Someone's been a busy busy bee...

Yea yea yea, I said I was gonna blog more often again - didn't really happen up to now, I know... But it's not my fault - seriously! Life's been throwing lots of exciting stuff at me recently and I sometimes don't quite know how to deal with it. The latest thing is something I'd love to write about but I'm not sure if I should, given it's very experimental in nature... In a nutshell, I'm going to be involved in some whole exome sequencing soon (and who knows, maybe I'll even land a first-author-Nature-paper like Ng et al)? I don't really have a clue about how it works yet, but am hoping to 'get it' fairly quickly once I actually come in contact with the subject matter. In that sense.. - anyone know of a next gen sequencing course/workshop happening in Europe or the US anytime within the next 4 months?? Alternatively: Anyone willing to travel to London and tell me all about it during a nice meal (paid for by Cardiff University ;)?

Anyway, lots of stuff has been happening lately, collaborations and other fun things, also private travel galore. I've met so many awesome people lately.. and I guess that's a direct consequence of me not spending a lot of my free time glued to the screen anymore like I used to (ie not web2.0ing much). I don't want to be unfair, I've met a whole lot of lovely people online too (like You , and You.. and You) but there's nothing better than a real-life hug or even just a real-life smile. Would you agree? I hope you do.

Scientifically proven...

... to help reduce bacteria that cause bad breath.


So it says on the pack of gum I bought last night. Am I right in thinking they got it all wrong?

Science - almost by definition - is not about proving anything. It's about prediction, approximation, suggestion, speculation.. Sure, sometimes we discover a causative link between things - but you'd still be hard-pressed to find the word 'proof ' in a (life-)scientist's vocabulary.

Maybe that's a common misconception among non-scientists - that we are trying to prove things. We're not. The aim may be to discover the true nature of something, be it an organism, a mechanism or a particle, but we don't claim to know the truth. Instead we speak in p values, varying degrees of certainty that something works the way we suggest it to do.

There's a line in a recent song called Miracles (well worth checking out, it's fantastic..) by the Insane Clown Posse that says, "And I don't wanna hear from no scientists, all you motherfuckers are lying and getting me pissed". No, I'm not actually taking the song seriously but maybe this kind of attitude stems from the above-mentioned misconception? Because, really, how can someone lie if they're not actually claiming to be telling the truth, only an approximation thereof?

Someone's been a bad bad blogger..

Anyway, not to dwell on it too much.. I just wanted to give a little update: 

a) I'm revamping the look and feel of this space

b) I plan to blog more often (given that the last entry dates back to November, make of 'more often' what you will..)

It's not a lack of interest in writing that has prevented me from doing so, rather a lack of time combined with the firm assumption that the things that go through my head these days (and hence the things I wish to write about) are of no significant interest to anyone else. By 'things that go through my head' I mean the epic journey that will one day hopefully culminate in getting to write 3 letters behind my name / PhD / - which, so I've been told, are required for opening the Sesame of academic success.

In the near future I am hoping to combine both my love of the interwebs and my current mostimportantthinginlife by writing here more frequently, about the nature of my studies (genetics of young-onset Parkinson's disease) and anything potentially remotely associated with my academic future.

Hopefully my PhD-related out-takes will be of interest and/or use to others. If you just happen to be interested in other people's lives, however, there may be the odd nugget of wisdom from a troubled 26 year old progressive female to be found here, also..

In any case - stay tuned! (i.e. subscribe to my RSS feed, if you haven't already done so).

Cheers

L

PS: The actual appearance of this blog may be a complete mess in the next couple of weeks (months?) while I try out new things. If you've already subscribed to me via Google Reader or the like, please don't visit my actual site until I've reported major style/content updates - it would save a helluva lot of time (in your case) and embarrassment (in mine).

"I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied."

... and Steinbeck did an excellent job. 'The Grapes of Wrath' is epic, as you flip through the pages you become more and more engrossed with the migrant workers' lives, their suffering and their courage and strength. The noble Joad family and the people they meet along the way. You see the damage that industrialisation brought with it, but it's not the machines' fault, for machines were invented by people. Not to say that it shouldn't have happened, or that it was wrong, but it's important to be reminded of the sacrifices some people had to make when the industrialised capitalist machine started churning its wheels. Then the intercalary chapters, Steinbeck's staccato-esque writing style that naturally quickens your pace, sentence after sentence of simple despair and strong emotions, hunger and hope, hope and anger, the will to survive. I just finished the book last night and for a moment there I was inclined to start reading it all over again. Here's Chapter 21, one of the strongest chapters imho:

"The moving, questing people were migrants now. Those families which had lived on a little piece of land, who had lived and died on forty acres, had eaten or starved on the produce of forty acres, had now the whole West to rove in. And they scampered about, looking for work; and the highways were streams of people, and the ditch banks were lines of people. Behind them more were coming. The great highways streamed with moving people. There in the Middle- and Southwest had lived a simple agrarian folk who had not changed with industry, who had not formed with machines or known the power and danger of machines in private hands. They had not grown up in the paradoxes of industry. Their senses were still sharp to the ridiculousness of the industrial life. 

And then suddenly the machines pushed them out and they swarmed on the highways. The movement changed them; the highways, the camps along the road, the fear of hunger and the hunger itself, changed them. The children without dinner changed them, the endless moving changed them. They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people. In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do before he fights. They said, These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They're degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of property rights. 

And the latter was true, for how can a man without property know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring disease, they're filthy. We can't have them in the schools. They're strangers. How'd you like to have your sister go out with one of 'em? 

The local people whipped themselves into a mold of cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them armed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can't let these Okies get out of hand. And the men who were armed did not own the land, but they thought they did. And the clerks who drilled at night owned nothing, and the little storekeepers possessed only a drawerful of debts. But even a debt is something, even a job is something. The clerk thought, I get fifteen dollars a week. S'pose a goddamn Okie would work for twelve? And the little storekeeper thought, How could I compete, with a debtless man? 

And the migrants streamed in on the highways and their hunger was in their eyes, and their need was in their eyes. They had no argument, no system, nothing but their numbers and their needs. When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it fought with a low wage. If that fella'll work for thirty cents, I'll work for twenty-five. 

If he'll take twenty-five, I'll do it for twenty. 

No, me, I'm hungry. I'll work for fifteen. I'll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, comin' out, an' they can't run aroun'. Give 'em some windfall fruit, an' they bloated up. Me. I'll work for a little piece of meat. 

And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we'll have serfs again. 

And now the great owners and the companies invented a new method. A great owner bought a cannery. And when the peaches and the pears were ripe he cut the price of fruit below the cost of raising it. And as cannery owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit and kept the price of canned goods up and took his profit. And the little farmers who owned no canneries lost their farms, and they were taken by the great owners, the banks, and the companies who also owned the canneries. As time went on, there were fewer farms. The little farmers moved into town for a while and exhausted their credit, exhausted their friends, their relatives. And then they too went on the highways. And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for work. 

And the companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment." 

the lights are on, but there's no one home

standing in front of my house; waiting for the lights to go out.

source

Is human evolution over?

The Large Chemistry lecture theatre in the main building of Cardiff University is packed with people - even the stairs are full. I luckily managed to acquire one of the last seats, and shortly beforehand one of the last glasses of red wine and a few peanuts, I might add.

On the screen a map of Utopia - as originally coined and pictured by Thomas More in 1516 - I suppose we're in for a pop science ride, but what else to expect in a lecture series called Darwin200? And after all, pop science can be really entertaining if it's done well.

While the speaker who's introducing Professor Steve Jones strikes me as a bit too nervous and generally mediocre (but then again that's usually the case), at least it becomes clear that Jones is not only a population geneticist extraordinaire, currently head of genetics at UCL (if you excuse the self-advertising), but also an established science writer and science communicator. Naturally, I feel sympathetic towards him right from the start, despite him looking rather blassé as the crowd starts clapping ferociously.

Instead of boring you with my account of the lecture, I suggest you take a look yourself. Chris coincidentaly found this video a few days back, of Jones giving the same lecture in Edinburgh, and while I haven't watched it, I suppose the content will be pretty much the same as today's lecture (maybe except for the regional Welsh jokes). I have to warn you though, while it's certainly an enjoyable lecture, I personally don't feel like he's answered his own question all too well. Jones is really a good speaker, but maybe he was trying to be too careful in his arguments, given that he was speaking to a lay audience..

Elect the Dead

Don't you see their bodies burning?

Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

The first time I listened to Serj Tankien's debut solo album "Elect the Dead" I was taking a walk around my neighbourhood last December after a particularly vicious argument at home.

Why do we sit around and
break each other's hearts tonight?
Why do we dance around
the issues'till the morning light?
When we sit and talk
and tear each other's lives apart.
You were the one to tell me go...

I started out rather desperate, but within 5 minutes of listening to the album I began to run instead of walking in sadness, running rather fast for about 10 minutes (which, for me, was a big and unanticipated achievement - I'm anything but fit..) and feeling considerably more empowered afterwards.

Since then, Elect the Dead has been a staple on my mp3 player - every now and then there will be a moment when the music just fits. I'm not sure if the lyrics are political or deep or just pseudo-deep but it doesn't really matter. It's just great music.

She took my hand and I let her go
She broke her little bones
On the boulders below,
Took my hand and she ended it all,
Broke her little bones on the boulders below,
And while she fell, I smiled.

If you're familiar with System of a Down, you should most certainly give it a listen. It might be a bit less rock-heavy, a bit less angry, less shouting and such than you'd normally expect - but the voice is at least as intense as on Toxicity. Elect the Dead is somewhat more melodic, and makes for excellent listening if you're oscillating between sadness and rage.

Do you know that life is ending,

As we go, the dots connecting,
We had our chance to save the garden,
As it dies, our souls will harden,
With these words chastising your conscience
Were breaking through and praying for
transcendence.