, the gods of science were rather stingy with me. It appears that not many of the stains I tried actually worked. Which isn't surprising, given that the tissue was decomposing as I was working on it. The last dead lobster of the day I dissected was so bad, I just gave up on it.

Whoops, not yet

Ah, the rain stopped, so I guess the onset of Erika is not quite as near as I'd feared.

5:20 pm and Annette hasn't shown up.

The nick of time

I'm just about done processing my lobster samples. And it started raining about 5 minutes ago.

Place your bets

I'm betting my student Annette won't come in this afternoon to check on the ascidian experiment she started yesterday. Which would mean I'd have to check on it.

Bar the gates

Tropical storm Erika is threatening us to the point where they are closing the university tomorrow, and nobody is supposed to be allowed in. Not even us researchers. This puts the bash in my plans for doing half the of my experiment processing today and half tomorrow. I have to finish it all today.

Luckily, the techniques I'm using are pretty robust. "Robust" is code for, "You can take shortcuts and probably get away with it." Still, I've been having to "triage" the material I'm working with. Quick look to see how promising it looks; it gets the full treatment if it looks good, otherwise, it gets a shortcut.

Another irritation was that all this morning, they've been testing the alarms, so every little while, the siren would sound and lights would flash. This I could handle, except the fume hoods kept shutting off. I'm using some fairly nasty chemicals in processing the tissue I'm working with, so when the fume hood shuts off, it's noticeable. I made a comment to Nisha this morning that between the dead lobster smell first thing in the morning (which seems to be under control now that I've retightened the lid to the body bucket) and the chemical smell when the fume hood was off, the lab probably smelled like the Bog of Eternal Stench in the movie Labyrinth.

And if that weren't enough...

Tropical Storm Erika is supposed to hit tomorrow.

And I dropped my very fine, delicate dissecting scissors on the floor last night. Dang it. Those things are expensive.

Wee-oooh!

Just walked into my lab, and it smells like a fishmarket. Another drawback of having almost a dozen lobsters die at once. I really wish there was a window I could open!

Aftermath

I finished the experiments a few minutes after midnight. I hope nothing was stolen last night, because I'd probably be the prime suspect! I can just hear it now: "There was a suspicious looking character leaving the building with a big backpack after midnight last night."

One of the advantages of leaving late, though, is you get new experiences. I left the building and saw three people rollerblading their dogs, which tickled me. (Incidentally, the people were on the rollerblades, not the dogs.)

But then, just to round off a dreary day, just as I was about to go to bed... I get hiccups. I'm tired but don't want to disturb Sarah's sleep, I stay up, waiting for them to go away. I think I finally crawled into bed about quarter to 2. Needless to say, I didn't have one of my earliest starts this morning.

Disasters

August hates me.

For some reason, for several years, it always seems something stressful happens to me in August. The end of July fills me with a slight sense of dread. “What’s it going to be this year?”

Tuesday and Wednesday were marked by a massive virus attack on the University, which resulted in us having no email or web in the Science building for large chunks of the last couple of days.

But that didn’t bother me, because I'd had lots of student in the lab working, and I’d just got in a shipment of spiny lobsters for the project of one of my students, Nisha. They all arrived well, so I did one experiment with one and left the rest.

I came in this morning and every single lobster had carked it.

Damn.

I’ve spent the day dissecting the “recently deceased” remains of the lobsters, trying to get some basic anatomical information from them. Fortunately, some of the techniques I use are pretty robust and can be used if the tissue is in reasonably good shape, even some time after the animal dies. It's about 20 to 10 at night, and I'm not near done yet. I can only hope the gods of science see my small sacrifice of midnight oil and see fit to reward me with some useful information.

Still, it could be worse. My disaster only affects me and one student, and not really very much.

I could be living in Toronto, Ottawa, or much of eastern North America, who are suffering the world's biggest power outage... Hang tough, guys.

The world is secretly run by turkeys

(A friend of mine sent me this, and I couldn't resist running it. It’s downright surigical in how precisely it exposes the loopy logic and argumentative style of conspiracy theorists. -ZF)

I realized this yesterday while looking at a turkey motif carved into the outer stone walls of the Hotel Vancouver. The motif serves a similar decorative function as the gryphon motif noted by Icke on his website, so it got me thinking about the possibility of a grand turkey conspiracy going back to ancient times. Let's consider the “facts”, shall we?

- Why is it that businessmen and other people in positions of POWER! call getting down to serious business “Talking Turkey”? Is this a reference to a SECRET! language known only by the INITIATED!?

- Benjamin Franklin, a MASON!, wanted the turkey to be the national bird of America. He wanted to put a turkey image on all American bills, his TEMPLE BROTHERS! decided to go with the eye-of-god/pyramid symbols instead. Was this because those symbols had already been “LEAKED!”, but as yet, the secret of the turkey was still SAFE!?

- Traces of cocaine have been found in a number of Egyptian mummies. Cocaine is native to the Americas, not Africa, as are... ; TURKEYS! This is PROOF! that ANCIENT! Egyptians were AWARE! of the turkey!

- How is it that there is a country called TURKEY! in a land where there are no turkeys? Because it was TURKISH! traders that introduced New World turkeys and guinea fowl to THE ENTIRE EUROPEAN CONTINENT and the MIDDLE EAST! Rather than try and pronounce the Amerindian and African names for the TURKEY!, the English took to calling them “turkeys” after the traders selling them - further PROOF! of the TURKEY CONSPIRACY!

- Turkish traders used the turkey as an INROAD! to the European CONSCIOUSNESS!, but the REAL MOTIVATION! behind the introduction of the fowl was to introduce Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and all sorts of other MYSTERY! CULTS! to the continent.

- Let’s not overlook the OBVIOUS! Turkish coffee connection. The Turks also introduced the DRUG! COFFEE! to the European continent at the SAME TIME! that they introduced TURKEYS! The connection between the oppressed masses and forced wakefulness through the POWER OF CAFFEINE!, which only the RICH AND POWERFUL! could afford, is clear evidence of the TURKEY CONSPIRACY! and the POWER OF THE BLOODLINES!

- And is it just a COINCIDENCE! that the country of Turkey contains the ancient city of CONSTANTINOPLE!, the portion of the ANCIENT! ROMAN EMPIRE! that PERSISTED! for a THOUSAND YEARS! after the fall of the western empire and was the REPOSITORY OF ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE! that was instrumental in sparking the RENAISSANCE!?

- Angel wings: ancient TURKEY SYMBOLISM!? In art throughout the ages, people in POSITIONS OF POWER! have been shown SURROUNDED! by these winged creatures. This is an *OBVIOUS!* reference to the TURKEY BLOODLINE! that runs through ALL! the prominent rich and powerful families.

- As if further evidence is required, why is it that people routinely refer to the rich and powerful as “A BUNCH OF TURKEYS!”?

- How come on the most HOLY! holidays we ritually SLAUGHTER! and CONSUME! this ONE BIRD!? In cannibal cultures, enemies are eaten in order to GAIN! their powers. Is our RITUAL CONSUMPTION! of TURKEY! a means of symbolically procuring the POWER OF THE TURKEY!?

- Is it mere coincidence that people GORGE! themselves on turkey leftovers, which then make them SLEEPY! and DOCILE!? Someone has to stop these turkeys from trying to TRICK! and CONTROL! us!

- The secrets of masonry are often referred to by ACTUAL MASONS! by the saying “thou hast kept well the BIRD! in thy BOSOM!.” This is very significant corroborating EVIDENCE!.

- That “G” in the Masonic logo... could it be that it stands for......... “GOBBLE!”? You be the judge!

These are my initial thoughts on the subject. I shall endeavour to report more “facts” about this ANCIENT CONSPIRACY! as I discover them. Unless, of course, some turkey gets on my case about it.

Remember folks, don’t let the turkeys GET INSIDE! of your genes! That is why I wear this SPECIAL HELMET! It deflects the MIND CONTROL RAYS! that these FOUL FOWL! transmit into our heads, which in turn mutate into powerful DNA from a FOREIGN! species that only wants to use the human race as a HOST! to carry out their EVIL DEEDS!

Geez, ;I left the tinfoil hat off for only an hour and look what happened.

The truth is out there.

I have to go baste myself now.

Equipment

When I got this job, I got hand-me down. The computer that I have in my office (and from which I post most of these journal entries) was recycled from the last faculty member who retired before I got here. As such, it's rather old, and has been showing signs of "computer Alzheimer's disease" for some time. Even as I type this, I get a little twitchy about opening up any other programs for fear of causing some odd little glithc. Like that one! (Okay, that was really my fault, not the computer's.) I finally got so annoyed that I asked the chair if I might be able to get a new computer... and it looks like it'll happen! Huzzah!

Meanwhile, after two years of having no students, I am veritably awash in inquiries from Honors students looking for research projects for their thesis. I think my current total is five students who have expressed interest in working with me in the fall. Nisha (continuing from an independent studies), Gloria, Maria, Anna, and Anna. I can just hear it now: "This is my student Anna, and this is my other student Anna."

The good news is that six people can do a lot more than one person can. The bad news is that it means I actually have to do things now so that my students can work, rather than getting to them "eventually."

Which is a very good thing, given my habit of tackling small, easily achievable tasks (lik ethis journal!) before the large, somewhat vague and nebulous ones.

New colleague

Our latest new Biology faculty, Fred Zaidan, showed up in the department today. I wonder how many people are going to get him and me mixed up because of the presence of a "Z" in our names?

We also got a message about our first faculty meeting of the fall semester today. The start of classes is rolling up far too quickly.

Since getting back from Chicago, I seem to have been consumed by a whole mess of little tasks, mostly writing. Reports, forms, and the like have been chipping away at me. Unfortunately, while these things have to be done, they such niggling things that you don't feel like you've really accomplished anything.

Our webmaster, Luis Materon, dropped by this morning. He's done a spendid, major revision of our department website. So Luis stopped by my office to take my picture. Dang it. I asked him to use the third one.

ISN EC and other letters

Wow. Almost a week since I posted last? Let's see what's happened...

All my current students seemed to have gotten on well, and are continuing to make progress.

I had two new students, Gloria and Anna, walk into my office on Tuesday asking if they might be able to do Honors projects with me in the fall.

I managed to sneak out with Isaiah and Nisha to the Coastal Studies Lab to collect some sand crabs on Thursday. Fortunately, we had reasonable success to pull some animals up without too much time. Though the return trip did take slightly longer than I anticipated, but I think Nisha was able to make arrangements so that her friends would forgive her for her instructor bringing her into Uni 20 minutes late...

On Friday, I set off on another trip. This time I was off to Chicago to attend the executive committee meeting of the International Society for Neuroethology (ISN). Unfortunately, the trip to Chicago was not smooth, nor welcome. I had just come back Monday, and the Houston airport was a zoo then. I didn't want to go back through Houston airport two more times in less than a week...

And I got stuck there for about four hours longer than I was supposed to be. There were thunderstorms in Chicago, and they weren't letting any incoming flights in. At one point, they went so far as to load us on the plane before they turned back to the terminal and cancelled the flight all together.

I finally got to Chicago, and that airport was also a zoo. I had to take a cab to the hotel and had a touchy moment with the cabbie ("What do you mean, you don't take credit cards in this cab?"). I was in a terribly foul mood that night, which wasn't improved by waking up at 5:00 am the next morning. Fortunately, it did improve slightly during the meeting itself. We managed to get through the agenda in reasonable time, though it did take the whole day.

The major compensation for the trip came that night, were the committee members got treated to a rather nice meal at Va Pensiero.

Flew back Sunday, and had another odd experience at Chicago airport. I was sitting, happily reading a paperback science fiction novel, when a woman walked up to me and said, "Dr. Faulkes?" I raised my eyebrows and said uncertainly, "Yeeeeeah?" Turns out she was a Biology major from UTPA who was going to be taking my Neurobiology course in the fall. She was in Chicago as part of a leadership conference sort of thing.

And on the last leg of the flight from Houston, I was pretty sure I saw our University's provost on the plane. But I may have been mistaken, since this person was flying first class, and administrators would never fly first class when their University was in the middle of budget cutbacks, would they...?

The first thing I had to do this morning was to go to a meeting regarding a Howard Hughes Medical Institution grant our Dean is spearheading. Now, I think I just have a lot of writing to do in that last couple of weeks before classes start up again.

Home again, home again

Back in Edinburg, after a few days of fun but definitely not relaxing personal time. Since this is a research journal, I won't go into details here. I'm currently in "catch up" mode and suffering from a mild case of reverse culture shock ("Wow, there's a lot of Hispanics around here!").

So far, have heard from one student, Annette, who sent me a brief email saying she had no major disasters, and I should be meeting with her in a few minutes. Hopefully Isaiah and Nisha will have similarly good news (or lack of bad news!) to report.

Blogging from Boise

Part 5

As Captain Star might write, "Uneventful day. Listened to science. Helped criticize a practice talk by another speaker for for tomorrow. Made preparations to leave for airport tomorrow. Now setting off on excursion to find food."

Blogging from Boise

Part 4: Play behaviour of unrestrained primates

One of the things that has apparently become a tradition at the Animal Behavior Society meetings is an evening presentation of "acaoke" (ah-kay-o-kee): "academic karaoke." It owes a lot more to improve, theatresports, and Whose Line is it Anyway? than karaoke, though.

What happens is that the organizers collect a large number of slides (or, these days, Power Point diagrams). The "speaker" gets up and begins presenting his talk, using the slides provided. Except the speaker has no idea what the images on the next slide will be! So you may be talking about the historical background of Darwin's ideas (or, last night, his lesser known relative, "George Dubya Darwin"), and suddenly be faced with a slide of copulating lions, a cute child, a hideous graph, or a slide proclaiming in huge hot pink letters, "Size might matter!"

Like all improv, it can be laboured and painful to watch at its worst, but screamingly funny and inspired at its best.

I think I'll do it for this year's department Christmas party.

Blogging from Boise

Part 3: The smell of... success?

The symposium is over, and I slept well last night. For the most part, it went very well. We kept to the schedule to within a minute or two. The speakers' all gave excellent talks with interesting science. Got positive feedback, for the most part. The only sort of concern that was expressed was whether the attendance was as high as we might have expected, hoped for, or liked. The audience certainly did peter out to a minimum over the day, and the feeling of desertion was amplified because they put us in a huge room.

Nevertheless, I am very pleased overall with how the symposium went, and with the speakers I recruited. Lots to think about.

Now I get to relax a little and enjoy some other people's science.

Blogging from Boise

Part 2: On your marks...

The opening keynote talk is in 22 minutes, then a coffee break, then my symposium starts. Wish me luck.

From yesterday: It's hotter here than in souther Texas! How hot is it? One of my speakers, Roy Ritzman, said to me, "Thanks for the invitation to hell."

Blogging from Boise

Part 1: The calm before the storm?

Arrived in Boise for the start of the Animal Behavior Society meting. My symposium. "Mechanisms of behavioural switching," is tomorrow morning. I'm calmer than yesterday, as I'm over the "Oh no! I-haven't-packed-what'll-I-take-and-what'll-I-wear-and-my-flight-is-first-thing-tomorrow" panic of yesterday.

Met a few of my symposium speakers, and so far none have threatened me. Definitely a confidence builder.

Met Phil Stoddard, the junior Program Officer, and he complimented me on being the only symposium organizer to get everything in on time and not change everything after it was approved. More ego boosting goodness.

I was thinking, "Maybe this'll work out after all."

Then someone pointed out that one speaker in the program was listed twice, and another was completely missing. As much as I like Paul Stein (the double listed speaker), I don't think it's quite sporting to have him do a talk twice in a day. Ah, the life of a symposium organizer is fated never to be trouble free...

Last minute bits

I am rushing around like the proverbial chicken. I feel like this is the worst prepared I've been for a trip in a long time.

My independent study students, however, seem to be set and should have enough to keep them busy at research in the week and a bit while I'm gone. Annette and I went to the Coastal Studies Lab and got some animals. I had planned another trip with Isaiah to dig up the beach for sand crabs, but he mesed up his back earlier in the week and may not be able to go. Which would be good -- more time for me to pack! Nisha is well on her way; no problems there.

And just for those of you who wonder how far in advance we have to plan, I just got my teaching schedule for January of next year, 2004.

;;;;;

Additional: Not only can't Isaiah make it to the Coastal Studies Lab, he can't make it because his truck blew a tire. A bum back and a messed up truck in one week. Poor sod.

For me, his phone call saying he can't make it in is a blessing in disguise: I get to go home and pack!

The little ants

The ants I mentioned recently, after a day of really annoying infestation, seem to have vanished of their own accord.

Claudette, you tease...

Hurricane Claudette has completely and totally missed us, for which I am thankful. I awoke to sunny skies and no winds to speak of and thought, "If only all tropical storms and hurricanes were like this." It's a bit of a bummer, though, since we could have easily made the trip to South Padre Island today, and now we're not. And my students' schedules are such that we'll probably have to make two separate trips.

Too bad for folks in Galveston, though.

Meanwhile, my three independent study students are keeping me hopping. Annette and I teleconferenced a bit with my colleague Virginia Scofield this morning, while Nisha and Isaiah are beginning to get their lab work started. I hope that I'll have given them enough of a push before I get on a jet plane to Idaho this Saturday. (Eeeek! The trip is so close! And I have so many things to do before I leave!)

Curse you, Claudette!

The prospect of a very wet and windy day at the beach made me cancel a planned animal collecting trip to South Padre Island tomorrow. Luckily for us, however, tropical storm Claudette seems to be headed much further north than was originally anticipated. We may be able to get out later in the week, however.

Scenes we’d like to see

A bit of weekend goofiness...

James Lipton: We end tonight's Inside the Actor's Studio, as we always do, with the questionnaire invented by my hero, Bernard Pivot, for his show Bouillon de Culture. Pikachu, what’s your favourite word?

Pikachu: Pika!

JL: What is your least favourite word?

P: Chu.

JL: What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

P: Pika! Pika!

JL: What turns you off?

P: PiiiiIIIiii... kachu?

JL: What is your favorite curse word?

P: Pika?

JL: No, it’s all right, you can say it here.

P: Pika. Pi!

JL: What sound or noise do you love?

P: Pikachu-chu!

JL: What sound or noise do you hate?

P: Pi-pi-pi-pikachu!

JL: What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

P: Pikachu... pika pika pi. Ka. Chu. Pik?

JL: Of course. What profession would you not like to do?

P: Pi. Kaaaa.... chu.

JL: If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

P: Pikachu, pi ka chu!

Couldn't stand the weather

Plans for me and my 3 students to head to the Coastal Studies Lab next week may be scuppered by the weather. We were planning on going to South Padre Island to collect animals and do various other things next Tuesday -- which is about when Claudette is scheduled to hit Brownsville, which is very slightly south.

Only about a week until I head off to the Animal Behavior Society meeting to run my symposium. Nervous? You bet!

Our department continues to have problems finding a new chair to replace our current one.

Infestation! (A free verse blog entry)

There are ants in my lab.

They are very small ants.

But there are very many of them.

While they are very small ants -- so small that you can only tell they are ants instead of dirt because they move -- they still bite.

The bites do not hurt. (They are very small ants).

I do not like ants in my lab.

I cannot work well in my lab with ants in it.

Even when the ants are very small. (They do no take up much room.)

I hope they will go away.

I do not think they will go away on their own.

Tomorrow?

There might be ants in my lab.

Grants leave, students arrive!

My NSF grant proposal was just submitted 10 minutes ago. Yay! It's done! It's gone! Now the wait begins... I probably won't hear anything until January.

Today was unexpectedly busy, as I had three students in my lab who are interested in doing a little bit of summer research!

• The first was someone I knew was interested in doing research, but I'd heard about her from another professor, and hadn't actually met before today (Nisha).


• The second I had as a student in a class before, but had no inkling she was interested in taking an independent studies class with me (Anet).


• The third I had talked to one before, and actually planned to have as a student (Isaiah).

It looks like I could well have a big supervisory load on my plate over the next six weeks. It is, as far as problems go, a very nice one to have.

Paper chase

What's happened since I finished my NSF proposal?

The first thing was to start the signature collection. I had to sign a "routing form," then get the Department Chair's signature, then the Dean's signature, the the Director of Sponsored Research's signature. (Our Dean, who's been here for half a year, has remarked a couple of times that "this place runs of paper," which is a very true thing to say.)

Of course, once I got the proposal to the Office of Sponsored Resarch, I discovered was that I really didn't finish the proposal: they pointed out a couple of mistakes (one grammatical one in the main text, and some budgetary gaffes that took a couple of tries to patch up.) The budget fix required I go over to the Office of Grants and Projects to initial the changes on the form. From there, it has to go to our Vice President for Research and our Vice President for Business Affairs...

The expression goes that it takes a whole village to raise a child. I'm not so sure it should takes an entire beuracracy to submit a grant proposal -- but it does here, apparently...

How to celebrate Canada Day...

...When you're a Canadian scientist living in America?

Well, first you get up for a 7:45 a.m. department meeting -- just how I wanted to spend the day! It was a meeting on a serious issue, though, so I won't complain too much. The Biology Department I work for has the current Chair resigning that position (still staying as regular faculty), but there's nobody set to replace him in September. Not for lack of trying; the Biology Department's proposed candidate was rejected by the administration.

The major way I am celebrating is by finishing off the NSF grant proposal I've been working on. I made the last few changes, got the paperwork signed by everyone who needed to sign it, and so it should be winging its way to the NSF considerably in advance of the 10 July deadline. Now I just have six months to wait before I hear "Yea" or "Nay."

In the meantime... my Animal Behavior Society symposium is coming up this month! Eeek! Time to start working on an introductory talk. Also still have manuscripts to write, lab equipment that needs to be fired up, and much, much, more to do in the remaining two montsh of summer. (The voice inside my head just read that and said, "Two months? Is that all? Arrrrrrrrrgh!")

But in the meantime, I will celbrate Canada Day as I probably would in Canada: working a bit in the morning, and goofing off in the afternoon to catch a movie. And maybe get a little ice cream.

Happy Canada Day to all the readers in my homeland. I sure wish I could be there.

Galveston

The trip to Galveston earlier this week was quite good. I went with Mohammed Farooqui (current Biology Chair), Hassan Ahmad (Chemistry), Scott Gunn (Biology’s pre-med advisor) and Michael Eastman (Dean of the College). Got to see some acquaintances, got to see a new campus (University of Texas Medical Branch), and got treated to a very good meal on the evening we arrived.

By far the coolest thing that happened, though, was that after meeting with several of the various recruitment people from the grad school and the medical school, we were slated to have a meeting with students from Pan Am who were currently on the UTMB campus for various reasons. I was expecting to see a dozen faces or so.

We walked into the room, and I estimate that there were about 60 students there. Scott said later that I looked genuinely surprised, and I was.

And they applauded when we walked in.

Now that was cool. When you're a university instructor, having a room full of students applaud you is a rare and fine thing indeed. I'm under no illusions that the major person they were applauding was Scott Gunn, who works like a dog to get students into medical school, but I’ll bask in reflected glory. (I am not proud.)

Otherwise how are things? I actually got to do a bit of lab work today, generating preliminary data for my NSF grant application, and managed to track a supplier for some animals that are important to the project I’m proposing for said grant application.

Budget cuts suck

After investing a fair amount of effort into writing a good little pre-proposal for the Texas ARP competition, I come in to find that late last night the whole thing got axed.

The email I received this morning explains: "The Advanced Research Program was cut from the state budget just before it was signed by Governor Perry at midnight last night (Sunday, June 22, 2003)."

No appeal, no recompense for the time many researchers spent preparing to submit. It's the Texas government's money, so they can do what they want. End of story.

Yeah, it's a pretty crap way to start the week.

But at least I have a trip to Galveston to look forward to this afternoon.

Jet set II!

I was still in a slight state of disbelief about going to Galveston next week when I got an invitation to fly to Chicago in August. The reason for this trip would be to attend the Executive Committee meeting of the International Society for Neuroethology. No pressing reason not to go... so I guess I'm going. This is going to make four plane trips in six weeks, three of which are science related.

In other news, I've been working hard on my NSF grant. I've spent the last few days on a description of the kind of university I'm at. This was a rather depressing exercise in some ways, since I was reminded again just how poor this area is. This county has an unemployment rate twice the state average; the country bordering us on the west has a jobless rate triple the state average.

Today, I've been working on the budget. So far, I've sliced off 8 months and US$78,610 from the version of the project that I submitted last year. Hopefully, reviewers will look at this and be convinced this is a "faster, cheaper, better" project than last year.

Joining the jet set!

The latest distraction from finishing my grants, manuscripts, and doing research will be a trip to Galveston in a week and half.

Why go there? It happens to be the location of the rather large University of Texas Medical Branch. In the past, my university, UTPA, has sent a lot of our student up there to go into medical school. But they also have a big biomedical research aspect, and we're trying to set up a "pipeline" for graduate students similar to what's in place have for medical students.

The other attraction for me to go on this trip is that there's a marine lab, and it would be good to see what's up there. And I know a couple of people in my field who work there, so maybe I'll run into one or both of them again.

As an added bonus, Galveston also happens to be the location of one of my favourite books by an author acquaintance of mine, Sean Stewart.

Money all gone (almost)

Spent part of the afternoon working my way through more enormous scientific catalogues. I now have just over $100 left to spend from my start-up money. It's surprisingly difficult; sort of the "spare change in your pocket" syndrome. What do you do, buy a stamp? Considering the cost of most scientific equipment, I'm not about to get anything major.

I also spent part of the day working on my NSF grant. I've discovered one good thing about going through this process for the second time. There's quite a few sections that don't need updating. Most grants, for instance, includea "Biographical sketch." That only needs minor tweaks, because where I got my degrees from isn't about to change. Of course, that's the easy bit. The hard part -- revising the proposal -- is still to come.

Ah, power... or the illusion of it, anyway

And the results of the latest summer meeting are in. Universities are run by committees, and this one is a search committee for hiring new faculty. When our department chair asked, "Who's going to chair this committee?", I suddenly had a whole bunch of fingers pointing at me...

It looks like almost a done deal, and I'm going to be Chair of the search committee. Bwa-hah-hah-haaaaaaa... Today the search committee, tomorrow the world!

;;;;;

Most recent twist on the ABS symposium I'm organizing. I reckoned I'd scored a coup would I got the editors of a fairly major journal in my field to agree to publish talks from this symposium in a special issue. But last night, one of my contributors said he had other things to write that took higher priority, and might not be able to do it. Not what an organizer is wanting to hear with less than two months to go...

I've contacted one of the journal editors, and hopefully will be able to work out a timeframe that will let everyone get their papers in.

The evil that tweens do

Went out to a barbeque restaurant tonight that we'd passed by once or twice. Should have passed by a few more times. Mediocore food I can take. But tonight was the night I learned that karaoke in the hands of 10 year old girls can induce almost physical pain.

They could not – I'm sorry – carry a tune with a fork lift.

I know they’re just kids. I understand letting them go up and have a go... once. But they did another one. And another. You find yourself thinking, “I never knew just how long ‘Complicated’ goes on...”

The most tragi-comic moment was in the third song, where these little kids were singing I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman and hitting this line about, “wanting to find the woman in me...” “Argh! You're not going to find a woman in there for another five or six years yet!”

End rant.

In or out? Who gets to do what in a grant proposal

Although I mentioned the other day that I have to get to work on my next NSF proposal, I am also working on a short "pre-proposal." Think of a pre-proposal as a micro-proposal to write a big proposal (this sort of thing would drive lesser men mad...). This one will be for ARP. ARP is strictly a Texas thing, unlike NSF.

The latest wrinkle in writing the ARP pre-proposal is that this group is very picky about who can be listed as an investigator on the grant. Unfortunately, one of my colleagues, Virginia Scofield, falls into the "exclude" category. This meant I had to redescribe what she was doing quite significantly and change all the "we"s in the text to "me"s and a few "I"s.

Fortunately, all involved in the project are more concerned about getting the money to do the science and not adding lines on a CV.

Dojo poems

That darn Neil Gaiman always finds the best websites. Of course, as a New York Times bestselling author and winner of major SF, fantasy and horror awards, he has the help of a few more readers than me. Neil pointed out a webpage with a poetry generator, and I couldn't help but see what it did to this journal...

A.lot
more you use this nervous
system. This
lab to all problems, judging from
how deadlines sneak up a particular grade like
it worked well, although
I had been there will probably take
the infinite credulity of
that, will
probably take the queue!
Funny how weird or something.
to raise his grade,
not Irrelevent recommendation: Down
to my calendar
and while I
was rapidly running
out
If there yet.

I cheated a bit and remove a little formatting stuff. But I quite like "the infinite credulity of / that, will / probably take the queue! / Funny how weird or something."

Top of the queue!

Funny how deadlines sneak up on you.

Just looked at my calendar and realized I have about one month before the next NSF deadline. That's the big one I have to shoot for in my field, lots of work, so that's just become my #1 priority.

Starting tomorrow. It's after 5:30 pm, so I think it's quitting time for now.

Meetings?

Yeesh. I had a meeting this morning that took up my whole morning (but was worthwhile as I got a glimpse at a large collaborative research project that our Research office is trying to put forward), I have a meeting tomorrow morning that will probably take the whole morning (but should be worthwhile as it concerns a large grant application that would benefit the entire college our department belongs to), and I have a search committee meeting Monday morning (but should be worthwhile because we might be able to figure out ways of attracting more applicants for our upcoming positions). Three meetings in six days (and two of those days are the weekend!).

Still, I can help but wonder? If I'm not getting paid, why do I have so many meetings to go to? I think I must just be too nice or something.

;;;;;

Am also still trying to sped the last of my start-up money. Thought I had it under control when I walked forms over to Dean's office. Had Dean's secretary, Gloria, tell me, "You can get these faster if you use this form." Decided fast is good, so went back and got told by our secretary, Dora, "No, you can't use this form, you have to use that form" (which is the one I'd walked over with in the first place.

I left while the two secretaries got on the same page and to fume over the frustrations of working in a bureaucracy and pull at my hair. Quietly.

I think I have the right forms now. Hopeful that someone will spend money for me soon.

Can't talk -- spending money!

Realized the other day that with the end of the financial year approaching, I was rapidly running out of time to spend the last of my start-up money. So I've spent yesterday and today combing though technical catalogues.

Think this is easy? Consider that one technical catalogue on my desk, the VWR catalogue weighs in at a whopping 2,500+ pages.

I have no problem spending money, but spending money in a hurry always worries me.

I will soldier on, however, bouyed (or is that distracted?) by the music coming through my computer speakers (Big Sugar, if you're curious).

More blogging in the news, academics this time

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article up titled, “Scholars who blog.” The overarching question asked is whether blogging is simply an ephemeral bit of intellectual fashion that will disappear in a few months. Heaven knows the Internet is famous for such things. (Internet users of a certain experience will remember “the age of Gopher,” which immediately preceded the explosion of the Web.)

And no, this blog didn't get mentioned. [pout]


;;;;;


Today is the first day of summer session, which means students are back on campus. That is not necessarily a good thing for me. I had one of my students from last semester who needed a particular grade in one of my classes to graduate -- and didn’t get it. So he came into my office asking if there was something he could do to raise his grade, like an extra paper or something. “An extra paper” seems to be some sort of student stock solution to all problems, judging from how many students have asked me about this. But from my perspective, if I do something to help out one student that I don’t make available to all the rest... not very fair to the rest of the students in the class, is it?

Nonetheless, while I am happy to stick to my principles, it still really sucks to be the one to have to say, “No, I’m sorry, I’m not raising your grade” (not in so many words, mind you), which translates into, “No, you can’t graduate.”


;;;;;


A few entries back, I mentioned my theory about the infinite credulity of the human brain. To give credit where it’s due, that particular line of though may have been prompted by a comment by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. In her blog, said succinctly, “Folly is fractal. The more you look, the more of it there is.”

Who ya callin’ “small”!?

This article is a rather standard account of SARS research. I think it’s quite amazing that they list how, in three months, SARS has gone from nonexistant to a completely described virus whose entire genetic code has been sequenced and whose origin has been pinpointed...

...and then they title the article, “small victory.”

The petty part of me is shouting, “What the #311 else do you want?”

Why I’m sometimes short on details...

I was thinking that my discussion of what I was doing – and will be doing a lot more of in the coming months – may sound a bit murky. Short on detail. Just what am I doing in this lab with that lobster I brought in yesterday?

I'm aware of that, and while I'd like to be more forthright, there are a few reasons why I0Æm not.

Ultimately, my research is meant to be published in journals. One of the basic rules of journals is that they don't take papers where the results have already been published, and for most, that includes reporting on the web. Like in this journal.

There's also the problem that science is a competitive business. Now, I am not in one of the most competitive fields – far from it – but the fact remains that I'm one person just starting a research career with no grant (yet) to buy things and no students to help out. If I blab what I'm working on and what I suspect, it's possible (though unlikely) that another researcher who is currently funded could jump in, set a couple of Ph.D. students, and get the paper out before I could say boo. It's one of those things that you just don't want to have happen, because priority matters in science, just like it does in mountaineering. (Quick – who led the second team to reach the top of Mt. Everest?)

These are just a couple of factors that prey in the back of my mind. As much as I want to go all out to tell people what cool stuff it is that I do, I'm just too chicken about where I am in my career right now to be assured that I'll get it done first.

;;;;;

Speaking of science communication, this story makes some interesting points about media coverage of science controversies. Should one “maverick bucking the establishment” get equal coverage as “the establishment”? Very tough call, especially in medical research, where so much is at stake and there are lots of people out there with downright loopy ideas.

(One of my current pet theories is that the human brain is capable of infinite credulity. No matter how weird or outlandish the proposition, no matter how much evidence to the contrary, someone out there will believe it.)

;;;;;

Whoa! Science facts are useful! If you can listen to mp3 files, you absolutely, positively must hear Tripod's song for scientists, written as part of their regular "song in an hour" challenge on Triple J. Look for the "Tripod - Boffin' boffins" link fairly far down, here.

I got to do an experiment!

And any day you do an experiment is a good day.

The story is as follows: I got up and drove out to the Coastal Studies lab on South Padre Island. I thought it would be an uneventful drive, but to my surprise, ran into a couple of massive cloudbursts. The sheeting down, "Can't-I-make-the-windshield-wipers-go-any-faster?" kind of cloudbursts that slow even normally aggressive Texas drivers down to 30 miles an hour. I'm sure there are other places in the world that matches the southern U.S. for the ferocity of cloudbursts, but I haven't been there yet.

Fortunately, while the burst is intense, it's quite small, and I'm out of it fairly quickly. I get to the Coastal Studies Lab to pick up a juvenile spiny lobster that they had been showing off to the public. They had two small lobsters, so I left one behind, so that the public wouldn't be deprived of the viewing pleasure of seeing Palinurus argus. (Couldn't find a link to a decent picture of the beast, sorry.)

Then I scampered back to the lab to look at this beastie's nervous system. This gave me the first real chance to test out my nifty microscope (that cause so much trouble to order... but I won't rehash old details). It worked well, although I may have to see if I can do something to get a slightly larger field of view. Sometimes, even the lowest power magnification is still a teensy bit too high.

The exciting bit is tomorrow, though. Some preparations have to sit before you get to see the results, and this is one. Tomorrow I get to see if it gives me a definite answer to my question... or not.

;;;;;

Irrelevent recommendation: Down With Love with Ewan McGregor and Rene Zellweger.

Posted

I'm surprised. Revamping a manuscript for submission to a new journal didn't take as long as I thought. I now have four copies of the manuscript in two envelopes (three to an editor and one to an associate editor) waiting to be taken out with the morning mail.

It feels good to have a manuscript in the works again. I have to push and get one or two more out in the coming months.

But first, I have a symposium to organize (today) and make a trip to pick up an animal from the Coastal Studies Lab (tomorrow).

Tedium!

One of the most annoying things about preparing a scientific manuscript is the references. They are fiddly. They are long. And every journal wants them a different way.

For example, I'm revising a paper that I had originally written for one journal for submission to another. The first journal wanted the list of references to look like this:

Paul DH, Then AM, Magnuson DS. 1985.

Very clean, very "Europoean" in its approach to punctuation. Now, however, the journal I'd like to submit this paper to wants the references to look like this:

Paul, D.H., Then, A.M., and Magnuson, D.S., 1985.

The same, you think? Oh no. 10 periods and commas and the word "and" have to go in the latter version that weren't required in the former. One journal wants abbreviated titles for journals and the other wants all titles spelled out in full. One wants colons separating the volume number from the pages, the other wants a comma.

There is software to do some of this stuff automatically, but it's rather expensive. So, back to my word processor I go, putting in periods and commas...

It's noon now. I'll let you know how long it takes.

;;;;;

About an hour! Lot less than I thought, thankfully.

The grant gauntlet

I'm starting work on a pre-proposal for something called the Advanced Research Program grants, which are put up by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Feeling masochistic, I looked up their funding rate, and discovered that my field, Biology, is the most competetive of anything they fund. Less than 7% of applications get funded.

Why do I do that to myself?

Enough wallowing. Back to writing the proposal...

Replies

Here’s what I sent to the letters section of The Age in response to the article mentioned in the last entry of this journal:

“It’s unfortunate that over a century of high quality scientific research has escaped notice, judging by the article, ‘Pain test to rock lobster fishermen’ (16 May 2003). I was stunned by the statement, ‘Aquatic scientists have now begun examining lobster tails for evidence of nerve tissue.’

“I can save someone a lot of time by saying that not only do lobsters, yabbies, and their kin have nerve tissue in their tails, that nerve tissue has been well studied by neurobiologists. Crustacean nervous systems have been and still are important models for understanding how nervous systems work in all sorts of animals, including humans.

“The question of pain in other animals is an important one, and deserves a higher level of scholarship.”

Doubtful that it’ll see print, but there's no point in letting errors stand uncorrected.

Fighting the forces of ignorance...

We crustacean neurobiologists are frequently asked the question, "Do lobsters feel pain?" (Usually the context seems to be, "Am I a bad person for tossing them live into a pot of boiling water?") The question is being revived in Australia, according to this article in The Age, spurred on by recent research that suggests fish may feel pain (which is sure to be hotly debated for some time yet).

It's not that I don't think the question of invertebrate pain is unimportant -- on the contrary. But I was utterly gobsmacked by this sentence in the story:

"Aquatic scientists have now begun examining lobster tails for evidence of nerve tissue."

What?

We've known the answer to that question for well over a century. There's been about a zillion papers on the neural tissue in the lobster tail (I've had a hand in writing a couple).

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. All I can say is: Nobody better be getting a grant for that research!

;;;;;

I've handed in my final marks for my classes this afternoon. Have started to receive the usual contacts from students who just missed making a particular grade. Their transcripts don't show percentages. Two students with different letter grades (e.g., a C at 79% and a B at 80%) can actually be closer in performance than two students with the same letter grade (80% and 89.4% are both B students).

I always feel crummy for them. The disappointment that I know I'm inevitably handing over to some students always tempers what an otherwise happy day of completion.

Transitions

This is always a tricky time of year for me, because I'm going from an established routine to a situation where my schedule is totally total free form. I always find those sorts of switches to be quite difficult. Unfortunately, I tend to sputter and not use my time very well for a few days before I get reorganized.

Considering how tight things have been for the last couple of months, though... I think a bit of sputtering around to reorganize might not be entirely unwarranted.

Among the mess of things on my plate are writing grant applications, organizing a symposium at this summer's Animal Behavior Society meeting, finishing manuscripts from my Melbourne work, and, of course, doing entirely new research.

Scary thing? Based on some conversations I've had Friday with our College Dean and today with our Department Chair, it looks like they're interested in getting me involved in preparing a Howard Hughes Medical Institution grant application. It's worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars... if you can get it. I'm a little nervous, because if I get involved in what's really a grant for the college... when will I find time to do the stuff I need for me?

The end is near... end of semester, that is

Haven't been blogging much because there hasn't been a lot of movement on the research front. That should change soon, because today is the last day for this semester that I have to give lectures. Hoo... ray. (You can’t quite see the slight look of exhaustion in my eyes when I see that. I’m sure there's been dark circles under them more than a couple of mornings this month.)

In other news, our Department is putting in requests for new faculty positions. I got tapped to write up the justification for a position I had suggested (which is only fair, I reckon). I suggested we hire a developmental biologist.

In justifying the position, though, I was instructed to play up any possible “biomedical” aspect to the work. I didn’t suggest the position because I thought it was biomedical – quite the opposite, in fact. But in a few short paragraphs, I was able to work in a whole slew of buzz words. I started off mentioning last year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine was for developmental biology. Then I got on a roll.

“Cancer research!” “Spinal cord injury!” “Aging!” And I even brought in the big ace-in-the-hole new bite star: “stem cells.” OooooOOOoooh. AaaaAAAAaaah.

Writing it all made me feel like such a sell-out.

Last big boxes

Got two boxes yesterday, which contained one of my last major equipment purchases (for a while). It was the second of two stereo microscopes that I had ordered. Now all I have to do is get through the rest of the semester, and hopefull in less than a month, I'll actually have a chance to use all this equipment that I've been accumulating over the last year.!

Happy anniversary, Major Gagarin, wherever you are...

Quirks and Quarks informed me that today is the 42 anniversary of the first manned space flight, by Major Yuri Gagarin. Major Gagarin died in 1968.

Being reminded of the early days of the space age makes me a little sad. I don't think any other enterprise in my memory has ever captured the exhilarating feeling of "Ever upwards!" (literally) than the space program. I wrote to NASA as a kid and got a big stack of goodies -- posters, pictures, articles -- back. Visited the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral on a family vacation. I can't think of any sort of equivalent science/technology program today that is as accessible and appealing, especially to kids. I just can't see a kid sitting down and writing, "I am interested in the Human Genome Project and would like to know if you have any pictures to spare to hang in my room..."

It's no accident that, "We can put a man on the moon" still has coin in our vocabulary as a towering achievement. (You know, as in, "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't get a cable guy to show up for an appointment on time.") Even though it's been how long...? Just over 30 years since Apollo 17 made the last moon landing.

Damn. From the first man in space to the last man on the moon in only 12 years. Was it really that short?

Maybe a research venture like the Human Genome Project is ultimately more practical. But when it comes to inspiration, real, honest-to-God space travel hasn't been topped yet. I miss it, even though I barely remember it.

Data!

Little late to report this, but on Monday I was back out at the Coastal Studies Lab, taking our second candidate for a Biology faculty position, [name deleted for legal reasons]. For once, I planned ahead.

As I mentioned last week, there were a couple of small spiny lobsters in the public display tanks. I've been very interested in the behaviour and neurobiology of spiny lobsters for a long time.

While [name deleted] was getting a tour of the lab from acting director Don Hockaday, I set up a video camera and got a bit of videotape of these lobsters behaving. It probably wouldn't make it into a finished paper, but it should be enough to give me something to use as "preliminary data" in writing grant applications.

Oh boy, here it comes...

While walking into my office this morning, I noticed that there’s heavy machinery on the future site of the Regional Academic Health Center (or RAHC – pronounced “rack" – as it’s frequently called here). It’s a little surprising to see something happening, since the groundbreaking ceremony was back in December and nothing had happened since then.

Although it’s located on Pan Am property, the RAHC is actually owned by the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio. Unfortunately, the presence of this facility is causing tension in my department (Biology) because there is a push for us to collaborate with the research going in the RAHC. While collaborations are good things, there is a certain fear that we will suddenly be expected to do applied medicine and not biology.

The building is slated for completion in summer of 2004.

;;;;;

Daylight savings time?! No! In this of all weeks, I didn't need to lose an hour!

"Debunking" a 'Net "psychic," Part 2

How does the Flash Mind Reader work? (If you haven't seen it yet, you may want to scroll down to read yesterday's entry first.)

When I read the instructions, I strongly suspected that the little procedure ("Pick any 2 digit number, add the digits, subtract the total from first number") would give a very limited range of possible answers -- not the range of 100 shown on the page. Not being a mathematician, I had to check this in a "brute force" sort of way.

Using Microsoft Excel, I randomly generated a lot of numbers: over 65,000! I ran them though the procedure asked by the web page, and plotted them all on a histogram. As I suspected, the resulting numbers were not randomly or broadly distributed.

There are only nine possible answers. 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, and 81. All multiples of 9. In retrospect, this isn't a big surprise, as 9 was considered a "magic" number by a lot of mystic thinking types. If you multiply any one digit number by 9, and add the two numbers together, you get... 9! This funny property is also used in this gag (also here). (When I was learning multiplication in school, this trick let me remember my multiplication tables for 9 easily; only the "5 times" tables were easier to learn.)

From here, the rest is easy to decipher. All you have to do is to put up the same symbol for the nine possible answers. Because:

• The multiples of nine are widely spread,
  
• There are 91 distracting "possible" answers,
  
• There are over a dozen possible symbols, and
  
• The symbols change every time you click on the crystal ball (and the page takes you to a new screen to get your "psychic" answer),
  

...The regular, invariant pattern is well concealed. Thus, the webpage creates the powerful illusion of "knowing" your answer -- which is not as wide as you think.

There you have it, folks! Behold the power of science!

Link of the moment: If you liked this journal entry, check out the website of magician James Randi.

“Debunking” a ‘Net “psychic”

A crucial part of research is skepticism. It”s not just useful to being a practising scientist; skepticism saved me from the fake eBay email I mentioned in my last entry.

For a scientist, few things should trigger the old skeptical filter (a.k.a. the "BS detector") like the word “psychic.” So when a student mentioned the “Flash psychic,” my antennae went up.

As far as self-declared “psychics” go, the Flash Mind Reader is pretty innocuous. It presents itself only as a an entertaining diversion, and asks for no money. Something of a rarity among psychics.

The page shows a crystal ball with instructions underneath to pick any 2 digit number, add them, then subtract that from your first two digit number. On the right, you are presented with an array of numbers from 0 to 99 with associated symbols (I got to 15, then stopped counting). When you click the crystal ball, the symbol next to the number you picked is supposed to appear in the crystal ball.

It’s a clever little device. Its accuracy seems impressive. Try it.

Of course, being a scientist, I have to ask, “How does it work?” It took me a while, but I figured out the solution. (Hint! It's not really psychic!)

I’ll give you the answer... but not yet. Come back tomorrow to see how it’s done.

eBay lookalike scam

Received a sneaky email that just about caught me. It looked like it came from the well-known online auction house, eBay. But I vaguely recalled seeing something about a scam that sent people official looking emails... which was a good thing, because there are some.

Nasty, ugly piece of work. And not as well known or easily detected as the "Nigerian" scam.

Read about it here and remember to excersize skepticism for all emails in your box!

Showing off the place

Spent a good part of the day showing off our Coastal Studies Lab to a job candidate. Our department is in the market for a “Vertebrate Physiological Ecologist,” and we have two candidates who will be visiting for an on-site interview for a couple of days. (I can't mention the candidate's name, because there are laws prohibiting candidates from knowing who else is being interviewed for the position.)

I probably could have used the time at the office to mark papers or something, but what the heck. I worked all weekend, and I’m on the Search Committee.

Plus! While the major point was to show off some of our university resources to our candidate, the trip was also fortuitous. I discovered that there were some animals in the CSL’s aquaria that I want to film: young spiny lobsters. I’m hoping I can get back before something happens to them.

;;;;;

Some things are just a delight. Fireflies are one.

They are fireflies in the grass around the university, and when I walk home a little late around this time of year (like tonight), there they are, quietly blinking on and off in their slow, pacifying intervals. If I ever get tired of them, buy me a coffin, ‘cause I'll have obviously lost my taste for life.

Where two cultures meet...

Being a Canadian living in the southern most tip of Texas, this makes my heart feel good as much as it makes my brain confused:

This October, the Rio Grande Valley will have its own professional hockey team: the Killer Bees. (Pro sports is all about the logo.)

I'm hoping cricket and Aussie rules football teams will soon follow, seeing how they have about as much history in southern Texas as hockey.

A look in the lab

Here's the infamous microscope that took an inordinately long time to purchase (partly due to delays in getting start-ups funds, partly due to my misunderstandings of the purchasing process, partly due to... oh, you get the idea.)

Isn't it pretty? I've joked more than once that I don't actually plan to look at anything through it, I just need a scope for show to impress the visitors.

You'll notice a camera attachment on the left; it's a nice digital camera. A camera lucida (a.k. drawing tube) is on the right. It's a device for looking at the material under the scope through one eye, and looking at a piece of paper through the other so that you can trace what you see. It's excellent for making records of material that isn't flat, which can't be easily photographed because of depth of field problems.

That's about $8K worth of microscope you're looking at there. It's probably the single most expensive thing in the lab.

Here's the runner-up in expense (would tie if you included the software asscoiated with it).

That little "bruise-coloured" box (i.e., black and blue!) on top of the silver one cost over $6K. It's an analog-digital board: it converts continuously variable electric signals into digital signals that my computer can understand.

But enough tech for now. Let's turn to a more green and pleasant thoughts...

The view out my lab window. There used to be a baseball field (right picture), which was ripped down last year. I've heard various things about what is going in there. It might be a new building. Or it might be a parking lot (I'm kind of hoping not). But at least I have some green plants and blue sky to view when I look up from my scope.

Biology myths of our time

Heard on television commercial currently playing locally:

"I can't concentrate. Could I be pregnant?"

Somehow, I doubt that an inability to concentrate is the first clue women use to detect a pregnancy. And if the makes of this pregnancy test don't know that, would you really trust them on some of the other details...?

The power of blogging

Anyone who still doubts the power of blogs (“web logs” like this journal) to be effective at reaching a wide audience will probably not be able to have those doubts for much longer. A blog from Bagdhad is now receiving international attention.

Another piece of the lab puzzle

My new microscope is now assembled and ready for action. I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to get much use out of it, but I feel so much better just seeing in the lab. I'll take a picture of it later.

I should be getting my second microscope in a couple of weeks, which will be the last major piece of equipment I'll be buying from my start-up funds. Anything I need after that (and I do need some stuff) wil have to come from a successful grant application.

Good thing I ain't too proud to beg.

And... Action!

One best momentary distractions I've come across lately is the Action Film Trailer Generator. The visit is enhanced if you can either imagine the voice of the man who does so many of these movie previews -- or, better yet, have a friend who'se good at mimicry read them aloud in his best "Coming attractions" voice.

My most recent visit to the page rewarded me with entries that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing ("In an infernal empire, four fighters hope to avert the apocalypse.") to the goofy ("In an infernal city, two nuns hope to participate in the greatest fighting tournament of history...")

Which got me thinking: What would the "action movie preview" for me (and this journal) be? Maybe something like...

"In a foreign land, in a confusing beuracracy, one scientist fights to triumph over ignorance..."

I could keep at this all day. But I probably shouldn't...

;;;;;

Quote of the week: See Neil Gaiman's second entry for 20 March 2003.

Evidence

Back to teaching, preparing for teaching, and pretty much nothing else.

Like most others, my mind has been very much on the conflict in Iraq. I was thinking about what lessons a biological researcher's training might be able to bring to bear on such an event. The one question that I've learned to ask as a scientist that seems appropriate in this instance is this.

What is the evidence?

In such situations, assertions and claims are made back and forth in furious successions. "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." "Saddam Hussein poses an immediate threat to the security of [insert name of country here]." "Weapons inspections are working." (Ooops. Suppose that should be "...were working.) And so on.

What is the evidence?

When my brain is working well (which it doesn't always), few things trigger my radar like such flat statements. Unfortunately, politics and much current news reporting does not always do a good job of presenting evidence, nor do many people take the time to look deeply at available evidence (and I'm sure not excluding myself here). Instead, factors like fear and trust come into play in a big way.

What is the evidence?

Who gathered it? How did they get it? What tools did they use? Are there numbers specifying quantity? How about confidence intervals, or the possibility of measurement error? Can it be confirmed by other independent sources? (This is a big one in science, where it gets the technical name of "replication.")

What is the evidence?

Of course, many people outside research seem to have little patience for scientists' insistance on looking at evidence all the time. This may have been what led Cecil Marice Bowra (1898-1971) to comment, "Scientists are treacherous allies on committees, for they are apt to change their minds in response to arguments."

Scope it out

Oh joyous day! Two big boxes arrived today, containing within them the components for one of my microscopes. Now I just have to put it all together.

I also managed to get the paperwork off my desk for my second major microscope. I'm hoping that will go through channels quickly, as it's under the $ value where it has to go out for bids.

In other news...

This week is the infamous American "spring break," a time synonymous with drunken debauchery. (In Canada, we have "reading break," just to show how studious we all are.) A local radio station was referring today to nearby resort South Padre Island as "South Party Island." I've had no classes to teach, but a surprising amount of other things keep vying for my attention. Because so many faculty left (meetings, etc.), I got left holding the bag for several tasks this week, mostly related to the Search Committee.

Sigh.

I couldn't wait for last week to end. Now I'm terrified over how soon this week is going to end!

A long standing bugbear resolved

Was so run off my feet yesterday that I didn't have time to report a piece of good news. I have finally been given the go-ahead to spend the last 1/8^th of my start-up funding. This should give me the last crucial item or two, and a lot of minor bits, needed to get my research lab ready to do actual research this summer.

This was far and away the best news I’ve had all week. This has definitely been one of “those” weeks, where every time I turned around I had new things to do. I was getting behind on preparing lectures, I was running to prepare labs, I had to schedule meetings on short notice, I have to undergo Sexual Harassment Training. (I keep wishing they could call it something else; it sounds too much like a “How to” course. “Have you taken the Sexual Harrassment Training session?” “Have I? Watch me make a pass at that cute first year student...” Ick.)

I am so ready for this week to end. Not the least reason is that next week is break here, so I won’t have any classes to teach. A little uninterrupted time to get ahead, caught up, and so on will be highly welcome.

But back to the subject of start up: I should have my first research microscope delivered in two weeks.

Odd spot: It’s cold in here! The outside is pleasant and warm, but the air conditioning is needlessly belting it out in many rooms in the building. Apparently there’s a problem with the Central Scheduling, and they can't turn off the air con in several buildings. I find it bit hard to believe that the “Off” switch is broken...

Odder spot: A front page story on the campus newspaper, The Pan American describes a controversy over an article in Vanity Fair over comments on Hispanics made by Dame Edna Everage.

What someone might not realize from some of the commentary is that Dame Edna is a fictional character. Criticizing Dame Edna for making a joke in poor taste is like criticising Sherlock Holmes for being a drug addict...

Palindromes

Not much to report here, but who can resist the urge of making a post on 03/03/03?

Hm. I wonder how many doomsayers will appear just before 6 June 2006?

Actually, I'm doing a bit of everything today: a bit of grant writing, some lecture writing, and more administration than I bargained for (I'm on a Departmental Search Committee for hiring new staff and faculty, and the searches have not gone well).

Back to the grindstone...

Grants; screensaver needed!

The major research thing I'm working on these days? A draft of another grant proposal for the National Science Foundation, this time working with my colleague Virginia Scofield. I originally planned this to be a C-RUI proposal, but we may not make the deadline.

Outside the lab... My television went on the blink Monday. Got a chip in the windscreen of my car on Friday. And this morning, the screen on my computer laptop suddenly turned black. It is stubbornly refusing to show anything. Fortunately, the computer itself is fine (I think); simply running a cable from the laptop to a new screen should solve the problem.

Off topic

I can't resist the urge to post a link to one of my favourite writers, Peter David, for his comments on Saddam Hussein's suggestion of a televised debate. It's at the top as I right this, but if you come in late, look for the 25 February 2003 entry.

Happy Birthday to me

Today's journal entry is the only thing I'm doing that's even remotely research related. My present to me is a day off.

Not enough people got me cake. Other than that, it's been a good day.

Less money

And another thing. We had a meeting of the College of Science & Engineering yesterday (of which the Biology Department is a part). They were explaining how the University and the College are trying to cope with the state of Texas asking for 7% of their unspeant budget back.

There were also warnings of a further 12% reduction from the state next year.

This does not bode well anyone, but I reckon it's a particularly ill wind for any new faculty member trying to get on her or his feet.

Not that I'm talking about myself, mind you. Well, not necessarily.

I should be writing a grant proposal now. Excuse me...

If there's no snow in Texas...

...How can I be snowed under?

When it's work rather than white stuff, I guess. Teaching, trying to get a grant together (which is faring poorly), committee duties are all making it rather difficult to do anything but just keep up.

Unexpected interruptions

Two fire alarms late this afternoon. Two. Very distracting. Fortunately, I guess, they were late enough that I just went home during the second one. The leading theory was that some student didn't want to take a test, so pulled the switch.

Or maybe this was a particularly inept terrorist attack. And me without my duct tape.

(Duct tape?! Who the blazes is in charge of American "homeland security"? Red Green?)

Reality science?

People find other people endlessly fascinating. And not any particular sort of people; pretty much anyone will do.

Although I have never watched a single minute of Survivor (I was living without a television in Australia when the first series was making waves), there is no escaping the prevalence of “reality” television. There are the dating shows (Elimidate, The Fifth Wheel, and lots more), the home makeover shows (Changing Rooms and its American successor, Trading Spaces, and all of its third generation imitators, like While You Were Out and Surprise by Design and even, almost unfathomably, the rock celebrity Rock the House), and the “stick strangers together and hope they hop into the hot tub” genre (The Real World, The Surreal Life, Road Rules, High School Reunion).

Now setting aside that most shows place people in profoundly “unreal” situation, the main attraction seems to be the chance to see (initially) unfamiliar personalities in action, making choices, interacting, and in conflict.

Look at entertainment or sports, and again, there is a strong fascination with the personalities involved, and not just the game or the art or the work. Yeah, sure James Lipton says Inside the Actor’s Studio is an exploration of acting craft, but there’s little doubt that it has appeal beyond that because people are interested in the opinions and experiences of creative folks, not just their technical skills.

Then you flip to science programming and you see... plants, animals, the food chain, exploding stars, and lots of computer animation to explain the theoretical bits. Actual scientists are scarcely seen.

Maybe this isn’t a good strategy, considering that there is ample evidence that the level of knowledge about science in the general public could be better (to put it mildly). Maybe a way to get people interested in science is to show off scientists as having interesting people in interesting situations facing problems to which other people can relate. Surely the problems faced by researchers must be as engaging as chefs-in-training.

Yes, that’s right. Here in the U.S., specialty cable channels The Food Network is running a show called Cooking School Stories, which shows the “true life” struggles of students becoming chefs.

Why not Grad School Stories? Follow grad students as they try to balance their supervisors insistence they work at the bench with their other demands in their life?

“Can Carol finish her thesis? Will Jim's paper be accepted in Nature, or will it be scuttled by reviews from a competing lab? What happens to Yang’s research project when research funding runs out before its finished? Stay tuned...”

Or perhaps Iron Scientist. Give two researchers an experiment and see who is able to perform it faster and get better data. “Whose protocol will take it all?”

I think I have an untapped vein here. Maybe I should form my own production company.

Microscopic!

After sundry delays, I finally signed off approving bids for one of my microscopes today. Keep watching to see how soon it'll actually arrive in the lab...

Meeting with Dean

Several of the assistant professors from my department had a meeting with the new Dean of the College of Science & Engineering here, a fellow named Michael Eastman. Been on campus for about 5 weeks. Was good. Was much more impressed by him in a face-to-face meeting than I was in with his presentation to larger groups. Hopefully, we were able to provide him with some information that he wouldn't have known otherwise.

Challenger and Columbia

The radio has just reminded me that the Challenger disaster was seventeen years ago. Time flies...

The Challenger disaster was very affecting for me. At the time, I was working on The Meliorist, the University of Lethbridge student newspaper, and I went home at lunch and drew probably the best cartoon I ever did there.

Today, what makes me sad is that I'm not as stunned or sad for the Columbia crew as I was for the Challenger crew. I'm not sure why. Maybe it seems less shocking because "it's happened before." The images of cloud trails in the sky seem so similar to those of seventeen years ago.

It's a sad time. I simply hope that people don't forget that there are still people in orbit at the International Space Station who need to come home.

Too much stuff, too little money

Wow, do I have a lot of work to do this semester. Barely able to catch a breath to continue the blog.

Bad news: The State of Texas is asking state Universities to give back 7% of their operating budget. This means cuts to everything, and new faculty in our College are being advised to spend our start-up funds ASAP. This makes me particularly worried, considering that I'm still owed a full one-eighth of my promised start-up funding.

Still here and stuff

I'd been neglectful since the Christmas and New Year's holiday. It's a neglect brought on by teaching two new classes this semester. The pressure to come up with stuff - lectures, lab preparation, etc. -- has been pushing lots of things I should be doing slightly to the side.

The journal will get back on track now.