Going to my Happy Place

Mines of Moria, indeed. It has been a stupid day. By lunchtime my best friend had called to tell me her heart had been broken, by 4pm I discovered that a virus deleted a significant portion of my experimental design (which went from 12 pages of brilliance to 3 pages of squares, symbols, and the random phrase "uncooked rice"), and I just read an article about how the Cambridge primate lab is abusing its marmosets.

Fuck.

It's a good thing I have all you fine people in my life and that summer is coming.

The Trilogy of the UK doctorate: Part I

Lately I feel like Frodo in "The Fellowship of the Ring", namely like when he and the rest are passing through the Caradhras mountains, just as it gets real tough:



As you may recall, their next stop after the mountains are the Mines of Moria. This is where I am currently (metaphorically speaking), in my proposal-writing process.

Like the sunken-eyed, malnourished, beaten yet resilient little Hobbit, I too trek on for my life. In about four days, though, I will awaken to a different world (i.e. "differentiated PhD Status")



Ah. Reprieve at last! But wait, something is still amiss...

ah yes, that would be the dissertation. But that's not until part III, 2 years from now.

To be continued!

MARS, b*tches!

I am super excited about the success of the Phoenix Mars Lander. I actually cried watching the mission control celebration (I always do at these). When I was little I wanted to be an astronaut, and I am still a total astronomy freak. But the point is, all of this reminded me of my absolute favorite Dave Chappelle sketch: Black Bush. (the bit on Mars is at the very end)

Hairy Coo's and Cooper's Hair

There are two issues that need immediate address:

1. Hairy Coo's, or Highland Cows, are the cutest things ever. I was reminded of this during my recent trip to Scotland. Just look at them!!





When I was in the gift shop at the National Modern Art Museum in Edinburgh, there was a table of Hairy Coo stuff that I was fawning over. Maybe I feel an affinity with the red hair. Anyway, upon exiting the museum with Erin, Ben, and Jamie, I reached down to put my coat on and, no joke, a Hairy Coo stuffed animal had ATTACHED ITSELF to the velcro of my jacket. No, I did not steal it! Of course, I took this as a sign that he wanted to go home with me, so I went back into the shop and paid his ransom. Here is my new buddy (he likes to drink coffee and read Darwin, apparently):





Awwwwww!

2. What. is. up. with Anderson Cooper's hair??!! Don't get me wrong- I love AC. He brings me my daily dose of American news via podcast every evening. But seriously. A man who can rock a full head of that much gray deserves a decent cut. I have no idea how it went from great to stupidly buzzed with that unsightly tuft at the top. This seems to work on Highland cattle, but not on the Coop.

Good (longer all around, no tuft):



Not bad/Pushing it (sides shortening, tuft begins to appear):



WTF? (this has got to be stopped)


Anderson, come back to us!!!

Guatemala!

So, after a very tumultuous year my employers finally decided that the PhD students would be happiest if given the freedom to choose their own fieldwork sites. Imagine that! (after all, we're not in the military. Or are we?)

Anyway, thankfully the shitshow that was the fieldwork issue has subsided. My choice, you ask? Guatemala, August 25th ETA. I am thrilled and can't wait to get there.

La Antigua (where I'll be August through December)



The volcano "El Fuego" towering over Antigua. Scary/cool!



Pyramid in Tikal, Yucatan




Start planning your visits!

Anna's gone and Edinburgh

After a lovely dinner of mussels, white wine, and chips with mayo, I just unfortunately had to say good-bye to one of the most wonderful people I've ever met. I was lucky enough to have had Anna from Belgium (originally from Kazakhstan) as my across-the-hall neighbor since January. She lavished upon me Belgian chocolate nearly every other weekend and is kind enough to be hosting me in Brussels in July, where I plan to eat more chocolate and drink LOTS of beer, and from where I plan to bring back a case of the prized Westvleteren back to Seattle for my bro, Alejandro, Kevin, Rodney, Tim, and Jimmy to celebrate the purchase of Big Al's brewery.

As if going out to dinner wasn't enough of a risk, I also realize it's an extremely unwise decision to be taking a trip to Edinburgh tomorrow but hell I'm doing it anyway. I'm flying over to Scotland (a short 25-minute jump across the Irish Sea) with my friend Jamie to my old home town for Erin's 32nd birthday! We'll be celebrating at the Elephant House, one of the best coffee houses in the world, where J.K. Rowling first began to scribble the Harry Potter novels on a napkin. Then we're off to the pubs, maybe good old Sandy Bells, the non-touristy refuge and home of traditional Scottish folk music jam sessions. The ladies (friends from seminary days) are actually there on business solving the world's problems with the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. I on the other hand will be revisiting some of my old haunts- the Divinity School to pop in and say hi to my old Barthian buddy John McDowell, Edinburgh Castle, the Castle gardens, and Royal Mile Whiskeys, of course.

See you on Thursday!

False Alarm

I am still getting used to the fact that in scientific research you are either right or wrong. In the humanities and even social sciences you can pretty much say whatever you want as long as your argument is persuasive. Never with science.

In my limited scientific background I have never been wrong. I feared being wrong, especially in Mr. Nichols' 11th grade chemistry class during quals, wherein we had 4 chances to determine 3 given chemicals correctly for our entire grade. The process lasted weeks, and though one of my favorite teachers, his goal here was to mess with our vials to make them as hard to determine as possible. Needless to say I got them all right in the first 3 trials. Maybe I worry too much.

But last night I experienced the horror of what I thought was being wrong in science. It was probably one of the worst feelings I have ever had. It must have been what the other juniors felt whom Nichols mercilessly failed, but exponentially worse. I felt my doctoral hypothesis slowly crumbling around me, and there was nothing I could do. After convincing myself not to have a nervous breakdown, I slowly moved the mouse over to the left-hand side of the computer screen to a folder called, "Alternative Research Ideas".

Thankfully there were at least two ideas here that I could work with. But you know what? I didn't need them after all because about 2 hours later, I realized that my hypothesis would work. I wasn't actually wrong; I was fake wrong. I made what some call a Type I error. At least it wasn't 2 years from now, right? Like this guy:



I think I'm going out for a drink to celebrate not being wrong. Oh, wait, it's only 3pm. Oh, wait, I live in Ireland.

cheers.
Hillary

"Hunger" premieres at Cannes

Reposted from the Times Online 15/5/08:

The controversial history of Northern Ireland's troubles was brought to vivid light in Cannes today with the screening of Hunger, directed by Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen.

Dramatising life inside the notorious Maze prison and the highly emotive events surrounding the 1981 IRA hunger strike, the film opened the Un Certain Regard section of the festival, which encourages innovative works and young talent.

The film stars Irish actor Michael Fassbender, 31, who starved himself for two months to play the IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands

McQueen said he wanted to capture what it was like to hear, see, smell and touch the blocks where IRA prisoners were incarcertated in 1981 and convey something which could not be found in books or archives.

The London-born director said: "When I was a child growing up in 1981, aged about 11 or 12, there were three things that influenced me: the Brixton riots, Tottenham winning the FA Cup - which was fantastic - and Bobby Sands.

"His image appeared on the TV screen virtually every night with a number underneath it and it stayed with me. That passion and that level of confrontation to die on hunger strike.

"This memory and this opportunity drew me to find out more about him and I thought it could be a powerful film."

McQueen, who had never written a script before, described the research process of speaking with ex-prisoners, prison officers and priests who had visited the Maze as "probably the heaviest experience of my life emotionally".

He said he initially contemplated having no dialogue at all.

"But then I started to think about there being, after a period of no dialogue, an avalanche of dialogue."

The film is almost without dialogue for it's first hour, before an unbroken 22 minute take of Sands discussing his proposed hunger strike with his priest.

McQueen said of filming in Northern Ireland: "What became apparent was how so many people had been touched by this story and it was quite remarkable how everyone knew where they were when Bobby Sands died during the hunger strike, everyone had some kind of relationship to the events of that time."

Bobby Sands Mural, The Falls Road, West Belfast

Erin and I after signing the Peace Wall, which separates The Falls Road and Shankhill neighborhoods.

Paul Curreri

Seldom do I come across music that is literally soul-saving. There is plenty of music by gifted singer-songwriters that resonates way deep down, and while it is absolutely beautiful it can often be paralyzingly depressing (Elliot Smith, Damien Rice, Mindy Smith, Rosie Thomas, Jeff Buckley). There is also the rare, frighteningly innovative and brilliant repertoire, like Radiohead: again, gorgeous but it always seems to leave me a little more anxious or melancholy than I wanted to be. Zeppelin rocks my face off, but conjures up memories of an evil ex-boyfriend. So what am I supposed to do if I want to feel sympathized with and transcendent, but don't want to end up punching someone, crying, or killing myself?

I have found 3 artists so far who solve this problem. Rachmaninoff (namely his 2nd piano concerto) got me through most of high school and college, Ray Lamontagne saved me during the first year out of college and continues to do so, and I don't know what I would have done this year without Paul Curreri. These are men who bellow cries of mercy from the gutters of despair yet refuse to whine about death; instead they give it the finger and sing (or play) into it's face.

To be sure, it's a sad world most of the time but let's be realistic: it's more complicated than that. If you are a normal human being you'll understand that this world if anything is paradoxical: spells of utter shittiness mixed with bursts of great joy, often happening concurrently in the same day, or even same 10 minutes. And sometimes you don't want to analyze or feel things- you just want to shoot the breeze on a nice day over a bourbon with your best buddy and forget about everything. No bullshit.

These guys understand this very human concept. Sergei and Ray have more of an excuse to be a bit on the heavier side- they lived in Russia and in a chicken coup, respectively. But Paul, I believe, validates the spectrum of the human experience while not letting you get away with feeling too sorry for yourself. He is blues-based, often moving quickly and gracefully between styles, navigating with poetic lyrics and taking surprising turns. Enjoy.


"Tight Pack Me Sugar" (skip ahead to 2:10)



"California"



More excellent videos here

Concerned? I'd wager not as much as this hippo...

Nothing makes my eyes roll and triggers my gag reflexes more than Range-Rover driving yuppies who book extreme adventure vacations to countries in the Amazon or Congo where local citizens make 10 cents a day so they can return home to their Range-Rover driving friends and tell them over a $600 bottle of brandy how they barely escaped the clutches of a maniacal hippopotamus. "It was horrible, Julian. I was half way inside the beast when Gwyneth's 7-carat engagement ring must have blinded the bastard. Same diamond mined no less up the road by some very dear looking little boys. The irony!"

But no matter how much this bothers me, there's little I can do to control this phenomenon as there will always be rich people who will spend thousands paying other rich people to guide them through poor countries with endangered ecoregions so they can do ridiculous things. Thankfully there’s a charity that’s capitalizing on this trend, and turning it to good use. And the target market would be BoBos.

Today I happened across a brochure for the Concern Challenge 2008. Concern Worldwide is a UK Charity that I was previously unfamiliar with, but apparently they are well established in organizing “treks” to exotic places in the world like Ethiopia, Nepal and even Transylvania (vampires not included). They can also set you up to mush with sled dogs or jump out of planes (although, who hasn't been skydiving these days? geez). After you sign up for one of their adventures, you begin fund raising a minimum of 5,000 euro (that's $7,700) that goes towards world hunger relief and health care.

Though these trips come off as little obnoxious, I'll definitely give CW credit for being innovative enough to make them all about donating money for very worthwhile causes. I'm not sure exactly how much of the money actually goes to the impoverished, but I'll assume it's most of it. And who knows? Someday I may get tired of academic travel or even organizing my own excursions. So next year I may be asking you to sponsor me, or inviting you over so I can tell you about my near-miss with the last wild snow leopard after a record-setting ascent up K2. Just be sure to BYO brandy.

"Endlessly complicated and interesting"

This blog began and still emanates from an unsavory desire to create a diversion from real work, and though it is much more fun than working, I am starting to feel guilty for it. So I made a compromise with myself today that sometimes I would write about work-related things (no gossip, though...sorry!).

Daniel Kahneman is one of my heroes in the field of cognitive psychology and currently works at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School (why did I leave New Jersey again?). He is best known for his work in behavioral economics, namely Prospect theory which basically describes how people make decisions based on their evaluations of potential losses and gains. (Similar ideas have been applied in the area of religion, like the "Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis" of my former professor Dominic Johnson and current adviser Jesse Bering, a theory which in my opinion doesn't suffice for explaining economics of religion, so I spent the whole day writing about why not...) But anyway, I thought of this quote by Kahneman today- one that has always stuck out in my mind as partly his reason for entering the field of psychology. He recalls being a small boy in Nazi-occupied France:

It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others – the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting (Kahneman, 2003, p. 417).

So very true. And even still, the field of behavioral economics continues to explain human behavior especially as we analyze it through an evolutionary lens. But enough work for today. Next time, I'll tell you about monkeys and morality....to be continued!

Ribs!

Three little letters: OMG. That's what I think every time I eat ribs. With the warm weather and BBQ season here, I can't stop thinking about them. The smell, the taste, the texture-- bring on the ribs!

I didn't always used to feel this way about the best food on the planet. To be honest, it's not that I ever didn't like ribs, it's just that I didn't know that I did. You see, in high school I went through this very weird vegetarian stage because all of my friends were doing it. I was trendy at the expense of my health. I was too lazy to supplement my protein properly, so logically I just ate a lot of bread and cheese and candy. It was dumb.

Now, when it comes to food, my family doesn't mess around. Our standards are the highest. My grandmother and mother are artisans in the kitchen, and if they're not cooking, someone damn good better be. Any of us would just rather not eat than eat crap. Well if we're going to be literal about it, then I'll put it this way: either of these women could make crap taste good.

Well, along came graduation and my subsequent party. Since this was a big event, mom and grandma had the day off. So, in accordance with their excellent taste, they decided to fly in Tennessee ribs from the world-class Corky's in Memphis to the delight of everyone except me, the anemic rebel without a cause. I was angry primarily that I had nothing to eat except potato salad, but even moreso that a sauce-covered hunk of pig meat could outshine me at my own party.

But now I understand: Corky's ribs aren't just good, they're damn fine. Once I was lost, and now I am found, in a great big pile of BBQ ribs.

Cats on Leashes

Have you ever seen a cat being walked on a leash? If so, then you have also probably experienced the cognitive dissonance that this image evokes. There is just something not right about it at all. See how terrified this cat looks?

Not too long ago, my friend Ryan snapped this shot of our friend Florian at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This kitty was certainly not on his way to an animal rights protest.



I know that my parents' cat, Callie, would never stand for this. It's bad enough that this huntress can't go outside. But to put her on a leash so she can? This reminds me of a Deep Thought by Jack Handy that goes,

"One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. 'Oh, no,' I said. 'Disneyland burned down.' He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late."

This is exactly how cats must feel when harnessed up: the victim of some cruel joke. The best they can do for Callie is let her roam around by the pool. She seems happy enough. I promise, Callie, no matter what, I will never put you on a leash.

Barack Obama

My generation loves Barack Obama. This is mainly because he is the only politician and perhaps even among the few people in our lives who hasn't (yet) bullshitted us. As a recently turned 26-year-old, I can say that I'm elated to be free from the 18-25 age bracket, which, in my opinion, should just be re-named the "bullshit years" on any survey. These are the years wherein we enter adulthood with the belief that every other adult supports our earnest and idealistic desires to heal the world, and wherein we come to face the ugly truth that many of them don't because they never learned, or at least have forgotten how, to share. During these years, we learn with malignant disappointment that many people just don't care, and will do or say just about anything to keep care from happening.

At 26, the bullshit in my life certainly hasn't subsided; I think by this point I've just acclimated to it, or always expect it, or can call it from afar. But once in awhile, it's really nice not to feel superfluously defensive. I know Barack Obama isn't perfect but I also know that his intentions are certainly not to kick over my generations' sandcastles. He is down with the spirited, idealistic, and peace-loving soul (remember what it was like: you'll find it deep inside) in all of us.



"I don't think I've encountered anyone with a greater combination of heart, charisma, brilliance, and potential than Barack Obama." _ Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School

Meet Erin

Here's Erin, one of my best friends who I met at PTS. That's a lie. We met at the Ivy Bar in Princeton a year-and-a-half ago on karaoke night, a place which set the tone for the rest of our adventures together (unpredictable, weird, and really fun). This is a montage of Erin "contemplating" various things on some of our excursions this year. The first is a sculpture in the foyer of the Frames concert in Dublin, the second was taken at the Bushmills Distillery in N. Ireland, and the third in front of a "monkey tree".