Peer review
Am currently reviewing a paper that is utter nonsense. But there it is.
Cheered by this.
More kissing in public I think. In general.
Heard a rumour once that the Parisian tourist board hires couples to wander around Paris and snog at romantic locations, just to keep the "City of Love" thing rolling. Wander round Paris, stop every so often for some snoggage, get paid... hell, sounds like a winner to me.
Moving to a new house at the moment. Well... sort of. Most of my stuff's over there anyway. Still got quite a lot of shite in the old place. Need a friend with a car. Actually, need a car myself. Vroom I say.
Blimey. It's my birthday on Friday.
Age crisis looms.
addendum
Oh, and I already checked wikipedia. Need MORE.
Release the gonadotropes!
There is nothing in this world like fudge donuts and coffee for breakfast.
So... today I want to know what gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnrH) does. I want answers to that question in any and every way conceivable, from biochemistry on upwards. Been hunting around for endocrinology papers etc, but am kind of unsure as to where to look... anyone help? What I need is a friendly biologist... wait, I think I know one...
Oh, and yes, that is precisely what Autocopy did. To be honest, I have no idea why I kept it for so long. It automatically copied what you highlighted on a webpage, which was annoying if you wanted to then replace the contents of a search box with what you just highlighted. As soon as you selected the text in the box, it autocopied that. Used to drive me mad. But things like that tend to make me feel like a bit of a fool, as if I am perhaps not using it right and, if I were to just stick with it for a bit longer, I'd have some great epiphany. Or something. That'd be by obstinate streak. Anyway, I have ripped it from Firefox and now feel much better for it.
Two things:
One, I am VERY excited.
Two, to continue a theme.
jiggerypokery
Fixed it! Seemed to be a problem with the Autocopy extension on Firefox. Uninstalled it, moved on with my life. Yey.
Battling my hangover with sandwiches and vegetable juice.
Disruption
Yes, yes, I know the link in that last post doesn't work. It's not my fault; for some reason I can't select text any more on this computer. It's getting on my tits a bit, actually. Things stay highlighted for about a second. Gah.
Gah I say.
Oh lordy I am hungover today.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
So, thanks to Andy for lobbing this my way...
http://tinyurl.com/6w62I've had a few run-ins with creationists myself. The Christian Union went all guns blazing for me during my MSc, I think because I was known to be an evolutionary type and also vaguely popular in my college. It's nuts. You can't get anywhere, really. Creationists do actually speak a different language, there's no common ground on which to hold a discourse. I mean, when you can actaully get them to cheerfully admit that reason has no part of their position... what can you do? When a particularly lengthy debate with one of the missionary types was winding down, I asked (out of curiosity really) how old he thought the Earth was. He said he didn't have a figure in his head, but "roughly 6400 years, at a guess".
Faced with that... what can you do?
Attempting to fix a website today. Got hoardes of tiny 16 yo girls heading to the lab site at the end of this month when a piece in a magazine comes out. Need to make it work, but someone made their images too big. Gah.
That financial crisis I mentioned a while ago should be sorted by the end of the week. Hoorah. The university has finally decided to release the money my industrial sponsor owes me. About time. What's the point of whoring out my intellect if I don't actually get the filthy, filthy money at the end of it? What's the point, eh?
Exactly.
"If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age, and anybody would percieve that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno."
Mark Twain
Epiphany
But WHY pheromones? WHY study them? Just because other mammals use them, what possible ground is there for making the initial assumption that humans use them too? Why should people become more sensitive to them at various times? WHY should social condition and mating strategy POSSIBLY effect detection ability of pheromones? HOW would that work anyway? What's the mechanism? HOW? DAMMIT HOW?
Such were the questions rolling around in my head this weekend. Facing the very realy possibility that anyone asking me that question in a formal academic situation would be faced with a sage nod and "that's a very good question, I'm afraid we don't have an easy answer at the moment" (which is Academic for "fucked if I know").
Until yesterday.
"...the hormone GnRH appears to be in a position to serve as a coordinating system for the multitude of events occuring during reproduction, including changes in olfactory sensitivity to pheromones."
Oh thank you Wirsig-Wiechmann, Celeste (2001). In 5 pages you have saved my PhD.
Who'd have thought it? One hormone conrols not only aspects of reproductive decision making, but also olfaction... how fantastic. Not just of primates, either. Nor just mammals. ALL THE VERTEBRATES. Oh, except sharks, it seems.
I grin.
So, here's to gonadotrophin-releasing hormone. Long may it continue to stimulate the nervus terminalis whilst simultaneously releasing FSH and LH into the vertebrate system.
Yeeha.
wOOT
Our techno-mage has the new X-server up and running. Life may never be the same.
Credo
Am very beardy today. Seem to have has some sort of hormonal surge; it's as if my face has just gone mmmmmmBEARD all of a sudden. Most odd.
Drank too much again last night. Really, I don't think my body can take much more. Watching people doing karaoke in the union. What laughs. Until someone asked me some rather searching questions and plunged me in to introspection. Great.
I'm trying to write an essay at the moment. I don't think it makes much sense, but it's 2 months overdue and goddamit I have to produce some written work soon. Dominance and human mating behaviour indeed. Well... I suppose somebody has to .
More participants coming this afternoon. Get them dribbling in to bottles etc. As they say, wOOT.
Right. My body is ready for coffee. Caffeine and alcohol; my two drugs of choice. Great stimulant, great nepenthean. One brings me up, the other puts me down. Oh twin suns, oh great gods...where would I be without you?
Asleep, probably.
Rapid retraction.
Ok, forget what I was saying before; I was being a muppet.
But then, it's not really my fault. The data from my experiment is spread out all OVER the place and bringing it together is a fairly intense process. So I missed a bit. And the bit I missed is the list of people who actually CANNOT smell things. Of which there are a few. Not many, it's true. But some. So it's all going okeh. Grin.
I turned in to an ARSEHOLE on Thursday night. Mate's birthday. Got him totally wasted (hahaha) but accidentally wasted myself too. Oops. Back to his afterwards, where I spent about an hour shouting at him. Haven't done that to a mate for ages. Last time I did it, the guy started to cry. Not this time. To be honest, he seemed too drunk to fully understand what was happening. Ah well. Felt utterly guilty on Friday, so apologised, and we sorted it all out. So that's ok.
What was I shouting about?
What could possibly make one guy shout at his very good friend for an hour? Using such choice phrases as "seriously, what the FUCK are you doing?" ? What could do that?
Go on. One guess.
Sitting in my lab at the moment, not really doing any work. Listening to Rufus Wainwright, of whom I am suddenly a very big fan. Also half hoping that my supervisor isn't going to ask me for a report of that paper I said I'd review. Oops.
Some mates of mine hunted me down on Friday to give me a balloon and a cake. Apparently they thought I needed cheering up. Touched I was. Go me and my great friends.
Eschaton
It turns out that the ethics form I submitted yesterday for the experiment I am *ahem* already running is an old version. It further turns out that the secretary of the ethics committee has no apparent sense of humour. As a final punchline, everyone in my lab seemed to know this except me. I told M that I had sent a "lighthearted email" in response to being told off about the form and was somewhat surprised by the terse reply I had received. M was not surprised, and looked slightly ashen when I mentioned the email.
Ah well, you live and learn.
Everyone can smell everything in the bottles I give them. This is not going well. As a surprising bonus, if this is because my protocol is slightly more rigid that the last labmember to investigate these compounds, then I may have accidentally weakened her research.
Good thing she's away, I supppose.
It's my mate's birthday tomorrow. He'll be 22.
My god, I feel old.
Not in a serious way. Not really. But I am significantly closer to 30 than most of my friends. For fuck's sake, I'm moving in with a 19 year old in a month or two. One of my friends' girlfriend is PREGNANT.
I mean, really. It's too much.
Oh... no
Well, this hasn't happened in a while.
Rapidly running of money. Personally I blame this town, which is totally, completely and ludicrously expensive. Also writing deposit cheques for me and my buddy for flat next year. Oh and the rent for my current house. Oh ... buddha.
Don't really know what I'm gonna do about that. Don't get more funding until the end of June. Gah. Well, there is one possibility, and that's that my supervisor finally gets in to gear and gets me that cash from my industrial sponsors. Double quick please.
Bugger.
Perhaps it has something to do with having an audience...
You never can tell.
Running participants through my experiment today, as long as
everything's still working. Everything crashed the day before yesterday.
Webpages that used to work no longer functioned. Happily the wonderous computer mage in my lab fixed it. This whole outfit would grind to a
slow, inevitable halt without him.
Yeah. Mate and I put on a play. When the Wind Blows. Fun with nuclear
holocaust. Incredibly stressful. My shoulders hurt from being up around
my ears for so long. Seemed to go well, though. Must say I face the
return to normal academic life with no small amount of relief.
You know, I really want a Powerbook. I wonder what I can do about that.
Have a horrible feeling my experiment may not work. So far all the
subjects can smell everything I give them. Mind you, there's only been 4
so far. Wait and see, wait and see.
Better do some work, I suppose.
ctrl alt delete
So, it's official.
I have an observation for everyone.
Talking to people is a really good idea.
I mean, I knew /that/. I've been talking to people for years, and I'm
never one to bottle things up... well, maybe sometimes I am. But...
well. There were some issues that needed to be resolved and
all it took was a chat. And now it's alll better.
Except I /hate /beef jerkey in all its forms. Blech.
So. PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, hear me: Talking it through is a great idea.
Put yourself at risk, go on. Even if it doesn't work out, you'll feel
better.
I promise.
