LOST

I just finished episode three of LOST. Yes, that means S01E03. Lame, I know, but I didn’t believe the hype. I have to say, the writing and production values blow Heroes out of the water.

Also, there’s something great about the magic of seeing anything for the first time and that feeling you get… I’ll savor it. All the tingles down the spine, the laughs and the guesses on where the plot goes next. I know lots of people have been saying the plot goes nowhere, but I don’t care. This seems like an amazing story.

“Murder victim’s fiance left with lease” – story on Consumerist

The Consumerist picked up a recent Madison story about the Zimmerman death.

It was reported in a lot of news outlets that Brittany Zimmerman’s fiancé, Jordan Gonnering, was going to be forced by his property management company to keep the apartment that he and his fiancée shared. That part of the story unraveled Friday, but by Monday afternoon, Wisconsin Management Company had cleared the whole bit up, maybe after doing the wrong thing, and have put out a press release (pdf).

My comment @ Consumerist:

The back story here makes me believe [Jordan] is in the right. I’m a UW student, and Zimmerman was murdered almost two weeks ago now. He would have moved out right away for CSI and such. But I suspect he would NEVER go back there. I wouldn’t. The right thing for the property management company to do is say, “We’re really sorry. You can have out of your lease now and rent one of our empty apartments. Your lease for next year is off, too.”

As a student and BS graduate, I can attest that there are a lot of crooked “property management” companies downtown who will fleece people by charging high rents and keeping security deposits. This company actually probably owns fewer than the average downtown properties relative to others. We only recently (and finally) had a Student Tenant group start up, and they were the ones threatening what would have been the first renter’s boycott in 30 years (according to our district’s Alderman). What we need is for the university to offer legal help to tenants with real problems. I believe Minnesota does so, especially after one really bad house fire.

We have one house fire death, several student rapes/assaults and two very recent, possibly related stabbing deaths in the last two years. I think we not only deserve better housing but a better crime task force… but that’s a WHOLE different story.

Zimmerman was found on April 2 stabbed to death in her apartment, and the case has been typical, as of late. It’s to the point where I’m surprised when the police find a perpetrator of a major crime, as happened with an abduction/rape on campus last year.

There’s a lot to this case that we don’t know so far, but what is known has caused enough of a ruckus. The police suspect someone described as looking “homeless”, and a lot of homeless folks in Madison are up-in-arms over the increased scrutiny and profiling that has occurred as a result. I think that, to some degree, it had to happen, since the person is likely on the move. Still, such things often lead to police overstepping their boundaries.

A man named Joel Marino was found nearly dead in an alley behind his house earlier in the winter less than a mile away. Because the investigations are in two districts, there are two separate investigations. According to some recent reports, the police are sharing tips with each other because the cases are starting to overlap. Still, there’s no official word yet as to whether they actually believe the murders are linked.

Another murder happened in nearby Fitchburg over the summer. The woman, Kelly Nolan, was young and was last seen downtown. That murder went entirely unsolved, and I’m starting to be sickened by the number of high profile crimes that police can’t seem to figure out.

Now, I understand that we don’t live in Murderapolis (God bless Minnesota), Baltimore, D.C. or Milwaukee. The number (and rate per capita) of murders, rapes, etc., is a very positive one in light of what it could be, but these crimes are happening in campus neighborhoods where we should feel reasonably safe. I don’t expect  or care for the “safety” of the suburbs, but come one, let’s keep our own safe.

I’m riled now, but I’ll have to rant more later. I need to sleep.

John Kirsch Remembered

John Kirsch, an amazing instructor, zoology professor, researcher and friend, died of pancreatic cancer a year ago tomorrow, on April 5, 2007. Though I hardly knew the man outside of the Hoofer Sailing Club, I heard rave reviews of his lectures, and I thought he was a fantastic sailing instructor. He gave the impression of being a decades-long veteran of the sport, when, in reality, he had only been sailing for a year or two longer than I myself had. A friend of mine has posted a website in remembrance of him, and I felt the need to post John’s rather eloquent final lecture (ever) to his zoology course, less than a year before his death.

John Kirsch final words for last Zoology lecture

May 5, 2006 

My Final Words:

Now, were I smart, I would  stop here … but today is rather special and I need to ask you a favour.  Not only is this the last day of class for the year, and the last of my series of lectures, but it is probably also the last undergraduate lecture I will ever give, having tendered my resignation a few days ago.  Not that I am going anywhere, really:  I‘ll see you tomorrow at the review session, and again at the final exam.  And, so long as my joints hold out, I expect to continue instructing at Hoofer‘s and hope see some few of you on the water.  Nonetheless, I ask you to “stand in“ for 35 or 40 generations of students while I say a few Last Words – of apology, explanation, and thanks.

The line between Instruction and Indoctrination is a fine one, and not always obvious; if I have sometimes crossed it, it is because of beliefs passionately held; and given that the first rule of judging propaganda is to “consider the source,“ I think you deserve to know what some of those beliefs are and why I hold them. [Certainly I have never wanted to be anyone‘s positive role-model, intellectual or otherwise – I regard it as far more important that you learn from my mistakes rather than my successes, which in any case are quite modest.]

Einstein once said that he found the most mysterious thing about the universe to be that we can in fact understand it; and surely one of the major human discoveries was of a way of thinking that closely mirrors and explains reality – the suite of logical and experimental techniques we call “the scientific method“ and its indispensable complement, mathematics. [I came to this conclusion after some time sampling the delights afforded by other “ways of knowing,“ one of the glories of the American liberal arts educational system being that it gives young people a chance to do this.  But my paintings looked too much like Cézanne‘s, my poetry was too much like Matthew Arnold‘s or really bad Shakespeare (one fellow creative-writing student remarked that an elaborate blank-verse play I wrote “would make a very good silent movie“), and so I became a scientist, partly by default but primarily because it became apparent that science offered the best and surest path to true knowledge.]

[Gertrude Stein, on her deathbed, is said to have lain moaning “What‘s the answer?  What‘s the answer?“ – then suddenly sat upright and asked “What‘s the question?“  Science is about framing questions, and although it is fashionable – and logically correct – to say that we can never prove anything, I think that is intellectually wussy: on a recent Nova episode about the Cassini mission to Saturn, which successfully delivered a probe to the surface of Titan, a NASA scientist compared this remarkable accomplishment to tossing a basketball from Boston through a hoop in Los Angeles – or maybe it was farther – without even touching the sides!  Pretty good for provisional and supposedly obsolete Newtonian mechanics.]

As a biologist I find our ability to understand the universe quite unsurprising: if we did not – in general – perceive the world realistically, we‘d probably soon be dead!  As is often the case, a poet – in this case, Wordsworth – says it most succinctly:

How exquisitely the individual mind

… to the external world

Is fitted; and how exquisitely too …

The external world is fitted to the mind.

While I am aware that the argument is circular, that doesn‘t make it wrong.  And, in any case, it  describes beautifully the positive feedback mechanism that underlies Natural Selection.

It follows that, if my first motivating belief is in the power of scientific method, my second conviction is of the literal truth of Evolution, though I do have grave doubts about the omnipotence of Darwin=s mechanism:  after all, most species do not adapt, but go extinct.  The profound reason for this is that however deterministic the relation of environmental demands to available variations, the operative word remains available:  in the end, adaptability depends upon random mutations and the dice-roll of genetic recombination.  It was this fact, the opportunism of change, and the appalling waste represented by almost universal extinction that drove Darwin to – or very near – atheism; and indeed I consider that religious conservatives are correct in regarding evolution as the enemy of faith.  Many scientists – some of my colleagues in Botany and Zoology among them – will tell you that there is no conflict, but I think this is wishful thinking.  You cannot have Darwin and God both, unless you are content with a deity who kick-started the universe and then lost interest in it.  This, clearly, is not what most people of faith hope for, but rather a personal deity, imminent and engaged in the operation of the world.

[Recent attempts to revise American history notwithstanding, the notion of an absentee landlord of the universe was of course the position of our founding fathers; and while I have no reason to doubt that they were an admirable group of committed Deists, ardent Unitarians, gentle Quakers, and polite Anglicans, Deism provided a convenient support to their political agenda of excluding established religion from government.  Yet surely the most vocal believers today are Theists; and it is perfectly understandable that  the separation of church and state should be as repugnant to them as the union of these two institutions was to Jefferson.]

It is certainly not my intention to tell you what to believe – only what I believe, or do not believe, and how it has influenced my teaching.  [When the mathematician and astronomer Laplace proudly presented a copy of his Celestial Mechanics to Napoleon, the Emperor looked it over and remarked how odd it was that he, Laplace, had done such a wonderful job of describing the universe without once mentioning its Creator.  Laplace‘s reply was that he had “no need of that hypothesis.“  By this he probably meant only that science and religion should be kept separate – something that is getting to be harder and harder to maintain in these disUnited States – rather than that one must be discarded in favour of the other.  But not everyone can live such a schizophrenic life.  Certainly I cannot.  I suspect that were there a Drake Equation for assessing the likelihood of God (as there is for the existence of extraterrestrials), it would deliver a negative value.]

I see no evidence of design or purpose in living things, and if I did I would be highly suspicious that I was imposing order where there is none.  After all, the fatal flaw in the Intelligent Design argument is precisely the blasphemous presumption that we can impute our own notions of good design to God – a presumption the Greeks called hubris and is the very genesis of tragedy.

As much as I would sometimes like to think differently, my deepest conviction is that there are neither gods nor extraterrestrials in the universe, and we must have the courage to be alone.  But does this mean that we are adrift without a moral compass?  I think not.  In this course we have argued that every aspect of an organism, whether anatomical, physiological, behavioural, or ecological, must be examined with a view to how it might – or might not – facilitate fitness.  Religion itself is surely an adaptation, but if one rejects the metaphysics, an evolutionary ethics is the obvious substitute.  Critics have taken that suggestion to mean that, in the conduct of human affairs, whatever is biologically natural is somehow Aright.@  Yet Biology is not necessarily Destiny.  An essential part of being human means being able to transcend the biological constraints which have shaped us, when it is appropriate to do so.  Most dramatically, I have argued in my conservation lecture that for our own long-term survival, much less that of other creatures, we must vigorously resist the most emblematic of evolutionary impulses, the mindless drive to make endless numbers of copies of our genes.

More positively, and because of our phylogenetic history as social organisms, I further suggest that the evolutionary world view mandates that we must care for each other.  It is unfortunate that I have not had time to discuss behaviour, because if I had it would seem less of a paradox when I say that caring for others means, first of all, fulfilling yourself.  You have a social, if not moral, obligation to be good stewards of your genetic potential, to become “all that you can be” if you’ll forgive me for borrowing the Army’s recruiting catch-phrase [(which is right up there with “Guinness is good for you“ – but, as Martin Luther said in defending his musical compositions, there is no reason why the Devil should have all the good tunes … or advertising slogans)].

At the same time, and while we rightly honour Olympians for extending the boundaries of their exceptional physical potentials, we should be humble as well as responsible stewards:  one’s genetic profile is an accident of birth.  Much mischief has been perpetrated in the name of the supposed superiority of certain combinations of alleles over others, and not only the Bad Guys are guilty of oppression and ethnic cleansing:  it is not widely appreciated, for example, that the Nazis modelled their racial laws on the theories and methods of American eugenicists (including the practice of forced sterilization of the so-called “unfit”).

Rather, pride appropriately resides in what you accomplish despite your genetic limitations.  When I decided, about eight years ago, to become an athlete after a lifetime of scorning organised sports, it was definitely a departure from what I am naturally competent at doing.  Of course, there are some things that you will never become really good at unless you start early in life:  playing a sport is certainly one; mastering a musical instrument, learning a foreign language, or doing mathematics efficiently are others.  But I am prouder of what I’ve accomplished as a sailor than almost anything else I’ve done with my life, precisely because it was so hard.  (And a bonus is that I now understand better why most people are so crazy about playing sports – it is a way of doing something physical together without having to feel guilty about it!)

There is another reason you should never be afraid of trying something new and out of character (Panel 1).  We humans now live an extraordinarily long time, and it is therefore unsurprising that passions which we once thought would last a lifetime diminish, whether those enthusiasms be for a particular kind of music, food, literature, professional activity, or (sad to say, perhaps) a particular person.  Renewal lies in reinvention, as Scrooge McDuck implies in this panel recreating the moment in 1947 when he first met his nephews and started a new life of wonderful adventures in their company (Panel 2).  I look forward to emulating Scrooge.

And finally this:  the Chinese have the marvelous custom that, when a speaker has finished a presentation, he or she applauds the audience, in thanks for their politeness and attention.  And so I end by applauding you, and through you the many generations of biology students who preceded you, in appreciation of your patience and good humour, and in sincere gratitude for allowing me to pursue the vocation of teaching.  How well I have fulfilled that calling is not for me to judge, but it has been an honour, a privilege, and a deep pleasure to serve you as best I can.  I shall miss you greatly, and wish you well.

John Kirsch: UW-Madison Professor of Zoology, Hoofer Sailing Instructor, Friend – April 8, 1941 – April 5, 2007

Rachel Dratch as Barbara Walters on 30 Rock

Simply because it’s not the easy to find… and it’s laugh-out-loud funny:

Barbara Walters: [on The View] Let’s get personal. Your father Werner was a burger server in suburban Santa Barbara.
Jenna Maroney: Yes, that’s right.
Barbara Walters: When he spurned your mother Verna for a curly-haired surfer named Roberta. Did that hurt her?
Jenna Maroney: It was hard on all of us, yes.
Barbara Walters: Flurg murg glurg flurg murg murg murg tennis murg murg. Was a murg murg flurg?
Jenna Maroney: I’ll always be his little girl.
[cries]
Barbara Walters: [puts her hand on Jenna’s shoulder] Glurg.

Linguist I

I’ve recently developed a fascination with words, types of words and origins of words. Just in my surfing, I picked up a few new things.

Déjà vu – (from Merriam-Webster) 1 a : the illusion of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time

The literal French is “already seen“. According to Wikipedia, what’s more commonly experienced is Déjà vécu, the sensation of having already lived. According to a poorly cited source, as much as 70% of the global population has experienced Déjà vécu.

Jamais vu (“never seen”) is the condition of not recognizing a situation, place or person as familiar despite the knowledge that such a thing has been experienced before. A Times report cited by Wikipedia explains one example:

Chris Moulin, of Leeds University, asked 92 volunteers to write out “door” 30 times in 60 seconds. At the International Conference on Memory in Sydney last week he reported that 68 per cent of his guinea pigs showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as beginning to doubt that “door” was a real word. Dr Moulin believes that a similar brain fatigue underlies a phenomenon observed in some schizophrenia patients: that a familiar person has been replaced by an impostor. Dr Moulin suggests they could be suffering from chronic jamais vu.

Presque vu is the sensation of having something on the tip of your tongue. Try impressing your friends with that phrase… just don’t forget what it is.

What’s in a Name? University of Wisconsin’s rich history

I was sitting in my intro microbiology lecture, taught by professor Stephen Barclay, and a thought struck me. This man lecturing before me, though somewhat rambling and dry at times, had a real passion for the history of science, particularly at our university, UW-Madison. Every important scientist in the field of microbiology, it seems, came from, started at or had a hand in research at UW.

Of course, that statement isn’t entirely true, but Barclay’s boasts speak to a rich history of research and scientific breakthroughs that make the UW one of the top public universities research-wise. What makes it all even more fascinating is that the departments of these breakthrough scientists are housed in a college of the university called the “College of Agriculture and Life Sciences” (CALS). If some administrators had their way, the school would just scratch the agriculture part and be on it’s way.

But there is no denying that CALS would not have such funding for biofuels, stem cell research and the like had it not led the way in prior agricultural research followed by groundbreaking genetics, biochemistry and microbiology findings. In my next few posts, I intend (for my own knowledge as well as that of any readers that may show) to give some overview into the significance of names seen on and around campus including Temin, Babcock, Steenbock, Elvehjem and more.

As I was listening to Barclay speak, I remembered back to how many science professors I’ve had who have proclaimed the greatness of some of the world’s most amazing scientists. Their stories are fascinating, and you begin to realize that the history of our scientific discoveries is nearly as fascinating as the discoveries themselves. Past, present and future are all importantly linked.

We’ve discovered the secret of life.  – Francis Crick

Weather Here

I was walking home today from the library appreciating the beauty of a Midwest winter. I’m one of the first to bitch and moan about the cold, the slush, the snow and everything else. I like the summer more, simply because it’s easy to get out and do things. I can stay more active.

We broke the all-time record for most snowfall in Wisconsin, last set in the 70s. Since then (about a week ago), we’ve had about three more snowfalls. Late last night, it started raining, and the rain froze to everything. If you’ve never seen freezing rain before, it’s fantastic. Imagine everything outside covered in a half inch of ice.

I stepped out the door this afternoon, and I heard crackling. The wind was blowing the tree branches, and the ice was fracturing in thousands of places at once. On my walk home tonight, I looked up. In the orange glow of the sodium vapor lamps, all the trees looked like some cross between antlers and icicles. When a wind gust came up, instead of whipping, the branches swayed rigidly together.

After that, I smelled the smoke of a wood fire. I felt and heard the crunch of the snow, frozen in the tread of the tires that had run over it before. I stomped through five inch puddles of slush and enjoyed the cold air in my lungs. I remembered what it was like playing in the snow as a child. I smiled.

Beer

Just got done bottling my first batch of beer. It feels good, but damn, that’s a lot of work. There’s something to be said for economy of scale (and for beer that’s immediately drinkable). I’m going to aim to cut down on some of the time in some steps during my future brewing endeavors, especially the whole “cleaning the bottles” thing. That sucked. Beyond that, I’m hoping to develop a sense for what alters the flavor in each batch or recipe.

 This batch was a clone of Newcastle called Oldcastle, purchased from Midwest Homebrewing Supplies. Up next for home brewing is going to be Edwort’s Apfelwein.

Y: The Last Man

Y: The Last Man, the masterpiece comic series by Brian K.Vaughan and Pia Guerra is done. How do I feel?

(I can’t hide clips, so unfortunately, there is one very key spoiler below. Don’t read on if you care about the end of it all).

I was just slightly less than satisfied with the ending. I’m glad it was left open, yet with a sense of ultimate resolution. I read a review from the Onion A.V. Club (is that national or by city?), and they effectively summed up my thought that there should have been more plot resolution in the flashbacks than was. I would like to have known exactly how the world accepted the return of men (via new Yoricks).

Overall, I think Vaughan did a great job conceptualizing a realistic response to such a population collapse, from doomsday naysayers, to political changes to exactly how anyone (women or men) would pull their heads out of their asses, work hard and make the best of such a situation.

You can’t tell me that if we found out we’d be out of oil in five years that we would be without sufficient energy ten years later. You change focus, bust out the big brains, conserve and labor to make things as easy as possible. But I digress…

I read the trade backs leading up to ~ issue 52 around a year ago, and I don’t remember everything so vividly, but one thing that I always remember is that Aussies owned the seas because they were the only ones whose country allowed women to command subs, thus they were the only ones who knew their shit on one. So sweet…

Anyone else have thoughts on the story as a whole?

lessons, headfirst, on February first

I had a number of thoughts after leaving the bars tonight. They all kind of mishmashed for me, and what I convey next in my writings is what I best recollect.  These are my thoughts on such subjects:

humility – No matter what you do and how caring you are, there will always be someone who is more so. On top of that, the more you think you think of yourself, the less others (probably) think of you.

caring – I was walking down the street with a group of people leaving the bar tonight. It was two guys, two dolls and me. I felt kind of outcast because one of the two girls was my ex-girlfriend, ad I didn’t know the men. I kept getting ahead of the other four because they were having a snowball fight and laughing. I felt kind of shitty and not at all like laughing, but the other non-gf girl said it seemed like I needed a face full of snow. I smiled and said I thought I did, so she grabbed a handful and whitewashed me! I laughed, then told her I was really good at snowbanking and tossed her in. That was all I really needed to feel happy, and I was grateful for her thoughtfulness.

relationships – So I saw my ex and had a minor conversation with her. It was fine. I’m not angry, but I do finally see what dumpees mean when they don’t see eye-to-eye when the “let’s stay friends” statement is made.

self-esteem – A friend I hadn’t talked to for years said hi to me and admitted she had a crush on me all freshman year. She said that every time she saw me her sophomore year, it brought her spirits up. I was really happy to hear that someone felt that way about me. It kind of made my night! -)

love – I realized that love is so tough to attain. God knows I’ve tried to convince myself that I was in love so many times, and really, I only feel like it’s been about three times (out of three times as many relationships). I don’t enjoy looking for love, since looking seems to lead to dead ends. Instead, I’ll adopt the idea of going with the flow, and hopefully that will lead me in a more positive direction.

I do say that I have more than one model of the type of woman I’ll be keeping my eye out for. These women probably have no idea that I admire them, but I have mini crushes that I know won’t go anywhere, and I keep an eye on them to appreciate the way they handle themselves and their lives. They range in age from 19 to their 50s, and they’re all very cool women.

drunkenness – It’s fun and awful at the same time.

responsibility – I’m horrible at it. I wish I had more of it.