Musings of a Compulsive Thinker

Pleasant Things

2010-12-21T13:22:00.002-07:00

A light rain shower falls while the sun still shines, and rainbows reflect in every droplet of water clinging to the leaves.

Receiving a genuine compliment.

Hot cocoa and clothes fresh from the dryer after you've been out in cold, wet weather.

The first blooming flower buds in spring.

The sun shining on white mountains and frosted trees the morning after a snow.

You tell a joke and your audience laughs sincerely.

Your dog is overjoyed to see you when you get home.

You secretly admire someone from a distance, and they greet you with a smile -- the warm, happy feeling you get inside.

You give someone a gift, and they are genuinely pleased.

A hot shower after a long, hard day of work.

Waking up in the morning feeling refreshed instead of tired and weary.

The gentle rocking of a boat in small waves.

Waking up on a fine morning from a pleasant dream, and realizing you have no appointments to keep.

The satisfaction of a completed job well done.

Comforting words from a friend when you need comforting.

Rain after a dry spell.

You say something to make someone smile.

Discovering the solution to a difficult riddle after much thought and deliberation.

A bird singing in a snow-covered tree, to remind you that winter is not eternal.

The end of the workday on the last day of the week, heralding the start of the weekend.

A day off.

The feeling of elation after you win a contest.

A beautiful work of art.

The soft, contented purring of a cat when you scratch lightly behind its ears. It turns its head to press harder into your hand, enjoying the attention.

A cooling breeze, just enough to ruffle your hair, on a hot day.

The sun shining through a break in the clouds after a rainstorm.

The graceful air you feel when you put on elegant clothes.

You are expecting an unpleasant chore and learn that you don't need to do it after all.

The joyful tolling of church bells after a wedding.

Seeing loved ones or old friends that you haven't seen in a long time, and sharing fond memories.

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Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

2010-01-29T10:33:00.004-07:00

Martin A. Schwartz wrote a thought-provoking essay on how scientific research makes us feel "stupid" and why that's perfectly OK. He shares an anecdote from his days as a PhD student, in which he came across a question that no one could give him the answer to. "That's when it hit me," he writes. "That's why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve... The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can."

That is a foundational idea in scientific research. As Schwartz puts it, "Science involves confronting our 'absolute stupidity'. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown." The scientific process (ask a question, form a hypothesis, test your hypothesis, and draw conclusions) is being "stupid" in a productive way. "Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time... The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries."

In summary: going through the scientific process = productive stupidity. Or, as in the titular quote of this post, "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." That wonderful gem is from Irish writer and Nobel prizewinner Samuel Beckett, who clearly understood that we learn best by trial and error; whether or not we ever reach our original goal is relatively unimportant, as long as we clear up some of our stupidity along the way.

Read Schwartz's full essay: "The importance of stupidity in scientific research"

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Osteoporotic candy bars

2009-12-10T14:56:00.005-07:00

Human trabecular bone is the spongy-looking type of bone found inside the dense outer layers of cortical bone. (For a more complete explanation, go here.) Osteoporosis is a condition in which bone loses some of its density; this change is especially prominent in the trabecular bone. I read about a study by some Welsh medical professionals in which they compared Crunchie (top right) and Aero (bottom right) candy bars to normal and osteoporotic human trabecular bone, respectively.

No, really.

At first I was a little surprised that it was actually published, let alone that these people actually conducted and wrote up this study. When I took the time to actually read the paper, however, I came to admire the practicality.

The basic idea here is that when medical professionals discuss bone health with patients, particularly when explaining the risks involved with osteoporosis (most notable of which is increased fracture risk), it helps to have a visual aid. Apparently the authors of this study noticed that Crunchie and Aero bars were a popular teaching tool, and so they decided to test the validity of this comparison.

I won't go into the technical details here, but their test methods were surprisingly thorough. What they found, in the end, is that the mechanical properties of the candy bars don't really compare all that well to actual bone. However, for the purposes of providing a simple visual aid for describing bone structure, these candy bars are fine examples.

Read: P. Jones, S. Jones, D. Stone: Accuracy of comparing bone quality to chocolate bars for patient information purposes: observational study. British Medical Journal 2007, 335:1285-1287.

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Fake "legs"

2009-07-01T15:01:00.001-06:00

A while back, I read a book that discussed (among other things) the myriad uses of cadavers in scientific research. In the case of such areas as ballistics & munitions testing (including trying out protective footwear for minefield sweepers), it was no surprise to learn that these folks don't often (hardly ever) get permission to use actual cadavers or cadaver parts (i.e. legs) in their tests. On one hand, I completely understand that these tests need to be run; on the other hand, I completely sympathize with those who withhold the permission. Who wants grandma's legs to get blown to shreds?

What they usually end up doing is casting models of bodies or body parts in ballistics gel, which apparently is a fantastic substitute for biological soft tissues. This book reported that several researchers have expressed their desire to have a more complete model of, for example, the human leg; they can see from their ballistic gel models what can happen to soft tissue, but they want a model with synthetic bone inside.

Some work has been done toward developing such a model of the human leg. So far, the "best" model produced consisted of a fiberglass "bone" at the core of the ballistic gel "leg." When tested, the fiberglass proved to be a nominally adequate bone-substitute; however, the testers complained that this "bone" just didn't behave quite right.

If I had but time and money to spare, this might be a fun project to develop. I have given the idea some preliminary thought. The compact portion of the bone could probably be fairly well-modeled with a fiberglass composite. Modeling the trabecular bone tissue, however, would present more of a challenge. Possible materials for investigation might include metallic glass foams, high-strength aerogel composites, or other cross-linked fiber composites.

The book (highly recommended, unless you get queasy): Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach (2004).

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Around the world with a shoebox

2009-05-14T13:13:00.006-06:00

I don't remember where I found this prompt, but it struck me as an interesting question: "If you were given a free plane ticket around the world and a single shoebox for luggage, what would you pack?"

The shrewd, calculating side of my brain immediately responded, "Define 'luggage.' If the shoebox is my 'carry-on,' do I get a 'personal item' like a purse or a backpack as well?"

If the answer to that question were to be "yes," well, that really kind of takes all the fun out of it. For the sake of discussion, then, let's say that anything I take with me (barring the clothes on my back) must fit in this shoebox. Obviously, I can't bring everything I would need; I would be able to purchase and discard most things along the way. So what would I wish to have on this trip that is (a) small enough to fit in a shoebox, and (b) expensive and/or difficult to obtain?

After some thought, I think that my shoebox "priority" items would be the following:

Passport
Wallet (including the usual ID, credit cards, etc.)
Cash
Contact lenses and/or glasses
Digital camera (with an extra memory card)

Extra space might go to my Neti pot, and a couple of extra pairs of clean underwear and socks.

I'm ready to see the world!

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The Omnivore's Hundred

2009-01-13T17:29:00.005-07:00

This list comes from the Very Good Taste blog. As per the given instructions, I have bolded all the items I’ve eaten, and ~~crossed out~~ any items that I would never consider eating.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
~~6. Black pudding~~ - I am repulsed by the very idea of this.
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes - Home-brewed mulled apple mead, courtesy of Matt.
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
~~25. Brawn, or head cheese~~
~~26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper~~ - I like my taste buds just the way they are, thanks.
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
~~43. Phaal~~ - What's the point of eating something if your tongue is scorched after the first bite?
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu (pufferfish)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette - I almost crossed this off, but 'never say never'... right?
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini - I've had both, but not together
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill - It would have to be extremely fresh roadkill.
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie - Food of the gods, seriously.
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a 3-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

How much of an omnivore are you?

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The future is now?

2008-09-07T14:04:00.004-06:00

Reading this article in a recent issue of Technology Review, I had to stop and think that (a) some people have really been weirdly accurate in their visions of the future, and (b) we might be able to live under Their umbrella in blissful denial and/or ignorance, but Big Brother is here and They might be more powerful than we like to think. (And that, right there, is a frightening and thorny dissertation for some other time.)

Quoting MIT professor Robert Fano, 1970:
"Computers provide access to knowledge, and knowledge is power... Big Brother may well take the form of a computerized and centralized information system which has become essential to the operation of society. Thus, the societal exploitation of computers... may continue on the automation of existing functions in human organizations, with a concomitant centralization of information and control... [which] leads to the evolution of organizations into superhuman entities with their own goals, largely insensitive to human values."

Of course, the flip side of this argument is, as Fano explained, that "societal exploitation of computers" could take the opposite direction, toward "turning the power of computers to the service of the individual." His main point was a warning: "Unless computers are made truly accessible to the population at large, there will develop a dangerous power gap between those who have access to computers and those who have not, and particularly between organizations -- whether public or private -- and the private citizen."

I think it's important to recognize the current reality of both of Fano's visions for the future. With that in mind, it's also important to note that by the very nature of the Internet, and the resultant collaborative sharing (or not) of information -- privacy rights, for example, and how private your on-line information actually is -- our situation is still growing and changing as society adapts new technology to its own ends in various ways.

(Full article: "Community Access," by Matt Mahoney >>)

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Road trip report: spring break at Grand Canyon

2008-06-09T13:47:00.035-06:00

For spring break this year, I drove to the Grand Canyon and back with two sixteen-year-old girls (which meant that I did all of the driving). What was I thinking? I was thinking it might be fun. Well, it turns out I was right. I only thought about killing them once or twice; the rest of the time, we were all too busy taking pictures and laughing at each others' lame jokes. The photo highlights (and all of the hundreds of other pictures we took) can be found at my Flickr site.

Our traveling roadshow:

Day 1, Tuesday: Boulder, CO, to Blanding, UT (440 miles): via I-70 and US-191

We hit the road with a box full of canned goods (ravioli, green beans, corn, peaches, pineapple, etc.), plenty of bottled water, a huge music selection (ran the gamut from Kanye West to Madonna to Paul Oakenfold to AC/DC to the Backstreet Boys), and other assorted supplies (especially pretzels).

The first day was the biggest, mileage-wise; we hoofed it all the way out to Utah and then a good ways south, with room for sightseeing stops on the way. We stopped in Glenwood Canyon for a lovely picnic lunch of cold canned ravioli and green beans. At a scenic rest area off I-70 in Utah, we took another break, took lots more pictures, and my gravity-defying little sister topped out on a picnic shelter and later somersaulted over a concrete retaining wall. (Actually, she says, she was attempting to vault it at a run, but her foot slipped, and she recovered by throwing her shoulder down and going into a roll. I wasn't paying very close attention, so from my perspective it looked cooler than that sounds.)

Farther down the road, just north of Moab, we drove through Arches National Park, which was gorgeous. That night, somewhere out on the open highway north of our destination, we stopped on the side of the road to look at the stars and debated over what was or wasn't the Big Dipper or Little Dipper.

Day 1 photos:
Hitting the road
Eastern Utah
Arches National Park

Day 2, Wednesday: Blanding, UT, to Flagstaff, AZ (262 miles): via UT-95, UT-261, US-163, US-160, and US-89

We headed west from Blanding to Natural Bridges National Monument. The drive there was beautiful: blue sky, bright sun, rolling hills, towering roadcuts, surprising vistas. The park itself was chock full of picturesque sandstone. We drove the nine-mile loop road, stopped to look and take pictures at every overlook, did some meandering on foot.

Then we headed south for the Arizona border. We knew that we were coming up to a small section of road called Moki Dugway; the park ranger at Natural Bridges said it was a series of switchbacks, descending more than 1000 feet over 3 miles of road surface. Then we came to a pull-off, beyond which the road disappeared over a rise. We stopped and walked out to the edge of a sandstone overlook, where I had a monumental "whooooaaaaaaa" moment as the view opened up in front of us. Far below, the highway zigzagged off into the distance across the wide country. Moki Dugway, as we discovered when we finally got back in the car and continued down the road, is a narrow, side-winding gravel lane that twists back and back on itself to eke down the side of Cedar Mesa. I drove slowly, enjoying the view, and the girls screamed like it was an amusement park ride around every hairpin curve. A little further down the highway, just north of Mexican Hat, Utah, we did some off-roading near Mexican Hat Rock. I was feeling adventurous, the girls were yelling encouragement in my ear, and I went for some of the more exciting tracks. My Subaru Forester handled it all with aplomb; I love my car.

North of the Utah-Arizona border, US-163 crosses Monument Pass; from a distance, this view struck me as particularly iconic of the great American Southwest. Late in the afternoon we drove into Sunset Crater National Monument. It was pretty, but not terribly exciting or spectacular. We had fun clambering through a lava field.

Dinner was in Flagstaff, at a restaurant called Dara Thai that served up delicious and spicy Thai cuisine. Highly recommended!

Day 2 photos:
Southern Utah 1
Natural Bridges National Monument
Moki Dugway
Southern Utah 2
Sunset Crater National Monument

Day 3, Thursday: Flagstaff, AZ, to Kayenta, AZ (230 miles): via US-180, AZ-64, and US-160

Once again, we were blessed with warm, sunny weather. We cut northwest from Flagstaff through the mountains, which was a pretty drive, and then continued northward to Grand Canyon National Park. We visited Mather Point and Yavapai Point, then did a picnic lunch in the parking lot at the park headquarters. From there we left the car for the shuttle buses, and rode up to Hermit's Rest, with a few stops at overlooks along the way. We provided our own additional entertainment by engaging in bizarre arguments (how to best conduct and cover up a mob hit) and pointless ruminations ("if my leg muscles could speak, what would they say?"), as usual, at a volume certain to be overheard by other tourists. Returning to the car, we drove eastward along Desert View Drive on our way out of the park, with plenty more scenic overlooks and lots of photos along the way. We made one more stop outside the park, at the Little Colorado Gorge, where we hiked in a little ways from the road and went venturing off the beaten path.

In Kayenta, the hotel desk clerk's dinner recommendation was a small local place called the Blue Coffee Pot. There, we discovered a nice family atmosphere and a down-home-style menu that featured Navajo dishes and other southwestern fare.

Day 3 photos:
Grand Canyon 1
Grand Canyon 2

Days 4-6, Friday-Sunday: Kayenta, AZ, to Gunnison, CO (317 miles), and Gunnison to Boulder (212 miles): via US-160, US-491, CO-145, CO-62, US-550, US-50, and US-285

On Friday we headed for familiar territory. We pulled off the road at Four Corners, intending to stop and take a couple of pictures, but they wanted to charge us $3 admission per person, so we got right back on the road and kept going. Lunch was another canned picnic, parked roadside amidst the snowbanks, somewhere in the mountains of southwest Colorado. Over the course of the afternoon we played in the snow, complained at other drivers riding their brakes downhill from the mountain passes, and ate lots of pretzels. Towards evening, we made a little detour off US-50 west of Gunnison, up a little dirt track called Alpine Plateau Road No. 867. Thanks to the tire tracks worn into the mud and snowpack, and the hefty snowbanks to either side of the road, I had fun rumbling up and down the hills and sliding around turns. (No sarcasm, either -- I love my car!)

Friday night my parents rolled into Gunnison, a couple of hours after we did; on Saturday we went to the local climbing competition, which my little sister competed in and my dad helped run. We also hung out some with friends from the Colorado-New Mexico region who were in town for the same competition.

Sunday we drove home. We pulled off at Kenosha Pass on US-285, and went hiking a little ways into the woods up another mud road. Then, while my parents wandered around the parking area with the dog, I took the girls in the Subaru for a spin up the same mud road. My car came back muddy; I was duly pleased. We did lunch at Coney Island, a hot-dog-shaped hot dog stand tucked away among the evergreens just off US-285 east of Bailey, Colorado.

Days 4-6 photos:
Driving home

Statistics:

1461 highway miles
742 photos/videos
4 states (US-160 actually cuts through New Mexico for about a mile)
4 national parks/monuments

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The technological singularity: future or fantasy?

2008-06-02T11:24:00.003-06:00

Over the weekend, I read this fascinating series of articles in the June 2008 issue of IEEE Spectrum, addressing the concept of the "technological singularity" which some say will happen by the year 2030. Spectrum executive editor Glenn Zorpette describes it thus:

"The singularity is supposed to begin shortly after engineers build the first computer with greater-than-human intelligence. That achievement will trigger a series of cycles in which superintelligent machines beget even smarter machine progeny, going from generation to generation in weeks or days rather than decades or years. The availability of all that cheap, mass-produced brilliance will spark explosive economic growth, an unending, hypersonic, technoindustrial rampage that by comparison will make the Industrial Revolution look like a bingo game." (Full article >>)

Some believe that this singularity will lead, in short order, to a kind of technological rapture. One of the skeptics, science journalist John Horgan, describes this view flippantly, but not inaccurately:

"Like paradise, technological singularity comes in many versions, but most involve bionic brain boosting. At first, we'll become cyborgs, as stupendously powerful brain chips soup up our perception, memory, and intelligence and maybe even eliminate the need for annoying TV remotes. Eventually, we will abandon our flesh-and-blood selves entirely and upload our digitized psyches into computers. We will then dwell happily forever in cyberspace where, to paraphrase Woody Allen, we'll never need to look for a parking space... Notably, singularity enthusiasts tend to be computer specialists, such as the author and retired computer scientist Vernor Vinge... and the entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil. Intoxicated by the explosive progress of information technologies captured by Moore's Law, such singularitarians foresee a 'merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence,' as Kurzweil puts it, that will culminate in 'immortal software-based humans.' It will happen not within a millennium, or a century, but no later than 2030, according to Vinge... Kurzweil says he has adopted an antiaging regimen so that he'll 'live long enough to live forever.'" (Full article >>)

Researcher John Casti, however, foresees the singularity going in the opposite direction:

"I think it's scientifically and philosophically on sound footing. The only real issue for me is the time frame over which the singularity will unfold. [The singularity represents] the end of the supremacy of Homo sapiens as the dominant species on planet Earth. At that point a new species appears, and humans and machines will go their separate ways, not merge one with the other. I do not believe this necessarily implies a malevolent machine takeover; rather, machines will become increasingly uninterested in human affairs just as we are uninterested in the affairs of ants or bees. But it's more likely than not in my view that the two species will comfortably and more or less peacefully coexist -- unless human interests start to interfere with those of the machines." (Full article >>)

Here, then, is a view of a different kind of singularity (which is, in my opinion, a more plausible one), as proposed by MIT robotics professor Rodney Brooks:

"My own view is that things will unfold very differently... an artificial intelligence could evolve in a much different way. In particular, I don't think there is going to be one single sudden technological 'big bang' that springs [a human-level artificial intelligence, or AI] into 'life.' Starting with the mildly intelligent systems we have today, machines will become gradually more intelligent, generation by generation. The singularity will be a period, not an event.

"This period will encompass a time when we will invent, perfect, and deploy, in fits and starts, ever more capable systems, driven not by the imperative of the singularity itself but by the usual economic and sociological forces. Eventually, we will create truly artificial intelligences, with cognition and consciousness recognizably similar to our own. I have no idea how, exactly, this creation will come about. I also don't know when it will happen, although I strongly suspect it won't happen before 2030, the year that some singularitarians predict.

"But I expect the [AIs] of the future -- embodied, for example, as robots that will roam our homes and workplaces -- to emerge gradually and symbiotically with our society. At the same time, we humans will transform ourselves. We will incorporate a wide range of advanced sensory devices and prosthetics to enhance our bodies. As our machines become more like us, we will become more like them." (Full article >>)

The questions are many; the speculation runs rampant. Will machines ever be as smart as humans? Will they ever achieve "consciousness"? Will they be our helpers, our caretakers, our overseers? Eventually, time will tell -- assuming that the human race doesn't first undergo some kind of cataclysmic event (e.g., an Andromeda strain, a nuclear holocaust, extraterrestrial enslavement, the Biblical end of days, etc.).

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Clam chowder as it was meant to be

2008-05-28T13:52:00.004-06:00

In my travels last summer, I dined one evening at Dooger's Seafood & Grill in Cannon Beach, Oregon. The first-course soup was their own homemade clam chowder; it was amazing, perfect, melt-in-your-mouth creamy and tender. This is what clam chowder was meant to be.

The most complete recipe I could find was on Cooks.com. It sounds right, but the cooking directions are a tad vague. Does anyone want to give this a shot? Let me know how it turns out.

Dooger's Clam Chowder:

1 lb. boiling potatoes
1 c. half & half
1/2 c. whipping cream
26 oz. canned sea clams
1/4 tsp. seasoning salt
Dash of ground thyme
Dash of white pepper

Peel and boil potatoes. Drain and mash lightly. Put clams in pot and heat. Add potatoes and seasonings. Let simmer. Heat milk, add clam mixture. Add butter.

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Once More to the Lake

2008-05-27T13:39:00.002-06:00

Summertime, cool morning air, the idyllic lake surrounded by towering trees: this is one of those iconic, near-perfect experiences which, once passed, we wish could have stretched for just a little longer.

"I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen ... as I was always the first up I would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along the shore in the long shadows of the pines. I remembered being very careful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral."

(excerpt: "Once More to the Lake" - E.B. White, 1941)

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Modeling the cardiovascular system

2008-05-22T13:21:00.004-06:00

There are several popular models of the cardiovascular (CV) system. Depending on your training and experience, one may make more sense than others. Personally, I prefer the fluid flow model; incidentally, this is probably the closest analog to the actual CV system itself, because blood behaves largely as a fluid.

The Windkessel fluid flow model is relatively straight-forward, with elements representing the aorta and the peripheral circulation (i.e., all of the other veins, arteries, etc. in the body). The aorta is modeled by an elastic chamber, exerting pressure on the fluid it contains, and the peripheral circulation is modeled as a rigid tube of constant resistance; the system input is given as a volume inflow rate.

Another analog to this model is that of an electrical circuit:

Fluid element ~ Circuit element
Flow rate ~ Current
Pressure ~ Voltage
Elasticity ~ Capacitance
Fluid inertia ~ Inductance
Valves ~ Diodes
Resistance ~ Resistance

The circuit can be laid out as follows:

The heart will be represented by an alternating-current (AC) current source, providing a current (blood flow rate) of specified period and amplitude (ranging from zero to a positive value). The flow will then pass through a diode (valve) to prevent backflow into the source (heart). Here, current (blood flow) can pass through the diode (valve) in one direction only.

The flow then encounters an inductor (arterial element) and resistor (aorta) in parallel. Here, the resistance is the proportionality of the voltage (pressure) across the element to the current (blood flow rate) through it; the inductor (inertial component) induces a voltage (pressure) that opposes any change in current (blood flow rate).

Following this, the flow encounters a capacitor (systemic/arterial compliance) and resistor (systemic resistance) in parallel. Here, the capacitor (compliance/elasticity) stores an amount of charge (blood volume) proportional to the voltage (pressure) across the element (aorta); i.e., it stores an amount of energy proportional to one-half the square of the voltage (pressure). Resistance here is the same as described above.

The circuit after this point goes back to the source, with a branch to common ground (blood supply, "reservoir"). Here, ground (supply) merely provides a reference "low" voltage (pressure) for the rest of the circuit.

>> Cole et al. (2005): "A LabVIEW Model Incorporating an Open-Loop Arterial Impedance and a Closed-Loop Circulatory System," Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

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OK, I think my brain just exploded

2008-05-16T15:56:00.007-06:00

This particular recurrence of Exploded Brain Syndrome may have been caused by the sheer awesomeness of this photograph and the accompanying news articles.

Just, uh, wow. I cannot summon the words to describe just how incredibly awesome this is. It's like my childhood dreams about flying.

Read:
>> "Rocketman flies over Alps with jet-pack strapped to his back"
>> "Holy Jetpacks, Fusion Man! Swiss Man Flies With Own Wings"

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A wee taste of Geoffrey Chaucer

2008-05-16T13:38:00.009-06:00

In the General Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, some space is devoted to describing each of the travelers. We'll have a look at his take on the Monk. If you want to read along, the passage can be found here, with a modern translation given alongside the original Middle English. For the convenience of the more casual reader, I will offer translations as close to the original wording as I can get.

Chaucer’s description of the Monk is fraught with the kind of sarcasm that I enjoy so much in his writing. This becomes evident beginning in lines 177-178, where Chaucer writes of the Monk's disregard for a certain text condemning his favorite pastime:

" He thought of that text not a pulled hen,
That says that hunters are not holy men "

Clearly the Monk enjoys hunting and other things too much to let such old-fashioned religious notions get in his way. At first read Chaucer seems to agree with this philosophy (l. 183-192):

" And I said his opinion was good.
Why should he study, and make himself mad,
Upon a book in cloister always to pore,
Or work with his hands and labor,
As Austin bids? How shall the world be served?
Let Austin have his work to him reserved!
Therefore he was a rider aright:
Greyhounds he had, as swift as fowl in flight;
Of riding and of hunting for the hare
Was all his lust, for no cost would he spare. "

Why should the Monk study and labor? "How shall the world be served?" This seems justification enough; Chaucer writes, "Therefore he was a rider aright," as if this is the best thing on which the Monk could possibly spend his time and effort. The verses that follow give a description of the Monk's person, giving him the air of a rich man who has spared no expense in the pursuit of fashionable comforts: fur-trimmed cloak, gold pin, well-conditioned boots, and, from all indications, very fine dining.

Some might say that Chaucer genuinely agrees with the Monk's habits, being of a practical mind; the Monk can't change the world or really improve the quality of life for lesser people, so why should he waste his time?

However, especially in light of Chaucer's other works, such an observation would seem to be drastically out of character with his apparent set of moral values.

" Suffice unto your things, though they be small,
For avarice is hateful, ...
Savor no more than behooves you "

The above, translated from Chaucer's "Ballad of Good Counsel," praises the simple lifestyle and the virtue of being satisfied with no more than you need. Considering his verses about the Monk, I find myself responding with equal sarcasm to the Monk's own set of values. "How shall the world be served," indeed?

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Culinary excellence

2008-04-27T00:04:00.004-06:00

A little while ago, I had the opportunity to enjoy dinner at the Flagstaff House Restaurant here in Boulder. I was impressed by many things: the location, the food, the service. This was a dining establishment the likes of which I had never experienced previously, and it may be a long time before I do so again.

The one thing which struck me most, however, was our waiter; he was a perfect gentleman, and unlike any waiter I had ever encountered in real life. Maybe "handler" was a better descriptor for his role. Regardless, what really impressed me was his commentary on every single menu selection we made: "Excellent." I'd say, "I'd like the quail, please," and he'd respond with, "Excellent." My sister would say, "Can I have the rabbit loin?" and he'd reply, "Excellent." Every single time. It seemed so very high-society, and sort of quaint in a very classy way.

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It's Alive!

2008-03-30T20:21:00.003-06:00

Robotics is a field in which I don't have a lot of experience, but I find the results terribly cool. Especially fascinating are those robots which are designed for biofidelic movement, or which mimic the movement capabilities of living creatures. Here is a perfect example: Boston Dynamics' DARPA-funded "BigDog."

Mobile Robots Take Baby Steps (full article >>)
"A robot dog could one day become a soldier's best friend -- if an Army program works out as planned."

New Video: Robot Mule Conquers Ice, Snow (full article & video >>)
"BigDog, the alarming life-like, four-legged robot, is back in action. And this time, it's trudging through snow, marching up hills, and picking itself up after slipping on some ice."

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ABO blood types

2008-03-18T08:38:00.003-06:00

Here's a (relatively) simple explanation.

The four basic types are A, B, AB, and O. These types are determined by which certain antigens, or protein markers, are found on a person's blood cells. A person can have 'A' antigens only, 'B' antigens only, both 'A' and 'B' antigens, or none.

Which (if any) of these antigens a person has is determined by genetics. In a person's genetic code, the gene pair that determines these antigens can be any combination of 'A', 'B', and 'O', making for six possible genetic sequences: 'AA', 'AO', 'AB', 'BB', 'BO', and 'OO'. The genes for 'A' and 'B' are codominant, and 'O' is recessive. This means that if a person's genes code for 'AA' or 'AO' their blood cells will carry 'A' antigens (this is blood type A), 'BB' or 'BO' will yield 'B' antigens (type B), 'AB' will cause both 'A' and 'B' antigens to be produced (type AB), and 'OO' will produce no antigens (type O).

Now for the important part: anti-A and anti-B antibodies. (Antibodies are one of the human body's defensive mechanisms.)

A person with type AB blood carries both 'A' and 'B' antigens, so neither type of antibody is produced. This is what makes type AB the "universal receiver"; because it has no anti-A or anti-B antibodies, it can accept any blood type.

Type A blood carries only 'A' antigens, so in this case only anti-B antibodies are produced, which will attack only cells with 'B' antigens; vice versa, for type B with 'B' antigens, only anti-A antibodies are produced.

Type O blood carries neither 'A' nor 'B' antigen markers, so both anti-A and anti-B antibodies are produced; if these antibodies encounter any blood cells that carry 'A' or 'B' markers, they will recognize those cells as foreign and attack them. For this reason, a person with type O blood cannot accept any other blood type; each of the other types (A, B, and AB) carries 'A' and/or 'B' antigen markers. However, for this same reason, type O is the "universal donor"; these blood cells, because they carry no 'A' or 'B' antigens, can safely mingle with any other blood type.

Those are the basics of ABO blood types in a nutshell. (Bonfils gave me a complimentary keychain; I might as well know about what goes on with the blood that I've been giving away.)

The good news is that my blood type (AB+) can accept every other known blood type. The less-than-great news is that my blood cells are only acceptable to other people with the same exact type, or only about 3.4 percent of the population.

Anyone, however, can use my blood plasma, because it contains none of the blood cells (with their pesky antigens and Rh factors) that cause the incompatibility.

This warrants some thoughtful consideration.

The process by which they (the nebulous conglomerate of licensed phlebotomists) collect plasma is called plasmapheresis. This involves several iterations of a cycle in which blood is collected and separated into its components in a centrifuge, the plasma is drawn off, and the remaining components are fed back into your bloodstream. The entire process (including paperwork, donation, and prescribed downtime) takes about an hour and a half, and most donation centers offer to "compensate" plasma donors for their time.

Plasma is a fairly versatile blood product. According to several informational websites, a bone marrow or organ transplant surgery requires over a hundred units of plasma. Plasma also contains proteins that are used to treat immunodeficiency and blood coagulation disorders (such as hemophilia); for these same reasons, it is also a sought-after material for biomedical research purposes.

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Injury repair in the central nervous system

2008-03-13T11:00:00.011-06:00

This is such a promising development. Also, you know, it's really cool science.

Injuries to the central nervous system (CNS) are notoriously difficult to repair, though in many cases the surrounding CNS tissues adapt to work around the resulting scar. This "glial scar" is very inhibitory to the regeneration of damaged axons, which carry outgoing signals from neurons (signal-conducting nerve cells). In order to understand the inhibitory nature of the glial scar and consequent failure of axon regeneration after CNS injury, we should first understand the cells and processes involved in the formation of the glial scar.

When CNS tissue is damaged it undergoes an injury response called reactive gliosis, or glial scarring. This consists of a series of cellular and molecular events that occur and change over a period of several days; the glial scar structure evolves over time as various cells arrive and participate at different times. The main cell types involved are the neurons themselves, as well as the surrounding glial tissue, which consists of astrocytes (general support cells, providing structural stability and helping to regulate the extracellular environment), microglia (immune cells, the "garbagemen" of the CNS), and oligodendrocytes (provide insulation for axons in the form of myelin sheaths).

Immediately following injury, myelin debris (from damaged oligodendrocytes) will be released into the neural environment as oligodendrocytes and other cells in the injured area are damaged and die. In the first few days following injury, the primary entering cells are microglia. The lesion (damaged area) also expands during this time. The mature glial scar consists mainly of a tightly-woven network of astrocyte processes.

Astrocytes around the lesion exhibit abnormal growth and some undergo cell division; the end result of this activity is the dense, predominantly astrocytic composition of the glial scar. It has been found that this tissue can be both inhibitory to and supportive of axonal regeneration, depending on changes in the CNS environment and/or the population of glial scars by an as-yet undetermined sub-type of astrocyte which is inhibitory.

Oligodendrocytes are directly damaged by traumatic injury to the CNS, causing the release of myelin debris and some oligodendrocyte death. Glial scars, therefore, usually contain some oligodendrocytes and myelin debris. It has been shown that mature oligodendrocytes and myelinated areas of the CNS are inhibitory to axon growth. Also, it has been seen that oligodendrocyte precursor cells are recruited en masse to CNS lesion sites; these cells express several proteoglycans (dense molecular complexes of proteins and polysaccharides) that are inhibitory to axon regeneration.

Microglia exhibit activation and division following injury, and migrate to the injury site, becoming more macrophage-like over time ("macrophage" essentially means "great eater," so you can guess what a macrophage does). Collective evidence suggests that microglia may actually support regeneration, as long as nothing happens to make them overtly toxic.

Interestingly, it has been shown that the eradication of all CNS glia from the lesioned area results in an environment in which robust axonal regeneration can occur for a period of about 4 days, until glia re-invade the area.

With this in mind, we turn to the potential use of a self-assembling nanofiber peptide scaffold. This novel scaffold is a hydrogel (content is over 99 percent water, with 1 to 10 milligrams of peptides per milliliter of water) that forms when a self-assembling peptide (SAP) solution is exposed to salt solution similar to that found in the human body. The figure at right (click to enlarge) shows (a) a molecular model of the SAP, (b) a microscopic image of the SAP nanofibers, (c) a microscopic image of the scaffold, and (d) a photograph of the hydrogel. The components of the scaffold are amphiphilic oligopeptides that have repeated alternating ionic hydrophilic & hydrophobic amino acids. These form beta-pleated sheets with distinct polar & non-polar surfaces. Structurally, macroscopic scaffolds have been formed in various shapes and sizes, depending on SAP concentration, total amount of SAP solution, salt concentration, and the geometry of the processing apparatus. These structures consist of individual interwoven fibers of about 10 to 20 nanometers (one-trillionth of a meter) in diameter, with the density of fibers correlating with the concentration of the SAP solution.

Here's the "really cool science" part. In one study, Holmes et al. seeded neural cells on SAP scaffolds. These cells underwent extensive outgrowth along the contours of the scaffolds; further evidence suggested that the scaffolds also supported the formation of functional neuron synapses. In another study conducted by Ellis-Behnke et al., a tissue gap was created in the hamster midbrain (by deep transection of the optic tract). When treated with SAP solution, this gap was seen to be reduced or completely eliminated by 72 hours post-surgery and in all subsequent examinations, as compared to the saline-treated controls, which remained visible in macroscopic examination at all times post-surgery. The figure at right shows typical examples from 30 days post-surgery of (a) the saline control case and (b) the SAP-treated case. The SAP-treated animals showed axon regeneration through the injury site; the control animals showed no axon regeneration. Here the SAP treatment was generally found to support axon regeneration with a correlating return of functional vision.

Both of the above studies included tests of the body's toleration of the SAP solution; after an injection of the SAP solution into muscle tissue, examinations found no detectable toxic effects and no observable signs of structural abnormalities, muscle necrosis, inflammation, or motor impairment. Where the SAP solution was injected into brain tissue, no apparent inflammatory response was found; in addition, it was discovered that the amino acid degradation products of the scaffold are mostly eliminated from the body within 3-4 weeks post-injection.

Also, one important feature of the SAP scaffold is its ability to fill irregular voids (because it is a hydrogel) such as injury sites in damaged tissue. This allows close contact between the scaffold nanofibers and surrounding tissues.

References:
> J.W. Fawcett et al.: "The glial scar and central nervous system repair" [PDF, 183 KB], Brain Research Bulletin, 1999.
> T.C. Holmes et al.: "Extensive neurite outgrowth and active synapse formation on self-assembling peptide scaffolds" [PDF, 522 KB], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2000.
> R.G. Ellis-Behnke et al.: "Nano neuro knitting: Peptide nanofiber scaffold for brain repair and axon regeneration with functional return of vision" [PDF, 1.7 MB], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2003.

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Wanderlust

2008-03-10T17:56:00.005-06:00

I've got it bad. I have always romanticized the adventure of traveling: cruising down the open highway, rolling across the country over railroad tracks, making a brand new journey. Perhaps this is part of the reason that I prefer not to travel by jetliner; on the road or on a train, you get a real sense that you're actually traveling. I love looking out the window and discovering a new panorama at every moment. I want to freeze every one of those moments and remember it, treasure it, because who knows when I might pass this way again; for each moment I have experienced, every place I've ever been, one thing remains true: I came, I saw, I moved on. And while it's nice to slow down, maybe even stop for a while and really experience a place, I want to keep moving, because there's something new another mile down the road, around the next bend.

Every single time I cross a set of railroad tracks, see a train, hear a train engine's horn, I want to follow those tracks, I want to catch that train and see where it takes me. Interstate highways are a perpetual temptation; I usually manage to curb the impulse, and I pull off at my planned exit and go wherever it was that I meant to go, but I always think, What if I just kept going? San Francisco, here I come. Or Cheyenne, or Chicago, or Albuquerque, or whatever else may lie ahead.

The open road: the steady hum of the engine, the rhythmic rumble of pavement under the wheels, milemarkers ticking away the distance, an endless stream of asphalt stretching ahead and behind, land spread out wide all around. Every now and then I find that I have come unexpectedly into a moment that is almost a kind of nirvana; in those moments of near-perfection, I could just keep following that road, going onward forever.

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"Whiplash" injuries: a car safety lecture

2008-03-03T09:52:00.016-07:00

Today we're going to learn about one of our friendly vehicle safety features, the "head restraint" (apparently, it is not properly referred to as a "head rest"), how it can save us from nasty "whiplash"-type neck injuries, and how to properly adjust it so that it will be more effective in the event of a crash.

In a rear-impact car crash, as the vehicle is effectively given a shove forward, a poorly protected occupant will undergo three primary phases of movement, as illustrated in the three-part diagram above [IIHS, 1997]. Initially, the torso is forced against the seatback and is pushed forward; the head, prior to contacting the head restraint, initially remains level and lags behind the torso. This results in a characteristic "S"-shape of the neck, where the upper portion of the neck is in flexion while the lower part is in extension (above, left). Following the "S-phase" is the extension phase, in which poor head support will allow the neck to transition into full extension (above, center). Here the torso may "ramp" up the seatback, causing the head restraint to provide even less head support. The forces on the head then accelerate it to catch up with and pass the torso, giving rise to the full flexion or "rebound" phase (above, right). So-called "whiplash" injuries may occur in one or more of these phases. In general, it is thought that the risk of whiplash injuries may be reduced or even completely eliminated if we can minimize relative motion between the head and torso. Controlling this relative motion involves various safety features, but head restraint geometry is especially important to reducing the risk of whiplash injuries in rear-impact crashes.

The two common measurements of head restraint geometry are vertical offset and horizontal backset. Vertical offset is commonly measured as the distance of the head’s center of gravity above the top of the head restraint; in U.S. federal safety regulations, this measurement is replaced by that of height above the so-called "seating reference point" (SRP). Horizontal backset is measured as the horizontal distance between the back of the head and the head restraint. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the Research Council for Automobile Repair (RCAR) commonly define these as shown in the diagrams above [RCAR, 2001]. Studies over the last four decades have generally agreed that whiplash will be reduced if the head restraint is positioned sufficiently high and close behind the head. Independently from federal regulation, IIHS evaluates head restraints according to guidelines set by RCAR. IIHS recommended that head restraints have a vertical offset of less than 90 mm (3.5 inches), so as to make the top of the head restraint at least level with the head’s center of gravity, and a backset of less than 100 mm (4 inches) [IIHS, 1997].

As of January 1, 1969, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 202 required that all passenger cars manufactured for U.S. sale must have a head restraint in the front outboard seating positions that could achieve a specified height above the SRP, providing adequate protection for a 50th-percentile male [Kahane, 1982]. This standard has not changed since then. According to IIHS, the standard is weak; two major deficiencies are the lack of a minimum height requirement for head restraints in the down position, and the lack of a backset requirement. FMVSS 202 states only that head restraints must achieve a certain minimum height above the SRP when in the fully-extended position; when adjustable head restraints meeting this requirement are left in the down position, the occupant will be inadequately protected. In addition, the required height is only minimally protective. An IIHS evaluation of 1997 model year cars rated over 50% as having poor head restraint geometry, and less than 3% were rated "good" [IIHS, 1997].

To address the deficiencies, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has revised FMVSS 202 in recent years [NHTSA, 2000]. Effective Sept. 1, 2009, head restraints must achieve a new, greater height above the SRP and lock in this position, with a specified minimum lowest height; the head restraint's backset must also fall within a specified range in any adjustment position. According to NHTSA, the new front outboard standards will provide adequate protection for 99.7% of the male population and all females, where "adequate protection" is defined as the head restraint reaching at least as high as the head’s center of gravity.

IIHS and RCAR support these revisions, but nonetheless there is still concern that the revised standards are not what they should be [IIHS, 2001]. RCAR recommended, and IIHS has adopted, stricter testing standards consisting of both geometric and dynamic tests [RCAR, 2006]. By these standards, an IIHS evaluation of 2004 model year cars rated 80% as having "good" or "acceptable" head restraint geometry; however, once seats passing this static geometry test were subjected to RCAR dynamic tests, ratings dropped significantly. By the combined static and dynamic testing standards, only about 33% (24 out of 73) passed with a rating of "good" or "acceptable." Including the 24 car seats that did not pass the static test, a total of about 56% (54 out of 97) were rated "poor" [IIHS, 2004].

With the average level of current technology, it's important to promote education among vehicle drivers and occupants alike. Most occupants don't properly position their adjustable head restraints; in many cases this may be due to mere ignorance and/or indifference, but it is likely that many other people leave their head restraints down for reasons of comfort. Ford Motor Company, for example, reported a recent increase in customer complaints pertaining to head restraint comfort; it is believed that these complaints correlate with reduced backsets in head restraints [NHTSA, 2004].

Next time you hop in the car, check your head restraint. The first time I did so, I was dismayed to realize that mine was positioned far too low to provide any real protection against rear-impact whiplash injuries. Now, however, it's adjusted as it should be. Remember: horizontal backset within 4 inches, and vertical offset within 3.5 inches, or such that the top of the head restraint is at least level with your head’s center of gravity. If you fail to comply with these recommendations, I will feel free to call you stupid.

References and further reading:
>> IIHS (1997): "Special Issue: Head Restraints" [PDF, 575 KB], Status Report Vol.32, No.4.
>> RCAR (2001): "A Procedure for Evaluating Motor Vehicle Head Restraints" [PDF, 471 KB].
>> C.J. Kahane, NHTSA (1982): "An Evaluation of Head Restraints."
>> NHTSA (2000): FMVSS 202: Head Restraints, Code of Federal Regulations, Title 49, Part 571.202.
>> NHTSA (2004): "Final Regulatory Impact Analysis, FMVSS No. 202 Head Restraints for Passenger Vehicles" [PDF, 4.3 MB].
>> IIHS (2001): "New head restraint rule would prevent many whiplash injuries, but proposed dynamic tests could compromise safety" [PDF, 230 KB], Status Report Vol.36, No.4.
>> RCAR (2006): "RCAR-IIWPG Seat/Head Restraint Evaluation Protocol" [PDF, 3.2 MB].
>> IIHS (2004): "Special issue: protection against neck injury in rear crashes" [PDF, 504 KB], Status Report Vol.39, No.10.

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"Gender-sensitive" knee implant designs

2008-02-28T10:47:00.009-07:00

Apparently this is the next big thing in TKA (total knee arthroplasty). Back in 2006, both Stryker and Zimmer were touting their latest TKA designs; each claimed to be the first with a design created specifically with the female anatomy in mind.

The resulting debate in business and medical forums provided me with both amusement and annoyance. (Apparently I wasn't the only one rolling my eyes over the whole argument; back in March 2006, when the advertising campaigns for Zimmer's Gender Solutions High-Flex Knee and Stryker's Triathlon Knee System were running in high gear -- both designs were highlighted at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons -- Colin Barr of TheStreet.com included the marketing tug-of-war in his column, "The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week.")

The idea of a gender-specific knee is an important step forward in the slowly evolving area of TKA. There are many well-documented differences between the male and female knee, including fat distribution, anatomical alignment, and bone structure; for example, the female femur and tibia are narrower and more elliptical in the sagittal plane. This idea makes a lot of sense to me.

There are skeptics. DePuy and Biomet, for example, have gone on record with the opinion that the anatomical differences between the male and female knee are not sufficient to warrant a gender-specific TKA design. However, I'm still working on digging up any out-and-out refutations of the pro-gender-specific arguments, of which there seem to be no particular shortage.

Further reading:
"The Female Knee: Anatomic Variations" (S. Conley et al.), J. Am. Acad. Orthop. Surg., 2007.
"Total Knee Replacement for Women" [PDF, 3.6 MB] (J.N. Argenson), European Musculoskeletal Review, 2006.
"Gender Specific Knee Replacement Implants" (J. Cluett), About.com Orthopedics, 2007.
"Knee Replacements, Designed for Women" (A. Aubrey), National Public Radio, 2007.

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Go Montana!

2008-02-26T12:27:00.011-07:00

This kind of thing gives me hope that my constitutional rights are still relevant.

From the Washington Post (full article >>):

"Montana officials are warning that if the Supreme Court rules in the D.C. gun ban case that the right to keep and bear arms protects only state-run militias like the National Guard, then the federal government will have breached Montana's statehood contract.

"Nobody is raising flags for the Republic of Montana, but nobody is kidding, either."

If it comes to a Republic of Montana vs. a Big Brother kind of America, well, I know which side of the border I'll choose. I'd rather not leave my personal safety and that of my family in the hands of someone else, especially in light of the legal implication that the police are not obligated to protect the citizenry. Also, I can't afford to hire a personal bodyguard.

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Car accident injuries

2008-02-25T11:29:00.007-07:00

Before your next car accident, let's consider some of the myriad factors that affect how things may or may not go horribly wrong.

Occupants:
- Front
>> Outboard only: driver and passenger
- Rear
>> Outboard (2) and center

Impact/collision types:
- Front
- Rear
- Side
- Oblique (bi-axial)
- Rollover

Vehicle safety features:
- Seatbelts
>> Lap and shoulder belts
>> Belt auto-catch mechanism
- Head restraint (headrest)
>> Height and distance away from head
- Seat
>> Frame stiffness (resistance to bending and/or failure)
>> Seat stiffness (cushioning; resistance to loading by the occupant's torso)
>> Contouring (when the seat is loaded by the torso, how will the shape and relative stiffness of different sections of the seat affect the forces that build up on the torso?)
- Airbags
>> Front, side, etc.

Other factors:
- Safety feature performance
- Internal structural failure
>> Displacement of vehicle components (e.g., if the door panel fails, you might end up with a piece of sheet metal in your ribcage)
- External structural failure
>> Penetration of extravehicular objects into interior space (e.g. tree branches, signposts, meteors)
- Occupant orientation at moment of impact
>> Is the torso twisted? Are the legs crossed? Etc.
- Occupant's voluntary reactions to impact
>> E.g. bracing

Some possible injuries and causes:
- Steering column impact injuries
>> Usually seen only in frontal impacts; unique to driver position
- Upper extremity injuries
>> Usually due to occupant bracing
- Lower extremity injuries
>> Especially prevalent in frontal impacts; usually due to compressive loading
- Whiplash-related injuries (neck)
- Head injuries
>> Especially prevalent in side impacts; can occur in frontal impacts due to poor shoulder belt performance
- Torso injuries (thoracic, abdominal, pelvic)
>> Especially dependent on belt and seat performance
- Injuries due to excessive loading of shoulder and/or lap belts

Now, doesn't that just make you want to go out and get into a high-speed rollover crash?

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Sunrise over the Nevada desert

2008-02-18T10:40:00.004-07:00

Once upon a winter morning, in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, I come to realize that the desert can be startlingly beautiful in its own way.

There is a hint of the pink-tinged, gold-warmed edge of dawn in the sharp, cool, dry brand-new-morning air. Dusty white frost powders the scrub brush, clinging low to the packed, sandy earth; sparse and brown-green, sagey, yellowed, the brush has a marathoner's wiry robustness, scrappy and thin like the deep, hidden water that the desert so jealously hoards. Thin, delicate sprites of clouds hang wispily around the mountaintops, the kind that burn away before the dry warmth of day. The sun works up slowly, hardly enough for warmth but enough to paint the brown, gullied mountains in a sweet, sugary, candied-fruit shade of orange-pink. It glimmers, shimmers, little baby heatwaves illusioning through the raspy dry air. Thin ice barely covers the green creek that winds in that corrosive, sinewy, side-twisting way through the painstakingly eroded gully in the flat spread of land ahead of the foothills. A low, single-wire fence gives substance to some hypothetical line through the desert; the fence is no taller than the scrubs, just man's attempt to toe a line in the shifting sands, no good hindrance to anything save a few plodding cattle and the uprooted vagrant tumbleweeds.

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The Great Mouse Jihad

2008-02-14T12:03:00.002-07:00

My mother has declared holy war on the mice in our garage. I think it really became an issue when she discovered droppings on the shelf where she keeps her special gluten-free beer. The beer was fine after she washed the bottles a few times, but since then she's been a little crazy about it. I think she's taking it personally. Every time I see her, she says "I REALLY HATE THESE MICE!!!" and I'm at the point where my stock response is, "Yes, Mom, we know, thank you."

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Appalachian mornings

2008-02-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

A typical early morning in the Appalachian Mountains has its own slow, distinct charm. A wide, still river slides placidly along beneath its shroud of mist; vaporous fingers trail languidly through the reeds along the water's edge, silent over the marshy ground, settling stealthily into the hollows -- lying in wait, perhaps, or merely in molasses-thick lethargy. Thin white mist floats over a dirt lane, fills the fresh-plowed furrows in the quiet fields, hangs like smoke under the trees, swirling in the low spots between the worn hills like an old banjo tune. The morning light is soft and diffuse in the solid humidity pooling near the ground, blanketing but not quite touching, hovering shadow-like, light and airy, between gravity and evanescence, smoking down out of the slowly warming air.

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I went to Salt Lake City and all I got was...

2008-02-08T08:26:00.003-07:00

- Dry, irritated eyes and nasal membranes (really, their air quality isn't great)
- Bigger sleep deficit (Discovery Channel in the hotel, and not sleeping in my own bed)
- Up-front, standing-room-only view of Chris Sharma's awesome whipper off the top crux move of the USA Climbing men's national final route
- Bad case of nerves from seeing a bunch of tractor-trailers and RVs blown sideways off of I-80 by strong cross-winds in Wyoming
- A new perspective on pantry management

It's really the last item that I'm here to talk about. When we were in town in late January, the local supermarket chain Macey's was having their annual "Family Preparedness Sale." They were advertising great sale prices on gallon-deep cans, five-gallon buckets, and ten-pound (and larger) sacks of freeze-dried blueberries, dried beans, rolled oats, cracked wheat berries, instant milk powder, powdered eggs, and myriad other items, pretty much all you could hope for.

I don't have anything against Mormons personally; I'm not going to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't believe. However, there are two things I really admire about the whole Mormon culture: this preparedness thing (if the apocalypse ever comes, the world will be rebuilt afterward by Mormons, and by fortified back-country mountain folk and the paranoid freaks who have fully-stocked fallout shelters in their back yards), and their work ethic. There's a lot to be said for a serious work ethic, too.

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Bones and My Future?

2008-01-28T22:11:00.000-07:00

I am just fascinated by skeletal structure, joints, bone tissue: individual bones, and how they all fit together. Human bones are especially fascinating, maybe because I can identify with the subject matter. I love studying x-ray images. I have a segment of a bison spine in the big freezer in the garage; it's been out there for over a year, and I still need to clean and sterilize it, but it's there for when I find the time, and eventually it will be something cool to display on my desk. (I lobbied to gain custody of a humerus or femur as well, but they've been reserved for the dog.) The myriad times I've been in physical therapy, I pestered my therapists with questions about anatomy and joint structure, bone mineralization, cartilage, scar tissue, muscle attachments, ligaments, etc.

Bones are cool.

I have concluded that I will very likely continue my education; the biomedical field is one of two likely areas of study (the other being air quality and/or environmental policy). Should I go the biomedical route, I suspect I'll end up doing something bone-related. On the far engineering side of that field, there are narrower areas such as bone fracture mechanics, material properties and mineral composition of different types of bone, and orthopedic implants. Another area that I've started thinking about in the last two weeks is physical anthropology; there, I could specialize in anthropometry, forensic identification, musculoskeletal adaptations in certain groups of people (such as increased calcification around the knuckles of rock climbers), or something like that.

So, bones. Yep. They're fascinating ("cool"). (I'd really like to get a replica human femur or humerus to keep on my desk. Vertebrae are also nifty.)

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Round-up of the pet project

2008-01-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

Here's my summary of design issues for the plug-in prosthesis idea.

Really, this design concept isn't so far off. It's probably a long ways from bulk commercial production, because it's kind of an expensive prospect at this point, but the actual implementation is within our grasp.

The electromechanical functions of the prosthesis may be complicated, but this has all been done by robotics research groups focusing on control of biofidelic movement.

The interface linking the peripheral nerves to the prosthesis is a three-stage problem:

1. The "plug-in" interface on the prosthesis itself.
Comparatively speaking, this is trivial.

2. The direct tie-ins between the implanted cybernetic interface (ICI) and the nerves.
This is not so trivial. However, referring back to previous entries including research on the FINE (flat-interface nerve electrode), we can see that the groundwork for this stage is well underway.

3. The implantation and long-term maintenance of the ICI itself, the physical module that will interface mechanically with the body and the prosthesis.
This is probably the most difficult part of the entire design. I foresee three areas of primary concern:

A) Mechanically, this unit has to hold up under not-insignificant loading; it has to be firmly anchored in the limb, and it has to transmit forces between the limb end and the prosthetic. Ideally, it will perform as a nearly-seamless mechanical interface with little to no maintenance requirements, because repairs on this level will likely require surgical intervention.

B) Electrically, the ICI needs to maintain good contacts with the prosthesis. Over time, various elements may require replacement; this shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

C) Biologically, the ICI should not provoke any kind of long-term inflammatory or immune response. Here, it is important to recognize that the direct neural interface will require a permanent disruption in the body's natural coverings (skin, underlying connective tissues). On the biological side of the interface, at some point the natural and the synthetic will meet. Some questions here involve the extent of skin coverage -- will the skin be continuous over the end of the limb, or will it end at a seam along the edge of the ICI? If the skin is continuous, will it cover most of the ICI surface (in which case irritation will be a concern where the skin touches the prosthesis), or will the ICI fit over it like a cap (in which case irritation is still a concern)?

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Zen for geeks

2008-01-15T15:33:00.000-07:00

I used to write a lot of poetry. This was something I scribbled on paper a couple of years ago. I came across it the other day, and just reading it left me with a pleasantly relaxed mindset.

It's untitled, but I like to think of it as a kind of poetical zen (for geeks, and other people who think too much).

I could spend hours
right here,
lying among the flowers,
breathing in the air:
sheer, sunlit atmosphere.
Breathe deep --
the flowers love to share --
and worries lose hold
on the edge of sleep,
as if this fresh earth smell,
both new and old,
is some chemical debonder
of stress;
it soothes as it wanders,
permeating
and percolating
with feather-light caress,
until every care
diffuses through the shell
of my skin, to the air,
to be lost, finally,
inconsequently.
If I wait
a long, long time, maybe
it will permeate
all of me;
and I just might
sublimate
and float away,
my very DNA
taking flight
to come apart
sequentially,
the tiny atoms of my heart
mingling with the atmosphere
to be Breathed,
essentially,
through the very lungs of Earth,
my double-helix unwreathed
in a kind of rebirth;
and fade to black,
from whence I came,
lacking form to hold my name --
carbon to oxygen and back.

--

Ever wondered how MRI works?

2008-01-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a powerful tool in medical diagnostics, yielding a true three-dimensional image of large tissue volumes. It works by producing a strong graded magnetic field along a specified spatial axis. Most biological tissues contain large concentrations of hydrogen atoms, usually in the form of water. The atomic nuclei of some of these hydrogen atoms align with the field. Then the tissue is bombarded with radio waves of a specific frequency, exciting these nuclei. This causes the nuclei to "flip" their polarity back and forth between their two aligned states; each "flip" is actually a specific excitation event and subsequent "relaxation," which causes an energy emission. These emissions are measured and used to produce an image of the hydrogen content of the tissue. Because the magnetic field gradient can be generated along various spatial axes, a series of images can be taken and compiled into a three-dimensional image.

Contrast-enhanced MRI involves introducing a contrast agent (usually a gadolinium compound) into the tissue's blood supply. These contrast agents appear very bright on MRI images. The contrast agent can be thought of as a probe of sorts, spreading throughout the cardiovascular system and diffusing into the extracellular space as permitted. This technique is especially useful in screening for or imaging cancers, many of which are highly vascular tissues, because the contrast agent will tend to accumulate in highly vascular areas.

Functional MRI (fMRI), which involves the rapid acquisition of a sequence of time-dependent images, can help differentiate cancers from benign lesions. This is because benign lesions generally have a more normal vascularity than malignant lesions, and therefore are usually seen to enhance more slowly on fMRI sequences.

For more in-depth reading:
How MRI Works
MRI - Wikipedia
The Basics of MRI (on-line textbook)

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Estimating time of death: a foray into forensics

2007-12-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

(I was really tempted to title this entry, "If you want to fool the cops, stick the body in the freezer for while." But I decided not to, because that seemed a bit capricious even for me.)

Time of death (TOD) is an important indicating factor in forensic investigation. The oldest, and easiest, method of estimating TOD involves core body temperature (usually obtained with a liver probe, just like they show on CSI) and/or observed progression of rigor mortis.

The TOD estimation based on temperature is really kind of an iffy thing. The equations for this include many corrective factors to account for variables such as body weight (and fat content), average environmental temperature (which can be unreliable, as it may be subject to large variations over time), degree of exposure (e.g. clothes or other coverings on the body), air or water movement around the body, and substrate (pertains to conductive heat transfer through adjacent surfaces). This involves a lot of educated guesswork by the investigators. Henssge et al. recommended that additional methods of estimating TOD be employed where possible.

(Also, the body temperature is only really useful with relatively "fresh" bodies, because after a while the temperature comes to equilibrium with the environment, after which point the body temperature can't tell you much at all. Another major skewing factor can throw off the entire method when the body is moved from the site of death prior to the start of an investigation. Then, of course, there are cases where the fatal event, constituting the actual crime that the investigators want to solve, doesn't immediately precede death; this opens up a whole other can of worms.)

It is generally accepted that the "average" case of rigor mortis lasts 2-4 days post-mortem. It is also generally accepted that lower-than-"average" temperatures cause this time period to increase. Varetto et al. performed a study in which human cadavers were stored at a constant temperature of 4 degrees Celsius, representing average winter outdoor temperatures in temperate regions. They found that complete rigor lasted at least 10 days and up to 16 days, which is much longer than is usually indicated in forensic medical texts. Partial rigor was observed up to 27 days post-mortem, with complete "relaxation" seen on day 28. Based on these results, Varetto et al. concluded that at this temperature, it can be expected that complete rigor will persist 11-17 days post-mortem, with rigor disappearing altogether by day 28.

Henssge et al.: "Experiences with a compound method for estimating the time since death."

Varetto & Curto: "Long persistence of rigor mortis at constant low temperature."

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More general pondering on the pet project

2007-12-14T10:20:00.000-07:00

I'm really intrigued by the whole design concept for the plug-in prosthesis. It's a possibility for arms and legs, but because we started with the leg, we'll continue along that thread. Let's assume here that we want the prosthesis to be easily removable; ideally, the user can take it off and stick it next to the door at bedtime, and just as easily reattach it in the morning. Convenience is key; this includes comfort, good mechanical performance (security, reliability, & durability), non-invasive & low-frequency maintenance, and power efficiency & self-sufficiency (just recharge the batteries overnight!).

Now, the exact attachment point would depend largely on the location of the original amputation. Consider the issue, for example, of how many surviving muscles have retained functionality. We will consider the two general cases of amputation (1) below the knee and (2) above the knee.

Case 1: If the amputation was below the knee, let's assume that the muscles in the upper leg, which mobilize the knee joint, and their attachments to the lower leg are intact. In this case, the natural motion occurring throughout the knee joint is unimpaired; the prosthesis will only have to account for the structures & functions of the lower leg & foot. The prosthesis must also attach securely & comfortably to the termination of the limb. The implanted cybernetic interface (ICI, for simplicity's sake) could be anchored in the distal terminations of the tibia and fibula, assuming these bones are intact down to the point of amputation, with supporting structures placed radially outward through the tissue to support non-central, non-axial loading about the edges of the implant.

Case 2: If the amputation was above the knee, many of the surviving muscles in the upper leg have no purpose other than to serve as cosmetic padding to preserve the natural shape of the leg. The potentially useful muscles, namely those that move the upper leg relative to the torso, may or may not still serve this function; if the amputation was sufficiently high on the limb to disrupt the attachments of these muscles, further surgery should be performed to re-attach them higher up on the femur so as to restore functionality. The missing knee joint, its movement, and the previously discussed structures & functions of the lower leg must be replaced by the structures & functions of the prosthesis. The prosthesis must attach securely & comfortably to the termination of the upper leg, and also must move the entire lower leg independently of muscle action in the upper leg. The ICI would probably be anchored in the distal termination of the femur, with a supporting structure similar to that described above.

In either case, because we don't want miscellaneous protrusions on the limb surface of the ICI, the corresponding surface of the prosthetic will probably have the protruding/moving components of various mating/latching mechanisms to securely hold the prosthesis in place when it is attached. The distal terminations of the surviving nerve branches could be permanently wired via a highly-discriminatory electrode cuff, such as the FINE (discussed in an earlier post), to one or more "outlets" on the surface of the ICI, corresponding to electrical connectors on the attaching surface of the prosthesis.

--

Neuroelectric interface example

2007-12-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

Here's yet more supporting work for the plug-in prosthesis idea.

Usually, a single nerve supplies several different muscles. Within the nerve are several fascicles, or bundles of nerve fibers; each fascicle supplies a different muscle. (Bear in mind that this is kind of an over-simplification; the nervous system is incredibly complex, and very cool, but we don't need to get into the nitty-gritty details here.) The flat interface nerve electrode, or FINE, is a discriminatory electrode cuff that can interact with selective fascicles within a nerve. More invasive electrodes, ones that are inserted directly into nerve fascicles, perform well but at a high risk for nerve damage. Ideally, for our two-way neuroelectric interface, each electrode will communicate selectively with a small group of nerve fibers within the nerve without damaging the nerve or stimulating non-target fibers ("signal slop").

With the FINE, the working concept is that the cuff puts pressure on the nerve, forcing it to deform into an elongated oval shape, which is a favorable geometry for selective stimulation of fascicles. This effectively increases the nerve's surface area, thereby allowing more electrode contacts to be placed around the nerve; this also causes central nerve fibers, which would otherwise be relatively inaccessible, to move closer to the surface, where they can be more easily stimulated by the contacts.

Leventhal & Durand conducted two separate studies with the FINE. They demonstrated that the FINE was able to selectively activate portions of individual fascicles, and that in general the FINE acted as a stable and selective interface for stimulating peripheral nerves.

Tyler & Durand showed that only the most constrictive (narrow) cuff geometry used in their study was associated with signs of nerve damage (changes in the nerve's function), and that these signs had disappeared by 21 days post-implantation. Their data supported the hypothesis that the constrictive FINE causes an acute initial reaction (due to the high force applied by the cuff) that is resolved over time as the nerve reshapes and intraneural pressure (within the nerve itself) returns to normal. In general, they found that the FINE cuff was able to reshape the nerve and fascicles without significant changes to the nerve's structure and function long-term. Leventhal, Cohen, & Durand found that the "wide" and "medium" cuffs caused little to no damage to nerve fibers and supporting cells; the narrow cuffs were found to cause some damage, which was recovered over the course of the study, which supported Tyler & Durand's findings.

Tyler & Durand: "Chronic Response of the Rat Sciatic Nerve to the Flat Interface Nerve Electrode."

Leventhal & Durand:
"Subfascicle stimulation selectivity with the flat interface nerve electrode."
"Chronic measurement of the stimulation selectivity of the flat interface nerve electrode."

Leventhal, Cohen, & Durand: "Chronic Histological Effects of the Flat Interface Nerve Electrode."

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More on the pet project

2007-12-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

In the broadest sense, a cybernetic interface is one that provides a communication between man and machine. A PC keyboard falls into this category. When most people think of cybernetics, however, what usually comes to mind is actually a neuroelectric interface, which serves as a sensing and processing system that uses signals from the brain or peripheral nerves as control input for some piece of hardware and/or software.

What we'd really like for the purposes of this "plug-in prosthesis" is a two-way neuroelectric interface. Ideally, this will allow "outgoing" motor nerve signals to be sent to the prosthesis, and in addition the interface will translate "incoming" signals from sensors in the prosthesis and transmit them back up the sensory nerve pathways to the brain. This is not as "sci-fi" as it may sound.

An important goal in realizing a fully-functional, two-way neuroelectric interface is the first step in a bottom-up approach: the development of a functional two-way interface between an electromechanical "terminal" and individual neurons (nerve cells) or a neural network (e.g. an individual nerve bundle leading to one muscle). Some important issues that need to be addressed in the design of such an interface are as follows:
- Neuronal and/or network plasticity ("recovery") following stimulation
- Biocompatibility of interface materials (material degradation, toxicity; how the body responds to the material, i.e. does it cause irritation or inflammation in the surrounding tissues?)
- Insulatory and discriminatory behavior (it should prevent signal "slop" to unintended recipient neurons)
- Separation/isolation of sending and receiving pathways (it should prevent feedback and interface-generated noise)

Two separate groups approached this design problem. Stett et al. designed, constructed, and successfully tested a silicon micro-structure that allowed two-way communication with an individual neuron; Reiher et al. used a titanium-gold electrode-based interface to simultaneously stimulate a large area of a neural network. If you're so inclined, you can find the articles through the links below.

Stett et al.: "Two-way silicon-neuron interface by electrical induction." [PDF, 180 K]

Reiher et al.: "In vitro stimulation of neurons by a planar Ti-Au-electrode interface." [PDF, 153 K] (HTML version)

I realize that to many people this may sound like a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo. If you don't understand all of it, well, the only thing you really need to glean from this is the fact that for the purposes of my little conceptual design exercise, I consider the neuroelectric interface problem to be "solved." However, if you have questions about any of this or simply think it's cool, feel free to comment. I'll be happy to explain things, discuss further, and/or otherwise "get my geek on."

I'm weird enough that I actually enjoy killing time by thinking about this kind of stuff.

--

My new favorite design concept

2007-11-15T16:13:00.000-07:00

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. The basic concept is for a prosthesis that connects ("plugs in") to a cybernetic interface that's implanted on the stump end of an amputated limb. The idea started coming together in my head over a year ago. Privately I've been referring to it as the "plug-in prosthesis." Technologically and medically, it is rather complex, and it's also a very expensive prospect by the standards of today's consumer industry. However, it's not outside the realm of feasibility.

Originally, I started thinking about the more general design problem of a lower-limb prosthesis. The idea which I explored was basically to model the missing biological structures with mechanical components. The primary concern here is that the prosthetic limb mimics natural motion; this is potentially a real can of worms. The "natural motion" of the lower leg includes locomotion (walking, running, and everything in between, for which there are different requirements) as well as balance (the whole issue of lateral control and stability, and the role of our toes). The stability and motion of the ankle are also an important factor when you consider how often we set foot on uneven surfaces. Shock absorption in any dynamic motion (running, walking, jumping) is another important consideration. Another issue is the emotional value of a prosthesis that looks and feels natural. The prosthesis can easily be padded so as to mimic the shape of a natural human leg; however, if we really want to go for the pie in the sky, why not construct some sort of moving musculature?

Theoretically, we can design the prosthesis to include a synthetic model of every bone, tendon, ligament, and muscle found in the leg and foot. Practically, this rapidly complicates matters; how can we control all of these muscles?

One possibility, I thought, would be to implant a cybernetic interface into the amputated surface. This interface would plug into the prosthesis, providing a hard-wired connection that would transmit impulses from and to the existing nerve endings. The patient could have complete control of the prosthesis, as well as a good deal of sensation (depending on just how overboard we wanted to go in planting electromechanical sensory receptors in the prosthesis).

There are plenty of issues involved, and they span a lot of disciplines including physiology, biomechanics, biomaterials, robotics, and neurophysiology. I'm not an expert in any of these fields, but I know a little about all of them, and I'm a good researcher (so my research advisor tells me). As I work through the various aspects of the design, I'll try not to do too much hand-waving, because I'm really interested in how this concept could be implemented on a practical level.

Stay tuned. You always wanted to see the engineering design process in action, didn't you?

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Salary Theorem: The less you know, the more you make

2007-11-14T16:14:00.000-07:00

I don't remember where I found this, but it makes perfect sense. Proof:

Given:
(1) Knowledge is Power.
(2) Time is Money.
(3) Power = Work / Time (as every engineer knows).

Let's do the math. We can combine (1), (2), and (3) as follows:
Knowledge = Power = Work / Time = Work / (Money). Therefore,
(4) Knowledge = Work / Money.

Solving (4) for Money, we get
(5) Money = Work / Knowledge.

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of Work.

--

Supplements for treating joint pain

2007-11-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have expressed interest in the effectiveness of glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate supplements in treating joint pain and/or inflammation, here's what I've discovered.

Glucosamine and chondroitin/chondroitin sulfate are commonly thought to effectively treat osteoarthritis. Even if these treatments are only mildly effective, in many cases they may be a more desirable treatment option than non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) due to the adverse side-effects associated with the latter.

McAlindon et al. presented a review of previous studies on the effectiveness of glucosamine and chondroitin in treating osteoarthritis symptoms. They found that in general, the studies showed that glucosamine and chondroitin "demonstrate moderate to large treatment effects on symptoms." However, the authors found the methodology of most of these studies to be less than optimal, and stated their belief that these findings of effectiveness may have been exaggerated as a result.

Clegg et al. reported on one recent study, the Glucosamine/chondroitin Arthritis Intervention Trial (GAIT). In general, the response rates for glucosamine and/or chondroitin sulfate (alone or in combination) were not significantly higher than those for placebo; however, the response rates for glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate in combination were significantly greater in patients with moderate-to-severe joint pain (this was a relatively small group). Also, treatment with chondroitin sulfate correlated to a significant decrease in joint swelling and/or effusion. The authors remarked upon the high response rate (60.1%) to placebo and also upon the relatively minor symptoms presented by participants in this study and in osteoarthritis treatment studies in general; these were cited as possible reasons for difficulty in detecting treatment benefits.

It may be possible that these treatments require patience. In both articles, it was noted that response rates increased substantially beyond 4 weeks. (In the Clegg study specifically, the response rate to placebo also increased between 4 and 24 weeks, but the response rates to glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate increased more.)

Further reading:

McAlindon et al.: "Glucosamine and Chondroitin for Treatment of Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Quality Assessment and Meta-analysis." [PDF, 223 KB]

Clegg et al.: "Glucosamine, Chondroitin Sulfate, and the Two in Combination for Painful Knee Osteoarthritis." [PDF, 184 KB]

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Some debating about stem cell ethics

2007-11-09T10:32:00.000-07:00

My assignment was to find, read, and discuss one or two articles about the ethics of human stem cell research. The first time I read the Fischbach article and attempted to put my response on paper, I found myself bordering on a rant about bias and authoritative influence (grrr...), so I held off until I had the time to find and read a counterpoint article. When I finally wrote up my response, well... Here are the results.

Read:

G.D. Fischbach, R.L. Fischbach: "Stem cells: science, policy, and ethics." [PDF, 533 KB]

K. Hug: "Therapeutic perspectives of human embryonic stem cell research versus the moral status of a human embryo - does one have to be compromised for the other?" [PDF, 190 KB]

Discuss:

Given further research and more time to think about it, I now feel that I can discuss the Fischbach article with relative objectivity (meaning I think I can avoid letting my irritation affect my critical judgment). Granted, my ill humor at this article has been percolating for almost a week. For that reason I feel compelled to issue the following disclaimer: Read this at your own discretion. (Also, please note that all emphases are my own, for purposes of highlighting certain things.)

The Fischbach article is clearly biased in favor of producing new human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines. With regard to hESC research the authors employ words and phrases like "promise," "hope," and "relief from suffering." They're not stepping outside the bounds of what seems to be general consensus among the scientific community, namely that there is a great deal of promise in the possible applications of hESC-derived treatments. There are many possibilities that, if realized, would prove beneficial to many individuals. They say straightforwardly that producing these new cell lines requires, at present, the destruction of blastocysts, which are pre-implantation embryos consisting of 100-200 undifferentiated stem cells.

They get off to a good start, pointing out from the get-go, "The profound ethical issues raised call for informed, dispassionate debate." They ask the important questions: "What is the moral status of the blastocyst? Should blastocysts be protected under the same laws that govern research on human subjects?" Then they ruin their credibility with me in the next paragraph when they jump up on their little soapbox and start grandstanding: "Indeed," (who says "Indeed," anyway? **Warning Flag**) "the integrity of the scientific process and its independence from politics and from fundamentalist dogma are at stake." (This is not the kind of declaration that I would label as "dispassionate.") Hey, authors, I hate to point it out, but you were the ones who brought up the "profound ethical issues" and the "moral status" of the blastocyst. An individual's set of ideas about ethics and morals stem from their personal philosophy/worldview, which has everything to do with their set of beliefs ("fundamentalist dogma"), none of which can be proven scientifically. And that brings me to the whole issue of "knowledge" vs. "belief" and what exactly constitutes either one, and from here I could really go off on the "religion" of atheism/naturalism... (And hey, look, it's my personal favorite soapbox. I'll leave this alone -- for now, anyway, because a lot of my scientific ponderings seem to come back to this point eventually.)

Anyway... My point is that Fischbach & Fischbach seem to be throwing around a lot of hefty catch-phrases in a completely non-validated fashion to make their own points, which (in my own humble opinion, of course) undermines their whole position.

What kind of sealed the deal for me was one of the goals for this paper that they state near the end of the intro section: "we must reduce the emotional valence of phrases such as... 'destruction of embryos.'" This indicates to me a certain cavalier disregard for some very valid ethical concerns that they don't seem to share. I tried to read this article with an objective mindset (I really tried, I promise), but by making statements such as that one they have made it exceedingly difficult to remain objective.

Well, after the massively irritating goat rodeo that they make of their introduction, the Fischbachs get back down to business. The next couple of pages give a nice, factual, soapbox-lacking explanation of hESC development, pros and cons of research on adult stem cells, positive results seen in previous stem cell-related studies, and the basics of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). From the explanation of SCNT they trail into an attempt at defusing the issue of reproductive vs. research/therapeutic cloning; this attempt is largely successful, because it seems to be only a matter of clearing up some confusion, but I don't care because that's not the real issue here.

Then they work through the hierarchy of legal paperwork and hair-splitting distinctions that define what is and is not allowed with regard to hESC line creation and research. They wrap up their legal-political posturing with speculation about a currently (as of Nov. 2004) undecided bill that would outlaw human embryo formation by SCNT in both the private and federally-funded sectors. (I don't know whether or not it was passed into law.) Their jaw-dropping commentary on this is as follows: "This extraordinary legislation would criminalize scientific research... Effects of this chilling attack on the scientific process extend beyond hESC research. It casts a pall over all science."

(Let us pause for a moment in awed recognition of the sheer volume of B.S. that the authors have managed to cram into those three sentences.) To make a potentially lengthy criticism short, this is a perfect example of why I find the authors guilty of gross overstatement of melodramatic proportions.

The authors turn next to the ethical issues. "When does life begin?" they ask. Well, really, this is a matter of philosophical debate (first of all, define "life"), but the Fischbachs try to make it a clear-cut scientific problem. "Defining life as the moment of conception is certainly a convenient starting point," they say, "but this relies on an assumption about the value of a potential life." I will refrain from dissecting this argument in detail, but I wish to point out that their own position relies on an assumption about the lack of value of that potential life.

I'll comment on just three more items before I gleefully burn the article out of sheer irritation.

Statement: "We must weigh the moral imperative to help suffering individuals against the inherent value of preimplantation blastocycts."
Comment: As if the choice is obvious. What about the morality of respecting "potential" life? I also like how they refer to the developing embryo in such clinical terms. (Yeah, that's sarcasm.)

Statement: "We have many examples in history where attempts to outlaw fields of study have led to terrible and terrifying consequences (from Galileo to Lysenko)."
Comment: Ooh, scary words. Once again, I feel this is a case of the authors making a melodramatic overstatement. And I happen to have studied the life and work of Galileo; please enumerate these "terrible and terrifying consequences," because I'm coming up blank. (Actually, I think the overall story of how Galileo was persecuted for his science is inspiring, though sad in ending.)

Statement: "Finally, this effort should go forward because we simply will not know the answers unless we do the research. The desire to know is absolutely intrinsic to humans and has a survival value as well as a moral one."
Comment: Wow. They just kind of throw that one out there and let it hang. The statement comprising the second half of the first sentence, that we won't know until we do the research, is simple fact. The complete statement, that this is justification for the research, is opinion. (It is, in fact, an opinion that, in my infinite wisdom, I happen to disagree with.) The "desire to know" -- natural human curiosity -- yes, it would seem to be inherent in our sentient nature. Does it have a "survival value"? In many ways, I suppose, this is true; we learn how things work so as to better master our environment and therefore increase our chances of survival. But does the "desire to know" have a "moral" value? "Moral" is defined as "of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong" [Dictionary.com Unabridged, v 1.0.1]. (And hey, look, it's my soapbox again! Morality is another one of those "belief" things; no one can state factually that they know that any one thing is "right" or "wrong," only that they believe it falls into one category or the other.) Is it morally right or wrong to have this "desire to know"? This is another matter of philosophical/religious, not scientific, debate. I am astounded that these authors have the gall to wave the "moral value" flag in their defense. (Then, of course, beyond our "desire to know" there are certain things -- for example, the existence or non-existence of a "higher power" beyond our current understanding -- that we must believe to be true; we accept these beliefs on the basis of faith, because when it comes down to intellectual honesty, we must admit that these things cannot be "scientifically" proven or disproven... But that's a dissertation for another day.)

Wow, I just realized how long this is getting. I need to be done now. I'll keep the rest of this short.

As for the Hug article, I should say that I really (really, really, really) appreciated the straightforward and unbiased approach that the author chose to take. Hug didn't shy away from the fact that there are many differing opinions on these issues and that in this case, in fact, you cannot separate the philosophical from the scientific ethics. It really helped me broaden my understanding of the "ethical issues" involved in hESC research. I haven't exactly changed my opinion, but I have refined it a great deal.

Perspective is a wonderful thing.

(I would also love to go yell at the Fischbachs in person.)

--

Snapshots from the travel diary

2007-09-28T09:27:00.000-06:00

Free time? What's that?

In early August I spent a week travelling by train around the western U.S., and I thought I might share some of my journey. I had a notebook with me, so when something particularly struck me I scribbled it down.

Western Colorado: As the conductor tells us on the train, the section of the Colorado River between Granby and Glenwood Springs is known as "Moon River" because -- can you guess? -- rafters like to moon the passenger trains. Generally they're too far away to really get an eyeful, but you can see enough. If you can believe it, this has been only the second (and third, and fourth...) time I've been mooned. (The first was on a bus with my high school soccer team.)

Eastern Utah is rolling flatland between distant reddish-brown buttes, colors muted by distance like a watercolor painting. Short, dry grass with a rust-colored hue covers the ground, like an old carpet being taken over by radioactive mold, complete with worn bald spots where the dusty earth shows through.

The desert west of Winnemucca, Nevada, reminds me of a Pacific atoll: mounds of dry dirt, with clumps of scrubby green and brown plantlife clinging to the tops, rise in little groups out of the pervasive spread of gray-brown mud, baked to a hard, flat, cracked finish. Between the island groups lie wider expanses of flat gray mud, dried tight and crinkly under the glaring sun.

Roseville, California, is orchard country, dominated by neat rows of lush green trees on a gently-rolling landscape. Irrigation canals meander along from orchard to orchard, riding trussed aqueducts over sunken hollows and pastures. Oddball palm trees start to crop up here and there, their strangely tufted tops rising above the other native and imported greenery.

Descending from Oregon's Willamette Pass, the train winds down through evergreen-carpeted mountains, dwarfed by towering pines and firs on either side. The forest is dense, the spaces between the trees filled in by a thriving undergrowth that seems almost tropical in its lushness when compared to the dry, sparse pine forests of home.

Highway 26 west of Portland, Oregon, turns into a quiet 2-lane road once we leave suburbia for the dense evergreen forests of the rural foothills. Late in the day, the landscape of moss-covered tree trunks and rich undergrowth fade away into deepening shadow. It looks cool, shady, lush, and old, the kind of place you might find Bigfoot lurking off the beaten path. Early the next afternoon, under bright daylight, the deep green forests practically glow; what little sunlight filters down through the canopy makes the different shades of green all the more vibrant and rich.

We spent the night in Seaside, Oregon, and had free time this morning. We thought about the various sightseeing things we could do, and decided that all we really wanted to do was roam the beach, which is what we've spent the last 2 or 3 hours doing. We found a bunch of sand dollar shells and a few live ones (they were kind of furry, and came in various shades including dusky greens and purples), pieces and clumps of kelp and seaweed, crab shells and disembodied legs and claws, a few jellyfish, and patches of sand washed with glittering black minerals. The air is cool, only in the 50s or 60s, and the ocean water is cold, and it strikes us that the ocean air doesn't smell strongly of salt like we were accustomed to on the Atlantic seaboard. (My theory is that this is due to significantly lower humidity here.) My feet are slightly numb, having been in the water almost the whole time; earlier in the morning I was almost wading, wandering along the shore in water up to my knees, but later I stuck to shallower water so my pants could dry a bit. I rolled up my pant legs as far as they would go, and they still got soaked by the waves, and I can't bring myself to care all that much, because I am just so content. At home in Colorado, sometimes I miss the ocean like you wouldn't believe.

Entering the Rocky Mountains in western Montana, the train follows part of the Flathead River eastward for a while. I sit by a window, watching the clear, blue-green water winding through its channel below the railroad tracks; it is at times shallow and wide, rippling over a pebbled riverbed, and at other times it seethes as frothy white rapids, or flows clear and smooth through a deep, narrow channel. Glacier National Park is pretty but hazy, due to wildfires in the area, and we don't see anything worth special mention. I suppose we've been spoiled by the clear, grand vistas of the Colorado Rockies.

Between the Rockies and the Mississippi, the country seems to have been painted with broad strokes of homogenous landscape. North Dakota looks a lot like central and eastern Montana, which looks a lot like Nebraska and northeastern Colorado: semi-arid prairie farmland. Minnesota and Wisconsin look like Missouri and other areas thereabouts: wide, green farmland, lots of deciduous trees, thriving corn and wheat fields, tributary waterways here and there, and of course the wide, placid expanse of the Mississippi River.

--

So much for the new habit...

2007-08-21T15:04:00.001-06:00

I have failed miserably in my goal to post here at least once every week. In my defense, I've been working full-time all summer. But now I'm back to school, perhaps for the last semester of my academic career (but let's not think about the implications of that quite yet), and I'm hoping to have a little more free time in which to indulge my blogging.

--

Restless night

2007-07-10T10:53:00.000-06:00

I got very little restful sleep last night. When I first went to bed, the house was still pretty warm, so I tossed and turned for a while before I got comfortable enough to nod off. Then I dreamed a lot. And then, shortly before 3:30 in the morning, I woke up abruptly hearing a momentary burst of noise; it sounded like loud voices over a radio.

Normally I would have brushed this off as the vestiges of a dream, but this time my dog jumped up with me. I don't know if she was just responding to me sitting up so suddenly, or if we both heard the same thing.

But at that point I couldn't just brush it off, and I had been soundly jolted out of sleep, so I grabbed a big flashlight and did a tour of the house, double-checking the screens on the open windows upstairs, the window latches on the closed windows in the rest of the house, and the locks on every door. My dog, after her initial start when I almost fell out of bed, was relaxed. She probably thought I was crazy, wandering around the house in the middle of the night. If anyone else saw the lights going on and off in different rooms, I'm not sure what they thought.

After that I went back to bed, and the dog settled down again on the floor next to my bed, but I lay awake for a long time and just listened to the night until I eventually fell asleep.

--

'Tis the season

2007-07-09T16:22:00.000-06:00

The season for big undertakings, I suppose. In August I will finally take the train trip that I've been planning for at least the last 7 years. This week my dad will depart on a 30-day backcountry hiking expedition across the Colorado mountains. One of my sisters is currently vacationing in Hawaii; the other one is on the way home after competing in the USA Climbing youth national championships.

Why do we travel this time of year? This is when everybody takes the big family vacation, while the kids are out of school. Popular destinations are a zoo during the summer. The rest of us, logically, should therefore prefer to do most of our travelling outside of the peak season... but we don't. We follow the crowd, and then we complain about how crowded it is. People are such silly creatures.

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Blogging as a habit

2007-06-27T10:54:00.000-06:00

I've heard that if you do something 25 or so days in a row it becomes a habit. Now, I think that expecting to make a blog post every day (especially considering the fact that I maintain more than one blog) is unreasonable. As we can all see from my previous posts, it has been rather a sporadic thing on my part. However, I would like to change that. I have also heard it said that the more you write, the better your writing becomes; this seems like an acceptable forum in which to practice. And so I shall.

I am stating here and now that it is my goal to post to this blog at least once every week.

Starting now.

Feel free to send me nasty emails or snide comments if I fail to meet this goal.

--

The Alygator Show

2007-06-22T11:46:00.000-06:00

Have you ever had the feeling that you're on TV and no one told you? I have this feeling frequently. Sometimes I'm half-convinced that my life is a strange reality show; at these times I think it's more fun to suspect and speculate than to know for sure.

Once in a while, when I'm home by myself, I might think of something amusing and start laughing for no apparent reason. (Really, I crack myself up sometimes.) Then I'll have that "I have an audience" feeling, and I feel obliged to explain, out loud, to anyone who may or may not be listening, what was so funny.

Yeah, I know I'm crazy.

--

Thinking outside the box

2007-05-08T17:33:00.000-06:00

I am irritated by these seemingly popular arguments over scientifically proving or disproving the existence of God. The entire concept is a joke. The fundamental basis for all of these arguments is flawed.

You see, science is based on our observations and ideas about the concrete, natural world. Scientific arguments are rational and logical. Therefore, in order to scientifically prove or disprove something, we must approach the issue on a rational, logical basis.

This is my problem. People who want to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of God are assuming that they can fit God and his actions into a rational, logical box. This is ridiculous. Those of us who believe in God are not thinking irrationally in order to to do; we are accepting that not everything fits into that rational, logical box. God is supernatural.

supernatural: of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or a deity.

Beyond the rational, logical box of the natural world is the larger, sometimes indefinable non-rational realm, of which the supernatural is a part. God cannot be explained within the limits of rational thought; therefore, God cannot be "proven" or "disproven" scientifically.

I would like to point out, finally, that even atheists operate under a kind of faith: while I and others take it on faith that God exists, though we cannot prove this rationally, atheists and those of a similar mindset must take it on a kind of faith that God does not exist, because they cannot rationally prove that, either. Whether or not you believe God is out there, the whole concept of God is outside the rational box, out there in the non-rational realm; trying to rationally prove or disprove his existence is a futile endeavor. Deities, the supernatural, are beyond the scope of rational arguments.

The moral for today: Stop arguing over the premise that God fits into your neat little rational box. He doesn't fit, and he never will. Whether you choose to believe in the existence or non-existence of God, accept the fact that it is a non-rational belief and not a rational conclusion. Learn to live with it.

--

Row, row, row your boat

2007-03-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

I work, and I study, and I make small talk with various acquaintances over coffee or breakfast or a game of cards; and sometimes, like now, I wonder what all of my efforts are leading to.

Oh, of course, I have these pretty ideas in my head of a nice house and a picket fence and 2.5 kids and a dog, but I suppose nothing on this earth is guaranteed. Sometimes that thought can be a little bit depressing, but this time (and some other times) it makes me sit back and realize, once again, that I am completely in God's hands, no matter what may or may not happen; and that makes me feel a little hopeful and a little apprehensive, but mostly I am at peace with the simple fact that God has a plan and he knows what he's doing.

Some people liken this to being adrift at sea; the analogy is that we, the sailor, have no control over where the boat is going, but simply must take what is thrown at us by the wind and the waves, keeping in mind that God will guide our boat where he means it to go.

I don't like that analogy. As an admitted control freak and amateur philosopher, I find it hard to accept that we play no part in sailing our own boats. Rather, I like to think that we have cast off with a fully functioning rudder and oars and sails, but with an incomplete map of the sea. We may have a destination in mind, or at least navigation check-points that we mean to reach during the course of our journey; we may have a timetable we wish to keep. But we are working from this incomplete map and from our imperfect knowledge of the sea and its hidden intricacies, so we can never know with absolute certainty what path we will follow to our final destination. Sometimes we will sail with the prevailing winds; sometimes we will struggle to tack in a different direction; sometimes we will be caught up in a current that we cannot fight. Every decision we make will have some dependence on our navigational fix; if we want to see the journey through, we must strive to remain properly oriented. But after all, God will guide our boat where he means it to go, with or without our help.

As Thoreau wrote, "It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course."

--

What not to do with an airplane

2006-11-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

As far as maintaining stability, I'm going to explain one of the worst things that can happen to an airplane in flight: spin. Aircraft spin accounts for 10 percent of all aviation accidents, and just under 14 percent of fatal accidents.

For starters, airplane wings are designed so that over a certain incident airspeed (the velocity of the air travelling directly over the wing from front to back), the fluid pressures of the air flowing over the wing's surfaces cause lift generation, or an overall upward force. Below that speed, the wing doesn't generate any lift.

Because of this, every airplane has a specified "stall speed." You want your airplane to be flying faster than its stall speed, because otherwise the incident airspeed hits that magical point where the wing "stalls" -- it stops generating lift. (Airplanes don't fly very well when the wings stop generating lift.) The horizontal stabilizers (fins) on the tail of the airplane work the same way; usually, however, the stall speed for those is lower than for the wings. I'll explain why in a moment.

With that in mind, consider the case of an airplane flying straight and happy. If it slows to just below wing stall speed, the wings will lose lift and the airplane will sink. But the horizontal stabilizers, which are still above their stall speed, are still generating lift. This gives the tail some buoyancy relative to the rest of the airplane, so the airplane heads into a dive. Then the incident airspeed over the wings increases again, and -- *ta-da* -- the pilot can pull out of the dive back onto a level flight path and keep on humming along at a suitable speed. Thus, because of the horizontal stabilizer design, the natural reaction of the stalled aircraft is to dive, which provides the boost required to get the airplane flying again.

The dangerous kind of stall is not too far removed from that. In the case I just discussed, both wings stalled at the same time, so the loss of lift was symmetrical. If one wing stalls before the other, you have a real problem. (This can happen, for example, if you're flying just above the wing stall speed and you hit a wind gust the wrong way; you can also cause it deliberately by using the controls to swing the airplane's nose sharply to one side.)

Let's say that the airplane is flying just faster than the wing stall speed, and the right wing stalls. Three things happen:

1. The airflow over the stalled right wing isn't smooth anymore, so the drag on that wing increases, effectively pulling back on that wing relative to the rest of the airplane; this causes the airplane to "yaw" to the right (the nose swings over in that direction) and enter into a spin.

2. The stalled right wing loses lift, but the left wing is still lifting. This sends the airplane into a roll as the right wing sinks.

3. Because the right wing is no longer generating lift, the total lift provided by the wings has been cut in half. The horizontal stabilizers, just like before, keep lifting the same amount as always; but because the wings are producing less lift than usual, the body of the airplane will start to sink while the tail is more "buoyant" than the rest of the airplane. This sends the airplane pitching nose-down.

At this point the airplane is in what we call "developed spin" and losing altitude fast. Recovering from this kind of spin, if this specific aircraft is able to do so (and they aren't always), requires that the pilot keep a cool head and follow prescribed spin recovery procedures.

--

The Minion

2006-09-20T17:08:00.000-06:00

Last week Emily saw, was intrigued by, and purchased a Venus' fly trap. She refers to it as her Minion. Her stated logic for this is that the Minion kills things for her. (When my dad was introduced to the Minion, he just made a comment about mini-onions.) Emily makes me laugh.

The other day I found a tiny spider in the living room and announced it to the household at large. Normally this would provoke Emily into escaping the room with high-pitched shrieks; this time, I suppose, she felt safe as she was, checking her e-mail on the computer across the room with the Minion perched on the desk next to the screen.

We decided it would be a good idea to feed the spider to the Minion.

Emily made me catch the spider in a piece of tissue and shake it into the Minion's container. (It came in this container, clear plastic with a lid, with the explanation that these plants prefer high humidity.) We all then watched the spider scurry around the Minion's container for a few minutes before Emily got frustrated.

She picked up the container, turned it up-side down, and shook it vigorously, screaming, "Earthquake!!!"

When the earthquake was over, we found the spider clinging to the Minion, just below one of its traps. The spider tested the footing ahead, thought better of it, and retreated back to the sides of the container.

Emily yelled at the spider for being stupid, informed it that it was now going to die a painful death in retaliation for its non-cooperation, and expressed her disappointment to the Minion at its own lack of aggression.

I got bored shortly thereafter and went upstairs.

A short time later, Emily ran upstairs after me, shrieking in maniacal sing-song, "It ate it! It ate it!"

I expressed interest, and examined the Minion to see the closed trap while Emily stroked the Minion's container, telling it, "Good Minion, I'm so proud of you!"

We have also discovered, in a separate incident (which still makes me laugh when I think about Emily's startled reaction), that the Minion will bite anything when provoked. Emily was testing its reflexes with her finger. Once she got over her surprise, she was extremely pleased with the Minion's reaction time.

--

Is anyone listening?

2006-09-15T10:01:00.000-06:00

In general, as I share my various musings here, I really try to avoid sounding pretentious. I think that sometimes I fail at this goal. Maybe most people have zero interest in what I have to say, or maybe they find me irritating; maybe these and/or other reasons can serve as an explanation for the glaring lack of comments on my posts.

(Am I whining? I'm sorry if I sound like I'm whining. I love to complain, but I hate to sound whiny.)

Pretentiousness is a common pitfall for those who write to a perceived audience. Various people (my mother among them) have related a certain distaste for the writings of Henry David Thoreau, for example, citing an air of pretentiousness as their primary complaint. (Their other complaint, if they make one, usually contains the word "boring.") Admittedly, this may be true; Thoreau often hopped up on his little philosophical soapbox, sometimes entirely for the sake of doing so, and sometimes as an aside in the middle of an exposition on bread-making. In my own way, however, I enjoy these little tangents as well as the more mundane material in which they are couched.

(Yes, I read Thoreau. For fun. I'm one of those people.)

Well, at any rate, I suppose I don't have anything to say that is of great importance; I'm not famous, so there's no celebrity factor to coerce the interest of the masses. You should feel free to take it or leave it, I guess. My family may actually be the only people who ever read this. And, really, I'm okay with that possibility.

--

Where were you?

2006-09-11T11:21:00.000-06:00

Five years today have passed since September 11, 2001. I was a senior in high school. I remember that while driving to school that morning, still mired in my usual waiting-for-the-caffiene-to-kick-in early-morning funk, I spent the first five minutes of the trip flipping through my favorite radio stations, trying to find a station that was playing music. But they were all talking, blah, blah, blah, and finally I gave up.

Then, as I was driving south on highway 119, coming down the hill to the intersection at Valmont Road, the news finally sank in. I stopped at the traffic light, had a moment in which stunned realization dawned on me, and drove the rest of the way into south Boulder listening to the news bulletins on AM radio.

When I arrived at school, I was reluctant to leave the car (and the radio), but I had to go to my 8:32 calculus class. I listened to one last breaking news item and turned off the car.

The classroom, full of seniors and a few juniors, was a-buzz with conversation; every student to walk through the door delivered the latest news they had heard. And so it happened that I was the one to inform them all of the plane crash at the Pentagon.

That entire day exists in my memory as permeated by a deep sense of surreality.

I grew up in the NYC metropolitan area. The New York cityscape, for me, has always been defined (and still is, because this is the way I remember it) by the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Now, when I see photographs of the Manhattan skyline taken within the last five years, it doesn't look like Manhattan. Something is missing.

I am one of the many who had no real personal ties to the attacks. My best friend's father was in Manhattan that day and watched the towers go down; that's as close as I came. I was lucky, I guess.

Still, it seems to me that 9/11/2001 has been one of the defining days of my early adulthood. I felt compelled, after all, to recognize it today.

--

Flirting: just add vodka

2006-06-30T16:01:00.000-06:00

Last night I was at a piano bar called The Reef in downtown Boulder with a friend of mine. She was drinking vodka martinis because she enjoys them; I was drinking cranberry juice on ice because there were car keys in my pocket.

Around 1:15 a.m., two inebriated (but polite) young men from a few tables over came to sit with us. One of them, College Guy #1, swore he recognized me from his business classes at the university, I promised him that I had never taken a business class in my life, he proceeded to apologize (repeatedly) for making an idiot out of himself, and I reassured him (repeatedly) that it was a mistake easily made and just as easily forgiven. His friend, College Guy #2, struck up a conversation with my friend, bought her another vodka martini, and compared his friend to "that guy, you know, the one who says something stupid no matter what," after which my friend joined me in attempting to reassure College Guy #1 that he was not, in fact, "that guy."

You should understand that the entire interaction consisted of near-shouting to be heard over the (admittedly thunderous, but very good) piano-playing happening on stage, and I could hear maybe half of the words exchanged, my own included. This resulted in rather disjointed conversations and a frequent occurence of the universal "Huh?"

After a little while, during which College Guy #2 talked my friend (repeatedly) into taking "just one sip" of his alcohol-and-coke beverage ("it's really good, I promise") and College Guy #1 consoled himself in flirting with an equally-inebriated (and very appreciative) young woman at another table, my friend collected the phone number of College Guy #2 and we left.

We had a good laugh about the whole thing in the car on the way home.

That is the first time that a complete stranger has ever so much as attempted to flirt with me, regardless of the outcome. There is a little voice in my head complaining that he was just drunk; still, it was rather flattering, and I am inordinately pleased about it.

--

Road trips

2006-06-28T15:16:00.000-06:00

They are a great American rite of passage. Whether you strike out on your own or with a few friends, there is an undeniable sense of freedom that comes to you as you are cruising down an unfamiliar highway with nothing but a spare change of clothes, some snacks, and a toothbrush in the back, some money in your pocket, and prudent emergency supplies buried in the trunk.

As long as you have a few caffeinated beverages in a cooler (I recommend Starbucks Double Shots, or Mountain Dew), some bottled water in the back seat, one or two good road maps, and blankets stashed in the back for the cold nights spent in the car, you can get by in reasonable comfort.

It also helps if your travelling party includes a navigator who can read maps.

You drive until you're too tired to drive safely anymore, then you trade seats with your navigator and take a nap; when all of your potential drivers are exhausted, you pull into a rest area, and you sleep. Then you wake up with the sun and start driving again. You stop for only four other things: gas, bathroom breaks, food, and places that look intriguing; there are floating bonus points to be won if you manage to combine at least three of those things in one stop.

It's not the classiest, or the most expedient, means of travel, but it sure can be a lot of fun.

Even if your eventual destination is not quite what you expected -- or even if it completely fails to meet expectations -- well, the journey is at least as important as the place to which you choose to journey.

(Besides, Roswell may not have been as much of a po-dunk little nowhere town as I was hoping, but the UFO museum was just fascinating.)

--

Meteorological mood swings

2006-04-24T12:40:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, average local temperatures were in the low 80's. This morning it snowed. I know it has to do with the mountains and the strange convergences of northern and Pacific fronts that we get over Colorado, but for crying out loud, for once I'd like to be able to reliably plan my wardrobe for a week in advance.

On the plus side... We have a saying around here: If you don't like the weather, wait a few days.

It's rough on the garden, though. The Japanese maple tree in our front yard gets hammered in the springtime.

--

Senoritis, or something completely different

2006-04-22T12:44:00.000-06:00

I have too much work to do for the time I have in which to do it. I am two weeks away from the end of my senior year, and I still have another summer and fall semester to get through before I graduate. Most of my friends are preparing for life after college.

I should be tearing my hair out by the roots in despair. I should be climbing the walls of the engineering center, desperate to escape.

And yet, I am at peace with my current situation. I have reached a state of a kind of zen. I am content to hole myself up in the lab every day for hours at a time, slogging away at my enormous to-do list of project objectives and homework assignments. Sometimes I forget to eat lunch until my stomach starts making angry noises around 4 p.m., and my reaction to this is a mildly surprised "Huh, it's later than I thought," a trip to my locker for a snack bar, and a return to my lab station to work for another several hours. I end up back at the lab most weekends. I go to bed every night by 10, wake up every morning by 6, and have learned to like Quaker Peaches & Cream instant oatmeal and a cup of coffee with milk and sugar in the mornings.

Matt, who complains that I don't drink "real" coffee (namely, black), grudgingly admits that at least I've pared it down to this from my old habit of drinking exclusively "fake coffee-flavored beverages" (as Matt referred to them).

I'm even still interested in most of my classes.

It's going to be a good year.

--

Four / Twenty

2006-04-20T16:22:00.000-06:00

How did this become an event? It's something over which we roll our eyes, here in the People's Republic of Boulder. Every year at 4:20 p.m. on April 20th, a crowd gathers at Farrand Field on the university campus to light up and enjoy their marijuana.

Supposedly it's a rally in favor of legalizing posession of small amounts of pot. There's a Denver-based group who call themselves "SAFER" (Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation) advocating recreational marijuana use instead of alcohol. CU students passed a referendum last year "encouraging" the university administration to reduce marijuana use/posession penalties to the same as those for alcohol. Also last year, Denver voters passed an initiative to make marijuana legal for private adult use.

And they say Colorado's a conservative state. Pfft.

This year the local police put up barricades around Farrand Field and announced it was closed, warning that trespassers would be fined.

I'm doubtful that these measures will have proved to be effective deterrents. This is Boulder, after all.

--

Being and becoming

2006-03-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder about the experience of blindness. It is not something easily imagined; I can close my eyes and wander around my house, counting steps up to the second floor, trailing my hand along the wall to my door at the end of the hallway, tapping my fingers on the edge of my bed and then letting go, stepping out across the carpet, trusting that I didn't leave my shoes in the middle of the floor, reaching until my hand meets the edge of my dresser: and then there's a slight feeling of relief at having completed my journey without bruising my shins along the way.

Even when I do this, as I move through the house with my eyes closed I am picturing the walls and furniture around me, drawing on my visual map of the rooms for navigation. My mind's eye pictures my desk where I left it this morning, and lo, my hands find it exactly where I imagine it to be.

I do this sometimes in the morning; I fix myself a cup of coffee and, if I'm feeling brave, close my eyes while I'm still in the kitchen. Holding my coffee cup carefully in one hand, up at the level of my chin so as to not accidentally knock it against an out-of-place chair, I feel my way out to the foyer with my free hand, find the doorknob and pull the door open, step down onto the porch, and close the door; then I edge forward, feeling with my feet for the edge of the porch, and carefully step down, and sit gingerly on the edge of the porch, every movement controlled and slow so I won't lose my balance if one element in my surroundings is not exactly where I think it is.

And still I can picture the journey, though the chairs around the kitchen table provide some excitement, because I'm never sure where they are. I run into them frequently. Sitting on the porch, I can picture the front yard and the houses nearby; I picture cars on the street where they are habitually parked.

All this, the things I picture because I have seen them before, they fall into place as in the world of "being": this is the way I imagine things to be. I take it on faith that Colorado has not cracked in half, that there is not, in fact, a new Grand Canyon in place of the houses across the street. Immediately, I am only aware of the elements in my environment that I come into direct contact with: my coffee cup, the kitchen chairs, the front door, the porch, and the tiny square of sidewalk on which my feet are resting.

I can't be sure that the trees in the yard are actually there until I hear leaves rustling in a breeze; this enters into the world that is "becoming," the world of action and movement. I hear a car driving down the street, tracking it from left to right as it passes the house. The front door opens behind me; someone steps onto the porch.

"What are you doing out here?" I recognize my mother's voice.

It's a good question. I'm enjoying my coffee; I'm paying attention to the feel of sunlight on my skin; I'm imagining what I might see if I weren't temporarily blind.

When I open my eyes, I see one of our neighbors across the street, weeding a flower bed. I can't hear her over there; until now, she didn't exist in the world as I was aware of it. Only now does she enter into the picture.

There are other things I missed, too, because they weren't "becoming" in any tangible way.

--

Has anyone seen my brain?

2006-03-02T16:19:00.000-07:00

... because it seems to have sprouted wings and taken off sometime in the last 30 minutes.

It can't have gotten far, right? How fast do brains fly? And what is the coefficient of lift for brain wings? What is a brain's lift-over-drag ratio? What kind of turbulent flow results from brain aerodynamics?

I can't answer these questions; I don't even know if my brain decided to wear a safety helmet.

I was doing fine up until a little while ago. I've been holed up in the lab all afternoon, so about fifteen minutes ago I took a walk upstairs to my professor's office (the one my subconscious believes is partly mechatronic) to pick up my old homework. And when I got back and sat down at my lab station, I couldn't do any more work. I think the crafty old brain took the opportunity to escape out a window upstairs when I wasn't paying attention.

I sure hope it comes back before class tomorrow.

--

An odd side note

2006-03-01T17:17:00.000-07:00

Have you ever dreamed that one of your professors was some kind of bionic-experiment-turned-reluctant-hero?

I had this kind of dream for the first time last night. And it's been stuck in my head all day. Then I went to class with this professor and couldn't help but picture the good doctor dashing around in a tan trenchcoat saving hapless citizens.

From what subconscious depths does my brain dredge this kind of stuff?

--

Assigned seating

2006-03-01T10:16:00.000-07:00

It won't save your life, but it'll make somebody's job easier.

My topics have been rather middle-of-the-road lately. Time to raise a few eyebrows.

------

So, really, assigned seating, specifically on commercial airliners. Besides eliminating the ridiculously long lines that would appear in airports if people thought an earlier arrival would get them a better seat on the plane, it helps crash investigators determine why the plane crashed.

The so-called "human wreckage" is particularly important in investigating when the airplane tanks in the ocean, because the structural wreckage itself, along with the black box, may be particularly difficult to recover. Bodies, on the other hand, float.

If a passenger was in his or her assigned seat at the time of the crash, the location, type, and severity of injuries found on the body can be documented; when you perform this analysis on a group of bodies and place each one into its proper context, the assigned seating chart, you have a pattern.

Without going into what some people would find to be unnecessarily graphic detail, I will say simply that the various injuries found on recovered bodies and/or fragments, when analyzed to form such a pattern, are a fairly good indicator of the cause and ensuing events of the crash.

So remember - next time you fly, stick to your assigned seat; it might not affect your well-being in the long run, but if you crash it could help tell the world why.

--

Fatigue

2006-02-21T15:28:00.000-07:00

It's funny the way this worked out, really. In one of my engineering classes we're currently discussing the various ways in which fatigue can lead to component failure. At the same time, my schedule has fallen out such that I am feeling extremely fatigued this week, both physically and mentally.

Hopefully I can catch up on my sleep before something fails. (Ha ha.)

Such is the life of a senior engineering student. Just remember: we suffer for the sake of future generations.

Ooh, that was almost motivational.

"Sleep is for the weak," as someone I know frequently tells me. Granted, his major life goal is to rule the world with an iron fist from an impregnable mountain fortress; also, his relationship with caffiene borders on addiction. I'm doubtful as to whether or not his advice is very applicable to my own goals, which pale rather dreadfully in comarison.

--

... My Future?

2006-01-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder, amidst worry about today and tomorrow and the rest of your life, how much longer you might have? What if the rest of your life is all of next week? Or next month? Next year? What if (God forbid) all we have is tomorrow?

In my senior year of high school, someone wrote in the yearbook, "Party forever! You can sleep when you're dead."

For those who may find this a rather impractical (if exciting) modus operandi, someone else wrote in the same yearbook, "Dream as if you'll live forever; live as if you'll die tomorrow."

What if?

What if you were to die today, unexpectedly, without warning: no last confessions, no good-byes, no more chances to tell your mom "I love you."

Think about that for a moment.

What would be left undone, unsaid? What did you never get around to doing?

I have plans for the future. But really, each moment is up in the air until it has passed. Maybe I should say that I have hopes for the future. That may be a more realistic statement.

In the end, I suppose, I will consider my life to have been successful if I was loved and will be missed, and if the people I love know that I love them.

--

Soccer Moms and My Future?

2006-01-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I imagine what motherhood will be like. I have these scenes in my head of getting up in the morning, making sure my kids have their homework together, getting their lunches ready to bring to school, packing them into the car and seeing them off; scenes of family board games after dinner, of parents and kids all crammed together on the couch to watch a movie. I even see myself cleaning the kitchen in the middle of the day, doing laundry, picking the kids up from practice.

I want to be a soccer mom, in the most general sense of the term: not necessarily a mother of soccer players, or even of athletes (though that would be a plus), but my kids will play an instrument, or play a sport, or take ballet, or sing in the school choir, or something. And I will go to every recital, every game, every concert.

There will be family picnics on weekends; Sunday visits to the grandparents; bedtime stories; cookie-baking lessons in the kitchen degenerating into cookie dough feasts; trips to museums: things that families do.

I imagine all these things, and I have great hope in the future.

--

Recreational reading

2006-01-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

Ooh, Friday the thirteenth.

Lovely connotations associated with this particular convergence of day and date.

(But that's not what I logged in to talk about.)

--

I have been told that I have bizarre reading habits.

I tend to agree.

The list of my current non-fiction reading is as follows:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach;
Advanced First Aid and Emergency Care, by the American National Red Cross;
Psychologist with a Gun, by Detective Harvey Scholssberg, Ph.D.;
Practical Psychology for Police Officers, by Martin Reiser, Ed.D.;
and
AOPA Air Safety Foundation Handbook for Pilots.

For the record: No, I don't have a pilot's license, and neither am I likely to get one in the near future. But for reasons unknown even to myself, I rather enjoy reading rules of air traffic control patterns, navigational signaling, and other such seemingly mundane and otherwise useless things. Neither am I likely to become a police officer, nor a psychologist.

You see my point.

What can I say? I'm into self-education. I have eclectic tastes.

--

New beginnings?

2006-01-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

And here we are at the onset of another year. The clocks have ticked over, the calendars are brand-new. Everyone talks about New Year's resolutions and a "fresh start for the new year." Really, what is New Year's Day but a marker along a long, continuing road?

2005, as years go, ran the board. It was astonishingly lousy, depressing, outrageously funny, and surprisingly pleasant, among other things, in turns. We had a death in the family, then a birth; I turned 21, attended a few weddings, had surgery, changed academic majors, failed some classes, aced others. Having come through all these things, I still have my close family and they still love me (go figure); I have my health; I have good friends; I have my faith. Life is not bad. And onwards, hopefully upwards, things continue; and the earth keeps right on spinning.

--

Nothing, really

2005-12-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

I hate these moments, when I sit down to type or write something, and thoughts continually run across my mind, but none seem of enough consequence to record. So I sit here and stare at the page, or in this case the computer screen. I might start to put down words, just to have something there; then I'll decide they're rather pointless, erase, and be left staring at blank space again.

I hate that. I really do.

On another matter entirely, I find myself mesmerized lately by Vincent D'Onofrio. His character on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Detective Bobby Goren, is absolutely fascinating. He's the only reason I watch that show. And where did this guy come from? Most pop culture victims (and I mean that in the nicest way possible) may have an "aha" moment when I say that in the movie Men In Black he played the creepy bug guy -- the human form of the giant cockroach assassin who ate Tommy Lee Jones. (That sounded really weird.) Talk about versatile. D'Onofrio is well on his way to the top of my "favorite actors" list.

Wow, I talked about something. As opposed to nothing. Go me!

--

Snowflakes

2005-12-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

I was driving home yesterday evening. The outside temperature was well below freezing; I could see my breath as a frosty plume in the air inside the car, and it kept fogging up my glasses. Stopped at a red light, I was examining my road-scummed windshield when I noticed a snowflake sitting against the glass. It was about a quarter-inch across, perfectly symmetrical, etched in finely feathered frost. I can't remember the last time I saw such a perfect snowflake.

This was the second time this week that I really noticed the snow for its unusualness. Just a few days ago, when I went out in the morning to clear the snow off my car, it looked cottony, like the kind of fake snow you'd expect to see drifting across a stage - light and fine, like loosely spun cotton candy.

--

Freedom

2005-12-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

I walked out of my biology final this morning at about 9 o'clock with a strange sense of liberation. Another semester bites the dust.

I think I'm going to do not much of anything for the rest of today. Maybe some laundry.

--

DFMA

2005-12-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

Design for Manufacture & Assembly. It's a huge concept in engineering. I've been working through the principles a lot this semester in various classes and projects. Basically, the idea is that when you're designing something, you optimize the design to make it as cheap, easy, and fast as possible to produce. Some ways in which you can do this are eliminating unneccessary parts (for example, using snap-fits instead of screws), combining parts, and using standard components instead of custom ones.

I've spent a lot of time this weekend examining a Kodak FunSaver (with flash) disposable camera. My team's goal for this case study was to determine how Kodak manufactures and assembles this camera. Most of what I did involved taking apart the camera and figuring out the order and manner of assembly for all the little internal gears and springs and things. I have to admire the DFMA that went into the camera body; there are so many little protrusions and slots and things built into the solid base itself that, if produced as separate pieces that needed to be assembled on a less complicated body, would have been an absolute logistical nightmare. And most of the camera is also recyclable; the majority of the parts are made out of polystyrene or other recyclable plastic. It's an amazing little package. Ah, the marvels of modern engineering...

Yeah, DFMA makes the world go 'round.

--

Men in uniform

2005-12-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

I love Thursdays. Thursday is ROTC dress day on campus, when all the future officers come to school in their dress uniforms.

I'm partial to Air Force blues, personally, though there is a lot to be said for Navy whites. Be military or law enforcement, there's just something very appealing about a man dressed to the nines in formal uniform: the clean-cut hair, the sharp lines of the jacket, the little pins and bars on the collar and shoulders, the shiny black shoes.

It makes me proud to share my crossword puzzle with these fine-looking young men. Gets me every time.

--

Life by the Window

2005-12-06T13:20:00.000-07:00

I'm a Watcher. I like to observe the world; I love listening to stories and reading what other people have had to say; I am an indiscriminate gatherer of information. I gravitate toward windows, both physical and metaphorical: doorways, books, photographs, artwork. When you're at a "window," it's not out of place to just hang around and observe or listen without participating in what's going on. People at windows are naturally seen as observers. Sitting by a window you can watch the snow falling outside; you can listen to an old man share stories from "back in the day"; you can read about the finer points of life as a Japanese geisha; you can see the night sky as a collection of swirling fiery streaks through the eyes of Vincent van Gogh.

Just observing. Granted, life is by nature a participatory endeavor, but sometimes it's a great luxury to sit by a window and soak in an experience not your own. Often we can learn the most, after all, by seeking outside your own limited point of view.

--

Comfort food

2005-12-05T11:46:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure if this is an American thing or what. And what defines "comfort food" anyway? Is it creaminess? Fond associative recollections? Proteins? Fat?

I don't know. My list of comfort foods is too eclectic to be satisfactorily defined by any of the above.

Macaroni & cheese
New England-style clam chowder
Homemade chicken soup
Chili
Hot chocolate
Cookies (sugar, butter, chocolate chip, peanut butter, pecan, Oreo, you name it) dunked in milk
Pie
Pudding
Chocolate chip cookie dough
Good farmer's homestyle scrambled eggs
Lasagna
Eggplant parmesean
Mashed potatoes & gravy
Biscuits and scones
Strawberry shortcake
Tuna salad sandwich
Pancakes with syrup or cinnamon & sugar

Mmm... Now I'm hungry. Lunchtime. Chili mac & cheese!

--

Flying

2005-12-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

I think everyone has had a flying dream at some point. I've always heard from other people that in their dreams, flying takes real effort; they have to "swim" or flap their arms or something similar. It takes hard work.

When I was a kid I had flying dreams fairly often. It was almost effortless; all it took was some momentum, like jumping off of something or running fast, and then I'd just take off and soar like Peter Pan. If I started slowing down, all I had to do was swoop up a little higher, like a kite catching the wind, and then dive to get my momentum going again. It was wonderful.

One morning when I was little, I woke up from a dream so realistic that I wasn't sure I couldn't really fly. So, being possessed of a scientifically curious mind, I went outside my family's apartment building for a test flight. I climbed up on a landscaped terrace about three or four feet high, stood at the edge, and leapt.

I didn't fly. This was a minor disappointment. But my experiment was completed; my results were conclusive. I went back inside.

I haven't had one of these flying dreams in many long years. I miss them. Last week I had a dream that I can't really remember; all it left me with was a deep-rooted sense of uneasiness that stuck with me the entire day.

--

Little blue box

2005-12-02T14:20:00.000-07:00

I have been daydreaming all week about this little box in Tiffany Blue. What makes it so special? Why do Tiffany stores enforce the rule that no box bearing the name can leave the building unless it's carrying a bought item? It is the trademark of Tiffany & Co., symbolizing classic big city elegance.

It's also expensive. Tiffany jewelry is overpriced; granted, it's high-quality jewelry, but a necklace is not worth as much as they charge. Everybody knows this; they pay for it regardless. Why? When you buy Tiffany, you're buying the box, the name, the style, the aura, the very mystique that epitomizes a Tiffany purchase.

And if you can afford it, it's totally worth it. I like to imagine the shock and sheer giddy happiness I would feel if my significant other ever gave me one of those little blue boxes.

He went to Tiffany.

--

The "I like you" game

2005-12-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

I was reading my friend Mike's blog. He wrote a few weeks ago:

"You know what sucks? Trying to establish a relationship with someone you see about once every two or three weeks... and sometimes even longer. It's like, you can't just say "Hey, I like you," because that might freak them out, and then there's always the threat of them never talking to you again... another friend lost to awkwardness. I suck at the whole 'unsubtly hinting at my feelings for someone' thing. And I'm a bumbling idiot when I get the courage to fess up. I guess I have a fear of rejection."

Poor Mike. And I totally feel your pain! I think everybody runs into this exact problem at some point in life. I keep running into it! Trying to start a non-platonic relationship is freaking tricky. I hope I'll figure it out some day before I get old. Or that somebody will step up and start something so I don't have to.

You know, a few months ago I would have said that romance is overrated. Now I'm not so sure.

--

the City

2005-12-02T08:49:00.000-07:00

New York, of course: Empire City, the Big Apple, the City That Never Sleeps. You love it or you hate it, or you're like me: caught in the middle. I'm not a fan of the pollution and the perpetual rat race, but there's Fifth Avenue, Grand Central Station, the Met, Central Park. The Empire State building. Rockefeller Center. The Rockettes. Broadway. The Macy's parade. The Copacabana.

There's something about New York.

My family is from the east coast. One of my cousins was planning a road trip to New York over spring break last year, so we all e-mailed him some travel advice.

So for whoever wants to know, here's What To Do In NYC.

Me:
I've heard the Metropolitan Museum of Art is pretty darn cool. You could try to get into a taping of Conan O'Brien or Dave Letterman. That would be nifty. But do what sounds like fun to you.

Grandpa:
First go to Little Italy to Ferrara's for Italian pastry, and a cup of coffee. Then take a slow walk to Chinatown, which is very close. Experience Chinese food, which should be very resonable. Take a walk to Wall Street, take a picture with the big bull.

Then take a subway ride to Times Square, see the show district, etc. See Rockeffeler Center, they should be ice skating there, it's just down the street from the Radio City theater. Take a walk on Fifth Avenue towards Central Park, experience the park. Don't be afraid to buy food from the vendors, it's a good experience. Notice I use that word a lot...

That will keep you busy for at least two days.

Grandma:
Yeah! Avoid roaming the streets alone, Washington Square (unless you need some drugs), and Central Park at night. The biggest thing to avoid is running out of money. Make sure you take A LOT with you. And keep some in your wallet and some in other places, like pockets, etc. That way if you get mugged you won't lose it all at one time.

Little Italy is OK, but you will have to pay about $6 for that pastry at Ferrara's. I don't know if prune danish is worth that much to you. Chinatown is really cool too.

All that Grandpa suggested sounds good to me. Also, NY is really expensive. You might find yourself paying $8 for a hamburger, though it will be really good and pretty large. Actually, the hot dog guys and other street vendors are a good source for food. Despite how disreputable they all look, the food is good.

I don't know how much money you guys will have, but there is a place called TKTS to get last minute tickets to Broadway shows.

Have a good time -- just walking around the city always fascinated me.

P.S. If you need the hookers, they've moved them from 42nd Street but just ask anyone in NY and they will either BE a hooker or be able to point you in the right direction. I also don't know how much they cost.

Aunt K.:
If you're looking for a good burger -- go to Jackson Hole. TKTS is in Times Square -- there's a website that's got all the information. Aida is great, so are Wicked and Hairspray.

You can get a hooker at any price point, but you'll get all the extras that go along with it -- eeeeeuwwwwwwww!

As far as getting mugged, don't look like a tourist and you should be fine. Know where you are going before you leave, don't use a map, walk with determination with fixed eyes ahead and (as horrible as this seems) ignore anyone who approaches you.

Good luck.

Aunt A.:
I advise you to wear sunglasses so that when people approach you and you need to ignore them, they can't see where you are looking, and also don't walk with your hands in your pockets, it makes you a prime target to be grabbed or pushed. I don't remember enough about NY to be able to recommend anything (except where to get good fabric, 39th & 40th Street), but everyone else's ideas sound good! It sounds like you will have a really fun time.

P.S. I'm not sure if I made this up or actually saw him do it, but I have a vague recollection of your uncle W. making subway or bus rides fun when he couldn't get a seat by not holding onto anything, but rather standing in a wide stance kung fu like crouch with arms up to balance himself. (Especially difficult around curves.) I didn't make that up, did I?

Uncle W. (my dad):
Nope, you didn't make it up. But the point is to NOT have your hands up for balance, but rather to keep a subtle athletic stance, hands down, and to shift your weight around the 360-degree circle to counterbalance external forces. If you get it wrong, you'll smash your face or lurch into someone. The odds of that happening are pretty good.

Having been a 20-something young male in NYC, let me say this: You are probably NOT anyone's main target of opportunity, unless you look unaware and do stupid things with your money/wallet. Especially if you're dressed down and with your buddies. My sisters, on the other hand, had a different problem.

Washington Square Park is a GREAT place during the day. Check out the characters in the public chess games in the SW(?) corner. Central Park is a busy city park at lunchtime, the south end.

If you go in during the morning from NJ, feel confident you can get a cheap breakfast in the city. Bagel vendors are everywhere during "go to work" time, and a bunch of restaurants will sell you "egg and cheese on a roll and a coffee" for cheap. You buy it, walk out, and eat.

NYC is one of those places that you won't have enough time to see everything. So I'd recommend those things unique to the city. Chinatown; I liked the David Letterman suggestion, if you watch him; Times Square; ABSOLUTELY the subway; bookfolk like the Strand; the cultured like Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; patriot/immigrants like the Statue of Liberty; King Kong fans like the Empire State Building; shoppers like Fifth Avenue south of Central Park; young bankers like Wall Street and the NYSE; etc. etc. etc. I used to like walking through the flower district on Sixth(?) Avenue in the early morning. At rush hour, see how fast you can walk through the dense pedestrian traffic. It helps to imagine yourself a running back seeing a hole in the line opening up, and all you have to do is make the cut and go. Hey, it's all good.

Don't give money to bums; don't take photos of streetpeople peeing behind cars; things can get weird at night in just a block or two. Have a blast.

Aunt A. (a different one; my mom):
Everyone had good suggestions for NYC: Rockefeller Center is really cool any time of year, but the ice skating makes it even more fun, whether you skate or not. When I was working in Manhattan, they rented skates there pretty cheap. Chinatown, Wall Street, Empire State building, Washington Square with the chess games -- all great spots to visit in NY. K.'s suggestion about looking into street fairs is also really good. If you can find one, they are great to visit.

And if you want to talk about food... The grab-and-go breakfasts are great and cheap. I liked scrambled eggs on a hardroll -- you get the best hard rolls in NY. And the hot dogs and souvlaki and hot pretzels from vendors are all great. And how about trying a REAL bagel for a change -- NY is the place to get them.

I worked on Park Avenue right across the street from Grand Central station. Grand Central is a really neat building to walk through, and a major hub for several subway lines. They've got lots of food in there -- kind of like a food court in a mall -- and public restrooms. You may find that public restrooms can be hard to find, so it's good to have an idea where to go... like Grand Central, Penn Station, Port Authority, the Public Library. (I think that's the building with the cool lion statues out front. A scene from Ghost Busters was set there.) I used to walk on different routes to work from Port Authority (where the NJ buses come into) to Grand Central because each street has it's own character, interesting buildings, just a fun place to explore. I think Times Square and the Public Library were both along my route. And what W. says about trying to dodge your way through the rush hour pedestrian traffic -- all too true, and very entertaining in its own way.

I also liked walking through Greenwich Village.

And finally, my cousin's trip report:
New York was fun. We spent a couple days there. Also apparently I was the only one in the group who had been farther east than Ohio, so that was interesting. We stayed in North Bergen, NJ, and rode a shuttle bus from the hotel into the city every morning, and then back in the evening -- $5/person, not that bad a deal.

Time Square was interesting, but everything there was expensive... really expensive compared to 2-3 blocks away from Time Square. Grand Central station was interesting, we only spent a few minutes there. Our first day in the city, we just headed south from Times Square on foot and made it to Chinatown before we headed back up. One of the guys with us stopped in a record store in the Village, and found a couple records.

The next day we just did a lot of wandering around the city randomly. We saw a bunch of cool things though. We even rode the subway from Wall Street to the Bronx. (Freaked out the two guys I was with, but it was just a subway station, a little dirtier than Grand Central.)

Oh, I got yelled at on Wall Street for taking pictures. Apparently, a group of college age geeks taking pictures of buildings and street signs look like a bunch of terrorists (I did get a couple pictures before the police officer stopped me). You were allowed to take pictures of the NY Stock Exchange, but the guards armed with machine guns wearing riot gear kinda threw me off a little.

It was interesting, up near Times Square the street vendors were selling t-shirts and other souvenir stuff, but down in the financial district, they were selling silk ties, dress pants, dress shirts, shoes and other various professional things. I am actually kicking myself right now, because I should have purchased a $10 silk tie on Wall Street because they were actually quite nice looking.

We saw the World Trade Center. I got a couple pictures, but it really doesn't look like anything special now (ignoring the signs saying what it is). It just looked like a construction site; I would not have given it a second glance had it not been the World Trade Center.

We then rode the subway to right around Chinatown and Little Italy, and had dinner at a small restaurant in Little Italy. My tortellini alfredo was wonderful. It was a fun restraurant; there was a guy who played a keyboard and sang and everyone sang along. I forget the name of the place but it would probably be pretty easy to find again.

We then wandered in and out of import shops in Chinatown. And wandered through an open air fish market as the sun was setting. We then attempted to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but by the time we got there, it was closed (who would have figured it would close in the evening!?). We then went to a wonderful Jewish deli/bakery on 83rd and I had a warm fresh bagel. We then rode a cab back to Times Square and just barely caught our shuttle back to the hotel.

The next day we tried to go up into the Empire State building, but there was a 3 hour wait that we did not want to deal with, so we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spent several hours there. The Egyptian exhibit and the 19th century paintings were my favorites there. The modern art exhibit did not do too much for me, but there were one or two interesting things there. Some of the calligraphy from China and Japan was also quite cool.

When we left the museum, it was snowing. We popped through one of the edges of Central Park and then hit a coffee shop. The other two guys got some sort of weird sweet flavored coffee, and I got something normal. After this, I believe we headed back to Chinatown (one of the guys wanted a sword), and wandered in and out of more small shops. My friend never did get his sword (in retrospect it may have been a bad thing to wander around the city with a huge sword, but who knows.) Anyway, we were freezing (note the cold wet snow) and took a cab back to near Times Square and camped out in McDonald's for an hour or so, until we were close to the time when the shuttle would pick us up.

--

So there you have it -- what to do in New York City, on good authority. You heard it here.

--

The most wonderful time of the year

2005-12-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

I think the Christmas holidays are my favorite time of year. I always take great pleasure in "getting into the Christmas spirit." This December, however, I find myself turning into a hopeless romantic.

Now and then I catch my thoughts in fanciful wandering: a proposal under the Christmas tree in NYC's Rockefeller Center; a little blue box from Tiffany's; a carriage ride through the city streets aglow with holiday lights. I feel the urge at least once a week to go wandering the Pearl Street Mall downtown in the evenings, when the holiday lights are sparkling and the Christmas shoppers are out in droves. When I'm in town, I stop constantly in stores to look at Christmas ornaments -- crystal snowflakes, glittering globes, and tiny phone booths stuffed with Santa and all nine reindeer.

What can I say? Love is in the air at Christmastime.

--

"Ashes, ashes..."

2005-11-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

Volcanic snow.

Why not? A particle of volcanic ash is an amorphous (glass) fragment of coagulated minerals. A snowflake is just a crystalline lattice of water molecules.

In the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, a mushroom cloud of ash was ejected 15 miles into the atmosphere. The mountain spewed ash for about 9 hours. Three days later there were ashes falling on the east coast of the U.S.

Most of us are used to some snowfall now and then; how many people have gone out and shoveled blankets of ash off their driveways? They had to jump on that quickly, because ash can develop the consistency of concrete when it gets wet. (Talk about completely ruining the gutters on your roof.)

Volcanic ash also conducts electricity; an approaching ash cloud may look like a thunderstorm. And it carries the accompanying scent of sulfur. Can you imagine? Hellfire and brimstone are coming to town. Wow. Oh, and this ash would be extremely abrasive, so you wouldn't want to get it in your eyes -- or breathe it into your lungs. (Remember how it turns into liquid cement when it comes into contact with moisture?)

I have been out in a few driving snowstorms, when the wind is up and the snowflakes sting your exposed skin like the tiny high-velocity ice pellets they are, and you can't see ten feet in front of you for the blindingly furiously swirling whiteness. Can you imagine being caught in an ash storm? Imagine the air filled with a driving sleet of rock shards, the smell of sulfur invading your nose; your eyes start getting that nasty gritty gummy feeling, your throat stings and you can taste a tang of blood on the back of your tongue when the abrasive ash particles start making microscopic tears along the inside of your mouth. The air feels thick when you breathe it in, the sunlight has disappeared, and you're surrounded by this gathering darkness, heavy and invasive and suffocating.

Imagine.

This could be approaching hell on earth, if it was possible to begin to imagine such a thing.

--

Snowdust

2005-11-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

I was driving south along the Front Range this morning under a thick bank of clouds when the snow flurries started coming down. It was strange, seeing the snow against a blue sky to the south, the sun breaking through cloud banks over the eastern plains. The snow dust was doing its smoky, snaking dance over the highway pavement. By the time I got into south Boulder, the neighborhood streets were white and the snow had stopped, and the sky overhead was a beautiful early morning blue.

--

Forensics, Chicago, and My Future?

2005-11-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

So I've been doing some research on careers in crime scene investigation and forensics in general. As it turns out, CSI has it wrong. (But hey, it's TV.)

I thought for a while last year that doing "forensics" would be cool, maybe; but the more I thought about it, the more I disliked the idea of dealing with violent crime scenes and grisly dead bodies. I still don't like that idea. But as I discovered recently, that's really only the CSI part of it; after the scene technicians collect the evidence, the analysts take up the evidence and work on it in a lab. OK, they look at photos of violent crime scenes and grisly dead bodies, but they're not actually there. Big difference.

So, once again, forensic analysis is under serious consideration.

Also, I found out (don't ask why I was looking at Chicago apartment listings) that there are decent-looking 1-bedroom apartments available for under $1000/month (utilities included) in Chicago's Lakeview neighboorhood. I found this really cute place in a courtyard building with hardwood floors, right near Wrigley Field, on a nice-looking street with tall, healthy maple & oak trees.

I could live there. I think I'd like it.

And the Illinois State Police run the world's third largest crime laboratory system. They have a nice lab in Chicago, and a "Forensic Scientist Trainee" program that I could do right out of college... Hmm...

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Biology and My Future?

2005-11-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of another pre-exam multi-day study session. For biology. I always confuse the differences between the various phases of cellular mitosis and meiosis.

I'm not a big fan of microbiology. Anatomy and biomechanics are more my thing.

I talked to one of my coolest professors ever, Daria, on Tuesday. We had a chat about engineering and other careers, among other things. Once again, I was informed that medical education programs look favorably on engineering backgrounds. So, once again, I find myself looking favorably on the career of Physician Assistant. They're somewhere between nurse and doctor; to be certified, most programs do 2 years of graduate education followed by a year of internship rotations. (Yes, I have done my research.) And a P.A. can specialize in basically anything that a doctor can. I'm thinking maybe radiology, maybe orthopedics, maybe family practice -- I don't know. That's supposedly what the year of internships is for, so you can get an idea for what you want to do.

I went to the Rock N Soul cafe in east Boulder on Tuesday night to see my friend Janine sing. (She works at the hospital.) She was there with her bluegrass/folk trio, the Whipporwills. They sounded great! I love old-fashioned harmonies.

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Mornings

2005-11-09T11:21:00.001-07:00

I wish there were more hours in a day. Then I could get everything done that I do now, and I'd be able to get in my required 8 hours of sleep. I like mornings, as long as I'm well-rested.

That's right, I'm a morning person. When I have the time. I love my bedroom in the summertime, when I leave my window and curtains open to the sunrise. There is nothing quite like waking up, sans alarm, to warm sunlight on your face and a cheery birdsong drifting on the air.

I think my perfect morning would happen like this:

I wake up, comfortable, well-rested, before my alarm goes off, with the pleasant realization that I have no obligations for the next few hours. Winter or summer, the temperature in my room is perfect: I'm not shivering, but it's just cool enough that I'm happy to wrap myself in a light fleece pullover and step into a pair of cozy slippers. The sun is barely risen, the house is blanketed by that peaceful quiet of early morning. In the kitchen, I turn on the coffee maker and set the oven to preheat. There are biscuits, ready-made, waiting in the fridge. I stand in front of the sink and stare out the window at the lightening sky. Hopefully there are some birds poking around a feeder in a tree. My dog (or cat) comes wandering into the kitchen after me and settles down on the floor at my feet after a brief pet on the head. When the oven *dings* (yes, I like ovens that *ding*) I slide the pan of biscuits in and set the timer (which also *dings*). By now the coffee is done, so I pick my favorite mug out of the cabinet and pour myself a nice steaming cup of hazelnut. One spoonful of sugar and a dash of milk (or cream?) later, it's perfect. So I stand against the counter and smell my coffee (mmm, hazelnut) for a few minutes while I stare out the window some more and watch the birds. Right about now, someone (mom? dad? sister? husband, someday...) comes into the kitchen, lured by the smell of hazelnut coffee and baking biscuits. I get a hug and a "Good morning."

Why can't all my days start like this?

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My first blog!

2005-11-08T16:03:00.000-07:00

So... I've never done a blog before. This is my first blog post ever! Isn't it exciting?

No, not really. For me it is, though.

I decided recently that I really have no idea what it is I want to do when I graduate. I mean, I want to work, sure, but in what field? Healthcare, forensics, meteorology, science journalism, bioengineering... ? So I just do a lot of reading in my spare time. I love the nonfiction section of my library.

OK, I'm done. Whew, that was an exciting first post.

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