i want house back

run #8

this is about the halfway point of my big study (n = 15; 1 dropout so far*), which i will drink to, even if no one drinks with me. completing/publishing this experiment (august '09, i hope and pray), plus the slightly ass study that i did last spring**, plus the soon-to-be-run follow-up to the slightly ass study, plus the work i'm going to do this summer***, will hopefully work out to at least 90% of a dissertation. the work done so far would have been of much higher quality were i not forced to take classes, but so it goes, and i still have a chance to go back and hammer it into shape. all in all, i hesitantly declare that things are going ok on the research front for now.

one of the subjects i have in this run is a screenwriter (!). for tv? i ask hopefully, but no, he writes movies, small independent films so far, although a major studio bought one of his films right after the strike ended. this was Interesting. we discussed kauffman, and tarantino, and dr. sb weighed in with her very strong opinions on what makes a good zombie movie****, and so on. it's been a good run so far. no one has needed tylenol, they do my tests quietly and properly and the rest of the time play madden nfl '08 on the x-box 360 and (critically) don't complain. i'm very easy to please that way.

* this is a phenomenal retention rate, even for me. since no one is patting me on the back for this, not even the advisor, i shall do so myself, because between claustrophobia and low morale, it is hard as quantum physics to get people successfully through a sleep deprivation/fMRI study

** i don't understand what's going on with the manuscript for this. i wrote a chunk of it last year, then handed it off to hengyi for editing and to finish off the figures, and it seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. meanwhile, daniel and the committee chair have stolen him off to their own lab for some VBM bulls*** that they're doing. i just don't understand this, because awful as our experiment was, it's at the very least more sexy than damn volumetric work, which to me is about on par with studies about the geologic age of rocks in terms of interest.

*** please keep your fingers crossed for me, by the way, that this experiment actually works. from my point-of-view, connectivity analysis is akin to boarding a space shuttle to mars.

**** strong opinions in general because as you know, mr. sb does animatronics for industrial light and magic. which means, incidentally, that he's 1/1274 of an oscar nominee, although he did not get to go to the ceremony. just as well. at world's end was kind of crap. oh, and also, he got asked to do effects for indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull but had just taken on another project. idiot. but i digress:

(1) the zombies must lunge, not lurch.
(2) the annoying people must die in satisfyingly horrible ways.
(3) there has to be some reasonably cogent explanation as to why there are zombies in the first place...
(4) but this explanation must not be cerebral

etc.

interviewing prospectives really drives home the asymmetry of the process -- they sit on the other side of the table sweating bullets, while i'm in my skin (a) completely not caring, and (b) fully aware that my opinion doesn't count for nuts in who gets in and who doesn't.

i begged off my undergraduate class in the morning and brought our prospective student on a little walking tour of west philly and the campus. we stopped off for a good long while at the center for cognitive neuroscience (which his potential advisor works out of) to escape the cold and sip coffee and talk about the research that is conducted within, including a project mysteriously titled "purple carrots". the other housemate was there, and ben, and we google-earthed the island of jersey, and myth-busted the transatlantic rail, and generally prevented anyone in the room getting work done for a good hour.

we left late morning and married up with grace and the person she was hosting (south korean) and went to see if anyone from the brainard lab was in. they were not. dave brainard and co. study the psychophysics of color vision, and are beginning to join forces with the cog neuro empire to understand neural dissociations between perception and interpretation of color stimuli. from what i understand, the project is a tour de force of engineering, biology, psychology and linguistics, the meeting of several mighty empires, etc. it's also highly uninteresting to me, but i find nowadays that every other person i talk to seems to be involved in this work, including the south korean prospective, the other housemate, and a large number of the very serious neuroscientists who roam the top floor of solomon and steal our beer from the department fridge.

more wandering, then kinjal joined us and we had a late lunch at marathon where i bitched about our DCT and got sympathy, and we told the prospectives about how great the penn program is, except for the parts that are not. i still hate marathon. we split up, and i read articles for an hour, and then we had social psych led by todorov which went the full 3 hours and nearly killed me. social is a gigantic seminar that has attracted wharton (i'm going to singapore!) graduate students, nefarious individuals who want to talk about subliminal advertising and unconscious manipulation and raping your mother. gross; and we're only a quarter way through. anyway.

the day closed with us going out to dinner and the department picking up the tab: pietro's with the prospectives and nick and ben and the housemate and the other housemate and grace and ewa and a neuroscience student who got invited by accident but turned out to be cool. almost despite itself, our department has really good people in it, and it shows when we have guests. if i were them, i'd want to join us for sure.

prospective weekend again

didn't i just write about this? differences: this year i have the space to host someone, and i am, one m.c. from oxford who's asleep on the futon, this being 3 a.m. in the UK. he's good-mannered, and nice, and brought harrods fudge, which automatically scores 3 points from me in the book of "would you recommend this fellow for admission?". more points for: being british, and having a beautiful accent, and admitting to "being a little peckish".

*

in preparation for hosting, i took half the afternoon off and swept and mopped and dusted and cleaned a month of grease off the stove. everything smelled like pine-sol until i foolishly decided to cook a pot of curry for dinner, after which time it did not.

*

the day otherwise was not very pleasant. i saw an extremely anxious client in the morning and spent a good hour-and-a-half trudging through the ADIS. i despise structured clinical interviews, especially with people who want nothing more than to tell you that they have everything. supervision followed almost immediately, and i was the only one with anything to present, which meant that our DCT could indulge in one of her favorite activities: making me feel like an idiot. i've kind of habituated to this over the months, and all of the other students know that she's being unreasonable, but it's still kind of irksome. on the plus side, i think i'm learning more than anyone else, so whatever. also: my diagnoses are, on the whole, actually right, thus, dear DCT, please shut up about that. thank you.

because we shouldn't be miserable all the time

          The Open Window

My tower was grimly builded,
With many a bolt and bar,
"And here," I thought, "I will keep my life
From the bitter world afar."

Dark and chill was the stony floor,
Where never a sunbeam lay,
And the mould crept up on the dreary wall,
With its ghost touch, day by day.

One morn, in my sullen musings,
A flutter and cry I heard;
And close at the rusty casement
There clung a frightened bird.

Then back I flung the shutter
That was never before undone,
And I kept till its wings were rested
The little weary one.

But in through the open window,
Which I had forgot to close,
There had burst a gush of sunshine
And a summer scent of rose.

For all the while I had burrowed
There in my dingy tower,
Lo! the birds had sung and the leaves had danced
From hour to sunny hour.

And such balm and warmth and beauty
Came drifting in since then,
That window still stands open
And shall never be shut again.


                Edward Rowland Sill

have a go at some implicit association tests (one of the more fascinating try-it-at-home psychology paradigms, i find)

9 exam "strategies" which undergraduate think are smart but in in actuality are just a royal pain in the ass

1) I don't know the answer to this question, so I'll do a question that I do know the answer to instead.

2) I have no idea what I'm talking about, but if I fill the entire page with words in very small handwriting maybe you'll give up and give me some points.

3) I know exactly what I'm talking about, and I'm going to give you the answer to this question as well as reproduce word for word the contents of chapters 1 through 4 of the textbook.

4) If I do both parts of an either/or question, you'll think I'm really smart and hardworking.

5) Instead of writing my answer down from left to right and top to bottom on the page like a normal person, I'll draw arrows and asterisks and hieroglyphics and make you chase my text around like a Saturday night high.

6) Smiley faces and facetious comments will make my grader happy.

7) If I say one thing, and then say the exact opposite, I will surely get some points.

8) Using the lightest pencil in my possession and possibly in the history of the universe will force my grader to concentrate real hard on my script.

9) Complete sentences are for 9th-graders.

i hate grading

with the intensity of a trillion white hot suns

another thought on tmt

i think terror management is certainly one of the driving forces behind why i'm doing a phd; i suppose that somewhere at the back of my mind is the quaint illusion that no matter how insignificant my work is, at least it will be there after my death, in contrast with money or power or what-have-you. this is a useful justification only until you see through it, upon which it immediately collapses in the face of the very true argument that you get immense pleasure driving a beemer now, and no pleasure whatsoever from anything after you're dead.

filling my quota of one a year for shows-that-i-care-about-which-get-cancelled

well, we're dry of new episodes of just about everything, and even though it looks like the writers are going to be back at work next week not very many shows will be back till the fall. or, in some cases ever, judging from what the newspapers are saying about friday night lights. if 2x15 turns out to be the series "finale", i shall at least enjoy the irony that its very last line was jason street saying: "give it a chance".

capogiro last night had papaya gelato and numerous people having crises of faith about their research. it's universally acknowledged in psychology that almost everyone has something to hide in their work, and the corresponding maxim that Makes It All Better. in daniel's case, it's Averages Are Your Friend -- this because of the notorious unreliability of cortisol data which spikes and plummets at the slightest perturbation, and differs from person to person by an order of magnitude. the broader version of this problem -- that virtually all measurement in psychological experiments is unbearably coarse -- has plagued me since my early days in college. and, as if self-doubt weren't bad enough, it's the main broadside of both the anthropologists and the biologists; the former want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and give up entirely on abstraction and generalizations, and the latter think we're a mess because we can't achieve anywhere near the amount of reduction they're comfortable with. i don't have a very good reply to either of those salvos except: we're doing the best we can. you try giving someone else a several-hundred-year head start and see how well you do.

someone called me dr. lim today, and i had to explain to them, in a slightly pained way, that: no.

avenue q is doing a run in philly, and some of us went to check out the greatness. some of the broadway cast is here, including the people performing the leads (princeton and kate monster), so except for the fact that we had nosebleed seats it was a pretty sweet time. muppet sex! also, as i continue to think about the sentiment that the more you ruv someone, the more you want to kill them, the more i think it's absolutely correct.

melissa headed home, and the rest of us situated ourselves in a pub and watched obama and clinton slug it out for delegates and made fun of the latter-day saints. does anyone else have the sinking feeling that if clinton gets the nomination it's going to be mccain who takes the prize? these were the terrible thoughts that wondered through my head after a couple of beers. i was making small talk with one of my clients the other day, a young, middle-class white guy who told me, conspiratorially, that he "really hopes we don't get a black president" -- this in philadelphia, pennsylvania, USA, in the year of our lord 2008. i despair, gently. also: if you advertise that you have leffe on tap, you should please either have leffe on tap, or let me know before you bring it to me in a bottle. thank you.

el azteca, on 9th and chestnut, with nick and the two housemates. as far as mexican food goes, it did set itself apart from the crowd. the nachos tasted homemade, and my carnitas were not too salty, which is sometimes all you can ask for when you eat out. everyone seemed to be having a birthday, the colorful sombrero being passed from head to head like an anointing. we considered faking one for ice cream in a tortilla bowl with a sparkler stuck into it, but did not.

NASA beams Across the Universe into space

For the first time ever, NASA will beam a song -- The Beatles' "Across the Universe" -- directly into deep space at 7 p.m. EST on Feb. 4.

The transmission over NASA's Deep Space Network will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the day The Beatles recorded the song, as well as the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding and the group's beginnings. Two other anniversaries also are being honored: The launch 50 years ago this week of Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, and the founding 45 years ago of the Deep Space Network, an international network of antennas that supports missions to explore the universe.

I'm sure there are people who study this, but I really like the idea of missives that are absent one of their critical components -- sender, message or recipient. For example, and in order, messages in a bottle, burned love letters, and this: radio transmissions into space. I think there's a special kind of tension created by this topos*, a suspended chord that can stay unresolved for years, centuries, forever, and in that suspension hold all manner of rich emotion: hope, love and longing.

And what a container to choose -- the poetry of Paul McCartney. Nothing's gonna change my world. A beautiful irony considering that, if a recipient is ever found, and the chord resolved, everything will change. And give new meaning to this: Limitless undying love that shines around me like a million suns/ It calls me on and on across the universe.

* minz informs me that i mean topos, not trope, and she is, i think, right.