* Totally underwhelmed by Amazon's "Prime Day" offerings. A few electronic gadgets, most of which sold out rapidly, and then lots of random junk (Giant tub of whey protein powder, anyone?) that I don't want. The few books on offer were mostly suspensy bestseller types; there were a few Elsevier books but they were all medical-school texts. Sigh. (I confess, I was hoping for maybe a "You may order one item off your wishlist and take 40% off of it" or something similar. But I guess the point of sales is to unload stuff you overbought and that few people really want...)
They did have a Roomba and I sort of want a Roomba but it wasn't the model I want and anyway, it was still more expensive than I can justify spending, considering I can do about the same with a Swiffer and fifteen minutes' work.
* The President is in my neck of the woods today. My secretary was listening to the security detail talk on her police scanner (her son is a deputy sheriff, so she keeps the scanner on hand to keep tabs on what he's doing). It's a closed meeting, so only dignitaries are there.
I guess the last time a president was here it was Taft? If I'm remembering the news reports about the history of presidential visits. And he just rode through on a train.
No, I don't expect my university to get any goodies out of this visit, unfortunately. (We could use it: we got permission to raise tuition but our appropriations were cut, and I think the loss in appropriations was actually bigger than the tuition hike....so no pay raises and repairs and stuff are now on the back burner. Including fixing the leaky roof and the mold garden I assume is inside every dropped ceiling. (Honestly, rather than my pay being raised, I'd rather see (a) some of the "deferred" maintenance be tackled and (b) better salaries for the staff people, who really take it on the chin pay-wise)
(And some people are protesting the visit. Fine, that's their right. But they're doing it in a way that almost seems calculated to get them shown on late-night talk shows as the very stereotype of a redneck. I am facepalming quietly at my desk after reading that news story.)
* The Pluto news yesterday was interesting, all the stuff people were reading into the image (probably an impact crater) on its side - a heart, Pluto-as-in-Mickey's-Dog, I think someone saw a rabbit?, and also, someone photoshopped Nightmare Moon on there because of course.
(It turns out the heart wasn't so very heartlike but more an artifact of the false-color process. Boo.)
But it is kind of amazing to see how much more detail we've got now, as opposed to everything from years previous. I suppose someday maybe there will be samples collected from further planets, or a Rover sent like there was to Mars (though I'd really like to see them try to learn about the surface of Jupiter first)
This may just be me but: I think we need to do more of this kind of thing. It was heartening to see the engineers cheering when the flyby was successful. It's interesting to learn about something so distant from us. This is the kind of news I enjoy watching and hearing: it's not the "WAGD" type of news, it doesn't show people being awful to one another. Rather, it shows what people can do when they use their ingenuity and their skills. (I kind of miss there being a more-active space program. I never wanted to be an astronaut or even a NASA engineer, but still: there's something cool about it. It's something aspirational about us as a nation.)
And yeah, I feel similarly towards news about advancements in cancer treatment and such and will cheer the news of a cure if it ever comes, but it also seems health-related news has become so fraught and is so easily spun....
* I was looking up information on epigenetics the other day. Epigenetics is a new sub-field of genetics (new enough the definition is not entirely agreed upon, but I guess a simple one would be, "Environmental influences can have a long-term effect on gene expression"). For example, rat pups that receive a lot of maternal care grow up to express more of a protein that apparently combats anxiety and physiological stress than rat pups that don't (There's even a fun little game at this website about it).
(I also wonder: are there things in my personal background that led to me being a more anxious person than I might? I mean, I get that humans aren't rat pups and I think my parents did a good job with the human version of "parental care" but....I know I'm more tightly wound than is ideal, and less good in unfamiliar situations. Huh. And I wonder if some of the vaunted "Oldest Child Stereotype" is related to the first-time parents having been more anxious with their firstborn. I definitely display some of the stereotypical oldest-child traits, both good and bad....
Though in a happier vein, perhaps we can learn from epigenetics how to do stuff like fight PTSD in returning soldiers...)
Anyway, about health news being misreported and "fraught" - some of the information I found were self-help types using some of the basic ideas behind epigenetics to essentially claim you could "think yourself successful" and the like. (And I groaned inwardly, and thought, "This is going to lead to another bad old round of 'you didn't think right, so you brought that cancer on yourself' unhelpful statements by well-meaning people to patients"). So yeah. On the one hand, epigenetics is fascinating but I can also totally see how bits of information can be taken from it, spun and repackaged, and made up into something ugly. (Kind of like how some of the early genetic work, like Mendel's work, was seized upon by the Eugenics types to try to argue with 'science' that "undesirable" types shouldn't breed.....)
* One good thing about doing labwork where you need to wear one of those nose-and-mouth covering facemasks: you can sing very softly to yourself and no one else will know. (Current favorite: Taylor Swift's "Shake it Off." And I will note here one thing age is doing for me is it's burning away a lot of the false sophistication I had when younger; even ten years ago I could not have appreciated a song like that. But it's a fun, catchy song, and it also has a message I probably need to get better at internalizing: that there will always be people who talk smack to your face or who say mean things behind your back, but you should keep your head up and keep going. And while the opening of the song isn't all that descriptive for me (I do not stay out late, no one has EVER accused me of having nothing in my brain, and if anything, I go on too few dates...) still, there is something irresistible about being able to shrug and go "The haters gonna hate....the fakers gonna fake" and keep on moving...)
Though I admit it's probably funny that I'm singing it while wearing a fiber facemask and a lab coat that's more soil than fabric at this point (Honestly: I'm afraid to wash it, because I'm afraid it will either disintegrate totally or the mud it generates will clog my home's plumbing. It's an old, old coat, scored it off of one of the retiring faculty at my grad school. It barely fits me because it's a man's 36" chest and I have some chestal appendages that are bigger than 36" in total....but it works and it was free, so)
No comments:
Post a Comment