He of the Lion
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "He of the Lion" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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12:48 pm
[Link] | Once upon a time, livejournal used to be really great for keeping in touch with my friends. Most of the people I cared about that I didn't see every day used to be on my friends list, and we would all post interesting things about our lives and then have interesting conversations in the comments. These days, most of the people I'm interested in following never even had livejournals, and those who do only post very rarely. Facebook has some usefulness for certain kinds of communication, but really doesn't form a community the way livejournal used to. Twitter seems to have potential, but a glance at my friends page shows that the way people actually use it is horrible, and four out of five tweets are totally uninteresting to me.
Well, I don't know. Maybe I'll come up with a solution. In the meantime, if you need me, I'll be in my lab doing science.
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10:30 am
[Link] | Last year, I lost a girl to med school. This week, I lost a violinist to med school.
Med school and I are not friends.
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09:00 am
[Link] | Another song is posted.
I'd like to try to get higher-quality audio recordings of these things, by laying down instrumental and vocal tracks separately, adding vocal harmony, &c ... but I can't decide whether to focus on recording new videos or making audio recordings. Any opinions?
Also, for those of you who know the rest of my songs, any requests for what you want to see next?
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10:24 pm
[Link] | http://www.youtube.com/lessersounds
Tell your friends.
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12:00 pm
[Link] | I have just arranged to join Shamil Sunyaev's lab for a rotation in January. In a few weeks I will have more information about what project I will be working on.
Relatedly: some of you may remember that last summer I spent some time trying to calculate my Erdös Number. I have finally come up with a number, which is 8. The path goes:
- Erik Zuiderweg
- Gerhard Wagner
- Eirik Flekkøy
- Gianni de Fabritiis
- Francesco Mainardi
- Hari Srivastava
- Joel Brenner
- Paul Erdös
Shamil Sunyaev, though, has an Erdös number of only 3, through Eugene Koonin and Lazlo Szekely. So if I publish with him, my Erdös number would be cut in half.
You know, one must be concerned about these things.
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09:54 am
[Link] | This is a little (okay, a lot) overdue, but hey, I published a paper last year! As first author! Here's the cite, if anyone's interested:
Jordan, DM, KM Mills, I Andricioaei, A Bhattacharya, K Palmo, ERP Zuiderweg, "Parameterization of peptide 13C carbonyl chemical shielding anisotropy in Molecular Dynamics simulations." ChemPhysChem 8 (9) 1375-1385 (2007).
doi:10.1002/cphc.200700003
It currently has 3 citations, giving me an h-index of 1.
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10:26 am
[Link] | In actual news: Either I've gotten worse at school since college, or school has gotten harder. Probably a little of each, combined with the fact that I've lost the knack of caring about my classes. Joining a lab might make me feel less like a waste of space and taxpayer money. I've currently got two or three names on my list for my first rotation. These two also do really cool research, but might not be the best places to work. Maybe I'll join a lab when I come back from Thanksgiving.
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12:23 am
[Link] | If I could have any woman in the world, my first choice would probably be Vienna Teng. The rest of the list varies from day to day, but numbers two and three are currently the crown princess of Sweden and Freema Agyeman, not necessarily in that order. My plans for meeting these women involve (respectively) becoming a successful singer-songwriter, winning the Nobel Prize, and, I don't know, wishing really hard.
I don't really have anything resembling a point. Wish me luck, I guess?
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03:11 pm
[Link] | Interesting side note about the election: the statehood party in Puerto Rico (called the Partido Nuevo Progresista or New Progressive Party) appears to have won the governorship, the non-voting seat in the House, and a massive majority in the commonwealth legislature. Could we have a 51st state in a few years?
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11:47 am
[Link] | "This is a matter of how we prioritize the money that we spend. We've got a three trillion dollar budget, and Congress spends some 18 billion dollars a year on earmarks for political pet projects. That's more than the shortfall to fully fund the IDEA. And where does a lot of that earmark money end up? It goes to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good -- things like fruit fly research in Paris, France, or a public policy center named for the guy who got the earmark. In our administration, we're going to reform and refocus. We're going to get our federal priorities straight, and fulfill our country's commitment to give every child opportunity and hope in life.
"For many parents of children with disabilities, the most valuable thing of all is information. Early identification of a cognitive or other disorder, especially autism, can make a life-changing difference. That's why we're going to strengthen NIH. We're going to work on long-term cures, and in the short-term, we're going to work on giving these families better information."
- Sarah Palin (emphasis mine). And yes, these two paragraphs were consecutive.
So, Palin wants to cut fundamental research in developmental biology while searching for cures for developmental disorders. Interesting.
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11:50 am
[Link] | What do you mean, my grades don't matter? They're grades, that's all they do, is sit there in my transcript mattering all day long. You mean to tell me that nobody will ever look at them again? That all anyone cares about now is how well I learn the material? That it's entirely up to me to decide what I do and don't need to know? And, more to the point, that I don't have to finish this problem set if I don't think I'll get anything out of it?
... weird.
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09:37 am
[Link] | I just got an email from Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, saying they got my resume at WWDC and have a job I should apply for. They're about a year late, of course — I now have a much cooler job on the opposite side of the country as a scientist, though I suppose it pays about a third of what these jobs pay. And the other thing, of course, is that I haven't been to WWDC in two years. A little odd, no?
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09:41 pm
[Link] | The fact that I order lattes at coffee shops has led to a lot of people calling me a "latte-sipping arugula-eating east coast liberal," which is, I suppose, more or less what I am. But ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lyster and I want to print up t-shirts: one for him that says "black-coffee-sipping Chinese-speaking martial-arts-practicing novel-writing liberal" and one for me that says "latte-sipping viola-playing computer-programming Midwestern liberal."
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09:26 pm
[Link] | Things I like:
- Cambridge.
- My house.
- My new guitar.
- My new iPhone.
- My classes, amazingly enough.
- Dudley House.
- Biophysics students.
- Systems Biology students.
- Law students.
- Boston accents.
Things I do not like:
- Harvard.
- Harvard undergrads.
- The Harvard IT department(s).
- The writing ability and style of scientists.
- Matlab.
- Spending an average of 2 hours going to and from class every day.
- Flooding.
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05:52 pm
[Link] | Moving to a new city and starting a new school has prompted me to change nearly all my contact information, including my phone number and my google talk address. I've posted a friends-only entry here and a note on facebook telling you how to reach me; if you want my new contact information and are neither my facebook friend nor my livejournal friend, drop me a line and I'll send it to you.
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11:02 pm
[Link] | I just watched a stadium full of Republicans waving signs that say "Service" and chanting "Country First." Is it just me, or are they actually starting to sound like fascists?
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11:38 pm
[Link] |
Life with Dan and Max
From a conversation with lyster:
The philosopher Xun Zi is largely known for two views: first, that academics are the highest form of human endeavor; and second, that human nature is basically evil. These views seem (to Max) strangely unconnected, but he thinks there is an answer in the etymology of the Chinese word used for "evil" (恶). The word acquired its current meaning around, let's say, the 16th century AD, when Christians used it to translate the word "sin" in the Bible; Xun Zi wrote c. 300 BC. The character itself depicts a deformed man and a heart, and appears to have originally meant not evil so much as incomplete or malformed of soul. Xun Zi's meaning, then, might be that humans are born incomplete or malformed.
So why was this word used in this way? Because the word is actually a faithful translation of Greek "ἁμαρτία," which has a root meaning of falling short or missing a target, and a pretty reasonable translation of Latin "peccatum," which has a root meaning of failing or being in error. These words are used as approximations in the Bible because, as Nietzsche was fond of pointing out, Latin and Greek do not have native words for the Judaeo-Christian concept of sin. Classical philosophers used these words in a moral sense, but one slightly different from the sense in which the Bible uses them. So this means our modern misinterpretation of Xun Zi's philosophy is based on a confusion in terminology between Western Classical philosophy and Biblical ethics.
I know I'm a geek, but I am highly amused.
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03:20 pm
[Link] |
Report from the road
Our truck has a governor that won't let us go faster than 75 mph. Since our truck is called the Dawn Treader, we have named this imperious circuit Reepicheep. It seemed appropriate.
Yesterday: take US-23 south from Ann Arbor to Toledo. Just past Toledo, turn east on I-80, a.k.a. the Ohio Turnpike. Stay on I-80 through about $10 worth of Ohio and a whole damn lot of Pennsylvania. Once safely in the middle of New Jersey, take I-280 towards Newark and Jersey City. Stop for the night.
Last night: Upon arriving at our destination in Jersey City at about 2 AM, we discovered that our padlock had suffered a fatal injury and would now not open, meaning our suitcases and my viola were trapped in the back of the truck where we couldn't get to them. We called a 24-hour locksmith, who said he would be there in half an hour. Two hours, four phone calls, and $120 later, we had a new working padlock on the back of our truck. We got to bed around 6, which is something I usually try to do only for reasons involving a girl in my bed.
For what it's worth, we checked the contents of the back periodically along the way, so we know that the lock did not break until we got on I-280. I-80 is our friend and would never do us wrong. She is, as Dave Carter will tell you, a mighty good road.
Today: wake up at noon, hang out in New York City, go to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour.
Tomorrow: take I-95 across the George Washington Bridge, through New York City and up to New Haven. Wave hello and then goodbye to Mother Yale. In New Haven, take I-91 to Hartford; in Hartford, take I-84 to the Mass Pike; from the Mass Pike, take exit 18 to Cambridge. Arrive at the new house and rejoice. Then start lifting some heavy furniture, which is not quite as joyful an activity.
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09:18 am
[Link] |
Disjointed thoughts about Boston
I'm leaving Ann Arbor probably for good on Friday, and arriving in Cambridge on Sunday. I am, as you may know if you've been paying attention, insanely excited to get on my way. Packing, however, is a bit of an ordeal. As will be the journey out.
redbaker and I are renting a Budget truck and taking an epic 3-day road trip into the Utter East, also known as New England. We are naming our truck the Dawn Treader, for obvious reasons. We will make good friends with I-80 and the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. Chances are I will be ready to kill him by the time he leaves Cambridge.
Speaking of redbaker, over the weekend we discovered that he has a tendency to think women I'm interested in are kind of high-maintenance and significantly crazy. In retrospect, I think this is probably true of the women in question. A day or two later, he announced that he knew a woman in Boston who might be perfect for me, which appears to mean more trouble than she's worth and dangerously insane. Somehow I'm still excited at the prospect.
I have realized that, rather than just being vaguely unhappy and bored, I may have actually been suffering from depression for a good chunk of the last two years. This means that being in a new place with new people and new things to do might not really help. On the other hand, maybe it will. I guess I'll keep you posted.
I guess I'll actually have to wake up in the morning and be on time for things in the fall. Too bad.
Over the course of the last two years, I have written seven songs I think are good and significantly revised one. Together with the three that I was happy with from college, this makes enough to record an album. I'm not sure how to proceed at this point. At the very least, I'll start showing up at open mic nights in Boston and singing them. Hopefully they're as good as I think and I won't get booed off the stage.
Relatedly, I have a shiny new guitar, which is very pretty. Astonishingly enough, I can actually play it passably. It's pretty easy if you already play a string instrument.
In the last two years, I have learned to play guitar and brew beer. I've switched from being a physicist to being a biologist, which worked out well, since I never would have gotten in to a program this good in physics. I've also lost about 40 lbs, shaved my beard, cut my hair, and started wearing contacts. You might not recognize me.
I have completely lost touch with my TD friends. If any of you still read this, I'm sorry and I'll try to do better once I get to Boston. That goes double for Marc, whom I haven't spoken to since before I graduated, even, and have no idea how to contact. Marc, are you out there?
I think that's all I have to say at the moment.
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12:24 pm
[Link] | Things I have called "the bane of my existence" in recent memory:
- Microsoft Excel
- Line endings
- The Conservative movement in Judaism
- Teleconferences
Things that I have not called the bane of my existence, but it might be kind of funny if I had (courtesy of redbaker):
- Non-black non-ravens
- The void at the heart of existence
- Stefan's mom
- Kittens
Things that actually are the bane of my existence:
- Stupid and unnecessary relationship-related drama, both mine and others'
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