It’s the end of the world as we know it

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Is everyone having a nice apocalypse? Jolly good – now let’s talk about what happens next!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The professor who taught microbial genetics during my undergrad degree was hilarious. A lot of people didn’t like him at all, but those of us with advanced dry humour detection abilities absolutely loved him. One of his most memorable moments was when he told a packed lecture theatre about how he’d tried to introduce a new exam format for final year students, which would involve designing and engineering a novel virus; the class would be graded on a curve, with those who managed to kill the most people upon the release of the virus getting the top marks. However, the university apparently wouldn’t let him, so he had to keep using those boring essay questions.

When I saw the iPhone game Plague Inc, I wondered if Professor Samson had been involved in its conception. Probably not, but he would have loved it. The aim is to evolve a pathogen that will wipe out the world; you get “DNA points” for infecting and killing people and for spreading the disease to new countries, and can redeem them for new traits related to symptoms, route of transmission, and resistance to human research and treatment efforts. It really is enormously good fun.

PLAGUE

The trick is to focus first on infecting as many people as possible without making them so sick that finding a cure becomes a global priority, then ramping up the symptoms and resistance to treatment / genetic analysis once you’ve infected as many people as possible. Unfortunately though, it’s almost impossible to win without help; I tried to get past the first (bacterial) level, which you need to beat in order to unlock the more exotic virus, prion and parasite levels, about seven times without success. The problem was that I kept killing everyone except a few hundred people in fucking Greenland and being told I’d failed. GREENLAND! Honestly! I ended up reluctantly paying an extra 99 cents for a power-up – you can unlock these by playing well, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. Some awesome geeks I met at Beth‘s party a few days later a) commiserated with me about fucking Greenland and then b) let me know that you have to beat a level on the hardest setting to unlock the power-ups for free (I’d been playing on “normal), so I felt a bit better about my extravagant expenditure.

The global outbreak simulation is obviously rather scientifically unrealistic – when the virus evolves a new trait it manifests itself in every single infected person in the world simultaneously, for starters – but really, it’s the “leaving any survivors at all means you fail. Even if they’re in fucking Greenland” flaw that bugs me the most. Where’s the fun in that?! I’m a huuuuuge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, starting with my childhood love of John Wyndham, and therefore appreciate that what happens after the plague is the most interesting part.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(smooth and seamless segue into the book-review portion of the post)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the best examples of the genre (and one of the best books I’ve read in the last few years – I’m completely 100% serious about that) is World War Z by Max Brooks. Yes, it’s about zombies, but it’s entirely unlike any other book I’ve read (or film or TV series I’ve seen) in this genre, or even in the post-apocalyptic fiction genre as a whole. The novel’s set in the very near future and is framed as a series of interviews, conducted a few years after the outbreak by a UN official who’s been tasked with writing a comprehensive report. Each chapter is its own little story, featuring interviews with doctors, soldiers, politicians, psychologists, civil servants, and ordinary people from all over the world about their own little part of the war; together, these vignettes add up to one of the most detailed and thoughtful post-pathogen-apocalypse scenarios I’ve ever read. (It even gets into some things that really bug me about The Walking Dead, such as why the hell don’t they obtain a pack of guard dogs to protect the camp?! Why are they so afraid of forming larger groups – are we seriously supposed to believe that not one single character on the show has read Day of the Triffids?! But I digress…)

The book is about much more than zombies, though – it’s a wide-ranging satire on the current state of global politics, international relations, military endeavours, medicine, celebrity, the world of work, and society in general (two notable exceptions that I thought should have been given more coverage: religion, and scientific research). Some parts are so specific to our time that they’ll probably seem quite dated very quickly – for example, Beth joked about the “undead” part of the “any resemblance to actual persons, living or undead, is purely coincidental” legal statement, but some real-life celebs are totally recognisable in one of the more humorous chapters of the book (plus one well-known and much-loved politician, who makes an appearance in one of the more serious chapters, in a very powerful and moving scene that has definitely stayed with me).

I’m guessing that the upcoming film is going to be very different from the book; it’s not really filmable as-is, due mainly to the lack of recurring characters. It would probably have been next to impossible to find enough well-known actors to sign up for five minutes of screen-time each to justify the huge budget a faithful adaptation would necessitate… but I’m sure I’ll go and see it anyway, even though there’s no possible way it’ll be as good as Shaun of the Dead.

The next book I read was The Passage, by Justin Cronin. I know what you’re thinking – “why on earth would she read another vampire trilogy after the whole Strain/Fall/Night Eternal fiasco?! She doesn’t even like vampires that much, at least not compared to zombies!” (you were thinking that, right?) Well, the answer is that it wasn’t my fault. While I was buying WWZ, the woman who works in my local book shop recommended The Passage, saying that it was “excellent, but really really creepy – do NOT read this book if you’re home alone!” I didn’t ask for further details and, suitably cautious, didn’t start the book until Mr E Man came back from Montreal and then finished the night shifts he worked on next. Disappointingly, it really wasn’t all that scary, but I did thoroughly enjoy it and will definitely buy the next two books. It was much, much better than the aforementioned vampire trilogy – much better written, much better characterization, and getting more into the psychological aspects of survival (the story begins with the outbreak itself, then jumps forward a few decades into the much more interesting post-apocalyptic phase). It did get a bit silly in the middle, but redeemed itself by the end, and finished with a massive cliffhanger. I’ll be buying part two in the very near future, I think, after I’ve worked my through some of the piles of unread books in my house!

IMG_3311

A little light, cheerful beach reading for a tropical holiday

I didn’t really expect the third and final book I read on vacation to fit the same theme, but somehow it does. Yes, I know I’m late on this one, but I finally got around to reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In this case the catastrophe that befalls mankind (well, the USA, at least) is a drastic fall in the birth rate, and the novel deals with what happens to the status of women in a world where fertility is a rare and precious commodity. The story unfolds from the point of view of a single woman, and gradually expands from a narration of her daily routine to a much bigger picture of what has happened to society as a whole. I definitely found this book to be by far the scariest of the three – recent statements about women from some sectors of the society to my immediate South have really been quite terrifying, much more so than the thought of fictional monsters. OK, so I did have one nightmare per “camping in the woods” episode of the first season of The Walking Dead (seriously! Get some dogs!), but it’s The Handmaid’s Tale that continues to haunt my waking thoughts.

Interestingly, Handmaid and Passage both employ the same device – a post-hoc analysis of some of the book’s events at an academic conference set a few years ahead of the novel. I wonder if Cronin was consciously influenced by Atwood?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Right, back to the fire and brimstone final family Christmas party preparations. Happy Solstice, everyone!

Posted in blog buddies, book review, current affairs, plagues, silliness, technology, television, virology | 18 Comments

Temporospatial trends in germophobia

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

One of the cultural differences I noticed soon after I moved from Britain to Canada is how people treat you if you say you have a cold or other minor ailment. In the UK, my experience is that friends, family, and even colleagues will express sympathy and concern, and offer to make you a cup of tea. In Canada, my experience is that they’ll literally back away from you at your first sneeze with a look of horror on their faces, as if facing Patient Zero in some horrific new giraffe ebolafluenza plague outbreak.

I always put this difference down to wussy pampered North Americans versus well ‘ard Europeans (plus the civilising influence of tea), but I’m starting to wonder if age isn’t also a factor; I’m definitely getting less cavalier about germs as I get older.

The Campylobacter food poisoning I got in 2007 that made me sick for ten days and sent me to hospital for emergency IV rehydration might have had something to do with it; I’m much more conscious of food safety than I ever was before. Or it might have been the two bouts of norovirus, one of which kicked in at 11:30 pm one Christmas Eve, and which reconfirmed my hatred of throwing up that borders on the phobic (vaccine NOW please). I got the first bout, and then something else a couple of years later that wasn’t noro but had somewhat similar effects, when a friend or relative who’d been sick a few days before (but hadn’t disclosed this fact to me) offered me a sip or a bite of what they were having. The result is that I’m now much more cautious about sharing food (and about using paper towels to turn off taps and open bathroom doors), and once literally shouted at another friend who’d invited everyone over to his house a couple of days before Christmas without telling anyone until we got there that he’d been throwing up all day (I didn’t get sick that time, which is the only reason I don’t have any assault charges on my record).

I’d maintained my nonchalance around colds and flu, though. I always get my flu shot at the free clinics we have at work, and the one time I didn’t because it wasn’t available yet and then I got swine flu a) wasn’t even the worst flu I’ve ever had and b) apparently has left me with super-immunity. Oink Oink Yay! And although I’ve always been prone to bad coughs after a cold (thank you, childhood whooping cough), I’ve been better since leaving the freezing cold student accommodation I “enjoyed” in Newcastle and Glasgow well behind me, and the colds themselves never bothered me much at all…

…until this time.

Mr E Man got it first, from a colleague who’d come in sick and literally coughed right in his face. When Mr E Man protested, the guy said “hey, I got bills to pay” (they don’t get sick days per se – they do get a small amount on every pay cheque that nominally counts as their annual paid sick time, but doesn’t actually feel like it because if they miss work when they’re ill they don’t get any pay for those days and end up with a much smaller cheque that week). Mr E Man ended up missing six days of work – two because he was sick, then the other four because not being in on the day when it suddenly got very quiet meant that he was the guy who got the phone call telling him not to come back until next week because there wasn’t enough work for everyone. The guy who’d got him sick worked right through that period.

I knew I was going to get the cold, because it’s inevitable when you live with someone. I wasn’t worried though, because as I said, colds don’t usually bother me that much. I didn’t even forbid him to kiss me or to drink from my glass. And when I did get the cold, it was mild and lasted two days.

But then the coughing started, and still hasn’t stopped eleven days later. I was hacking away all through each day, and the nights were worse – I’d sleep for an hour, cough almost non-stop for three, repeat until exhausted. The second I lay down my chest felt weird – not painful as such, just weird – and I just couldn’t get control over that cough. I missed two days of work – extremely rare for me – went back for two, exhausted myself, and missed another day. At this point I went to the doctor – I’ve never been to the doctor for a cold or cough or even the flu before – and was given an inhaler, and some codeine to help me sleep. I had high hopes for a good night’s sleep, but nope, I was wide awake again before midnight, coughing non-stop until after 3am. The inhaler did offer some relief, but only for an hour or so at a time, and I wasn’t supposed to take it more than three times a day.

A second trip to the doctor resulted in a diagnosis of asthma, which I’ve never had before. It’ll probably just last a couple of weeks, but might recur or even become chronic in the future. I had no idea this could happen, but as so often happens with my medical escapades, I quickly found out that at least two colleagues from my team of nine have had the same thing happen to them. Who knew?!

I now have two inhalers and had my first decent night’s sleep last night (decent is defined as “only woke up coughing three times, and only for about ten minutes each time”). I might even be able to move back out of the spare room soon, which will be nice – I’ve been there for ten nights now so as to let Mr E Man sleep, and it’s just not as good as being in my own bed. The right diagnosis and prescription works wonders – hooray for modern medicine!

I do think, though, that this latest adventure in germs will affect my attitude towards minor head colds in the future. I hope I won’t ever become North American enough about it to start literally backing away from my friends in horror, but I do understand that kind of reaction a leeeetle bit better than I did as a FOB immigrant.

I still think people should offer me more cups of tea, though. Even when I’m not sick.

Posted in Canada, medicine, personal, UK, virology | 19 Comments

Context is everything (Part II)

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Microsoft continues to crack me up:

too many projects

Certain PIs of my acquaintance may agree that they’re involved in too many projects, but I doubt anyone’s ever said the words “too many publications”…

(Part I here)

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Fourth Annual VWXYNot? Readers’ Choice Comment of the Year Award!

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

(I’m off sick with a really nasty cough for the second day in a row, so I’m pushing this out a day earlier than planned ‘cos I’m bored)

So as regular readers know, every Friday, more or less, I choose my favourite comments from this blog (and my favourite posts I’ve read on other blogs), and list them in the sidebar under the title Bragging Rights Central. In December I go through the archives, tally the wins (congratulations again to Ricardipus (most mentions for best comment, for the second year running) and Steve Caplan (most mentions for best post)!), pick my favourite comments of the year, and let my readers vote for the winner.

This is no easy task – I’m lucky enough to have some amazingly funny and insightful commenters, and it’s sometimes hard enough to choose the best comments of the week, let alone the whole year! I had to cut some really, really great comments from my not very short list, and as always I’m really sorry not to be able to include everyone.

This year’s 12 choices are below, and you should can click through to the original posts to read the comments in context. This may be more important for some comments than others… I’m looking at Prof Curry in particular!

But first:

THE RULES

  1. All regular and irregular commenters and readers are encouraged to vote! Lurkers, this includes you – and why not delurk in the comments at the same time? 😉
  2. Please vote for your favourite three (that’s right, three) comments using the poll ONLY (link at the end of this post). Any votes cast in the comments on this post, on Twitter, Facebook, other people’s blogs, or by carrier pigeon WILL NOT COUNT.
  3. Please vote only once each
  4. Please vote for three different comments as your first, second, and third choices
  5. Please do not vote for your own comment!
  6. If you’re nominated, please feel free to link through from your own blog so all your own readers see the poll. HOWEVER, please link to THIS POST, rather than directly to the survey, so everyone who votes sees all comments in full (and all the rules 🙂 )
  7. Voting closes at midnight (Vancouver time) on December 31st
  8. The points for each comment will be tallied as follows: total points = (3 x number of first choice votes) + (2 x number of second choice votes) + (1 x number of third choice votes)
  9. In the event of a tie, I will choose my favourite of the tied comments (I won’t vote otherwise)
  10. The winner will be formally announced as soon as the NYE hangover clears
  11. Prize: ultimate 2012 bragging rights AND a CAD40 Amazon gift certificate
  12. NO WHINING ALLOWED

THE COMMENTS

(in alphabetical order by commenter’s first name):

1) Bean-Mom for “it’s surprising the gaps in knowledge highly educated people can have. One of my favorite examples: one morning during his medical residency, my husband got a telephone call from a colleague. Afterward, he just kept shaking his head. His colleague, another medical doctor in her pediatric residency, had dropped her hairdryer into the toilet that morning. She unplugged it, but she was now staring at the thing, afraid to touch it because she thought the toilet water might be “electrified” and she was wondering when it would be safe to fish it out. She had called two other colleagues previous to my husband, and neither of them had a clue. Three people, all of whom had gotten through college and medical school.”

2) Beth Snow for “Any time I get an email with “gentle reminder” in it, I picture the person who sent it red-faced and screaming “WTF is wrong with you???!!! Why haven’t you sent me that [insert item name] that I already asked you for 17 times???!!!””

3) Eva for “The world is a lab, but the gel is badly cast.”

4) John the Plumber for “Has this layman got it right Cath?

Neither the originators of the ‘high’ science, nor those who peer review it, are capable of presenting it in an understandable way, so they employ you, who must both understand the unpresentable, then present it understandably, in order to get funding from those who would otherwise find it incomprehensible – so your value to both science and laymen is inestimable.”

5) John the Plumber for “wouldn’t it be more sympathetic to use lemmings as the laboratory animal of choice to be < alive. Whilst it might be a misconception that lemmings like to commit suicide, I’ve yet to find a truly suicidal mouse, – On the subject of mortality, it’s disappointing to learn from Mike that Stieg Larsson has died. As a dyslexic myself, I found comfort groaning at his sentences which he wrote with a hardened steel roller ball pen, puchased from the shop next door to Ikea, straight after he had bought his walnut topped desk with the oak legs, on his way to the library. The librarian, a most helpful blonde haired woman, dutifully sought the book he required, explaining that her hobby was knitting and that she always had two hardboiled eggs for breakfast at the Umqvist Cafe on Sodemalstrada. Now I feel guilty about the whole thing.”

6) Mike for ““Some people are still getting used to the way in which us Brits speak to each other, in particular the use of insults to show affection”

No we don’t. Idiot.”

7) Mike for “I’m pretty sure the tickle monster sign is actually a warning: “Danger! Canadians aren’t quite as good at the Gay Gordons as they think they are.””

8) Nina for “NZ celebrates “the queen’s birthday” too. But always on a Monday, because otherwise what is the fun of a dead queen’s birthday.

My Spanish colleague was equally confused when me and a German colleague tried to explain 2 long weekends to her. A few weeks back was ANZAC day, which is something like memorial day for Aussie and NZ. There is also an ANZAC Biscuit (which the girls used to sent to the boys at the front). So My German colleague said “You know, ANZAC, like the biscuit”. To which the Spanish lady answered “A holiday for a cookie, and one for a queen that is not there anymore and not on her real birthday either. It’s fine by me, but I don’t understand”.”

9) Richard Wintle for “Completenes. The ancient Greek god of proofreading.”

10) ScientistMother for “Like Nina my non-Christianity knowledge meant I was completely oblivious to the fact that the lion was supposed to be Jesus. Apparently its a “known” incarnation.

But seriously Lions are the symbol of Sikh men. Singh means lion in sanskrit and is the middle name of almost all Punjabi males (my hubby and son incl). Really, I grew up thinking the aslan was a kick ass punjabi sikh. Fuck Jesus. Maybe [CS Lewis] needs to realize that the lion can be whoever the fuck we want him to be.”

11) Stephen Curry for ““A His-tag!?!””

12) Sylvia McLain for “ICK Cath – all I can say is I think that is the worst thing we have to do – I hate end of grant reports – its like showing your mom your grade card – yuck”

THE POLL

Click here to vote – THANK YOU!

Posted in competition, meta, Uncategorized | 10 Comments

2012 Bragging Rights

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

HURRAH!

It’s that time of year when I start going through the Bragging Rights Central archives of my favourite comment(s) from this blog and post(s) from other blogs – see the sidebar for details – trying to pick my favourite comments for the annual reader vote. Expect the list of finalists and the reader poll some time in the next few days…

…but for now, I present to you: the Third Annual VWXYNot? Awards for the Most Comments and Posts Listed in Bragging Rights Central!

As always, the winner of each category gets a $20 (Canadian) Amazon gift certificate, as well as 2012 Bragging Rights (Quantitative)!

NB the most recent comments and posts that are currently in the sidebar do count towards this year’s totals.

First, the comments:

2012 Comments

And it’s another runaway victory for the defending champion in this category, Richard Wintle / Ricardipus! Many congratulations to Richard, and please email me to let me know which email address I should use to send you your well-deserved Amazon gift certificate!

I couldn’t include the following contributors in the chart without making it look ridiculous, but I’d also like to acknowledge the following commenters:

Two BRC mentions: EcoGeoFemme, Elizabeth, Frank Norman, Heather, Jenny Rohn, Laurence Cox, Nico, SB

One BRC mention: Casey, Catherine, Crystal Voodoo, David Kent, Gerty-Z, Ian, Megan Cully, Michael McCarthy, Michelle, ModScientist, Prof-like Substance, Robyn, Science Girl, Silver Fox, Stephen Curry, Stephen Moss, Sylvia McLain, Zen Faulkes

A HUGE thank you to EVERYONE who commented on my blog this year! You’re all winners!

And now, the posts! Last year we had a four-way tie between Massimo, Beth Snow, Nina, and CromerCrox, so I’m glad to report that we have a clear winner this time:

2012 posts
Congratulations to Steve Caplan! Please let me know which email address I should use for your prize.

As with the comments, I couldn’t include all this year’s winners in the same graph, so kudos to the following bloggers:

Two BRC mentions: Alyssa, Biochem Belle, Captain Awkward, Erika Cule, Kimli, Masks of Eris, Ruchi, Sylvia McLain

One BRC mention: Anthony Fejes, Ask A Manager, Austin Elliott, Benoit Bruneau, Charles Pelkey, Don Davies, EcoGeoFemme, Excitable Scientist, Gerty-Z, Grant Jacobs, Heather, JaneB, Letters of Note, Nik Papageorgiou, Pharma Strategy Blog, Rachel Slatyer, Richard Wintle, Scott Wagers, Silver Fox, T Ryan Gregory, TOC ROFL, Unbalanced Reaction, VanEast Beer Blog, Viktor Poor, xkcd,

A HUGE thank you to ALL the bloggers I read! Keep up the great work in 2012!

Right, now I just have to choose my favourite comments… watch this space!

Posted in competition, meta | 16 Comments

Hanging out on corners

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I realised this morning that I’ve been delinquent in doing my part to promote an exciting new Occam’s Typewriter venture – a group blog, Occam’s Corner, on the Guardian’s science blogs network. (I did add the feed to the “Latest posts from Occam’s Typewriter” widget near the top of my right sidebar, but I never actually mentioned it on-blog). Unlike the main OT site it’s focused 100% on science, but just like OT there’s a great variety of well-written articles (plus mine) from all the familiar faces you’ve come to know and love. Check it out! The comments don’t stay open for very long, so if you get a wee bit behind you find yourself unable to contribute to the conversation, but everything up there is well worth reading – and the comments I’ve got so far haven’t been as scary as I’d feared 🙂

My first contribution, “Genetic screening: curiosity killed the CATG“, discussed my ambivalence about the kind of personal genetic screening offered by companies like 23andMe; the title of today’s post, “Why I’m feeling so crabby about cancer conspiracy theories“, speaks for itself.

Many thanks to Jenny Rohn, Richard P. Grant, and Stephen Curry for getting us into the Guardian stable of blogs (as I’ve mentioned before, I grew up reading the Guardian so this is kind of a big deal for me); Jenny for proofreading my articles; and Richard for very patiently dealing with a combination of human error and some kind of weird formatting conversion glitch to get my latest article submitted 🙂

Posted in blog buddies, blog roll, cancer research, meta, quacks, rants, science | 11 Comments

Hockey is not the only sport

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

As a few of you may already know, the NHL season that usually begins in October still hasn’t started. The players and owners/league haven’t managed to agree to terms on revenue sharing and other issues, and as a result there’s another lockout (although hopefully not for too much longer – full coverage on the CBC, who are faithfully and excitedly reporting on every person’s facial expression as they leave every day of talks, plus full fan reaction to leaked news of what the negotiators had for lunch). Basically, the situation boils down to millionaires arguing with billionaires while normal people who make their livings working at the arenas, or in nearby sports bars, hotels, and sports clothing stores, risk losing their houses.

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/enniscath/status/276140086356213760″]

Anyone who’s looked at a Canadian TV schedule during a normal hockey season will appreciate just how much of a hole this lockout has left. It’s not just the actual games; whole channels are usually taken up with pre- and post-game analysis, trade rumour talk, injury updates, etc etc etc.

So what are they showing instead?

Old hockey games.

Yup, every time I browse through the sport channels, they’re showing NHL and Olympic hockey from the 70s and 80s. Now, I really don’t like watching sport that isn’t live (as I said to general agreement during a discussion at work, “it ruins the illusion that shouting at the TV actually helps”). I’ll make an exception for the rugby and football world cups, if England or Canada play at 3am or something, but only if I don’t know the outcome, and it’s just not the same*. I absolutely will not watch a game from more than a few hours ago, or any game where I already know who won. I know lots of people who agree – an overwhelming majority of my friends who like sport, in fact. But yet several channels keep playing those old hockey games (a friend at work claims to have also seen a 2010 curling tournament on the CBC, but I’m not sure I believe him).

This is such a wasted opportunity. Why not give other, usually neglected, sports some time in the spotlight?

  • There are lots of people at my work watching cricket at the moment – on the internet, at 2 am. Show some highlights at 7 pm! It’s one of the most commonly played games in Canada!
  • I tried and failed to find the England – All Blacks rugby game on the weekend – it wasn’t on anywhere. Show that! Everyone was talking about rugby during the last world cup, there’s a huge potential market here!
  • The summer and winter Olympics prove that people will get into some really obscure events if they’re covered well and during prime time TV; there must be some Northern Hemisphere winter sports tournaments on right now, or some Southern Hemisphere summer sports, that we could all watch. I’d much rather watch, say, the Norwegian snowboard cross championship or some African track and field than Detroit Redwings vs. LA Kings from 1972.

I’m sure there are all kinds of licensing and rights issues, but it’s not like no-one saw this lockout coming. And surely the TV channels can negotiate rights with small, cash-deprived sporting bodies much, much faster than the NHL millionaires and billionaires could even agree on what kind of bottled water should be on the negotiating table…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*I used to watch every game live when I first moved here, whether that meant staying up until 2 am or getting up at 3 am or whatever, but I’m too old to do that on weeknights any more, and I no longer have a job where I can leave for two hours in the middle of the day to watch a daytime game. Instead, I watch overnight games on tape at 6 am, or make a sign that says “DO NOT TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT THE ENGLAND GAME” and wear it around my neck all day at work for a daytime game.

Posted in bad people, Canada, current affairs, personal, rants, sport, television | 20 Comments

Stranger danger at the conference buffet

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

I’ve spent the last couple of days at my institute’s annual conference, catching up on some very cool science and gorging myself on delicious food. Having spent eight of the last ten years at the same institute, working in three departments and collaborating with people in many more, I love this conference because I know so many people – and even some of the inside jokes!

Unfortunately though, I missed the keynote address AGAIN. It’s always at 8 am on the second day, and it takes me an hour to get to the conference venue on the bus (I have to take two of the slowest bus routes in Vancouver); however, I’d heard great things about the speaker (a cancer survivor) and was determined to make it this year. I asked Mr E Man to wake me up when he got up for work, which is usually around 5:45 am, but unfortunately he woke up at 5 with a really nasty cold and decided not to go to work, but rolled over and went back to sleep before letting me know. So when my alarm went off at its usual time of 6:45, it was too late.

People who did make it to the talk spent all day asking me if I’d been there and raving about how inspirational it was and what a shame it was that I’d missed it.

As so often happens, though, a real-life FAIL is a blogging WIN, because my plight reminded me of a story one of our PIs (who’s now moved back to the States) told me about an encounter he had at the 2007 conference:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The PI had got his pilot’s license the year before, and had just bought his very first plane – a little two-seater of which he was immensely proud. I knew all about it because he would describe his weekend airborne adventures in great detail at the beginning of every single Monday morning meeting, and apparently at every other possible opportunity too.

On the first day of the conference, he was in the queue for the lunch buffet and started talking to the woman next to him. He commented on the unseasonably beautiful weather, and she replied that it had been the perfect morning to fly into Vancouver, with a great view of the snowcapped mountains.

“I wish I was out there flying right now”, he replied.

“Oh, you’re a pilot?”

The PI admitted at this point in his narration of the story that he may have gone on slightly too long about his shiny new toy. I believe he may have used the words “gushing” and “extended monologue”.

“Oh, that’s a nice plane”, said the woman. “I hear it’s [something very technical that I can’t remember but that only a pilot would say]”.

“Oh, you’re a pilot too?!” asked the PI in great excitement. “What do you fly?”

“Well”, she said, completely deadpan, “the last thing I flew was the space shuttle”.

Yup, that was the year the conference organisers had booked Dr. Roberta Bondar – first neurologist and also the first female Canadian in space – as the keynote speaker. And yes, she was wearing her name badge AND had her photo on all the conference posters, but no, he hadn’t noticed…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ll have to wait until Monday, when I see the people who shelled out extra cash for the conference social, to hear if any PIs embarrassed themselves that much at this year’s event! There was karaoke, so it’s certainly possible…

Posted in career, conferences, science, silliness, Vancouver | 15 Comments

Losing your research funds down the back of the Sof(i)a

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

About 18 months ago, I posted about some accusations of seriously compromised grant review in Bulgaria that were brought to the international community’s attention via a news article in Nature. Several readers commented that they were disappointed to have missed out on the opportunity to make some easy money on the side by reviewing grants completely outside their area of expertise.

Well, I have good news for you, guys! I’ve just learned from another article in Nature that it’s possible to make waaaay more money from the Bulgarian National Science Fund than mere review fees – all you need is to register a brand new company with thirty bucks / twenty quid in your pocket, no track record required!

The petition also raises concerns about a project to build a nanosatellite, which snagged 480,000 leva for two companies, called Bulcube and Space Research. Both were registered as new companies only on 16 July, the deadline for the call, and each declared just 50 leva in capital. The project’s principal investigator, Valery Golev, head of astronomy at the University of Sofia, says that the satellite project will provide useful training to help Bulgaria develop its space activities, and that he believes the new companies to be competent.

As with the last blog post on this topic, I’ve highlighted just one accusation on a list of many: this time, the focus is on major conflicts of interest and a completely opaque review process. All kidding aside, this is a terrible situation and I wish our Bulgarian colleagues the very best of luck with the petition they’ve just submitted to their prime minister.

The rest of us should keep this situation in mind when complaining about our next terrible grant or manuscript review…

Posted in bad people, politics, science | 4 Comments

Retreat to the library

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

(I’ve been back from Puerto Rico for a couple of weeks now, but for some reason I’d got it into my head that I had to write a “What I Did On My Vacation” post before I could write anything else, and I was having a hard time coming up with a creative non-chronological way to describe my wonderful holiday (all I’ve got so far is two genius/terrible puns, depending on who you ask, and a tenuous song lyric tie-in). But then I realised that I’m not in primary school any more and can write whatever I want, in whatever order I want! Being a grownup is so great!1)

My team at work had an all-day offsite retreat earlier this week. It was really great to have the whole group of 20+ people together for a whole day – we’re split over two sites, as are the department’s labs, offices and PIs – and we covered a good group of topics, with lots of interaction and creative ideas from everyone. During a drawing-based activity we even came up with a new team mascot – Bleb, the Super Project Manager! (Bleb wears a cape and is an amoeba, because a) PMs have to be very adaptable and b) amoebae are very easy to draw).

The retreat was in a meeting room at the main downtown branch of the Vancouver Public Library, because that’s how cool we are. It’s a very interesting and attractive building, inspired by the Colosseum in Rome, with lots of light and space inside. I haven’t spent much time there before as I’ve always lived much closer to one or another of their satellite branches, so it was great to spend a whole day in the building, even though we didn’t get much time to explore. But I’ll be back more often now that I’ve remembered how nice it is!

Vancouver Public Library

[photo credit]

Being in a library all day was also a nice nostalgic flashback to my last couple of years of high school. It wasn’t generally a very happy time in my life, what with the bullying for being clever and all, but I did have a small group of close friends, and the library was one of our regular hangouts / refuges from the cruel outside world2. We were basically like six Hermione Grangers, if Hermione Granger was more timid and spent most of her clothing allowance at the Sweater Shop. The librarian was a terrifying old battle axe3 who’d transferred in from a rough inner city school somewhere down south, but gradually learned that not all students were evil book trashers4 and learned to tolerate our presence.

I observed two of my colleagues sniffing marker pens during the retreat, which may or may not have also been a flashback to high school5.

The absolute highlight of a fun day, though, was the extraordinarily good timing of two of the announcements that came over the library tannoy system:

  • one came during a session on the art of persuasion, while we were discussing creative tactics – the tannoy burst to life with a member of staff strumming a guitar and singing “My Favourite Things” from The Sound of Music, to persuade younger visitors to come to the 3:30 pm sing-along session (we didn’t get to go)
  • the other was even better, and came just as we were starting to discuss our team’s weaknesses, as part of a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. “LOOKING FOR A NEW CAREER?” boomed the tannoy; “DON’T LISTEN TO THE VOICE!” yelled the boss.

Great stuff – and we came back to work yesterday to some very good news about some grant applications! Bleb, Super PM Amoeba, is very excited to get stuck into some juicy new projects…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1) see also: being able to eat leeks, one of my all-time favourite foods, whenever I want – even though my sister doesn’t like them. I’m actually eating some for breakfast right now (leftovers from my very leeky dinner last night – my local supermarket only sells them in bunches of three for some reason). Mmmmmm, leeks – I’ve been craving them ever since a recent series of mass work emails I got over the course of several days about a steam leak in our other building. All I could think every time a new message came in was “Mmmmmm, steamed leeks”.

2) we also spent a lot of time in the music department, even after all but one of us dropped music at the age of 16, because the teacher knew and trusted us and let us eat our lunch there completely unsupervised from the age of 14 on. As a result, I know how to play many different musical instruments – all of them really badly.

3) during her first year there, she featured very prominently in the annual Christmas show the older students put on for the younger ones. I myself was one of the main creative forces behind a school-themed reworking of Bohemian Rhapsody that involved one of my friends dressing in a leather skirt and death metal band t-shirt, brandishing a whip, and singing the “so you think you can love me and leave me to die” part as said librarian. Our version: “SO YOU THINK YOU CAN BORROW A BOOK FROM MY LIBRARY?! SO YOU THINK YOU CAN TALK AND BREATHE AIR IN MY LIBRARY??!!” “Oh, lady! Can’t you compromise, lady?” “NO! YOU JUST GOTTA GET OUT, I’M THROWING YOU RIGHT OUT OF HERE NOW!”

4) autocorrect tried to change that to “evil book tarsiers”, which is quite the mental image.

5) they were actually scented markers and my colleagues, as good scientists, were trying to figure out what the smell of each colour of pen was. The more pertinent question, however, is “why would anyone need scented marker pens? Doesn’t that encourage solvent abuse in young people? BAAAAAH”

Posted in career, education, food glorious food, personal, silliness, Vancouver | 9 Comments