molecular leda

interesting reading on the interweb

2008-03-03T22:50:00.000-08:00

Reminders of Mortality Bring Out the Charitable Side

"Pyszczynski found that people who answered the survey while standing in front of the funeral home -- which had a large sign reading "Howe's Mortuary" -- were more positive about charitable donations than those interviewed 150 feet away."

With Power Comes a Selfish Point of View
". . . those who had been made to feel powerless were three times more likely to draw the E so that it was legible to someone facing them. Those made to feel powerful, however, drew the letter so that it looked correct from their internal perspective but was a mirror image from the point of view of someone facing them. . . Volunteers made to feel powerful, even in a trivial laboratory experiment, almost instantly lose the ability to see things from other people's points of view."

2008-02-25T00:21:00.000-08:00

sometimes at night fears and anxieties seize me and don't let go. usually i lie in bed until it's over and i fall asleep but it's hard to stay still in that quiet darkness.

i wonder if it's just the looming graduation date that's giving me these existential heebie-jeebies? what am i doing with my life.

it helps to have a purring cat in lap. scared the crap outta me with her midnight scrambling at the window, but i guess floppy can occasionally be useful. writing the prelab will settle these nerves, maybe.

2008-02-18T23:47:00.000-08:00

score, finished my first report for 150L a day in advance! While I was in the middle of writing it up, Floppy Cat scratched at our window and Kim let her in. Something about a purring fuzzy animal in your lap is very soothing, even if it's a creature as fickle and crazy as she. A lap cat makes homework more fun. Floppy snuggled and I melted like sap, despite the cold knowledge that to her I am not a fellow lifeform but some kind of soft, heated, wiggly seat. We're not sure about her real name. We call her floppy because her belly is pendulous and swishes in the wind. Too many kittens? She probably ate them. That's the kind of cat I think she is.

Weird RWOrwrwwwwing noises made me stop typing this and go look outside. In the hallway Floppy is in another standoff against Black Cat. Go Black Cat, I'm rooting for you.

experiment

2008-02-03T17:10:00.000-08:00

i'm going to try this:

turn up the volume of how i talk, just one notch above my usual. apply to most conversation. one week. observe any differences inside myself, how the other person reacts, or in general.

2008-01-28T20:22:00.000-08:00

well, i've molted and whined about being too far outside my comfort zone, but the truth is that i feel far more alive recently than i ordinarily do. the prospect of learning about acting in a class on the one hand, and actually performing for an audience with Theatre Rice on the other, is thrilling and terrifying rolled together. each night i go to sleep feeling eager and greedy for the next day, and the next. it's a fun way to live, a novel one for me.

this morning we had our first real class in acting, since last week it was just an overview. the instructor is irreverent and funny, but still philosophical and sincere. to me that's an ideal combination of traits. courtesy of theatre 10, here's 2008's gem of wisdom: be present. example: walking to class. walking to class, i like to feel the cold, see the streets, the trees, eavesdrop on briefly passing strangers - except i'm worrying about the homework. doing homework, i want to think about the ideas and the mesh they form that binds abstract theory to concrete life - but i'm actually thinking about dinner. having dinner, i'd love to immerse myself in the texture of bread, the crispness of juice, the thoughts of the friend who is talking - instead i drift away, out of this moment, out of this body, always somewhere other than here. "be present": simple to say and easy to mock. but it's so hard. and apparently, it's somehow related to acting. . . we'll see how this goes.

speaking of the texture of bread, i went to Gypsy's for lunch today and ordered the chicken sandwich. do NOT order a sandwich at Gypsy's!! soggy and dry at the same time. after a domestic battle with Kim last night we agreed he would wash the dishes if I would cook dinner today (for the first time ever), so into the pot my sad sandwich went, to become a Sandwich Soup. After 2 or 3 hours of intense effort, I also made mushroom+potato rice, and sauted zuchinni. Kim ate it dutifully. I applaud myself! Pat on your back, Leda, you chef extraordinaire! From henceforth all my takeout leftovers are doomed to a watery afterlife as soup.

2008-01-27T16:12:00.000-08:00

AUGHGHGHGHG

Dissection of an audition:
4 hrs left: I have no material! WTF?? What the hell am I going to audition with?
3 hrs left: I better write something. Ok, this is kinda fun.
2 hrs left: Biking to BART. Oh god, the urinal stench of the elevators. Train conductor closes the doors on me as I try to maneuver bike on board.
1 hr left: Finally at Berkeley. Fuck, there's only an hour left!! I can't memorize this!
45 min left: My writing is total crap. This isn't funny, it's just embarrassing. I want to die. I have to memorize this, and then I'm going to die.
30 min left: Oh god. Oh god.
20 min left: Bike over to Wheeler. Wobble wildly in the bike lane. Cars narrowly miss me.
5 seconds left: What am I doing here? I'm feeling dizzy. Am I supposed to remember something?
Audition.
5 seconds after: Whoo. That's done, I feel so much better.
1 min after: Why did I say that? I sounded deranged!
5 min after: Bike back in sudden pouring rain. Only see through one eye. Grimace like a sailor. At one point, close both eyes while still pedaling because blinded by rain.
For hours thereafter: Sit at home. Decompose in shame and neuroses. Resolve to never speak or directly look at another human being again.

Golly, auditioning really brings out the best in me. I went way too far outside of my comfort zone this week. Comfort zone, I long for you.

2008-01-24T20:58:00.000-08:00

acting is my only class tomorrow, and the fire of my curiousity is all that warms me in the cold hell berkeley has lately become. what kind of classrooms are in zellerbach? what kind of homework do the drama kids do? what kind of lectures? i'm envisioning bizarre exercises and bracing peptalks, ala Tootsie. Dustin Hoffman in drag: it's fearsome!

a good thing i enrolled in a yoga class before leaving berkeley, although who knows, i may also get a chance to learn more yoga in korea; i hear it's THE weight loss thing over there. and now i truly appreciate why that is. today's yoga session was not only ringing with the soothing chants of "Ω", but also the mellifluous groans, whimpers, and ok -i admit it- sobbing. the guy on the neighboring mat visibly vibrated. our first collective downward facing dog, and the instructor had us stay in it for minutes!! AGHH!! don't underestimate this stuff.

loopy. supposedly now an adult, i find myself totally getting into the world of make-believe again. next i try my hand at writing a short play in one sitting. likely to end in tragedy.

fugue you!

2008-01-23T20:54:00.001-08:00

wowza. i auditioned for theatre 10 this morning with a sentimental monologue about love and loss. shudder!! wince!! if i don't get in, i will use my wonderfully free MWF mornings to sleep in late, have slow breakfasts, and generally recover from the trauma that was my one-minute audition. watching a long string of other people auditioning, though, would probably be something i'd enjoy.

tomorrow, i'll be illigitimately taking up space in a class about the music of J.S. Bach, and after that a class about Californian Politics - taught NOT by an academian but by an actual politician. The Bach class is taught by a sweet English gentleman who sounds like he stepped out of Masterpiece Theatre. Lots of in-class harpsichord playing too - strange, morbid-sounding instrument. If you have free Tu or Th afternoons, come hear the fun! 2-3:30 pm at 125 Morrison. I know I'll be Bach - ha ha ha.

2007-12-27T17:43:00.000-08:00

must learn to cook.

potatoes: easy to cook.

four potatoes in a row: bad meal choice, bad.

must learn to cook something that is not potatoes.

feeling queasy.

help.

shady genetics musings

2007-12-27T13:10:00.000-08:00

isn't it cute? vivid example of genetic mosaicism, maybe? Her mom is a horse and her dad is a zebra. My guess is that her patches of zebra coat and patches of pure white coat are due to an early recombination event in the paternal gamete: the autosomal chromosome carrying the gene for stripes traded a chunk of genome with the X chromosome, so the stripey gene ended up on the paternal X. Since females have two X's where males have one X, female mammals compensate by only expressing one of the X chromosomes; thus male and female mammals have the same level of sex chomosome expression. The result is that some cells express only the maternal X chromosome which doesn't have the stripey gene, and some cells express only the paternal X chromosome(which after recombination carries the autosomal stripey gene). That could be why this girl has obviously different patches of coat, instead of a uniform coat that blended the characteristics. Mosaicism can only occur in female mammals, not males: if this individual were a boy, it would probably have a uniform zebra pattern, though maybe lighter than usual. Also, ALL females (including human women) exhibit mosaicism because of sex chromosome dosage compensation! Neat eh?

** Was confused earlier about when the recombination took place, but the simple answer turns out to be that it takes place in the father's gametes, NOT with the mother's X chromosome. Silly me.

2007-12-13T19:19:00.000-08:00

recently i tried this korean brand of citrus honey tea - it's a sort of jam that you mix with hot water, so it smells way more potent than the dry kind. It's sweet, but sharply astringent with a hint of bitterness; a warm yellow color. When I first tried it, I happened to be watching the movie Bewitched (I love Nicole Kidman).

A few days later, I had another cup of citrus honey tea. I was studying. My train of thought was: biology biology next page biology (mm tea) biolo- Nicole Kidman?? Unbidden, the impression of Nicole Kidman flooded my head. The taste and smell of this tea was so unique that after only one instance of exposure to it some part of me already made a lasting association between the tea and Nicole Kidman. it's a strange reminder that "me" is only the tip of an iceberg: although i think of myself in emotional and logical terms, using ideas like "personality" and "will" and "reason" to explain who i am and what i do, there are more primitive mechanisms at work behind this sense of self than we know -- hidden levers in the mind, like association.

i wonder, if i ever meet nicole kidman, will i get a sudden thirst for citrus tea?

back to finals labor. immunology this saturday, woe!

a dream

2007-11-15T09:19:00.000-08:00

50 cent was running for president. i talked to him in some wing of the capitol after his speech.
"i don't think america will vote for someone with a criminal record," i said.
"i know," he said, looking dejected.
then i insinuated that i should be his campaign manager and left. he appeared unconvinced.

2007-10-31T15:09:00.001-07:00

it's terrifying when someone you respect tries to understand you.

i just came back from office hours with a very perceptive professor, and i'm all shaken up.

sometimes i wish i could just step out of my head. i would conduct my life by remote control, always objective, always rational, and uninvested.

Weary rejoicing

2007-10-26T00:07:00.000-07:00

whew! I just worked out a problem that was vessel-poppingly hard for me. I get the feeling most people completed this problem in 1 to 2 hours, but it took me about 2 days of painful brain-wracking. still, i feel quite triumphant right now!

it's a just a problem of compressing a string of 1's and 0's. For example, evaluating (1 0 1 1 1 0 0) should return (1 0 3 1 2 0). A lone 1 or lone 0 can't be compressed further, so it just returns 1 or 0 again. Three 1's in a row returns a (3 1), two zeros in a row returns a (2 0), so forth.

Below is my code. It didn't take long for me to decide on my strategy: turn the sentence of 1's and 0's into a sentence of words of 1's or 0's, then count the number of letters in each word. Easy, right? But I fell into a deep abyss of buggery (in every sense of that word) in trying to write that first step. Also, I find solving a coding problem to be much like high-stakes game matches: if you doubt yourself, you are on your way to failure. I kept wondering if the approach I outlined would work, if there is a massively better way to code this, so I got more and more frustrated that I couldn't solve this efficiently or think of that perfect approach. then I imploded from panic. This evening I tried again when I was more relaxed.

Anyway, here's the code- it works, but I'm still pretty sure there is indeed a massively more efficient solution. If somebody feels like showing me the light, I'll be forever grateful.

;; Compresses a sentence of 1s and 0s. Example: (compression '(1 0 1 1 1 0 0)) returns (1 0 3 1 2 0).
(define (compression sent)
(if (= 1 (count (final-boppy sent)))
(helper (first (final-boppy sent)))
(se (helper (first (final-boppy sent)))
(compression (bf (final-boppy sent))))))

(define (helper wd)
(if (= 1 (count wd))
wd
(se (count wd) (first wd))))

;; Takes a sentence of 1s and 0s, returns a sentence of words.
;; Example (0 0 1 1 0) becomes (00 11 0).
(define (final-boppy sent)
(other-boppy (se 4 sent)))

(define (other-boppy sent)
(cond ((<= (count sent) 1) ())
((= (first sent) (first (bf sent)))
(other-boppy (bf sent)))
(else (se (boppy (bf sent)) (other-boppy (bf sent))))))

(define (boppy sent)
(cond ((empty? sent) "")
((= 1 (count sent)) (first sent))
((= (first sent) (first (bf sent)))
(word (first sent) (boppy (bf sent))))
(else (word (first sent)))))

I have the bad habit of naming all my helper functions boppy. Crap, not able to indent!

2007-10-15T01:53:00.001-07:00

And now I know basic recursion, at last. One week of CS3 down, three more weeks of catch-up left to do.

Frustrated and tired

2007-10-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

I have just spent 5 hours reading a 28 page essay, and my understanding of it can be summed up in about 4 sentences. Is this normal? Am I missing a chunk of brain labeled "formal reasoning ability"? I had looked forward to this class, but lately I just feel like I'm wasting my time. It's ridiculously unrewarding.

2007-10-13T22:30:00.001-07:00

instead of thinking about how much i don't want to be working right now, i will just focus on reading the first sentence. I will think about that sentence, slowly and deliberately. Then I will read the next sentence.

2007-10-10T22:52:00.001-07:00

You know that feeling when a song keeps playing in your head? Well, for me it's this ol' tune, just because MIDTERMS vs. LEDA ROUND ONE IS OVER!!! DING DING DING!!! Rejoice, and kiss the earth, our mother!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :: finger-poking dance ::

(not that) funny quotes of the day

2007-10-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

Prof: So this stimulated receptor transduces the signal into . . . . . . uh . . . . . . a bunch of boxes with question marks in them.

My bf: You should give your GSI a 1 on his evaluation! (Pause) No wait, they'll drop your 1 because it'd be an outlier. Give him a 2!

Funniness? Debateable.
Nerdiness? Mighty.

2007-10-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

Writing that legal studies report about "In Defense of Anarchism" by Wolff.

So I don't get why Wolff keeps erecting this barrier between what counts as a good moral justification of state authority on the one side and the huge practical consequences of state authority on the other. PS120 made a pretty persuasive argument that anarchic life would be (and was) nasty, brutish, and short. Doesn't sound good to me. Seems like a legitimate reason to . . . have state authority! But Wolff says it's irrelevant.

I know I'm oversimplifying and missing something here, I just don't know what. Yet. This pattern of divorcing consequences from moral evaluation is much of what's stymying my understanding of legal philosophy in general. That's why I gravitate towards utilitarianism, where moral legitimacy and real-world effect are directly related. Wherefore do you cleave the two, kantian-based philosophers?? I am trying hard to follow your reasoning, but success in doing that may require more sleep and less midterm-ing.

Also, Wolff anticipated my confusion of political philosophy with political science, by explicitly defining the former as normative and the latter as descriptive. So anarchism probably means something different in one versus the other. I think the philosophy version is much tamer than that all-caps, RED, alcatraz-y font on the cover of the book suggests. Thanks for nothing, font.

2007-10-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight's MCB140 review session was uniquely instructive, both for test-performance reasons and more philosophical reasons. First highlight of the night: the prof brought his kid to class and she gave a brief ppt presentation on inheritance of wizarding ability in Harry Potter! Her super-precise enunciation impressed me - not exactly common in elementary school children. It always fascinates me when teachers talk about their kids . . . partially because it boggles the mind that some of them have a domestic life outside of science, and partially because it's interesting to imagine what kind of mini people would result from the devoted attentions of the university's most brilliant and articulate educators.

It's also fun when GSI's talk about their SO's. Like in freshman summer, we had a fantastic GSI who was bald and tall and had a sorta endearingly goofy smile. So whenever he mentioned his fiance, I always saw a bald, tall, smiling duplicate of him, except wearing a pink dress and lipstick. :D But maybe she was actually smoking hot, who knows.

Other thoughts inspired by this review session:
1. Influence of MCB140 on me, personally, as a thinker
2. Thoughtful professors vs. less thoughtful professors (see number 3)
3. Reality as a story

1. Urnov's approach to student learning vs. the approach described in my first post
2. Why LS190 is important
3. What makes a good review session (or a good course), i.e. the thoughtful professor's opportunity

I will write about these eventually.

2007-10-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last week I was studying for my MCB150 midterm to the neglect of all other duties, human relationships, and hygienic concerns. In the midst of fervent desperate scribbling, a few thoughts occured to me about proper exam preparation for upper div biology classes.

o. Preread. Review the lecture slides before going to lecture.
It's easy for me to feel lost in the middle of a fast-paced lecture with strange numbers and theories flying wild, so examining the slides ahead of time is a way to get some purchase on that slippery slope.
1. Take relevant notes during class.
Relevant can actually be a tough call. Transcribing every word out of the professor's mouth = fighting a losing battle, and it doesn't force me to think about what the prof is saying. I do this as a last resort if I'm utterly confused.
2. Review the lecture immediately.
Did I really understand the lecture? Write down questions or topics that weren't clear to me.
3. Summarize.
Draw a diagram. Write an outline of the lecture. Note important new concepts, vocabulary, pathways, schema. Schlissel was a fantastic teacher in that he posted very complete yet concise outlines for almost all his lecturers. I stapled the outlines to the back of each lecture, very convenient come exam prep time.
4. Flash cards.
Diagrams on plain paper are superior for more involved ideas, but flash cards are a very fast way to remember basic concepts. Definitions, nomenclature, amino acid structures, biochem assays, what enzyme does what to which substrate, etc. I especially still need to memorize assays this way, want to access them easily.
5. Office hours.
I admire those students with whom the professor is on a first-name basis. Such daring, such confidence!
6. Study a bit of each subject each day.
Even if it's just a few minutes. I trap myself by thinking that I need huge blocks of time to study one subject, so if I'm doing a CS3 project on Tuesday I can't do MCB140 reading too. This belief is too conducive to procrastination. A lot can get done in ten minutes.
7. 1-3 page outline of the entire unit.
Good exam prep. Condense all those details into their essential patterns. Relationships between the big ideas.
8. Practice exams.
Actually, this could be at the beginning of the list, because practice tests are the best glimpse into the mindset of a sadistic professor, so they should be triaged as early as possible. What kind of questions are important? What details does the professor obsess over? Last semester in MCB 110, Tjian exclusively tested on assays whereas McCollin (?) was focused on protein functions, pathways, and substrates. This semester Schlissel's exam was pretty straight-forward and rounded out, but Urnov is a whole different thing.

[10.05.07 Edit:]
9. Ask the Professor directly what will be on the exams.
Especially in office hours and at the review session, if the prof is the one holding the session. Why play guessing games when you can just find out directly from the source? Some profs act like it's offensive of students to ask, which is ridiculous. Of course, it's better to be specific than to expect him/her to tell you every question of the exam. I wish I had asked Urnov how much we need to study yeast genetics and tetrad genetics.

For the first MCB150 exam, I only really did steps 1 and 4 satisfactorily, and a bit of 8. On the other hand, 150 is the first upperdiv MCB class where I paid near-total attention during every single lecture, so that compensated a bit for my crappy work ethic. As a result, I didn't really have to cram, it was more of an intense review process. If I can somehow catch-up on the MCB140 material, however, I will be qualified to write THE definitive treatise on college cramming, because I am FIVE WEEKS BEHIND in this class!! I am a very bad genetics student.

Anyway, these study methods are far from novel, but I sorely need to improve my study habits and this way is very thorough. Maybe too thorough. Does learning have to be so inefficient? I will assess the effectiveness of this approach after round 2 of midterms next month.