It’s official

What’s your gift? Can you make sense of nomorerape?
Is it:
a) a rare Japanese cucumber?
b) a form of paysan dance?
c) a French term for wound dressing?
d) an incomphrensible name slapped onto the side of a 40-feet long winnabago that goes around colleges?

Visit the website to find out.

In the meantime, I spent the entire evening hoping to finish that damned manuscript and introduce some sane space into my daily schedule. Instead, my hours went to a special documentary on the Discovery Channel's newest morph - the Science Channel. Tonight's topic was an interesting one. Much more interesting than misfolded proteins or people dying of disease because their brains has literally cooked itself, the topic of geniuses was far more appealing. Kim Peek, the inspiration behind the multi-Oscar hit Rainman, can remember every single ZIP code in America and retrieve it before you can hit the return key on your search. He can also tell you the day of the week of any date, any year as well as regurgitate 99.98% of every single word he's ever read. To make sure no one even approaches him in collectivized knowledge, he reads at a blistering 12 pages a minute. The flip side of all this is the very reason he's so smart - Kim is also autistic. Furthermore, he actually lacks a corpus collosum as well as parts of his frontal cortex which give context to his industrious intake of stimuli. In otherwords, whereas most brains are guarded by a manhole, his brain is one amazing large sewer of words and numbers. For all his troubles, his 82-year old father has to shower with him each day.

Part 2 detailed the life of up and coming savant Daniel T., who will soon be the next Kim Peeks. DT's claim to fame is his ability to see numbers as shapes and colours. It doesn't hurt that he can recite the first 25,000 digits of Pi. Unlike Kim and other savants, DT is also autistic, but mildly enough to adapt socially and not seem so out of place. Although it is telling that someone of his intellect and brainpower cannot score chicks at 26.

And to round up the day's theme of geniuses, Stephen Hawking finally found the balls (likely with the aid of a nurse) to divorce his second wife, who happened to be a former nurse of his. While I would usually find someone who writes books entitled History of Time rather pretentious, I sympathize with Hawking who by all accounts has been a victim of some vicious abuse, and some very tough luck.

Which leads me to think that maybe it's not so bad that it's taken me a full 18 months to grasp the finer points of protein folding. That the further away I am from appearing in the likes of Nature and Science, the less likely that my brain is wired like some alien termite farm. Perhaps I should be thankful at how merely ordinary I am actually am.

To the end of the world and back

Up and down. Up and down. So are the moods of the perennial postdoc, now in besetting his second year at the helm. Another seven days have passed. Weather has deteriorated, no parties to attend this week, and life hasn't gotten any better. So what then?

As the photo belies, I've had Bic Runga on my mind for the last few days. From here to there to everywhere..., the tune has rung through my head a hundred times. The trigger was a visit from a kiwi. The fact that the song has been on my phone for the last three weeks has simply reinforced it. Standing in June, whistling the same old tune.

After struggling to keep awake during a most ethereal talk on the pyschiatric struggles of the Parkinsonian patient (why is any surprised when people with bits of brain missing are on the wrong side of the sanity fence?) came the main event. Or roast. As it turns out, talk of dying cells and mystic proteins still enthralls me enough to keep me from nodding off. A late lunch (roasted peppers, grilled salmon, cooked candidate - you get the picture). As refreshing as eager minds and bodies is seeing someone who is even more clueless than yourself. But ignorance is bliss, and bliss is what we can sing about. Dressed in our second hand Sunday best, we were waiting for the taxi to come.

And then rushing off to the most phallic of all imaging devices, the electron microscope. An afternoon with eight grand feet of erect, unshakable steel. Under such atmosphere, even proteins behave, and I finally have the missing figure for the paper that should have went out a year ago. Yes, I believe that I'm not the only one. Why don't you get some sleep?

The only problem with Bic; you can't look too closely.

What could've been

Shit happens alot. I guess I must mull on it frequently enough that my sense of smell is a little warped. The only thing I'd like to do is fall into a deep sleep. A restful one of course. It's been a stressful week, if only because playing catchup in science is rather futile. Sort of like patents, which falsely leads one to believe that things can only be discovered once. Perhaps as a consequence, or for unrelated reasons, it's also been a depressing week.

Like many others, apparently, I've been missing my Lincolns and beavers. I actually miss the former more because I'm seldom in its company. As for the other....I'll reserve comment. However, depression usually puts me to sleep. In this case, a new opera-loving neighbor is the culprit. I'll see to it that I blast some very bad music in his direction in the following days. Puccini v. Outkast.

Just when you think you're at the very bottom of the pile, someone always manages to top your pain. So while I suffered my publication angst, dealt with other people's mundane quibbles, read unfathomable essays, etc., the Yankees were ousted by an overperforming Detroit squad. As it turns out, failure mixed with 25 million dollar salaries can be a fatal mix. Maybe I should be glad I don't have the Lincolns. Now just bring back those beavers.

Somehow, sporting failures bring out the most bizarre in all of us. Not to be outdone by my on-court antics last week, Cory Lidle goes one better and smashes a much more expensive toy into familiar turf. OK, maybe my week wasn't so bad...

Everyone's friend and foe

It's been over a week since the last update, which can only mean one of two things. Either I'm on holiday (won't be until Thanksgiving), or I've been very busy at work. As I leaned wistfully on the centrifuge that wouldn't behave and had entrapped my samples last night a dash before midnight, I wondered why I had so little of it, where it had all gone, and could I get some of it back. While on most days, that one thing would be cash, I had time on my mind. With deadlines expiring, eyes growing dim, I pondered what time was. This year's field medals have just been awarded to people who figured out, somewhat esoterically (perhaps using math like others shovels - to pile it thick and high), components of what time and space could, might be. Lacking in energy and probably intellect, I opted to take a more simplistic view.

In my universe, time would be likened to an ingredient. Not something that we could necessarily add or leave on the side, but rather as part of the whole package. Like ice-cream and calories. It is inherent, but not combined. It's there, but can't be removed or detached. But like all ingredients, it's there for a reason. If a tortoise could reason, it would argue that time is the thing that drives all things in the physical world. After all, without time (or it being consumed) planes would never arrive, people would never wake up, and all John Mayer songs would start and end on the same note (not far from the current state).

Turning back to my experiments, which held me from dashing home and catching a few Z's, it was apparent that time is vital for all reactions. Most protocols mention chemicals required for a given process but fail to mention add time. Since it tends to add itself, experiments usually proceed, albeit not necessarily successfully and usually keeping people in the lab for much longer than anticipated.

But of course, the fact that time cannot be willingly manipulated also serves as an advantage. For example, instead of say, "add 1ml of potassium chloride solution and stand at room temperature for 30 minutes", one could also add the abovementioned component and sit on his hands to achieve the same effect. In fact, the most effective way of bringing time about is to sit on your ass all day like we do, and watch it fly by. Thus that proverbial ticking underneath my ass can be so loud, I'm sure others can almost hear it too. From now on, when someone tells me to use my time effectively, I'll make sure they hear it too.

Dire straits

This country's really falling apart. Today, they set a motion in congress that will make online gambling illegal. Except it will be passed within the next week, unlike acts on mundane matters like saving the environment, impeaching the president, and catching Osama. Those will probably remain unratified until Sept 11, 2011.

Actually, things aren't much rosier up north as the Quebec transportation department can testify to. The only government department capable of certifying a bridge safe, 35 minutes before it pancakes two cars underneath it, 12 ft. into the ground below. Ouch!

The engineer was on holiday, so they assigned some guy by the name of Andrew Fastow. Said he knew collapses.

Finally, I have previously pointed out how even the most salicious of sporting matchups can be rigged. Sweden v. Belarus, Arsenal v. Barcelona, England v. Portgual. One has to argue for it because it seems difficult to fix results of such high paced, inexact endeavours. On the flip side, there are things which one should only expect to have been fixed from the very start. Like politics, the lottery, and American Idol.

Now add to that conniving marketing. Today, girlfriend was sent (given, for free, without solicitation) an entire outfit from Nike as an ambassador for the company's products. No obligations, only a voluntary questionnaire, and mailing address. Once upon a time, Cote dÓr sent me a box (2.4 kg) of pure Belgian dark chocolate to "sample" and give my expert opinion on before deciding to rollout into North America. In the ensuing 18 months, I'd spent 300 bucks on the black habit. You get the picture...