A (small) sigh of relief

Last week my advisor approved my thesis; this morning my second reader approved it. I printed it out and gave each of the five members of my thesis defense committee a copy.

Nothing can stop my defense now! (Knock on wood...)

What's 30 years?

Today I am 30 years old. Let's go over some statistics here:

In the past 30 years of my life, I have:

1. Slept for about 10 years, or roughly 33% of my life
2. Spent 5 years and 2 months, or 17% of my life, eating
3. Consumed about 21,352,500 calories, or enough energy to run 6100 marathons
4. Been in school continuously for 25 years, or 84% of my life
   
5. Lived in NYC for 8 years, 2 months, and 11 days; that's 27% of my life
6. Breathed about 6,493,788 cubic feet of air
7. Cut off about 7.5 feet of hair from my head
8. Shaved off about 4 feet of hair from my face
9. Earned a whopping $200,000 dollars, which is about $6700 per year
   
10. Spent about $199,000 dollars, which almost qualifies me as a nonprofit organization
    

Anyone else have interesting numbers for me to consider?

Just in case I forgot...

that this week was my birthday week, Yilin reminded me with a sign that she painted:

It has begun

Since I turn 30 ripe old years of age this Friday, today marks Day 1 of Birthday Week! Woohoo!

On Saturday my parents visited and brought me possibly the best birthday present I could ever ask for upon turning 30: an entire cooler full of meat! Filet mignons, tenderloins, roasts, etc, etc. Our freezer was full of meat! My mom also brought me a loaf of her excellent zucchini bread. That night Yilin cooked up the filet mignon, and we had potatos, too! (We never have potatos.) It was fantastic.

Yesterday, Yilin was in the kitchen for about 6 hours. I wasn't allowed in there, but it smelled good. I don't know what she was doing, but she said that it was for birthday week, so I'll let you know when I find out.

Oh yeah, the day after I posted about "Finishing the Game", Yilin and I went to see it. It was pretty good. There were a few parts that were serious, and had character development, which I could have done without. I mean, the movie is obviously a spoof, so they didn't have to try to fool the audience into thinking it was real, ala "The Blair Witch Project". They should've just kept it silly and ridiculous throughout. Despite that criticism, I highly recommend seeing it because there are some absolutely hysterical parts. (You'll only be able to see it on DVD now, I think, as it was only showing in NYC and LA and it's no longer showing in NYC.)

Now to finish my thesis! (Today is the day, basically.)

Muffins, Shoes, and Crayons

As you may or may not know, Yilin has been instrumental in my thesis writing process. She makes dinner for me every night. Plus, since she works about 3 blocks from our apartment, she also comes home everyday and makes me lunch. She does all of the cleaning. She does all of the laundry. She does all of the grocery shopping. I am very grateful to have such a loving and understanding spouse while I am writing my thesis. It helps tremendously.

Recently, she baked banana walnut muffins for me, too. They were amazing. Yesterday she baked lemon poppyseed muffins for me. Very good indeed. I am especially grateful for these muffins because I like muffins, and because Yilin rarely bakes. I think she just doesn't have a lot of experience baking. Fortunately, I do, so I can cover that aspect of our relationship. But right now baking isn't something I can do, so I am glad that she has done it succesfully. (I could say more about her baking, ummm, "non-successes", but then she'd probably get mad at me.)

When she came home for lunch today she told me that she saw a fashionably dressed woman walking through the wet rainy Manhattan streets barefoot. This woman was obviously more concerned about her shoes than catching flesh-eating bacteria or a myriad of lethal and disgusting diseases that exist on every square inch of NYC pavement. Yilin says that they were "in" shoes, but come on. She needs her priorities examined. Seriously. No shoes are worth it. In fact, since the weather forecasts have been predicting today's rain well in advance, what was she doing wearing improper footwear to begin with? "Hmmm. It is supposed to be very rainy all day long. I think I'll wear my cute little strappy leather shoes that don't cover my feet and will actually be destroyed by contact with water. If I have to walk outside, I'll just take them off."

The impracticality of New Yorkers irritates me.

On another note, I recently downloaded a paper today that was published in 2005 and it appears that one of the figures was drawn in pencil and colored with crayons. I kid you not. I have attached the figure below, with an enlarged portion (outlined in red) to allow closer examination of the crayon-like texture in the colored areas.

Astounding!

Finishing the Game

This is going to be the movie of 2007. Apparently it's out, and I am going to see it ASAP.

A thousand words? Try 2,000.

I'm still writing. Nearly done, though, which is good. I'll let you all know the moment I get this draft out to my second reader. (I think I explained that process already...)

A fair amount of the writing process isn't even writing, but rather putting together figures of data, or cartoons/schematics to illustrate current knowledge or a hypothesis. Data figures are fairly straight forward, and usually are composed of some labeled photographs arranged in a grid (columns and rows), each photograph taken from the outcome of different experimental conditions and the whole thing properly labeled.

Cartoons/schematics/illustration/diagrams, or whatever name you prefer, can take a lot more time than data figures. If you are skilled at producing such things, you get them done fairly quickly if you just want a simple representation. If you are not skilled, then combining ellipses and rectangles into a recognizable biological structure could be daunting and time consuming. Again, simple representations are the quickest.

However, if you really want to produce an illustration that truly is "worth a thousand words", then that could take time. Even if you are skilled. In fact, especially if you are skilled, because then you know you can do anything, given time. For a highly skilled illustrator like myself (modesty? where?), the time consumption problem is compounded because I know that "a picture is worth a thousand words", and I could easily create figures for every few paragraphs of my thesis. Heck, I could probably put together my thesis in illustrations and data figures alone. (Which is sort of what my presentation will be, now that I think about it...)

To better illustrate my point (nyuk nyuk), I am including in this blog post (without permission) a few diagrams showing "neural crest migration", which were published in peer-reviewed journals. Exhibit A:There you are. Simple indeed, but it gets some relevant information across. (Just to orient you, so you have some idea what is going on here, you are looking at a cut away section of an embryo. Chick, mouse, human, they're almost identical at this point in development. Just pretend it was cut in half somewhere between the shoulders and hips, a "transverse section" such that the top of the diagram is the embryo's back, and the bottom is its front. The "neural tube" is what will become the spine, the "dermomyotome" is part of a structure called a "somite" that gives rise to the muscles, and the orange circles on the top are the neural crest cells, which can become many cell types.)

However, this diagram is not as good as it could be. The illustrator tried to cover up the fact that they possess shoddy skills by using gradients. Even the boxed labels have gradients. I can see right through their tricks.

Let's present some other illustrations from other published papers that are a bit better. Exhibits B, C, and D:
Excellent! The top figure (Exhibit B) has two parts. The first part is three-dimensional. (Clearly we are witnessing the workmanship of a much more experienced illustrator.) The second part is just like Exhibit A. Some new information is imparted here (besides all of the labels), but some information is also lost. Note that we now see the the neural crest cells don't migrate in a two-dimensional pattern as we would believe by looking at Exhibit A, but migrate only through the rostral (towards the head) half of the somite. However, the second part of Exhibit B leaves out two of the migratory paths in Exhibit A. (And I still don't care for the gradients.)

Exhibit C is better still, more clearly showing the migratory patterns in a three-dimensional aspect, but I think the real bias of the migration in the anterior (same as rostral) half of the somite over the posterior is lost. There's something about seeing those waves of cells. Also, the direction is reversed (the 'head' end of the embryo is away from us), and that seems counterintuitive to me. Perhaps it is because I have seen many, many diagrams that were 'head towards the reader and tail into the page'.

Exhibit D yields even more information: It illustrates the migration of the neural crest cells into the rostral sclerotome only, as opposed to the cells migrating into the whole somite (the sclerotome is a part of the somite, just like the dermomyotome). However, the migratory path between the neural tube and somite is not shown, and it just isn't a pleasing illustration.

Additionally, none of these diagrams shows the migration of neural crest cells in the space between the somites, nor do they show the fact that the migration initiates rostrally/anteriorly (toward the head), and happens later caudally/posteriorly (towards the tail). The illustrators could've tried to show this, but didn't.

So when I made my diagram (let's face it, this process is a lot easier to understand with a picture, rather than just a paragraph, and I can't steal someone else's illustration), I tried to incorporate as much of the information as possible. As you'll see, my diagram is heavily influenced by all of the ones above. Note that I didn't label where every gene is expressed, like in Exhibit B, although I might add that information rather than just put it in the text, unless it clutters the diagram. So without further ado, here is my diagram illustrating the migration of the neural crest:
Comments/criticisms are welcome. I don't consider it entirely complete, but I've put a few hours into it and need to focus on other aspects of thesis writing right now. In fact, I just realized something that was anatomically incorrect, but is not entirely wrong, so it can wait to be fixed. Regardless, I think you can see that

1. With more than a measly 5 minutes effort *coughcoughExhibitAcough*, much more information can be conveyed with an effective illustration
2. A diagram can be both informative and aesthetic
   
3. A picture is truly worth a thousand words, unless I drew it, in which case it is worth two thousand words. ;)

Thus concludes this post.

The truth can be painful.

As you know, I have been spending a lot of time searching for jobs, going to informational sessions on campus, putting together applications, practicing for interviews, etc. I used to make fun of my buddy Mike, wondering what he did all day and why it was taking him months to get a job. It's actually a fair amount of work. (Especially if you're always sitting around in your underwear watching "Cops", as he did.)

Today was the career fair at Columbia University. It was mostly for undergrads, but some of the employers there also recruited graduate students. I spoke to all of the employers that I was planning on applying to, and others that I had never heard of but saw that they were consulting firms. Many of these firms do hire graduate students, but don't have any training for them. This translates to: we don't hire people without business backgrounds.

That's always frustrating to hear. Especially when you are convinced that you can do just about any job in the world, perhaps after a week or two to familiarize yourself with everything. I believe that even though my degree is not directly applicable to virtually every job on the market, I have valuable skills that I can carry over and apply to an entirely different job. I don't believe that spending 8 years in graduate school earning a PhD in the biological sciences is a dead end.

So when I got home this afternoon I went online to Columbia's Center for Career Education website and registered on the application/interview website that they've set up in conjunction with Monster.com. There are a number of basic questions, and in some ways it is similar to one of the many online forms I have already filled out for job applications.

Once you are finished you can view your profile to make sure that there were no errors. On that same page are links to various parts of the website (job search, tips on resumes, etc) and some other content. At the very bottom was a section called "Featured Opportunity" that hopefully wasn't tailored to the information in my profile.

Are you familiar with GoogleAds? If you enter search terms into Google, along the right-hand side of the page will be links to advertisers websites that have content related to what your search terms are. This way, Google makes money because it directs its users to appropriate ad content. Well, regardless of how accurate or useful it is, that's the basic idea.

Anyway, as I said, I hope this "Featured Opportunity wasn't directed toward me based on the content of my profile. Why? Well, I took a screenshot and cropped it down for you to see:

Perhaps Bart was right. (WARNING! Video link, which may or may not be a problem at your workplace.)

The Job Hunt

For the past two weeks I have been applying for jobs. This translates into writing a resume, writing a curriculum vitae, writing cover letters, writing essays, requesting transcripts, remembering what the heck I got on my GREs and SATs (yes!), and in some cases requesting references. Additionally, I have been studying/practicing for interviews (more on this later). I have had little time to actually work on my thesis.

So far I have fully submitted applications for positions at 5 companies. One application is in the works, and two others are due this weekend. All but 1 of the positions are within management consulting firms. I know, you are asking "What the heck is a management consulting firm?" I didn't know the answer until a few months ago.

Imagine you are a CEO of Interglobal Megacorp, a Fortune 500 company. Your father went to Harvard. His father went to Harvard. So, naturally, you went to Harvard, and had no trouble being accepted as a legacy. You didn't study much and got drunk often. Through your father and his friends you were able to secure a summer internship at a prestigious company. After graduation you were able to secure an offer. You worked for a few years and then went to one of the Ivy League business schools. There you not only drank a lot but also studied very little. However, you made plenty of connections. You "earned" your MBA and secured another lucrative job at another prestigious company. Eventually you work your way up to the CEO of Interglobal Megacorp, earning millions of dollars per year.

One night you wake up in a cold sweat and realize that you don't know jack, don't know how you got to where you are, and have no clue how to stop the decline of profits at Interglobal Megacorp. So what do you do? You pay a management consulting firm $1.5M to send in a team of 4-6 people who solve your business problems in 1-3 months, allowing you to sleep peacefully at night in your Park Avenue mansion.

Apparently this happens all of the time in real life. More than one consultant from more than one company has said during recruiting sessions "You'd be surprised how often this happens at the top companies." So in comes the role of the management consultant.

What is the role of a management consultant? From what I gather, management consultants are one part Winston Wolfe (from Pulp Fiction) and one part James Bond (from James Bond). If people with lots of money have problems, they call you in. You are calm, cool, and solve their problems in a timely manner. (That's the Winston Wolfe part.) Your work has impact on some of the largest and most influential organizations of the world (sometimes non-profits or governments are clients as well), which tends to make front page news on The New York Times, The Financial Times, or The Wall Street Journal. Your company isn't named in the articles, and you personally receive no credit publicly. However, you know you made that happen. (That's the James Bond part; he knows when he reads the newspaper that the headlines about a "Foiled terrorist plot!" or the "Fighter jet dogfight through downtown London!" are his doing, even if he and MI6 are not named.)

Doesn't that sound like a cool job? Of course it does.

Naturally, jobs this cool aren't easy to get. Lucky for me, the top management consulting firms realize that business skills are easy to learn, while problem-solving and analytical skills are harder to learn. Therefore, they recruit people with science PhDs and teach them the business skills in 2-3 weeks. (Honest. They teach you everything that you would have learned in a top MBA program in 2-3 weeks. Yes, it is an intense 2-3 weeks, but it goes to show you how much MBAs learned in the 1-1.5 years it took to "earn" their degree.)

The real challenge is in the interviews. In the application and the interview they look for "outstanding written and oral communication", "interpersonal skills", blah blah blah... So does every company. Management consulting firms use one little trick to separate the wheat from the chaff: the case interview.

A case interview question can be as simple as "How many cows did it take to provide the leather for all of the baseballs manufactured last year?" or "What is the market size for headphones?" Those are estimation cases, just to show that you can make logical assumptions and carry out simple calculations. The tough questions are more in line with what the job is actually like.

For instance, your client, GagCo Inc, is a manufacturer of rubber chickens. GagCo Inc's profits have declined sharply in the past two years. Why? What can GagCo do to reverse this trend?

Perhaps that example was a bit silly, but the idea is there. In order to answer this question you need a basic working knowledge of business. By basic, I mean "the most basic ever". (Trust me, I know very little, yet enough to address questions like this.) You also need to know the right questions to ask in order to solve this problem. You need to be able to look the interviewer in the eye, never say "uh" or "um", be enthusiastic, tell the interviewer your strategy for determining the cause of the problem (how you set up your questions), walk the interviewer through any mathematical calculations, and summarize your findings at the end.

Imagine what this is like actually doing. Now you see why practice is necessary. They say that there is no "right answer", which is only partially true. You have to identify the problem. Your suggestions for solving the problem could be anything, as long as you can logically support your conclusions. (Telling GagCo that they "should target restaurants as a new market" better have some damn fine logic backing it up.)

So wish me luck on not only finishing writing my thesis ASAP, but also in the job hunt!

Your computer can kill you

That is the conclusion I came to after reading this article from Reuters.

In summary, a Chinese man died after a three-day internet gaming session. Let me repeat that: he died. The cause of death is currently being treated as "exhaustion" by the police. Suicide was ruled out, and considering he was in an internet cafe, I am not sure why it was ever considered a possibility.

In light of this new information concerning the danger of computers, I am thankful that I am not as devoted to thesis writing as he was to internet gaming (~12 hours/day for me vs. 24 hours/day for him). Also, it is clear that I am not pushing the envelope with my "lax" schedule. For instance, my eyes get tired from staring at a monitor all day, and I my brain slows a little and I feel mentally tired, but I have never even come remotely close to "exhaustion". In fact, I often feel the need to stand up and walk around for a few minutes every now and then.

I have a theory. My thesis writing is mentally laborious, and perhaps incurs a different type of tiredness, while his gaming must have been physically laborious due to complete lack of sleep. Perhaps a consistent adrenaline rush from killing other players (or who knows what, since the name of the game was not released) was able to stave off sleep long enough for him to reach physical exhaustion.

Regardless, I think that we should now view computers in a different light: not as nice little plastic and metal boxes that increase productivity, act as gateways for entertainment, and allow fast and easy communication, but as machines programmed to kill us.

You have been warned.

O Fortuna!

November 16th.

Friday, November 16th.

11/16/07.

That will be the glorious and historic day of my thesis defense. Finally, my committee was able to agree on a date, and that date is Nov 16! I mention it in passing, in case you'd like to attend the defense. ;)

Update

Just writing to tell everyone that I am still alive. Currently I am in a state of blogging paradox: a number of things have happened that are blog-worthy, yet the sheer mass of nonblog-worthy noise has hidden that signal. Besides, it is difficult to blog about events long-past.

As of now I have written drafts of more than half the chapters of my thesis. I anticipate the last few chapters to go very quickly, due to their nature. A rough estimate of length puts my thesis at a mere 240 pages. However, I may have to 'expand' various sections, at the behest of my advisor or my committee. Conversely, I may have to 'contract' other sections. So my money is on 240 pages right now.

Sometimes it is nice to be distracted by amusement

The thesis writing has been slow-going, and not very fun. Life in general has been keeping me busy, as well, which is why I haven't blogged much recently.

However, today I saw these two articles, and they made me smile. The first is about a couple in New Zealand that wanted to name their son "4Real", but were denied by the government. So they are naming him "Superman" instead. However, they insist that he will always be called "4Real", no matter what his birth certificate says. The New Zealand government claims that talks are ongoing.

The second article concerns a gigantic 8-foot tall Lego man who was fished out of the ocean in Holland. People who worked at the beach set him up near a drink vendor's stall.

Some things are too crazy to be fiction.

I'm back

Well, last you heard from me I was off to the chapel and getting married.

Now, I am married.

The wedding was great. The weather for the outdoor reception was perfect. I don't think I could've hoped for more. You can view a photo slideshow here, courtesy of our guests who've uploaded photos to a Flickr account I created just for the occasion.

Yilin and I spent 3 nights in Quebec City as a "minimoon" so that I wouldn't lose too much time writing my thesis. We ate a lot. I mean, so much so that I woke up in the middle of the night with indigestion, two nights in a row. It was great.

So we've been back in NYC for a while now. I've been writing my thesis. Sometimes it can be boring, but what am I going to do? Not do it? That's not an option. Besides, the simple fact that I am writing my thesis outweighs any associated boredom that can come from it.

I am also in the process of setting up my thesis defense committee and finalizing a date for my defense. I will let everyone know when that gets worked out.

Lastly, Yilin's brother, Yen-I, is staying with us for the summer. Hyunmi and Mike were nice enough to host him for a week when we first returned to NYC, so that we could have our first week home, as newlyweds, to ourselves. Since then he's been staying with us. So far everything is working out just fine: Yilin has been making him do some of my household chores. Gotta love that!

I apologize for the brevity of this post, which contains information on many large events in my life, but I have to spend more time typing something else... I will update more regularly now.

Off to the chapel

It's just after 6am, and within the next hour I will be leaving for Montreal. When you next hear from me I will be married. Ta ta!

Ikea, Thou art a False Idol

Yesterday I built 6 chairs, 2 bookcases, a sofa bed, and a TV/entertainment stand. All of this glorious plastic and particle board furniture was designed by Ikea. I think it took me 7 hours, and there were no problems or delays at all.

The chairs were by far the most difficult piece(s) of Ikea furniture I have ever assembled, with 9 different items under my belt (some items I have assembled more than one of). The reason for such difficulty was that the ÖGLA chairs are a hairpin bentwood-style bistro/cafe chair, but are made entirely of a plastic/wood composite. I had to use about 75% of my maximum strength to screw in each of the 8 screws necessary for each chair. I would be surprised if most people could even assemble one of these chairs without a power drill. Honestly.

Anyway, how can one argue when the price is cheap. And by "cheap" I mean "1/10th the price of any equivalent chair in NYC".

So that was half my day yesterday. How about you?

More Clocks!

I am still alive. Working harder than ever, but still alive.

Yesterday Yilin and I spent 6 hours in Ikea, eating both breakfast and lunch there. Six hours. She was not happy during the final hour or so, becoming impatient with the throngs of customers everywhere. I told her afterward that we are not buying any more furniture or home... anything.

It's been blinds, air conditioners, bookcases, shelves, storage bins, lamps, end tables, slipcovers, cabinets, recirculating above-the-range vents, shower curtains, extension cords, TV stands, kitchen chairs, sofa beds, kitchen tables, towel racks, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

The one cool thing that I bought at Ikea was a clock. Actually, I bought 3 identical clocks. They are round wall clocks with white faces and black tickmarks instead of numbers, and thin silver frames. They look very 1960's (or so) to me, yet definitely modern. I am going to put them on the wall and have each set to the appropriate time zone with the following cities (labeled underneath the clock): Montreal, Taipei, Winsted. (Think movies where you see clocks labelled 'New York', 'London', 'Tokyo' or such.)

The best part about this plan: Montreal and Winsted are the same time zone and Taipei is exactly 12 hours different. Thus all three clocks will read the exact same time.

Yilin thinks it is ridiculous, but I love it. I also love that 'Winsted' is thrown in there with Montreal and Taipei. Ha ha.

Maelstrom of Chaos

The title of this post basically describes my life at this point, and for the past 3 weeks. Yesterday was the shortest working day I've had in that time, at a mere 10 hours in lab. (Not counting the day my parents visited a week ago.) Most lab days have been 12 hours, with a few 14-hour days, and even one 15-hour day. I know you are jealous.

Yesterday Yilin and I spent a few hours putting together our menus and programs for the wedding. They came out looking nice. The biggest fiasco was getting the printer to bleed (print off of the edge, i.e., no border). But we did it.

And speaking of my lovely fiance, let me point out that exactly 2 years ago today we met, and exactly one year ago today I proposed. Unfortunately for me, she did not choose to get married on April 30th, so I'll have to remember two dates now instead of one.

Not much else to say, except that I am in the home stretch.

Bacon of the Month Club?

Last night Yilin and I watched the Food Network awards. It was interesting, and a bit better than we expected. They basically had different categories pertaining to different types of foods (chocolate, comfort food, ballpark food, etc) and then told a bit about the nominees (mostly restaurants or small companies), and then gave out the award.

It was interesting to note that there was a large emphasis on restaurants and companies who use locally grown food, organic food, and anything "green" (not Kermit green or Hulk green, but "green" in the "environmentally friendly" sense of the word). Many of the restaurants or companies were powered entirely by solar power or wind power.

But one category in particular stood out: food of the month clubs. The first nominee mentioned (although not the winner) was the Bacon of the Month Club. Trust me when I say that as soon as I move in with Yilin after the wedding, I am joining this club. For life, if they have a lifetime membership option. (I wanted to enroll last night, but decided to wait until I move in 2 months so that a single shipment cannot be lost in the mail.)

Just follow the above link and read what that page has to say: one paragraph of text and some bullet points. Honestly, if you need someone to sell you on the BOM, then you don't really like bacon anyway, and I have lost interest in talking with you. ;)

I can't wait!!!

What would you do?

Yilin and I had a conversation the other night, which revolved around a story someone told me about an event that they witnessed. I told Yilin how I would've reacted if I were in the situation of one of the people involved. She then told me that I was "ridiculous" and "silly" and she firmly believed that a rational person would be laughing at me incredulously if they heard me say what I said to her.

So let me put the situation and the question to you, dear reader, and get your honest response.

Two people were sitting on the grass facing each other and talking in a park. A man and a large unleashed dog walked into the park. The dog ran away from his master and was running and smelling all over the grass. The dog then proceeded to sniff one of the people sitting. They didn't pay the dog too much heed and continued their conversation. The dog then began to urinate on the back of one of the people sitting on the ground.

My question is: How would you react if you were the person being urinated on by the large dog?

"Want some ham?"

This past Saturday morning started like any other Saturday morning: I woke up early, went into lab to check if any of my mice got pregnant, then took the A train down to Claude's for croissants. Afterward I went to take the 1 train back up town so I could stop at Barnes & Noble. (That in itself is the subject of another post, which I will make later this week.)

When I went into the 1 train station I saw a sign saying that there was no weekend 1 train uptown service; instead I would have to take the 2/3 (that's "2 or 3", not two-thirds) train(s) up to 14th Street and transfer to the 1. No big deal. I hop on a 2 train, travel one stop, get off and walk towards the 1 train.

There was an announcement over the subway station intercom saying that the uptown 1 train is running on the downtown 2/3 track. Ohhh-kaaay... So I get onto the train that is waiting right there, ready to leave, and this young guy (early 20's) runs into the same car as me and says, "I don't care which direction this train is going, as long as it's going uptown." He is obviously chemically impaired.

He plops down on the bench seating a few feet to my left, turns toward me, holds out a fist-sized fleshy-pink lump of... something, and says, "Want some ham?" Indeed, a strong odor confirmed the mysterious lump's identity as that of ham. Imagine, if you will, somebody who was out all night drinking/drugging/whatever, then took an apple and gnawed off all of the skin, held it in their dirty hand, and offered you a bite. Now imagine that the apple was really a piece of ham. What would you do? I thought so.

So I said, "No thanks," and turned my attention to an advertisement on the wall. However, this young guy wasn't done trying to be my friend. As the train started pulling out of the station he turned toward me and asked, "Do you know what time it is?"

I said, "It's about 8:40" and quickly added "AM", not sure he knew that there was in fact sunlight outside. He gave me the most incredulous stare and said nothing. It was as if he had just witnessed Christ walk out of the cave, alive again. (I know it was only Saturday, and not yet Easter Sunday, but that's all I could think when I saw his face.) He continued to stare for a few seconds and then we pulled into a station where a lot of young people got on the train. Thankfully a few sat between me and the crazy guy.

A large group of the young people were speaking in German, so the crazy guy asked them where they were from. "Germany" one kid says. The crazy guy asks him, "Why are you here?" and the kid replies, "We're on a school trip."

Crazy Guy: "What kind of school?"
German Kid: "High school?"
Crazy Guy (laughing): "Oh, I'm done with that. No more school for me!"
German Kid: "What do you do now?"
Crazy Guy: "I play the guitar on the subway."
German Kid: "..."
(Note that Crazy Guy doesn't have a guitar.)
Crazy Guy: "Do you want some ham?"

Time elapses.

Crazy Guy: "Where in Germany are you from?"
German Kid: "Stuttgart."
Crazy Guy (making a shape with his hands that looks nothing like Germany): "If this is Germany, where is Stuttgart?"
German Kid (confused by a 'country' that doesn't look like Germany): "It's in the south."

(Some small talk, including the information that Crazy Guy lives at 168th Street just like me, and the large group of German kids leave.)

Crazy Guy (to me): "Do you have a cigarette? I really need a cigarette."
Me: "Sorry, I don't smoke."
(This invokes another incredulous stare; apparently I look like a smoker.)

Crazy Guy (standing up and speaking loudly to the entire train): "Does anyone here have a cigarette? Anyone, please? I have cigarettes at home, but I won't be home for twenty minutes and I really need a cigarette."
Everyone: "..."
Crazy Guy: "I promise I will smoke between the subway cars. ... Does anyone have a cigarette?"
Crazy Guy (to me): "Can you ask them for a cigarette? I think they'll give one to you."
Me: "I don't think they'll give me one. Sorry, but you'll have to try again."
(We pull into another station and more people get on.)
Crazy Guy (to everyone): "Does anyone have a cigarette? Look."
(Crazy Guy then starts hanging off of the bars and doing slow, awkward flips.)
Crazy Guy: "I can do anything. I'll do anything for a cigarette, watch."
(Crazy Guy does one pullup.)
Everyone: "..."
Crazy Guy: "Fine, I don't need your cigarettes. I'll get my own."

At this point we pull into 72nd Street. I had planned on going to 79th Street, but I had been trying so hard to suppress my laughter that I had to bite my lips. Several times. So I get off the train at 72nd Street. As I am standing up, an Indian guy sitting opposite me and Crazy Guy reaches over and hands him a cigarette. Crazy Guy gives his incredulous stare to the Indian guy and says, "Thank you so much!" Crazy guy raises his fists in triumph.

I guess there's no place like New York City.

Can anything else go wrong?

I've told you that I have been (secretly) writing my thesis. Well, I have and I haven't. I haven't written more than that 1 page of actual text, and writing in secret between experiments is slow-going. But I have been writing in the sense that I've written that 1 page (yeah!) of thesis text, and I have written several pages of protocols and methods that I've used to conduct my experiments. (The latter are shoved into a chapter in the back of the thesis, but they are integral to the body of work as a whole, and usually require a lot of time looking through notebooks, looking up solutions and recipes, finding catalog numbers of reagents ordered, etc.)

So my total time invested has been a fair number of (secret) hours. And all of it was nearly lost this weekend.

For the past month or so my computer has been making an interesting noise. It is best described as a whirring, thrumming, electrical-sounding, high-pitched drone. It isn't overly loud or bad sounding, but different. At first I thought it was my monitor, which was purchased in 1999. Then I suspected it was my master hard drive, which is sorta OK because I have been using that only to store my OS and programs. Any files I have go on my slave drive, which is only 3 years old. (My master drive is from 1999.) Worst case scenario: I get a new master drive, install an OS on it, and I've still got all of my files.

Well, the sound turned out to be my slave hard drive, where I store all of my files, including those pertaining to my thesis. On Saturday I couldn't access my slave drive all of a sudden. I got concerned. Really concerned. It had died.

After shutting down the computer, opening it up and messing around with the drive cables for a while, restarting it, shutting it down, letting it cool off for two hours and restarting it once again, I was able to access my slave drive. I quickly copied all of the files over to my master drive. By "quickly" I mean that it was a nail-biting 3 hours as the computer struggled to move files, with the slave drive making horrendous noises. Three hours to copy 1.5 gigabytes. (That is slow.)

I was able to copy every single file but one. "One file?", you say. "That's not so bad." Well, I haven't yet told you which file it was. It was a file so important... Ha ha, just kidding. It was unimportant and I already had a back-up copy. ;) But seriously, that was the only file I couldn't copy, luckily.

When it finally completed, I shut down the computer and went home. Yesterday morning I burnt a DVD of the files. I also copied the most important ones to our lab server.

With the entire universe conspiring against me graduating, the last thing I need is to lose my thesis due to computer failure. OK, I exaggerate: only my advisor and thesis committee are conspiring against me. It was a stressful day, let me tell you...

Fools?

This past weekend I went to the movies with Mike, Hyunmi, and Yilin to see "Blades of Glory". It was actually really darn funny. I remember hearing Will Ferrell in an interview stating that when they were making the movie they didn't have to really exaggerate anything at all in order to mock figure skating. Sad but true.

I did not play any tricks on anybody this year, so I have no good tales to tell. However, if anyone was a trickster (or the victim of a trickster), feel free to relate the embarrassment to all.

Revolutionary Graduate School Heroes

The other day, there were 2 separate articles in the New York Times about graduate students killing their advisors. (You may need to set up a free New York Times account using only your email address in order to read the articles.) Surprisingly (or perhaps not), I have yet to tell a graduate student about these newspaper articles and hear anything but delighted glee or sympathy for the graduate students. Sympathy for the murdered advisors/professors is never expressed. Allow me to summarize key components of these particular magistricides:

In the first article, a graduate student completes his thesis, but is not awarded a $2,500 academic prize for excellence from the university. Naturally, he killed his advisor, department head, and 3 other people, as well as paralyzing a sixth person. Tragically, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Chinese student association at the university hailed him as a hero. Recently, a semi-autobiographical film about his life was submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, wherein the advisor is painted as the bad guy. (Note to self: rent this movie.)

In the second article, 3 different graduate students convicted of magistricide are briefly discussed, as well as a homicidal professor who didn't get tenure. The first student is the stuff of legend: he murdered his academic advisor with a ball-peen hammer when he was told that he would not receive his doctorate in mathematics after nineteen years of research. My first thought on this case was: "I would've done it after 10 years, regardless of whether I would get my degree or not." He was sentenced to 7 years in prison, and expressed absolutely no remorse for what he had done when he was released. My second thought was: "The jury wasn't particularly sympathetic, were they? I would've found him 'not guilty'." Of course, his jail term of 7 years must've been a walk in the park compared to 19 years of graduate school.

Another graduate student was told by his advisor that his doctoral study was being terminated, and he would only receive a master's degree, after seven years. The student went to the professor's house and shot him. I suspect his jury was full of professors, because he is currently serving a life sentence.

The third graduate student (I have some background info on this, so I know more than the article says) was giving his thesis defense for his master's degree, and his committee raised an objection concerning a particular point of his work. They denied him the degree and sent him back to do more research. A year or so later he prepared to defend his thesis again. He walked into the room hours in advance, put a handgun in a box, and returned later on that day with his committee to begin the defense. When they raised the same objection he walked over to the box, pulled out the pistol, and murdered them. Again, he must have had a jury full of professors, because he is serving 3 life sentences.

The last person I will discuss is the most hardcore. This guy was a professor at a university trying to get tenure. He was denied tenure and killed 4 of his colleagues. Currently, while serving a life sentence, he has continued to carry out his research from his prison cell. He recently wrote on his blog:

I hope to be remembered as a person who had enough courage to fight lawlessness with deadly force and I hope to encourage others to do the same.

(Note: I have no intention of killing anybody, nor am I going to flip out. However, I find this amusing. Perhaps only graduate students will be able to relate...)

1 month, 1 page, 1 goal.

The other day (the 21st) was one month from my committee's imposed "2 months of experiments". So, one month down, one to go! It has felt like forever, yet only just the other day I was starting these experiments... I believe I currently exist in some undiscovered spacetime warp which is capable of expanding and contracting time simultaneously. That's my theory.

As of Friday night, I have written (secretly) one page of my thesis. Well, technically two pages, as the page I wrote was single-spaced, and the thesis writing guidelines clearly state that the thesis should be written double-spaced. But wow, it might take a while.

The art of thesis writing varies from lab to lab, due entirely to one's advisor's opinion on how a thesis should be structured and written. A student's first reader and committee will also have some influence over how the thesis is written, but I think that they often respect the advisor's viewpoint on such an issue.

When you write your thesis, you first submit a draft to your advisor, who marks up every other word and fills every margin with red ink. After incorporating the changes, you submit your second draft to your advisor, who marks it up with red ink. Repeat ad nauseum.

Eventually, your advisor signs off on your thesis, allowing you to give it to your first reader, who is a member of your thesis committee. The first reader's only job is to quickly read the thesis and decide whether the thesis is sufficient to warrant a defense. What is a little odd about this is that your first reader is already on your committee and has therefore given you permission to write your thesis, meaning that your body of work is sufficient to warrant a defense. So they don't really need to read your thesis, since they know what it contains; they only need to tell you that it warrants a defense.

But what really happens is that your first reader pulls out his or her red pen and goes to town substantially altering your thesis. Even though you theoretically do not need to placate your first reader by making changes, in practice it is necessary. You go back to your computer and hack away at the keys for a few days and incorporate your first reader's "suggestions".

Once your first reader hands you back your thesis and says, "This thesis is sufficient to warrant a public defense," then you are allowed to hand out copies to the rest of your committee. (Note that those exact words must be spoken; if they are misspoken the Army of the Dead will awake.)

Fast forward to your defense, which is basically giving a talk to anyone that wants to go (mostly your department), and then you sit in a room with your committee and they ask you questions and discuss your thesis. Often, some committee members demand revisions to parts of your thesis. So you end up spending a few days (or more) completing the desired revisions.

That is more or less what usually happens. However, the amount of time the whole process takes depends almost entirely on your advisor's opinion of how a thesis should be structured and written. I will outline the extremes of opinions that exist among advisors, and the what thesis writing entails for those students.

THE BLESSED
First, the lucky ones. Some advisors actually are grounded in reality and know that the only people who will ever read the student's thesis are the committee members. On a rare chance, some other poor soul might mistakenly pick up a copy of the thesis and peruse it, but that happens to maybe one in a hundred theses; all of the pertinent information is always published in a short (3-9 page) paper, which is far better reading than a thesis, and easier to acquire. (Published papers can be downloaded as pdf files; theses can only be acquired by contacting the university's library, or a company that catalogues theses, and ordering a copy for like $50. Why pay $50 when you can read the "CliffNotes" version for free?)

These advisors don't put too much stock in the thesis, and usually allow the student to fluff up their already-written publications, expanding on theoretical points that aren't discussed much in the publication, and usually requiring delineation between experiments the student did versus experiments other lab members did. Often, such theses are between 50-100 pages in length (remember they are double-spaced, and most of the text is already written), and take anywhere from a weekend to 2 weeks to write, depending on whether the student is a good writer or is in the lab performing experiments while writing.

THE CURSED
Then there is the other extreme: advisors who cannot ever understand that excess time spent writing a thesis is time wasted. Often, these advisors think that everything a student does is a reflection of them, and therefore the thesis must be impeccably written. Impeccably. Like, Pulitzer prize-winning, Nobel prize-winning, Faulkner Award-winning (well, maybe not that last one; that award is for fiction)... You get the idea.

I suspect these advisors had to go through the same tortuous process of writing a "real" thesis, and feel compelled to make others suffer the same fate. Kinda like men who have awful names, but pass them down to their sons, only altering the number at the end of their name: Huckleberry Hackensacker IV; Timothy Tinkletop, Jr.; Dick Hertz III, etc. ("I went through the Hell of having such a name, and Gosh-darn-it, you will too, son.")

These theses often are in excess of 300 pages and take 2 or more months to write.

Unfortunately, my advisor and his beliefs on theses fall into the latter category. The two students from my lab who have graduated before me have had theses of 306 pages and 360 pages in length. The 360-page-length thesis was written by a student who desired to write a short, elegant, 100-page theses. I guess that plan backfired.

So here I sit, 1-page deep into a mountain of words that I will have to string together into cohesive sentences: my goal, starting April 20th when I finish lab work here at Columbia. Forever. :)

Bueller? Bueller?

The other night Yilin saw 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'. For the first time. Ever.

She loved it (naturally; who doesn't?). I think she particularly enjoyed seeing so many stars early in their careers (Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Grey, Charlie Sheen, etc).

"Yes, I am Abe Froman. The Sausage King."

Altered Beast

I have made a quick change to the layout of my blog for a few reasons:

1) In order to have custom images for buttons, quotation marks, the header image, etc, you need to have server space somewhere to externally link to. I was using my Columbia account space for that. However, I won't have it indefinitely, and haven't looked into getting webspace somewhere. (I used to be able to get around this by having a junk blog where I would post images of my header, for example, and then it would be on Blogger's servers. So I would use that link as the "external link" for my real blog. Sneaky, huh? Well, I just went on to my junk blog and when I tried to create a new post, I saw this:

Warning. This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. ...

Someone saw this and didn't appreciate my cleveritudinous approach.)

2) I wanted a bit of a change.

3) Blogger has a new "layout" format that allows for some easier customization to be done, so you don't have to use the sometimes-generic-looking premade templates. Of course, the html (if you choose to jump into the trenches, like I do) is a lot crazier.

So, if you have any suggestions about certain font sizes/colors being too difficult to read, let me know. If your objections are purely aesthetic, well, I could just go back to the old color scheme. ;)

Oh, and I want a confession: who thought this was about the arcade game or Sega Genesis port? ;)

You fool!

This past weekend Yilin and I went to Patisserie Claude, as per our weekly custom. As usual, he came out from the back to serve us himself, preferentially treating us with warm croissants fresh from the oven. (This is a bonus only given to certain long-term customers; we had been going every weekend for about one year before he started doing this.)

In line (not immediately) behind us were two women. One of them, when given her croissant from the front display, asked to have "a warm croissant from the back". Claude was angered, and said, "What? Do you think this is shit?", pointing to the croissant she had been given by the server/cashier who works in the front. He mumbled something else, to the effect of "It's good enough for you," but I am not completely certain.

As the two women were leaving, the one complained to the other, "He gave those people warm croissants from the back..."

Haha! You fool! You will never get warm croissants from the back now that you have stirred Claude's wrath!

The same thing happens when people try to bring dogs inside or use cell phones. He comes out and loudly berates them, telling them to get out of his establishment. What most people don't realize, because it is not common in New York City, is that Claude is not a pastry chef; he is an artisan.

Once, we saw two young women order a croissant and a quiche. One woman was introducing the other to Claude's. She asked Claude to cut the croissant and quiche in half. He said, "No" and walked away with a look of disgust. You do not ask a painter to cut his paintings in half, or a sculptor to smash a statue into fragments for individual sale. Likewise, you shouldn't ask a master chef to destroy a comestible he spent many years perfecting.

Oh well, more croissants for me and Yilin!

"This is Sparta!"

This weekend Hyunmi, Yilin, and I went and saw 300. I enjoyed it very much. However, I picked up on all the differences between the movie and comic book, as well as the slight departures from perceived historical reality, so I was left with an awkward feeling because I had trouble immersing myself in the movie rather than analyzing it. But I did really like it, and will certainly be buying the DVD when it is released. I may even go see it in the theater again, if I can find the time.

I already mentioned the plot in a previous post, so I won't rehash that here. The visual feel of the movie was very much like that in the comic book, which was cool. The music was pretty good as well. Yilin and Hyunmi both think that Gerard Butler (King Leonidas) is hot.

If you make the wise decision to see this movie, sit around for the end credits: they are done in a sort of moving comic book illustration style that isn't easy to describe but is cool to see. I'm not sure why they didn't do the opening credits like that. Perhaps it was because there weren't really opening credits and the movie went straight into combat... (Not really, but it could've.)

Daylight savings? No thanks.

This morning Yilin told me that the whole 'daylight savings time' thing was shifted forward thanks to congressional insight (not to be confused with 'oversight'). I applaud Congress' effort to save energy, and wonder if it's an election year (is it? I honestly don't know). However, Yilin told me that most computers and cell phones won't change time properly as we are used to them doing, obviously due to their programming.

So now I am going to change my clocks twice because they won't change when they are supposed to (now), but will change when they are supposed to (before)? No thanks. I see no need to have daylight savings time anyway. I certainly can't be bothered to change my clocks twice. (Yesterday I was in lab for 17 hours, longer than usual these days, but not by much. I certainly didn't know or care what time it was, either.)

What ever happened to waking up and going to bed with the sun, and having noon at midday? What's wrong with that? I am pretty sure that is what France does. How else would they have a 35 hour work week, and take a month off in the summer when days are longest (the holiday compensates for working those long summer hours, I am sure)? I don't need time zones, especially not in graduate school where everyone wakes up whenever they want and starts their workday whenever they feel like it. (A labmate of mine is seldom in before 3pm, usually showing up between 4 and 5pm. However, he works until 5 or 6am.)

What I need is my own time zone. From now on I work on Josh Standard Time. JST is based on a fallible and whimsical interpretation of the lunar calendar, adjusted for the average nighttime temperature and precipitation. The algorithms used to convert more conventional times, such as Eastern Standard Time, are far too complicated to go into here (not to mention that they are copyrighted), so you'll just have to ask me what time it is in JST to know the answer. (Note that JST uses a metric clock and no unit of time is equivalent to your notion of 'second', 'minute', or 'hour'.)

(The previous paragraph was a joke, and should not be interpreted as a sign of impending madness.)

I am starting to think more and more that I am a Luddite. I could happily do without cellphones, clocks, skyscrapers, TV, radio, cars, and anything that is powered by something other than me. This is odd because I enjoy photography (which often incorporates a fair amount of technology) and keeping a blog (which is entirely technology driven).

"He is one of those men who have overshot their true generation." -Dr. Watson, The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My net worth

The other day Yilin and I were calculating our net worths. It's really simple: you add up the value of all of your assets, and subtract the total value of all of your liabilities (debts). All it states is that if you had to sell everything you own on eBay, gather up all of your cash, and then pay off credit card bills, student loans, etc, your net worth is how much money would remain. What you get is a financial snapshot of yourself at one brief instant of time; your income has no bearing on your net worth.

As such, this value only has meaning in specific situations, because oddities can arise. For instance, Joe could earn $500k per year on Wall Street, own $30k of furniture and household stuff, but have $100k of gambling debts to the local bookie. His net worth would be -$70k. Meanwhile, Shmoe is a janitor in the Bronx, earns $20k per year, owns a pimped out 1992 Honda Civic worth $5k, and has $300 of credit card debt. His net worth is $4700; almost $75k more than Joe's. Would anyone think that Shmoe is worth more than Joe? Of course not.

My net worth is a hefty negative number due to my frugal lifestyle and deferred undergraduate debt. What I have realized from this exercise is that I am worth more alive than dead: If I were to die then my debts would pass on to... somebody. (Not yet Yilin because we aren't married; maybe my parents and brother.) However, if I were to continue living then I would earn money and pay off my debts as well as stimulate the economy. (Currently, I stimulate the economy about as much as Hillary Clinton stimulates Bill.)

Wealthy people are worth more dead, regardless of their income: Their heirs would have much to gain from their death, the government (and theoretically us citizens) would reap the benefits of the inheritance taxes collected from the estates of the wealthy, and some portion of that money would come out of savings and be spent on things like yachts and sports cars (which are necessary to grieve over recently-deceased relations of vast financial stature), stimulating the economy.

Strange, isn't it, how those of us who are literally "less than worthless" from an accountant's point of view are actually worth the most alive...

Some people just can't do their job

This post may not be fully intelligible to all of you, as it contains references to biological reagents and scientific protocols that I use in lab, but the main message should be clear. Correction: I will make the main message perfectly clear right now from the start:

SOME PEOPLE JUST CAN'T DO THEIR JOB.

I needed to order some very short very specific sequences of DNA for a procedure called PCR. (PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction and is a method of amplifying specific sequences of DNA from cells or tissue. You can produce millions of copies of one gene, or part of one gene, for use in other procedures. One reagent necessary for PCR is oligonucleotide primers, the very short very specific sequences of DNA that I needed to order. Still with me? It doesn't matter; read on.) We order our primers from a company called Invitrogen, which rocks. However, their online ordering procedure for custom primers (meaning you get to choose the exact DNA sequence) doesn't rock.

Invitrogen allows you to request a confirmation email of your order be sent to you. This is good. However, the confirmation email does not include the sequences of the primers you ordered. This isn't so good. Imagine that you went online and ordered a custom t-shirt that has a bunch of numbers on it. Let's say these numbers are your birthdate, your age, your anniversary, etc. The t-shirt company sends you an email saying, "Hey, we got your order" but does not confirm what the string of numbers to be printed on the t-shirt is. Essentially, they haven't acknowledged what it is that you exactly ordered, which could be a pain if they screwed up your t-shirt (e.g., changed your birthday by accident) and you have no proof that you ordered something different.

Invitrogen claims that they do not email sequences to you in the confirmation email because "email is an insecure form of communication, and we do not want to be responsible if your competitors hijack/intercept/decrypt your email and steal your primer sequences". (That's not a direct quote, but a paraphrase.) This is absurd for two reasons: 1) What university doesn't force secure email upon it's employees/students? and 2) I don't think any scientist in the history of science has been so desperate to obtain something so trivial as primer sequences by way of something as technically difficult (for biological researchers, that is) as intercepting and decrypting email. Heck, the US government can't crack 128-bit encrypted messages (so they claim; conspiracy theorists don your tinfoil hats and refute me), nevermind some 70-year old tenured professor who can barely email and word process his grants and papers.

My advisor has called Invitrogen more than once to complain about this, and the idiocy of their policy. He was told to request that the sequences be sent in the confirmation email by typing so in the "comments" box on the order form. It often is ineffective: they don't email you your sequences.

One day he called Invitrogen to complain yet again and they gave him their absurd reason why they don't email the sequences to you. He said, "Then why don't you have a little box that you can just check on the order form so that you can risk having the sequences intercepted?" The Invitrogen representative's response was the standard "We don't have that feature on our order form, but if you request that the sequences in the 'comments' box we will make sure they are included in the confirmation email." My advisor then asked, "What do you do to make that happen on your end? Do you just check off a little box on your computer when you review my order?" The answer: "Yes."

Frustrating, no?

So when I ordered 40+ primers the other day I wrote in the comments box: "Please check the little box to send my sequences to me in the confirmation email." It worked. My labmate ordered some primers the other day and simply wrote: "Please send the sequences in the confirmation email." No luck. Apparently you have to let them know that you know that they only have to check a box, a task that they are often incapable of performing.

Some people just can't do their job.

Laws for mountaineers

I was oblivious to this piece of news, but I am sure most of you were aware that recently 3 people had to be rescued off of Mount Hood in Oregon. Fine, they got stuck in bad weather, fell off of a ledge, and were incapable of self-rescue.

But do we really need laws governing mountaineering? I am not objecting to carrying these so-called 'Mountain Locator Units', electronic homing devices that relay your position to anyone listening for it, besides rescuers, I suppose. (The name of the device is misleading; it is not for locating mountains, but rather for locating people who will presumably be on mountains.)

My problem is that people endorsing this bill are probably the same people pushing to have cell phone towers put up in the Adirondacks and Yosemite. There is no need for cell phone towers in state and federal parks. In fact, many people want to go to places like those because there are no cell phone towers.

People need to learn self-sufficiency and self-rescue, not rely on others to come rescue them. Sure, there will be incidents where it is necessary to have outsiders rescue you or your group. But this should be the exception, not the norm.

MLUs and cell phones aren't going to save everyone. I bet more people end up having accidents because they think, "Someone can always come get me." I just have horrible nightmares about families driving cross-country and going to Yellowstone (or Mount Hood in the summer) and bitching to park rangers, "What if something happened to us? Why don't you have cell phone towers everywhere so that we can call 911?" Um, because it's the wilderness?

Why don't we just require everyone who leaves a major metropolitan area to own a $3000 Iridium satellite phone and have a $300/month satellite phone plan? They are the size of regular cell phones, yet you can use them even at the North or South Pole. Let's also require that everyone also carry a GPS and MLU, for redundancy's sake. (Hey, their batteries might run out.) That way everyone will be safe because teams of rescuers will be able to come to their aid at any moment should they stub their toes or slip on ice and bruise their hips.

You do know that about as many people are lost/injured/killed by hiking every year as by climbing, right? Do these legislators know that? No. Climbing is an "extreme sport" so it must account for almost all of the wilderness injuries/deaths. (There is a journal titled "Accidents in North American Mountaineering" which anyone who goes into the woods should be familiar with. Many of the incidents posted are actually hiking incidents, and not what most would consider "mountaineering". If I get the chance I'll run the numbers.)

Certain people should just not be allowed in the wilderness, at all, ever. (This is no reflection of those on Mount Hood, but rather on the families driving through Yellowstone.)

Besides, we have enough laws governing everything anyway. Do we need more? Why not work to make our legislature/judicial system/whatever more efficient? Get rid of laws that are no longer meaningful or unnecessarily burden police/officials/whoever and citizens. Why is efficiency not a priority? Because legislators need job security?

End of rant.

The Benefits of NYC

Now that I have bashed NYC and its "benefits" in the comments of my last post, I would like to talk about the coolest thing I have seen in NYC in years: The Jaded Assassin. TJA is a live action martial arts play. My cousin Nate emailed me and off we were to the Ohio Theatre on Wooster Street. (Way down town.)

Imagine a group of people who love martial arts movies, anime, and ass-kicking. They must've spent forever choreographing and practicing for this. Sure, when kicks miss, they miss by a mile, and everything is a step too slow to look real. But it is better than you could do without quitting your day job.

It was as cheesy and funny as any classic kung fu movie, and brilliantly executed on a low budget. These people are very creative.

For instance, there was one scene where the the hero and the villain were throwing shuriken (throwing stars) at each other, and catching them and throwing them back. How was this accomplished? Easy. The stage had a black background, some people were wearing all black suits, and they had short sticks with shuriken glued to the end. they ran back and forth twirling the sticks so the shruiken spun like pin-wheels and gave the (very weak) illusion that the stars were thrown and caught by the actors.

It was too funny. and there were many many scenes like this.

The story is centered around a woman named Soon-Jal who was raised to be the greatest warrior ever, and she delights in killing. In some ways, she reminds me of Hyunmi, except that Hyunmi is more vocal. (Soon-Jal has only about 4 lines of dialogue, otherwise she screams in rage, or the narrator speaks her lines for her.)

If you are anywhere within 100 miles of NYC, I recommend you buy tickets and see this show immediately. Tickets purchased through the website I linked above are $20 each (well worth it). Nate bought his tickets through Gold Star Events for $13.50 each, and apparently they have $5 tickets if you buy early enough. I would definitely see it again, so let me know if you want company.

6 what?

There was a report the other day that crime on the New York City subway system is down to 6 felonies per day, from 17 in 1990-something. Are you kidding me? Not misdemeanors, or anything petty, but felonies. Felonies are things like assault, rape, murder, armed robbery, etc. Six per day? On the subway? I gotta move.

Or, as Mike might say, I gotta stop taking the subway.

Falun Gong strikes back

Yilin was so disappointed and upset over the deceitful practices of the organizers of the Chinese New Year Spectacular (read my previous blog entry) that she wrote several emails and made some phone calls to Radio City Music Hall, NTDTV (one of the sponsors), and NY1 (the local news channel).

She got a reply from Radio City Music Hall that was such a brush-off it was almost insulting. They told her that they only rent the venue out, they aren't responsible for the manner in which events are promoted, they aren't responsible for ticket prices (I paid over $100 for our tickets) and they do not discriminate against potential renters for any reason. Clearly.

I am inclined to come up with a "show" that is offensive to the extreme. A show so intolerable that it would demand the ACLU come to my legal aid. I would rent out RCMH and truthfully advertise my show, as well as prominently display the name of their venue, making sure to put out all of the "prestige" they have. It would be interesting to see if they would rent it out to me, and how they would respond to having their name dragged through the mud. Or perhaps I should do so, but falsely advertise. Make it worse by having many people spend money that I would never refund.

Regardless, I state again that I will never go there for another event.

She received a response from NTDTV yesterday afternoon. It is just absurd. Very long, and very absurd. I won't print her email here, because I want you to read their email, and this post would be too long. Basically she told them that we were deceived, the event had nothing to do with the Chinese New Year, and that sitting in the audience she felt embarrassed to be Chinese. (She used some of the language from my blog post, to give you an idea of the tone.)

Here is their reply, in all of its misleading and patronizing glory:

Dear Yilin,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us about the Chinese New Year Spectacular and thank you for coming to our show.

It was a little surprise to receive your email requesting a refund. So far the show has received overwhelming positive responses from the audience. "Absolutely Gorgeous!" said Sachi Koto, former CNN news anchor. "I adored it! It was really a fabulous evening. I loved everything from beginning to end. It was an astonishing show!" said Patricia Neal, Best Actress of 1963 Academy Awards. "This is a really wonderful performance! I recommend everyone go out and get the tickets. Not only see it once, see it twice!" said Dr. Dan Miller, host of WVOX 1460AM. "There's charm, elegance, beauty. It's like a birthday cake for everybody. Everybody could celebrate, and instead of fighting with each other, we could have peace and beauty," said Rose Billings, a governor of the National Arts Club.

It seems your concern is about a discrepancy between the promotion and the content of the show. Yes, we did try to bill the show as a Chinese New Year show with lots of colorful dances and costumes, and we also said the show aims to revive Chinese traditional culture and values, and the culture of the Tang Dynasty in particular which is renowned for its diversity, tolerance, and divinity in Chinese history.

As you know, much of the Chinese culture and traditions have been destroyed in the political upheavals and campaigns that have gone on over the past century and still go on today. Communism, a Soviet import, is ideologically opposed to the three major philosophical/religious schools of Chinese civilization: the Buddhist School, Taoist School, and Confucianism, and now it has also chosen to violently suppress Falun Gong. All of these are benign, non-violent belief systems advocating Chinese traditional values like compassion, truthfulness, and tolerance. For the Chinese Communist Party, all such belief systems pose a threat. The suppression of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, as well as Christianity in the last century and the current suppression of Falun Gong are all a result of this kind of cultural and ideological conflict.

Maybe you think the show offers much more than what was contained in the promotional materials. We can say that any show is bound to have many unexpected elements - I believe this is one of the reasons we go to live performances, to take part in a different kind of experience and expand our horizons. We apologize if you were expecting dancing dragons and lions for Chinese New Year. Those are fun and the children love them, but we already featured them last year and chose a different artistic direction this time. In the future such type of performances may very well come back to our show as Chinese New Year Spectacular is an annual event and we produce a completely new show every year.

You raised the concern about the content involving Falun Gong in the show. In fact, as you may expect, the Chinese authorities are particularly irked by this subject matter because it is very much part of contemporary Chinese reality. However, what many people may not know is that the Chinese authorities enthusiastically endorsed Falun Gong before the suppression started in 1999 for it saved billions of dollars of "medical fees" of the government - according to an interview with a high-profile Chinese official by U.S. News & World Report. Even the Chinese Consulate in New York held classes then to teach Falun Gong to Chinese diplomats in New York area as part of their promotion of 5000 year Chinese civilization. Your concern becomes a concern today only because of the on-going suppression in China and the massive defamation campaign by China's communist propaganda machine - the very same machine that once highly praised Falun Gong.

At NTDTV we believe any performance that embraces Chinese traditional values only adds depth and value to our show as long as it meets high artistic standards. We stand by the performances with themes from Falun Gong, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Chinese legends for their relevant contents and artistry level. It is these kinds of beliefs, traditions and stories that define a culture and bring it to life and there is no way to separate them from the art and culture of a civilization. This show is not about any particular belief system or message. It is about re-discovering authentic Chinese traditional culture and values; it is about freedom of expression and belief; and it is about China - where China is headed, and what China is going to become. These are things that deeply affect the well-beings of not only the Chinese people, but every one of us in this world.

I would like to thank you again for attending our show and providing us with your valuable feedback. We will do our best to improve upon our show in the future, and welcome your participation in the exploration of traditional Chinese values and culture.

NTDTV

Graduate?

My thesis committee meeting went... OK. Every time we have one of these meetings, there is a sheet of paper that has the committee's recommendations/thoughts/etc summed up and all of the committee member sign it. It gets filed... somewhere in some official office at Columbia. This time, my sheet only said "two months of experiments, three months of writing, then graduate." And that is that.

I was pushing to start writing now, experiments be damned. But I lost. On the other hand, it could be far worse than 2 months of experiments, and the end is in sight.

Now excuse me while I get back to work. I have to focus!

Committee Meeting: Update

It turns out that I was given an incorrect date, and that my committee meeting is actually on Tuesday the 20th. Wish me luck, as I have a lot to do this weekend...

Weirdest Valentine's Day Ever

Well, last night was certainly bizarre and out of the ordinary.

My secret surprise for Yilin was to take her to a Chinese New Year's celebration/show at Radio City Music Hall (that same landmark venue which displayed the mediocre Christmas Spectacular). The event was organized by NTDTV (New Tang Dynasty Television), a Chinese TV channel, to celebrate the Chinese New Year (this weekend). I saw ads for this event on the subway and in newspapers, and it seemed like a big annual event that Chinese people go to.

So we went expecting... something traditional and Chinese. Yilin herself wasn't sure as to what this show would be, as apparently it isn't a normal thing. But we had certain expectations. Expectations which weren't really fulfilled.

Yes, there was singing and dancing, just like we thought there would be. But almost the entire thing was propaganda promoting Falun Gong (which I had barely heard of) and denouncing China's communist government. For those of you who don't know (I had to read the locked and controversial wikipedia article), Falun Gong is essentially a cult-movement in China that the government has banned and is oppressing through torture and other badness.

I say that Falun Gong is a cult, a label its practitioners would object to, but I believe it is. Anytime in this day and age when a man starts teaching an "ancient" and "secret" way to enlightenment, claims that he has developed supernatural powers through the way, tries to conceal his origin and identity, gives vague answers to questions addressing whether he is human or not, and claims to be the saviour of humankind, then he is a cult leader. This exactly describes the man who "revealed" the "ancient" and "secret" Way of Falun Gong in 1992.

I do believe, however, that they are harmless as they promote peace and understanding (like hippies, who are harmless). I certainly see no reason for the Communist Party of China to jail and torture them, except that they believe is something other than Communist China, I suppose.

The various ads for the show never mentioned Falun Gong, or religion, or anti-communism. They just mentioned all the famous Chinese performers who would be present and made the entire event sound like a celebration of pan-Asian identity and New Year's joy. Instead, it was morose and reflective, focusing on the abuses done to Falun Gong practitioners, and the joy of those who were "lost" and "discovered the Way" (Falun Gong). There was almost no happiness or glee (except when people died and went to Nirvana), and definitely nothing to do with the New Year at all.

There were many different dancing acts, interspersed with vocalists. The four solo vocalists each sang 2 songs, with 7 of the 8 songs being about the greatness of Falun Gong, and the other remaining song about the memory of those protestors in Tiananman Square who died. Most of the dances had something to do with Falun Gong. One was a "more historically accurate" account of Mulan, of Disney fame. (I didn't see the movie, so I can't say much about it, other than I didn't see the connection to Falun Gong, and the connections, when present, were not at all subtle.)

There was also one... bizarre act. A dance troupe performed a piece entitled "Rainbows". It started out with 8 men and 8 women on stage, each holding what appeared to be a bunched up ball of fabric in their hands. They began an organized, synchronized dance, when they unfurled the pieces of fabric to reveal: ribbons. One-foot wide, twelve-foot long ribbons. They were ribbon dancers.

At this point, Yilin and I were in complete shock. I became concerned that this show would be a bad influence on the kids in the audience. Not so much that they would run away and join Falun Gong, but that any little boys in the audience might think it is cool to become a ribbon dancer. (Hyunmi will share my fear on this one.)

The men had blue ribbons, and the women had pink ribbons. They all left the stage and two women came on dancing with rainbow-colored ribbons. They were obviously lesbians. I wish I could remember how the story ended, other than that in the end all of the dancers were on stage and only blue or pink ribbons were present. I wish I could remember because this morning I read that Falun Gong's founder has denounced homosexuality and says that homosexuals will become demons, unless they follow the way. I'd like to say that the rainbow dancers gave up their rainbow-colored ribbons for pink ones, but I can't be sure. I am sure, however, that men should not ribbon dance.

All in all, it was very weird. We saw a few people leaving early on in the show. Yilin was embarrassed to be Chinese, uncomfortable being there, and she felt deceived. She felt sorry for me that it wasn't what I expected, and that I was deceived (along with all the other non-Chinese people). There were questionnaires present, and Yilin filled out ours before the show. We left during the last act (supposedly the Chinese Pavaratti), and she added many comments to the questionnaires about how we felt we were lied to. She vowed to contact Radio City Music Hall to complain, particularly since tickets were not cheap.

We were not in a happy-go-lucky mood after that, and I can say that it was a horrible Valentine's Day date. (Company notwithstanding.) Naturally, after the disappointing Christmas Spectacular, and now this, we have decided never to go to Radio City Music Hall again for anything ever.

Happy V-Day

Happy Valentine's Day. Go make your significant other feel appreciated.

I have a special surprise in store for Yilin tonight. All she knows is that I am meeting up with her after work and we are having an early dinner before we... Go see "Tarzan! The Musical!"

Hahaha! I lied! I know you are reading this Yilin, hoping to find out what the secret surprise is! Well, I won't tell!

Bad Science in Hollywood

There have been many many horrible representations of science and scientists in movies, but this one takes the cake. It is a movie entitled "Sunshine", and the awful plot is this: In 50 years time, our Sun will be dying. A small crew of people are sent on a space mission to re-ignite the Sun.

Do I look like an idiot? I have quite the imagination. I can suspend my disbelief when it comes to one-man armies, alien invasions, mutant superheroes, conspiracy theories, flying reindeer, intergalactic war, haunted houses, cars exploding from single gunshots, anything to do with black holes, and even magical boys with talking owls. I have even been known to suspend my disbelief long enough to watch the most implausible genre of acting ever: the musical. (The idea that everyone goes around singing and dancing all day long is ridiculous, to say the least.)

But if you are going to tell me that somehow the human race is capable of even affecting the Sun in anyway is preposterous. The sun is one enormous nuclear fusion reaction, converting 4.26 million tons of matter into energy each second. This is an equivalent amount of energy as exploding 9.15e10 megatons of TNT per second. That is scales of magnitude greater than all of the nuclear weapons on Earth combined. So I am to believe that 6 people are going to "re-ignite the sun"? With what? Their good looks? Wait, I bet it has something to do with their DNA (Hollywood's scientific-black-box-deus-ex-machina #1). Or maybe a black hole? (Hollywood's scientific-black-box-deus-ex-machina #2.) Please.

Hmm, if it has something to do with black holes, this might be the first time ever that I could not suspend my disbelief for such a thing. It probably has to do with the fact that the entire plot centers around is patently false: the Sun will not die within 50 years.

It's about time...

My "Autumn" committee meeting was finally scheduled for February 23rd. Now I just have to tell them that I am graduating, write my thesis, and go! How simple!

Apartment?

For those of you who don't live in NYC, let me tell you that here apartment-hunting is an obsession for some. I personally haven't seen any bad apartments when looking to rent, but I do have friends that have seen some horrible apartments commanding outrageous prices.

To give you an idea what rent is like, I'll throw out some numbers. In my neighborhood, the undesirable location of Washington Heights (which some people not-so-lovingly refer to as "the ghetto"), the average 700-square foot one-bedroom apartment rents at about $1300 per month. These apartments are usually quite old and not in the best condition. In a more desirable neighborhood like Chelsea or the West Village, a similar apartment will cost you about $2500 per month, but probably more as most apartments are smaller down there.

As a result, many people are always on the lookout for a new apartment: one that is cheaper, in a better location, and in better condition. (I have more than one friend who has moved every year while in NYC.) Those who can afford to buy (and plan on staying a while) do so because then you aren't throwing your money away on rent.

But buying an apartment brings its own problems. The average apartment in Manhattan goes for $1.3M. Of course, that is not the median price, as there are many apartments/townhouses that cost in the tens of millions of dollars. (There's one on 5th Avenue, aka Central Park East, that is going for $70M.) The median apartment probably costs $700,000 or so. That means that exactly half of the apartments on the market cost $700k or less; I'd imagine that ~75% cost <$1M. (For the record, the average apartment in Washington Heights probably goes for ~$300k. Three hundred thousand dollars. For an apartment. In the ghetto. Think about that.)

For most apartments in desirable neighborhoods (the Upper West Side, Chelsea, the West Village, the East Village, SoHo, Tribeca, etc) you can expect to pay at least $1000 per square foot when buying an apartment. Prices of $1300/sqft aren't uncommon for luxury apartments in desirable neighborhoods.

Which is why I wonder WTF people in London are thinking when something like this comes on the market: a 77 square foot apartment for $335,000. Excuse me? I'm bigger than 77 square feet! (OK, maybe not, but the surface area inside my lungs is.) That's 7.7 feet wide by 10 feet long. Mmmm, bed?

The article mentions apartments in NYC that go for $5300 per square foot. I'd like to see those places. Even that one on 5th Ave can't be more than $3500 per square foot. Either way, what a ridiculous waste of money. Perhaps if I were a single 40-something-year-old self-made billionaire I would buy an apartment like that to entertain the ladies, but even then I still doubt I would do something so vain and frivolous as spend $5300/sqft.

As for the London apartment, well, some people are idiots. Let them live in closet-sized London apartments. Literally.

Race complete.

Yesterday I ran the Manhattan half marathon (13.1 miles). As I mentioned before, I hadn't been running very much, so I had no idea how the race would go, but I was fairly certain that I would finish. Let me clarify a few things, tell you how I did, and post some observations about NYC runners.

I ran twice last week, about 4.2 miles each time. Before that I hadn't run since mid-December. In fact, I have run maybe 8 times since November 1st, and I can't remember the last time before that. When I run, I run with Yilin, who (despite her great progress) still only runs at about a 10:30 pace. (She never ran much before she started running with me.) That pace is not difficult for me, so I am never really pushing myself when I run. However, I felt that I could run that same pace for the entire 13.1 miles.

Except that I have never run that far before. I have never run half that far before. The longest distance I have ever run was 6 miles. I did that maybe 4 times last spring. One of those times was when I ran with Hyunmi and Mike in Central Park (we did the loop). That was the only time I had ever run in Central Park, that I can recall.

Therefore, on Sunday morning (21 degrees Fahrenheit, 14 with wind chill) I lined up at the starting line with those runners who planned on running an 11 minute/mile pace. I was trying to be realistic.

Well, I finished the race in 2:04:33, which is a 9:30 pace. While not stellar, I am not a runner (nor am I in shape), and I was pleasantly surprised that I beat my (admittedly lax) goal of an 11 minute mile pace by 1:30 per mile. I came in 2970th place, out of 4394 runners.

The weather was perfect, in my opinion. I don't perform as well in heat, so the colder the better. At the "fluid stations" (places where you get water or Gatorade), I grabbed water cups only to have to break the rather thick ice that formed at the top so that I could drink the water within. I mean about 1/4 inch think ice, using my index and middle fingers to punch a hole in the top. Some people were frustrated that they couldn't break the ice and spent a lot of time looking for freshly poured cups. I barely slowed down enough to grab any cup I could, slammed my fingers through the ice, took two large gulps, tossed the cup in a trash can (unlike hundreds of other people), and kept running.

Some observations about NYC runners:

Most people drastically over-estimate what pace they will run. As a result, I was blowing past people for the first 3 miles, and still passing a lot of people after 6 miles. In fact, I didn't cross the starting line until 5:20 into the race, and my first mile was run in 10:30 because there were so many people and it was difficult to pass them all.

Also, even up until mile 3, I was passing people who were walking. Why were they so far up in the starting position if they knew they would have to walk so early in the race? The worst was the speed walker I passed at about 2.5 miles into the race. Granted he was speedwalking really fast, but come on. He should not have started so far up. "Frustrated" doesn't begin to describe how I felt, especially since I purposely slowed down a number of times to keep pace with runners who I thought knew what pace they were running/going to run, and then realized that they were way too slow.

A large percentage of NYC "runners" like to think that they are real runners, and that the latest greatest high tech running shorts, shoes, socks, hats, tights, sunglasses, water-bottle-belts, and other crap will improve their performance. It won't. Some of these people passed me in miles 1-3, only to be found shortly thereafter huffing and puffing and/or walking as I cruised on by. Many of the others started ahead of me and ate my dust.

Don't misunderstand me: I don't think I am a great runner. I am definitely an athlete, and even when out of shape still far more physically fit than most people. But who signs up to run a 13.1 mile race when they should know that they can't run it? I seriously doubt that there were many people like me in that race: people who had never run a race before, had never even run half that distance before, and hadn't been training at all. So why were they performing so poorly? My answer to that question: they're weak.

Now to speak of the strong: The race course was two laps around the Central Park loop (6 miles each lap), followed by an additional 1.1 miles to the finish line. So, you actually cross the finish line 3 times: 1.1 miles into the race, 7.1 miles into the race, and at the end (13.1 miles). Thankfully, nobody lapped me (passed me while finishing their second lap, when I was still finishing my first).

However, the top five finishers did pass me after I finished the first loop, but within that 1.1 mile stretch before I crossed the finish line the second time and they crossed it for their third time. I think the winner ran the race in something like 1:10:??, or at a 5:30 pace or so. I am pretty sure that he beat all the wheelchair guys, who usually smoke everyone due to the slight advantage of having wheels on the downhill.

Something I learned about running long distance: at some point, you can't slow down. I became concerned that I might be running too fast at around mile 9, so I tried slowing down a little to conserve energy. I couldn't. For some reason, when I slowed down, it felt like I was using more energy to run slower. So I just let my legs keep going at whatever speed they wanted to. Also, after I crossed the finish line, walking was hard. Which is really odd since I had been running for 2 hours, you'd think walking would be a refreshing change. It wasn't. I felt like I was unsteady while standing. Very strange indeed.

One last funny thing: the loop in Central Park is also a road which is only open sometimes. Sunday it was closed (of course), but the race was supposed to be run only in half the road (the left lanes), while the other half was supposed to be left open for non-racers to use the park. Therefore, there were cones set up in the middle of the road, with race marshalls positioned every hundred yards or so asking everyone to stay to the left.

Well, the race marshalls were mostly 10-15 year olds. Take a guess at how many NYC adults would take orders from a 10-15 year old. Very few. It was sad and funny to see these kids trying so hard to get people to obey them, people who would inevitably run right past without even acknowledging the marshalls' existence, just like most people ignore homeless people on the subway. (I stayed in the proper roadway the entire race, except once early on when I ran outside for about 15 feet to pass a wall of people.) This was despite the fact that the rules of the race state that if you leave the racecourse (i.e., go outside the cones) you will be disqualified from that race and any future New York Road Runners races.