My favorite spot, where science and art converge

http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/

Is this amazing or what? Numerous ways to visualize data. These are better than your average graph. I'm amazed at how these artists/scientists/geographers/animators/etc communicated dance and this is what I want to incorporate in my future work. Shouldn't all biologists be trained this way???

Science Times

So I've been having a lot of science times at my job and have taken a few sneaky cell phone shots of the most scientific looking activities. The best experience so far however (and doubtless the coolest part of the whole, stupid company) is the glass shop, where they make all of the glassware we use in-house! I knew that this mysterious shop existed, and that the enigmatic man who worked there was an artisan in is own right (he decorates the flasks and tubes with colored glass faces) but what i found was a surprise. In the glass shop is a HUGE, hand blown aquarium, complete with filter and aeration systems! I'll include a picture, but I wasn't able to fit the whole thing in frame, and there's nothing like seeing it in person. It's just such an out of place surprise. The plant itself is dingy, chemical-stained, and gray but the fish in this tucked away room are happy and alive.

Beantown blues

Its been almost a month since I started working as a bartender at Koreana. The benefits have been that I have been brushing up on the language, eating Korean food almost every day, and keeping sane. I am sure that my parents are prouder of me now that I have found a way to simultaneously make money and brush up on my Korean. It's not a bad place to be. However, the managers have been hinting that I work there full-time. Drag. I recently picked up weekend hostessing duties and had some training as a server. They would like me to work as a waitress on days I am not a bartender. For now, I am fending off their requests. I will soon have to land a full-time job so I can have a legitimate excuse for needing some days of the week off. In reality, because I have funds coming through from this bartending gig, the search for a real job has slowed down.

Besides work, life is dull. I did carve a pumpkin. It rotted two weeks into October. Halloween passed without a moment of celebration. I got an extra hour of sleep today. Not that it mattered since I was sleeping in anyways. I have been trying to getting past the after-graduation/have-my-whole-life-ahead-of-me crisis. I am still out of touch with what I want, what I need to do, and where I should be in life. I've already made rash decisions for which I'll have to suffer the consequences for at a later time. I ran blindly to Boston, and I'll soon have to run to some other place when the life that seems to have been created here unravels. These days, I can't tell if I'm miserable, happy, or content. I'm not even sure if happiness matters or if its the only thing that does matter. Nothing seems to make sense.

The leaves have changed and the air is beginning to freeze. I'm singing the beantown blues.

Real Life

Not really real, though, cuz I still cohabitate with my momz. I've been thinking about posting on here for weeks but just haven't gotten around to it. That stops now! This blog is coming back with a (mild) vengeance!!

So before I headed towards New York (and the lovely rooftop moment we shared) I was occupying my time at LSU, extracting snail RNA and sneaking into classes. When I got home from Chicago, I had a job interview with a chemical company called Albemarle in Baton Rouge. I got the job, and as of yesterday, finished my 3 weeks of required training. Most of what I do is general and organic chemistry lab stuff (titrations, NMR, GC, etc.), but there are some other equally uninteresting and much more dangerous things I dabble in. Basically, we get samples from all over the plant/R&D, and we test them for purities, water, or metallic content. Things like that. At first I thought it was pretty cool because the instruments are all huge and industrial and state-of-the-art, but the novelty has since worn off and the job, like most others, has devolved into the realm of the mundane.

The shitty(iest) part of it is that it's shift work. I work 12-hours, either 6 am to 6 pm or vice versa, for a few days, then switch. I also have a shift partner named Jill, who happens to be a rather brusque lesbian type character. She's alright, but I'm a little nervous for my first official shift Monday night. During the last week of training, I got some caustic on my wrist while doing a titration and had to be shipped off the medical in a golf cart. I would post a picture of the bilster, but it's just too graphic in nature.

This is a lie. I'm not posting a picture because you can't see anything, because it was one drop of 20% NaOH, and it was completely pointless for me to 1) be rushed to the nurse on a golf cart, and 2) come in early the next day for an INCIDENT INVESTIGATION. Whatever.

Other than that, I'm sending pathetic emails out to labs and working on the all mighty Statement of Purpose for my apps. I've gotten a few postive responses from USC, UColorado Boulder, Tulane, and some lukewarm ones from Connecticut and NYU so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Funding seems to be a little harder to come by at schools these days. I'm also taking the Bio GRE on Nov 13, so I'm really nervous for that, because I don't know SHIT about biology.

I'll post some sneaky cell phone shots of my lab a little later.

I can't believe you're a Korean bartender now. I'm so jealous. Tell me everything and more.


P.S.
How hilarious is the whole Erik and Lou thing? Now things are awkward, and it's all for no reason! So good.

Re: Artist of the Week

I really liked our last Artist of the Week. Bio-art that somehow managed to look slightly pornographic. So innovative. Here's an artist for this week:

Hyperbole and a Half


I think Paintbrush files should count as art, don't you?

Now if I were in junior high, and this were my Angelfire or Expage, this is where I would paste in the code for my counter, noting the days until our next big adventure. Good thing we're grown-assed women, and blogs have no place for such juvenile nonsense...(It's about 22 days)

Artist of the week: Jason Hackenwerth

http://www.jasonhackenwerth.com/

The time Sam Loomis paid us to go down the street and buy him a pack of Lucky Strikes

Remember it?

pho-tog

i got most of that film developed. the pictures came out but were nothing extraordinary. heres the one of you on the railroad tracks and the only two that i thought had any contrast. how do i get contrast like this in the rest of my pictures??

Las Vegas

So I went to Las Vegas this past weekend with Michael and his mother. Not my first choice of travel destination ( or chaperone, for that matter) but it probably wouldn't have looked very good for me to say "No Mrs. Breitweiser, I'd rather not go on a free trip with you because you drive both Michael and I crazy, thank you," so I reluctantly elected to go. Have you ever been to Las Vegas? I think if I had to vote, I would say that it's the worst large destination type city in the world. Or maybe just worst city in general. My expectation was that the city would be flooded with hordes of good-looking twenty and early thirty somethings, with a scattered number of exceptionally wealthy Europeans and maybe some Asians thrown into the mix. This was not the reality I encountered. The people there are the severely overweight and the scantily clad. The middle aged and above trying to recapture some really sad aspect of their youth, and the solitary, that sit at slot machines for days on end, frowning, smoking, and spending money they won't ever win back. It was just so sad, Jane. Everyone in these casinos just has the most drawn and terrible look on their face. They are either depressed or they are drunk enough to convince themselves that they aren't. Lining both sides of the walkways up and down the strip are Mexican men and women wearing too-big tshirts with phone numbers that advertise instant access to the hottest girls. They're passing out thousands of these little cards with naked girls on them and they all end up on the streets and sidewalks. It's 107 degrees in the sun (which is where they're standing all day and you are walking). Not my idea of a vacation. That being said, we did get to see some good shows: the Crazy Horse at MGM, Blue Man Group at The Venetian, and Cirque du Soleil's "O," which were all varying degrees of awesome. The food was generally overpriced and overrated.

Am I being too uppity about this city? Judgemental? It just made me so sad. And I love drinking too!

Have you written me a mindblowing iPad app yet?

Book of the week! (month? Six months?)

As my mother has so astutely noticed, I seem to be somewhat unemployed at the moment. To remedy her apparent distaste for my lying around and watching food network for the better part of the day, I pretty much spend my time on the Internet (doing really worthwhile things mind you), studying for the GRE, or reading for pleasure. As such, I've got a lot of reading done recently.

Our first book of the week was recommended to me by none other than gangy herself and is called The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. It's just a really eloquently written/translated book about two characters in very different situations, who see the world in very similar ways. It also gives some really brief and generalized information about certain philosophies that I thought were really interesting and accessible. Anyway, I'm including a little excerpt that i found really striking, because it so accurately described the college experience that I saw in so many of my classmates (including Dan, the Actual secret hot one). It is one of the two main characters describing her reaction after reading the masters thesis of a very wealthy but apparently depthless tenant of the building in which she is the concierge:

"Colombe Josse, who has no ongoing preoccupation with Beauty or the destiny of tables, is relentless in her exploration of Ockham's philosophical thought, but she ventures only where her utterly uninteresting semantic simpering cares to take her. The most remarkable thing is that the intention that presides her undertaking, and that is to make Ockham's philosophical theses into the consequence of his conception of God's action, by reducing his years of philosophical labor to the rank of a secondary excrescence of his theological thought. It is sidereal, as inebriating as bad wine and above all the perfect illustration of the way a university works: if you want to make a career, take a marginal, exotic text (William Ockham's Sum of Logic) that is relatively unexplored, abuse it's literal meaning by ascribing it to an intention that the author himself had not been aware of...distort that meaning to the point where it resembles an original thesis...burn all your icons while you're at it...devote a year of your life to this unworthy little game at the expense of a collectivity whom you drag from their beds at seven in the morning, and send a courier to your research director."

This of course all makes more sense within the context of the story but for some reason I really liked how she collectively described a pretty significant number of Bowdoin College honors projects in just a few lines (those damn honors students just got so self-righteous by the end of the year). Anyway, I really enjoyed the book. It's a really good story and the characters are just as cranky as I've felt at my very crankiest.

How goes your internship? I dig the BTSD makeover...

Also, I just wrote this on my new iPad, which was a very unexpected graduation gift from my uncle and his friend. It's like having a great big iPod touch, only without most of the useful apps that it used to come with. Fun to type on.

Inspiration.

http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-12-Challenged.html

If Erik only knew...

Scientific American Mind 21, 7 (2010)
doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0510-7c

Neandertal Symbolism

Nicole Branan

Abstract

Abstract thinking may date back further than previously thought

A metal pin adorning a military uniform signifies rank; a ring on the left hand's fourth finger announces matrimony. Most scientists thought that the capability for such symbolic thinking was unique to modern humans, but a new study suggests that it dates back to before the Neandertals.

[EDIT]

Neanderthal Genome Shows Most Humans Are Cavemen

By Brandon Keim May 6, 2010 | 4:35 pm | Categories: Anthropology, Genetics

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/05/neanderthal-genome/#more-21437#ixzz0s9nDOzet

How a Collar Could Help Deaf People "Hear" Music

http://www.fastcompany.com/1653578/how-a-collar-could-help-deaf-people-hear-music

How would you like to be a professional scanner?

good week, or GREATEST WEEK!?

how would you like to be an owl?

This Happened

The Whitest Boy Alive

The Bowery Ballroom
Tue 4/20 21+ SOLD OUT!
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Wed 4/21 18+ SOLD OUT!

The worst way to start a day

when you chug water in the morning, only to immediately vom
this is a sure sign the rest of the day will be unbearable
something a bro would like.

btw

i have so many words

Red Stick, USA

So my preemptive impressions of Louisiana (the ones I made before arriving here) were pretty much consistent with how I feel a week in. Though not as swampy as I predicted, I'm none too impressed with the landscape, locals, or general southern style.

As you may or may not know, my post-Bowdoin plan is to take a few courses I need (organic chem-II, biochem, and physics-II) then an MCAT prep course, and then apply to and be rejected from as many medical schools as possible. Today my parents and I went over to LSU to check things out and I was thoroughly disappointed in how elitist and skepitical Bowdoin has made me.

I've made really comfortable homes for myself in Houston, Maine, and Copenhagen, but stepping onto that thoroughly purple and golden-clad campus, I'm daunted by the semesters to come. LSU seems a place where both conformity and anonymity are inescapable. Although I don't claim to be an outstanding individualist in any right, I find it hard to believe that I can be happy in a place full of Nike running shorts/Sperry-wearing conservative future ex-wives. I also found that they don't really offer everything I need. WHAT am I going to do? Houston isn't really an option, as I don't have the money to pay for classes and housing. I'm terrified...

Anyway, I guess I should try and just enjoy the time I have left and focus on finding SOMETHING to do. Deadlines are fast approaching.

How was your spring break?? What did you do?

Tell me everything. Should I order you an official Ivies pinney?

Artisans of the Week

This week's artists of the week were discovered as I began my search for the perfect smoking pipe. I stumbled upon some Danish pipe makers. Ungeneric in every way, below are the stories of the artists and their pieces.



Peter Heding
Peter Heding was so taken with pipes that he began carving them on his kitchen table with a knife. When he could not proceed any further, he came to Tom Eltang's workshop in Denmark to learn how to make stems. After being coached by Tom for two years, he has now quit is job as a physician and diabetes researcher in order to make pipes full time.





Erik Nørding
Originally educated in engineering. Pipe carving began as a hobby, but as time went by, he became more interested in pipe making as a profession. The only thing I would say is that his signature resembles Ed Hardy a bit too much.


Moral of the story, pick up an awesome hobby and you too may end up on our artist of the week series.

Alternative Spring Break

So thus far, we've played with cards with brown children and homeless people. Our group has bonded (somewhat) and I've gotten sunburnt (predictable).

Today one of the "teens" we were "working with" taught us a new song:

(Sung to the tune of the Oscar Meyer Weiner Song)

"My hobby has a first name,
It's W-E-E-D.
My hobby has a second name,
It's J-O-I-N-T.
I like to smoke it every day
And if you ask me why I'll sayyyyy:
That marijuana has a way
of fucking up the USA."


Oh, the youth of today...

Artist of the Week

Something tells me it's been more than a week since our last artist of the week, but whatever. Better Than Straight Dope's Artist of the Week this week is the one and only, Marina Abramović! A New York-based performance artist that you may or may not have seen portrayed in an episode of Sex and the City (she lives on display for 12 days and her only way down is via ladders with upturned knives for rungs), there is really only one way to describe Marina: bat-shit crazy, but also awesome. She did a performance titled Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim in 2005 and the program notes from the sixth night read like a recipe for a dish that would have pleased de Sade himself:

"I slowly eat 1 kilo of honey with a silver spoon.

I slowly drink 1 liter of wine out of a crystal glass.

I break the glass with my right hand.

I cut a five-pointed star on my stomach with a razor blade.

I violently whip myself until I no longer feel any pain.

I lay down on a cross made of ice blocks.

The heat of a suspended heater pointed at my stomach causes the cut star to bleed.

The rest of my body begins to freeze.

I remain on the ice cross for 30 minutes until the public interrupts the piece by removing the ice blocks from underneath me."

The Seven Easy Pieces performance lasted 7 nights. Here's a good run-down (though she has done a lot of other crazy shit, too):

http://spikyart.org/seveneasypiecese.html

Anyway, this bitch crazy and I think I'm a little obsessed with her right now. Just for now though. Why bring up this artist of the week, you ask? WELL, it just so happens that she is giving a performance at the MoMA starting in March and continuing on through May 31st! Is this possible? LET'S SEE HER! Let's also start talking about Ivies. We are ordering pinneys. Big things are happening. PASSION PIT.

As for the other things I've been up to, I'll update you on those later. For now, please read up on BroPoints and other things Bro-related here:

http://www.broslikethissite.com/

I think you'll find it disturbingly accurate...

Moments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNVPalNZD_I&feature=player_embedded

Answers to some of our favorite questions:
http://feeds.wnyc.org/radiolab

the white lie

I found a strand of white hair and freaked out. Getting older is aging me.
Updates:
Stopped thinking about what to do with the next few years of my life, seeing as it is just causing me unproductive stress. In between American literature (the Transcendentalists) and my Intro to Buddhism classes, I have determinedly altered my perspective on my future. In the last few weeks, I have received unrequested advice from unexpected places which I can only earnestly accept. So, an optional plan I've recently added to the myriad of so-called options (mostly unrealistic, unless I feel absolutely determined) seems to be to live as a nun in a monastery (preferably one in Belgium where I can learn the fine craft of brewing). For the immediate summer, Plan A would be to live in Charlotte at Sara's parent's retirement home that was made to party and work on Biobotz/portfolio. Plan B - I found this "clothing optional" beach near my home in NJ which has this amazing view of the NYC skyline, grow my hair as long as Alanis and spend my summer crossing books off my list and basking in the sun wearing nothing but SPF 90.


Meanwhile, technology decided to hate me in the last two weeks. My computer decided it doesn't want to accept any form of internet be it wireless or ethernet, so I traded it in for a loaner which is old and stupid. My phone was dampened with cranberry juice, which I always think I like but in actually really detest. My ipod is reverting back to a black and white graphics of older versions, which could be a sign of its near death. Also I locked my keys in my car the other night and had to wait a whole hour before getting drunk so I could find and deal with the locksmith.


That's about it, nothing too exciting to share. Saw some snow covered bikes and almost broke down crying. Plan X which would be the least probable but at the top of the list would be to get adopted by mom and live my life in wonderful Copenahgen where people aren't causing the destruction of the earth (Day After Tomorrow was on tv tonight, I watched it for a good 10 minutes). This weather is amplifies the fact that school is horribly depressing. Did you know it snowed in 48/50 states last week?
Just more proof that EWA is upset.

My comment was too long

I was under the impression that you already knew Adam had feelings for you, but the confession no doubt changes your views about what you thought was. I can only empathize with you. To hear "in love" is difficult when you can only return platonic love, but I can't say that you should take it as something to fear. I am not surprised that he confessed, seeing that in any turn of events, there are only a few months of school left to make the best use of or to endure. The panic with the school ending and real lives starting has set in for us all, and as we try to tie loose ends and live these last months reflecting on the past few years and ending these months without having regrets, things get real. Because he knows he will miss you and that things will never be the same as they were in college, he had to confess.

The next couple months I predict may happen like this:
There's a grace period, Adam decides its too painful and thus goes into hiding. Hurt and embarrassed, the next couple months pass with the occasional awkward "hey" followed by a half-smile-half-frown. There's only a couple months left to endure this and everyone suffers. When you find that you two can't avoid each other - you will rekindle a watered down version of the friendship that you had. At first you are cautious not to say anything that offends the other, but you realize that graduation is around the corner and wasting time being weird around each other is not the way you want to spend the last few weeks of school, after 4 years of bonding and before you may hardly see each other again. Things become normal or better and you can leave college with your memories skewed than what you previously thought them to be before the confession but as nonetheless incomprehensible as it is to the most of us.

Consider what he wanted from you out of this confession - A positive response and maybe even a recognition of his friendship. You can give him these because you have expressed that you love him, are hurting, and will miss his friendship. The positive response does not necessarily have to be that you are in love with him back. The best expression of your love back to Adam would be to say to him all the things that you feel, so that he can grow and learn. He will appreciate the truth and as painful as it may be for the moment, it will leave the good kind of scar - one that he can look back on in years to come and realize that it made him a better person. I don't think he will grow bitter because he's intelligent enough to understand the whole of the situation. I think he knows that you won't be able to say anything of that extent back to him. He has probably felt trapped by his inability to confess his feelings, and its likely liberating to finally say it but also likely to leave him feeling super vulnerable. But would you if you got on a test ride for a roller coaster? You rationalize how crazy you were for getting on it, rationalize the conditions, look upon past experiences of your roller coaster rides, then you hope for survival. At the end you get off the ride, plant your feet on the ground and pat yourself on the back for doing something crazy. As long as you are still around Adam to assure him that friendship from the last four years are good enough to trust in this new ride, I think the friendship will survive for the better.

See, my understanding of love would be that which helps someone else better understand himself - intellectually and emotionally. If you love Adam back even a little, you will do what is best for him. Give him space first, but also support and the knowledge that things don't have to be weird - that you also love him as a true friend, etc. It's hard to know that you two are hurting at this time, since I can just see from those few times I tagged alongside how much your friendship means to each other. Its rare that you see guy-girl friendships work out and it usually takes this type of turn, but I know you will both come out of this with a better understanding of each other.

1 year

Happy anniversary, to more years of arrows and moments


Can you believe it??

I sure can't.
I also can't believe you're 22.
Happy Birthday KIMMY!!

The Facebook Update

Over-sharing on Facebook has become trying. These are a list of the most commonly over shared types of updates (stolen from a mag). I found them cleverly true, I hope this will also amuse you.

The Oh, Shut Up-date
Jonathan is THRILLED by Time Out's favorable review of his club gig! (link)
Susan My kid just gets cuter.. and cuter.. and cuter every day!

The EWWPdate
Anna My rash is better, but still oozing
Jose Flu, day 3: Vomiting gone, but have the runs instead. And now Jack is throwing up.

The Schtupdate (should have been called the SLUT-date?)
Jackie is putty in the hands of a man who brings her coffee in bed
Melissa just loves morning sex

The Don't Save the (Up)date
Alexandra Hey, girlfriend! Psyched for J's wedding! Want to share a room?
Charlie I land on Friday - will be great to catch up! Can't wait to see you!
PS Alexandra's friend wasn't invited to the wedding and Charlie blew off other people in the town he's visiting

The I Screwed Up-Date
Sara I'm so sorry. I have a few reasons, but no excuses, Weepy sleepiness = complete penance
Bill Oh, Susanna, don't you cry for me. I can't believe I said what I said. Forgive me?

The I Chewed Up-Date
Christine is eating toast
Christine just made ramen
Christine has linguine with clam sauce - yum

The Just Suck it Up-date
Candice 'Tis a sad, sad day when one realizes she doesn't mean a thing to anyone

The re-up-date
Sam is on the plane!
Sam is landing!
Sam is getting off the plane!
Sam Here comes my suitcase!
Joe Wish I could just disappear. Just the fact I exist has always hurt people

New Digs

With my parents impending move to Baton Rouge (trans. "red stick?") Louisiana, I am faced with the opportunity of a new bedroom. You wouldn't believe the level of embarrassment I've reached in my current room's decor. Lavender walls, unicorn posters, lava lamps, the worst. It started in elementary school, refused to be updated, and continued to spiral downward as I insisted on feigning school spirit through my high school years.

In thinking about my new room, I've found (somewhat to my dismay) that searching through blogs and websites pertaining to interior design holds my interest for hours. Shelving particularly. You wouldn't believe what people do with shelves these days. My plan? Make a cheap imitation of the best one, put in my new room, and take all creative credit. Anyway, I'm including pictures of some of the cooler "pieces" I've come across, as I have nothing better to do, besides sort through my stuffed animals and decide which ones I can bear to part with. "Dad, the poor don't want that one! I need him!"

Designer: Yoon-Zee Kim
Doubles as desk...



Designer: Omer Unal
Doubles as a bookmark...



Designers: Stanislav Katz followed by Sakura Adachi
Double as chairs...




Deisgners: Daniele Lago and Massimo Bonnetti
Doubles as trees, etc. (art)



Designer: Some L.A. hipster
Doubles as: sculpture?




Anyway, what lesson have we learned from all this over-priced contemporary crap? Things that double as other things are AWESOME, and functionality is in the eye of the beholder.

That, and that you should never let your children pick the color they want to paint their room. Creative expresssion has other, less...lasting...outlets.

First night out in the city as a legal patron

Bar hopping was excellent. Without paranoia, I hopped from bar to bar as I showed some tourists/travelers the sights. I got a taste of the sweet apple as I strolled from the lower east side to the west side through Madison ave and back to K town. Wind chill was zero degrees, and with some vodka to keep me warm, it was painful but still I was in a good way. New York has opened up its doors to a whole new world filled with themed bars, men that clean up nicely, and music that will keep my feet a-dancing all night long. However, I found that there was something missing tonight. As you enjoyed your "cold" 50 degree weather, I walked the icy streets without my partner in crime. The tragedy today was the potential moments that were meant to be discovered but were lost.