run #4

wednesday: my subject starts hyperventilating when we put her in the scanner, and for a moment it looks like i'm going to lose the whole run. luckily, she's persuadable, and calms down long enough for us to put her back in and discover that the scanner coil is not working (phase ghosting, or what a brain would look like if drawn by jackson pollock). then, my account gets frozen because of some administrative cockup entirely out of my control, and i decide that it's probably just about time to get back into bed.

thursday: bard's. adrian and i discuss jesus camp. he thinks that all religions should be classified as cults and banned. you know, i've been wondering lately exactly how liberal one can get. i mean, it must be theoretically possible to reach a state where pretty much everything is up for discussion -- not, i stress, that one would necessarily endorse everything (that's just ridiculous) -- but a state in which one could take fanaticism, radical skepticism and everything in between as reasonable -- and be able to announce to everyone honestly and with candor that i don't necessarily agree with you, but i can see where you're coming from. the questions being: (1) is that state in itself reasonable? (2) is that state achievable? and (3) is it desirable? incid.: note to self -- find time to read paul feyerabend's work, in which he criticizes the notion that the scientific method is the best (and only) one for discovering and accumulating knowledge. no one really buys into it, mainly because it leads down the path of babies and bathwater, but still, it's intuitively appealing because it contains, i think a grain of truth. as i was explaining to a. on the way to DC last year, scientists have to believe in a null hypothesis, and the null hypothesis of any physical causative chain is God. which is not quite like a god-of-the-gaps argument if you think about it, because it's an a priori statement, a non-moving goalpost. and for that reason i like it, and am surprised more scientists don't like it as well.

friday: end of run; n=7. i spend the morning googling the lyrics of we didn't start the fire. all those years wondering what the hell "children of the little mind" could possibly be. idiot. this is like kristen's "totally blitzed by a fart". also: they run in chronological order! we went to a very cheap (but pretentious) place for dinner, and i had "capon" with unidentifiable stuff, and felt a little sick eating it because it looked so much an animal.

saturday: 37 days to go. DISSERTATION TIP #5: IF YOU MUST PANIC, TIME IT WELL. but, oh! it's been weeks and weeks and i'm still writing the methods section, which is the easiest part, and exams are fast upon us again, and friday night lights episodes look at me accusingly every time i turn on my computer.

i was going to give you homework, our stats professor said, but because it's such a nice day out today, i'm not. and well, it was, the first real day of spring, as in no jackets, golden retrievers frisking in the park, shirtless guys playing volleyball on the quad. the return of good weather has more significance for me this year. for the first time in a while, i've been in a temperate zone all winter, and it was a moderately rough one by philadelphian standards (i think) -- at least three snowfalls i recall that gave folks serious pause when stepping out of the house. but i think we're truly done with that, and everyone was out, even daniel who busted his foot a couple of weeks ago, and there were no excel worksheets, just milk chug and spaghetti tops and sunshine streaming down.

the twop forums are down and i cannot scream to [people who care] about the battlestar galactica season finale!!

(also: friday night lights is terrific, but i cannot get hooked on it now. please let me be good.)

also --

-- it would have been ok except that i have this deadline like the bloody sword of damocles over my head. 6 weeks to go.

after a long period of working elsewhere, i returned to the cfn this morning to do my data processing, only to strengthen my hypothesis that no one ever does any actual work there. there was music, random tracks from a hellishly schizophrenic itunes playlist, going from tupac to pachelbel and phish to a philharmonic, everyone's adrenaline pumping and heart rate going a hundred a minute from the mood changes and people yelling at each other about kal penn as adjunct professor and which fruit salad truck is the best and makeup applier that looks just like a biro. and then suddenly indiana jones and the last crusade was put up on the widescreen tv and it was that scene in the library with harrison ford and the piledriver. the server crawling like a dying man in the desert, and then koch's for lunch (emily's treat) and 3/4 of the day gone with only 2 datasets processed. not good. not good at all.

the unfortunate truth

the answers to the questions "is research important?", and "is your research important?" are often not the same.

one more word on going back for the summer. the dialectic -- of place, and being a stranger, or whatever have you -- is an intriguing one, and, knowing that everyone has to be saddled with some kind of struggle, i'm not entirely unhappy with what i got. it's definitely more interesting than starving on the streets.

i dreamed last night that i was a contestant on big brother (even though i've never watched a full episode of the show). it was time for the immunity challenge, whatever the hell they call it, and julie chen brought in a vat of ladybugs, which she proceeded to dump all over the floor. it was completely unclear what we were supposed to do, and some of the women began screaming, and then all of a sudden the ladybugs began swelling up until they were as large as beachballs, and furry, and i woke up convinced that my bed was full of them. diagnosis: too much wii before bedtime.

i've started making tentative summer plans -- back home for a few weeks in august, i think, and maybe a short trip in may if i can afford it. i've been soliciting opinions about whether it's weird to travel alone, since certain parties have sold me up the river. you know, when you read the blogs of people who travel solo, the instinctive thought is "cool" -- but i suspect that that's only because you become their companion by dint of reading the blog, thus mitigating the weirdness of the solitary journey. or maybe i'm just thinking about it too hard.

home. it's strange to think of it. when i was at duke, and was back in singapore for 3 months of the year, it seldom felt that i had truly left -- i was always either coming or going. and now -- it frightens me a little, all those things i was worrying about last august, bifurcating trajectories and so forth. and i kind of understand not wanting to face that, wanting to believe that memories might be enough, that reality is only perfect when it's frozen.

i have allowed myself, over the past few months, to like my life here. in college, as an undergrad, i found it hard to let go -- the breaks were lilypads, so that even while i was enjoying myself i thought of it as just an enjoyable (3-year) vacation from "real life". and i'm slightly ashamed of that, and i know that many singaporeans -- i've met lots of them (BONDED) -- take this to extremes; they "like" their overseas college experience only because at the back of their minds, they know that they're going to go back home and lie through their asses to everyone about what a fantastic, awesome, eye-opening, life-changing experience it was and have a billion public flickr albums with bulletpoints detailing exactly why this was so. the next step, of course, being angst -- why don't i like it as much overseas? what's wrong with me? i can't possibly actually like singapore more. i've been there. i just read a blog entry about someone in sydney who is there at this actual literal moment.

it's a conundrum, and has something to do with "to thine own self be true" or whatever, and i think that the light at the end of the tunnel is when everything unravels and you see the goddess and realise that anything higher than "i'm happy", or "i'm miserable" is, from the standpoint of living day-to-day, largely unimportant, and the unfortunate byproduct of an overlarge frontal lobe. so here it goes. i like it here, i truly do, even though i have crappy days and weeks. and -- at the same time -- i'm looking forward to going home. it will not be like before, ever again, but if you screwed a confession out of me, i'd tell you that i miss people too much to care. and so it goes, and so it goes, and you're the only one who knows.

run #3

so much work for so little data, but at least what i have so far seems to be assembling itself into some kind of sensible story. 50 days to the deadline. we've started the too-scary process of talking about committees and what the defense is going to be like. everything's moving entirely too fast, how did so much time go by?

st. patty's day. by 2 pm, drunk, green-shirted people ("RUB FOR GOOD LUCK") were already staggering around UC, and lines were forming outside the blarney stone and smokey joe's. i got into a rather brief and pointless discussion with a colleague about what st. patrick actually did to be canonized, pointless because neither of us knew anything beyond the fact that he's either the patron saint of ireland, or beer, or both (wiki tells me that he may have driven the snakes out of ireland and resurrected some dead people).

we declined the mid-afternoon drinking and went to eat at the newly-reopened samosa on 13th and walnut. the service was terrible -- one gay waiter who wrote our orders down, repeated them (2 mistakes), disappeared into the kitchen, reappeared 5 minutes later to repeat the order again (2 more mistakes), and then proceeded to bring out the wrong appetizers. fortunately, this meant they were free, and also very good. the vadai was unusually crunchy, although i will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the novelty was intentional. the pakoras won points for not tasting like they had been fried in three-day old oil. coconut chutney and thin but flavorful vegetable curry came on the side. the indian/sri lankan people, ewa and stephen had dosa with various permutations of fillings, i got the bangan bhurta with naan, and alyson to my disappointment ordered a lasagna (but i am good at swallowing my tongue nowadays, and proceeded to do so with great enthusiasm). i snitched bits of dosa while waiting for my food to appear (it took ages), and regretted not ordering it -- i think it's their specialty, and only $4.95. my naan turned out to be hot and fresh and light, but the curry was very non-descript and completely uniform in texture. oh well. i do want to go back to try the prata at some point.

it was still early, and people had not decided if they wanted to brave the pubs, so we adjourned to naked chocolate for sweets and making stephen suffer because he had given them up for lent. they had new cupcakes, and a four-foot chocolate bunny. now that i've been there a bunch of times, i think i'm ready to say that i don't like naked as much as bakerzin (sic) or even (glug) TCC, notwithstanding the 1.5 million schoolkids who seem to pack the latter places 24/7. and, since it's going to be spring (4 inches of snow on thursday!), i'm officially ready to move on to capogiro as being my dessert place of choice.

we eventually decided that we should just go back to the hangout house and play poker, so that we did. as it usually happens, the one person who had never touched a deck of cards in her life (who will remain unnamed) cleaned almost everyone else out, leaving stephen and myself to slug it out for second (drowned by the river twice, don't ask. does anyone know where the terms flop, turn and river came from? i'm sure von knows the answer.) a lot of white russians floated in from the kitchen, which led to a few eastern european jokes and someone confessing that they were almost named "nadine". i'm glad that the mother and the father decided on good, sensible names for all of us; i don't think i would ever have recovered from romulus, or henry.

there's an article recently published in science going around the lab with some very interesting findings on sleep and memory consolidation. these guys made their subjects play a matching game with a 6x5 array of cards before they went to bed (turn over pairs of cards to try and find matching ones), and asked them to memorize the positions of the cards for the following day. while they were doing this, they squirted a rose-scented aerosol at them to form a stimulus-context association, and then put them to bed. the experimental group got rose aerosol puffed at them during periods of slow-wave sleep (the deepest kind), while various control groups got no puffing during the task, no puffing during their sleep, puffing during REM and so forth. the group that was puffed at during SWS performed significantly better than all the controls (and i would say, looking at the numbers, that they were practically as well as statistically significant).

now, while this is very cool from a scientific standpoint, just think about the real-world implications. the task isn't so far removed from things you actually need to do -- i would say if you were comparing performance on it to, say, studying for an exam, you'd find that it's a pretty valid instrument. and think how easy it would be for an engineer to rig up something for make use if this information at home. all you need is a simple 8-electrode eeg system hooked up to a custom-made glade air-freshener doodad so that it spritzes the scent of your choice in your face every time it sees delta waves. then, inhale huge amounts of that scent while you're studying, and go to bed. instant memory boost! the marketing potential is staggering. why don't i ever come up with experiments like that? i want to retire at 35 too.

From On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt

Wittgenstein once said that the following bit of verse by Longfellow could serve him as a motto:

In the elder days of art Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part For the Gods are everywhere

The point of these lines is clear. In the old days, craftsmen did not corners. They worked carefully, and they took care with every aspect of their work. Every part of the product was considered, and each was designed and made to be exactly as it should be. These craftsmen did not relax their thoughtful self-discipline even with respect to features of their work that would ordinarily not be visible. Although no one would notice if those features were not quite right, the craftsmen would be bothered by their consciences. So nothing was swept under the rug. Or, one might perhaps say, there was no bullshit.

It does seem fitting to construe carelessly made, shoddy goods as in some way analogues of bullshit. But in what way? Is it the resemblance that bullshit itself is invariably produced in a careless or self-indulgent manner, that it is never finely crafted, that in the making of it there is never the meticulously attentive concern with details to which Longfellow alludes? Is the bullshitter by his very nature a mindless slob? Is his product necessarily messy or unrefined? The word shit does, to be sure, suggest this. Excrement is not designed or crafted at all; it is merely emitted, or dumped. It may have a more or less coherent shape, or it may not, but it is in any case certainly not wrought

The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain inner strain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires discipline and objectivity. It entails accepting standards and limitations that forbid the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is this selflessness that, in connection with bullshit, strikes us as inapposite. But in fact it is not out of the question at all. The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who -- with the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing, and so forth -- dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every word and image they produce exactly right.

run #2

-- has begun. there are only 3 runs of any importance in a study: the first run, the second run, and the run with the one idiot outlier that you have to explain away or hide under the carpet. this last one is going to be soon in coming. the room for my subjects had been thoughtfully heated to about 110 degrees, so that was an issue for a while, but i'm getting used to pulling my weight and (per the advisor) making sure i act like i run the show. director of the thermostat, that's me.

our lab is in the process of acquiring a new mr-compatible eeg system. simultaneous eeg-fmri experiments to date have been, on the most part, hopeless, for a number of technical reasons i'm not going to go into, so this is no low risk investment. i'm actually quietly pessimistic about the whole endeavor, but (a) this has nothing to do with my thesis, and (b) it's not my money being spent. in an exact repeat of my first days in the ex-lab, hengyi sent me a gopher e-mail asking me to lend them my head, which meant a morning looking at the inside of the scanner bore and the rest of the day walking around with conductive paste in my hair. this turned out to be unexpectedly gratifying; pan-clinical was right after, and the first thing hilary said to me when we were done was that my hair looked really good. now, people who know me know that i don't really give a crap about styling my hair, so this was like george w. bush receiving a compliment about his penetrating insights into how to fight the global war on terror. i would have dismissed it as facetiousness, except that dr. sb said exactly the same thing a few hours later, and we all know about lightning and striking twice. there were a few mad moments of temptation, but i came home and washed my hair, and will not be spending several hundred dollars on gritty electolyte gel because (a) it costs several hundred dollars, (b) it's a really stupid idea, and (c) i have too many weaknesses already to add vanity to the bottom of the list.

i woke up today and decided that spring break ought to have at least one day of actual break in it, even for graduate students. so i went to the mall and bought new shoes.

i met adrian in the break room at lunchtime today making a ketchup sandwich. he must have caught me staring because he immediately looked sheepish and explained that he had intended to go out to buy deli meats but had run out of time. embarrassment all around, and then i pulled the shasta-and-her-meatless-cheeseburger story out from the collection of old stories that really shouldn't be told anymore, and we both laughed nervously, and i almost felt bad enough to run out right away and bring back a slice of bologna.

From The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno (quoted in Paradise News, David Lodge)

In the most secret recess of the spirit of the man who believes that death will put an end to his personal consciousness and even to his memory forever, in that inner recess, even without his knowing it perhaps, a shadow hovers, a vague shadow lurks, a shadow of a shadow of uncertainty, and while he tells himself: "There is nothing for it but to live this passing life, for there is no other!" at the same time he hears, in this most secret recess, his own doubt murmur: "Who knows?..." He is not sure he hears aright, but he hears. Likewise, in some recess of the soul of the true believer who has faith in the future life, a muffled voice, the voice of uncertainty, murmurs in his spirit's ear: "Who knows?..." Perhaps these voices are no louder than the buzzing of mosquitoes when the wind roars through the trees in the woods; we scarcely make out the humming, and yet, mingled with the roar of the storm, it can be heard. How, without this uncertainty, could we ever live?

Slowly, stealthily, spring is arriving. Friday was Dianne's exam, which was intensely boring, and then glorious release into the sunshine, and spring break. I did my time at the beaches as an undergrad, but as you grow older, there's a trick you can learn so that Cancun and the like become less geographical places, and more states of mind. Spring break -- whose origins, I am old, were in Ft. Lauderdale, 1885 -- is exciting not because of the exotic escapes, but because of its position in the narrative arc of the academic year -- it's the caesura right before the final swell towards finals, coinciding with winter's thaw and the symbolic renewal of the world. Its power comes from its situation in time, and the rest is a facade. Fortunately, one doesn't have to realise any of this to get drunk and sunburned and have the time of ones life.

I picked up a copy of The Time of Our Singing from Last Word on the way home -- my third (one went to Yen and the other is god knows where) -- and spent a while just reading random bits of it and having small prosegasms. I haven't read anything new for almost 2 weeks now -- on Wednesday I abandoned studying at about 10 and picked up The Tempest, which I've reread with unhealthy regularity since J2. More recently, I've begun to think of Prospero's magic as science (per Asimov's quote), which will be my way of keeping myself honest once I publish a few papers in Nature and win the Nobel Prize. (Right.)

The evening was prospective's party round #2 (electric boogaloo), which was at Jared's place in West Philly, Crime Central. These were mostly folks in experimental psych with dull-as-ditchwater research interests. I just can't get into basic cognitive psych -- it feels so passe, somehow. Kinjal and I had made a pact to do our first Irish car bomb together (as an early St. Patrick's day thing), and the assertion that it would taste like chocolate milk turned out to be exactly correct. Between The Pogues, Flogging Molly, and Bailey's, I would say that the Irish pretty much have a monopoly on the good things in life.

Break is promising. I'll go to New York for a bit to visit (duke)ailian if she's free, and make root vegetable casserole, and write my thesis. and 300 is coming out on Thursday. And then back into my hole, and seven weeks of escalating complaints until my defense in May. But first, a pause.