Sleep is for chelonians

A stunning display of athletic inadequacy

When I spent three and a half months in China last year, I adapted to the local customs and cuisine -- to my great pleasure, I might add. I gained the most in humanistic aspects of course. But there were physical side effects; I lost nearly ten pounds without even trying. And while my general state of fitness was nothing to write home about, neither was it anything to be ashamed of.

I've been in the USA for eight months now and I feel right at home. The culture and customs are mostly very familiar, and the food is easy to like. Nay, too (gr)easy. After a winter of deep hibernation (WITH nutritional intake) my waistline has expanded to Plutonic proportions (i.e. not quite planetary, thank you very much IAU) and so I have decided to give in to one of the few local customs that I had been resisting.

Jogging. Yech. The very word makes me think of Norwegian pickled fish yogurt (which exists only in my mind -- I hope). I know, jogging is not strictly USAmerican -- but the way it's done here is on a whole other level compared to, say, Europe.

Physical exercise in general, in fact, is like that here. It's riddled with bizarre cultural paradoxes. Everything in everyday life is designed to make people's lives easier, allow them to walk less (the Car is Almighty Master of the roads of course), carry less, move less. All week/day long this economy of movement is at full throttle (or minimal throttle, rather?). Then, evenings and weekends witness an explosion of physical activity, in (expensive!) gyms and on sidewalks. People running like hamsters in their little wheels, walking up endless flights of invisible stairs, activating levers and executing exercise routines to the beat of the latest sport/dance fusion frenzy.

Well I say (with no pretension to originality whatsoever) hook up those machines to a set of electrical batteries and power the Eastern seaboard for a year. Solve the energy crisis, yeah?

These criticisms observations aside, my point was, I'm giving in to it. Not the gym thing -- I refuse to pay just for having a place to sweat -- but jogging. Even though in my heart of hearts I still believe, like Frodo's character in the delightful teen horror flick "The Faculty" (which also brought us the twin revelations that snorting aspirin powder can get you high and will help identify alien impersonators), that a person should only run when they are being chased. Though I would add trying to catch a bus or a train to the list of reasonable reasons for running. And maybe performing a flanking manoeuver during a bunker raid in a paintball game.

So today, full of good resolutions and no small amount of self-deception, I got my kit on (including the iPod-in-an-armband, this season's must-have for style-conscious jogsters) and went out for a run in the early morning (11 am) sunlight. Hah. The title of this post says it all. Suffice it to say it's not so much a muscular problem (I'm actually of rather sturdy construction) as a cardiovascular/pulmonary one. There was way more wheezing than running going on. I did stick with it though, and I'm not giving up -- I'll just try to focus on building up my pulmonary capacity for now.

Gosh darn it, that last bit sounds like  something the locals would say. I really am going native.

Still not touching peanut butter though.

One for the books

Specifically, for the "Biologist's Field Guide to Workplace Tippling" that I plan to write at some point, to make the most of my postdoctoral training.

Faced with an emergency situation that many field scientists are all too familiar with, the friendly (is there any other kind?) marine biologists at Southern Fried Science have cooked up a simple yet innovative solution to deal with the problem of running out of beer during an extended data-gathering expedition.

"How to brew beer in a coffee maker, using only materials commonly found on a modestly sized oceanographic research vessel."

Awright! Too bad I'm a bench-bound lab rat, I'd love to test that protocol in situ. I've half a mind to hijack the lab's coffee machine and try it anyway, but much of the romance is lost from not being on an actual expedition. Also, laziness whispers that it's easier to abduct a few bottles from the departmental beer hour every Friday.

Incidentally, I love the following comment left at their blog:

"Now I understand why so many ships carry Vegemite. I had previously thought it’s only practical use was to deter pirates."

If you check out their blog (do it!), take a look at this other post while you're at it. Not funny, but most illuminating.

"The ecological disaster that is dolphin safe tuna"

Pick me! Pick me!

The ultimate in self-discovery for a gene-jockey like me: get your complete genome sequenced for free (or a voluntary contribution) in this ambitious follow-up to the Human Genome Project.

The downside: zero privacy. Do I care? Not a whit.

In my email just now:

You have successfully registered for updates about enrollment in the Personal Genome Project. We will be in touch with you soon.

Thanks,
PersonalGenomes.org

 
So, will they pick me? Stay tuned...

 

Broccoli for the soul

[You may not like it but it's good for you...]

Hypothesis: religion is a byproduct of ancient evolutionary adaptations that resulted in some crucial cognitive mechanisms of humans mind, like decoupled cognition (being able to conduct a conversation in your head with someone while listening to someone else) and hyperactive agency detection (assigning movement of objects or shadows to an unseen person). 

Here's a very didactic conference talk by psychiatrist Andy Thomson on the topic. He starts from the admittedly very astute observation that people crave Big Macs more than they crave broccoli, then goes on to detail the hypothesis above and present evidence to support it.

It's actually interesting beyond the religion angle, because he discusses some classic as well as recent research in neuropsycholoy about how the human mind processes social interactions.

Saturday Stupidity: carbon dioxide is naaaaaaaatural

Inspired by this breathtaking display of ignorance and pigheadedness by Republican congresswoman Michele Bachman, I'm moved to inaugurate a regular series of posts dedicated to such affronts to common sense and scientific fact. I can tell you it's going to be depressing, but we might as well laugh about it.

Carbon dioxide is natural, huh? Yes it is. So is carbon monoxide, for that matter. So is arsenic. Care to add some to your diet, congresswoman?

I'm not going to go into the details of everything else she gets abominably wrong (like the numbers!). I just hope not too many people fall for her crap.

Melancholy like Lego

Getting credit card statements in the post is hardly ever uplifting, but I'm lucky enough that mother dear, who forwards my mail from Belgium, has taken to adding little notes in the envelopes. It takes the sting out and keeps me fluent in the deciphering of hieroglyphs [just kidding, Mom, your handwriting is very readable... to me ;-)].

But the latest missive from the Old World was especially pleasing because in addition to my latest Amex bill, it contained a music CD, though for what occasion I know not. I'm gratefully assigning it to motherly inspiration [thank you!].

The CD is "Bleu Pétrole" by the recently late French singer Alain Bashung, and it contains one track in particular with which I instantly fell in love. Written by songwriter Gérard Manset, it's a hauntingly beautiful song called "Comme un Légo" and the probable source of the motherly inspiration in question. There are a couple of WTF? lines (uh, fries and amoebas? a mango tree with pages?), and some vaguely deist undertones, but let's not be too literal -- yay for artistic license.

Anyway, to hear it, play this YouTube video, which is basically just an excuse to post the song online sort-of-legally. Homemade English translation (any errors and awkward phrases are my fault) after the jump.

America: where sizes really matter, Part 1

Part 1 of a three-part series by January visitor Mom (with comments by me in brackets)

Small is tall, right?

At least when you order a "small" coffee in any of the Starbucks shops in the US...

You say "one small Americano" and the waitress immediately signals her colleague "one tall Americano". OK, you're just off the plane and think your hearing is still impaired from landing or you're dumb tired  from the trip?

Nope, no misunderstanding here, just that strange Starbucks logic where small is "tall", medium is "grande" and large is ... "venti". [The largest size, yet the only one that doesn't actually mean "large"!]

When you know that "venti" stands for 20 in Italian, you realize "one venti Americano" will be 20 ounces (i.e. almost 600 ml) of coffee served. Your daily allowance in one single cup?!

From the department of the blindingly obvious

This news just in:

"Tyrannosaurus rex may have had
much smaller ancestors"
(image and caption from BBC News)

What, are T-Rexes not spontaneously generated in outer space cloning factories? Does that mean they're actually subject to (gasp!) gradual evolution, like all other forms of life on Earth?

I just don't know where to start to tackle this one. Did the BBC reporter previously believe that T-Rexes were descended from really really massive primordial cells that evolved into really really massive early lifeforms that in turn, eventually gave rise to the large dinosaurs, with conservation of roughly the same total size per organism throughout the whole process? Huh?

Well no, of course it was a "shortcut" way of phrasing the idea that an ancestral relative of comparatively small size had been found. No, I'm not letting it go that easily. It's a potentially confusing phrase, and what would have been excusable for a layperson is not so for a professional journalist who purports to report a scientific find or concept.

Way to turn a cool newsflash into a source of annoyance and frustration, BBC person.

*grumpy biologist wanders off, muttering about science journalists and their inappropriate shortcuts*

Shoot to paint

This Monday was the tenth anniversary of the Columbine massacre (of "Bowling for Columbine" fame), which saw two teenagers in Colorado storm their high school with guns, wounding over twenty people, killing twelve other teens, one teacher and finally themselves.

Coincidentally (not to minimize the tragedy of school shootings -- bear with me for a few paragraphs), I spent the day just before playing paintball with a bunch of friends, and found it wicked fun. We played first on obstacle courts to warm up, which reminded me of the training scenes in "Starship Troopers" (sadly, no giant insectoid aliens showed up), then in an arena set up in the woods. I found the latter type of play (called "woodsball" for rather obvious reasons) more fun because games are longer (the other type is called, tellingly, "speedball") and there is more opportunity to use the uneven tree-rich terrain for strategic moves, camouflaging and getting really dirty.

Interestingly, I discovered that I am by temperament more of a sniper than a rampage shooter (a tidbit of info that may be dutifully filed away by an FBI profiler, just in case it is needed one day -- which I'm sure it won't, let me just reassure y'all outright) and that I tend to favor the right flank of the field.

Connecticut take-away

So today a bunch of us BAEF* fellows (Boat of 2008-2009, North-Eastern US crew) met up in New Haven, Connecticut for the annual luncheon hosted by our generous and kindly president, Prof. Boulpaep (of Yale University, hence the location).

We were abundantly wined and dined, led to mingle, then sent home with a packed dinner -- special Easter edition -- courtesy of the Boulpaep's very own flock**.

Let me just tell you, I'm about to make one heck of an omelet!***

* Belgian American Educational Foundation, a.k.a. the nice people who pay me to have fun. And just to clear up any misunderstandings, "having fun" in this context means doing my research. Well, in any context, really.

** Of geese, obviously. Not velociraptors. That would be dangerous. Plus I think you need a permit for those.

*** You should have seen me holding on anxiously to my giant egg all through the 2h30 drive, 15 min. metro ride and 20 min. walk home. I'm not sure what passersby must have thought, though the phrase "special needs" does come to mind.