http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091209/ap_on_re/us_rel_religion_today
"What we're celebrating this year is the promise of the sun returning. That's S-U-N, not S-O-N," said Bill Weir, a retired marketing executive from Plymouth.

"Then the Christians stole it," added Marie Alena Castle of Minneapolis, the 82-year-old founder of Atheists for Human Rights and an atheist activist for two decades. It's a season of celebration for the Jewish faith as well, with Hanukkah.

Still, none of the atheists interviewed for this story expressed a wish to be left out of Christmas entirely.

"Food, we like. Presents, we like. Seeing family, we like," said Val Woelfel of St. Paul, an aspiring archaeologist. Woelfel, 47, and her boyfriend, Bjorn Larsen, 32, planned to erect a tree in their living room: "Sacred trees are an ancient custom. It's pretty, it smells nice and it's pagan," Woelfel said.


I don't think I can call myself an atheist if practicing the traditions of ancient, defunct religions & cultures is considered atheistic. I really wonder how the interviewer located these people, and why some of them consider themselves atheists. I guess it's possible to be atheistic without being areligious, and vice versa, but it still seems very weird to me.

Had some unusual experiences this semester.

1) Earlier, I occasionally felt pissed at some of the instructors and the academic situation vis-a-vis tests and test prep and the like. Now I'm ok with it. I signed up for this, knowing full well I was taking a 15 credit course load while working 35+ hours almost every week. It's ok, and the blame surely doesn't rest with the Instructors.

2) Coming to grips with the 7 in me. Yeah, it's a waste of time better spent studying, but it helps disengage from the tension, and hell, a few times I have been able to really take that energy and channel it to what I needed to do.

3) I've burned out about three times now, each one harder to bounce back from, and the last two times blurring together.

There's a very real, though still unlikely chance I'll fail a course or two.

I couldn't concentrate on studying for the last three tests. I went into the last Physical Chem test with zero studying, and having failed to complete the last two homework assignments. I think I probably did well enough for a score somewhere in the 60%'s, which added to the homework I did do and my first test will likely give me a solid B on the runup to finals week. If I blow it on the final, this is one of the courses I could fail. It's a prereq for things later on too.

Studied less than 15 minutes (and that was scattered) for the second Biochem exam. People usually do poorly on his exams, so he ends up curving well, but this is one of the highest scoring classes he's had. I guessed on about 70% of the multiple choice questions, though most of those guesses were at least educated guesses. We'll see. This is another course which is a prereq for 2 classes I'm taking next semester. If I get less than a C in it, it will necessitate some extreme revamping of my next two years of school.

But the best part of all of this is that I've hit my absolute limits and found that, this time, I'm psychologically robust enough to bend with it instead of breaking. I'm still in it, and will stay in it, no matter what. That's a pleasant attitude.

I'll need to study Linear Algebra over Winter break to test past it in the Spring or Summer. It, too, is a prereq for classes I wish to take, and isn't available schedule wise for me in the Spring or Summer terms (unless I fail Biochem, that is :P ).

C'est le vie. And I love life. :D

Inventor of Leaded Gasoline and discoverer of Chlorofluorocarbons as refrigerants, killed at the age of 55 by one of his own inventions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113766846&ft=1&f=1003

"If you're working on a problem you can solve in your own lifetime, you're not thinking big enough."

My Day At Work:

Finish calculating nucleotide percentages over regions of 5 plasmids, then send in an order form for the synthesis of 160 sequencing primers and 745 sequencing reactions over those 5 plasmids.  Spend almost as much money as I net in take-home pay in 3 months.

Hopefully the sequencing turns out nicely, so I don't have to design more primers and spend more money.


It was enjoyable too.  I also had a (mostly) enjoyable time this weekend writing an HTA (HTML Application) in VBScript that lets me input a DNA sequence and get back the nucleotide percentages.  The "mostly" was due to having the script initially fail when made as a Windows Scripting Host (WSH) hosted VBScript.  Turns out the "InputBox" feature of WSH only allows up to 254 characters.  A person on visualbasicscript.com turned me on to HTAs and the problem was solved.  Fun times after that.

I'm beginning to automate myself out of things to do at work.

Washed some dishes, autoclaved some microcentrifuge tubes, and sorted through some plasmid prep kits another lab wasn't going to use.

I'd have to say it was a good day.

I was reading and thinking again of the financial crisis, and a presumption of mine that the majority of those involved in finance at the regulatory and institutional level are SP/SOs (with some SP/SXs and SO/SPs) in terms of instinctual variant.

I wondered again what it would do to the financial world to either have an influx of sexuals, or at least be cognizant that in the SX realm (the realm of relations between things) is a whole sphere of knowledge you aren't paying attention to or thinking about, and really need to do so. It doesn't necessitate the intervention of a sexual to right certain kinds of wrongs, it just takes the sincere recognition that here is an area you really have to focus time and energy on, cause if you don't, you'll be screwed.

Quote from Riso and Hudson on the last instinct (for those who may not know anything of the variants):
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/articles/NArtInstVar.asp

and the third Instinct is least developed and creates "blind spots" in our personality.

Quotes from a recent Bloomberg article on the fall of Lehman Brothers:
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&sid=aUTh4YMmI6QE

“They didn’t know who Lehman was intertwined with because they hadn’t done their homework,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University economics professor who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001 for his analysis of markets with asymmetric information.

The relations between things and institutions is something sexuals are compelled by their very nature to care about.

Fratto asked what she was doing at work. “She told me that every bank in New York City had their back offices filled with people trying to figure out their counterparty risk to Lehman,” Fratto recalled. “I was stunned. Everyone knew that Lehman had been listing for six months.”

SP/SO can generate a tendency (at it's worst) to care about the institution you yourself are involved in, and forget the web of interconnections that pervade the larger social sphere you are a part of.  A neighbor gets stung by a mosquito and you just see to it that you don't get stung.  That neighbor drops dead a few days later, and you suddenly remember you've been sharing food, drink and toiletries with them all along.  Suddenly they realize: Maybe the virus can spread that way too.

It takes a few hundred thousand SX-lasts (and SP/SXs) to triage a situation a few hundred SX-firsts could have nipped in the bud.  And the "big players" even get it wrong:

For the executives and government officials who met at the New York Fed the weekend before Lehman went bust last September, the right decisions weren’t obvious. Their focus was on mitigating damage from about 1 million over-the-counter derivatives trades that Lehman had participated in, according to people who attended the meetings. The men and women in the room weren’t prepared when panic struck the $3.6 trillion money market industry, which provides short-term loans called commercial paper used by corporations such as General Electric Co. to pay everyday bills.

Or, they could continue to ignore the SX-firsts (really, what SX-firster could maintain enough interest in fiat exchanges to have a long term career in finance?  Very few and far between ones) and just go with what they created in the first place to protect their blindspot (as well as protect against the tendency toward financial risk-taking that grips so many SP types): the Glass-Steagall Act.

A significant number of credit unions allow people to use services at branches of other credit unions which they are networked with.  It doesn't take a monolith to provide the same things a megabank can.  Hell, even a megabank could "self-regulate" by breaking down into a few hundred smaller entities which share limited liability (both ways) with a parent corporation, or umbrella network.  That even makes good financial sense.

By G.K. Chesterton   

There are two kinds of peacemakers in the modern world; and they are both, though in various ways, a nuisance. The first peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that he agrees with everybody. He confuses everybody. The second peacemaker is the man who goes about saying that everybody agrees with him. He enrages everybody. Between the two of them they produce a hundred times more disputes and distractions than we poor pugnacious people would ever have thought of in our lives.

Over the last 2 and a half years that I've lived in Indiana, I've spent at least $1000 at various Speedways, not including gasoline purchases.  During busy times of the day, people have often formed lines in front of the cashiers to ensure the quickest and easiest service for everyone.  It's pretty much inevitable that jerks will act entitled and cut in that line, treating others like shit to be walked over.  This most recent time (this morning, 8/10/09, around 8:10 AM at the ******* store) a person behind me in line was trying to keep the line in order, yet still some entitled assholes cut.  And the clerks let them, and gave them service, treating those of us in line like shit too.

I don't blame the clerks.  They have a relatively low paying job, and no one (but certain paying customers) wants to make a scene trying to ensure fairness and courtesy, especially if they haven't been informed by management that they can do so.  I blame management for not ensuring that all customers are treated equal.  I'm done trying to ensure fairness.  If I can avoid it, I'll never stop in a Speedway again.  You've lost my business.

"Woo!  We won the jackpot!  We'll be rich, honey, when we get back home!"

"I'm sorry sir, but what happens in Vegas...stays in Vegas."

The only question in my mind is whether this is a mild case of H1N1, or a (so far) 5 day long cold with varying symptoms.

I don't feel too bad, just a bit weary.  It started with a sore throat last Wed, turned into something more on Thur.  I seemed to have had a fever of sorts Thur night, as I woke up sweating and chilled, which are usually indications of a fever breaking.  Felt like complete shit on Fri, then just more coughing and mild weariness over the last 3 and a half days or so.

What sucks is I've only been able to concentrate on Physics a bit, have gotten behind in the school work, and have a test on Wednesday and a lab today (which I'll try not to miss, but I also don't want to spread this crap around to anyone else).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090701/ap_on_he_me/us_med_michael_jackson_raising_the_dead

This guy has pioneered a way to successfully resuscitate people up to hours after their hearts have stopped beating, without brain damage.

A study of 34 people who had been in cardiac arrest for an average of 72 minutes had 27 of them survive, and 25 of those 27 survive without (noticeable?) brain damage.

This technique has been developing for at least two years now. Given how important it is, I would hope other doctors, hospitals and EMTs will start using it as soon as possible.

I've dropped my first class! Woo hoo! It's a wonderful feeling. Historically I've never dropped, only stopped attending - letting the sense of overwhelm build and build as I did other things such as study psych on my own initiative. This is a first, I recognized the grading rubric and course format weren't easily compatible with me, and that it'd take too much to do this course as well as the other courses I'm taking this summer and work.

Finally getting the school thing down. It feels great!

Woo hoo :) I was getting a strong A, a weak A and a strong B/weak A before spring break, then spring break happened and helped to destroy my momentum.

Finished the final final this semester, and am pretty sure I passed all courses. Except for Calc-based Physics I (which I know I passed - this Physics course seems to have had a strong enough SP/SX bias I was able to score really well on the exams with minimal to no studying or reading of material) all of the courses were redundant as I already had 8+ year old credit for them, but the refreshers were necessary after that long.

11 credits (3 courses) this Summer. 15 credits and 5 courses next Fall. A total of about 6 or 7 more semesters (including Summer sessions) and I'll hopefully graduate with a B.S. degree that'll either assist me to directly start working in computational molecular and cellular biogerontology, or at least go to grad school where I can start working on it pending a Ph.D. and enough work the relevant institution'll be interested in me. Over 200 semester credits just to get a B.S. degree. XP God it'll be nice to finally start working.

"What's so funny Mr. Dumas?"

"Nothing Mr. Jackov, nothing at all."

Too bad he thinks the "people like him" are the entirety of the Chinese population:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090418/ap_on_en_mo/as_china_people_jackie_chan

""I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," Chan said. "I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic."

Chan added: "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want.""

The experiments which can test string theory may not exist simply because too many presumptions are caught up in classical quantum physics and relativity still. Here is potential evidence in favor of String Theory, from unexpected behavior of two experiments:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/42632/title/Strings_Link_the_Ultracold_with_the_Superhot

Potentially operating at thousands of base reads per second without necessarily fragmenting the DNA into smaller sequencing regions beforehand. This is still at the experimental stage, and there are issues to be worked out, but if it does work out a few hundred or thousand "read heads" operating in parallel could bring about a Gattaca-like era in which an individuals genome or transcriptome can be read in minutes.

The technology uses electron microscopy methods to create hydrogen-bond circuits between the bases and modified microscope head and measures the electric potential across this junction to determine what bases are being read.

http://biodesign.asu.edu/news/covering-the-bases-quantum-effect-may-hold-promise-for-lowcost-dna-sequencing-chemical-sensor-applications

Promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I found the picture in the last link below after curiosity over this Bloomberg article prompted a run to Google:

"The country hopes a teenage girl wearing a mini-skirted uniform will boost its international profile and, by extension, the economy. Never mind that at 19, actress Shizuka Fujioka is no longer a schoolgirl. She will travel the world with two other young women as cultural envoys. The plan is to capitalize on Japan’s long-running craze for all things cute. "


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/polka-dots-and-miniskirts-how-japan-wants-world-to-see-it-1643978.html?action=Popup&gallery=no