From Wheels Of Fortune in The New Yorker, Nov 26, 2007

When you live in China as a foreigner, there are two critical moments of recognition. The first occurs immediately upon arrival, when you are confronted with your own ignorance. Language, customs, history -- all of it has to be relearned, and the task seems insurmountable. Then, just as you begin to catch on, you realize that everybody else feels pretty much the same way. The place changes too fast; nobody in China has the luxury of being confident in his knowledge. Who shows a peasant how to find a factory job? How does a former Maoist learn to start a business? Who has the slightest clue how to run a car-rental agency? Everything is figured out on the fly; the people are masters of improvisation. The second moment of recognition is even more frightening that the first. Awareness of your own ignorance is a lonely feeling, but there's little consolation in sharing it with 1.3 billion neighbors.

psychopathology imagined is very distant from how illnesses present in real people. the reason for this, i think, is that when we think of a depressed person, we think only about how they're depressed, and not at all about how they're a person, and after sitting and actually talking to someone with depression for 3 hours, you habituate to the sadness and the pain, and what emerges is just a core like anyone else would have. diagnosis is hard -- not just because of the therapist's humanity, but also because people contradict themselves, or misrepresent themselves, or just flat out lie

and of course there are the very human traps of wanting to diagnose people with the cool thing rather than the obvious thing (too much house!), or asking leading questions, or asking the wrong questions, and put that all together -- i guess what i'm trying to say is that what i'm doing now is hard, and hard in a different way from the academic work, because it's to do with people, who are messy, and because i often feel like i don't really know what i'm doing, and because we don't get any answers once our patients get sent away back to their primary therapists. so what you have instead is that those with high self-esteem pat themselves on the backs, and the ones with low self-esteem keep second-guessing themselves even after the report has been turned in and the patient gone forever.

i think i'm somewhere in the middle, reared on ten-year series where you get to go to the back of the book for the answers, far enough along in the process to realize the blatant stupidity of that. unlearning the lessons of childhood is a long journey; fortunately, it's one i've been given the chance to make.

the mcroyale-with-cheese effect

you see, after watching movies about food, i always get this compulsion to go and buy or make the dish in question, which meant that after watching ratatouille on dvd yesterday i just had to have a stab at putting together the E-P-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S meal. handily enough, googling "ratatouille recipe" turns up the real-life inspiration for the stew, so there was no need for improvisation.

it was a very educational process. first of all, it's kind of amazing that ego ever got his food, considering that the dish takes about 4 hours to make from start to finish. second, vegetable slicers are rad. third, chervil is related to, but is not actually parsley (i was thinking cilantro-coriander, but no.)

first layer:


fully assembled:


after baking:


plated:


it was nearly impossible to get the vegetables to stand on the plate in two tiers like remy did because they were a little bit too soggy, but let's not dwell on marred perfection. the dish looked -- and tasted -- wonderful, and this from someone who isn't the world's biggest fan of squash. my biggest worry was the amount of tomato in it (8 roma tomatoes!) -- i always add more sugar to pasta sauce than i really should to cut the sharpness of tomato -- but the other vegetables were more than sweet enough to do that job.

next week: ethnic potluck!

the leaves fell last night, all at once, accumulating in ankle-deep piles in my backyard and the streets. this coincided nicely with the end of a week in which i felt that my research, grad school, and pretty much everything is a bloody waste of time, and that any life philosophy beyond hedonism is not even worth considering. what would fall be without a little seasonal angst?

"thanksgiving" dinner with the housemate and christian from canada was hoegaarden and cheap turkey in a dive bar and the frank admission that life is pretty much hell for everyone, which made me feel better. and now, a good book, i think, and bed.

char kway teow (ii)

1) too much fishcake
2) not enough dark sauce

also by steven weinberg

“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

char kway teow (i)

su-lin tells me that i will fail miserably because i don't have a gigantic fire to imbue wok hei, and perhaps she knows best since she has apparently attempted it. nevertheless, i absolutely must have something ethnic for the ethnic potluck in a couple of weeks, and everything else i could think of was even more adventurous. i spent 2 hours in chinatown yesterday vacillating over which sambal was appropriate, but being unable to taste any of them, it was still a shot in the dark. anyhow, today is the experiment, and i have 2 weeks to rectify whatever goes wrong before the real thing.

the heat in our house is really weird; it seems to come on for 10 minutes at a time, blast hot air like dragonfire through the vents, and then turn itself off. also: unless someone is playing tricks on me, the thermostat seems to adjust itself, bouncing down to 62 in the middle of the night and making us wake up to freezing cold. i suspect there's something about the system i just don't understand, but at the same time, i'm silently thankful that we haven't all died of carbon monoxide poisoning, or been incinerated by the entire device blowing up completely.

(touch wood)

to tell someone you think they have alzheimer's disease, to be the one to pass down the sentence -- this, i think, is the hardest thing, the one part of the job that nothing will every adequately prepare you for except doing it.

sfn (v)

18. tuesday is uninteresting.

19.1. on wednesday, just before my flight home, i'm scheduled to give my poster.
19.2. it's my first time, and i really don't expect anyone to be very interested.
19.3. the instant i unfurl the poster and pin it up, i spot a typo: this despite spending literally 3 days making it.
19.4. interested person #1: random grad student from ohio state(?) who asks pointedly dumb questions and stands on one foot a lot.
19.5. interested person #2: assistant prof. at _____ university who throws technical jargon at me at a furious pace, most of which i suspect does not actually make sense. by the way, he concludes, you should read all my papers, the references of which are on this convenient list. right.
19.6. interested persons #3 + #4: two plump, ditzy girls complete with whispering and giggling and "no, we didn't have any questions"
19.7. et al.
19.8. i suspect everyone just wants to steal our imaging sequence, which our lawyers have fortunately surrounded with an impenetrable firewall of IP protection.
19.9. mercifully, it only lasts an hour.

and...that was neuroscience '07. not really as fun as previous years (less free food and drink for one), but a good conference nevertheless. i'm considering hbm next year, but that's in australia, so goodness knows where i'll get funding for that. throw some eccentric millionaires my way if you come across any.

sfn (iv) -- neuroethics

reading over my neuroethics post from a little while ago, i realize that failed to make the important distinction between determinism and free will. neuroscience is pointing increasingly to determinism in our behavior -- this makes it unlikely that free will exists in the form that most people think it does (the little man behind the curtain form). listening to dan dennett speak on tuesday reminded me that his little contingent of philosophers does not subscribe to that belief -- they believe instead in a weak form of free will (freedom to make decisions rather than freedom from causality). i disagree with that*: as i said before, i think the responsible way to live is to be fully cognizant that we have no free will in any proper sense of the word, but that we have to live as if we do. dennett does come to a sort of similar conclusion though, borrowing from the old is-ought problem: ethics as distinct and independent from scientific finding. he suggests that law-making should remain political, and that responsibility be a line agreed on by people and not machines, all of which i completely agree with. for the "right" reasons, but also because: people are never going to grasp the ramifications of neuroscientific findings, and "education of the public" is always going to be a pipe dream. this way, we avoid a dictatorship of the intellegentsia, and also, conveniently, satisfy the need to walk the morally correct path. who could ask for anything more?

* conceptually, i think of biological operation and the illusion of free will this way: the brain performs an unconscious computation, and the translation through motor/cognitive pathways that are conscious only comes later, giving us the sense that we performed the action volitionally when really the initiation was just not in our consciousness.

sfn (iii)

13. on monday morning, i locate ex-lab people and we breakfast at richard walker's pancake house. it has mixed reviews online, but i really like it. my german pancake -- lemon, powdered sugar and syrup -- is very well done, and the coffee is the best i've had in a while. then again, pancakes please me very easily, so perhaps i'm biased.

14.1. research. there is a group at michigan doing work very similar to ours. i go up to one of the grad students standing at the poster and start babbling and babbling in what i can only assume is an attempt to prove that i'm smarter than her. after about 10 minutes, i realize that the words coming out of my mouth are barely even in english any more, and i stop, and sheepishly walk away.
14.2. their PI is someone who i respect a lot, and want to collaborate with some day. he's hanging around as well, so i go up to him, manage to be sort of coherent, and get utterly snubbed. that's the last time i try something like that.

15. hengyi gives our talk just after noon. it goes as well as can be expected. i have absolutely no sense of how important our data are; judging impact in science can be one of the hardest things.

16. the ex-lab-boss is there, and we have a long chat, and start to solidify plans for next summer. i am going back to the ex-lab to collect a dataset -- this is so i can graduate in fewer than 87 years: the pace of collecting mri data here is completely unreasonable. i promise him that i will have a proposal before the year is out, a promise that i have since regretted making. coming up with ideas for research is the worst. the happy medium between "that's an idiotically trivial idea" and "what is the meaning of life" is one i have yet to find.

17.1. hengyi wants chinese food, so we end up in red pearl for dinner. it seems entirely unpromising, but shockingly, the dim sum appetiser is quite superb (honest-to-god xia1 jiao3!), as are the two dishes we order (duck thai-style curry and a sweet potato concoction).
17.2. i have started speaking chinese with hengyi some of the time. it's sharing the pain, i guess; speaking english seems to be physical agony for him sometimes. what results are these super-weird conversations where both of us furiously engage in pre-forming sentences that melt like sugar pills on our tongues as the other person is speaking.
17.3. but still: we talk about visiting china, and bilingualism, and philosophy of the mind (not kidding).

(cont'd)

sfn 2007(ii)

6. i spent a little time at the conference in the morning, but no one wants to hear about that.

Tijuana, Mexico

7.1. i wanted to cross the border for a couple of reasons: to see what a real taco is like, to see what illicit substances there were to be bought, and to add to the slowly-growing list of “countries visited in my lifetime”. admittedly, it’s a little bit of a cheat when all you have to do is take a trolley ride and then walk through a turnstile, but hey, it still counts.
7.2. mexico makes me think of: being drunk at ten in the morning, unwashed ponchos, logan echolls, getting your kneecaps shot off in the street.
7.3. number of items encountered/experienced from the list above: 0.
7.4. blame globalization. almost everywhere you can think of visiting nowadays has become a caricature of itself, think 10 million taco stalls with waiters wearing sombreros outside pushing menus into your face as you walk past. as if there’s some global panic that if it’s not big and loud and glowing, people won’t get it, that cultural experience is somehow not legitimate unless it’s magnified to the billionth degree.

8.1. but i get ahead of myself slightly. as i said, to get into mexico, you find your way to the san ysidro terminal (where the last thing you see before leaving the USA is a gigantic mickey d’s), and walk through a pair of very innocent-looking revolving turnstiles. innocent-looking because there’s no security checkpoint or warning that you’re actually leaving the united states, which is not very considerate at all.
8.2. i figured that tijuana would be crowded, especially since it was a sunday, but the streets and courtyards were pretty empty, and many of the vendors were only just setting up shop. what was open were the pharmacies – dozens of them, selling SSRIs, Viagra, and other such wonderments.
8.2.1. i’m not going to lie to you: i was really tempted to get a box of modafinil and a one of adderall, but I didn’t, and i think i regret it.
8.2.2. (mmm…speed…)
8.2.3. i swear to you, i really didn’t.
8.3. the avenue revolucion is about a 20-minute walk away from the border. once you get downtown, the touts really start coming at you: grizzled men selling hideous silver chains, hawkers with churros and menudo and huge hunks of meat slow-roasting on spits. in contrast with cambodia, though, the people here don’t really seem to mean it. they pester and chase you up the street, but you can sense their weariness as well. they know you know the rules of the game, you know they know the rules of the game, and so on, and they’re probably not starving – turistas flock here in droves, i hear, curious californians, rich college kids with money to burn on booze and knick-knacks. the effort is kind of vestigial, like they’re putting on a show because you expect them to be pushy. in retrospect (and i'm writing this last bit from home now), it was all very self-conscious, as if the entire culture was on parade, on edge and aware that it's being watched.

9. some pictures of the avenue revolucion:






ethnic dance:



10.1. for lunch, i’m tempted by this really sketchy place with just enough room to sit about eight people shoulder-to-shoulder. it’s all locals in there, and the most wonderful smell of what i think is a very greasy roasting pig. like a coward, though, i chicken out and head for somewhere with a menu in english. yes, I am suitably ashamed.
10.2. the fish tacos and draft beer are good, not excellent, and the salsa is not a patch on the stuff daniel's wife makes*.

11. this was a market i popped into:

candy skulls for the dia de los muertos

biggest pile of chillies ever

this was kind of a weird juxtaposition, bamboo and other chinese ornaments right beneath statues of the grim reaper. covering all your bases?:



12.1. i did get a bottle of mezcal, which i’ve been wanting for a while. the shopkeeper let me sample a few kinds before i decided, and i liked this one the most: smooth, mescado, and with the little agave worm floating around in it. also, a shot glass.
12.2. i swear on my ancestors' graves that i did not get the adderall.

(cont'd)

* again in retrospect, i should not have done a sit-down meal. alas. i guess there'll be a next time.

sfn 2007

San Diego, CA

0.1. the splendid thing about being the only neuroscientist in a lab full of psychologists is that i get to come to sfn unsupervised. in atlanta, that's not such a big thing, but when you’re talking SoCal, that’s when the heart starts singing. of course that meant I had to make a poster, but no one cares about posters anyway, even ones with sexy mri pictures on them. conferences are for professors to catch up and drink a lot, and students to feel important. and dude, san diego, unsupervised. academia can wait.
0.2. if you’re my advisor and you’re reading this, i didn’t just say that.

1.1. the first thing that happens to me is that i miss my connecting flight, which means i get to charge around the dallas/fort worth airport hunting for another one. good times. i'm also forced to eat lunch there. i select a barbeque place on the basis of being in texas, and it's horrible beyond all imagining.
1.2. incid. -- try not to travel across time zones on the day before daylight savings time ends, it's really very confusing.

2.1. san diego is shrouded in smoke and haze, not quite the biblical plague of darkness one of my friends described, but a rather awful reminder nevertheless of all that's going on.
2.2. it's about 20 degrees warmer than philly here, but you can hardly see the sun. add in palm trees and sailboats on the bay, and you have yourself some real cognitive dissonance.
2.3. also: there doesn't seem to be anyone out on the streets, and it's a weekend.
2.4. it's not san francisco, and it's not miami. i'm not really sure i like it. ask me again in a few days.

3. i was planning to get to the convention center and register for the conference, but the flight snafus put me in my hotel just before dinner time, and i figured that there wasn't too much point. besides, that would be the industrious and responsible thing to do (see 0.2).

4.1. hob-nob hill is the closest decent place to my hotel that google maps spits out, so i head there for food.
4.2. notwithstanding the sentiment in my previous post, i think there's much pleasure to be had in eating alone as well. for one thing, you get to pay full attention to the food, and since reading michael pollan, that's something i've endeavored to do a little more.
4.3. it's not important, but in case you're wondering: raisin bread, caesar salad, braised lamb shank with mashed potatoes, corn-on-the-cob and mint jardiniere sauce.

(cont'd)

From The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan:

... Brillat-Savarin draws a sharp distinction between the pleasures of eating - "the actual and direct sensation of a need being satisfied," a sensation we share with the animals - and the uniquely human "pleasures of the table." These consist of "considered sensations born of the various circumstances of fact, things, and persons accompanying the meal," - and comprise for him one of the brightest fruits of civilization. Every meal we share at a table recapitulates this evolution from nature to culture, as we pass from satisfying our animal appetites in semsilence to the lofting of conversational balloons. The pleasures of the table begin with eating (and specifically with eating meat, in Brillat-Savarin's view, since it was the need to cook and apportion meat that first brought us together to eat), but they can end up anywhere human talk cares to go. In the same way that the raw becomes cooked, eating becomes dining.

merely players

oftentimes, when i'm done seeing a client, and i walk them to the front door to say goodbye, i get a fleeting feeling that they're suddenly going to break out of whatever role they were playing, smile broadly, start giving me comments on how i did or what i could have said that might have been better. but of course they don't. they walk out the door, and back into their lives, the same ones they've been telling me about, lives that are real, full of misery and pain and hopelessness. and once they've left the clinic and gone out that door, the hope that all i've learned is just a heartbreaking story, a tragedy conjured from air, vanishes along with them.