dissertation tip #7

IF YOU THINK IT'S TOO LONG, IT'S PROBABLY NOT LONG ENOUGH.

i'm not sure when this started happening, but college students now treat their TAs like wikipedia. they expect two-paragraph answers from two-line questions, and utter not a word of appreciation once the answers are received. i swear to you, the first class in college needs to be life 101: introduction to life, where undergraduates learn that TAs are human beings, and the words 'thank' and 'you' exist in the modern lexicon.

*

in happier news, my latest patient is nice and normal and very sympathetic, a welcome change from the borderline-y folk who seem to have flocked to our clinic in droves recently. we're more than halfway done with this practicum, and my next, for the fall, has been lined up -- CBT of mood disorders with [eminent person in the field]. this is treatment, not just diagnosis, the talky stuff you may be familiar with from TV, the stuff that's supposed to actually make people better. i'm not at all convinced that words coming out of my mouth are going to change anyone's worldview for the better, seeing as how i send most people i talk to in the opposite direction, but there's a manual, and people kicking you in the shins if you do anything wrong.

Some arguments against the logic of Pascal's wager

not new, but well put

From Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer:

I don't love you he told her one evening as they lay naked in the grass.

She kissed his brow and said. I know that. And I'm sure you know that I don't love you.

Of course, he said, although it came as a great surprise -- not that she didn't love him, but that she would say it. In the past seven years of love-making he had heard the words so many times: from the mouths of widows and children, from prostitutes, family friends, travelers, and adulterous wives. Women had said I love you without his ever speaking. The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you

I'm My Own GrandPaw

Many, many years ago when I was twenty-three
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be.
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her and soon they, too, were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life
For my daughter was my mother, 'cause she was my father's wife.
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to dad
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad
For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother
To the widow's grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my step-mother.

My father's wife then had a son who kept them on the run
And he became my grand-child, 'cause he was my daughter's son.
My wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue
Because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother too.

If my wife is my grandmother, then I am her grandchild
And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild
For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
(This has got to be the strangest thing I ever saw)
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpaw.

Chorus
I'm my own grandpaw
I'm my own grandpaw
It sounds funny I know
but it really is so
Oh, I'm my own grandpaw.

TMT

am reading about terror management theory, which explains motivated human behavior based on the fact that

"many psychological needs are ultimately rooted in the existential dilemma into which our species was born. Although humans share with other forms of life a basic instinct for self-preservation, they are unique in their possession of intellectual capacities that make them explicitly and painfully aware of the inevitability of their mortality. Because of this juxtaposition of animal instinct with sophisticated intellect, humans must live with the knowledge that the most basic of their needs and desires ultimately will be thwarted. Knowledge of the inevitability of death gives rise to the potential for paralyzing terror, which would make continued goal-directed behavior impossible."

thus, all behavior that is not directed towards mere survival (and some behavior that on the surface appears to be) is ultimately energy spent towards creating and maintaining a "cultural anxiety buffer" that serves to manage and suppress this terror. we don't realize this because every behavior has a train of hierarchical motives behind it, and we keep pay attention to only the most salient and proximal of these. terror management, its proponents suggest, is the superordinate goal of virtually everything we do.

i find this idea fascinating. unlike other theories i've found to be romantic, this one actually seems like it might be correct as well. i particularly like the fact that it explains, simply and completely, why humans have this funny notion of "justice" that has put millions of lawyers into business. you can ponder that one on your own, and, if you're a lawyer, then go and drink heavily.

during the course of fixing my plumbing problem, it crossed my mind to ask alyson, one of the other owners-not-renters in the department whether being the one in charge causes her to have any more anxiety, on average. her answer was an emphatic 'no'. why? because the convenience of not having to go downstairs and put quarters into a laundry machine every week counterbalances the inconvenience of having to call a plumber every once in a while. because the feelings of self-efficacy cancel out the annoyance when the floorboards accidentally get scratched. and because landlords can suck, and when you're us, the person you most trust is often yourself.

i'm still undecided as to whether this being a landlord business is, on the whole, going to be a positive or negative experience, but i do know this: if anything is going to tip the balance it will be that i'm responsible for the complaints of two other people, and nothing offsets that weight on the other side of the scale. now perhaps the debt has been paid in other ways, but objectively, considering only this endeavor, that's the score. and we'll leave it at that for the time being.

From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard:

Peeping through my keyhole I see within the range of only about 30 percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me. A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: "This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is."

black music for white people

what i can't figure out is -- rap songs that make it onto the charts, artists that everyone has heard of, tupac and jay-z and 50 cent, are those all for white people pretending to be into black culture because it's phat, or whatever? like, real rap for black people consists of stuff that i've never actually heard of? or is everything nowadays just one homogeneous cultural pudding, cf. ben folds' social commentary via their cover of bitches ain't shit? i ask purely out of curiosity and ignorance, since i'm completely out of touch with whatever the music "scene" is nowadays, and would like to get this clear so as to be generally well-informed.

the drain pipe from the other housemate's bathtub is leaking, which, while not a disaster by any stretch of the imagination, is a dratted inconvenience. i wasn't happy with either plumber who stopped by to do an estimate today -- one of them tried to convince me that i needed to rip down the tiled walls of the room (wtf?) -- and now need to call yet another few companies tomorrow. when you run stress paradigms on rats, all you have to change are little things -- marbles in their cage, an unfamiliar odor on their straw bedding -- and cortisol levels go through the roof; i thought this was a rather unusual phenomenon till today, but now am far more sympathetic.

because someone made me think of it today

i do worry about money. i don't covet it, but it does occur to me dimly that i'm going to hit the age of 30 with very little squirreled away and a rather uncertain career ahead. i've tried several times to figure out how much i should be expecting to earn when i'm done, and have come up with estimates all over the map from dismal to pretty reasonable.

and no, i still wouldn't have had it any other way, but the feelings are complicated and will be till i graduate; and there is ever the fear that, in monetary terms alone, this is irresponsible and foolish; and that i've made some terrible mistake which will cost me dearly further down the line.

10 ways to entertain yourself while the TV writers are striking

With the exception of certain personages who believe that fictional characters are not important, I believe I speak for many of us in saying that the TV writer's strike has left us with plenty of free time we otherwise would not have had. To fill those hours, i offer the following suggestions:

1) Instead of watching C.S.I...

... plan the perfect murder. I've done this on numerous occasions, and it's a most enlightening exercise. The rules: the victim has to be someone you know, and you have to have a reasonable motive for wanting to do away with him or her. You must not get caught and convicted. You can assume reasonably good luck to be on your side, but cannot break the laws of physics.

2) Instead of watching Lost...

... check yourself into a hotel for a few days and see how long it takes for someone to call the police and declare you a missing person. once you find out, you'll learn a lot about your self-esteem ("You took how long? Don't you love me???"), and/or reveal that your family is a bunch of pot-smokers ("I'm home!""You left?")

3) Instead of watching Heroes...

... play this game with a friend. Each of you takes it in turn to walk up to a random stranger and yell 'Yatta!'. First one to get beaten up by a skinhead homophobe loses.

4) Instead of watching 24 ...

... make it the goal of your life to reduce your commute time to under 13 minutes no matter where your starting point and destination. Because if Jack Bauer can do it in L.A. rush-hour traffic, gosh darn it, so can you.

5) Instead of watching The Office ...

... bring a video camera disguised as a pencil sharpener into your office and film random 10-minute snippets of every day. Watch them at home at night. Weep when you realize the clips are indistinguishable from this show.

6) Instead of watching House ...

... buy a cane sword and teach yourself how to fence. En garde!

7) Instead of watching Battlestar Galactica...

... build a real-life model of a Raptor using only items currently in your home. You may, if you wish, break down appliances for scrap metal.

8) Instead of watching Grey's Anatomy

... get together with someone, then break up with them, then sleep with their partner, then get together with the original person you were with and cause your best friend to break up with her husband, then steal an ambulance and crash it into another one in front of your local hospital's emergency room.

9) Instead of watching Samantha Who...

... wait you watch Samantha Who? Clearly you're not someone I know.

10) Instead of watching Friday Night Lights...

... go now, and buy this poster, and hang it on your wall, and put on your Dillon Panthers jacket, and pretend that Matt Saracen is singing Mr. Sandman, and melt into a small warm puddle on the floor.

tomorrow is TTT, or train-the-trainer, an exercise where senior lab members go to the hilton and teach very properly-dressed science types how to administer neuropsychological testing, and eat a rather good dinner for free. big pharmaceutical company, important collaboration, make a sterling impression, etc.

so we have a preparatory meeting cum dry run, and i get to the conference room where a thousand assessment sheets have already been color-printed, stapled, and laid out in order of serial number all ready for dissemination. they're really rather nice, professional layout and glossy paper and all, and it's in a very soft and sorry voice that i have to point out to daniel that the name "merck", on every cover page, in 24-point font, really should have the letter "c" in it. at which point the entire room falls silent for about ten seconds, before someone intones with great solemnity: "fuck".

clear blue sky billboards in the netherlands:

i have been informed, in confidence, that one of the third-years was asked to take a leave of absence, largely because he spent the last 6 months, more or less, completely slacking off. this is the fourth person on the program to be on the ropes since i've been here (2 have been kicked out), and it pains me personally, not just because i think he's a nice guy, but also because it does nothing for my it-could-happen-to-you anxiety.

semester the fourth

i will be good, and finish my classes, and not complain too much, even though social and cultural psychology are going to be force-fed down my throat. it's rozin for cultural, who is supposed to be awesome, not to mention famous, so perhaps the material will be palatable. social, however, is taught by a rotating crew of princeton faculty, the thought of which is already making me feel slightly green. why breadth requirements? he laments, before remembering the resolution just made.

teaching: a small class led by a post-doc, mcq exams (i'm told) and only office hours to conduct, so hopefully the experience will be less painful than last sem. also: the last semester that i have to teach, and god bless the advisor for having the money to allow me to do that. in future, it's my way or the high way -- i.e. i teach neuroethics/cog neuro or nothing at all.

research: mostly preparing for summer, and of course i go on seeing my weird assortment of patients -- next up a lawyer who may have borderline pd. smart clients suck, because they're not too busy drooling to tell when you're screwing up.

all in all, things look like they'll be a little more manageable than last semester, which is good because i anticipate that this summer business is going to be a pretty big headache, what with having to coordinate the logistics across continents. thus, things looking up, except for the big nasty that is the writer's strike, and having to wait till april for battlestar galactica season 4.

pa

1. hopefully my blog will not go so neglected this semester as the last.

2. i would be a liar if i said i didn't enjoy the fawning and attention when i go back; i would also be a liar if i didn't admit that it's also slightly embarrassing.

3. breaks are still eerily the same: the restaurants, the conversations, the pining for what might have been. i have a sneaking suspicion that they will continue to be the same until i graduate. this is either very good, or really bad.

4. despite myself, i'm enjoying the rick riordan series.

5. we will, shortly, discuss semester #4.