the conference

Washington DC

0.1. backdated, obviously. my boss has been breathing down my neck for the past 5 days, and i've been loath to blog.

0.2. i'll try to get through this with a minimum of technobabble, because that's just boring (for you, anyway).

saturday

1.1. in the grand tradition of american excess, the convention center is beyond huge. 30,000 neuroscientists coverge on it early morning, and miraculously, there are not only no traffic jams, but there's enough coffee for everyone. talk about your five loaves and two fishes.

1.2. and i mean huge. they use the main hall to test jumbo jet turbines.


2. i almost immediately run into my boss hobnobbing with allen song, a genius who apparently keps turning down multi-million dollar grants because he likes duke so much. or something. he gave us a lecture on mr physics once which went so far over our heads they couldn't even catch the pitch in the stands. i tell him as much. he does not remember me.


3. there's FREE INTERNET access everywhere. they've covered the convention center with one enormous wi-fi dome so powerful it extends two blocks in every direction outside the building. i say a silent prayer of thanks to the gods of technology


4.1. the poster displays cover an area about the size of two football fields, but only about an eighth of that is cognitive neuroscience, and of those only a fraction of studies involve fMRI/EEG/simultaneous fMRI-EEG/TMS etc. I talk to a bunch of people in d'esposito's lab to try and be cool by association even though I don't understand what they're saying half the time.

4.2. when it comes to the occasional molecular study i've been asked to go to, i'm even more overmatched. if college has taught me one thing though, it's how to nod and look intelligent even when lost in a fog of ignorance.


5. i have lunch with this one girl from scranton university. scranton is a jesuit school, as you may be aware, and she's the one person i've talked to in my life who's heard of the atom-sized college that the brother attends. i'm inwardly pleased.

5.1. she puts mustard on her fries, which i find exceedingly weird.

5.2. coincidentally enough, she's also applying to do grad school in clin psych in the university of pennsylvania.

5.3. her undergraduate thesis involves removing goldfish telencephalons to see if that evinces changes in their startle response. she's first author. i try to act nonchalant, but the green-eyed monster does a tapdance behind my eyes. i resolve to get my name on a paper - any paper - by next year march.

5.4. fine, june.


6.1. the dalai lama is the keynote speaker. he's simply adorable. i suddenly want to become buddhist all over again.

6.2. he says that he would have become a scientist had he not opted for the religious life. he speaks of wonderment and proof, of how religious teaching must bow to science if the evidence is irrefutable, but that science must respect ethics as well. he struggles with the english (there's a translator offstage who helps him through the difficult bits), but the points are made. there is much figurative hem-touching.


7.1. dinner is meatloaf. it's expensive, and kind of sucks, but my boss is paying so i stay quiet as a mouse.

(tbc)