My contribution to the intense political season has so far been limited to posting Jon Stewart clips on the interwebs. Not being a US citizen yet, I can't vote in this election. However, the results of the election will affect my life, and the lives of many, many people. The next 50-odd days will be very nerve-wracking, because I will be trusting my future to the choices of other people I don't know, and therefore don't trust.

I will keep my candidate preference to myself, but suffice it to say that I identify with heathen liberals more than bible-thumping rednecks. No disrespect to bible-thumping rednecks.

It therefore bothers me when I read about polls showing the candidates running neck-and-neck. Never mind the consequences of such polls on the efficacy of either candidates' messages. What I'm interested in is whether these polls are scientific enough. Are they actually representative of reality ?

Considering that they are mostly national polls, they have little bearing on the state-by-state results that actually determine the composition of the electoral college. But never mind that. Here's my beef: They poll about 1000 people. They make the calls to landlines. They chose participants based on voter registration records. So, they're basically polling a handful (metaphorically, compared to the total population) of people who have previously voted,who also own a land line, who pick up the phone and actually respond. Sounds like they're polling a bunch of old people.

It gets even worse when the news organizations (a.k.a The Media) report these polls; they declare leads that are within the margin of error (e.g. a 2% lead with a 4% margin of error). You'd think that if one person leads the other within the margin of error, it's a tie. Heck, the loser could technically be leading by 2 points.

Is it the fault of the polling organization? Well, partly, I think. Their samples seem to be excluding a significant portion of the electorate. But I'm gonna bash the media for their sensationalization of every single piece of news. I mean, within a news organization that's been reporting on politics since the invention of TV, you'd think there's one editor who knows about margins of error and statistical significance. I hope I'm not being an elitist when I ask for integrity.

Here's another burn on those awful journalists(opens in new window):

Screw Oprah!

Here's the deal: I am a busy person. I am sure many, many people are. There are a hundred things competing for my attention at any given moment. I have to prioritize hard in order to decide what I'm going to do at any given moment. So when the only cue for Oprah's next show is "Dirty secret, on location with Anderson Cooper, Next Oprah", guess what?

NOT WATCHING!!!

Not that I ever watch Oprah, but are desperate housewives who do watch Oprah really that desperate? Told to tune in for an unknown topic so they do it? Why does Oprah even bother to tell her audience to tune in for an unknown topic anymore? They're tuning in no matter what! *sigh*

Here's what I think, a good TV program should give me a general idea of what to expect so I place it higher on my priority list. The more they tell me without giving the show away the better. Better yet, three words: Women's beach volleyball!

P.S. I did my first public tango performance in front of a crowd of international students during a break from an orientation session! Not exactly an earth-shattering performance, but hey, I just started 6 weeks ago.

P.P.S. I'm almost done with my QLA. Not sleeping till I'm finished ... hopefully, I won't still be awake when you read this. (update: I decided writing a history of neuroprostheses section while falling asleep is not a good idea, so I'm off to bed. Will finish tomorrow)

Research motivation in the heat

I am in BME seminar right now, where fellow students present research that I'm not intimately familiar with. It is really hot because the AC is broken, and therefore I'm cranky and irritated.

So I will bitch then. The following is a theme that has been played over and over again in this summer seminar series: Dr. Leslie Geddes (National Medal of Technology 2006) asks the students about the motivation behind their research. They reply with a quizzical face. Hint: he doesn't want to hear about the clinical need cliches, with the the billions of dollars of potential market size, that everyone's so fond of regurgitating. We know that makes you feel important. But it's a science seminar, not a business plan meeting. He means why do you take your particular approach. It is unacceptable to stumble at that question.

Today he was clear about it: what's your basis for the choice of your material? Still stumbling? FAIL. If you don't know why your novel material or your novel approach is so cool, then why the hell are you using it?! Having your advisor come to your rescue is acceptable only when the questions become badgering; she can't rescue you at the first question.

Last week, a question was asked about the state of the art in spinal cord research, a lot of which is conducted by Dr. Richard Borgens across the street from us in the vet school. Having no idea is also unacceptable. I can give you some leeway if your experimental design is a little lacking, but if you don't know the background, either learn it or go get a lab technician job.

update: Don't include a 5-line paragraph in your presentation. I have the attention span of a boston terrier. Keep it short and sweet; use bullet points. There's a reason why Powerpoint adds them automatically when you hit Enter.

Conclusion --- Summer seminar: mostly disappointing.

Sick in the head

I suspect that I suffer from undiagnosed pathological procrastination. I don't update my blog more than once a month, if that. Once a month is also how often I clean my apartment . If not for the impracticality of owning 50 shirts, pairs of socks and underwear, I probably wouldn't do laundry any more often than that, either. You'd think I'm a slob. I'm not. I like neatness, organization and time management. I just can't bring myself to do them enough. It certainly feels like a psychiatric disorder, and it's pushing me down a maelstrom of stress and despair that has been taking its toll on my relationships with lots of people around. So again, I apologize for being such a dick lately. It's not the real me. Or at least, not the me that I want to be.

My big task for the summer is to write a 25-page document composing a critical review of the body of literature pertaining to a topic relevant for my research. It is our department's version of a qualifying exam, and given the endearing term QLA. We don't call our quals quals. I always thought that was an irksome name. Instead, we give it a 3 letter acronym. That sounds a lot more important, as any respectable PhD qualifying process should sound.

I technically started in May, with a sloppily written introduction for a writing workshop the department offered. I also rewrote that introduction based on comments and feedback I received during and after the workshop. I put off further work under the guise of running experiments, which I was doing, so to say. May passed, and so did June, and with the coming of July I decided I would start writing in earnest. Obviously, that didn't happen. There was a lot of staring at the blank screen. A lot of telling myself "Just start writing! Anything!". A lot of outline outlining. Definitely a lot of lit searches and reading. But the actual writing never materialized. Sure, I got a few pages of disjointed sentenced and uncited claims, but not actual meaningful, pseudo-intelligent writing until 2 or 3 days ago. The downside is that the QLA is due on Aug. 19, and therefore I need to have a complete draft by Aug 5, in order to get enough reviews and edits.

It's depressing to realize that I could have finished the whole thing in the last 2 weeks, but didn't. So, as any rational person would do, I try to dissect my behavior and try to learn from what happened, so that I can avoid it in the future. Except I can't. All the BS in the phony beat-procrastination-and-change-your-life books is useless. No I don't enjoy the rush of working last minute; I hate it. I'm not striving for perfection, just a passable document. I'm not afraid of humiliation if my work's not up to par. If anything, that should motivate the hell out of me to get done. It is a confusing situation to be in. It sucks that the most frequent thought on my mind is: maybe I should quit grad school and get a real job. That is not what I want. I like my research; the intellectual value of it does elate me. But the process is taking its toll. Maybe I should consider therapy. Not for the QLA's sake, obviously ; it's too late for that. I just hope I don't procrastinate on that too.

I don't think I'm the only grad student (or student, period.) who's gone through this. So here's a solicitation for ideas:

a) How do you (few, you happy few) readers of this (almost) moribund blog beat procrastination and motivate yourselves?
b) What is the optimal set of conditions under which you write best and most ?

Here's to hoping we get some interesting ideas!

P.S. I just realized I wrote this whole post in under 20 minutes, with little editing. So why not my QLA, dammitt?

Good Bye George!

Apart from the ups and downs of my everyday life, today is a sad day. George Carlin has died of a heart attack at the age of 71.


The Old Fuck (not fart; fuck, mind you) was one of my heroes. He was a master of freethinking whether you agreed with him or not, and a master of obscenity (NSFW), also whether you agreed with him or not. No one before has ever made me laugh by just reeling off a list of sexual euphemisms, but the Old Fuck did. I learned the seven words you cannot say on TV from him, but I also learned that old men with white beards can be contrarian, funny and deeply insightful all at once.

I encourage anyone reading this with a free hour on their hands to watch the video on the first link and the following videos from his last album "It's Bad for Ya!". The first 2 or 3 cover the topics of aging and death in the very strong Carlinist style that endeared him to me. I might not be going along a similar path as Carlin, but I hope that when I'm old and close to the end I would have achieved many of the things that I had wanted to, just like he did.

R.I.P. George. I know you you're up there and smiling down at us. Shit! I hope he didn't hear me say that. LOL.

In praise of IHOP

Where else can you go at 5pm on a weekend and have your first meal of the day? Not your typical continental so-called breakfast, mind you, but something like the Colorado omelette: a behemoth of an omelette containing bacon, pork sausage, shredded beef and ham, in addition to the eggs and cheese. Or something like the Big Steak omelette, which has strips of steak and hash browns.

They even have a Bacon Egg Cheeseburger. Delicious. No matter what my scale says, or what scholars of nonsensical religions might say about the consumption of pork or the mixing of eggs and meat, I'll have brunner¹ at IHOP anyday.


1) Brunner: a term I invented, mixing the words "breakfast","lunch" and "dinner".

Life's good. For now.

This blog originally started with the purpose of documenting my adventures in Indiana. But a big portion of my readership can attest to this fact: as a grad student, I don't have that much time for exciting adventures. I don't have that much time for adventures, period. My posts have become less and less frequent. Some of my friends have even deleted the link to my blog from their blogs (thanks a lot, w-suck!). These days, whenever I have any free time, I spend it lamenting the fact that I have so little free time. Well, actually, I spend it contemplating some more profound issues -- sometimes even debating them with some like similar-minded people. Either way, my blog has morphed from one detailing fun adventures into one discussing existential issues; a philosophical sort of venture. For how long, I don't really know, but then again, I don't really care. Without further ado, here's today's dose of philosophy.

If I've learned anything recently, it's that life trudges along slowly but surely. It brings joy and it brings sorrow. You're damned if you worry about it, and you're damned if you don't. So, I now approach it with an I don't-particularly-care approach. If something bad happens, I try not to mope for too long. If something good happens, I'll pounce on it and enjoy it for as long as I can, but with the realization that it might disappear into smoke at any given moment. Carpe Diem.

Some people tell me it's a cynical approach, and that true happiness will certainly elude me if I don't believe in it. Others tell me that everything happens for a reason; a proposition that I utterly refuse to believe in. I do believe that it is important to look at the positive side of any experience, and to actively seek positives in a negative situation, but I just cannot bring myself to believe that everything happens for 'a reason'. Whether because it sounds a little arrogant to believe that my petty life is being micromanaged by a Great Architect of the universe, or because it seems like a cop-out, or because it's extremely easy to find patterns and rationalizations when looking at any situation in retrospect, and the list goes on and on; I just don't buy into that. I realize that many people need to entertain this thought to keep their sanity in this turbulent existence, but to quote Laplace, I just have no need for this assumption.

Why do I say all this? Well, just as January turned out to be a bit of a crappy month for me, with a strong 'touch' of bronchitis and the diagnosis of my uncle with lung cancer, February is shaping up to be a pretty good month.

My uncle's situation turns out to be not as serious as we feared. Apparently the nodule that was removed from his lung contained slowly metastasizing cells, and therefore there was no need for more violent treatment. He still needs to monitor it closely, of course. But there will be no radiation or chemo for now.

Last week, I went with a large group of fellow BME grad students to Indy for a BMEGSA meeting at IUPUI, then to the Pacers' home game against the Celtics. Through our organization, we got really cheap tickets ($10). Never mind that our seats were in the stratosphere, that the players looked like fleas chasing a grain of dust, or that the arena was three-quarters empty. We got so much freebies, it was certainly worth it. Count with me: a hat, a koozie, a Pacers t-shirt, a Budweiser, a Hardee's thickburger, a Pepsi, a ride to and from Indy, and pizza at the meeting (edit : and a bag of candy popcorn!). All for $10. Oh, and there was a basketball game going on too. Or so I'm told. (The Pacers lost, not by much though).

And today when I went to pay my (exorbitant and completely uncalled for) fee installment, I was told that I didn't owe anything this month, because it 'has been taken care of'. How, I asked. It turns that the incentive grant that we apply for based on our applications to national fellowships was disbursed to my account. Which means I have $500 less to worry about this semester, yay!

To top it off, my friend Jenna won some sort of contest, and the prize is free drinks at an Irish pub in Chicago, for her, plus cheap drinks for her guests. So next week, it's open bar at McFadden's in Chicago for $20.

Right now, I'll say life's good.