the contractor got me up at the crack of dawn to go pick out a fridge. he's italian and fits all the stereotypes from the mile-a-minute mouth to the meatball and sausage gravy simmering at home ("that's-a spicy meatball!"). we got onto the i-95 with the rolling stones on the airwaves and the contractor talking nineteen-to-the-dozen about wayward family members, the philly mafia, and the fallen state of humankind. it was hazy over the schuylkill; that and the jet lag and the conversation combined to make everything seem extremely surreal. made a stop at the dump in north philly along the way. "welcome to the badlands", said the contractor, and proceeded to recount the time when a gang of thugs beat him half to death for his truck 15 years ago. ah, real life. "people here have no work ethic," the contractor explained. "they get up at 11, collect their welfare, down a handle, then go out and shoot each other up. fucking animals." i nodded in agreement, while trying to look as inconspicuous as possible in the passenger seat.

we were in and out of the dump in 10 minutes, then did a wawa stop for coffee, where the contractor proceeded to flirt with (i think) an old friend -- a busty woman resembling faye dunaway wearing cut-off everythings. i was starting to warm up to the situation by this point -- you may not be aware of my chameleonic nature -- and back on the highway it surprised me not at all to learn that the contractor

a) got someone pregnant when he was 16, and had to drop out of high school to get his GED because of it
b) dated governor rendell's sister and spent a month in nassau and a week in the best suite in the plaza hotel in manhattan
c) was in the navy for four years, and
d) shot a man in reno just to watch him die

well, not the last thing, but maybe. i countered with several made-up stories about myself (and some not-so-made up NS stories). we really do get along splendidly.

at the appliance shop, the contractor nearly got into a fistfight with a burly fellow who must have weighed at least 250 lbs, and who wanted him to "slow the fuck down" while coming down the driveway. the contractor counterargued that we were doing "fucking 5 miles per hour", which was not at all true, and things kind of took their course from there. i was totally in the game by now, and waltzed into the shop completely unconcerned while various insults were hurled back and forth, and had almost picked out the fridge by the time the dust had settled (stainless steel: 68.5" x 33" x 32").

it was almost noon. we got to ikea, and i broke myself in two hauling furniture around, after which i went to the other green line and found minz on msn and spent spent 5 hours revising my stupid paper .

the day ended with a very warm cocktail party at grace's (no central air) (minz: no parties! do more work! you can only leave for 1 hour!), where i was very, very good and did not have any irish car bombs, just a rather weird tasting whiskey sour mixed by kinjal, and talked to peter about lucid dreaming and met a few of the new incoming students, one of whom asked me if i had "any advice for first-years" (OMG). and then i went home, and clocked in with minz (2 hours 24 minutes), and stared at my tiff files wondering why in blazes i had made them in color when the instructions had explicitly told me not to.

in the morning, i wrapped glasses in newspaper, one by one, and picked up all the dead flies from my windowsill, and stubbed my toe several times. i replied to a lot of e-mail (i don't know why, but everyone seems to want you when you're on a plane and completely unreachable). i discovered to my disgust that TA training (29th - 31st) is not strictly compulsory, but that the professor of the class i'm teaching insists we go anyway.

i went to see the new house. it was madness inside -- a confusion of debris and tools and soda bottles and spackle, and our contractor screaming and screaming, and it's a week (less!) till everyone moves in. i'm given to understand that renovations are like that, sort of in the style of cp's cooking, where everything looks like it's going to explode until about three minutes before dinner, at which point perfect duck a l'orange appears out of seeming nowhere, and so i shall be encouraging and gently goading and generally hopeful. the other housemate came by to take some measurements for his room, and he seemed completely unperturbed by the chaos, which is either affirming or means he trusts me too much.

otherwise: it's very hot, and i'm terribly jet-lagged and putting caffeine into my system in unhealthy amounts. sleep is not for the weak, but this is one time i can't give in; tomorrow is furniture and a billion phone calls, and i have to finish making all the figures for my paper before monday or face the advisor's fiery wrath. it's going to be rough.

year 2

first and foremost, they haven't kicked me out yet, so that's blessing number one.

the main excitement for now is settling into this new house, turning it into a home, and making sure the housemate and the other housemate (there are two now) don't run amok. i have a feeling that this is going to be a very tall order, but we'll see. the whole new drama probably falls under the unfortunate category of "interesting", as in "may you live in interesting times", and can probably also be filed under the heading "growing up (at last)". that drawer has been untouched for a while.

(incid: msn conversation with su-lin last night --
me: (10:28:07 AM) i'm not sure i can look after a house
me: (10:28:27 AM) i'm not grown up yet
su-lin: (10:29:20 AM) i'm starting to realise that growing up is what you do while trying to figure things out
su-lin: (10:29:38 AM) rather like yen and her nus grads and the manuals and the course
su-lin: (10:29:54 AM) you don't grow up first and then do things
su-lin: (10:29:59 AM) does that help?
su-lin: (10:30:00 AM) (:
me: (10:30:08 AM) not if the house burns down
me: (10:30:10 AM) but sort of
su-lin: (10:30:40 AM) think of all the years you would save in the growing up
su-lin: (10:30:47 AM) if it does)

and besides tenants, i have kids this year, and sick people to look after, and an independent study student who had better not be needy. it's funny to think of so many different groups of folks depending on me in one way or another, because i don't think i feel the weight of that responsibility. you always think: if i disappear, the enterprise doesn't fall apart, and it doesn't in the sense that you're more or less replaceable, but it does in the sense that you're here in the present doing things. many people can teach a batch of kids, but i'm just about the only person who can, in penn psychology in fall 2007, teach this batch of kids. and this isn't self-aggrandizing in any way -- i'm very consciously trying to avoid that -- but maybe it's like the de-motivator i gave cp several years ago -- "just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important" -- but flipped: "just because you're not important doesn't mean you're not necessary"?

---

year 2 is supposed to be the easy year -- no major project due at the end of spring, no terribly important clinical responsibilities. it's the year for making sure you know what the hell you're doing in the way of research methodology (do i?), and generating ideas, and making certain you're capable of coherent original thought. progress without milestones. the scariest kind.

---

i was thinking of this song on the plane, as i thought of year 2:

Take the last train to Clarksville
I'll be waiting at the station
We'll have time for coffee-flavored kisses
And a bit of conversation

i'm not very sure why.

Portland, OR

blogger swallowed my post last night, and so i say a belated goodbye from pdx. coming and going so often gives you perspective on goodbyes, anyway. perhaps there's only one that really matters.

the world is undulating gently -- i've had about 3 hours of sleep in the last 36, and only starbucks is holding me upright.

prata at holland v with wc and m_____, both of whom have left the ex-lab and moved on to far more lucrative things. wc, in particular, is making pots of money for doing practically no work, and spends his time practising the saxophone by the seaside in the hopes of one day bringing jazz to the singaporean masses. it comforts me somewhat to know that these things do occasionally happen to the good guys. i think we're all far too scared off by the generalization that smart people never make pots of money by taking chances, that thinking too hard dooms you somehow to making cash the slow and painful way, and it is good keeping in touch with wc to remind me, in principle at least, that such an actuality need not necessarily come to pass.

a final word on this snippet, after hearing the opinions of people who think the sentiment is bunk: it seems to me that there is a philosophical gap between believers and non-believers that just can't be bridged by argument -- it comes down perhaps to whether you think we're of the earth or of the angels (to put it poetically). and if you can't see your way to my side, then you'll just have to believe that my endeavors are purely onanistic, in which case i hope you're very jealous, because i get to pursue them, and you don't.

to dorcas:

it's a rare thing for me to see friends truly happy, happy in a way that's unadulterated and real, not the cynical half-happiness of intellectual triumph, or pecuniary gain, or moral oneupmanship. i almost hesitate to say anything about it, because any opinion or sentiment surely cheapens the emotion; the penumbra surrounding anything so good must needs be talk of its transience rather than the celebration of its preciousness. so, no, rather than empty wishes of the impossible, i want to wish you this: that the memory of your delight will be as clear today as always, and that you know this happiness truly and deeply, whatever you may feel in the rest of this hope-filled life.

congratulations, and all the best for now and always!

have been trying to make up a lease agreement for the housemate and housemates-to-be by lifting wholesale from the document i signed for my present apartment. this is not as great as it appears. everything sounds cold and litigous, what with threatened evictions and confisactions of property and similar draconian punishment. there's a fine line to be walked -- obviously i don't want to run the place like a penintentiary, but ones interests have to be protected. specific problems: do we charge for washer and dryer use? presumably not. put in a clause about loud noise? i would like to think that this is something that can be sorted out amicably, but perhaps that's too optimistic? the crux of the matter is this: in the utopia i construct in my mind, living together in a house is entirely different from living in separate apartments. specifically, common space breeds common responsibility, and social reciprocity and threatened tit-for-tat in a repeated game is enough to enforce a basic level of cooperation among players. also, to the best of my ability, i'm going to try not to get people off the street (or craigslist) and stick to folks who are minimally friends of friends (of friends). is that totally naive? i don't want to evict anyone! there was a notice taped to the door of my apartment complex when the mother and i returned home from dinner one evening a couple of weeks ago -- someone in the block had defaulted on their rent for 2 months -- and it was just the most humiliating thing, worse than a pig's head, i think, all official and stamped and signed. it's like this: i'm cynical about humanity, but i don't put the people i know into that category. is that an awful failing? and -- even more frightening -- isn't the alternative -- not fully trusting anyone, never thawing the final layer of frost -- isn't that alternative far, far worse?

it's the old sheryl crow thing.

you know

if it makes you happy,
it can't be that bad.
if it makes you happy,
then why the hell are you so sad?

Walter Moers' new book is out...I like the premise, and if it is less desultory than Bluebear I think I'll enjoy it.

big news writ small

the rest of the anxiety, for those who still don't know, came from the denuouement of the long and exhausting tale known as "the mother and i buy a house in west philadelphia". chapters: all the good ones sell like hotcakes, doing this across 12 time zones is not a good idea, and the seller is a bankrupt with no scruples.

i was going to spin the whole (extra-long) yarn for you on here, but frankly i've been too exhausted to write, or do much else during the day besides surf blankly through the web. the upshot, really, is that i'm moving into a new place, with all attendant perks and responsibilities, and will have at least one housemate (known heretofore as The Housemate). drop in if you're in the neighborhood, and i'll mix you a mojito.

for the record

Singapore

back, and internal clock almost reset. it was a shock having to adjust to a different apartment on top of everything else. i've been relegated to a sofa bed in the living room, and go to bed at night with the sound of traffic roaring past on the ECP. the light switches are in odd, unfamiliar places. the sunlight comes into the flat strangely, as if filtered through thick gauze.

summary thoughts, year 1

(I)

From A Whistling Woman, A.S. Byatt

"So how would you educate the young?”

“I wouldn’t. I’d give them their freedom . To find out what they want, when they want. You only learn what you desire to learn.”

“And things like science? That need technical knowledge –“

“Listen, darling, science is a Bad Thing. The planet is going to kill itself dead with science. Probably they’ll blow us up with nuclear mushrooms, and if they don’t, they’ll burn away the earth’s crust with napalm and extinguish the fowls of the air and the fish in the sea with pesticides. Oh yeah. Science is for two things, human greed and human blinkered arrogance. Don’t teach little kids science. Teach them human things, making love, painting pictures, writing poems, singing songs, meditation. I wrote a poem against science. Do you want to hear it?”

“OK, if it isn’t too long.”

The metal men in coats of white
In shuttered rooms with shuttered eyes
Make metal death with metal claws
Block out the sunshine from the skies.

The children dance in forests free
They smell the sunshine and the rain,
They dance and sing the roots and flowers
Weave magic circles whole again.

The metal men are full of hate
They bind the children with a chain
They clang the institution’s gate
And box the children up in pain.

The children’s eyes are red with rage
They burst the prison-gates and chain
They burn the spectacles and coats
The men go naked in the rain.

The children teach the men to play
They teach the body’s ancient truth
The naked men kneel down and pray.
Rainwashed to innocence, and youth.

“So you think the young may be able to save the world from scientists?”

“Listen, I know. They are saving it. It’s happening. They’re saving it by natural spontaneity. They are putting the blast of the orgasm against the radioactive spout of the bomb. They can do this by just not giving in. By changing our consciousness completely. We will make everything new.”

---

(II)

From The Varieties of Scientific Experience, Carl Sagan

Does trying to understand the universe at all betray a lack of humility? I believe it is true that humility is the only just response in a confrontation with the universe, but not a humility that prevents us from seeking the nature of the universe we are admiring. If we seek that nature, then love can be informed by truth instead of being based on ignorance or self-deception. If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It or whatever the appropriate pronoun is, prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intricacy? I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship. My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, then our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, then our curiosity and intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival in an extremely dangerous time. In either case, the enterprise of knowledge is consistent surely with science; it should be with religion, and it is essential for the welfare of the human species.

because i kind of don't believe it

i'm actually going back to singapore. the anticipation of that -- and i'm sure there would have been a good measure of it -- has been lost among the rest of the madness.

but you know, i've accomplished stuff this academic year. not enormous strides in absolute terms, but considering i had classes to worry about, and settling in, and other miscellaneous aggravation, it's not been too bad. perhaps forward momentum is lacking, but the direction has been set, the course plotted. which is something? maybe?

(incid: despite everything, i have a draft of the book chapter. it is, i think, a reasonable first attempt, and i'll pick at it some more when i have time.)

for the eighth time in 6 years, i'm packing most of my earthly possessions into boxes in readiness to move. this is where the chest-of-drawers and assorted sundries come back to haunt me. what i need are one of those coffeehouse cards where you get one stamp for one cappuccino, except that instead of cappuccinos it's new residences. prize: free membership in peripatetics anonymous.

---

it's been an awful 2 weeks, with absolutely everything that could go wrong going wrong. the story -- well, the full story comes later, but perhaps an aperitif for now. i had rodents in my apartment on saturday, two big, oily, brazen rats scuttling around my kitchen in full daylight. the first time this has happened to me, and only, of course, when the mother is here and sharing the very small studio. screaming, multiple calls to the landlord ("our hours of operation are monday to friday, 9 to 5:30. if this is an emergency --" OF COURSE THIS IS A &*^#ING EMERGENCY!!!). traps laid down, bloody useless (inhumane) ones with peanut butter that the rats come out and feast on and don't trigger. more screaming. 24 hours later, after erecting barricades and fortifications and actually considering doing guard duty in my own apartment, one of them gets its back broken and the other one runs for the hills. all quiet on sunday, then on monday a carpenter comes and boards up the hole with wood that looks like it came from the raft of medusa.

wednesday: the mother says something smells.
thursday: the mother says something smells.

i was clearly in denial or something, because it's only today, with actual flies buzzing around the apartment, that i finally admit that yes, something smells like it died. i call the landlord ("our hours of operation are monday to friday, 9 to 5:30. if this is an emergency --" OF COURSE THIS IS A &*^#ING EMERGENCY!!!), and they say they'll send someone and here i am now 3 hours later with a dead rat boarded up in my kitchen, and a very long night ahead.

and this is just the tip of the iceberg, but you'll only hear the rest later. i'm tired, and i have to pack, and i have a plane to catch on monday.

From the applyingtograd forums:

weakknees:
If you won an Olympic gold medal, would you mention it on an application to grad school? On the one hand, it's not relevant (maybe to kinesiology, but let's say you're applying to, oh I don't know, history) but then on the other it's a hell of an accomplishment!

apptake2
It really depends on the event. Because of medal inflation, it isn't necessarily a remarkable achievement any more. A friend of mine had two Olympic golds and was rejected from every school he applied to because it was a middle distance event (not very glamorous) and, on the second occasion, he failed to beat his own world record. Really, unless you're a world record holder and have multiple golds in a top-tier event you're not going to stand out from the competition. Bottom line: one gold won't hurt your application, but it won't help either. Having said that, I do know that for most top-25 schools, an Olympic medal of some sort is seen as the absolute minimum (along with an 800 on both sections of the GRE) for admission, but if you want to be competitive for funding you'd better back it up with a 4.5 GPA.

the longer story

i don't like blogging about things as they happen. it's unfair, and asymmetrical. or rather, it's not a drama, it's my life.

what has happened:

i. today: nathan's farewell dinner. ocean harbor on race, decent overall, superb cui pi dou fu. capogiro afterwards: dulce de leche and coconut milk gelato, and cancerous ferrets, and how to cremate a dead billy goat.

ii. last sunday: the mother breezes into town, fresh as a daisy after 30 hours of traveling. we should all be so lucky.

iii. tuesday: mixto, which i now find everyone on earth has gone to except me. perhaps credit card debt really is your friend. incredible plantains.

iv. in between: work -- mostly boring. 2 sessions left of clinical training, and then we're supposed to be to see real patients. they're going to give me a borderline as my first case, i can just feel it. hi, my name is OHMYGODGETTHATKNIFEAWAYFROME. right.

Ursula LeGuin:

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

From A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain:

Intellectual 'work' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle-bow in his hand, who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him - why, certainly he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair - but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, also. And it's also the very law of those transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship.

real work

gave my first lecture ever on thursday. it went pretty smoothly except for one absolutely egregious mistake in my slides which i didn't catch until it was all over. i have taken to giving myself cognitive therapy instead of vicious beatings when things like this happen (too frequently), which is hard, but i reckon better overall for my mental health. besides, i think the kids were entertained, and i admit i did enjoy myself; this speaks well for when i get a class of my own in the fall.

apropos of harry potter & TDH, i have decided to order my copy off amazon instead of wandering around in west philly in the middle of the night. they guarantee delivery on the 21st, and ups usually gets to me before noon, but that still means potential spoilage (remember su-lin's "snape kills dumbledore" story? yes). formal request, therefore: 24-hour blogging moratorium, and no sudden popping-up on IM with OMFG messages, and the like. can? this is the last time.

watching federer-nadal installment umpteen while running on the treadmill today, i was struck once again by how all of us are wrecked by the bell curve. in any field, just by the nature of the distribution of anything, there are going to be one or two people who are so far out in front they're going to be practically untouchable. and sure, you can be good, but you're still going to be there in what we fondly know as the human morass, while year after year those same people, the ones who are operating on a different plane altogether because of good genes and how statistics works, those people are going to swoop in and take all the glory.

i advise you not to think about this too hard, because it's extraordinarily depressing.

at traitor joe's farewell party last night, i learned that paul theroux's son, louis theroux, made a documentary about the bunny ranch in nevada in which he actually stayed with the girls for 6 weeks to get to see them in their day-to-day lives. i was immediately reminded of john irving's a widow for one year, a book i had forgotten i'd even read. this was all apropos of one of the ccn's RAs planning to pull a similar stunt, having already done post-katrina new orleans, and giant redwood trees in the american northwest. i wish my life were unbearably cool too, but alas.

mental sums

lately, i find myself staring into the cart of the person in front of me at the supermarket checkout, trying to figure out what kind of life they lead from the kind of food they buy. trying, i think, to come up with the answer, "less fulfilling than mine", as measured by: tins of chef boyardee ravioli, absence of fresh produce, number of boxes of lean cuisine (extra deductions for getting a week's supply of the exact same meal).

nice retrospective on the sopranos from new york magazine.

[David Chase] was willing to give us what we didn’t want. There are many breeds of TV auteurs: the great mythologizers, Buffy’s Joss Whedon and Lost’s J.J. Abrams and The X-Files’ Chris Carter; the quirky dialogists, like Gilmore Girls’ Amy Sherman-Palladino and the maddening David E. Kelley; deadpan craftsmen like Dick Wolf and sadomasochistic visionaries like Tom Fontana and California dreamers like Alan Ball. There are the utopian solipsists (okay, just Aaron Sorkin). But they all share an essential love for their characters—a natural side effect, one might imagine, of building one story for many years. Their protagonists suffer, but they rarely corrode.

In this sense, Chase was a true iconoclast, a prophet of disgust. He seemed determined to test TV’s most distinctive quality, the way it requires us to say yes each week. To be a fan, we needed to welcome Tony Soprano again and again into our homes, like a vampire or a therapy patient. Chase gave that choice a terrible weight.

... [The Sopranos] was, in fact, truly revolutionary, but not because it was adult or novelistic. [It] was the first series that truly dared us to slam the door, to reject it. And when we never did, it slammed the door on us: A silent black screen, a fitting conclusion to a show that was itself a bit of a long con, that seduced us as an audience, then dismantled its own charms before our eyes.

While I just can't bring myself to watch John from Cincinnati, I do declare that The Wire is a very good show. Caveat: the writers have no qualms whatsoever about killing off likeable main characters in horrible and unexpected ways, and I'm only halfway through season 2.

i had the meeting. the advisor looked at my outline, suggested the reason i was having difficulties was that i was attempting to write a 5,000,000 word review on the sum total of all knowledge acquired across human history, and applied the shearing scissors. (DISSERTATION TIP #6: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WRITE A REVIEW OF THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED ACROSS HUMAN HISTORY.) so i feel a bit better, and plus that i now have figures.

---

pep talk for self: no more excuses; i have to get writing. i have 4 more weeks before i leave for sg, and i do not want to be fretting over this paper while i'm there. i will write. i will go to mark's, or the other green line, and sit there, and turn off messenger, and write. i will write at least 2-3 double-spaced pages a day. i will not check my e-mail every 2 minutes, or read twop forums obsessively, or go on one-hour hunts for the release date of super mario galaxy. i will not read every review for live free or die hard on rotten tomatoes. i will write carefully and steadily and accurately. i will finish updating my experimental protocol and submit it by next week so that i can collect data in the fall. i will do my clinical homework so that when i finally do see patients i can actually help them. amazon.com is the devil's playground. youtube is instant death.

---

in other news, the lab has given me a s'porean undergrad (BONDED) as a personal lackey. i set him to work on spreadsheets, which i don't have time for and hate, and which hopefully will not be bollixed up when i next see them.

why ratatouille rocked (minor spoilers)

i've never been into movie reviews (though i watch a lot of films nowadays), but for pixar i must gush.

so you know how in the witches the protagonist gets changed into a mouse halfway through the book, and suddenly everything changes -- for him, because he now has to navigate being a creature in a human's world, and for us because we have to readjust our expectations of what's going to happen next? well, ratatouille does that trick multiple times, elegantly walking the very fine tightrope that makers of cartoons always dread, the one where animals/inanimate objects have to interact and coexist with human beings. there's remy in the rat's world, and remy in the human's world, and yet the entire piece feels natural and complete seamless (nerdy exercise: when the dvd comes out find all the splice points. i warrant there are dozens more than you noticed on first watching. make it a drinking game!). on top of that, all this is stirred in to a rather complex plot (for an animated feature), with a sly and amusing script. it didn't have as much heart as nemo, and it wasn't quite as fresh to me as cars, but i think that of all the pixar films so far, it may well the most significant in moving the genre forward.

i hardly need to praise everything else, but i have to express gladness that janeane garofalo is continuing to do amazing things post-felicity, and that sir ian holm, as always, deserves encomiums that the english language cannot provide. and pixar, i reaffirm my willingness to follow you wherever you may lead. wall-e: summer 2008!

Dr. SB's Hollywood husband got to watch the Transformers premiere WITH FRICKING GEORGE LUCAS. SITTING NEXT TO HIM AND SHARING HIS SNACKS. two degrees from anthony minghella pales in comparison to this.

one of the first-years had a pretty huge falling-out with her advisor and is now wandering from lab to lab in search of a new one. we were on the roster today, and doing everything in our power to dissuade her from joining us, not because we're mean, but because the advisor's hands-off (as in, across continents) mentoring style would not suit her at all. i tell this story because it's a very real, very frightening this-could-happen-to-you scenario -- not because of fallings-out, but, other unforeseen events; for example, dr. sabini passed away suddenly 2 years ago leaving his lab to scatter to the winds. i often wonder how it must feel to be a grad student of one of those 90-year-old nobel laureates, every day the feverish race, the silent prayer: please, not today.

i intended to work at home all day, but the heat is intolerable in my apartment, so here i am in the other green line goofing off and reading the new yorker. the review paper proceeds at an impossibly slow pace. i read 3 papers in order to write 2 lines, and the whole thing feels like it's falling apart at the seams. i have decided that as soon as the advisor returns from amsterdam or wherever it is i'm going to call an emergency meeting and break down in tears in his office. this will certainly be the last review i agree to write until i'm at least midway through my 3rd year -- what i really should have done is turned this one down and planned to spend the summer hammering down the foundations of my knowledge, instead of slapping together this piece of work in my current uninformed state. in fact, i've been a year now without anyone telling me THIS IS HOW IT IS, and i really need some of that, someone to sit me down and be didactic. THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW; THIS IS WHAT WE DON'T. you get some of that at least while doing a phd, right? or do they just allow you to go off the rails and redo experiments that have been done and write reams of nonsense and then at the end of 5 years tell you that you can't grdauate?

after a rather random and bizarre concatenation of events, i got to meeting this guy in old city to look at some of his art. he's leaving the states next week to return to korea, and is giving away a bunch of things, which i may or may not claim to bedizen the new pad, when we finally do get it.

artists are just about the only people who are, in real life, exactly like how they're represented in movies (i.e. incessant smokers, incredibly incisive, and either say 'fuck' a lot or act as if they're restraining themselves). this guy was also a stickler for not interpreting his own pieces, (there's only the art and the viewer! the art and the viewer!) as well as slightly sensitive when i offered my own. one example -- he admitted that people had called his stuff 'disturbing', but wasn't very happy when i gently suggested to him that the reason for that might be that they were falling in the uncanny valley. ah, the pitfalls. (plus...isn't "disturbing" a good thing? they are very...t.s eliot? we are the hollow men/we are the stuffed men/leaning together/headpiece filled with straw?)

also:

me: i do admire artists though, regardless of the quality of what they make. you guys make it worthwhile being human, you know?
him: actually, i think we're just fucking selfish.

just like the movies.

note to self: potbelly sandwich milkshake, this weekend.

a lot of the questions i get from outsiders have to do with people killing themselves. is it your fault? do you feel endless remorse? the short answer to the first question, apparently, is no. beyond a certain point, if someone is sad enough, and sick enough, and wants to kill himself badly enough, he'll find a way, no matter what you say or do.

i suppose this is true, although it does also hint at a built-in justification for incompetence. it's also very hard to accept, no matter how many times you say it to yourself. sometimes people just die. i was flipping through complications, by atul gawande the other day; his thesis is that we, as society, find mistakes by doctors and nurses impermissible, and by doing so hold them to essentially impossible standards. which is true, and perhaps even necessary. there's such a fine balance here; on the one hand, health care professionals are (tragically) human, like the rest of us, and on the other, if we draw the line anywhere beneath perfection, how do you ever define the criterion point for acceptable, especially with our modern insistence that a human life is of either undefinable or infinite value?

as for remorse, that's a deeper question. on house last season, foreman screws up and kills someone, and hugh laurie tells him at the end of the episode to go home, have a few drinks, come back the next day and do it all over again, that he can't offer forgiveness because there's nothing to forgive. i think what is closer to the truth is that forgiveness isn't possible if there's no clear concept of what sin is. medicine, flawed as it is, at least attempts to define what can be cured and what can't, when it's reasonable to pull the plug. psychologists have coarse instruments, "clinical judgment", and worse still, for people who are poorly-trained, half-baked, superstitious notions of a patient's prognosis. and people kill themselves, sometimes out of an orange-colored sky, and you wonder: is there anything to forgive? do i take this guilt upon myself? and sometimes, i think, you just really, really don't know.

daniel and wife laura had a bunch of department people over for sangria and mexican munchies. i swear to you, they make the best pico de gallo in the entire world; it makes me want to swear off store-bought salsa for the rest of my life. it was all very summery, very rachael ray, with the languorously-turning ceiling fan, ice melting in glasses, and a bowl of dark, sweet cherries, picked from a new jersey orchard not two hours before.

and one more thing

-- i have finally convinced myself that people do have hypnagogic imagery of video games they've played during the day, even though this isn't something i've personally experienced.

(except for that one time when i dreamed i was in the mushroom kingdom, but i think that was because i ate cheese before bed.)

APSS '07 (5)

my talk was scheduled for thursday, the very last day of the conference (of course). this meant no sleep on wednesday night, despite my best efforts to convince myself that it didn't really matter, nothing really matters (anyone can see; nothing really matters to me). it's funny how your mind can just lose control of your body when you're anxious. i really pity people with GAD.

the actuality of it wasn't bad at all; all the things they say help really do -- looking for the friendly face, being yourself etc. q&a caught me a little bit off guard -- i was so relieved to be done that for a moment i forgot that people get to ask me questions. fortunately, i'm quite aware of the all-time #1 piece of advice for fielding questions from the audience, which is to preface every answer you're unsure of with "that's a very good question". that way, the questioner is too busy basking in the warm afterglow of being called smart to actually pay attention to your subsequent answer. works like a charm.

APSS '07 (4)

they bring us up to the 52nd floor of some swanky hotel, and unleash us on an open bar, and pretty much all hell breaks loose. people start telling me stories about the history of the lab that i don't think i was ever meant to hear, and i kind of grin stupidly, and nod very slowly. for the longest time i'm sure i have it under control, but the champagne is slow-acting, and soon enough i catch myself telling gurpreet how much i admire the works of khushwant singh and r.k. narayan, a bad sign. i compensate by eating more -- the bacon-wrapped scallops are very good. our server is roxanne (you don't have to put on that red light), and she refills our glasses too often, and flirts with mb. i hear someone try to tell someone else about an upcoming research project and making little to no sense. "but the wheel's off!", is, i think, the appropriate exclamation, but who ever comes up with these things? the sun sets, slowly, and late (it's nearly the solstice), and i feel like i want to retire to a balcony, glass in hand, and just say to someone, anyone, who's out there: "i say, my good fellow, isn't it simply a splendid evening?". and he would say, in reply: "it most certainly is, dear chap, it most certainly is."

APSS '07 (3)

we went to hell's kitchen* twice, because it was nearby, but also because it was that good. highly recommended: lemon ricotta pancakes (melt-in-your-mouth), the all-american breakfast with bison sausage (8,000,000 calories), mahnomin porridge, and the walleye b.l.t.. minus/weird points: we were told there would be a 5-minute wait the first time, and waited 20, then were told we would have to wait for 20 minutes the second time and were seated in 5. i would have waited 20 both times, though.

* no relation to the TV show

APSS '07 (2)

to be honest, from a scientific standpoint, i wasn't terribly impressed with anything that i saw. in the first place, there are so few groups doing research directly related to mine that i tend to already have tabs on their work; in the second, i think it was a slow year for sleep and neuroimaging. still, i continue to enjoy the fact that the pond is small; at least this way people know i exist.

APSS '07 (1)

Minneapolis, MN

Unless you're bloody rich, a lot of the appeal of travel is purely romantic. The reality everyone knows. Having your sense of time and space get thrown out of whack, living out of a suitcase. Getting lost. Unwholesome food. My romantic self, though, always seems to have my sense of reality in an armlock, which is why I would unhesitatingly get in a time machine and visit the 16th century, or, as the case may be, not absolutely dread flying out to the Midwest.

annoyance

"When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again"

i get to give a full WAIS tomorrow for the very first time, with all the real equipment and everything. i know it's lame to say so, especially since in our police state they inexplicably allow fresh grads to administer it (wtf?), but it's very exciting, and i shall make like a real professional and do it with aplomb.

zot, in society hill, is one of the better belgian pubs in town, with a classy location and a drinks list as long as your arm. i met thomas and ewa there for a We Love Summer dinner -- all of us will be away for mostly-non-overlapping periods during the break, and figured we'd better get our jollies while the going was good. thomas, unfortunately, loves beer but has the Asian gene, which usually means three ecstatic sips and then a long mournful evening of passing his glass around the table. someone needs to manufacture an aldehyde dehydrogenase pill and make a killing in china, stat (p.s. if you do this, some of those billions are mine). i got to try gouden caroulus, which was just amazing, sherry-sweet and very pleasant. also, petrus (rock? or wrong language?) and leffe, both very nice. totally going back just for the beer, or maybe to eulogy where the list is as long as both your arms, and the tables, i'm told, are coffins. the food wasn't too shabby either -- herb crusted bone marrow, potatoes in various guises, mussels in a tarragon creme sauce. tom wanted waterzooi (he had actually planned the trip for wednesday in particular because it was their special du jour), but they were out, so he had a rather morose beef stew instead. there was no chocolate, which made me sad, and reminded me of the fullerton chocolate buffet which made me even sadder. alas. we walked down penn's landing after the dinner and stared out at the delaware, and thomas said it reminded him of looking across from sentosa to the mainland at night, which it did -- black, bottomless water, and the warm promise of the other side.

clinical training started today. there was no grace period, no how-tos for dummies, just the high-wire and no net beneath. learn by failing. learn by saying the wrong thing. look a total stranger in the eye, and control your terror, and try and find out what's wrong with him.

i think i'm afraid i'll be bad at it. not afraid to try, but afraid that this is finally something so massively beyond me that i'll wade into the ocean and never touch bottom. that the thing i reassure myself with -- that i and everyone i know are damaged, fucked-up, struggling for the surface, and that when it comes to clients it's just a matter of degree, a tendency not a diagnosis -- may not be true, is not true, that there really are more things on heaven and earth that are dreamt of in my philosophy. that i'll be too empathic, or not empathic enough. that people who try to help others should not themselves be desperately trying to keep it together, beating it into themselves that it's ok as long as you let go of it all and not take anything so damn seriously.

how seriously to take it, that's the thing. that's the trick. i can't take it absolutely seriously. i can't take anything absolutely seriously any more, because that's how you truly go mad, like soldiers in wartime who can't find a way to make light of the situation when their brothers-in-arms are blown to bits by a claymore. perhaps that's the thing to hang on to, that yes, many things are horrible -- people slashing their wrists, starving themselves to death, following the voices in their head onto the railway tracks -- but ultimately, there's either God, in which case all is well, or oblivion, in which case all is meaningless. and either way, it's possible to imagine a large-enough space that the sum total of all uncured mental illness, no matter how awful, is still nothing, insignificant, lost among the vastness of whatever infinity is real.

i wish i could go back to college. in college you know who you are.

conversations in the lab between grad students

me: i don't believe it. we're almost halfway though this year.
daniel: which year?
me:this one?

---

me: look at this cool textbook. i got it for free.
daniel: where'd you get it?
me: i just picked it up.
daniel: you do realize that's called stealing.

rouge on rittenhouse square has an extraordinary cheese platter at only $18 late nights, 10 varieties with fruit and caramelized walnuts. i wish i knew how to identify cheeses; anything beyond cheddar and brie is just either Tasty or Not. fortunately the deficiency has at present no practical consequences, but if i ever do have money to spend on nice things (unlikely), cheese gastronomy is something i want to learn.

The Advisor summoned me today to discuss what i'd been doing the past couple of weeks (nothing), and what i was planning to do with the rest of the summer (write this very intimidating book chapter, finish my data collection for our smaller study, prove the Riemann hypothesis, climb K2, win the Tour de France). Somewhere during the course of the conversation he said something like: "As you start thinking about your dissertation...", and i didn't really hear the rest of it because i went into a kind of coma. I'm definitely in denial that I'll ever actually produce a dissertation; it is one of those mythical events so far in the future as to be inconceivable, like the colonization of Mars. What does a dissertation even look like? I refuse to believe that it's merely a bound collection of paper. In my mind, it's like whatever was in Marcellas' suitcase at the end of Pulp Fiction, incandescent, not fit for the eyes of mortal man.

it's been an uneventful week. wayne persuaded me to head up to the 'burbs with him on memorial day, which i thoroughly regretted. you wouldn't think it, but venture outside of philly and chances are good that you'll land in hicksville. despite spending so many years in this country, i still feel all the old allergies come on when i'm in the hinterlands, that feeling that someone's going to jump out of the bushes and frisk you for harry potter books. why can't we all just get along?

to be fair, it was pretty -- how long had it been since i'd seen open spaces? i just can't do it too often or i'll get republican cooties.

---

and while i'm thinking of memorial day: there's something genuinely stirring about the concept of a "tomb of the unknown soldier". and not just the surface meaning of it, but something deeper, something to do with our ability to elevate ourselves into significance after death, when we can almost never accomplish that in life. anyway.

---

in the mail: you are cordially invited to attend an Interactive Dinner Symposium: Restless Legs Syndrome. um...no thanks?

---

clinicals start next week, which means that in a few months i can start diagnosing people. the line forms to the right.

while the criticisms are true -- that a large percentage of psychology experiments are conducted on the most-unrepresentative population of college undergraduates -- there's also a lot to be said for having subjects who follow your instructions, and show up.

(Read minz's post first, on how "students learn nothing about the methodology and principles of whichever discipline they have chosen, nor the history of the development of said discipline as discipline.")

Further thoughts. Principles are not taught in grade school for 3 reasons.

1) The argument you always hear from the teachers:
Content must precede context. However, by the time my kids have enough content for me to start dealing with context, they are 18 and have graduated.

2) Teachers don't know how.
--> and most (I believe) just think it's a bloody waste of time.

3) All roads lead to "What is the meaning of life?"

e.g.

Q: Why do we study psychology?
A: To understand the mechanisms and causative relationships associated with cognition and behavior, and subsequently be able to make predictions about these phenomena.

Q: Why do we want to make predictions about these phenomena?
A: So that people can use this information to better the quality of human life, in material, or non-material ways.

Q: Why do we want to better the quality of human life?
A: [insert your personal MEANING OF LIFE answer here]

and similarly for all other disciplines. And it's hard to go down that road, and people just don't want to. Better to pretend it doesn't exist at all.

what happens next

so now that my burned offerings have been accepted, i get to stay in the program at least 2 more years unharassed, and also get to start seeing patients. norah had me tag along on thursday to do intelligence testing, something which sounds terribly glamorous when you first start out in the field, but is actually just a pain in the ass. (incid: this actually works out great for "psychologists" in singapore, because they get to shunt all the neuropsych testing onto the wet-behind-the ears fresh grads, with nary a complaint heard.)

i don't know if you've ever considered this, but giving someone an oral intelligence test is highly embarrassing for everyone concerned. (i certainly hadn't thought about it before i did some testing myself in my old job). with pencil-and-paper tests, there's a degree of separation: the candidate never has to see you while you're doing the grading. but with the WAIS, you're right there hammering the poor examinee with mental math and those horrible spatial rotation puzzles i could never do. so there's the guy being roasted, and you're not allowed to offer any correction or feedback, just "mm-hm", and "ok" and other non-commital grunting noises. and they're like: am i a jackass? am i mentally retarded?. and you're like: i dunno? next?

and furthermore, most of the tests i'd administered before were on people with alzheimer's or traumatic brain injuries, so it's not so bad if they're a disaster because you expect that. when we run studies in the lab, we of course have normal people, who grin at you sheepishly as they tell you things like the sun rises in the north, doesn't it? and all i can do is look down at my instruction pad, and continue reading in a monotone. it's like watching two dancers perform, one who's a paralytic, and the other who doesn't know the moves.

i've not reported this here before, but thomas has a little storyreading club going on at his place on thursday nights (this was where i encountered the holy tango, and etiquette). it's a nice small group -- usually 8 or so of us -- a few linguists, a few psychologists, a philospher, and one very quiet girl who knits and reminds me of minz (an english major, i'm sure, but i haven't gotten round to asking). we've had to stop for the summer because people are going to bulgaria and belgium and such, but when we resume in the fall i think it deserves more of a place on this blog. i don't often get to hang out with people who read real books here, and certainly not with the frequency that i used to hang out with the human-s* crowd (who, incidentally, managed to kill our book club before it even started). my love for the group was cemented last week when someone brought anne fadiman's ex libris: confessions of a common reader and read "insert carrot here", but even before that we'd had thurber and asimov and all manner of delightful authors.

* i refuse to type out "humanities", but i really must be befuddling people like lz and a. sorry, guys.

From Crash Course, in The New Yorker, May 14, 2007

In 1969, the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy held a hearing at which the physicist Robert Wilson was called to testify. Wilson, who had served as the chief of experimental nuclear physics for the Manhattan Project, was at that point the head of CERN's main rival, Fermilab, and in charge of $250 million that Congress had recently allocated for the lab to build a new collider. Senator John Pastore, of Rhode Island, wanted to know the rationale behind a government expenditure of that size. Did the collider have anything to do with promoting "the security of the country"?

WILSON: No sir, I don't believe so.
PASTORE: Nothing at all?
WILSON: Nothing at all.
PASTORE: It has no value in that respect?
WILSON: It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture...It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about...It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.

Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker

Whene'er I take my pipe and stuff it
And smoke to pass the time away
My thoughts, as I sit there and puff it,
Dwell on a picture sad and grey:
It teaches me that very like
Am I myself unto my pipe.

Like me this pipe, so fragrant burning,
Is made of naught but earthen clay;
To earth I too shall be returning,
And cannot halt my slow decay.
My well used pipe, now cracked and broken,
Of mortal life is but a token.

No stain, the pipe's hue yet doth darken;
It remains white. Thus do I know
That when to death's call I must harken
My body, too, all pale will grow.
To black beneath the sod 'twill turn,
Likewise the pipe, if oft it burn.

Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
Behold then instantaneously,
The smoke off into thin air going,
'Til naught but ash is left to see.
Man's fame likewise away will burn
And unto dust his body turn.

How oft it happens when one's smoking,
The tamper's missing from it's shelf,
And one goes with one's finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell
How hot must be the pains of Hell!

Thus o'er my pipe in contemplation
Of such things - I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation,
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, at sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.

Johann Sebastian Bach

defense (short version)

it was incredibly stressful, but i got through it with a simple, preordained strategy: realize throughout that no one in the room actually cares.

defense (longer version)

the worst part, i think, is when they make you wait outside in the hallway at the beginning and the end while they discuss in hushed voices whether or not you're worthy to pass through the narrow gate, and burn their ballots to see what color smoke arises or whatever it is they do. you're out there, there's nothing to fidget with, you can't read because your heart is racing at 160 beats per minute, and they go on talking and talking for one billion years as solomon laboratory and the entire upenn campus and the mountains themselves crumble to dust around you.

defense (the god honest truth)

Dramatis Personae:

The Student, or Me, or the One Drowning in a Sea of Bewilderment
The Advisor, or the One who Lobs the Occasional Softball, but Otherwise is Just There For the Show
Committee Member #1, or the Insider, or the One Personally Supervising the Drowning of Me in the Sea of Bewilderment
Committee Member #2, or the Outsider, or the One Who Has No Idea What the Hell is Going On, and Has Probably Not Even Read the Damn Paper

---

The Student sits, waiting. Enter the Committee, in flowing white robes.

The Student: Prithee welcome. We are gathered here today so that thou noble selves may deem the worthiness of a poor graduate student to proceed, in future years, to waste more of thy money on matters of Scientific Inconsequence. But first, if thou wilt, please partake of this Caffeinated Beverage and these Petit Fours which I purchased yesterday from my meager stipend at considerable price.

The Committee eats.

The Student: Art thou pleased with this humble repast?

Committee Member #1: It is tolerable.

Committee Member #2: We accept your offering, modest as it is.

The Student: Thou are most gentle and kind.

Committee Member #2: It is in our very nature to be so.

The Student (aside): Though thou liest, I must yet hold my tongue.

The Advisor: So pray, enlighten us on your Scientific Progress this twelvemonth past.

The Student: I would be delighted to, my liege. See here, how I come well-prepared with visual aids and Powerpoint slides that strike to the very heart of the matter. Did I not slave for hours and hours to ensure that their composition was pleasing to the eye? Do they not succinctly capture the essence of my manifold labors?

Committee Member #1: In five minutes, if you will.

The Student (aside): Would I were dead, if God's will were it so. For what is in this world but grief and woe?

The Advisor: But come, tarry not, let us hear of your merry adventures.

The Student: Twas August last we summoned from a pool of subjects that we had recruited...

Commitee Member #1: Nay! I accept not your premise.

The Student: But I had not yet started...

Committee Member #1: You assume too much. What is a subject? What is a subject pool? How do I know we divine the same meaning from this symbolic language which you are using? How are you certain that the concepts you are presenting are represented similarly in my mind's eye as yours? You cannot do this; we do not share a consciousness. Why, what if here and now I denied your very existence, and the existence of reality itself?!

Here, lightning shards pierce the room in a crackling chirascuro

The Student: I submit to thee that reality exists.

Committee Member #1: This is an unsubstantiated claim!

The Advisor: Come S____, let us not quibble over trifles. Here, have one of these Mini-Cheesecakes.

Committee Member #1: (chewing) Indeed, they are creamy, yet their creator had a light touch.

Committee Member #2: Then onward! I have much to do. Tenure does not grow on trees.

The Student: So from these graphs so intricately plotted, we see a lucid pattern doth arise. Confusion falls! The clarity of theory and empirical data once more shine their light on lands we hitherto dared not traverse.

Committee Member #1: So you are well-versed, I understand, in the substance of these matters.

The Student: My knowledge is but a pea in the vast stewpot of thine unimaginable wisdom, but I will answer any queries best I can.

Committee Member #1: What is the capital of the Faroe Islands? Name the next prime number after 1 trillion. What were the significant turning points in the Battle of Puebla, and what were its historical consequences? Describe how the socialist leanings of the Manic Street Preachers influenced and shaped the thoughts of the working class in the United Kingdom in the late 20th century. Account for the weakness of the gravitational force in our 3-dimensional universe.

The Student (groveling): O! Stop! I'm fat and scant of breath!

The Advisor: Our purpose is to build you, make you wiser.

Committee Member #1: What does not kill you only makes you stronger.

The Advisor: Now then. Tell me what you know about sleep.

The Student: When people sleep not they grow mighty weary.

The Advisor: He speaks the truth.

The Student: And by a sleep to say we end the heartaches and the thousand natural shocks that human flesh is heir to is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Committee Member #2 (aside): Alack! He has discovered my purpose. I must forestall him with a question:

Committee Member #2: If I may, a word.

The Student: I listen.

Committee Member #2: Could you mayhap explain to a poor Outsider the clinical significance of your research?

somewhere in all of this is beauty

james clavell's king rat, if you haven't read it, is a story set in a malayan prison camp during the japanese occupation of wwii. much is made in the book of food and cigarettes, in particular how much eggs were prized among the inmates:

The King was pleased. "You wait till I finish. Then you'll see the goddamnest egg you've ever seen." He powdered the eggs with pepper, then added the salt.

-- which leads to Marlowe being

...pacified by the glory of the sizzling eggs.

this goes on for some pages. later on, the men trade in eggs, argue about them, accuse each other of stealing them, and so forth. ok.

in victor frankl's books about his experiences in the concentration camp, he often says things like this:

We were grateful for the smallest of mercies. We were glad when there was time to delouse before going to bed, although in itself this was no pleasure, as it meant standing naked in an unheated hut where icicles hung from the ceiling. But we were thankful if there was no air raid alarm during this operation and the lights were not switched off. If we could not do the job properly, we were kept awake half the night.

similar quotes have to do with the joy of having extra potatoes, or looking up from time to time into a clear sky.

so you could go on looking for examples all day, but my point is that the extraction of exquisite pleasure from the utterly mundane is something that's been written about a lot, and something that i'm sure most people experience at some point in their lives (particularly if you went through ns, but i'll spare you those recollections).

now take that feeling a little bit further, and remove as a necessary quality its positive valence. remove also the necessity for it to have any specific proximal cause. now what you're left with is something like c.s. lewis' Joy, a feeling desired, but not necessarily pleasurable, an underwelling, a spiritual sensation, a notion that beneath the surface characteristics of the mundane is something infinitely powerful.

so, it may just be that i've been smoking crack, but the more i read and talk to people, the more i sense that this is a very common human experience, though one that is incredibly hard to put into words. maybe it's a zen thing, that it defies description because the notion gets more slippery as you try harder to verbalize what it is. in any case, it's (to me) one of the big psychological mysteries. what is that feeling? is it religious? is that what people mean when they say they're experiencing 'God' (the honest ones, not the fruitcakes). is it something that emerges because of our cognitive biases to categorize things and draw connections? and, in the frame of your choice, is it important, or just a feeling like any other?

the fall-to-spring academic year has a tempo completely different from the january-to-december academic year we grew up with. both are pragmatic, but the american system has stronger parallels to a narrative, a sense of beginning, middle and end. and, as eliot once said, the end is the beginning, the sending-forth; but the beginning for many people is also a kind of end: of imagining life will always be the same, of the wish that home is forever, and that the people you love will never change.

i was going to stay at home and lounge around reading today, but by 10 being alone in my apartment was making me think of drug suicides and motorcycle emptiness, so i went to my lab to surf amazon.com and fiddle with my conference abstracts. summer is here, and the undergrads are gone. we had a farewell lunch for them yesterday on the penthouse level of brb: baked ziti and stromboli and a large ebony-and-ivory cake ("CONGRATULATIONS, SENIORS!"). people come and go so often in modern life. we must come into contact with tremendous numbers of people compared to humans just a few generations before us, and they appear and disappear with frightening suddenness. i wonder if that doesn't put a lot of stress on us psychologically. if you count up all the fake 'how are yous', over the days and weeks, that has to take a toll.

From The Book on the Bookshelf, Henry Petroski:

A common procedure, when there is room of course, is to put one's finger on the top of a book and pull gently against the headband to rotate the book in its place until its top corner projects out enough from the other books on the shelf for it to be grapsped and removed. Martha Stewart Living does not approve: "Never hook your finger over the top of the spine." The problem with doing so is that it can lead to broken fingernails or, perhaps worse, to torn book bindings. As a nineteenth-century "handy-book" warned, "Never pull a book from the shelf by the head-band; do not toast them over the fire, or sit on them, for 'Books are kind friends, we benefit by their advice, and they reveal no confidences.'""

i was looking through what i'd written over the past few months and figured it was time for a short break from wordy expositions. so, just for a change, here are some pictures of flowers:

first things first:



right. binding costs $2.95 a pop at campus copy -- not morbidly expensive, but enough to give pause. bribery and impression management: the hidden underworld of graduate school. i'm not even kidding: the next thing i have to worry about is what kind of coffee the people on my committee particularly fancy, and whether or not pistachios are appropriate. maybe some boston creams? i hear that too fussy is no good, but then aren't all distractions from the actual product beneficial to the cause? how can they see with sequins in their eyes?

but yes: it's over, for now.

i found myself with about an hour to kill before my presentation today (!), so i went into the bookstore and read the first few chapters of douglas hofstadter's i am a strange loop, which was entertaining but completely antithetical to what i believe in a number of ways. his stand, which seems to resemble that of many philosophers of neuroscience nowadays, is that the vertical integration of neuronal, systems and cognitive theories is neither possible nor desirable. i say: nonsense. inconceivable at the present moment, maybe, but so were bullet trains a hundred years ago. the gestalt of consciousness from matter, the explanation of how that occurs lurks in the interstices, the sticky places that neuroscientists and psychologists alike are wary of exploring. and i shall control myself here by not talking too much about fools rushing in, but you know what i mean*.

and then came the presentation, which was shit, and has convinced me that i need to make a bullet-pointed script before i go into my defense on the 15th. the difficulty is that all of our committees have one "outsider", someone with no background in the subject material, and so we have to pitch the talk at an appropriate level while still hitting all the high points. this was impossible to do on the fly, as i discovered, and i'm glad i had the opportunity to look like an idiot among other grad students before i did so in front of my advisor.

* and to be fair, his point is that we can all live and read good books and smell the coffee without understanding the (sub)atomic world, which is true, and cheerfully anti-reductionist, but also immensely unsatisfying.

rant

if i get the question "what practical significance does your research have?" just one more time there's going to be a chainsaw massacre in the department. do people not know that asking that is taboo? the brother and i had this conversation, like, 2 years ago, and he was an undergrad at the time -- you would have thought that grad students would have figured this out by this stage in their lives. you just don't get to ask that. my work has no external or clinical worth, and that's just how it is, and i'm certainly not going to "frame it in a larger context" in my paper. or, if you really must have a story, 150 years down the road bioengineering and neuroscience are finally going to be wed, and all this information about neuroanatomy and physiology will be used to build fully functioning artificial brains capable of interfacing with machines, and then we'll have cylons who nuke the planet and send the vestiges of humanity into outer space, and that's the practical significance of my work. there.

"clinical research", i think, was created to ease the guilty consciences of people who have realized, and are petrified of the fact that science is a societally acceptable brand of onanism. you play in your own little sandbox, and spend taxpayer's money, and feel smart because no one else knows what the hell it is you're doing, and it's ok. and then there are a few ways things can go -- you can justify it to yourself by using the tongue-in-cheek cylon argument above, who can say where the road goes? all we can do is what we can do. or the monkeys on typewriters argument -- with enough scattershot science we're bound to find the Universal Theory of Everything sooner or later. and finally: my research has "clinical relevance", which is intuitively admirable, but rests on about a billion assumptions about the whole enterprise, the least of which is hume's is-ought problem. it's a guilt complex, i'm telling you, like people who bring their paychecks home every month and then scream about how the money is tainted because they had to work for The Man.

besides, if human advancement is both an offshoot and a stimulator of research, and modern pathology/discontent/whatever is at least partially a symptom of human advancement, you now have a self-referential loop, where the clinical researchers are both fixing, and contributing to the self-same problem. Which means that the net advancement afforded by these people is at most slightly above 0 (and possibly negative). so now you have people spending money to do little more than assuage their own guilt. moral of the story: all these stupid studies of whether caffeine is good or bad for you, comparing CBT and IPT ... i'm not even saying don't do them, but at least own up to the fact that research, like almost everything else you can choose as a career in life, is done mostly for selfish reasons. and the reason that we get paid less than what we're "worth"* is not that we're martyrs burning ourselves at the stake for the cause of future generations, but because it's rewarding -- and if you believe that economics has got it right, more personally rewarding than a corporate career. but there's the rub -- it is rewarding. so there you have it. my work is pure, and hopefully one day it will be beautiful too. and i'll feel good about it, no justifications or practicality necessary.

* yes, whole new can of worms, but let's hold to present, and not utopian ideals of worth for now

8 days. it doesn't necessarily help that i'm surrounded by overachievers who are voluntarily turning in their projects early. whatever happened to solidarity in at least pretending that you're dying?

---

i have one last section to go, a bit that is proving very hard to write. it has to say, approximately, the following:

* i don't believe my results one bit because they are as reliable as the saharan dunes
* not that there was anything i could have done about it
* it's the effort that counts

---

the undergrads are beginning to move out. i see them when i emerge from my lab/ apartment, which is seldom, and feel sort of hollow. it's been one academic year, fall and spring, and i knew at the beginning that it would feel like no time at all, and it did.

---

stats final on tuesday, mock defense of my project on thursday, last-minute panic from friday-monday interspersed with heavy drinking, kinko's, running around campus to turn everything in by 4:55 pm, and then more heavy drinking, and possibly poker. and then much blogging about everything i learned this year, which was a lot, and not all to do with factor analysis. can't hardly wait

On Growing Old

Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornland, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nore share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower.
Spring-time of man, all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts, or loiters, or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain when the summers parch.
Give me but these, and though the darkness close
Even the night will blossom as the rose.

John Masefield

12 days. i wish i had a t-shirt i could walk around in that says this is graduate school. you know, there are exaggerations, and jokes (thank you, minz, and other people, for thinking of me), and false bravado, but there's no honest way of disguising the fact that this is hell. i wake up, i drink 2 cups of coffee, i don't even really stop for lunch (food just seems to happen, somehow -- i'm not dead, so clearly nutrition must be coming from somewhere), and the rest of the time i'm just submerged in this thesis, or studying for my statistics finals, or being bombarded with e-mail. the weekend was fantastic, admittedly, but i'm 48 hours into the week, and it was only a couple of hours ago i realised it was tuesday. and when i go to bed, in the early hours of the morning, i dream of microsoft excel.

singapore day

Manhattan, NY

I went. I wasn't going to -- the project is due in 2 weeks, and there is a lot left to be done -- but I was feeling really burned out and incapable of working through Saturday. Also, they flew Makansutra hawkers in to cook -- PSA complex bak kut teh, Adam Road Nasi Lemak, Casuarina Road Prata -- so even though I didn't admit it to myself there was no real hope of resistance.

Besides, I figure that it's time to start healing, to start being a little bit more sanguine about my cultural identity crisis. Not that I see myself ever endorsing what we are told is "Singaporean". I don't think I'll ever not being at harsh odds with a culture so simultaneously false, hypocritical, conservative and smug. The critical thing for me, now, is to not be angry, because, really, it's not a fault. Some people are hurting, but on balance, from a purely utilitarian perspective, the vast majority of Singaporeans are getting what they want, and loving it. Where in the world don't some people hurt?

It's not a fault, it's a cultural, collective, and conscious decision, and anger does nothing because I'm getting angry not on behalf of anyone, but at the idea that people would want to live that way, much the same way you feel frustrated at a child for not understanding something that is patently obvious to you. It doesn't even have to be painful, or pitiable, or worthy of scorn. It's just...if anything, it's small. It's like...take all the rhetoric and propaganda and economic success and realise that it's all just one thing, one idea. Everything -- HDB estates, National Service, flag waving on August 9th, Phua Chu Kang, bringing satay to Wollman Rink on a sunny day in April -- for the purposes of "feelings towards Singapore" it's all quintessentially one thing, and if you can see it that way then the issue takes on manageable proportions, because now you're not getting angry with 4 million people and 40 years of public policy, but a solitary idea that vanishes in comparison to the infinity of everything else. Better still, the idea itself is circular: this is my country, this is my flag, this is my future, this is my life. Singapore is Singapore, in the way that God told Moses "I am what I am" at the burning bush. When you define a thing as "everything that you could possibly want", it's a necessary truism that you won't want anything else.

So now, as you can see, New York and the Ivy League are part of Singapore -- and I say this almost literally, because I'm not talking about the physical places, but the concepts of what they are. All borders nowadays are ideological anyway (which is why no matter where I live I'll not be Singaporean; the ethos does not encompass me). So we lined up in what may as well have been Adam Road, to all intents and purposes, and got our nasi lemak, and I called Von who was disbelieving, and anyway late to go build his table. There was a goody bag with a Bread Talk voucher ("for when you come home") and a packet of rubber bands in it, which I actually need rather urgently (the rubber bands, not the flosss). And Wong Kan Seng, and a million gay performers on stage, and finally both Kinjal and I bumped into someone we knew with the small world anthem running in an endless midi loop through my head as i nodded and smiled.

We met up with Grace and her brother for dinner much later on, after a failed trip to Serendipity Cafe (1.5-hour wait. Did you know that Kate Beckingsale was in that? It's scary how I have absolutely zero recall of that movie even though I remember with perfect clarity the details of the day I went to see it.) Grace was in town to watch Kevin Spacey on Broadway, and we had a nice normal conversation and drinks. Which brings us back to why I don't want to be angry -- because it's very tiring, and vexatious, and I talk about my frustration in 15 billion ways on this blog and to people and nothing ever comes of it, when most of what I want in life comes with nice normal conversation and drinks. The issue has been talked to death, and I'm tired of it -- and yet there's so much more, miles to go before I sleep, the quest to calmly, impartially ask: Why? Why did this single idea work so well? Why were you in Central Park that day?

the usual disclaimer: if entries are sparse, i aten't dead, just overworked.

Etiquette

The Ballyshannon foundered off the the coast of Cariboo,
And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew;
Down went the owners--greedy men whom hope of gain allured:
Oh dry the starting tear, for they were heavily ensured.

Besides the captain and the mate, the owners and the crew,
The passengers were also drowned excepting only two:
Young Peter Gray, who tasted teas for Baker, Croop & Co.
And Somers, who from Eastern shores, imported indigo.

These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast
Upon a desert island were eventually cast.
They hunted for their meals, as Alexander Selkirk used,
But they couldn't chat together--they had not been introduced.

For Peter Gray, and Somers too, though certainly in trade,
Were properly particular about the friends they made;
And somehow thus they settled it without a word of mouth--
That Gray should take the northern half, while Somers took the South.

On Peter's portion oysters grew--a delicacy rare,
But oysters were a delicacy Peter couldn't bear,
On Somers' side was turtle, on the shingle lying thick,
Which Somers couldn't eat, because it always made him sick.

Gray gnashed his teeth with envy as he saw a mighty store,
Of turtle unmolested on his fellow-creature's shore.
The oysters at his feet aside impatiently he shoved,
For turtle and his mother were the only things he loved.

And Somers sighed in sorrow as he settled in the south,
For the thought of Peter's oysters brought the water to his mouth.
He longed to lay him down upon the shelly bed, and stuff:
He had often eaten oysters, but had never had enough.

How they wished an introduction to each other they had had
When on board the Ballyshannon! And it drove them nearly mad.
To think how very friendly with each other they might get,
If it wasn't for the arbitrary rule of etiquette!

One day when out a hunting for the mus ridiculus,
Gray overheard his fellow man soliloquizing thus:
"I wonder how the playmates of my youth are getting on,
McConnell, S.B. Walters, Paddy Byles, and Robinson?"

These simple words made Peter as delighted as could be
Old chummies at the charterhouse were Robinson and he!
He walked straight up to Somers, then he turned extremely red.
Hesitated, hummed and hawed a bit, then cleared his throat and said:

"I beg your pardon--pray forgive me if I seem too bold,
But you have breathed a name I know familiarly of old.
You spoke aloud of Robinson--I happened to be by.
"You know him?" "Yes, extremely well" "allow me, so do I".

It was enough: they felt they could more pleasantly get on,
For (ah, the magic of the fact!) they each knew Robinson!
And Mr. Somers' turtle was at Peter's service quite,
And Mr. Somers punished Peter's oyster beds all night.

They soon became like brothers from community of wrongs:
They wrote each other little odes and sang each other songs;
They told each other anecdotes disparaging their wives;
On several occasions, too, they saved each other's lives.

They felt quite melancholy when they parted for the night,
And got up in the morning soon as ever it was light;
Each other's pleasant company they reckoned so upon,
And all because it happened that they both knew Robinson.

They lived for many years on that inhospitable shore,
And day by day they learned to love each other more and more.
At last, to their astonishment, on getting up one day,
They saw a frigate anchored in the offing of the bay.

To Peter an idea occurred. "Suppose we cross the main?
So good an opportunity may not be found again".
And Somers thought a minute, then ejaculated "Done!
I wonder how my business in the City's getting on?"

"But stay," said Mr. Peter: "when in England as you know,
I earned a living tasting teas for Baker, Croop and Co.,
I may be superceded--my employer thinks me dead!"
"Then come with me," said Somers, "and taste indigo instead".

But all their plans were scattered in moment when they found
the vessel was a convict ship from Portland, outward bound;
When a boat came off to fetch them, though they felt it very kind,
To go on board they firmly but respectfully declined.

And both the happy settlers roared with laughter at the joke,
They recognized a gentlemanly fellow pulling stroke:
'Twas Robinson--a convict, in an unbecoming frock!
Condemned to seven years for misappropriating stock!!!

They laughed no more, for Somers thought he had been rather rash
In knowing one whose friend had misappropriated cash;
And Peter thought a foolish tack he must have gone upon
In making the acquaintance of a friend of Robinson.

At first they didn't quarrel very openly, I've heard;
They nodded when they met, and now and then exchanged a word;
The word grew rare, and rarer still the nodding of the head,
And when they meet each other now, they cut each other dead.

To allocate the island they agreed by word of mouth,
And Peter takes the north again, and Somers takes the south;
And Peter has the oysters, which he hates, in layers thick,
And Somers has the turtle--turtle always makes him sick.

W.S. Gilbert

25 days left. the combination of sleep deprivation and a carousel of aimee mann on the ipod is bringing me to the verge of hallucination during my waking hours. my first task of the day was to boil 6 eggs and 3 pounds of potatoes; this turned out to be the most exciting event in a day full of misregistered images, bad-tempered baristas, and grey drizzly skies.

in the tradition of camilla parker bowls:

shout-out

-- to the other brother, who is going to boston college once he finishes his national servitude/slavery/sycophancy/[insert joke of choice here]. congrats! (even though you read this blog once every two years).

(minz: i know it's early, but let it be said that i'm putting it upon you to show him what there is to see.)

In case you've ever wondered how the date of Easter Sunday is calculated, you may edify yourself here. Quite interesting! Especially, the "April 19 is the mode" fact:



Happy Bunnies Day!

30 days. the data is all in, now it's a question of making something of it. i had 4.5 hours of class in the afternoon, by the end of which i was alternately doodling, dreaming of puppies, and doing the pavlicek bridge quiz -- anything to not have to think about linkage methods in cluster analysis. fridays this month are brutal.

during the break, the present for one of the birthday boys arrived at the department office, necessitating some misdirection and skulduggery as ewa and i smuggled the 4' by 2.5' by 2' box to a suitable hiding spot. i love how amazon ships their stuff in containers that are at least 16 times the size of the product. we had a little debate as to how ewa was going to get the present to the party, and not one graduate student suggested opening the package to see the size of the actual damn thing; instead, we wrestled with the box all the way to the trolley stop, and held up rail traffic for several minutes when it jammed in the doors.

it was a bread maker; the other, more manageable gift the talking heads brick, and the cake was actual several dozen Symbolic Cupcakes with depictions like the sri lankan national flag and "positive psychology" (don't ask). daniel managed to make an appearance, despite his busted leg, and traitor joe, on rotation back from princeton. i ate too many mini-pappadums. the theme of the night was the 80s, and there were too many leotards, and a vigorous, overlong debate about whether lynyrd skynyrd was 70s or 80s (if you think the answer to that is obvious, try another one: pac-man. unquestionably 80s, right? but no! the arcade version first appeared in 1979. point: decades are no longer defined by years). there was also too much discussion of work and research, and you could sense people frantically trying to get drunk to put a stop to that. and still: just before i left at 1, i overheard a conversation about randomized controlled trials, and the problems associated with.

i don't believe we moved house and i wasn't even there.

anyway. from if not now, when, primo levi:

"I studied various things," Mottel replied smugly. "I also studied the Talmud, and you know what the Talmud says about women? It says that you should never speak to a woman that's not your wife, not even in sign language, now with your hands or your feet or your eyes. You mustn't look at her clothes, even when she isn't wearing them. And listening to a woman sing is like seeing her naked. And it's a grave sin if an engaged couple embrace: the woman is then impure, as if she had her period, and she has to cleanse herself in the ritual bath."

"All this is in the Talmud," asked Mendel, who hadn't spoken before.

"In the Talmud and other places," Mottel said.

"What's the Talmud?" Piotr asked. "Is it your Gospel?"

"The Talmud is like a soup, with all the things man can eat in it," Dov said. "But there's wheat and chaff, fruit and pits, meat and bones. It isn't very good, but it's nourishing. It's full of mistakes and contradictions, but for that very reason it teaches you how to use your mind, and anyone who's read it all --"

Pavel interrupted him. "I'll explain what the Talmud is to you, with an example. Now listen carefully: Two chimneysweeps fall down the flue of a chimney; one comes out all covered in soot, the other comes out clean: which of the two goes to wash himself?"

Suspecting a trap, Piotr looked around, as if seeking help. Then he plucked up his courage and answered: "The one who's dirty goes to wash."

"Wrong," Pavel said. "The one who's dirty sees the other man's face, and it's clean, so he thinks he's clean too. Instead, the clean one sees the soot on the other one's face, believes he's dirty himself, and goes to wash. You understand?"

"I understand. That makes sense."

"But wait, I haven't finished the example. Now I'll ask you a second question. Those two chimneysweeps fall a second time down the same flue, and again one is dirty and one isn't. Which one goes to wash?"

"I told you I understood. The clean one goes to wash."

"Wrong," Pavel said mercilessly. "When he washed after the first fall, the clean man saw that the water in the basin didn't get dirty, and the dirty man realized why the clean man had gone to wash. So, this time, the dirty chimneysweep went and washed."

Piotr listened to this, with his mouth open, half in fright and half in curiosity.

"And now the third question. The pair falls down the flue the third time. Which of the two goes to wash?"

"From now on, the dirty one will go and wash."

"Wrong again. Did you ever hear of two men falling down the same flue and one remaining clean while the other got dirty? There, that's what the Talmud is like."

Palm Sunday. We had a visiting priest talk about how suffering is meaningless without Christ's passion, an argument that I strongly dislike, for 2 primary reasons:

1) I'm not sure it's true. "Meaning", as we usually think of it, is probably a human creation anyway, and non-religious people can (and do) find all sorts of meaning in their suffering if they choose. One could even make up an evolutionary story -- suffering is "meaningful" because those who suffer the least incur the fewest fitness penalties etc.

2) Even if it is true, it makes an assumption about the causal direction -- that is to say, it's equally reasonable to say that maybe religion only exists because suffering does. This is the Stark and Finke argument, essentially -- we believe, and invest in belief, as advance payment for the mitigation of suffering on earth. It's then utterly necessary (and, the skeptics would say, very convenient) that our suffering is arbitrary and orthogonal to the strength of our belief, because otherwise, there would no longer be any need for this external and inscrutable source of meaning to exist. Thus, at the very best, religion and suffering are symbiotic -- if we could directly negate our suffering with good acts, if there were any correlation whatsoever, there would be no need to appeal to (a) (G)od for our lives to make sense.

It's very clever really, because here you have one piece of evidence that can be used -- equally convincingly -- both for and against the existence of God. Not that you would ever hear this coming from the pulpit, but I thought I would share.