Anniverse

Last March, I started writing this blog. I was beginning to feel better (I thought), and I had some stuff to say. For example, I noted that my blood serum level for lithium was on the low end of therapeutic but that Chris said it was fine when combined with lamictal. How wrong was that!

The onset of mania often escapes notice, masquerading as just feeling better. Looking back, I see that last April marked the peak of blog-writing, coming in at 21 posts. I made a little graph to test a hypothesis: did the number of blog posts for each month indicate vacillating moods? The results are in. Last April (21), September (14), and this February (10) look like spikes in an otherwise downward trend. I should say, however, that May's posts were fewer than April's, but they were prolix. It's an illustration of how mood works in me. More posts mean more to say, but fewer posts can still mean pressured speech and a desire to get out all of the stuff I have to say, all at once.

I don't know what counts as the onset of mania and what just counts as feeling better. I don't know how to measure how I feel, even, as I wrote some posts that seemed lighter in tone because I was hiding my misery so that no one stopped me from fulfilling my plans. When mood is the question, nothing becomes an answer.

Ground rules

Okay, here are some ground rules in the crazy-person hospital: no alcohol of any type, including that which is found in shampoo, toothpaste, and deodorant; no computers, which means no working; no cigarettes, no laces for shoes; no belts; no personal connections among patients. Some of these rules worked better than others. I mean, there's a reason why deodorant has alcohol in it.

Some ground rules for this blog: no pulling punches; no publishing all of my nut-case journal entries; no editing for length when content is more important (in other words, I can be much more wordy than I am here); no hiding from myself or from you, my friends.

I must ask you to abide one rule: please comment, even if only to indicate that you've read what I've written. Blogging can be a lonely pursuit. I imagine that someone reads any of this and finds meaning in it, but in my heart, conjecture rules. I imagine the worst, and silence can turn into anything, really. 

So, please comment, please. Even if only to tell me that you get the message. It doesn't have to be complex. Just let me know you're out there.

A reply to J-P's comment on the previous post

My response was getting so long that it made more sense to put it into a comment of its own. The Kindle (and devices like it) probably are boons to inveterate travelers. Books are heavy!

J-P, the questions you ask regarding paper books generally provoke tons of (let's say) vigorous discourse in my field. I could definitely imagine a future in which owning paper books becomes a luxury, a electronic books and their attendant devices drop in price. Just as it is now a luxury to own a horse for now good reason. (Also heavy.)

I believe that the codex (even if not made with paper) will and should endure, but that we'll use it differently, perhaps with more respect or shared ownership within a community. Codices resist change and censorship more easily than electronic documents do. The paper book signifies a drain to our environment, but how does that compare to the environmental impact of producing, distributing, and recycling electronic devices and the infrastructure that they require? (That might be an unanswerable question at this point.)

What I do know is that many codices are beautiful in themselves. As are those luxury horses. (But with less poop.)

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And now a question regarding my own crappy paperback codices: Does anyone know how to get one's paperbacks re-covered to make them hardbacks? Most of our books are paperbacks, and I like to imagine them as cloth-covered hardbacks, in a range of colors. As a child, I lusted after the huge library of leather-bound books that belonged to one of my father's colleagues. They had a pleasing uniformity of size and color, with exotic names on their spines, like "Seneca" (an Indian chief?) and "Cato the Elder." Now I know I don't want any leather books or the authors in their canon. But it's really cool to think of a cloth-covered canon of our own. So if any of you people know where I could get this done, or anyone on Etsy who would do it, please let me know.

How to start a fire

I miss reading good books but cannot give up the luxury of a quiet voice reading me to sleep. Nevertheless, no illusion stands between an audiobook and actual reading.

In the service of trying to do more real reading, I checked out the Kindle, a device Amazon is pushing. Its screen works like paper, sort of, allowing the user to read even in bright daylight. It also connects to Amazon through a cellular network, allowing fast and free downloading of comparatively inexpensive books anywhere a cell phone can connect. It's ugly and expensive and technologically selfish, but most reviews were positive.

After some thought, I realized that the new device wouldn't solve my central problem. And—this is important—the thing can't retain the physical elements of a paper book, like page layout, paper quality, typeface that isn't Cambria. You can do what I plan to do (here in a minute). Pick up the closest book and smell it. Turn the pages and listen. Look at its age, and open it until the spine cracks. Smush the pages and write your name on the surfaces that creates. Read it until the page falls away, in that mysterious process of becoming absorbed.

Now call me Ned Lud. 

According to wired.com, Banksy, the infamous yet anonymous British graffitist, has hit NYC, and it sounds like his biggest statement yet. Wednesday marked the opening of The Village Pet Story and Charcoal Grill, an installment featuring anamatronic creatures that directly cross the line between animals and prepared food, among other boundaries. I'm talking hot dog hamsters here, people.

The Wooster Collective published a statement attributed to Banksy. I can't vouch for its provenance, but it's funny, so here's some of it:

I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and the sustainability of factory farming, but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing.

I think we all knows what that feels like.

Re-learning an important lesson

When hugging a kitty, don't squeeze it too much around its middle.

Also, FYI: It's snowing on Mars!

working at the coffee shop

I really like working at JJ's and meeting students here. Overall, it's a good experience. HOWEVER (didn't you know that was coming?) there's this older guy who often shows up, and he always sits next to me, which in itself is creepy. It's not like no other seats available near the powerstrip. 

Because of where he sits, he generally has to climb past me to plug his computer in, which also makes me uncomfortable because I don't like to be that close to strangers. He always apologizes for getting in my way, which isn't really an apology because it happens each fucking time.

There's a coffee table on which people rest their beverages. It's pretty big, which is great. So creepiness #3 is that he puts his stuff so close to mine that he has to lean toward me to pick up his coffee cup. Ew. And he tries to make conversation.

Now, if this series of events only happened once, that would be fine. It's easy to be generous and polite if the other person is as well. It's becomes less and less easy the more frequently it happens. I intended to ignore all of this as though this desperate old man just wants a little attention and perhaps camaraderie. The smile of an obviously married woman? The scent of clothes worn a third time, not really dirty but not totally clean either? Ick. Just ick. 

Today represents my last little nerve. I don't know what to do.

I was meeting with a student this morning when he sat down. Then, during an obvious conference (more obvious to someone sitting too close), he interrupts to ask me could I please plug his computer in so that he doesn't have to climb over me. Three things: 

1) don't interrupt my meeting/conference/conversation/whatever to make me do a favor for you. 

2) the favor itself is unreasonable because it is he who sat down after my student and I did. (He left for a moment, and my student leaned over and asked, "do you know that guy?" I explained that I didn't, and she said, "I thought maybe you did, but when you didn't say Hi, I wasn't sure. Yeah, he's weird.") Also unreasonable because the powerstrip is on a long cord, and he could move it so that he doesn't have to bother anyone ever.

3) Now I'm spitting mad, and I would say something, but I didn't at the moment, and now it's been about 10 minutes, and I don't really know what to do. The presence of my student made him sit a little farther than usual, so it's not like I can ask JJ's gunther to help me. When I look up, straight ahead in front of me (as I often do when I'm thinking and writing), he always looks at me. (It's pretty obvious.) I'm mad and creeped out, but I won't move because I don't want to cede my territory. This is where I sit. I shouldn't have to move, and this creepy guy is taking advantage of JJ's overall sense of decorum, so I feel I can't yell at him. Part of me is angry at myself that I didn't tell him immediately that he was interrupting a student conference (with the subtext that he could figure something else out about his stupid computer that didn't involve me plugging it in for him or him crawling over me to do it himself). 

What should I do? What would you do? If you know what to do, would you do it for me?

Actual, for-real water bears in space AND the best atom-smashing machine ever; or, yes, yes, I'm a nerd

Two exciting science-y things happened this week. 

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ONE: Wired reported the findings of a study in the journal Current Biology in which some scientists shot tardigrades, aka water bears (which are a kind of invertebrate animal), out into space, exposing them to radiation, and they survived. If you wanted, you could easily see one  without a microscope. They can slow their metabolisms by a factor of 10,000 (the article says) which allows them to survive vacuums, starvation, total disappearanence of water, and extreme temperatures (above 300F and below -240F).

Not only did they survive, one group was able to repair the DNA damaged by the radiation and reproduce at the same rate as the control group, making normal little water bear babies. Amazing.  Seriously awesome. Now that we know that these tiny creatures can survive in space, scientists can start to figure out some stuff, like improving human DNA repair (e.g., aging much more slowly) and adapting to space.

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TWO: Yesterday, international scientists turned on the Large Hadron Collider and shot its first beam of protons, which traveled the entire 17-mile track. In a few weeks, they'll shoot lots and lots of beams, at which point atoms will begin to smash into each other, creating particles and possibly subparticles. This thing is incredible. It can generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than our sun.

The importance of the Large Hadron Collider cannot be underestimated. They'll be able to test such ideas as the Big Bang Theory, String Theory, the Multiverse Theory, and the Dark Matter Theory. The scientists who have been working on this thing say that the worst-case scenario is that they'll find out nothing, a waste of roughly 7,000 scientists from 20 countries at the cost of about $10 billion. Which isn't too bad, I guess, considering that the cost is still less than we spend in Iraq each month. (Data source: Congressional Research Service, as of 2/2/2008)

One of the worst case scenarios, floated by "crackpots," (i.e., physicists who aren't down with Einstein), is that the Large Hadron Collider could create a Large Black Hole. No more student loan debts!

Britain's Astronomer Royal put the odds of the Large Hadron Collider destroying the earth  at 1 in 50 million. An analogy: if my math's right, if everyone in the world (6.6 billion) participated in a lottery, and the lottery money had to be equally divided among all of the winners, 36,000 people would walk away with some cash. And then blip out of existence.

See if that might happen.

Extreme rhetoric

After adding a few entries to the blog roll, I went on a search to find comparable right-wing entries. A few of the better known sources, like The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, would be fine, but I wanted to find something more like the right's version of AlterNet. The other side's ideas would be enlightening. I've known some Reagan-style conservatives who persuasively argue their point of view. Unfortunately, none of them run blogs. 

(Left-leaning websites can get overwrought, but the hostility of some of the right-wing websites astounds me: "JaMarcus Obama"? Really?)

Instead of achieving my goal, I have rediscovered the joys of poking commenters with their own ideological sticks. It's fun, but I'm still at a loss for less mainstream right-wing websites. That run substantive, fact-based pieces. Whose supporters don't rely on their orotund demagogues. Whose commenters avoid using all caps to call people names.

Any ideas?

Not a rhetorical question

A couple of weeks ago, I was having a conversation with Sam and two good friends over drinks after a nice dinner out. One of the topics that I keep thinking about is the way in which a blog's structure determines its content. Blog anonymously, and you can say whatever you like. Blog under your real name, and you have to think about whose feelings you might hurt or who might disapprove of your opinion or behavior. For example, I wouldn't complain about Sam. Not that there's anything to complain about. I love you, baby!

So that leads me to ask myself why I write these entries to begin with. My stated purpose is to construct a place for all of the jumbled ideas in my head that don't find exit in other ways. But when those ideas overlap with (for example) questions or problems with family or friends (my main audience), I find myself resorting to coded language. When you come across an entry that doesn't make much sense, it's probably evidence that I'm concealing something. I edit these entries (as much as it might seem otherwise), and sometimes I edit them out of comprehension.

That somewhat undercuts my purpose for doing this. Writing helps me work things out. But I need some kind of audience—implied or otherwise—to write to. So diary or journal writing isn't that appealing. Writing about some thought, idea, or situation using clear language helps me clarify my thoughts. Wanting to write about something but having to obfuscate the true subject may only muddle it more. I'm never really going to write something very raw on this blog, like a sonnet I'm working on, but I'd like to be more direct than I have been. 

How?

Flight

**Disclaimer: This post is not about anything that happens on an actual plane. If you're have any fears about the act of flying, read with impunity.

Sam and I went to Albuquerque this past weekend. It was lovely to see Rory and Kim, and I look forward to seeing them when they come to visit. Or if we drive out there. But I'm never flying again if I can possibly help it.

Everyone has a terrible airflight story to relate, mostly because it's an incredibly painful experience. But this one threw me into all kinds of mental directions. I'll give just a quick description of the very worst part and bore you with the wretched details later.

We went to the airport, got tickets, made it to security. I put my computer into a bin, as you're supposed to do. I went through the screener without problems. As I was reshoeing myself, I looked up just in time to see a woman knock my computer bin off the conveyor, with enough force that it landed upside down. The TSA did their best to intervene, and I didn't actually do anything unreasonable, even though the woman was not the least bit contrite when she acknowledged that she had, in fact, knocked my computer onto the floor. I cried the whole way to New Mexico.

Tomorrow at some point, the computer will be ready for me to pick up at Mac Authority, and then I'll send my receipt to TSA, and they'll eventually send me some small amount of money not equal to what this all actually cost. It's not the money, though. It's feeling out of control, out of touch, and away from work I've put hundreds of hours into. And I feel like a total ass for even talking about this because Rory and Kim's reception was beautiful and should be the focus, not my crazy-ass, yelling at strangers, crying in public, generally embarrassing self.

Sam was wonderful about the whole thing and continues to be supportive and caring. I'm using his computer right now. So although I don't seem like it today, baby, you are the turtles all the way down.

Chemicals and chimera

I like them. They keep me alive, and they're actually quite useful. But I have to say reading about our food production practices is kinda gross. If you like being grossed, read Atwood's Oryx and Crake. It's excellent. And although we don't yet have plants that grow boneless, skinless chicken breasts (as in the novel), scientists are right now experimenting with creating meat from scratch. Thin, bloodless sheets of living flesh. They even can make the muscle tissue contract using electric pulses. At Tuoro University in New York, they've gotten even further with fish tissue, with the aim of creating food astronauts can grow on long space trips. They fried some up--the recipe they described actually sounds good--and presented it to colleagues who mistook it for fish fillets. No one ate it, they say, but it looked and smelled like fried fish.

Fascinating but disgusting. Worse than quorn, even.

These research projects and others like it will quickly raise questions that I don't think we're ready to answer, or to even approach. What will happen to vegetarianism when meat comes from plants or trays or petri dishes? For that matter, what will happen to meat eating? At some point soon, we'll start seeing products with uncertain origins in grocery stores. H.G. Wells's Dr. Moreau has nothing on us.

Taste has already been largely divorced from its origins, and if we had the cultural will to do it, we could start building factories for making Three-Course-Dinner gum right now. No glutens, cholesterol, or trans-fats. Omega-3 enriched. Addictive-free. Some assembly required.

Imagine, now, a clearing of the throat

I have nothing to say. That sentence is obviously not true and should signal to you that I'm going to whine now.

Everywhere I start to begin goes poorly. It's like trying to force your way into a scrum, or so I imagine. Three places to begin: the theory, the history, the (or a) film. I've already got my appropriate introductory quotation at least. (In critical writing, it's customary to put an interesting quotation at the beginning of an essay so that the reader can at least have a little fun.)

In any of the ten files I've created, after a page or so, the cursor just blinks. A blinking cursor may be the saddest thing in the world. Blink. Blink. k.

The erstwhile planet

Remember when the astrologists destroyed a planet and a time-honored mnemonic a couple of years ago? (In our school, it was "my very eager mother just served us nine pickles.") No more pickles. When they debated, they determined that either Sol has 8 planets, 12 planets, or potentially dozens, depending on one's view of the Kuiper Belt. Had Pluto been retained as a planet, schoolchildren across the country would have had to figure out a mnemonic for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon, and UB313. Another suggestion at the time was that Pluto and Charon be named a double planet. (They share a center of gravity between them.) 

Instead, the IUP created planet rules that exclude Pluto. 

The reason I bring this up is that Newsweek online recently published an interview with Venetia Burney, who named Pluto in 1930, at age 11. While breakfasting with her grandfather, Venetia suggested that the planet be named for the Roman god of the underworld. Old Grandad happened to be the head librarian at the Bodleian, so that all worked out rather well. 

Venetia Phair is now 89 and unperturbed about Pluto's demotion. Other things have been named for her since, like planetoid 6235 Burney. So, astronomically, she's had a pretty exciting life so far. Tonight raise a glass to Venetia, namer and named. 

Hey, presto!

I usually become irritated easily with customer service reps. It's not very reasonable. It's a shitty job, and they are almost never the source of whatever problem to begin with. My irritation is rarely productive, which only increases it. This morning, for example, I couldn't get the Verizon lady to answer my questions because I wasn't listed as an account decision-maker. 

This afternoon, however, I talked to a Verizon CSR (Paul something) who not only was able to answer my questions clearly, but also was able to make (most of) the changes I requested to our bill and our account. I'm satisfied. It's an anomaly, yes, but finally, I encountered a competent, helpful CSR. Cheers to you, Paul Verizon.

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In other news, I'm ready for the Democrats to choose a contender. Prior to the Florida and Michigan primaries, the DNC made it clear to everyone that they didn't count. For Florida, Sen. Clinton even signed a contract agreeing that Florida votes were moot and that the state wouldn't contribute delegates to the candidates' totals. In Michigan, her name was the only name on the ballot. Although she and her campaign may wish the Florida and Michigan votes held significance, they don't, really.

By no metric is she ahead. More than anything, though, I wonder why it isn't more of a problem that she's trying to go back on the agreements. Surely that's more troubling than Obama saying that the government has caused people to feel embittered about its ability to serve them. Even if he is an elitist, why don't people want their president to represent the best qualities of America? 

President Bush appeared on Deal or No Deal on Monday. Reportedly, the show tied its worst ratings for Monday nights. Even Vonnegut couldn't have made that up.  

The kind of shit I get excited about

MoMA is having an exhibit through May 12 called Design and the Elastic Mind. The sheer number and combinations of projects submitted bogs my mind. Some of the projects seem somewhat familiar (e.g., those inspired by science fiction), some are fanciful (e.g., eight things for lonely men, including a machine that steals the covers), and others offer a view of a future that is incipient or happening now. The example most germane to my studies is telepresence.

Telepresence allows a person to operate at a distance in at least one sensory modality (e.g., vision).  The goal is to replace one's input with the sensory details of another location. In essence, the difference between telepresence and virtual reality is that the remote location is not virtual. DARPA and NASA grants started off the process of developing telepresence technologies. (One can easily imagine military applications of this technology.)

Telepresence is an intermediary between present embodiment and virtual embodiment, and it offers me a third possible answer to questions about sensory experiences and embodiment.

Part of what's amazing about it is that surgeons are already using it. In an effort called "Operation Lindberg," Dr. Jacque Marescaux and his team from Institut de recherche contre les cancers de l'appareil digestif (IRCAD) in Paris successfully used telepresence techniques in a laparoscopic cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal) in 2001. (Unfortunately, they performed the operation on 9/7/2001.) Dr. Marescaux operated in New York City on a 68-year-old woman in Strasbourg, France.

It really makes sense. Laparoscopy has been around a long time, and surgeons have been using the technique on humans since roughly 1990. The development of robotic systems like ZEUS allowed what might have been a leap to become a simple step.

The ZEUS system uses robotic arms and a tiny camera in the patient's body. The main surgeon sits at a console, looking at a monitor showing the camera's output and manipulating controls to move the robotic instruments. Systems like these have numerous advantages, not least the abilities to filter out a surgeon's tremble and to scale motions. (One can program the system to reduce a surgeon's motions to a level otherwise impossible for the unaided human hand. Analogues to cinema's effects on vision, anyone?)

If the main surgeon is already looking through a camera and using robotic instruments, the last barrier to clinical robotic assisted remote telepresence surgery (RARTS) is communication lag among the computers, which has since been reduced to thousandths of a second. 

In other words, your doctor can operate on you wherever you are—France, Iraq, space, the bottom of the ocean—provided that the right technology is present. Yet again, technology extends the human sensorium, further complicating embodiment as a concept.

yay!