Blog entries and other stuff
I got all excited just now, because - not only did my cell phone ring for once...but the person on the other end knew my name but did not know how to pronounce it.
"Hello.... I-nee?"
Since most grad schools that contact you early call you on the phone, that's where my thoughts immediately went to. Could this be University of Oregon? ...but why would it sound like they were reading my name off something handwritten?
"Yes."
"I represent Forest Ethics, and from our information it sounds like you may be interested in working with us blah blah blah."
Yeah, that's what you get when you give money to the NRDC or the ACLU or PBS or whatever acronym they pulled my name from. What was even funnier was that from my training as a nonprofit phone soliciter, I could tell this women sucked at her job. She read woodenly from her script... she did a good job checking in to make sure I was still with her, but when I gave the least resistance ("I'm a little busy right now") she let me go, and she didn't make sure I had their website address.
Anyway, the point of this entry is to transfer entries from my class blog, so that I will have every public internet communication I ever made in one place, for the sake of posterity.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Whoo doggee.
It's been a relatively quiet week for me, blogwise. It's because I'm exhausted -'ve been spending entire days at JSD, and yet feeling like I get nothing done. I have to go back later tonight for probably about 6 hours - I'm doing a cook of fly food, some genetics, and a polytene chromosome squash and antibody treatment.
It's funny how much science takes out of you - I look at Dr. Armstrong, who is just running an undergraduate research lab, and we have a technician to help out. She still ends up working 14-hour days multiple times a week, and 10-12 hour days usually. I really hope that's not my future. I think as long as I remain an underachiever, I'll be safe.
That said, THERE ARE SO MANY COEN BROTHERS MOVIE COMING OUT. I am really excited for "No Country for Old Men" - I haven't read the book, but it looks like a good, Blood Simple style of Coen Brothers movie, and I love me some Javier Bardem. Want. Now.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 6:33 PM
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Ach! You've got the shinning!
Already 6 hours in the lab today, and another 6 tonight. What the hell is wrong with me?
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES IVY A DULL GIRL
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES IVY A DULL GIRL
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES IVY A DULL GIRL
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES IVY A DULL GIRL
NO BEER AND NO TV MAKES HOMER SOMETHING SOMETHING
I seriously hope y'all are up on your movie/Simpsons references, or you're gonna think I'm nuts.
It really sucks having two small-time jobs. I get no more than 7 hours/week with my TA job, and 2 hours a week with my fly caretaker job. I miss my 20 hours/week Motley money. I also miss having activities that were outside the JSD building - at least working at the Motley kept me balanced. And managing builds a lot more character than sitting alone flipping fly vials.
Long story short - I'm broke. Broke broke broke. Any money that sits in my bank account now needs to stay there, or I will have nothing to pay my tuition bills with for next semester. That sucks balls, because I really wanted to send some money to the NRDC. Maybe I'll just flush a little less and unplug any clocks I don't use.
I want all the Simpsons episodes from seasons 1-9 on DVD, and I want the ability to produce homework/experiments, knit, watch the Simpsons, and win a place in the hearts of my friends, all at the same time.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 6:54 PM
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Incubation periods are the best times to blog...
Edited to Ask: Does incense smoke set off fire alarms? All my instincts tell me "Of course not, what a stupid question!" But all of my paranoia at the thought of evacuating Browning and getting castigated and sent to fire safety training by a Hall Director make me worry.
And if any of y'all are Scripps RAs, or friends with Scripps RAs, this is totally hypothetical.
I blew off a homework assignment for the first time in my college career this week. I forgot to do it, and then in class I told my professor I would submit it by Saturday... and then I didn't get out of lab until 2 AMish both Friday and Saturday, so I blew it off.
I've got all kinds of anxiety about not doing something I told my professor I would do... but I'm guessing he won't even notice.
If you're wondering why I'm in lab so much - two reasons. I'm trying to resolve some issues for my Genetics paper, which I need to send back for final judgement next week. We also just learned on Friday that our collaborator - you know, the one at Harvard who is so nice, that we've been forbidden to talk to because we want to scoop him? Well, he's collaborating with one of the most famous scientists in the world, in order to scoop us. KARMA!!!!! And they have a ton of post-docs at their disposal. All we have is me. It's a race between me and two labs, one at Harvard and one at Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, with two of the most famous scientists in the world, who've published in Nature countless times. And I'm working really hard. But I'm also a pipsqueak undergrad who is very very sleepy.
I think I'm going to ask Dr. Armstrong if we should diversify our lab on Monday, and start looking at different proteins. It's not a good idea for us to all be chasing the C-H-D1 dragon, when some of the nastiest guys out there are all doing the same thing.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 4:04 PM
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Confessions of a Webstalker
Yeah, it's pretty obvious that I don't want to write my poster for a conference next week. Thank god for blogging homework, the guilt-free form of procrastination!
SO, I have my own webstalking experience. One time I was hanging out on TWoP, and a poster alluded to being from a "small Alaskan town." I was immediately intrigued, since there are few small Alaskan towns that have people hip enough to use both television AND the internet.
So, yeah, my curiosity got the better of me. I used the forum search function to get all of the posts she had ever made, and I parsed them for clues. She made some mention of the professions of her brother and father, and gave a clue to her first name. I quickly figured out which town it was she lived in... which meant I knew which high school she had gone to growing up, which made it fairly easy to figure out her last name.... eventually, I plugged her name into google and was able to easily come up with her phone number and address. WHICH I DID NOT USE OR CARE ABOUT, I just wanted to see if I'm a resourceful internet searcher.
So yeah. Some people are creepy, and like to track you down. It's not always for evil - for example, I used the internet to figure out my professors birthday and buy her a present.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 8:25 PM
Sunday, November 18th, 2007
Liminal State, Second Exit, 1/4 mile
So, I am embarking on a scientific rite-of-passage. It's a common one, that every aspiring biologist or chemist must undertake. If you pass then you have what IT takes.
I have to sleep in the lab for a week.
Yeah, remember a few weeks ago when I said I got a sexy result? Well, it was sexy, but it wasn't publishable. To get publishable data, then I have to take data points every three hours. And since I have to qualitatively score the data, all data points have to be assessed by me and me alone. But I have a blanket. I have a pillow. And I have an iPod playing Peter and the Wolf. This? Is a happy place. I'm actually really excited, because my result is so sexy. I can barely sleep, because I'm just pacing through each three hour interval, I'm so eager to take the next point.
So, I'm off to take a single sleep-cycle (90 minute) nap. Good night!
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 2:16 AM
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Gay communist bleeding-heart hippie
Okay, so I'm broke. But that's not going to stop me from becoming a card-carrying member of the ACLU!
I'm so proud. I'm going to be the subject of e-mail forwards!
One thing I hate about living in a Scripps dorms is that I'm ashamed to do things that sacrifice aesthetics for energy conservation. Mostly I'm thinking flushing-wise - but also, it seems like EVERYONE BUT ME uses those weird little paper seat covers. I sometimes fear that people are judging me based on the conspicuous silence that precedes more typical bathroom noises.
I didn't know that switching things off at the power strip is the best way to save energy. I'm totally doing that. I also am trying to figure out how to save energy on my computer, since I use it a lot. I've heard that with LCD monitor displays, turning down the brightness can help...using Blackle.com instead of Google actually uses more power with LCD laptops, unfortunately.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 4:33 PM
Monday, November 19, 2007
ATTENTION
Whoever is trying to break into my blog. CUT THAT SHIT OUT. It's MINE.
(For my anth class - someone just had Google send four password requests to my e-mail, and it sure as heck was not me... but I have a good idea who it might have been.)
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 4:37 PM
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
my friends say I'm bipolar... my friends are sometimes wrong
I got to see the most lovely concert at Pomona last saturday - Peter and the Wolf, otherwise known as Red Hunter, with his beautiful vocal range, duct-taped guitar, finger snaps, whistles, and awesome inter-song banter. It has been a long time since I felt as good as I did then, cuddling with my friends on the couch and listening to an awesome cover of "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" Now I can't stop listening to his music - it's delovely.
Check it out:
http://www.myspace.com/whiskeyandapples
In other news, I'm almost done sleeping in the lab! I was woken up this morning by the JSD basement custodian, and I gave a little cry and startled him. Needless to say, I was kind of embarassed to be sleeping in the lab. There is something very intimate about sleeping, and it's kind of weird to be caught doing it in strange places. It almost feels like I'm doing something unsanitary....but sleep is not dirty, as far as I can tell. Maybe it's just me being anxious.
Anyway, I'm exhausted, but it doesn't matter, because GENETICS accepted our paper!!! Booooooyaaaaaa! I need coffee.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 6:31 PM
Friday, November 23, 2007
do not want.
Thursday I went out to Pasadena, to volunteer at this big "Thanksgiving-in-the-Park" celebration they have every year - a lot of food is donated, and then served in this big dinner to disadvantaged people in the community. I thought it would be a nice change of pace, to get out of town, hang out with people that might give me some more perspective.
When we got to the place, it was swarming with people. I managed to help a little with setup, moving around table and chairs...and then they corraled us into lines to help serve. It was at this point I realized how crowded it was, as we waited in lines for almost 2 hours.
Over 2000 people showed up to volunteer. Far fewer than that showed up to eat (maybe 500-1000 people, at the most). We had to take turns serving, so all the volunteers would get a chance... I was lucky enough to get two shifts, which meant I got to work for about half an hour before I was replaced. And in the end, I just felt like hell - it seemed like it wasn't about helping people, the whole thing was almost like a giant show put on by volunteers for volunteers, with those being served as props. Volunteer one day out of the year and get a feel-good coupon for the other 364.
blehhh...
I just watched one of the best movies I've seen in a while, called Waitress. It was written and directed by a woman named Adrienne Shelly. It was smart, realistic, a little cynical, but it was still very warm and had a happy and believable resolution to this woman's dead-end situation. There was sort of a deus ex machina, but I think that it's pretty realistic that it usually requires a deus ex machina for a single mother with no money to get out of a crappy life and succeed.
Movies I Really Like:
Ghost World
Waitress
Nurse Betty
The Good Girl
Amelie
Lars and the Real Girl
Raising Arizona
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Punch-Drunk Love
Half Nelson
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 2:54 PM
Monday, November 26, 2007
overstimulated
I thought I could drink coffee at 8:00 and still go to bed tonight - especially since I only got 6 hours of sleep last night.
Apparently that's wrong, because it is three in the morning and I am cracked out. In the scary way... I bet I have buggy eyes and twitchy spider hands. All I know is I'm tired, and I'm yawning, but my brain is going 200 mph.
It's interesting all the different things you have to have in order to go to sleep. It's like a little checklist. 1) Comfortable in your surroundings? 2) Tired? 3) Free of anxiety? 4) Don't have to pee? 5) Circadian-appropriate bedtime? 6) Not so stupid as to drink coffee at 8 PM?
Bah.
I agreed to lecture a microbiology class on Wednesday, while the professor is at a job interview. It's not really a lecture, he just wants me to talk about the research I did when I was working in Berkeley and give a 30-minute powerpoint on it, and then lead the class in a discussion about phylogenetics of fungi. But yeah... I probably should have worked on that more over break, instead of spending so much time in the lab.
The good news is, I just had a serious breakthrough. Serious. And it's really exciting, because it was all my idea. Probably the first time something I thought up will actually become very useful to our lab.
Classes for next semester:
Physics
Developmental biology
Thesis
Neurobiology
Biostatistics
Only one, easy class on Fridays - meaning no complications when I get to go off to grad school interviews! Woot!
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 3:14 AM
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
mammally factual
My friends and I are engaged in a contest. We are all growing out our leg hair, and the first one to shave her legs loses. The original punishment for the loser was they had to shave the other two persons legs - and even if my friends are hot, that's a little too fetishist homoerotic for me. I don't want to win or lose.
Which makes it an effective contest - no one wants anyone to lose or win, so we are just going to continue the contest interminably. Sucks more for me than my friends - they all wear long pants, while cargo shorts make up about 3/4 of my bottom half wardrobe.
Hairy legs are such a strange political body state. I'm most uncomfortable with them not because I think they are unfeminine - but because I think they reduce my power as a feminist. If I have hairy legs, I fit a stereotype, and therefore it becomes easier to write my opinions off. At the same time, feeling like I should have hairless legs to be attractive is anti-feminist... bah, it's a conundrum.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 11:32 PM
Thursday, November 29, 2007
blogs are public? who knew?
From NASA! HA! (insert picture of minimum sea ice coverage from NASA website)
Well, I hot-linked this, so I hope it stays functional. Yellow line is the median sea ice minimum coverage from 1979 to 2000. Green line is the sea ice minimum coverage in 2005. Red line is the sea ice minimum coverage in 2007.
You know, I felt so good today, because we are going to start washing and reusing our plastic fly vials. It's really unbelievable how wasteful molecular biology is - it's because everything has to be sterile, fresh out of the package. None of it is recyclable plastic - and there are so many regulations about laboratory waste, it would probably be very difficult to recycle if it were. So this small change made me feel good. And we go through about 600 vials a month, so it will add up quick.
But I'm pretty sure we are totally screwed. It's enough to make a person full-on nihilistic.
Apparently global warming is at such an irreversible level, scientists are beginning to consider geoengineering. That is just what is sounds like - deliberately SCREWING WITH THE PLANET, to try and compensate for the effects of mankind. Of course, they are just doing research for now - no one is proposing inducing volcanic eruptions to temporarily cool the atmosphere, or shooting Greenland into space before it melts into our oceans....yet.
It's kind of a scary thought - it reminds me of a long-ago plan to shoot rockets at Venus to knock it into an Earth-like orbit, to eventually make it habitable.
Damn it. Now I have to give more money to the NRDC, or at least to the place in Norway that takes all it's CO2 emissions and pumps them into greenhouses.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 11:50 PM
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Whoops!
My thesis is due in a week... I guess I should probably start writing it.
I'm exaggerating - it's not my full thesis, just the first thirty pages are so. And it's on a topic I've written four (count 'em, FOUR!) thirty-plus page papers on already. I've been in this lab for a while.
The only problem is that this semester, I had a lot of different experiments and problems I was chasing. And every time Dr. Armstrong has a new thing she wants to try, she gives it to me. Normally this isn't a problem, it keeps me entertained having so many different projects. But more people usually have a single project that they work on, so my thesis will probably seem a little scattered.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 11:04 AM
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
hell in a handcart
POOP. I think my Harvard application might be going down the drain. Apparently, ETS (the capitalist pigs who administer the GRE graduate school exam) created two files for me, with different exam scores in each.
The scores for my Biochem subject test (good) and the General Exam I took in March (not so good) were in one file. The scores for my July General Exam (wicked good) were in a different file. I reported my July exam scores in all my applications, and only listed the March scores if they were specifically requested.
I asked ETS to send all my scores to all my schools about a month ago. Not knowing that they had two files for me, I only made the request once, for one Ivy. They sent the file that had the subject scores and the March scores.
I finally learned about the file issue the day before Thanksgiving, when I received my copy of what they sent to my schools. I called ETS and asked them what was up, and they apologized and said they would combine my files and resend my score reports.... I called again on Friday to check on the progress of that, and my files have not even been combined yet. The lady on the phone said they would probably not be combined until next Friday... the day when all my application materials are due to Harvard and Yale. It still takes a week or more to send the reports through the mail after they've been combined.
I sent e-mails to all my schools explaining the problem, and most schools said they would accept the scores whenever they came in, and just use what I reported on my application until then. Yale asked me to scan my copy of the missing score report and e-mail it to them, which I did. But I haven't heard back at all from Harvard, or UChicago, which is one of my first choices.
BAHHH school applications suck. I am just going to pretend it's not happening... which is probably a better idea, considering the mountains of work I have to do. The readings for this week are super cool.... but soo long. I got too accustomed to just having a few newspaper articles.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 11:46 AM
Sunday, December 2, 2007
ethelbert humperdinck...
Ethelbert. I like the way that rolls off the tongue. Dr. Castronova, you've just named my first child.
By the way - Ethelbert is the middle name of one Wile E. Coyote, Sooooper Genius. Little known fact.
(all videos named below were once links. you can figure out to what, Future Ivy, if they still exist.)
How can I do homework when there are videos like this on YouTube? to the rescue!
and this one: chicken police break up a fight.
and this one: yeah i know i'm busting out the old duds
and this one: Werner Herzog knows what's good
PS - Hugo Chavez is NOT going to become a dictator! Hurray for free elections!!!!
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 10:47 PM
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
FLAKE
ATTENTION ALL: SKIP THE FOLLOWING ENTRY, IT IS BORING AND NEUROTIC.
Every year I do this. I sign up for classes, and approximately 3 seconds later, I realize I don't want to take any of the classes I picked. Every semester (not exaggerating, I've done this every semester since the beginning of sophomore year), I pick my classes... then I drop them all within the first week of school and pick up four or five completely different ones.
And it looks like I'm set up to do that again.
Here's what I signed up to take:
MWF: Physics at 9:00.... I'll keep this one.
MW: Plant Physiology at 11:00 at Pomona - I picked this class because I think I want to do plant development in graduate school, and I thought I should learn a little bit about them.
TR: Neurobiology at 8:10 at JSD - I signed up for this against my better judgement, because I know I don't like the professor (just because her delivery is very awkward and difficult to sit through - she's a nice person), and I don't really like the subject. But there's a chance that I will do developmental neuroscience in grad school, so I thought I should get some exposure to it. Plus, I love 8:00 classes.
TR: Developmental Biology at 9:35 at JSD - make no mistake, I NEED to take developmental biology. It's what I want to do. I have to take it. BUT! Our class doesn't have a genetics prerequisite! The professor has to assume that the students haven't had genetics! And the lab sounds absolutely ridiculous - fertilizing eggs and then drawing pictures of the developing organisms. If it were really developmental biology, we should be cloning cis-regulatory sequences in front of reporter genes and determining expression patterns. THAT's developmental biology. The lab they do right now is physiology, and it's lame.
So yeah, that's my schedule, not including thesis...and I feel so stupid about it, because I just had a meeting with my bioinformatics professor, and he told me he thought I was smart (which made me so pink I almost had to leave the room), but that I should become a systems biologist. Which I could see. I like systems biology a lot, and it's very closely related to evo-devo. Plus, there are really good systems people at all the grad schools I applied to.
So here's the classes I should be taking.
MWF: Physics at 9:00 at JSD
TR: Eukaryotic Gene Regulation at 9:35 at Pomona - I wanted to take this class, but my advisor convinced me to take developmental instead. Poop.
TR: Plant Developmental Genetics at 1:15 at Harvey Mudd - if I do study plants, this class will introduce me to the exact field I want to go into.
TR: Intro to Computer Programming at 2:45 at Harvey Mudd - if I want to be a systems biologist, I would have to learn computer science...and this is an excellent place to start. Plus, there are so many times when I know what I want, and I know the basic structure of the program that would do what I want, but I don't know any programming languages and can't make it.
Plus, this would drop me from three lab classes to two. And in the eukaryotic gene regulation lab, we do microarrays... and if I get my Fulbright, I'm going to be expected to do microarrays, day in and day out. I'm so bad at picking classes!! BAH!!
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 5:59 PM
Thursday, December 6, 2007
f is for fart, g is for gorilla fart, h is for huge gorilla fart, i is for i love you
Good things:
Kimya Dawson
Kimya Dawson's baby
Babies in my life
People who love me
Kimya Dawson singing
Friends who cuddle and spoon
People laughing at my jokes
Dr. Armstrong likes me and so does my bioinformatics prof
Becoming warm after being cold
I'm going to see my mom and my sister and my cat soon
I'm going to get a coffee in the next hour
Bad things;
Not enough sleep
No motivation
Priorities and anxieties of the pampered
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 9:09 PM
Friday, December 7, 2007
mi piace i pomodori
I think I learned what's wrong with America today you guys.
It's because our teen superstars are certain people whose names are blogprone....
and not this chick, who could teach James Brown how to dance. (the following is a link to a TV Rita Pavone performance, singing "La Pappa Col Pomodoro")
I was trying to reduce my spending, since I am officially in debt, but I am pretty sure that a Rita Pavone CD meets the definition of "necessity"
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 5:38 PM
Saturday, December 8, 2007
attention uncreative film students
Lately there have been some pretty good pregnancy-centereed movies coming out... Waitress and Juno are specifically what I'm thinking of. And it gave me an idea for a movie - can anyone imagine the political hullaballoo that would center around a pregnant president?
Granted....that requires actually getting to the point in our country where we would have a woman president, much less one young enough to get pregnant without mutterings of irresponsibility. I guess it's a little too novelty, and a little too precious for it to be made into a really good film... a more subtle human drama might just revolve around a pregnant Secretary of Defense during wartime.
Instead of working on my HUGE, ONE HOUR presentation for bioinformatics due on Monday... I am reading about possible biological/chemical basis of PMS, and demonstrations of occurrences of PMS in men (hormone and mood cycles, not actual menses of course).
And of course, there's still the ongoing debate of whether PMS even exists in women - not the pain, I think that's pretty much settled. It's really interesting, and it's funny to see the ways that people on all different sides with a wide variety of agendas interpret data.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 3:40 PM
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
holidays, etcetera
So, I don't know if this is obvious - but I am a big fat atheist. HUGE ATHEIST. It's shameful how many "socialist-tree-hugging-hairy-legged-gay-loving-ACLU-atheist liberal" stereotypes I fit - albeit in a more rational way than you would guess from that lengthy epithet. Still I don't really identify as "liberal," since they don't seem to meet nearly enough of those stereotypes for me to align myself with them.
The point is, as apathetic as I am to most all religions - I love Christmas. I really think that it would be hard to raise a child in America and not have them become emotionally attached to Christmas - I feel sorry for parents who are trying to instill their own culture, only to be rejected for songs, pretty lights and endless movies.
So, I love Christmas - specifically I love the pretty lights, laying around with my cats underneath the tree because it's warm, and pretty songs in the dulcet tones of Johnny Mathis and Lena Horne. These days, I love it even more, because I associate it with being at home, cooking my own food, and seeing my family. My mom says she dislikes Christmas because of the materialism and religious hegemony - but I still notice that she turns her Mannheim Steamroller CD up really loud, and rocks out while she tries adventurous new cookie recipes from the box our grandmother left us. We are less attached to the traditions than other families - we generally move the date around to fit our work schedules, and usually we celebrate on the 21st, because the solstice is a more significant day than the 25th.
I was thinking about Christmas movies today. I'd call them holiday movies, except I can't think of a single holiday that ever comes into play in these movies except Christmas. But I realized that some of them have pretty decent messages:
The Nightmare Before Christmas - In short, DON'T IMPOSE YOUR CULTURE AND VALUES ON OTHERS, STUPID. It's a perfectly appropriate message for a Christmas film... and highly relevant given the general destabilization that seems to follow Americans stupidly trying to influence cultures and countries they know nothing about.... I'm looking at you, Iraq.
The Ref - I like this one not only because the family is so realistically dysfunctional... but also because it address moral ambiguity. While most Christmas films propagate the idea of absolute moral values, the Ref reminds us that you should probably just think for yourself and decide what's right and wrong as the situation arises. Bad Santa is awesome for the same reasons - I definitely cheered when he kicked the twelve-year old's ass, cause the kid needed it.
Scrooged - Ummm... the moralizing in this story was a little obvious, I guess - people get hurt when all you care about is the bottom line. But this is mostly on my list because it has a) Bill Murray, and b) Bobcat Goldthwait. I saw this movie for the first time in middle school, and I believe it made me become the only preteen girl in history to develop a mad crush on Bobcat Goldthwait.
If you guys like Christmas movies, which ones do you like? And if you hate Christmas movies, which ones do you hate the most?
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 12:15 PM
"Hello.... I-nee?"
Since most grad schools that contact you early call you on the phone, that's where my thoughts immediately went to. Could this be University of Oregon? ...but why would it sound like they were reading my name off something handwritten?
"Yes."
"I represent Forest Ethics, and from our information it sounds like you may be interested in working with us blah blah blah."
Yeah, that's what you get when you give money to the NRDC or the ACLU or PBS or whatever acronym they pulled my name from. What was even funnier was that from my training as a nonprofit phone soliciter, I could tell this women sucked at her job. She read woodenly from her script... she did a good job checking in to make sure I was still with her, but when I gave the least resistance ("I'm a little busy right now") she let me go, and she didn't make sure I had their website address.
Anyway, the point of this entry is to transfer entries from my class blog, so that I will have every public internet communication I ever made in one place, for the sake of posterity.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Whoo doggee.
It's been a relatively quiet week for me, blogwise. It's because I'm exhausted -'ve been spending entire days at JSD, and yet feeling like I get nothing done. I have to go back later tonight for probably about 6 hours - I'm doing a cook of fly food, some genetics, and a polytene chromosome squash and antibody treatment.
It's funny how much science takes out of you - I look at Dr. Armstrong, who is just running an undergraduate research lab, and we have a technician to help out. She still ends up working 14-hour days multiple times a week, and 10-12 hour days usually. I really hope that's not my future. I think as long as I remain an underachiever, I'll be safe.
That said, THERE ARE SO MANY COEN BROTHERS MOVIE COMING OUT. I am really excited for "No Country for Old Men" - I haven't read the book, but it looks like a good, Blood Simple style of Coen Brothers movie, and I love me some Javier Bardem. Want. Now.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 6:33 PM
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Ach! You've got the shinning!
Already 6 hours in the lab today, and another 6 tonight. What the hell is wrong with me?
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES IVY A DULL GIRL
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES IVY A DULL GIRL
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES IVY A DULL GIRL
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES IVY A DULL GIRL
NO BEER AND NO TV MAKES HOMER SOMETHING SOMETHING
I seriously hope y'all are up on your movie/Simpsons references, or you're gonna think I'm nuts.
It really sucks having two small-time jobs. I get no more than 7 hours/week with my TA job, and 2 hours a week with my fly caretaker job. I miss my 20 hours/week Motley money. I also miss having activities that were outside the JSD building - at least working at the Motley kept me balanced. And managing builds a lot more character than sitting alone flipping fly vials.
Long story short - I'm broke. Broke broke broke. Any money that sits in my bank account now needs to stay there, or I will have nothing to pay my tuition bills with for next semester. That sucks balls, because I really wanted to send some money to the NRDC. Maybe I'll just flush a little less and unplug any clocks I don't use.
I want all the Simpsons episodes from seasons 1-9 on DVD, and I want the ability to produce homework/experiments, knit, watch the Simpsons, and win a place in the hearts of my friends, all at the same time.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 6:54 PM
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Incubation periods are the best times to blog...
Edited to Ask: Does incense smoke set off fire alarms? All my instincts tell me "Of course not, what a stupid question!" But all of my paranoia at the thought of evacuating Browning and getting castigated and sent to fire safety training by a Hall Director make me worry.
And if any of y'all are Scripps RAs, or friends with Scripps RAs, this is totally hypothetical.
I blew off a homework assignment for the first time in my college career this week. I forgot to do it, and then in class I told my professor I would submit it by Saturday... and then I didn't get out of lab until 2 AMish both Friday and Saturday, so I blew it off.
I've got all kinds of anxiety about not doing something I told my professor I would do... but I'm guessing he won't even notice.
If you're wondering why I'm in lab so much - two reasons. I'm trying to resolve some issues for my Genetics paper, which I need to send back for final judgement next week. We also just learned on Friday that our collaborator - you know, the one at Harvard who is so nice, that we've been forbidden to talk to because we want to scoop him? Well, he's collaborating with one of the most famous scientists in the world, in order to scoop us. KARMA!!!!! And they have a ton of post-docs at their disposal. All we have is me. It's a race between me and two labs, one at Harvard and one at Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, with two of the most famous scientists in the world, who've published in Nature countless times. And I'm working really hard. But I'm also a pipsqueak undergrad who is very very sleepy.
I think I'm going to ask Dr. Armstrong if we should diversify our lab on Monday, and start looking at different proteins. It's not a good idea for us to all be chasing the C-H-D1 dragon, when some of the nastiest guys out there are all doing the same thing.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 4:04 PM
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Confessions of a Webstalker
Yeah, it's pretty obvious that I don't want to write my poster for a conference next week. Thank god for blogging homework, the guilt-free form of procrastination!
SO, I have my own webstalking experience. One time I was hanging out on TWoP, and a poster alluded to being from a "small Alaskan town." I was immediately intrigued, since there are few small Alaskan towns that have people hip enough to use both television AND the internet.
So, yeah, my curiosity got the better of me. I used the forum search function to get all of the posts she had ever made, and I parsed them for clues. She made some mention of the professions of her brother and father, and gave a clue to her first name. I quickly figured out which town it was she lived in... which meant I knew which high school she had gone to growing up, which made it fairly easy to figure out her last name.... eventually, I plugged her name into google and was able to easily come up with her phone number and address. WHICH I DID NOT USE OR CARE ABOUT, I just wanted to see if I'm a resourceful internet searcher.
So yeah. Some people are creepy, and like to track you down. It's not always for evil - for example, I used the internet to figure out my professors birthday and buy her a present.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 8:25 PM
Sunday, November 18th, 2007
Liminal State, Second Exit, 1/4 mile
So, I am embarking on a scientific rite-of-passage. It's a common one, that every aspiring biologist or chemist must undertake. If you pass then you have what IT takes.
I have to sleep in the lab for a week.
Yeah, remember a few weeks ago when I said I got a sexy result? Well, it was sexy, but it wasn't publishable. To get publishable data, then I have to take data points every three hours. And since I have to qualitatively score the data, all data points have to be assessed by me and me alone. But I have a blanket. I have a pillow. And I have an iPod playing Peter and the Wolf. This? Is a happy place. I'm actually really excited, because my result is so sexy. I can barely sleep, because I'm just pacing through each three hour interval, I'm so eager to take the next point.
So, I'm off to take a single sleep-cycle (90 minute) nap. Good night!
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 2:16 AM
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Gay communist bleeding-heart hippie
Okay, so I'm broke. But that's not going to stop me from becoming a card-carrying member of the ACLU!
I'm so proud. I'm going to be the subject of e-mail forwards!
One thing I hate about living in a Scripps dorms is that I'm ashamed to do things that sacrifice aesthetics for energy conservation. Mostly I'm thinking flushing-wise - but also, it seems like EVERYONE BUT ME uses those weird little paper seat covers. I sometimes fear that people are judging me based on the conspicuous silence that precedes more typical bathroom noises.
I didn't know that switching things off at the power strip is the best way to save energy. I'm totally doing that. I also am trying to figure out how to save energy on my computer, since I use it a lot. I've heard that with LCD monitor displays, turning down the brightness can help...using Blackle.com instead of Google actually uses more power with LCD laptops, unfortunately.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 4:33 PM
Monday, November 19, 2007
ATTENTION
Whoever is trying to break into my blog. CUT THAT SHIT OUT. It's MINE.
(For my anth class - someone just had Google send four password requests to my e-mail, and it sure as heck was not me... but I have a good idea who it might have been.)
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 4:37 PM
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
my friends say I'm bipolar... my friends are sometimes wrong
I got to see the most lovely concert at Pomona last saturday - Peter and the Wolf, otherwise known as Red Hunter, with his beautiful vocal range, duct-taped guitar, finger snaps, whistles, and awesome inter-song banter. It has been a long time since I felt as good as I did then, cuddling with my friends on the couch and listening to an awesome cover of "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" Now I can't stop listening to his music - it's delovely.
Check it out:
http://www.myspace.com/whiskeyandapples
In other news, I'm almost done sleeping in the lab! I was woken up this morning by the JSD basement custodian, and I gave a little cry and startled him. Needless to say, I was kind of embarassed to be sleeping in the lab. There is something very intimate about sleeping, and it's kind of weird to be caught doing it in strange places. It almost feels like I'm doing something unsanitary....but sleep is not dirty, as far as I can tell. Maybe it's just me being anxious.
Anyway, I'm exhausted, but it doesn't matter, because GENETICS accepted our paper!!! Booooooyaaaaaa! I need coffee.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 6:31 PM
Friday, November 23, 2007
do not want.
Thursday I went out to Pasadena, to volunteer at this big "Thanksgiving-in-the-Park" celebration they have every year - a lot of food is donated, and then served in this big dinner to disadvantaged people in the community. I thought it would be a nice change of pace, to get out of town, hang out with people that might give me some more perspective.
When we got to the place, it was swarming with people. I managed to help a little with setup, moving around table and chairs...and then they corraled us into lines to help serve. It was at this point I realized how crowded it was, as we waited in lines for almost 2 hours.
Over 2000 people showed up to volunteer. Far fewer than that showed up to eat (maybe 500-1000 people, at the most). We had to take turns serving, so all the volunteers would get a chance... I was lucky enough to get two shifts, which meant I got to work for about half an hour before I was replaced. And in the end, I just felt like hell - it seemed like it wasn't about helping people, the whole thing was almost like a giant show put on by volunteers for volunteers, with those being served as props. Volunteer one day out of the year and get a feel-good coupon for the other 364.
blehhh...
I just watched one of the best movies I've seen in a while, called Waitress. It was written and directed by a woman named Adrienne Shelly. It was smart, realistic, a little cynical, but it was still very warm and had a happy and believable resolution to this woman's dead-end situation. There was sort of a deus ex machina, but I think that it's pretty realistic that it usually requires a deus ex machina for a single mother with no money to get out of a crappy life and succeed.
Movies I Really Like:
Ghost World
Waitress
Nurse Betty
The Good Girl
Amelie
Lars and the Real Girl
Raising Arizona
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Punch-Drunk Love
Half Nelson
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 2:54 PM
Monday, November 26, 2007
overstimulated
I thought I could drink coffee at 8:00 and still go to bed tonight - especially since I only got 6 hours of sleep last night.
Apparently that's wrong, because it is three in the morning and I am cracked out. In the scary way... I bet I have buggy eyes and twitchy spider hands. All I know is I'm tired, and I'm yawning, but my brain is going 200 mph.
It's interesting all the different things you have to have in order to go to sleep. It's like a little checklist. 1) Comfortable in your surroundings? 2) Tired? 3) Free of anxiety? 4) Don't have to pee? 5) Circadian-appropriate bedtime? 6) Not so stupid as to drink coffee at 8 PM?
Bah.
I agreed to lecture a microbiology class on Wednesday, while the professor is at a job interview. It's not really a lecture, he just wants me to talk about the research I did when I was working in Berkeley and give a 30-minute powerpoint on it, and then lead the class in a discussion about phylogenetics of fungi. But yeah... I probably should have worked on that more over break, instead of spending so much time in the lab.
The good news is, I just had a serious breakthrough. Serious. And it's really exciting, because it was all my idea. Probably the first time something I thought up will actually become very useful to our lab.
Classes for next semester:
Physics
Developmental biology
Thesis
Neurobiology
Biostatistics
Only one, easy class on Fridays - meaning no complications when I get to go off to grad school interviews! Woot!
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 3:14 AM
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
mammally factual
My friends and I are engaged in a contest. We are all growing out our leg hair, and the first one to shave her legs loses. The original punishment for the loser was they had to shave the other two persons legs - and even if my friends are hot, that's a little too fetishist homoerotic for me. I don't want to win or lose.
Which makes it an effective contest - no one wants anyone to lose or win, so we are just going to continue the contest interminably. Sucks more for me than my friends - they all wear long pants, while cargo shorts make up about 3/4 of my bottom half wardrobe.
Hairy legs are such a strange political body state. I'm most uncomfortable with them not because I think they are unfeminine - but because I think they reduce my power as a feminist. If I have hairy legs, I fit a stereotype, and therefore it becomes easier to write my opinions off. At the same time, feeling like I should have hairless legs to be attractive is anti-feminist... bah, it's a conundrum.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 11:32 PM
Thursday, November 29, 2007
blogs are public? who knew?
From NASA! HA! (insert picture of minimum sea ice coverage from NASA website)
Well, I hot-linked this, so I hope it stays functional. Yellow line is the median sea ice minimum coverage from 1979 to 2000. Green line is the sea ice minimum coverage in 2005. Red line is the sea ice minimum coverage in 2007.
You know, I felt so good today, because we are going to start washing and reusing our plastic fly vials. It's really unbelievable how wasteful molecular biology is - it's because everything has to be sterile, fresh out of the package. None of it is recyclable plastic - and there are so many regulations about laboratory waste, it would probably be very difficult to recycle if it were. So this small change made me feel good. And we go through about 600 vials a month, so it will add up quick.
But I'm pretty sure we are totally screwed. It's enough to make a person full-on nihilistic.
Apparently global warming is at such an irreversible level, scientists are beginning to consider geoengineering. That is just what is sounds like - deliberately SCREWING WITH THE PLANET, to try and compensate for the effects of mankind. Of course, they are just doing research for now - no one is proposing inducing volcanic eruptions to temporarily cool the atmosphere, or shooting Greenland into space before it melts into our oceans....yet.
It's kind of a scary thought - it reminds me of a long-ago plan to shoot rockets at Venus to knock it into an Earth-like orbit, to eventually make it habitable.
Damn it. Now I have to give more money to the NRDC, or at least to the place in Norway that takes all it's CO2 emissions and pumps them into greenhouses.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 11:50 PM
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Whoops!
My thesis is due in a week... I guess I should probably start writing it.
I'm exaggerating - it's not my full thesis, just the first thirty pages are so. And it's on a topic I've written four (count 'em, FOUR!) thirty-plus page papers on already. I've been in this lab for a while.
The only problem is that this semester, I had a lot of different experiments and problems I was chasing. And every time Dr. Armstrong has a new thing she wants to try, she gives it to me. Normally this isn't a problem, it keeps me entertained having so many different projects. But more people usually have a single project that they work on, so my thesis will probably seem a little scattered.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 11:04 AM
Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
hell in a handcart
POOP. I think my Harvard application might be going down the drain. Apparently, ETS (the capitalist pigs who administer the GRE graduate school exam) created two files for me, with different exam scores in each.
The scores for my Biochem subject test (good) and the General Exam I took in March (not so good) were in one file. The scores for my July General Exam (wicked good) were in a different file. I reported my July exam scores in all my applications, and only listed the March scores if they were specifically requested.
I asked ETS to send all my scores to all my schools about a month ago. Not knowing that they had two files for me, I only made the request once, for one Ivy. They sent the file that had the subject scores and the March scores.
I finally learned about the file issue the day before Thanksgiving, when I received my copy of what they sent to my schools. I called ETS and asked them what was up, and they apologized and said they would combine my files and resend my score reports.... I called again on Friday to check on the progress of that, and my files have not even been combined yet. The lady on the phone said they would probably not be combined until next Friday... the day when all my application materials are due to Harvard and Yale. It still takes a week or more to send the reports through the mail after they've been combined.
I sent e-mails to all my schools explaining the problem, and most schools said they would accept the scores whenever they came in, and just use what I reported on my application until then. Yale asked me to scan my copy of the missing score report and e-mail it to them, which I did. But I haven't heard back at all from Harvard, or UChicago, which is one of my first choices.
BAHHH school applications suck. I am just going to pretend it's not happening... which is probably a better idea, considering the mountains of work I have to do. The readings for this week are super cool.... but soo long. I got too accustomed to just having a few newspaper articles.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 11:46 AM
Sunday, December 2, 2007
ethelbert humperdinck...
Ethelbert. I like the way that rolls off the tongue. Dr. Castronova, you've just named my first child.
By the way - Ethelbert is the middle name of one Wile E. Coyote, Sooooper Genius. Little known fact.
(all videos named below were once links. you can figure out to what, Future Ivy, if they still exist.)
How can I do homework when there are videos like this on YouTube? to the rescue!
and this one: chicken police break up a fight.
and this one: yeah i know i'm busting out the old duds
and this one: Werner Herzog knows what's good
PS - Hugo Chavez is NOT going to become a dictator! Hurray for free elections!!!!
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 10:47 PM
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
FLAKE
ATTENTION ALL: SKIP THE FOLLOWING ENTRY, IT IS BORING AND NEUROTIC.
Every year I do this. I sign up for classes, and approximately 3 seconds later, I realize I don't want to take any of the classes I picked. Every semester (not exaggerating, I've done this every semester since the beginning of sophomore year), I pick my classes... then I drop them all within the first week of school and pick up four or five completely different ones.
And it looks like I'm set up to do that again.
Here's what I signed up to take:
MWF: Physics at 9:00.... I'll keep this one.
MW: Plant Physiology at 11:00 at Pomona - I picked this class because I think I want to do plant development in graduate school, and I thought I should learn a little bit about them.
TR: Neurobiology at 8:10 at JSD - I signed up for this against my better judgement, because I know I don't like the professor (just because her delivery is very awkward and difficult to sit through - she's a nice person), and I don't really like the subject. But there's a chance that I will do developmental neuroscience in grad school, so I thought I should get some exposure to it. Plus, I love 8:00 classes.
TR: Developmental Biology at 9:35 at JSD - make no mistake, I NEED to take developmental biology. It's what I want to do. I have to take it. BUT! Our class doesn't have a genetics prerequisite! The professor has to assume that the students haven't had genetics! And the lab sounds absolutely ridiculous - fertilizing eggs and then drawing pictures of the developing organisms. If it were really developmental biology, we should be cloning cis-regulatory sequences in front of reporter genes and determining expression patterns. THAT's developmental biology. The lab they do right now is physiology, and it's lame.
So yeah, that's my schedule, not including thesis...and I feel so stupid about it, because I just had a meeting with my bioinformatics professor, and he told me he thought I was smart (which made me so pink I almost had to leave the room), but that I should become a systems biologist. Which I could see. I like systems biology a lot, and it's very closely related to evo-devo. Plus, there are really good systems people at all the grad schools I applied to.
So here's the classes I should be taking.
MWF: Physics at 9:00 at JSD
TR: Eukaryotic Gene Regulation at 9:35 at Pomona - I wanted to take this class, but my advisor convinced me to take developmental instead. Poop.
TR: Plant Developmental Genetics at 1:15 at Harvey Mudd - if I do study plants, this class will introduce me to the exact field I want to go into.
TR: Intro to Computer Programming at 2:45 at Harvey Mudd - if I want to be a systems biologist, I would have to learn computer science...and this is an excellent place to start. Plus, there are so many times when I know what I want, and I know the basic structure of the program that would do what I want, but I don't know any programming languages and can't make it.
Plus, this would drop me from three lab classes to two. And in the eukaryotic gene regulation lab, we do microarrays... and if I get my Fulbright, I'm going to be expected to do microarrays, day in and day out. I'm so bad at picking classes!! BAH!!
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 5:59 PM
Thursday, December 6, 2007
f is for fart, g is for gorilla fart, h is for huge gorilla fart, i is for i love you
Good things:
Kimya Dawson
Kimya Dawson's baby
Babies in my life
People who love me
Kimya Dawson singing
Friends who cuddle and spoon
People laughing at my jokes
Dr. Armstrong likes me and so does my bioinformatics prof
Becoming warm after being cold
I'm going to see my mom and my sister and my cat soon
I'm going to get a coffee in the next hour
Bad things;
Not enough sleep
No motivation
Priorities and anxieties of the pampered
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 9:09 PM
Friday, December 7, 2007
mi piace i pomodori
I think I learned what's wrong with America today you guys.
It's because our teen superstars are certain people whose names are blogprone....
and not this chick, who could teach James Brown how to dance. (the following is a link to a TV Rita Pavone performance, singing "La Pappa Col Pomodoro")
I was trying to reduce my spending, since I am officially in debt, but I am pretty sure that a Rita Pavone CD meets the definition of "necessity"
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 5:38 PM
Saturday, December 8, 2007
attention uncreative film students
Lately there have been some pretty good pregnancy-centereed movies coming out... Waitress and Juno are specifically what I'm thinking of. And it gave me an idea for a movie - can anyone imagine the political hullaballoo that would center around a pregnant president?
Granted....that requires actually getting to the point in our country where we would have a woman president, much less one young enough to get pregnant without mutterings of irresponsibility. I guess it's a little too novelty, and a little too precious for it to be made into a really good film... a more subtle human drama might just revolve around a pregnant Secretary of Defense during wartime.
Instead of working on my HUGE, ONE HOUR presentation for bioinformatics due on Monday... I am reading about possible biological/chemical basis of PMS, and demonstrations of occurrences of PMS in men (hormone and mood cycles, not actual menses of course).
And of course, there's still the ongoing debate of whether PMS even exists in women - not the pain, I think that's pretty much settled. It's really interesting, and it's funny to see the ways that people on all different sides with a wide variety of agendas interpret data.
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 3:40 PM
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
holidays, etcetera
So, I don't know if this is obvious - but I am a big fat atheist. HUGE ATHEIST. It's shameful how many "socialist-tree-hugging-hairy-legged-gay-loving-ACLU-atheist liberal" stereotypes I fit - albeit in a more rational way than you would guess from that lengthy epithet. Still I don't really identify as "liberal," since they don't seem to meet nearly enough of those stereotypes for me to align myself with them.
The point is, as apathetic as I am to most all religions - I love Christmas. I really think that it would be hard to raise a child in America and not have them become emotionally attached to Christmas - I feel sorry for parents who are trying to instill their own culture, only to be rejected for songs, pretty lights and endless movies.
So, I love Christmas - specifically I love the pretty lights, laying around with my cats underneath the tree because it's warm, and pretty songs in the dulcet tones of Johnny Mathis and Lena Horne. These days, I love it even more, because I associate it with being at home, cooking my own food, and seeing my family. My mom says she dislikes Christmas because of the materialism and religious hegemony - but I still notice that she turns her Mannheim Steamroller CD up really loud, and rocks out while she tries adventurous new cookie recipes from the box our grandmother left us. We are less attached to the traditions than other families - we generally move the date around to fit our work schedules, and usually we celebrate on the 21st, because the solstice is a more significant day than the 25th.
I was thinking about Christmas movies today. I'd call them holiday movies, except I can't think of a single holiday that ever comes into play in these movies except Christmas. But I realized that some of them have pretty decent messages:
The Nightmare Before Christmas - In short, DON'T IMPOSE YOUR CULTURE AND VALUES ON OTHERS, STUPID. It's a perfectly appropriate message for a Christmas film... and highly relevant given the general destabilization that seems to follow Americans stupidly trying to influence cultures and countries they know nothing about.... I'm looking at you, Iraq.
The Ref - I like this one not only because the family is so realistically dysfunctional... but also because it address moral ambiguity. While most Christmas films propagate the idea of absolute moral values, the Ref reminds us that you should probably just think for yourself and decide what's right and wrong as the situation arises. Bad Santa is awesome for the same reasons - I definitely cheered when he kicked the twelve-year old's ass, cause the kid needed it.
Scrooged - Ummm... the moralizing in this story was a little obvious, I guess - people get hurt when all you care about is the bottom line. But this is mostly on my list because it has a) Bill Murray, and b) Bobcat Goldthwait. I saw this movie for the first time in middle school, and I believe it made me become the only preteen girl in history to develop a mad crush on Bobcat Goldthwait.
If you guys like Christmas movies, which ones do you like? And if you hate Christmas movies, which ones do you hate the most?
Posted by thelastpolarbear at 12:15 PM