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.