Glee - Rocky Horror

I know,
anyone who cares about Glee has moved along to thinking abut the next episode, which spoilers and previews etc. seem to indicate will be very intriguing.

But I'm still back on Rocky Horror.  And trying to figure out why I seem to have so little to say about a good episode.  Its possible that I lost my sense of humor over the past week along with my ability to spell.  If it weren't for Safari spellcheck this would already be a hopeless disaster.

But let's see.  I wish I had stopped myself and not watched the Time Warp ahead of time.  I don't know why I thought that would be okay.  I am glad I resisted the idea to try to rewatch the original before the Glee version.  That would have been a stupid thing to do.  Then I would be whining about how different it was.  Well duh.

However, it seems as you cruise around the internet on a weekly basis there are people whining about how a Glee version of something is a pathetic attempt to replicate the original.  Clearly these people have utterly missed the point and I wish they would shut up or it would be possible to muzzle them to protect them from establishing their stupidity.

Anyway, any time its a theme they need a kick to get into it.  The kick is always going to be silly (dentist leads to gas induced Britney hallucinations), but this time the silliness of the kick got out of the way fast.  Yes it was absurd for Will to put on Rocky Horror because Emma likes it.  But after that the adult story picked back up and blended in really, really well.

Lions and Tigers and .... wait, what next? Bears? oh my!

So I saw the preview for Mac OS 10.whatever Lion.  Well, I saw an ad for preview but didn't click on it.  What's the point? I have kind of been buying new Macs at a rate that I think I only missed one (after entry into Mac market), and I got that from a friend.  So I will buy it.  I don't really need to know what's in it.

But my first thought was actually 'Lion? How do you go from Snow Leopards, which are really cool, to Lions which are kind of boring.'

Probably not the initial thought Mac OS developers were going for.  That said, the cat naming thing has worked out very well for them.  Nobody remembers what number comes after the 10.  If you really have to know you you go to the apple icon.  You know what cat you're running though.

It seems though that Apple wasn't really planning on using the cat names for the public, and this might have made for some problems long-term.  Of course, in the meantime they've had years where they can bring out software updates which have something that makes them sound distinct without having to crawl all over themselves making up weird names and hoping people keep track.

The downside is, they're out of big cats.  Seriously this is the last one.  I mean, in the way that Snow Leopard was related to leopard, they could use Mountain Lion, but that would be cheating.  Mountain Lion is the same thing as Puma and they already used that.  Of course, they also used Panther.  Unfortunately people seem to persist in the notion that a panther is a separate animal.  It is a word with several useful purposes.

First, its the genus which all big cat species belong to.  (Edit: Okay, I realize Panthera is not the genus for all the 'big cats' but it is for most of them.  Looking at this the 'all' just bothered me.  Making sweeping incorrect generalizations of any kind bothers me.) Second, it is then a convenient word to use for any big cat whom you can't identify.  This would be due to primarily to distance and ignorance.  Lions, tigers, and cheetahs, you'd have to oblivious and not care in the least to be unable to identify.  I can see where leopards and jaguars could be a little tricky from a distance in a zoo, but really, they live on different continents.  Mountain Lions live over such a huge range of the Americas that obviously people in South America did not get together with those in North America to decide on a common name.  Not knowing what to call it at any given location, panther always works.  The most common usage though, is for the black variants.  Unless you get up close you can't see the spots so it looks like a totally different animal.  I saw a young black leopard hanging out in a tree at a zoo, god was it a beautiful creature.  So I guess its free game to call any large cat with no visible distinguishing markings a panther

But back to OS X, they're pretty much out of options.  Snow Leopard was actually fine, its not a subspecies of Leopard its not that related.  But now, all they have left to go to the Clouded Leopard.  Which would be highly repetitive, difficult to explain, and rather anti-climcactic since they're the size of a medium-sized dog.  Not particularly big cat-esque.  They are very beautiful though.  I can't see them moving to small cats.  I mean the people who actually know what an ocelot is would probably find that amusing, the rest would be confused.

I noticed that the very first codename, before release, was Kodiak.  In the context of animals rather than film, they could have meant the Kodiak bear, which opens the intriguing possibility of returning to bears.  Unfortunately this becomes not at all intriguing very quickly when you consider the names of bears.  They almost all end in 'bear' and the modifier is not descriptive enough to differentiate.  I mean you could have Grizzly.  Having established a pattern, people might know where you were going when you came up with Polar next.  But after that, really, are you going to Spectacled?  Mostly we just call them brown or black, depending, well, on whether they're brown or black.  I mean the Glacier bear looks cool too, but same problem as Polar, even if they're not related.  So what category of animal could they move to?
Or is it time for an OS XI and some totally different nomenclature.

I still wouldn't mind a Siberian Tiger even if it is a subspecies.  They're just so cool.

Eggs

I just read an article which annoyed me.  Actually, take that back, I had absolutely no problem with the short little comment masquerading as an article.  It was the comments.  The sanctimonious comments made by people who are sure that they know all there is to know about nutrition and what one should and shouldn't eat and feel perfectly comfortable advising and judging their fellow humans on what they should be eating.  And this was the least of it.

(For this post we are going to completely put aside the MD that sometimes lurks after my name and the fact that I am funded, sort of, by a school of public health)

The real fact? We don't know jack shit.  The best argument I've heard is the one that works for almost everything in life.  Moderation.  (Almost anything because there is no such thing as a moderate amount of cocaine.  Its just plain bad, sorry to any recreational crack users)

There are SO many theories about what one should and shouldn't eat.  And some of them are so extreme that most people know they're ridiculous.  Some of them, though, come with the stamp of medical studies.  I will say right now I haven't read all of them.  But, generally speaking, you ask a large number of people what they ate, you know, say, over the past 20 years how often did you eat x,y,z.  And then they check a couple years later on how many had heart attacks, or what their cholesterol level is.  You control for everything you can think of that might also influence your outcome, and you get a teeny tiny effect, which, since you asked 10,000 people turns out to be statistically significant.  There is a difference, a big one, between statistically significant and biologically significant.

One is easy to measure p<0.05 (although many times across different disciplines the idea of correcting for multiple testing gets lost in the shuffle, and can be difficult to determine anyways because multiple researchers use the same dataset.  Each time you probe that dataset its an independent test, but you don't know how many tests have been done on it, or will be done on it.

Sometimes You're not Crazy

So, I don't know about you (the metaphorical one), but I have a tendency to know very little about what is going on immediately around me.  I have a good idea of what's going on in the world, like the big stuff.  We're still at war, they saved the Chilean miners, the Tea Party candidates are chillingly moronic (I will resist the temptation to throw in a dig.  Not because I'm kind but because there have been so many that its kind of pointless).  The basics.

I know what is going on with my research.  In a great level of detail.  I had an interesting experience today in which I and another researcher had an entire conversation in which we were repeatedly using the same word.  cluster.  And we were using it to mean two completely different things.  We're both doing genetics research.  He's an economist/psychiatrist and I'm a neuroscientist/geneticist (neurogeneticist? is that a word yet? It seems we tack neuro on the front of everything so why not).  You would think two people in the same general field of research could speak the same language, but no.  He called a haplotype a vector and I seized up and couldn't hear anything he said afterwards.  Indeed, a haplotype can be thought of as a vector, I just had never done so, or had any reason to do so because its much simpler to call it a haplotype.  And good lord throw a computer scientist into the mix (and we do) and you can't understand half the words that leave their mouths.

So, I'm good on the micro level, above average on the macro level, and then there's in between.  I suck.  I never have any idea when there are events going on around me.  I have a hard time remembering what day is trash day.  Parades, festivals, concerts, they all fly right by me because I have no clue what's going on around me.  However, today I observed two things.  Admittedly I did not connect them at all, but I successfully logged them as unusual and thought to myself that something might be going on.  I was right!

So, first, I noticed that there were a lot of rowing boats (like sculls) out on the Charles River this morning.  While I assume Harvard and probably MIT have teams and have boathouses I had not regularly observed multiple boats out on the river in the morning, and it seemed very cold.

Then, as I was going from one hospital to the other (this is my life, not as a patient though) I noticed that there were frequent very large gatherings of people.  This I do not see usually.  Seeing at least 30 people standing around (still cold) multiple times, I found myself thinking: Did I miss something? The answer to which is obviously always yes, but not necessarily what I think I missed.  Sometimes it turns out something I think is strange is completely normal and I just have no idea what normal is.

I don't remember where or why I saw the answer, but there is indeed the Head of the Charles Regatta happening this weekend! Apparently loads of people come and watch (extra people milling around not knowing what they're doing) and they come to watch boats, or the people rowing them. (extra boats out on water).  Both abnormal data points explained in one and I actually have a clue what's going on just a few minutes from my home.

Too Many Things

I'm in that state I predicted would occur where there are 10 things happening in my brain that I would write about, except, I can't focus on one of them.  Rather than giving up, I'm pushing through.  And that means this could be the most disjointed thing I've ever written.

Where to start.

Netflix, Tim Minchin, Bear, Unix, Excessive Glee love, black clothes, ode to grey, Eeyore love, Karelia

Oops, I totally spaced out.  I think those are all the things I've started to write about or have thought about.  I could try to knock them off one at a time.  In order? Some cross over though... Karelia and bear.  Eeyore and grey.  Separate but related.

I'm just gonna knock out Unix cause that one is easy (if not particularly interesting, which is another reason to hurry it along and shove it out of my brain.)
Why did I want to write about Unix? Because I turned a corner! A big one, but in a very small way.
I hate Unix.  It drives me nuts that I have to do so much of my work on Unix, but I've been gradually getting used to it.  I occasionally know what to put after gawk and grep.  I have used vim. I think I kinda know what '{ -v -b $ are, but beyond that I get clueless fast.  Its amazing how easily you can figure out how to do simple things with google.

But that's not really the point.  Although its good that I kinda sorta sometimes know what I'm doing without hand-holding.  My little eureka moment came when I needed to do something, and, being a Mac girl I considered doing it on my computer, but then I would have had to upload it on to the server.  This doesn't sound like much but it made me go 'ugh' and then it occurred to me that I could do this simply and easily with Unix commands directly on the server, and promptly did so.

A choir of angels sang above my head and my smile was beaming.  I actually thought 'That would be so much easier to just do in Unix.' And indeed it was.

A month ago, maybe 2 weeks ago, I would have said that such words would never, ever, enter my little brain.  But it is stretching

Glee Episode 4-Duets

First of all - all kinds of happy noises which I will not attempt to reflect in typing in the interests of maintaining some dignity.

This episode was awesome! As usual on so many levels, and it will all come out in a big jumble.

Still not happy with spoilers and all the info that comes out about upcoming shows.  And yet.  I don't actively, aggressively hide from it any more.  And so I know things.  Like dear god that photo of Chris as Riff Raff is freaky.  But I heard some of a clip of a song from tonight's episode but didn't much care because there was no context.  Realized tonight that they release the songs on iTunes before the show airs! Why? I had to hit the back button fast so I wouldn't see the names of the songs on tonight's show.  Okay, enough with the whining.

So what up with Puck? Juvi. Really?  Just to make an odd number? This was one of those times where my brain went off into thoughts which took too long and hence I sort of missed what was actually going on (like the Billionaire thing in Episode 1 but on a smaller scale) So Puck is gone, he's in juvi, something about crashing car into something and an ATM and they were on to the next thing.  Admittedly, I was watching on DVR, so I could have used that little rewind button but whatever.  I always like Puck so he was missed.

Preachiness

Yup, this is me being serious. After all the blog is my thoughts, and sometimes I do have a serious one.

I'm actually a tad ashamed of myself.  I've been rather self-absorbed of late.  So it took my obsession with Chris Colfer to jolt me from my complaisance and into thought.  How? This PSA for the Trevor Project.  (And by the way I've watched 'I want to Hold Your Hand at least 10 times.  So beautiful.)

It had like 500k views when I saw it.  Sadly, I saw a lot of horrible comments.  You know, the kind of garbled, messed up English filled with all-caps comments about GOD and how homosexuality is evil.  Those comments we brush off as being from idiots.  And in another example of the silent majority the video has thousands of likes and a handful of dislikes.

Okay, the real reason

I decided to fess up, even though it will seriously hurt my nerd cred.
While I did indeed watch Lie to Me and Bones before Glee this week, that's not what I spent Friday watching.  I was on YouTube catching up on...

Well, this requires some serious explanation in order to not have it look like I'm, well, just totally pathetic.

Way back when I was in high school I got hooked on a daytime soap.  Why are daytime soaps worse than all the nighttime soaps? Well, mostly because they have no budget so their sets suck and there's a tendency towards bizarre stories, and nowadays, the writing is so god-awful atrocious you wonder how on earth these people keep their jobs.  But really, I only know much about one.  So I shouldn't speak for the others.  And I don't know too much about the one I do know something about.

Okay, I'm getting myself all tangled up.

When I was in junior high and high school and beginning of college I would catch, when I could (which was pretty rare since I actually went to school and all that stuff) this show.  And on this show there was a girl who was my age.  She was very smart, known for being good, had dreams of college and a career as a doctor.  Hmm.... in other words, she was me.  With one big difference.  That character was diagnosed with HIV and her boyfriend died of AIDS.  And I watched her, in occasional glimpses go through that, and deal with her own diagnosis and learn to move on.

Until, that is, they went to some bat-shit crazy storyline that made no sense and had her running out of town after months of hell.  That was, in, 1999? Right.

Glee Episode 3

For some reason I just watched Glee.  I kinda watched my other TV shows from this week first.  (Lie to Me and Bones.  I seriously pray that other people see how totally awesome Lie to Me is and it doesn't get booted after this move to a higher profile spot. Meanwhile Bones doing Jersey Shore was totally hilarious.  But onwards to Glee)

I think probably the reason I hesitated was that I wasn't too keen on the first 2 episodes and feared my favorite tv show would disappoint me again.

But no.

I cried.  I actually cried.  I can't remember when, if ever, I cried during a tv show, and its probably obvious when.
But this episode was also complicated.  There was a lot going on with sometimes very short bits of dialogue explaining characters belief systems, so, I actually had to watch things again, and when I couldn't find the bits I wanted, look them up on the internet.  Fun part of liking a show that's so popular, you can find out anything about it with google.

This is going to be a long one, so I'm just going to put the break here.

I'm back!

I normally don't make severe edits, cause its kinda a stream of consciousness thing, but I totally forgot that I posted about how I was going.  So, I'm back from where I went.

It was cold, it was kinda misty and rainy the whole time.  I nearly got blown off a ferry during a particularly strong gust.  But that's what you get for standing at the very front edge of a boat when trips are being cancelled because of the high winds/rough sea.  Nonetheless, standing out there by myself with the wind strong in my face and the spray from the water made me very, very happy.

It also brought back a childhood dream of joining the Coast Guard.  And now... I want to join the Coast Guard.  The only problems, as I thought about it, are: I'm really not strong enough, to like, haul dying people out of the water.  I think I'm kind of a weakling.  But I guess some weightlifting ought to fix that.  Then there was the fact that besides saving people the Coast Guard also protects borders.  This would mean attempting to stop smugglers.  Those people are dangerous.  I'm not sure I want to be around people for whom guns are both key to self-image, and also treated like toys.  (There's also the probably more significant problem that I doubt they would want me.)

I have hope that I have some good photos.  I did some experimentation to see what effects would happen with extremes on aperture and shutter speed.  I mean, the wind was so strong that even the fastest shutter speed I could use probably didn't avoid blurring, so we shall see what comes out. Probably a load of crap, and I suspect I got water in my lens.  Not happy about that.  But I'll stop whining

Go Patriots! It wasn't pretty but they beat the Dolphins on Monday.  I used to like the Patriots but kinda kept my mouth shut, or underplayed it, because to me, you root for the team from the place you grew up in, or where you live.  I don't really like fantasy football, because I think it kind of breaks down rooting for your home team in favor of rooting for an utterly imaginary team that lives only in your head and that of the people you know who also engage in this fantasy and have to play against you. Obviously I don't like fantasy football, but do like football.  I've been watching all my life.  Haven't really had a home team in a long time though.  I was in Atlanta for two brief periods, and I wasn't really into the Falcons either time.  Now I live in Boston I can unabashedly cheer for Brady, Bellichick, Welker, Moss, etc.

Tomorrow I will not be tired and cold and surrounded by the smell of mothballs (literally surrounding me on all sides, thank you mom). In the meantime, a friend posted a link to this lab video, and as a labrat I must share.  (The idea being that I will have something, if not exactly meaningful, at least less mopey, to say tomorrow.)

That said, this is all wet lab, which I don't do anymore.  Distinguishing feature between wet lab and dry lab? Wet lab people work at times with things that have moisture.  Us dry labbers use our computers only.

I have however used everything featured in the video, being a former wet labber, with perhaps the exception of safety goggles which is pretty hilarious.  I did use face shields, particularly for protection from UV lamps when reading gels.  Unfortunately, the shield was so scratched up I couldn't see through it and had to try to peer around it to make sure everything was lined up.  One time of severe UV burn of the eyes was all it took to stop that practice.  Not fun.  Had to pour stuff that's like jelly in my eyes several times a day for a few weeks.

I can't think of any other lab accidents though.  I guess I maybe didn't spend enough time in wet lab to get the glass cuts, animal bites, chemical splashes that just tend to happen.  After all, what's the worst thing that can happen to me? Electrocuted by my computer? Unlikely.

Packing

So I'm going on a brief trip.  I realize Cape Cod in October immediately post tropical storm related flooding doesn't seem ideal, but you take what you get.  Hopefully I will have nice photos.  I have my purple rainboots so I can get in the surf without getting soaking wet and cold.

Now, I was attempting to pack last night, at least most of it, and when I was done and climbed into bed I realized something interesting.  I am going to Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod, generally sort of nature, pretty, slightly outdoorsy type places.  The things that I was most stressed about making sure I packed were: camera (okay, that makes sense) Macbook Air, Nook, charger for Nook, iPod and iPhone.  Then I realized that charger I preferred to bring for the latter two was at work, got upset with myself, and finally decided to deal with this by sending the following e-mail to my work account.  'Pack iPod/iPhone charger dumbass.'  As if I would fail without that last admonition. When I arrived this morning and checked my e-mail, it was the first e-mail and I immediately packed charger.  Otherwise, who knows.

But, ummmm, I'm totally just assuming that I threw enough shirts in there.  Couple pairs of pants, whatever.  However, I obsessively needed to make sure that every piece of gadgetry I own was packed (and had downloaded a couple books to the Nook, just in case.... nothing, there is nothing.  I can buy books and download them if there is 3G, so, there is no way I could be without the capability of downloading books unless, perhaps, I wandered off into the African desert while I was on Cape Cod.)
And I also had to make sure that all chargers were packed.

Admittedly there have been some issues there in the past... I got to Barcelona with camera in hand, having put the battery to charge in the charger the previous night.  Unfortunately I left charger and battery behind, and, therefore I have no photographs from Barcelona.  I've left behind laptop chargers and made emergency Apple Store trip to acquire a new one (those things are damn expensive.)

So I guess there is some reason for this level of panic. But I was shocked at the level of gadgetry I feel it is necessary to bring with me for a few days trip.  Also, I am female.  Do I not care at all what I look like? Or whether or not I actually have clothes to wear? I mean guys should care too, but they seem more likely to just wear the same thing three days in a row.  There is no makeup or jewelry packed.  I even forgot to put on my usual jewelry this morning.

Now, I was all set for expected monsoon weather this morning.  It did not appear.  I became annoyed.  I'm pretty sure that this expected downpour is going to end up occurring right when I leave to walk home and continue through my walk to the T completely soaking me and my non-waterproof duffel bag.  But dry feet I will have! If I have to wear these rainboots the whole effing day I will do so! They are purple, shiny and warm.  All positives.  Maybe I am a girl after all.

After the Jump!

Why have I added this generally sort of annoying feature to my blog? Well, some of the posts are long, like I'd take a look to check that there were no bizarre format things and I'd have to keep scrolling and scrolling.  This seemed kind of annoying.

So, I was faced with 2 annoying things, cutting off the longer posts so you have to click to read the rest of it.  Or continuing to have some mammoth long posts that you might not want to deal with.  I'm not sure which is better, so I'll try the break thing for a while.  Only on long posts.

Okay, I have to admit, there is a third option.  I could edit my self and not write freakin ridiculously long posts.  However, since that ain't happenin.  Let's just stick with 1 and 2 which are actually viable options.  By the way, if anyone actually has an opinion on this please share.  I have no idea which is more annoying for people in general.