VWXYNot?

Seems legit

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Posted in publishing, science, screenshots, silliness, technology | 2 Comments

Posted without comment

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Posted in blog buddies, screenshots, silliness, technology | 8 Comments

All media can be social media

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

One of the themes of the last year or so is that a lot of my traditionally solitary pursuits suddenly seem to have become much more social. The biggest difference is my job, but my evenings and weekends are also busier, with a greater diversity of social events than before.

Mr E Man’s seven-week stay in Montreal last summer really initiated the whole thing. Almost all of my own friends are people I know from my current or previous jobs – all of which have been located within a few blocks of each other – which means that our socialising is very much based on quick drinks at local pubs immediately after work; the friends we spend most of our time with on weekends and evenings were originally Mr E Man’s friends, and with a few exceptions they’re just not really in the habit of calling me rather than him when they’re planning a night out. So while Mr E Man was away, I became much more proactive about seeking out other opportunities to socialise.

Science. I was already going to geeky events like Cafe Scientifique and Science Online Vancouver, but wasn’t making a huge effort to go every single time; with Mr E Man away, I started being much more diligent about adding the events to my calendar (and also about fighting the lure of my lovely comfy couch after a long day at work). As a result I now know more of the other regulars than I did before, and I’ve continued to go to as many events as I can – sometimes bringing friends and colleagues with me.

I also tried Skeptics in the Pub once while Mr E Man was away, but while I met some nice, interesting people (some of whom I recognised from Cafe Scientifique) and everyone was very welcoming, it just wasn’t really my thing. I think I’d just rather base new friendships on something tangible in common, rather than joining a group for people who don’t collect stamps or a team of people who don’t play lacrosse.

Writing. Thanks to Bean-Mom’s recent post and the email conversations that followed, I’m joining an online (blog- and possibly Google Hangout-based) writing group. I think it’s going to really help to motivate myself to write even on days when I come home from work feeling tired and there’s a Canucks game on and there’s a cat on my laptop and it’s just so much easier not to write.

Stories. I’m a big fan of spoken word podcasts, especially those that involve storytelling – The Moth is the granddaddy of them all, Story Collider is a science-specific version, and there are an increasing number of other similar shows available from all over North America. I listen in the morning after Mr E Man leaves for work, while doing laundry and other boring chores, at the gym, and on transit – this, to me, was therefore the epitome of a solitary pursuit. However, that changed when a friend from my last job* asked if I wanted to go with him to see the This American Life live show, which was being simulcast at a local cinema.

I didn’t really know what to expect, but the event was AMAZING. Watching and listening as part of a big crowd of fellow fans, and joining in the musical number via a Guitar Hero-type interface on the screen and a specially created musical iPhone app, just made the whole experience so much better. Since then I’ve discovered that Vancouver has two live storytelling shows of its own – Rain City Chronicles and The Flame (the latter is a Facebook link – they don’t seem to have any other website). I’ve now been to The Flame once and Rain City Chronicles twice, absolutely loved it, and am already starting to recognise regulars at RCC. RCC is the better known and the more polished and professional of the two (with the result that it’s sometimes hard to get tickets – we squeaked in via the waiting list last time), but both feature a mix of funny and serious stories, good music, and beer.

Oh, and I also went to Interesting Vancouver while Mr E Man was away, which doesn’t have a podcast but certainly lived up to its name. I met someone there who I now see at both of the other storytelling events in the city.

Sadly, I couldn’t use my ticket to the Vinyl Cafe live show in December because I had such a bad cough I’d have ruined the event for everyone, and I’m not even going to try to get into TED when it moves to Vancouver next year ($7,500 and you have to write an essay to get in?! I’ll just keep watching the videos online, thanks). But live storytelling is now one of my favourite things, and a permanent feature of my social calendar!

And finally… a shocking abuse of the work email system took place last week:

Figure 1:

The pilot study will commence in three weeks… very exciting! I will report back…

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*This was a new-ish guy who I thought was super grumpy and unfriendly, until we went on a work trip together. We realised during a big group dinner that we had tons in common (and I realised that he wasn’t grumpy at all), but sadly he moved to Australia just as we were becoming friends. Science SUCKS, reason #281.

Posted in blog buddies, book review, career, communication, conferences, games, personal, photos, science, screenshots, secularism, silliness, technology, Vancouver | 10 Comments

Fight the Future

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Last Saturday was my second time at Vancouver Change Camp and, just like the first time, it was a day full of very thought-provoking sessions about how ordinary people can change their world for the better.

The last event took place right at the peak of the Occupy movement. Although I didn’t go to any of the sessions led by people involved with Occupy Vancouver, they did tend to dominate the overall theme of the day. This year’s event was more diverse (I even pitched and led a session myself – a last minute decision, of which more later, possibly at Occam’s Corner rather than here!), with no overall theme. However, I chose to attend sessions along a personal theme: politics. I met people involved in an organisation called PlaceSpeak (a platform that anyone can use to state their thoughts on any aspect of local politics, and that politicians can use to assess public opinion); someone running for office in the upcoming Provincial election; and tons of other interesting people. I participated in conversations about public consultation; making politicians accountable; how to contact, influence, and help your representatives; electoral reform; and how to encourage longer-term thinking in politics.

We covered more ground than I can get into in a single blog post (selected thoughts of mine and others are still visible on Twitter though), so I’ll leave you with the most awesome thing I saw all day: a video made by Frances Ramsay, a local high school student who went to several of the same sessions as me, sporting a most excellent “Future Climate-Change Voter” button. Frances had some great suggestions about engaging young people via better education about the political system, and having lived here as a non-citizen for seven years (and getting my citizenship ten days after the last Provincial election. GAAH!), I completely understand her frustration at not having a vote when you’re surrounded by people who don’t care and don’t bother.

Enjoy! And remember – if you have a vote, you have a responsibility, too.

Posted in activism, communication, current affairs, education, environment, personal, politics, Vancouver | 3 Comments

RBO Work

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Lots of things going on, but nothing substantial enough for a stand-alone post. So here are some bullets!

Having read numerous articles about how bad it is for you to sit all day, even if you’re very active at other times, I’ve decided that I want a standing desk. Well, what I really want is one of those adjustable desks that moves up and down – standing all day isn’t very good for you either – but they’re ridiculously expensive. When I’m at home I sometimes take my laptop into the kitchen and prop it up on a stack of books on the kitchen counter, but I don’t have an equivalent at work, and we just don’t have the budget for adjustable desks. So, a few weeks ago, I cleared a section of a shelf on our team’s bookcase, and now use it as a desk whenever I have any hard-copy reading, editing, or drafting to do. It’s not ideal, and I’m only spending around 5% of my time there (yes I track things like that) because so much of my work requires me to be at my computer, but it’s better than nothing!

Bookcase, as seen from my desk

Post-it self-portrait

On a related note, a colleague has had a genius idea to get more people to be active during the work day. This is the same guy who runs all the work sports pools, and this initiative is along similar lines – everyone who wants to play puts in $5 and grants permission for their card swipes to be logged, and then for every day in March that you take the stairs from the ground floor to either the 5th or 6th floor, you get one entry into a draw to win the whole pot. (We share the building with another organisation, so we only have access to some floors, and have to swipe in (on the way up) and then out (except on the ground floor) of the stairwell). I think there’s about $400 at stake by now, and people are getting really into it – there’s even a side competition for the fastest climb to the 6th floor. I haven’t entered that one (my shiny new asthma’s still bugging me – yes, it has become chronic), but I did log my natural pace time at the beginning of March and will see if I get any faster by the end of the month. I was taking the stairs a lot before I got the cold that gave me asthma, but had been using the elevators since then, so this was a nice motivation to get back into better habits!
I have a notebook that I take with me into every meeting to jot down useful information, action items for transfer onto my to-do list, silly stuff that might make a good blog post, etc. When I first started my job, I wrote down every little thing that sounded like it might be important, so there’s a LOT of potentially very useful information in there – but I’m terrible at finding it amid all the other crap. So I’ve started spending 15 minutes a day transferring the important contents of the notebook into an Excel spreadsheet, with different tabs for different projects then different codes for different topics within the project, so that I have a searchable archive. I just type in the very basics, but specify the corresponding date and page number in the notebook so I can easily find more details. It’s already coming in very handy, to the extent that my supervisor has noticed and says he’s going to start doing the same thing. I get through about two weeks worth of notes in 15 minutes, so I’ll soon be caught up and will start just adding that week’s notes at the end of the day every Friday. I highly recommend this approach, and just wish I’d thought of it sooner!
I’m really very excited by the two papers in last week’s Nature describing circular RNAs with regulatory function. As with the recent discoveries of chromothripsis, RNA editing, and epigenetic modifications of RNA, it makes me wonder what other Big Deal phenomena are out there to be discovered. I’m also very curious to learn how long it takes other labs to jump onto this kind of discovery – the member of my team responsible for fielding sequencing requests from other institutes says she hasn’t had any specific epitranscriptome or circular RNA sequencing requests yet, but will let me know when she does. Methinks it won’t be long for either…
The birthday card I got from my colleagues last month is a) very apt and b) very useful:

I’ve taken it down now, but keep it in a drawer for easy access; my primary work drinking partner sits diagonally opposite me, separated by a divider, so I can wave the card over the top of the divider to discreetly invite her out for after-work drinks without disturbing anyone else. Her birthday card has a glass of wine on it, so she can reciprocate in kind.
Work is fun!

Posted in career, communication, drunkenness, exercise, genomics, original research, personal, photos, science, silliness, technology | 19 Comments

Coach’s corner

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I started writing this as part of a RBO Work Stuff post, but it got way too long so I’m making it into a stand-alone item. I’ll post the rest of the stuff tomorrow… probably…

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I’m taking a great course called Coaching Out of the Box, to help me with my work with our trainees. Coaching is, at essence, a structured way of asking open, “clean” (i.e. free of bias and judgement) questions that will guide someone towards identifying their own solutions to their work or personal problems. I find it very intense – it’s a very different way of thinking, and I think we’re all finding it difficult to really, truly listen to what the coachee is saying while simultaneously thinking about the structure of the process and coming up with the next question – but very rewarding. It’s fascinating to me how some people come in with a very specific problem, which you expand wide open before focusing back in on what the real problem is (sometimes very different to the one stated at the beginning) and what to do about it, while others start with a very nebulous, ill-defined issue that you then focus back down in a similar way.

The structure of the course is two full day classroom courses, two weeks apart (which I finished last week), followed by four 90-minute practice sessions in a group of three students and one teacher (I’ve completed two sessions so far). The highlights of the classroom sessions for me were:

when they made a bunch of Canadians be purposefully rude to each other, to demonstrate the right and wrong way to listen to someone (everyone apologised to each other profusely afterwards);
the experience of coaching someone who’s a novice in something at which you’re an expert, so you have to constantly fight the temptation to just tell them what you know. This is something I experience almost every time I’m asked to help a trainee with the contents of the training expectations / career goals sections of their proposals, so it was great to get a chance to practice; and
the fun I had during the second session when I was handed someone’s list of pet peeves (we’d all written them down as part of a get-to-know-you session at the beginning of the first day, then forgot all about them) and had to ask him for coaching on an issue that, unbeknownst to him, deliberately triggered his pet peeves. It was hilarious – he got all red in the face and kept saying “I don’t know what to tell you, because if you knew me, there is NO WAY you would EVER come to me with THIS PROBLEM!!!” We had a good laugh at the end, when I handed him the list of pet peeves he’d written down…

The course is run by the Provincial Health Services Authority, and I was one of only a handful of people in my session who came from the research side of their operations. The other participants I met were paramedics, ambulance dispatchers and dispatch managers, corporate HR staff, nurses and nurse managers, physicians, psychiatrists, family liaison, and others I can’t even remember – a diverse mix, and I really enjoyed hearing about their work. My “triad” for our extra practice sessions contains one other researcher and one HR person. Colleagues who’d taken the course before said that the composition of your triad can really make or break the whole experience – one person had someone quit and said the other member of the group just wasn’t very committed – but I’ve been very lucky and have a great group.

One of the most valuable lessons from the first classroom session was that even though we’re just learning how to coach, we can still be enormously helpful to someone – I’ve already received and given coaching on several real-life work and other scenarios that really has got me unstuck on a couple of things, and the people I’ve practiced with have said that I helped them in a similar way. It was really great at the second classroom session, and at my second triad sessions, when people sought their previous practice partners out to proudly report what progress they’ve made since and to reiterate how helpful the coaching had been.

Since starting my new job I’ve really come to appreciate the difference it makes when your managers (and their managers) have taken this kind of course and have also put a lot of thought into other aspects of how a team works, how to foster team members’ individual career goals etc. I’m therefore very happy to have had the chance to learn some of these skills that have benefited me, so I can help our trainees in a similar way. I know this sounds very uncharacteristically touch-feely for one of my posts, but it really is a very powerful skill and something I’m really enjoying.

Posted in career, communication, education, personal | 4 Comments

Office haiku

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

It’s ten forty-five

Six iPhones buzz with one voice

Time for our meeting!

Gotta love those synchronised calendars…

Comments in haiku form only, please!

Posted in fun with language, silliness, technology | 5 Comments

The tartle response

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

The Rock Paper Cynic comic titled “That Awkward Zombie Apocalypse Survival Moment When…” would soooo happen to me.

I really am awful; I usually need to meet a new person at least two or three times, within a short period of time, before I can guarantee that I’ll remember their name. Running into a brand new acquaintance, or someone I only see once or twice a year, will often cause me to go completely blank. Luckily (?), Mr E Man has the exact same problem; this means we both quickly recognise the signs that one of us is desperately trying not to have to introduce the other to someone, and will just introduce ourselves in the hope of eliciting the other person’s name in return. When I’m not with Mr E Man and am desperately trying not to have to introduce the person whose name I really should know to a friend or colleague who doesn’t instantly recognise my problem, things often end very awkwardly indeed. It’s really very embarrassing.

There may be hope, though – not that I can suddenly magically learn to remember names, but that a simple linguistic shift could mitigate my embarrassment.

You see, I was listening to an old episode of the excellent A Way With Words podcast recently, in which the presenters and listeners were contributing words from other languages and English dialects that don’t have an equivalent in standard English, but that really should because they’re so incredibly useful. One such word was tartle, defined as follows by Urban Dictionary:

A common Scottish term to insert at the awkward moment when you temporarily forget someone’s name. Useful to avoid that occasional embarrassment.

Steve: Hi, Susan!
Susan: Hi . . . uhhhhhh . . . Steve! Sorry, I tartled there for a moment.

Now, I lived in Glasgow for three and a half years and never heard this word once, but hey, let’s ignore that inconvenient little fact (not to mention the unsavoury Irish definition at the same link) and work on a strategy to get the Scottish definition into common usage in every English-speaking country. Having a universally understood term specific to this problem would make it so much more socially acceptable; “sorry, I’m tartling” just seems so much more understandable and less disrespectful – something that could and does happen to anyone! – than “sorry, I just can’t remember your name”.

Joining my campaign might even save your life in the event of a zombie apocalypse…

UPDATE: it has been decreed that the online version shall heretoforth be known as Twartling

Posted in English language, fun with language, personal, silliness | 21 Comments

Facebook rant about Facebook cancer hoax

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I just posted the following on Facebook, and thought I’d share it here, too – the wider the news that this is a hoax is disseminated, the better for everyone.

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I’ve seen a Facebook post about cancer circulating among various completely separate groups of friends in the last few days. The information in the post claims to be from the Johns Hopkins cancer center, but it is most definitely a hoax. I was actually riled up enough to want to write a point-by-point refutation of the contents of the post, but fortunately Johns Hopkins have already done an absolutely stellar debunking job.

This kind of misinformation makes me SO MAD. It twists the available evidence that a healthy diet can reduce (NOT eliminate) the risk of developing cancer into statements that eating or avoiding very specific foods or groups of foods will prevent cancer. This in turn cultivates a culture of victim blaming, in which someone’s response to hearing that someone they know has been diagnosed is often “well, he/she eats [whatever], so of course they got cancer. I don’t eat that, so I won’t”. In fact, outside of some very strongly correlated exceptions (e.g. smoking as a risk factor for lung cancer, some genetic predispositions), it’s next to impossible to blame any individual’s diagnosis on any one factor – it’s a mix of your genes, your diet, your stress levels, your socioeconomic status, your hormones, your environmental exposure, and plain old luck of the draw.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing a book about the causes of cancer, to help the newly diagnosed and their loved ones understand what’s going on. Hoaxes like this serve as a kick in the pants to get myself organised and actually do it.

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End rant. But AAARRRGGGHHH!

Posted in bad people, cancer research, medicine, publishing, quacks, rants, science | 5 Comments

The Journal of Anthropomorphism

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Cath@VWXYNot?

While browsing journal TOCs in my RSS reader earlier today, I realised that I seem to have subconsciously assigned human personalities to some of the journals I read most frequently.

For example:

Current Biology is an extrovert who enthusiastically dives into any ongoing topic of conversation, and talks with their hands a lot. Fun at parties;
Nucleic Acids Research is an older man in a tweed jacket who quietly talks with great authority about the arcane technical details of his obscure hobby over a cup of Earl Grey;
Genome Research is that one friend who always has the most recent smart phone and tablet;
Oncogene is an old friend from my grad school days. They don’t seem to have moved on much in the intervening years, and I don’t see them very often, but when I do it’s always nice to catch up and reminisce.

Is this normal, or have I developed a very specific form of synesthesia?

Posted in freakishness, publishing, science, silliness | 49 Comments