TheNinjaDon

Countdown

2009-12-08T09:13:00.001-05:00

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go
I wanna be sedated
Nothin' to do and no where to go
I wanna be sedated
Just get me to the airport
put me on a plane
Hurry hurry hurry
before I go insane
I can't control my fingers
I can't control my brain
Oh no no no no no
-Jeffrey Ross Hyman

But seriously...

2009-11-09T08:34:00.001-05:00

Exactly one month. Oh boy.

2009-10-10T22:17:00.001-04:00

2009-10-09T17:08:00.000-04:00

I... I... I understand a piece of art?

2009-10-09T10:37:00.008-04:00

The BME department commissioned a monument, to spruce up the front entrance a bit. Construction began this summer, and the rumors started to fly about how expensive it would be, and how it would look stupid, and how it was a waste.

Not knowing anything about the project, I agreed implicitly. Art is great and all, but is it worth a few dozen grad salaries worth of expense? No.

When the monument was finally unveiled, my friends' concerns were realized, and they expressed their vitriol every time the subject came up. Meanwhile, I still hadn't yet seen the damn thing, because I work in the Diaspora that is the Engineering building.

Eventually I had some business in the BME building, and as I approached the monument, I had no idea what I was looking at.

So I walked around it, and as made my way to the front, it became obvious.

And I got it.

People in my department still hate it, and yes, it probably was way too expensive. But, was it capricious? No way.

This monument embodies everything about Biomedical Engineering, everything that is good and everything that is complicated. It is nothing less than an introduction to the department, and the tone is set by its implications in exactly the way we should hope.

Some disagree with its imagery, the "Running Man" being a macro concept in a field that is mostly interested in cells and particles and atomic bonds. Certainly a sculpture that evokes molecules or organelles or the infamous double-helix would be more fitting? Wrong, I say.

Our work in the trenches may require us to concern ourselves with microscopic (or smaller) science, but we must not forget the end to which these tools are the means. We work within our thesis topics, but looming at the horizon is the all important question: how will this help a person?

It is the whole human that is the beneficiary of our work, and it is the whole human that should inspire and motivate us.

Why the running man, then? Was the artist invoking a once-iconic, now-ironic dance move? Is this an obscure homage to the department's marathon relay team from a few years back? Why not just a human form, but a running human form?

One doesn't have to be an athlete to recognize the power of this image. Healthy people run. Running is arguably the purest competitive sport there is. We should all aspire to be runners, or better, to restore someone else's ability to be a runner. My colleagues' tumor necrotizing projects and bioactive polymer projects and nanomolecular telekinesis projects (okay, I made that last one up) are all supposed to someday make people healthy enough to run.

Most brilliant of all, in my ever-so-humble opinion, is the construction of the monument out of metal pipes. It may be a bit jarring, especially if you approach the building from the quad, as I did, and see nothing but a haphazard stack of pipes.

But, oh, the implications of it! The subtle message here is that Biomedical Engineering approaches the human condition in a completely novel way. The truth is, we are puzzles, and the pieces are whatever we want them to be. Are we cells? Are we tissues? Are we subatomic particles? Of course we are!

I model the variability of motion to gain insight into the brain's control scheme. My classmates modify polymers to encourage nerve growth, and manipulate chemical balances to differentiate stem cells, and apply algorithms to classify stages of cancer with unprecedented accuracy. Mathematics and Materials Engineering and Chemistry and Computer Science inform the identification of the puzzle pieces, often in ways that are counterintuitive and exciting.

It is up to us, the Biomedical Engineers, to turn the puzzle pieces into something useful. The whole comes from the parts, in a way that is absolutely unique to our department. And it is with that unspoken message that newcomers and visitors are welcomed to our building.

Countdown

2009-10-08T15:22:00.001-04:00

Rejected Letter of Intent

2009-10-06T12:20:00.005-04:00

In my professional communications with other science-y people, I have to keep the tone professional and science-y. There's a time and a place for cheeky language, and both are entirely contained in this blog.

It has not been uncommon for me, in these past few months of constant writing, to generate an idea that I love, but that is not at all suitable for advancing my career. Like this one, they only belong on the blog.

theninjadon.blogpost.com: where fun ideas that wouldn't advance my career come to die.

Here's my latest well-deserved act of self-censorship:

"I'd like to start a discussion about potential research projects, about how your lab is organized, and about my many, many skills and qualifications."

It really would have fit well in that letter, if only I wasn't actually trying to get the job.

Buzz

2009-10-01T09:52:00.002-04:00

1. I got a very short, no-need-for-scissors haircut as an experiment.

2. Two days later, I'm still not sure whether it works.

3. It doesn't matter, because my hair will grow back soon.

4. Most of it, anyway.

Benched

2009-09-29T13:51:00.005-04:00

or, "Please approach the bench"
or, "Benchmark"
or, "How much ya bench?"
or, "Pepe le pew"

okay, not so much the last one.

It all began with a sketch.It wasn't a good sketch, but Cor and Sloan and I had been talking about a bench all day, and it was the sort of thing you just want to get started on. We were walking around Point Pleasant, and I was babbling about arm-rests and shelves and supports. The ladies were less enthusiastic, but they were generally happy to, y'know, have something done for them.

A half-dozen blueprints later, I was ready to build a bench. Out of posterboard.
The neurotic engineer in me needed to see the finished product before committing, plus it helped me picture how the boards would need to be joined (which, somehow, is not the same as joinery).

I read magazines on furniture design. I found DIY websites. I planned every detail.

And of course, I messed up. Often. While it might be fun to catalog my many slip-ups, of which there were a wide variety, it is better to point out the improvisations those accidents allowed. Mis-measured the bench? Well that support beam would supplement it nicely. And so on.

So the design changed, and the novelty of the thing increased with each audible. Aesthetic flair was the unintended byproduct of my mistakes. A simple plank with a decorative board at each end became a suspended shelf that highlighted negative space, somehow. Which I was okay with, and was actually totally on purpose, I swear.

I think it works pretty well. The paint scheme is unusual, too; my clients were going for a "beach-worn" look, like the weathered whitewash so common on the beaches of Pt. Pleasant. They described their ideal coloration, and I did my best to meet their expectations. But let's be reasonable: they were trying to verbalize an unusual look, normally produced by decades of weather exposure, to an inexperienced "craftsman". Who also happens to be colorblind.

What were they expecting?

As I've said, I'm happy with the way it turned out. Not the least of which is based on the fact that it's still intact! To wit:

If it can handle these two fatasses (one of whom seems to be perplexed by a bottle of Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA), it can handle anyone.

I said before that it started with a sketch. That's not true. It started with a Pinewood Derby car, in the spring of 1991. For which, you know who you are, and thank you.

Heroes limits my eyewear options

2009-09-24T22:07:00.000-04:00

Because if I wear any one of a few dozen fashionable frames, I look like Sylar. Apparently.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Recommended Drinking

2009-09-20T20:49:00.000-04:00

Hacker Pschorr Octoberfest. Not too fancy, not too hoppy. Not too exotic. Not too anything. Just delicious.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Bar Mitzvah

2009-09-20T12:28:00.004-04:00

Translated from Hebrew, "bar mitzvah" means "man of good deeds". Little known fact: translated from the original Aramaic, it means "lazy cyclist with no self-discipline".

I have been working out. I have! A bunch of rides this week, a run, a gym day. Yesterday, my sore legs hauled my sorry ass around central Jersey, and believe it or not, I did an intervals workout.

Racing season is coming, inevitable as the tide, and I am going to suck. That's to be expected, after a summer of athletic torpor. However, it has occurred to me that I run the risk of sucking too much. Everyone in a 'cross race suffers, whether racing for first or for not-lapped. There exists an inflection point, though, where the suffering exceeds the fun, and I don't want to experience that abject misery.

Thus and therefore, I have been making a real effort to ride more. And when I do so, I ride hard. Because racing season is coming.

Yesterday, for the first time this year, I did one of my favorite fall workouts: two 20-minute periods of as-hard-as-sustainable, with a surge every minute. This workout is uncomfortable, frustrating, and as much mental as physical. It went about as well as could be expected.

Two minutes into the second interval, I was grinding along Canal Road when I spotted a cluster of cyclists hunched over a bike on the side of the road. It wasn't immediately clear what they were doing - whether they were taking a break, tending to a crash victim, who knows? - and there was a car behind me, so I didn't stop... at least not at first. But something didn't seem right.

When it was safe enough, I pulled a U-turn, rolled back to the group, and asked if they needed help. Their response was a chorus of heartfelt "oh, yes, thank you". Of the three, whose total age must have exceeded 200, one had flatted and none had spare tubes or tools. I found the offending staple lodged in her tire, popped in one of my spares, and reinflated. The whole process took maybe 4 minutes.

All the while, she expressed her gratitude and tried to compensate me. "Can I pay for your tube?" Don't even worry about it. "I have friends in the UK. If you ever want to watch the Tour, they could help you". Umm... no thank you. "Is there anything I could do?" Well, there is rutgerscycling.com, you could check it out, maybe wish us luck for our upcoming season, and oh by the way we sell jerseys like the one I'm wearing.

I am shameless.

Here's the thing with having someone rescue you after a mechanical, or a crash, or a bonk. The only debt you owe is to pay it forward. Carry extra tubes, get educated on emergency repairs and first aid, and offer to help the next stranded cyclist you see. We are, when all is said and done, a community.

Repayment was unnecessary. I stopped because I don't ever want a cyclist in need to be snubbed by a Rutgers cyclist. I stopped because the Flat-Tire Gods are vengeful deities.

Most of all, as I told the group when I first rolled up and offered assistance: Anything to get out of an intervals workout.

The power of a bagel and a coffee

2009-09-15T00:05:00.005-04:00

I am generally okay with disliking everybody. On a case by case basis, I find the good in people - often, the awesome - and that's plenty. Everyone else, everyone I don't know, can talk a long walk off a short pier for all I care.

At its most benign, we can euphemism-ify my behavior as "people watching"; one of my favorite things to do is stand on the stairs at Karaoke and observe the dynamics of the crowd, always with a jaded perspective. Really, it's misanthropy. And I accept that.

Somewhat coincidentally, I had a post in mind about just how much I dislike people. I spent about 3 hours traveling to and from a Yankees game, including all the accouterments one would expect from Yankees traffic on the Major Deegan. Waiting your turn on an off-ramp, only to have a self-important schmo zoom by in the shoulder with inches to spare, really raises up the bile.

Also I have been riding a fixie through New Brunswick every day. While I don't mind the hassle of interacting with motor vehicles on a regular ride, my commutes force me to interact with pedestrians. I now understand the thrill of alleycat racing (which is an unofficial bike race through a city, cars and pedestrians and all). It should be in the X-games. People are either blissfully unaware or malevolently apathetic (think about that last one... it works as well as jumbo shrimp).

Just watching kids cross the street from the dorms to the quad, or walking through the grocery store, it's all the same: people move with Brownian motion, bouncing to and fro like ping pong balls, the epitome (if not the definition) of a "drunken walk". And that's discounting the text-walkers. It's as if they simply lack any survival instinct, or at least a sense of communal optimality.

Someday, I'm going to have an ulcer. Thanks, everyone.

Tonight's session in the Dunkin Donuts did not start off well. Not one, but two individuals occupied two tables each, not because they needed the extra room, but because... I don't know why. A baby was screaming (and, mind you, I didn't get to there until after the Patriots eeked out their win). That bitterness was welling up again in my gut.

And then, at midnight, everything turned around. A girl around my age, who had been sitting quietly in the corner at least as long as I had, got up from her table. She walked up to the counter, bought a bagel and coffee, and walked straight over to the exhausted-looking homeless man.

"Excuse me," she offered with the sort of politeness one does not normally reserve for such a ridiculously dirty person, "are you hungry?"

His face lit up, and he smiled a fantastically toothless smile. She left the coffee and the bagel on his table and went right back to work. As should I.

Turn

2009-09-10T15:51:00.003-04:00

Ask any cyclist how to take a turn, and they'll tell you:

Start at the outside
Apex at the inside
Exit at the outside

Like so...

I know this because I asked. In a thoroughly unscientific poll conducted via Facebook chat and napkins, I polled a bunch of friends and relatives and asked how they would drive through a turn. Not surprisingly, those with cycling experience tended to get the question right.

What flabbergasted me was that the non-cyclists were so very, very wrong. Like, opposite-of-right wrong. Inside-outside-inside wrong.

The out-in-out corner is right because it's as straight a line as possible. Sharper turns require you to slow down, so... y'know, you don't do that.

Non-cyclists answered the opposite of right, which is of course would be the equivalent of parking-lot maneuvers at any reasonable speed. There should be rolled SUVs everywhere. There should be Jeeps littering the highway shoulders like so many empty Big Gulps.

So, polls, aside, I've been watching. I've observed drivers taking gentle curves, taking turns onto side streets, and so on. People turn properly. They start outside, apex inside, and exit outside.

One of my favorite places to observe the phenomenon of Drivers Not Wildly Careening Into One Another is on the exit ramp from Route 18 to Busch Campus. 18, you see, is Central Jersey's answer to the Autobahn, and the exit is a wide 270 degree turn.

People invariably start in the center of the lane while they're on 18, like the Driver's Ed teacher said to. As the turn begins, there's a seam down the middle. When you have a tire on this seam, the car shakes a bit, because it's a pretty gnarly seam.

Drivers have three options during the turn: straddle the seam, drive to the outside of it, or drive to the inside of it. Across the board, people drive to the inside, or sometimes they straddle the seam. When they reach the straight bit at the end of the ramp, they exit to the outside.

People can't explain the proper way to drive, but they drive properly. How do you explain that?

I've been mulling over that very question for a few weeks now. Maybe it's experience. Maybe it's a vestibular thing. Maybe it's a vistibular-visual interaction thing.

Honestly, I don't know, and I don't plan to know any time soon, because there are bigger things afoot. I really just wanted to make reference to 18 being the Autobahn.

How else could I set up this picture?

Not Photoshopped

Trappist Ale. Cycling. Frites.

2009-09-01T16:03:00.004-04:00

and now, horribly offensive advertisements. You keep giving me reasons to love you, Belgium.

Except for that 9/11 one. Not cool.

Post something that I found on digg in lieu of real writing? B-b-but that doesn't sound like something Don would do!

ReTweet

2009-08-15T14:35:00.003-04:00

I have started two blog posts this week, but I have discarded both. It turns out, you see, that I've already written them.

First was the recounting of my visits to the Cognitive Rehab Center where I conduct my research, and how emotionally taxing it is to work with impaired patients. How that human thing we do, where we sympathize with the less fortunate and imagine what it's like to be in their shoes, inevitably leads ruminations on the fragility of the human condition.

I would have written about how I need to toughen myself up, and how much stronger than me the therapists (and psychologists, and medical staff, and social workers) who do this day after day must be. But, well, I've already written that post.

And then I got interviewed by a high school kid for a school newspaper or project or something. Really not clear on what that was about, but I was asked and so I answered. In explaining my scientific contribution to her, I was reminded of how very hard it is to make science sound interesting, even when (or especially when) you find it exciting.

It occurred to me that it's very much easier to impart some pathos, or at least gravitas, to the explanation when your research is about fixing what's broken, as opposed to understanding how things work in a healthy body. The story of one's research is always more gripping when some dragon is slayed.

One of my colleagues is improving cancer research. Another is improving spinal surgery (like that guy from Lost, but without the daddy issues!). These are compelling foils for our heroes. So, while my preferred research is in elucidating the hidden layers of motor control, I usually just say that I help people regain function after stroke.

Except, crap. I already wrote that one, too.

The only thing worse than a blogger is a repetitive blogger. Although I guess a repetitive blogger whose posts are self-serving is the bottom of the barrel. So, enough of this.

Here's some new content. There was a shouting match in the Dunkin Donuts today. A customer let loose on an employee, angrily and with R-rated language. The former claimed that the latter had stared at his girlfriend's posterior, and he was more than willing to express his displeasure at this. The customer and his girlfriend stormed out, or rather the customer stormed out and his girlfriend followed.

Now, I can't decide what's funniest about this. The shouting match itself was pretty amusing, as the customer searched for words to adequately describe his outrage, most of which started with "f" and ended with "uckin'", and the employee stood behind the counter, his mouth agape with surprise.

Even better, though, was the fact that the girlfriend was objectively unattractive. Just gross. Gross enough to be ogled for non-sexual reasons. Call me uncouth, call me unenlightened and backwards, but that's the way it wa. This chick was sideshow ugly.

The best part of it all was that, ghastly aesthetics and all, the employee had totally been ogling the girlfriend. Leering at her, sexually. He's that creepy, and frankly, he totally had it coming to him.

And with that, I return to the thesis. Today's topic: Methods/Data Processing/Onset Identification.

Spotted (in the last moment) on my walk to the Dunkin Donuts

2009-08-12T00:25:00.004-04:00

Note to self: Walk back on the other side of the road.

A send-up of things I love

2009-08-10T18:58:00.011-04:00

There was a time, not too long ago, that I made a habit of popping in earplugs, descending into a dirty, dimly lit basement, and basking in the innard-pulsating tunes of basement rock.

Not quite punk, and not really grunge. You wouldn't call it a concert, although you generally pay to get in and stand in front of a band while they perform. It sort of defied a label, but I've heard it called "noise rock", where noise itself is an instrument. And of course you would drink beer, usually from a keg, usually in a red plastic cup, always cheap. It was beautiful.

When my basement-thriving friends moved - to Brooklyn, to Connecticut, to Milwaukee, and to Israel, because you were wondering - I lost my connection to their world. It wasn't my world, which was painfully clear at every show. But they let me know when and where the shows were, and they are good friends.

So when I was invited, by way of Facespace, to a show at the Court Tavern, I said hell yes. How could I not? Sure, I'd be missing Jay #1's birthday, but that's mostly because he hadn't picked up his phone when I dialed the wrong number. What a good friend I am.

The show was great, the triumphant return of the Milwaukee expat and an unexpected mini high school reunion. I drank, I chatted, I enjoyed. And, in my head, I blogged.

Thus and therefore, I submit to you, my esteemed readership, my thoughts on how noise rock shows and bike races are pretty much the same.

These guys were good at this whole music thing. They had clearly spent hours a day practicing, and their technique was impressive. It didn't matter if they were using knock-off Stradocasters or superfancy carbon-fiber gadgetry. Proficiency is hard-earned in this world, and cannot be bought.

Obviously, I'm excluding Time Trials from this comparison, but that's okay, because Time Trials are not at all rock and roll.

The sets were fantastic, building to a crescendo, and maybe with a softer denouement, if the band so chose. You could appreciate that, or you could enjoy the melody. Or the way the cacophony is woven into the melody. There are... nuances. Much in the same way as the rush of the pack rushing toward a prime, a team pulling their sprinter to the front, or a single rider's charge through the field are all worthy of attention. There's beauty in it, if you know what to look for.

Standing in the crowd, I looked around at a familiar sight. I saw faces I recognized, even if we'd never met, because people come and go, but the scene never really changes. Throw in some caution tape, and you'd have yourself a bike race. The crowd - mostly white, and mostly male - were sweating and happy. They were skinny, and they wore the t-shirts they'd gotten at previous events. Many had already performed earlier. As far as I could tell, nobody had wandered in... everybody knew someone who was playing, by blood or friendship, or they'd already played. They all seemed to aspire to bigger things, to hope to be discovered and turn their hobby into a profession, but none seemed to be delusional about it.

We were as close to the action as we dared stand, for fear of catching a broken drumstick or an errant guitar. We drank cheap beer. We heckled.

Which reminds me... 'cross is coming.

Side Project

2009-08-04T16:15:00.006-04:00

Motion Capture systems cost a gazillion dollars. They have fancy infrared cameras, and lots of 'em. They have proprietary software. They are a big production, often with a kickin' soundtrack.

Screw that, says I.

Just because my lab doesn't have an expensive supersystem doesn't mean I'm not interested in a bit of motion capture. It just means that I have to put in a little bit of extra work to make it happen. And so I did, spending way too much time on the software, and then half-assing the hardware for the following demonstration.

Here is a simple video of me looking like a shmuck. Observe my incredibly slick dance moves and electric tape body markers. I am dancing. To "YMCA". By the Village People. Yes.

This video is two dimensional. So is the video that I recorded using another camera. Each point can only be located by left-right and up-down position, but we have no idea how far away it is from the camera. Using some trigonometry and some algebra, and a lot of programming, I reconstruct each point in a three dimensional space.

Each point. Every single one of them. In this video, that's 8 points at 320 frames for a grand total of 2560 points. And then I had to do it again, for the second camera. Oy.

And so here's the reconstruction, doing something that a real camera couldn't do...

If the angles look a little funky, it's because my choice of marker locations was bad, and also because I wasn't extremely precise in my marker identification. It's just a demo.

Here's another video, showing how the two cameras are used in making a 3-d stick figure. I think it looks like a dance class, like motion capture from a Richard Simmons exercise tape.

So there you have it. We've gone from two simple videos of movement to a completely digitized representation. It's nothing earth-shattering, more of a demonstration than a discovery. I'm reinventing the wheel here, but I'm doing it on the cheap, and the possibilities it allows are endless.

That was my Monday. And yes, YMCA looks RIDICULOUS, and by association, so do I.

UPDATE: Oh dear. I can create my own motion capture system, but I can't do the YMCA dance properly. Yes, I the C is backwards. Forgive me.

Carburated Beauty

2009-08-02T13:15:00.003-04:00

A car guy has an ancient Chevy in his garage, which he fixes up on the weekends. A car guy has a subscription to automotive magazines and can compare and contrast the 2010 Mustang to the 1967 Mustang. A car guy can diagnose engine troubles by ear and changes his own oil.

I am not a car guy. But I kind of am a car guy. It's a conundrum.

In college, I took a class that started off as Kinematics and somehow became Automotive Engineering. We learned the principles of four-stroke internal combustion engines and how to design cam profiles for different performance parameters. The term project was to develop a customizable gearbox. I didn't know how to drive stick, but I could design a manual transmission from camshaft to differential. Which, in the grand scheme of things, seems pretty backwards.

Having an old car to rebuild, like in that Autozone commercial, seems wonderful... but I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to begin. And so on.

Recently, I came across an article about the 1912 Bugatti Type 18, a Grand Prix car that raced in Le Mans, the Indy 500, and up Mont Ventoux. The description of its pros and cons and of its engineering development by Ettore Bugatti himself were a good read. The pictures, though.

I mean, the modern Bugatti is a stunning machine, but its ancestor was, well...

It's like listening to a love song in another language and knowing that it would be beautiful, if only you could understand the words.

Rejected Dedication

2009-07-30T13:29:00.002-04:00

Idly dreaming of the far-off day when I submit my thesis and take those first tentative steps into the real world, I started thinking about its dedication. My dad set the bar pretty high with his dedication, which I'd imagine he chiseled into a stone tablet at Jurassic U.

Which got me thinking.

"For my parents, who set the bar high,
for my colleagues, who helped me reach the bar,
and for my friends, who reminded me that there's more than one type of bar."

No? Too much? I'll take another shot at 'er later.

20,873 words

2009-07-29T14:39:00.015-04:00

I have been a very, very bad blogger. Terrible, even. For which I am sorry, about as much as a guy can be sorry for not updating his web log. If it makes you feel any better, I also haven't been riding my bike much at all.

While I may not have been blogging, I have been writing. After the Motor Control Summer School, 2 months (or 11 posts) ago, I resolved to write one page of my thesis every day.

And so I have. Some days I took a break from writing, and others I wrote as many as three. I took a half a week off before each new chapter, to review the literature and flesh out an outline. I found a few great new spots for working, because the lab just wasn't a good venue for prose-synthesis.

Ducks are catalysts

The Intro, at least the first draft of the Intro, is finished. Three chapters ("Brain Injury and Rehabilitation", "Motor Control Analysis", and "PAMI Development and Assessment"). 63 pages in 58 days. 20 thousand plus words. More citations than I care to count. Plenty of late nights at the Highland Park Dunkin Donuts.

It's been a fantastically productive summer. As the senior grad in the lab, it's been my responsibility, and moreso my pleasure, to mentor the undergrads and help run some fun side projects. Getting things done has sometimes required that turn myself inside out, working consistent long days and never really leaving my troubles in the lab, but I have genuinely enjoyed the past two months.

It's just that after all of that, I have trouble applying myself to blog posts. It's not that I'm too busy to blog, it's just that there's a limited amount of writing in me, and it's all been used up for the thesis.

My thesis outranks my blog. A travesty if there ever was one.

When it's all said and done, the Intro as it stands may be a case of biting off more than I can chew. The rest of the thesis probably won't be as long, and the breadth of the background is likely a bit too ambitious. We'll see what the committee says. Better to have too much content than too little, though, right?

I'll be taking a week off from writing (although not from revising, and not from continuing work on manuscripts that I'll be submitting to journals), so hopefully I'll soon have the energy to compose some decent posts.

In the meantime, here's a pygmy marmuset that I photographed at the Philadelphia Zoo.

Do not feed after midnight.

The email that caused my deep sigh of relief

2009-07-28T14:56:00.003-04:00

"Don,

I just checked your transcript and you have enough credits to finish with
your PhD.

Regards,
Larry
Graduate Secretary"

My New Website

2009-07-21T19:32:00.010-04:00

It has come to my attention that potential employers have been Googling me. Apparently, they have not taken me at my word.

So I Googled myself, and I was not at all surprised to find that anyone trying to find me would find way, way more about my mediocre race results than about my professional background. There is no way that this could be a positive thing.

With that in mind, I set out to improve my career prospects by putting my best foot forward. The non-cycling foot. I brushed up on my html, and with the help of a free template, I made a website.

Disappointed that the word "website" wasn't a hyperlink? Well, there will be no link to my website in this post. Nor will the website have any links to the blog. No good can come from a clickable connection between the two.

To find my new website, go to the address that consists of the following:

"first name" + "last name" + ".com"

If you don't know my last name, then I'm quite okay with you not being able to find my professional website. Please continue enjoying this frequently-updated, content-rich, super-good blog.

If you play guitar, I need your help!

2009-07-18T15:01:00.002-04:00

I had an idea. To make this idea happen, I need to choose a song that consists of the following chords:

G, D, C, and Em.

More generally, what I really need is a song that consists of I, IV, V, and vi. It has to be recognizable, so no obscure indie hipster junk. Just a song. So far, I've got Brown Eyed Girl... but that only has rare vi chords, so I'd like other options.

Can you help?

Letter of Recommendation

2009-07-15T17:43:00.003-04:00

('cause if you're not on Facebook, then the following is actually new content to you!)

In my quest to find a post-doc position, I've been asked by my recommenders to write my own letters, which they will then revise and sign. Which is weird. So, here goes...

To whom it may concern,

Don is as brilliant as he is handsome. He is creative, energetic, curious, ambitious, charismatic, innovative, clever, and smart. From what I've heard, he's a dynamo in the sack, too.

It is my recommendation that you hire him. And pay him a lot. Like, a LOT. For reals.

Sincerely,
Don's Recommender

P.S. Also, he's a ninja.

Man Night

2009-06-29T11:03:00.002-04:00

Burgers, beers, and cigars. It was the best kind of Saturday evening.

Minding Ps and Qs

2009-06-25T10:47:00.003-04:00

If P, then Q... so if notP, then notQ?

from velonews.com:

Vaughters refused to directly confirm or deny the rumor of contract discussions with Contador, saying, "Our team policy is that we don’t discuss private negotiations before they are closed. We never have, and that’s going to be the case here. Whether we were or weren’t talking to Alberto, we’re not going to talk about it, period. All negotiations are confidential until finalized.” [my emphasis]

In Vaughters' defense, I don't think that was an accident.

UPDATE:
JV's deft linguistic maneuvering reminds me of this:

Father's Day Musing

2009-06-21T13:27:00.002-04:00

I am who I am because of my Dad.

Address your critiques accordingly.

Don't Race

2009-06-20T15:14:00.001-04:00

A brief aside, before I begin the post-proper: as much fun as it is to write cute "here's what I had for breakfast" posts, I'd much rather compose a commentary on the human condition. They're inevitably more controversial, more preachy, and more likely wrong... still, they're most representative of "25 Year Old Don", and so they're what I'll want to read 50 years from now.

I use "human condition" as a catch-all, and in such cases as the following, it is too broad a term. Maybe not all people act the way my prototype does, not everyone has the same primal compulsions. In my circle of friends, though - in fact, in all of my circles of friends - just about everyone fits a certain mold.

What mold? I shall explain by way of an anecdote:

One of the bike races for which I registered, paid, and showed up was the criterium at University of Delaware. However, I chose not to start the race. The course design was downright stupid, with a dangerous corner at the bottom of a fast descent. The race was delayed before I even started warming up because the Newark, DE area ran out of ambulances. That's how many brutal crashes there were in that corner.

Rather than reverse the direction of the race, as had been suggested by spectators, racers, and officials alike, the organizers chose to continue running their ridiculous shitshow in the wrong direction. Acknowledging the danger in the corner, though, they dispatched the head official to stand in the grass near the beginning of the corner.

My peers and I watched in dismay as one of the most respected figures in Northeastern cycling shouted, over and over, to slow down. Once every minute or two, the pack would come charging down the hill, and he would wave his arms and bellow "Easy, easy!" To no one's surprise, it had ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT.

My prototype is a competitive person. He races his bicycle, and I do mean RACES. Not because it keeps him fit, not because he relishes the camaraderie of a like-minded pack, and certainly not because it justifies all the training miles. He races because you just can't win training rides. The competition is the end for which the remainder is all simply a means.

You can't tell a competitive person not to compete. Sure, with some discipline, my prototype can suppress his instincts, but even buried, they still lurk below the surface. That which drives him will not be snuffed out by shouting "slow down!".

Mark's Jenna, from what I know about her, is a lot like my prototype. She's a racy lady, the sort to chase people down rather than cruise through. That's how she kicked ass at Hibernia, as best as I can surmise. Not on fitness alone, but on competition.

Imagine her dismay to find that her next event, the More/Fitness Half-Marathon, had been neutered by race organizers (wordplay alert! this event was for women only). The unseasonal heat was cause enough for the powers-that-be to cancel the Marathon and turn the Half into a "fun run". The course would be the same length, but the clocks would be turned off. Competitors would not be Competitors, but Participants. In this way, the dangers of excessive heat would be mitigated, because nobody would be inclined to compete.

This rationale is so absurd as to offend. Even if the "Participants" had actually listened to instructions to treat the event as a Fun Run, even if they didn't have wristwatches with which to time themselves, they were surrounded by rabbits and chasers! Those among them who fit my prototype - many, if not most, presumably - would find competition at every step, and they would race.

A final example comes from the world of motorsports, in which I have taken a passing, passive interest. In late April, there was a terrible wreck at Talladega, in which a car going nearly 200 mph flipped upside down and flew toward the stands.

Here's the video, because I know you're curious...

The circumstances that led to this near-tragedy are somewhat unique to the world of NASCAR, and to this track in particular, but they're worth a brief review.

When engine technology raised speeds well above 200 mph at this superspeedway in the late 80s, NASCAR mandated a "restrictor plate", which limits the horsepower of cars and prioritizes drafting. Ed Hinton explains better from here:

Plate racing causes such tight packs of cars that multicar crashes are almost inevitable -- there were two such "big ones" Sunday, before Edwards' crash at the checkered flag.

The restrictions have opened a whole set of complex rules, such as forbidding passing below the yellow line at Talladega. When Brad Keselowski [09 in the above video] tried to pass Edwards at the checkered flag, and Edwards [99] moved down to block, Keselowski knew he would be penalized if he went below the yellow line.

So he chose to wreck Edwards instead. Which, believe it or not, is acceptable procedure in plate racing.

Having narrowly averted the unimaginable consequences of a 3000 lb car, shredded into 150mph shrapnel by steel fencing, decimating the capacity crowd at the Talladega track, NASCAR higher-ups immediately began proposing solutions.

The most frequent suggestion was to enforce penalties with more severity, as a disincentive for aggressive driving. It's a good suggestion, if penalties are applied with uniformity and predictability. Consistent administration of consequences has not always been a strong suit of any sport ever, because after all, the officials are human.

You've read this far in the post, so you know how I feel about the stricter-enforcement proposal. One of the most successful NASCAR drivers, Jimmie Johnson, put it best:

"Officials] can talk until they're blue in the face up there, but when we get in those cars we're going to race and try to get position. Regardless of the ass-chewing we get before we pull on the track, you're going to do what you have to do to win."

It's a lesson of which I've been increasingly aware in the past year, for a variety of reasons - in sports, in club administration, in teaching. Andy Kessler wrote in Forbes about the "inevitability of internet piracy". People will try to get the most of what's available to them, by whatever means they must. If there is any flexibility in a boundary, any opportunity to squeeze just a little more out of the rules, they will take it. You can't threaten water into one end of a basin, you can only expect it to fill its container.

That people will look for advantages is only a problem if you don't expect and accept it. It's not a bad thing... it's a human thing. Successful administration comes down to forethought - course design in racing, homework assignments in education, etc.

Of course, realizing this is not the same as implementing it. We'll see how I do when the time comes.

Twitterblogger

2009-06-20T13:55:00.003-04:00

Don...

... is getting a bit tired of rain

... regrets paying money to see Year One

... wonders, in his spare time, how changing motorsports regulations might facilitate passing

... doesn't feel like a bike racer

... has written a 5200+ word review chapter on brain injury and rehabilitation

... is never moving to the Pacific northwest

... reminds Jay: remember 'Foo Fighters'

... enjoys watching triathlons on Universal Sports, but sometimes can't help but shout "somebody do SOMETHING!" during the bike

... isn't sure what breed of dog to get

... has been in a good mood, excepting a couple of blips, for months

... blogs more than Will

Pomp and Circumstance

2009-06-18T17:18:00.007-04:00

Your children are as precious as flowers, as unique as a snowflake. Your children look positively dashing in those mortarboard. Your children will all be president someday.

None of the above fact-ish statements justify graduation ceremonies. Sorry to rain on parents' parades, but there is just no reason for this big waste of everyone's life. The graduation thing has got to go.

I went to High School graduation, all festooned in my green grown (go Bears!). My parents were in the stands, as were my grandparents and brother. There were tears... but none from me, because it was graduation from f'ing high school.

I went to college graduation, this time in a black ensemble that, frankly, didn't really do justice to my figure (go Spartans!). My parents and grandparents and brother were in the stands, and there were tears, because it was graduation from f'ing college.

In both of these cases, there was something coming next. When I finished high school, I was months from starting college. When I finished college, I was weeks from starting grad school.

Graduation was a milestone, but only as much as the mile markers on the turnpike... the ones that are like 3"x6" and on the other side of the guard rail and that you never pay attention to unless you're bored and 342 miles from home... 341.9... 341.8...

You know what will be fantasic, and will maybe even move me to tears? The graduation from grad school (knock on wood, throw salt over the shoulder, cross your fingers, and spit thrice), when I walk down the aisle in the hallowed halls of the RAC wearing enough velvet to clothe four drag queens. Because this one will be the last one. Terminal degree, my friends, means terminus.

Here is where I need to clarify the misunderstanding: There should be a college graduation, just like there should be a high school graduation. It should be for people for whom it has meaning. Graduations should be for terminal degrees.

Getting a diploma from high school and joining the workforce is fine. Getting a bachelors and eschewing grad school in favor of a paycheck is totally understandable. Nobody's judging. It's just that graduating means something different when you're done than when you're en route to more school.

There absolutely should be a graduation ceremony for every level of education. The only students allowed to attend should be those students who are entering the workforce. Less time waiting to walk up the aisle, less traffic in the parking lot... and fewer shapeless nylon gowns gathering dust in our closets. Everybody wins!

It doesn't make sense to force parents to sit in the bleachers while their kids are forced to wait an hour just to walk on stage and shake hands with some administrator before getting a folder (often empty, by the way) and sitting back down. It deprives the final graduation ceremony of meaning.

The worst offenders, of course, are the preschool graduations. "Congratulations, you've made it to kindergarten! It took a lot of work, and you almost didn't make it, but we knew that you would buckle down and really earn that diploma! What a momentous accomplishment!"

Those things are utterly wasteful. And adorable.

Supersenior

2009-06-17T09:48:00.002-04:00

I spent 8 semesters in Cleveland. I root for the Indians, the Browns, the Cavs, and the Buckeyes. I look down my nose at The Flats, I am unphased by the lake effect, and I know better than wander east of 116th or west of 105th at night. I'll always be connected to Cleveland.

I've spent 8 semesters at Rutgers. In fact, having started work in my lab in the summer of '05, and continuing it now, I've spent considerably more time at Rutgers than at Case Western Reserve.

So why is it that I still feel new at Rutgers? As if I'm a visiting student, or finishing my first year. By the third year in Cleveland, I was one of the "old guys" in the fraternity, by the fourth I was dying to escape. I feel less of a connection to the University and the town than many of my undergrad friends express, certainly less than I felt at CWRU.

Possible reasons:

I was younger then. Youth made me impressionable, which malleability I have since outgrown.
I am from Central Jersey. As a true outsider in the heavily-Ohioan population at CWRU, I needed to adopt the city to fit in. Having grown up near Rutgers, I have no desire to adopt it - on the contrary, I've always been more than happy to express my disdain for the Dirty Jerz.
I'm a grad student now. Grad students aren't supposed to feel at home. A graduate student who feels too comfortable is less inclined to write his thesis. We're supposed to graduate, so that we may go forth and prosper. For seriously, I think it's in the orientation manual.
Full-blown certifiable insanity

Whatcha think?

MCSS Photos

2009-06-13T09:18:00.001-04:00

Two weeks ago, I went to the Motor Control Summer School. It was, in a word, supermegagood. As promised, here is a photodump, er, blog post.

Ava Jade, my backseat companion for the 6 hour drive.
She slept for 4 hours, and did a repetitive "yawn, then sleep again" cycle for a while towards the end.
I dare you to find something cuter

"Welcome to Summer School," says the organizer.
"Would you like a martini in a dixie cup?"

The unwritten rule was "work hard, play hard". The play, along with the evening "happy hour", included 4-hour free periods every afternoon. We hiked, we played basketball, and we failed miserably at taking a break from Motor Control discussions.

(l to r): Enoka, Latash, Feldman, and Scholz.
Using the honorific "he wrote the book" for these guys is not at all an exaggeration.

The attendees, minus a few, at the last happy hour of the weekend.
Samir cracked us all up with a last-second "say 'lambda!'"
Our nerdiness knows no bounds.

There was a bonfire. Jealous?

(l to r): Jang, Tony, Steve, Jeremy, Valentina, Nikita, Matt, Osmar, and Carol.
Long after the fire was down to embers, we were having a good time.

Remember before, when I challenged you to out-cute the picture of the baby?
Done

Life Imitates Art, because I'm sad

2009-06-11T10:08:00.003-04:00

When the Air France flight disappeared without warning, it was too big a tragedy to wrap my mind around. Two hundred twenty eight lives lost in an instant. It's not the worst recent tragedy, nor is it even the most recent tragedy, but it still hurts, in a "the bell tolls for thee" sense.

Defense mechanisms are pretty convenient. What's the point in succombing to melancholy when you can crack a joke? It's healthy!

In the case of the Air France crash, I realized that the story of airliner disappearing over the ocean was a bit familiar. Was the search-and-rescue operation looking in the right place, or had the plane's radio broken as it flew a thousand miles off course and landed on The Island? Were there 228 dead, or had a handful survived and were they currently running from smoke monsters and fighting polar bears and finding The Hatch?

It hurt less that way. But then they found sections of fuselage. And then they found bodies. So the real-life Lost speculation pretty much went out the window.

Hollywood may not have been entirely wrong, though. It seems that a woman who missed the flight, and thus avoided a watery grave, has died in a car crash. So, maybe it's not Lost. Maybe it's Final Destination?

Go go gadget defense-mechanism!

The Juicebox Conundrum

2009-06-09T23:35:00.001-04:00

I am an adult, or at least I think I am. My colleagues have children,
the IRS takes a hefty chunk out of every paycheck, and my hairline is
retreating like the French Army. Which feels pretty grown up to me.

Gone are the simple pleasures of childhood. I don't play in the mud
anymore, or spend frivolously on entertaining gadgets. Certainly I
would never watch cartoons or drink from juiceboxes.

Oh wait... I do all those things!

Juiceboxes are the trickiest to incorporate into my otherwise adult
lifestyle. Its not that I mind how it looks, for a grownup such as
myself to be using such an anachronistic drinking modality. Rather, it
is the serving size of a standard juicebox.

I have a man-sized stomach. Why do they not make a man-sized juicebox?

Playing the hand that cruel, cruel fate has dealt me, I make do with
what I have. More specifically, I use two or three juiceboxes to
quench my thirst.

Herein lies my conundrum: each juicebox comes with its own
individually-wrapped straw. While I only need one straw per sitting,
I find myself using each new box's straw.

Why? Why am I wasting time and energy unwrapping each new straw? Why
am I compelled every time?

Bring On the Fury

2009-06-09T09:17:00.000-04:00

HPCX planning committee

This year's HPCX will be better than last year's HPCX, or any other HPCX before it.

This year's HPCX will be better than anything closer to your home that weekend.

This year's HPCX will change the way you look at cyclocross.

Honestly, I don't think I'm exaggerating. You need to be there. November 1st.

Save the date.

Dodged Bullet

2009-06-07T23:37:00.001-04:00

Its easy to get confused en route to my house. The good people of
Highland Park named two streets with the same name; I live on Ave, but
Google Maps defaults to Lane. Its easy to end up on the wrong street,
on the wrong end of town.

A potential roommate - let's call him Brian - was going to check out
the apartment between 5 and 8 today. Just as I was leaving the house
to ride, Brian's wife (yes, wife; I wish I'd gotten more of that story
for you) called to ask if they could visit before 5. It caught me
off-guard, but I shortened my already-truncated ride to accommodate
them.

A few minutes after 5, I called Brian, or rather his wife, to
facilitate their visit. That is, to ask where they were already. Her
response was chilly, "we drove by earlier, it was all apartment
complexes, Brian doesn't want to live there."

"Ah," say I, "I think you were on the wrong street. Common mistake"
and proceed to explain the urban planning snafu of Highland Park. "So
if you'd like, I can still show you the place."

"Hang on," she says, and then I hear, somewhat muffled:

"Do you want to go see the apartment?"
"not if it's in Highland Park, I don't"

Then she says into the phone, "okay, we're not coming, goodbye"

Two weeks ago, a lab in New York City posted to a listserve I read,
soliciting applications for a post-doc position. I want one of those,
and would love to work in Manhattan, so I sent a reply in which j
asked for details about the lab and its reararch. No reply.

Yesterday, they reposted the position.

It is my instinct to be put off by these incidents. I don't take it
personally, but the world is supposed to work a certain way, and when
it doesn't, I get frustrated. Brian's casual ambivalence annoyed me,
almost as much as it would have had I waited until 8 instead of
calling. The NYC lab's unresponsiveness, which I admit may have been a
rare oversight, shook my faith in the system just a bit.

Just when I start to get worked up over poor etiquette, when I imagine
that I bear the cross of a crumbling, selfish society, I catch myself.
Had Brian shown up, he might've wound up my asshole roommate. Had I
sent that lab my CV, I might be stuck as their unhappy, isolated
post-doc. How lucky am I, that events unfolded so frustratingly!

Measured

2009-05-30T07:51:00.008-04:00

So here's how it was: Three years ago, at my first Motor Control Summer School, I kept a journal. I documented my conversations and impressions, but also my ambitions and concerns. Foremost among these concerns was the fear that I do not have what it takes to make it in Motion Science. I wrote, for example:

"One thing that struck me is the high level of contention about control
schema...the discussions are heated, with well-supported arguments that are
simply above my head. The professors kept bringing up the difference in
philosophies; maybe someday I’ll have evaluations of philosophies?"

A legitimate question, hinting at a deep sense of self-doubt. Scary stuff.

Now, three years later, it turns out that yes, I do actually have evaluations of philosophies. Which is nice.

For years, even after poring over innumerate papers, parsing through their arguments sentence by sentence, still I have been left in confusion. Yesterday, sipping coffee with one of the big deals of Motion Science, we went over his brain-child, the Equilibrium Point Hypothesis. We talked about its applicability for different movements, about the attempts to refute it (unsuccessfully, he would contend), and about the empirical evidence that supports it. And I really, really got it.

I got how Equilibrium Point flows logically into Uncontrolled Manifold analysis. I could see how to apply this scheme to experimental evidence presented by other professors with alternate conclusions. It makes sense to me now, in a fundamental way.

Not everyone agrees with Equilibrium Point Hypothesis. That's okay (the professor I had coffee with would disagree). That leads to debate - sometimes heated, always loud - and debate forces better understanding, mental acrobatics, and the capacity for polemic. That can only be good.

So here's how it is. These days, I am known to race my bike, and to partake in Karaoke, and even to post on this here bliggity-blog. Not that it's all I do, but these are typical activities of mine that serve as a convenient gauge. Like you, I want to be at my awesomest, and so I measure myself by, well, everything. The most convenient, most frequent metrics include how fast I ride, or how well I sing, or how cleverly I write. It is no surprise, of course, that I am thoroughly mediocre at all three, which hurts just a bit.

It is rare indeed that I can measure myself as an academic. Especially in real-time, face to face interaction. Especially in terms of Motor Control.

This weekend is a long-awaited opportunity to gauge myself. How heartbroken I would be, were I to find that I am also mediocre at this, the focus of my, y'know, future. So far, my dear friends, results are... promising.

Happy happy happy Don.

Still not a post

2009-05-29T13:43:00.002-04:00

I have been embarassingly delinquent as a blogger. And I will continue to be so, at least through the end of the weekend.

I had two big due dates on Wednesday, made all the more pressing because I was leaving on Thursday for the conference from which I am posting. Those projects - a long abstract for a conference and the resubmission of my journal article - were exhausting, especially for the writing part of my brain. I had no energy for blogging.

There are posts in the works, I promise. For real this time. Posts that will get you excited for cyclocross, posts that will make you go "awww, how cute!", and even posts that will make you say "wow. Don's a nerd. eww"

Just not yet.

Written for, and omitted from, an application for a post-doc position

2009-05-18T17:14:00.002-04:00

I have spent years imagining the features of my ideal academic environment, just as little girls plan out the details of their distant-future weddings.

Leftward

2009-05-17T20:56:00.004-04:00

Diagnose this:

In the past 4 years, I have owned four pairs of Crankbrothers pedals. Two Eggbeaters, two Quattros. None of those pairs are still usable, because all four Left pedals are all loosey-goosey. Only one of the Right pedals is similarly worn. It is the Left pedals that are chattery, like the bearings are loose.

For what it's worth, I am a righty. However, I trackstand with my left foot forward, I start races with my left foot clipped in, and I unclip the right foot when I stop at a traffic light. I don't have a particular tendency to crash on one side over the other, but I have yet to crash horrifically - spectacularly, yes, but not horrifically.

Why are my left pedals dying?

My legs have felt poopy ever since Granogue. In part, I blame the latest pedal failure, because it bothered my left knee and definitely probably maybe changed the way I pedal. Mostly the problem is rooted in my inability to ride consistently.

Ben Swift, who's having a breakthrough race in Italy, said in an interview that he starts and ends each ride with five 30-sec sprints. Given my embarrassing lack of top-end speed, and especially given the "only crits ever" race scene in these parts, it seems like a good idea to add this to my utterly unstructed training regimen. After four training rides with this addition... my legs feel poopy. But that's been going on for weeks.

Yesterday, my legs felt poopy. For dinner, I tried a new (new to me) recipe: bacon-wrapped chicken. Today, my legs felt poopy. Clearly, bacon-wrapped chicken has, at the very least, no adverse effect on my riding.

No good experiment has a sample size of 1. Therefore, I will strive to have bacon-wrapped chicken as often as possible. For science.

(The secret is brown sugar)

Supervillainy

2009-05-16T18:28:00.006-04:00

It's not that I don't have a moral compass. I do. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and ne'er the 'twain shall meet. It's just that... good is good, but bad can be great.

I'll stick to good, fine. But I'll do it as an alter ego. You see, your beloved NinjaDon is just actually a cover, distracting you from a prolific, notorious evil-doer.

It's not easy being a doer of evil. People tend to frown upon your life-choices. They look down their noses at your calamitous intent and judge you, harshly. Still, I am what I am.

I'll take Dr. Horrible over Captain Hammer any day. I'll pledge allegiance to The Mighty Monarch before Dr. Venture, too. Hell, I'll even back Gob before Michael.

This week, while watching the season finale of Lost, I drew apalled stares from my fellow viewers with three simple words: "I like Ben".

Lex Luthor always seemed more captivating a character than Superman. Maybe the darkness of the foil allows for more depth. (Coincidentally, I stopped watching Smallville during the first season, when a young Lex Luthor gave an also-young Clark Kent a fencing sword, then said "a good superhero needs a foil.") But cartoons and TV series can only go so far in life.

At last, my search for like-minded supervillains is complete. It has come to my attention that a Ruthless Organization is being organized... ruthlessly. I've signed up. Have you?

Responsibility

2009-05-09T20:38:00.002-04:00

This is me at my most hypocritical: I hate when people don't take responsibility for their mistakes.

I read an advice letter from salon.com that, based on the title, I expected to be about the economy. It was not. Here's a highlight:

Everybody just assumed that because I was book-smart, I would be life-smart, and nobody pressured me to plan out what I wanted to do with my life.

I've also been so sheltered that I can't give directions to my own home, nor do I keep track of how much money there is in my bank account. Basically, I haven't had to learn the ins and outs of daily independent living and it's driving me insane, because I am 25 AND I HAVE A HARVARD DEGREE! ...

I don't have to worry about paying the bills (my parents take care of it all) so there's no external motivation to get serious.

So this total failure is blaming everyone but himself for his shortcomings. Fine. He's from an Ivy League school up North... what more should we expect from him?

What if he wasn't a coddled, silver-spoon-fed creampuff? What if he was a battle-hardened national hero from the cobblestones of Belgium?

"I need help," he told sporza.be. "Someone should teach me to understand what happens when I drink too much."

For goodness' sake.

Word Problem

2009-05-07T15:46:00.002-04:00

If I was to write a neuroscience exam question, it would look something like this:

It is known that a specific region of the forebrain is involved in making lists. Synaptic activity in that region occurs at up to 40 Hz. Transduction of list items from cognitive abstracts to audible sounds occurs at 1 Hz. The axonal time constants in Broca's area (hint: responsible for speech generation) are 0.14 sec^-1.

What is the highest number you can count to out loud in one minute?

How many people do you think would furiously write unit conversions and decay functions on the answer sheet? How many would stare at their wristwatches and time themselves counting?

Spanky Makes a Logician's Funny

2009-05-06T10:16:00.003-04:00

Don:
did i see your name on the list for the expert singlespeed race? how'd it go?

Adam:
that was my tax free donation to the race/cause. I won't begin racing until mid-June or so.
how come you weren't at Easterns?

Don:
'cause i was at granogue!

Adam:
isn't that a tautology?

"why didn't you win?"
"because I lost."

"why weren't you at Easterns?"
"cause I was at granogue."

Don:

here's another:

"how did your race go?"
"i considered my entry fee a donation to the cause"

Granogue Race Report ... in Interview form!

2009-05-04T09:21:00.001-04:00

video courtesy of cyclingdirt.org

Saved by Split-Treadmill Gait

2009-04-30T19:49:00.004-04:00

I received an email informing me that I didn't get a travel grant. No trip to France for me. They even included the reason: not enough publications... I am not "proven" as a scientist.

My future hinges on my ability to prove myself. That is, the rest of my life is going to be grant applications and paper writing, trying to prove that I belong in academia. This morning started a dangerous spiral of certainty that I am not worthy, and that I am boned.

I'll spare you the details of my darker thoughts. Suffice it to say, they ranged from a desperately short list of companies that might hire me to a pathetic vision of Dr. Don the Burger Flipper.

You know me, though. My bad moods' lifespans are measured in hours, if not minutes. While ambling aimlessly through the student center, I came up with a post doc project for one of my potential labs, about which I've been ruminating for over a month... and it was a fantastic concept, if I may say so. Suddenly, the ideas came furiously, a brainstorm in the most literal sense, and my pen couldn't keep up. It seems that, despite a few doldrums of self-doubt, I may have a future in this science thing after all!

This afternoon, I went for a head-clearing ride in the Watchungs, alone with my thoughts. The first heavy raindrops, only hinting at whatever storm may come tonight, fell on the petals of suburban gardens and flowering trees. As the breeze swirled between the split levels, the humid air thickened with a floral perfume, a pleasantness that filled my nostrils. I was overcome with the sensation, rich and complete, and I smiled.

Life is good, baby.

Good Start

2009-04-29T10:55:00.003-04:00

I woke up early today, but with nowhere to be until 4pm, I had plenty of time to do a morning routine that usually takes 20 minutes. Cartoons were watched, my bedroom was cleaned, the dishwasher was emptied, and still I had an excess of time.

Rather than make a quick bowl of oatmeal or cereal for breakfast, as is my habit, I opted to indulge my palate. Over the course of many minutes, I crafted the following masterpiece:
Cheddar Cheese Omelet
Cinnamon Raisin Toast with Cream Cheese
Glass of Orange Juice (plus Calcium)
Mug of Big Ring Americano

Here, enjoy it again:

My tummy is a happy tummy.

You will get nothing and you will like it

2009-04-28T16:37:00.004-04:00

It sucks that I haven't blogged in a while. It sucks because I love to write, and it sucks because, I would hope, you enjoy reading what I have to write.

Posts are coming. They are burning up inside me, screaming to be typed, and so they shall. We'll just have to be patient.

For one thing, I can't write many of them. Not so much "cannot as "will not". I'd write about why I'm not writing about them, but that would be both revealing and obnoxious. E.g.: the previous sentence.

Briefly, though, I can safely mention that I've been racing my bike a lot. As of February, though, I've promised myself to write about racing as little as possible. So, whoops.

Anyway, recently, I've been redistributing my time out of necessity. Instead of buying sandwiches from the nearby deli, I'm saving money and preparing my own meals, which chews up time. Instead of running data analysis in my lab, I've been grading in the student center, with no computer access. Instead of sitting in front of the computer in the afternoon, I've been playing guitar in my backyard.

Life, as it stands right now, is very good. We'll have to leave it at that for now.

Guest Post - El Gato's "Vuelta Ciclista del Uruguay" race report

2009-04-16T10:12:00.003-04:00

In case you didn't know, the Kelly Benefit Strategies team just won the Vuelta Ciclista del Uruguay. Our freelance reporter, El Gato, wrote a summary of the 10-day race.

OK. We pretty much just wrote the book on how to win a South American stage race the hard way. We had the yellow for 8 of the possible 9 days. We only had 6 guys, and with yellow sitting [ed: not working hard], that's 5 guys riding. We won the first 4 stages so that they all hated us. The only Spanish I know is very insulting, and that made them hate us more. We were riding tempo [ed: as hard as can be sustained] ALL day every day, and getting attacked by groups of 8 to 12 riders from different teams that had banded together. Here is where you can use your math. 8 or more guys smashing it in the crosswind after you have been riding at the front with 5. Bunch blows to bits, get team back together, and ride really hard to bring them back. Reassemble on the front, and give them dirty looks. Repeat every 15k or so.

No respect for the Yellow. Leader whips out his [ed: slows to urinate], they attack. We go to feed, they attack. One of us flats........you get the picture.

When I said "south american monkey knife fight" I really meant it. Try for a moment to visualize monkeys with knives. Now imagine they are very agitated, and possibly rabid. Now, place a shiny object in the center(stage win, yellow jersey, pesos) Hell... while you are at it imagine they have been drinking red bull vodkas too.

I just cracked up because I have this awesome picture in my head now.

Good times

photo by Graham Watson
(plagiarized blatantly from wcuk)

Duet

2009-04-13T15:37:00.005-04:00

I like music.

I don't know music, but I like it. You may know more and better bands than I, you may be better versed in music theory, and your talent with your voice/guitar/whatever may far exceed mine... in fact, you may even like music more than I do. The simple truth with which we will start this discourse is that I like music.

Music appreciation is an abstract thing, all qualitative and intangible, so I will take the liberty of narrowing our focus further. I like music, and when I really like music, I feel it.

Maybe more than most, maybe less - Relativism was never my forte - I get chills when I listen to a beautiful piece of music. You know that shiver down your spine, that deep down tingle that you can't quite explain? Like fingernails tracing lightly up the inside of your arm, or lips nuzzling where your collarbone meets your neck. That is how I feel music, when the music is good.

Take a moment to collect your thoughts. I'll wait.

It's nearly impossible to classify what type of music produces this sort of a response in me, for the same reason as it's unfair to ask "what's your favorite band?". I have gotten the chills from British blues-rock and from a six-year old's take on an old standard, from orchestras and a capella choirs. There's no guarantee that one genre will strike me in that way, nor is there any way to predict whether a different song by the same artist will have the same effect as an earlier piece.

That said, let's magnify again; that is, let's reduce the scope of this inquiry to better focus on the palpable. Duets, done properly, are extremely likely to give me the chills.

Not this Duets. Well, actually, why not? Listen to this, and enjoy.

Nice, right?

For me, it isn't so much that Huey and Gwyneth can sing - can't they, though? - but rather it's the way they sound in harmony. It's less about the vocal quality (sing the right pitches and I'm essentially satisfied) and more about the composition (what pitches are they singing?).

It turns out that there is a physiological reason for these sensations. (From here on out, I will rely heavily on Dan Levitin's book, This is Your Brain on Music). Your cerebellum, the most primitive part of your brain, coordinates your mesolimbic system, which releases opioids and dopamine into the blood [Levitin and Menon 2005]. Your cerebellum can get you high.

That explains the output of the wonderfully mysterious black box that is your brain. Now the question is, what is the stimulus that makes the cerebellum light up?

It seems that one of the cerebellum's functions is to be a timekeeper. Remember, this is a very primitive part of the brain, one we share with lower creatures, like rats and lizards and undergrads. Timekeeping is of evolutionary advantage - Levitin reminds us that the rat, hearing a constant rhythm on the earth above his burrow, can relax; when the rhythm changes, it may mean a predator is approaching, and the rat must prepare to freak out.

How does this translate to us higher beings? Not directly, yet considerably. Your cerebellum is active, and it coordinates the auditory and frontal cortices. For timekeeping, yes, but also for predicting and anticipating. Here, Levitin says it best:

"Music communicates to us emotionally through systematic violations of expectations. These violations can occur in any domain - the domain of pitch, timbre, contour, rhythm, tempo, and so on - but occur they must. Music is organized sound, but the organization has to involve some element of the unexpected or it is emotionally flat and robotic (173)."

This is noticeable in "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", even in a simple, unaccompanied performance by a child, as in the link above. The little girl's octave leap, from "Some" to "where", is essentially against the rules of Western music. It is jarring, at a subconscious level, because you are simply blindsided by the doubling of frequency between notes.

In the same way, duets play to your brain's predispositions. The melody may be somewhat set, but the harmony can play with your expectations, and it can do so different from one verse to the next. Your cerebellum will freak out (as our early ancestors would), and whoosh, neurotransmitters are released into your system. And you get the chills.

A Prairie Home Companion had a program the other night, which they called Pas De Deux, that kept me stuck in the car for nearly an hour. It was a duet competition. It was pretty. I got the chills a lot.

The following was my favorite song. I hope you enjoy.

Big Ring Coffee

2009-04-11T09:26:00.002-04:00

My team is sponsored by 53x11 Coffee... which I tell you in the interest of full disclosure. Regardless of the fact that 53x11 Coffee hooks a bunch of college kids up with a sweet deal of much-needed coffee, regardless of the fact that you could support Rutgers Cycling financially simply buy buying your coffee from 53x11 Coffee, you should trust my claims as being entirely objective.

53x11 Coffee is delicious.

So far I've tried the Chain Breaker and Big Ring varieties, and I've been thrilled. Chain Breaker has more body to it, but Big Ring is by no means watered down. I highly recommend them both. Click it!

Anyway, it turns out there is a trick to making 53x11 Coffee. It seems that running pressurized water over roasted beans produces a discolored, watery beverage that is basically disgusting. You have to grind the beans first.

I think I need to have coffee just to be able to make my morning coffee.

Don on Vacation

2009-04-09T22:01:00.003-04:00

It may come as no surprise whatsoever that I have work to do on vacation. "Relax," they say, "you're in Florida! You're with your family, and you haven't a care in the world"

Tell that to the giant stack of homeworks I had to grade!

As per our unilateral agreement, I will not be posting about the qualities of my students. It would be an ill-advised blog that lists the many, many adjectives that could describe the discipline, critical thinking, and self-reliance of my beloved students. So we won't be talking about their qualities. In public.

What I can talk about is their quantities. There are a lot of them. Dozens and dozens, and also dozens. 91 students means 91 homeworks (minus those who choose to accept the goose-egg, bless their hearts). Generally about three to five minutes per homework. Do the math, and cringe.

Yes, I am in Florida, and I brought the giant stack of homeworks with me. I may not be a PRO cyclist, but damned if I'm not a PRO academician. Which is probably better.

Gripe though I might (and did, and will) about the cruel injustice of grading while on vacation, there was one huge mitigating factor:

This is the view from my desk

All You Can Eat Sushi

2009-04-07T20:46:00.006-04:00

My Facebook status tonight was:

All-You-Can-Eat Sushi? Challenge accepted.

(Aside: If I blog about my Facebook status, is that tantamount to Twittering? Tweeting? Someone please help me conjugate my social networking technology.)

So, I had sushi tonight. High-quality sushi, too; nothing but the best for your favorite ninja and his family. If there's anything better than high-quality sushi, though, it's high-quantity.

This was my third plate, before.

This was my third plate, after.
A ghost-town of clamshells and sashimi stains.

And then it was time for dessert.

Best of all, though, is that the good people at Kyojin (who will forever tremble at the sight of me, after the havoc I wreaked on their profit margins) venerated me, their uncontested conqueror. Before I had even scooped my second helping of rice pudding, they had unveiled a sushi named in my honor.

Hint: It wasn't the Unagi

Eavesdropped

2009-04-04T23:16:00.002-04:00

After seeing "Adventureland" - a smart, soulful comedy - on Friday, I overheard the following conversation in the men's room.

Philistine #1: Oh, hey man
Philistine #2: Yo, it's been a while
[blah blah blah]
P1: So what'd you see?
P2: Adventureland
P1: How was it?
P2: I thought it would be, like, stupid-funny, but instead it was just Juno in an amusement park
P1: Oh, that sucks, man.
P2: Right?
P1: That is ass in a glass

You can't make shit like this up.

Members Only, like the jacket

2009-04-01T10:37:00.003-04:00

It's a new month, and here in the world of TheNinjaDon, that means it's time for some change. For the past few weeks, I've been composing new posts, collecting paradigm-shifting and/or hilarious youtube videos, and revamping the layout of this blog. That's why I haven't posted any new content, as you may have noticed.

Starting April 1st, the new content will be available to NinjaMembers on the all-access site. For a low monthly membership fee, you can be one of the many loyal fans of TheNinjaDon, with all the privileges that entails.

I look forward to your continued perusal of my little corner of the blogosphere, and to your generous contribution to my beer - er, Gatorade - fund.

Cookies

2009-03-16T14:05:00.006-04:00

During the two weeks of hiatus that have plagued this blog, I have been a busy little ninja. My research has progressed in leaps and bounds, I've raced my bike a half-dozen times, I've brought down the house at the ol' Karaoke bar... and I won't be writing about any of that. You've heard it all before, a thousand times over.

Instead, I will tell you about a little get-together I arranged, wherein a bunch of grad students of similar backgrounds got together to make traditional holiday cookies. And by "tell you about", I mean wimp out and post photos. At least they'll have captions.

It was messy work.

Very messy work.

Some got messier than others.

The cookies are customizable. Some are filled with apricot jam, some with raspberry.

And some are filled with liquid chocolate. Eat your hearts out.

Jay made a super-cookie, raspberry AND chocolate. And signed it.

For goodness' sake, Jay, don't sit down!

They were delicious.

Reason #438 That I Hate Time Trials

2009-03-10T09:33:00.003-04:00

alternate title: Inescapably Creepy

apologies in advance to my punchline, who generously donated his time and worked tirelessly for the team.

First, some background. In most bike races, everyone starts together, with one foot on the ground and one foot clipped in to its pedal. In Time Trials, though, racers start one by one, with both feet locked in to the pedals. How do they stay upright? They have a holder.

The holder stands behind the cyclist, holding his or her saddle, and the cyclist trusts the holder to, well, hold.

This puts the holder in the somewhat awkward position of having his hands under the rider's butt, which is as close to the holder's body as possible. Emphasis on "awkward".

As a holder, you stay as professional as possible, and the whole process is an accepted burden of bike racing. It's no more sexual than saying "I'm inside you" to another man going into a sharp turn. Then again, we've been known to refer to the Men's C racers as C Men (it ain't just a homonym for sailors, y'see).

So when I look at pictures that were taken on Saturday morning, I can't help but cringe a little. Particularly the shots from the Women's races. Even in context, but especially out of context, they just look inappropriate.

This one's not so bad:

"It's just business, ma'am"

This one looks terrible. I'm grimacing, and I'm hunched over... as if I was caught in the middle of something naughty.

If photos had audio, this would be "grunt"

The story behind it should be a lesson for all Time Trialists. When you roll to the line, keep your butt off the saddle, so that the holder can see what he's grabbing. Otherwise, he has to reach under you, blindly grasp at where he thinks the saddle is, and hope against hope that his hands find plastic. Thus, the grimace and the strained posture.

There's pretty much no way it could get any creepier than that. Right?

Wrong.

Half Baked

2009-03-02T23:33:00.006-05:00

It is a truly miserable feeling, running out of energy mid-workout and with no food. That feeling, that abject sense of exhausted desperation, is only slightly worse than the feeling you get when you buy the overpriced energy bars that stave off that wretched bonk.

Sick of paying 2-plus dollars for every bar, I resolved to make my own, and for a fraction of the cost! This was 2005. It has taken me this long to work up the ambition to attempt this noble feat.

And yet here I am, on the cusp of greatness. While grocery shopping today, I felt the urge to experiment, and with the aid of my fancy new toy, the necessary ingredients were procured. I have enough left over to make about 5 more batches, which would bring the price per bar to just about $0.15.

No one has ever accused me of being a baker. The stove top is my comfort zone, and I can stir fry with the most mediocre of them. The oven, though, is a mystery to me, a magical cavern of mysticism and convection. Still, recipes can't be that hard, can they? Right?

Don't be fooled by that fake-foreshadowing. The whole process was actually ridiculously easy. Observe!

2 c. uncooked Quaker Multi-Grain cereal
3/4 c. raisins
1/4 c. diced pitted prunes
3/4 c. flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. b. soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. brown sugar
large egg
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tsp. vanilla

Step 1:Whisk the oil, eggs, and brown sugar.

Step 2: Mix in the applesauce and vanillaThe mixture should now resemble baby spit-up. You will wonder whether you've made a mistake; you have not. Carry on!

Step 3: Add everything else.
Mix until homogeneous.

Step 4: Pour into a greased 9x13 pan
Step 5: Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Also, you should have preheated the oven to 350.

That's where I'm at. The bars are currently half-baked (hence the title), and the suspense is killing me. I cleaned up, I paced around the kitchen, and now I'm blogging. The smell has filled the air, and the apartment is abuzz with anticipation. I'll let you know how they turned out.

In the meantime, here are the lessons I learned while baking:

Make sure to have all the ingredients before starting. Apparently my apartment has 6 times as much baking soda as flour. There was plenty of cinnamon, though.
A kitchen can never have enough measuring utensils.
Brown sugar is a delicious pain in the ass.
Whisks are much better for mixing large volumes of liquid than are forks.
Whisks are a poor choice for mixing clumpy, sticky batters. Whisks are little prisons for the clumps.
You're never too old to lick the spoon

UPDATE:

Success! Kind of! A good first attempt, anyway. They could be sturdier, like less mushy. Not sure how to go about fixing that... longer oven time? more oats? less applesauce?

Suggestions, please?

And yes, that is a tiny ninja, guarding the bars.

UPDATE #2:

These bars need a name. Therefore, a contest:

You have until March 15th to suggest a name. The winner gets a free batch of the bars.

Saturday Morning Special

2009-03-01T09:12:00.003-05:00

Will is doing a no-handed trackstand.
You just can't see it, because the sun hasn't begun to start to hint at rising

I have to echo Will's apt, if succinct, post.

Yesterday, more than 200 people showed up to race in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. It was February. It was 6:30 in the morning.

My Cat-4 field had 84 starters. The 1-2-3 field had 110, the maximum that the promoters would allow (why restrict the number of racers, by which I mean the profit? does the rulebook dictate the limit?). That is a decent size field for any race, but it's especially good for February. At 6:30 in the morning.

Jason works on his bike, 45 minutes before the start

Bike racers are a peculiar breed, and there are a particular set of foibles that characterize us, even down to the hopelessly amateur level. Yesterday morning confirmed that we are all profoundly masochistic. In case you didn't know that already.

I am pleased with my result, and I am looking forward to the season-proper. And that's all the race report you'll be getting.

Addenda:

Motivation: On the drive to Brooklyn, we listened to the Rocky IV soundtrack. Guaranteed to boost your wattage. SYNTH SOLO!!!

Noteworthy performances:

Jason should be a 3. He is a 4. To avoid the "sandbagger!" accusations, or maybe just because he could, he spent half the race at the very front, pulling us around the course at high speeds. And then his bike ceased to function, and he had to drop out. There is no justice.
Eric had alluded to pre-race jitters, as is customary before one's first-ever road race. He would be using this race to gauge his fitness and skills, but he had no ambitions. Well, Eric got 7th in his race. How's that for a gauge?

Sometimes humor...

2009-02-25T14:25:00.002-05:00

...transcends politics

Overabundance

2009-02-20T11:25:00.004-05:00

There is a pretty fast turnover in residents in my apartment, usually about a year or two. People come, and people go, but their spices never leave. Who packs spices when they move? Nobody, that's who.

So my roommates and I have a lazy susan full of spices, none of which we bought. Luckily, we all have the same philosophy of cooking: Damn the recipes, full speed ahead. Adding flavor is as easy as hunting through the spice cabinet for something that sounds cool. As in, "Ooh, is that ginger in the back corner? That could work!"

We try not to think too much about how old the mystery spices are... 'cause spices don't go bad, do they?

Anyway, as a precursor to inventorying the contents of the spice rack, I took a quick glance. Here is what I found.

Why, oh why, would we ever need this much cinnamon?

The First Law

2009-02-19T15:46:00.001-05:00

For generations, some wild-eyed scientists have scoffed at the
warnings of common sense. Knowing that the Laws of Thermodynamics
forbid perpetual motion, they still struggled, quite in vain, to
create such a device. If only, they reasoned, we could defy
Thermodynamics, we could power the whole world, eliminate poverty, end
war!

Well, it seems that unbeknownst to the world, someone has finally
succeeded in flaunting those Universe-governing laws. Alas, they did
not use their discovery for good, but for the evilest evil. It seems,
dear reader, that they seek only to torture TAs.

Though I struggle mightily, adding homework after homework to the Done
pile, the damn To Grade pile never shrinks! "Conservation of Mass" my
tiny white ass!

Seriously, this is only a twice-per-month gig for me; I don't know how
you teachers do it. Respect.

Research Philosophy

2009-02-18T00:25:00.008-05:00

It occurs to me that the following post will out me. Not just me, but my classmates as well. Hell, the majority of my field will be outed by this post. Sorry.

What with The Future looming on the horizon, I've spent a lot of time this week touching up the ol' Curriculum Vitae. What's more, I've put together a Research Objectives document, because the powers that be have required it. It's a task I took seriously; it introduces an audience to me as an aspiring professional, and equally as important, it forces into solidity the flurry of ideas swarming about my little brain.

At a conference a few summers back, I had the great honor of sharing a few rounds with some of the invited speakers. It was a momentous night within a truly formative weekend, and I'll never forget the parts of it that I remember. It was the psychologist from UConn who, in a particularly somber moment, advised that "in grad school, you learn how science works, it's someone else's idea... the post-doc is where you find your research niche, create your career trajectory".

And now, wondering about my trajectory, I realize that I am not a humanitarian.

Don't get me wrong, I am a humanitarian. Perhaps even a humanist. Mostly, though, I'm just not the altruist you might've thought me to be.

The best example is also the most recent. There's an amazing paper that deals with the Uncontrolled Manifold Hypothesis and preadolescent gait. Nobody's ever looked at UCM analysis of gait before, as far as the authors or I know. It's kind of groundbreaking, a foray into uncharted territory for a controversial hypothesis. As I've described it thus far, it's cool - and meaningful - enough to stand alone.

There's more to the article, though. Half of the subjects are children with Down Syndrome, and the hypothesis was that the motor control strategy of "Typical Development" children would differ from that of Down Syndrome kids in a way that could be measured by UCM analysis. (For those who are curious, it does)

Of course, UCM in Down Syndrome is very important research! The scientific community absolutely should be trying to help Downs kids, helping all impaired individuals. It is a noble endeavor we undertake when we repair dysfunction.

For me, though, the real headline is UCM. Its application to Down Syndrome is just window dressing.

This is a trend in my field. Once upon a time, we studied motor control for its own sake - blacksmiths and horses and dancers were observed doing what they do best, simply out of curiosity - and impaired subjects added another piece to the puzzle. For example, a lesion that severed the "touch" pathways led to a wealth of knowledge, because with it we could find the patterns to which the body defaults.

Maybe because of scarce funding, maybe because everyone fancies themselves a saint, or maybe just as a field-wide case of "keeping up with the Joneses", motor control research has evolved. Now, the labs that exclusively study healthy control are few and far between. Neurorehabilitation is sexy.

I realize that the house of cards that is my reputation has been set to crumbling. No longer can you have the illusion that I am in the business of Biomedical Engineering for the sake of curing disease or restoring function. With this confession goes my facade of magnanimity.

Know this, though: I am not the only one. Without mentioning him by name, I could tell you about a certain Biomedical Engineering grad student whose efforts in the fight against cancer are little more than a pretense to play with Data Mining and Pattern Recognition. He would likely be as inspired by a Netflix recommendation optimization as by epithelial histopatholgy discrimination.

I ask you, is there something wrong with that? Is he a worse person for it?

It's so odd. How many other fields are laden with the de facto requirement that their projects save the world? Imagine if a thesis about Sir Gawain also needed to discuss the use of the story to combat illiteracy. Preposterous!

If my passion needs to be a means to an end, if Rehabilitative Science progresses because I heart motor control, then so be it. Everybody wins.

The reason I was late to work this morning

2009-02-16T21:26:00.003-05:00

I was almost to the lab, when I spotted this:

Coming soon to Rutgers Magazine... Rutgers University Cycling and Really Really Ridiculously Good Looking Team

The Scam

2009-02-16T17:39:00.001-05:00

This is my first winter in housing where I am responsible for the gas
bill. In the past it was my parents, or the university, or even my
landlord that took care of gas. Now it's on me.

January, as you can imagine, brought with it a huge shock, as the
sub-freezing temperatures drove the gas bill sky-high. There was a
small panic in the apartment, and even split three ways, the utility
bill hurt.

Rational minds prevailed, and rather than abscond to Arizona, we
noticed that our electric bill had barely budged, even though our
electric heaters had been on all month. We resolved to lower the
themostat, crank the heaters to overdrive, and hope for a warm
February.

Thankfully, this month has seen unseasonable warmth (tangible proof of
global warming, say the same people who called record-setting October
a fluke), and with our thermostat way down, we looked forward to a
smaller utility bill.

Imagine our shock when the bill arrived this weekend, even bigger than
the previous month's!

There was no panic this time, just dejection. Powerless in the face of
the Utility Gods, we felt woefully insignificant, depressingly
impotent. We were doomed to pay ri-damn-diculous bills, no matter how
diligently we shivered through the winter.

All was not lost, though. Determined to find some rational explanation
for my financial ruination, I looked at the detailed report... and
there it was, the clue in the report, the needle in the haystack. The
gas usage for this month's bill was an "estimate".

Surely this was the mistake. Surely The Man doesn't just pull a number
out of thin air when the Meter Reader can't read the meter (say that
five times fast!).

Long story short, it seems that that's exactly how it works. How
convenient for the gas company! How sharp!

So I called this morning, waited on hold for 20 minutes, and read the
meter to the operator.

Savings: ~100 dollars

I am the hero of my apartment, at least today.

The moral of the story, my dear chickadees, is simple. Don't take it
from The Man. Also, buy me a beer.

Irreverence

2009-02-14T21:43:00.003-05:00

We're all used to seeing handwritten signs in the hallways, informing passers-by of the status of discarded office supplies.
It is a rare treat to see such brilliance, the touch of neo-post-postmodernism in an otherwise-drab world, a timely nod to l'esprit d' sardonique. Art Nouveau meets scathing critique of 21st Century life. Irreverence embodied in an installation piece. In a word: genius.

Here's a better view.

The work was unsigned, so I cannot tell you the identity of its creator. It's certainly not me, though, probably.

Locker Room Etiquette

2009-02-10T17:20:00.001-05:00

By accident, I forgot my swim bag at home yesterday. I'd left trunks
and a towel in the car, but I didn't have goggles or a lock.

This posed a new dilemma. Not the missing goggles, of course - I don't
mind aquajogging as a substitute for swimming. The question was, what
to do with my clothing while in the water? I chose to stuff them in a
bag and bring it all to the pool.

Every time I go to the gym, I hunt through the aisles for an open
locker. Nine times out of ten, a seemingly available cubby is actually
full, just missing a padlock.

People who leave clothes in lockers and don't bother to secure them
are infuriating. I suppose this counts as a "pet peeve".

Looking at the situation objectively, this shouldn't affect me at all.
Locked or not, occupied lockers are occupied, and there are no fewer
spaces available than if they were all visibly sealed. I have to open
lockers to ascertain their availability, and a glance would have
sufficed if everyone used locks, but that's trivial - I'm neither lazy
nor shy.

It's not even the cycle of dashed hopes ("an open locker? Damn") that
has me so frustrated. What it comes down to is me. It's not THEM, it's
ME.

What kills me isn't inconvenience, nor is it a sense of some great
wrong against me. It is the vivid image that I see, of myself
gleefully tossing clothes and shoes and wallets from unsecured
lockers, that is so aggravating.

It kills me because I'd never do it.

Lab Safety

2009-02-06T16:46:00.002-05:00

If the foam on your earphones has worn through, the metal
underneath, a conductor, can contact your skin, also a conductor.
That's not too big a deal.

If you wipe the dust off a CRT monitor with your palm, a static
charge will build up on your skin. The excess charge will bleed into
the air over time.

If the foam on your earphones has worn through AND you wipe the dust
off a CRT monitor with your palm, the excess charge on your skin will
flow to ground. Ground, in this case, is the metal touching your ear.
This will result in a feeling not unlike a lightning bolt to the
brain.

It will not be pleasant.

My Mistake

2009-02-05T16:26:00.002-05:00

Most of my emails of the team are verbose. This one wasn't:

8am
meet at brower
35 miles
easy (17-19mph) pace

it's gonna be stupid-cold...dress appropriately.

All the information they'd need, even the forecast, with none of the fluff. The pinnacle of clarity. Unfortunately, my rare proclivity for the concise went a little too far, and I left out a key line:

you must RSVP

Had no one RSVPed, I could've stayed indoors. Had anyone stated with certainty that they would be at the ride, I could've let them know in advance that I was bailing. My mistake was to allow the possibility that someone might be stuck at Brower, wondering how long to wait for me. I couldn't let that happen.

So there I was, standing at Brower, tears pouring down my cheeks from the cold. I'd been outdoors for six minutes, and already I was getting the tingling in my fingers and toes.

Two weeks ago, I rode a century with the team in weather that never got above 25 degrees. Today was only 10 degrees colder, but the wind was biting, and the multiple layers I wore did little to stave the chill. I only rode outdoors for an hour, but I was miserable, and hurting.

It's fun to throw around the phrase "stupid-cold", but today brought real meaning to what is usually an embellishment.

Obstacles in the Pool

2009-02-03T11:01:00.006-05:00

As with most emails to the team, my swimming announcement was 25% informative, 75% unnecessary humor. It was in the spirit of the weekend's hard-earned lessons that I wrote:

please remember to wear your most up-to-date Rutgers Cycling swim trunks, and clean your goggles regularly. point out obstacles in the water, and above all else, try not to piss off the cars you may encounter while in the water.

Hardeeharhar. Little did I know how many obstacles there would be.

First, and most obnoxious of all, were the jackasses in lane 8. On a day when the pool was so full of swimmers that the deck was teeming with people "stretching" while waiting passively for a lane, these three were content to swim 50m, then hang on the wall and chat for minutes at a time. When I was ready to swim, I asked (politely, I swear!) them to move to the mini-pool, so that exercisers might exercise. They scoffed, and told me to buzz off, but they began swimming 100m at a time. I am Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds.

Luckily, I knew the lifeguard, and a little bit of friendly bs'ing resulted in the "deep end" by the diving boards being opened for us. A half-dozen people followed me, but that was okay, because the deep end is plenty wide, right?

If you spend enough time on the Triathlon web forums (fora, actually [beat you to it, Ben!]), you'll find that aggravating denizens of the pool are by no means rare. It shouldn't have surprised me to encounter them myself, and yet there I was, dodging arms and legs every lap.

There was Right Turn Man, whose inefficient flails frothed the water around him as he swam diagonally across the pool. I'm sure he intended to swim straight, but his imbalanced stroke took him from left side to right, lap after lap. If he ever swims a triathlon on the Jersey Shore, he will surely wind up in Maryland.

The Great Water Treader was a bear of a man, with tree trunks for arms and bigger tree trunks for legs. He was treading water just off my line, and I felt the wake of his swinging arms every lap. As he drifted toward me, I had to stop swimming for fear of a paw to the head. Treading water myself, I shared a few choice thoughts with them in my "I am calm but very very angry" tone. After that, I was safe from water treaders.

My favorite obstacle was the Little Lovebirds. Clearly Freshmen (don't ask me how I know. I've been at Universities for 8 years... I just know), they were hanging on the ladder and being all lovey dovey. By which I mean making out. Unfortunately, my line ended at the ladder, so I was in a bit of a bind. Thinking back to my High School years, when I spent years trying to improve my flipturns, I dug deep and undid all of my training. As inefficiently, awkwardly, and obnoxiously as possible, I splashed as much water as I could displace at the Lovebirds. And again on the next lap. After that, they were gone... it was almost disappointing.

It's fun to complain about the jerkwads, but you shouldn't get the impression that the workout was all bad. In fact, the highlight of my swim, aside from the Eau de Chlorine, was drafting. Molly is new to the cycling team, but she's a triathlete, which means she knows how to swim. She and I have been sharing a lane the past few Mondays, and we've developed a pretty good understanding. Having worked with her on drafting during Sunday's century, I hoped she wouldn't mind if I "sat in" in the water. As she cruised up and down the pool, I tucked into the slipstream at her hip, swinging further away near the wall for safety.

I'd never drafted while swimming before. It is even cooler than hiding from the wind on the bike. It's a truly unique experience that is hard to describe. Talking with Molly afterwards, it seems that the lead swimmer feels the drafting more than cyclists can, so I'm really grateful that she didn't mind my leeching off her speed.

This Monday recovery swim thing is working out really well. Obstacles and all.

To my dear upstairs neighbors

2009-01-30T11:47:00.003-05:00

The time has come to write a letter to the guys who live above me. Here's the draft I'd love to send:

We've been sharing a split-level house for half a year now. For 6 months, you have stomped and shouted your way through my life, and my nights have been rainless thunderstorms. I don't sleep until you sleep. This can't keep happening.

If you recall, we gave you a generous grace period when you first moved in. It was summer, and none of us needed to be up early, so what was the harm? In retrospect, it might've been wiser to set a stern precedent then, correlating your furious noise with our noisy fury - fighting fire with fire.

Instead, we took the passive-aggressive route, and at worst you endured a few saccharine requests for peace and quiet. Our smiles have grown more and more dour as you've taken advantage of our neighborliness. Now we're done asking.

You know, during the day, it's kind of entertaining to hear your antics. Your dialect is foreign to me, and it is a delightfully exotic sound that resonates through the walls when you shout a conversation between the front yard and the rear-facing kitchen. Your amelodic, arrhythmic, abysmal singing is almost charming; I myself have been known to Walk on Sunshine a little too loud. When your activities make the whole house rumble like we live by the El Train, it's a sport of sorts for us to try to figure out how you're producing such cacophony; Are you rearranging your furniture for time? Have you installed a bowling alley up there? Are you amateur jackhammer enthusiasts?

It's when you do these things at night that we have a problem. And you know it's a problem. You know when you hear a knock at your door that it's time to be quiet - I can hear hear your hushed whispers when I stand fuming on your porch. How interesting that you refuse to open the door. How peculiar.

That, my dear neighborinos, is not how this is going to work from now on. You do not have license to make a nightly ruckus until such time as we plead that you stop. Your cue for sotto voce is not "Don rolls out of bed, puts on shoes and sweatshirt and overcoat, walks around the house, climbs the stairs, and pounds angrily on your door". The question, then, is how do I make you realize that your behavior must change?

Consequences. Let's talk about consequences. Certainly I want to beat the bejeezus out of you, or at least I do at 2AM with temperatures in the teens. But I'm not going to. This is important, so I'll repeat: I will not cause you physical harm. It's just not in my nature, for one, and moreover, I have a considerable aversion to criminal charges. I am not going to hurt you (although I make no such promises for my roommates. You know the big one? He's cuh-razy). In fact, I won't even damage your property - won't penny-jam your door, won't fill the car you keep in the backyard full of shaving cream, won't put meat to rot in your vents (shall I go on?). I promise.

This self-restraint pretty much leaves me toothless. Toothless, I think to myself as I pound on your door in a snowstorm, like an old woman. And then I think about old woman cliches, like threatening you with a rolling pin (rejected, see above), screaming shrilly at you in a foreign language (rejected, your native tongue trumps my highschool Latin), or calling the police.

Eureka.

It's unmanly, it's embarrassing, and it's my civic duty. It's regrettable, but after months of waning politeness, it's all you've left me.

If you keep making noise past 11PM, I'm calling the police.

Love,
Don

P.S. Please don't worry about any noise you make during sexual congress. I would never begrudge anyone the opportunity to get busy, so that isn't on my list of gripes. Besides - and I say this from months of experience as an unwilling observer - the duration of this particular category of noises is laughably short. So really, no complaints... at least not from me.

So that's the letter I wish I could write. Brevity, though, is the foundation of clarity... plus I'm not sure their English comprehension is up for the task. So here's the letter I'm going to write. It lacks the linguistic flair on which I pride myself, but I think it'll do the trick...

IF YOU KEEP MAKING NOISE PAST 11PM, I'M CALLING THE POLICE
-your downstairs neighbors

Ice Queen

2009-01-30T10:33:00.003-05:00

When the roads in the park are better suited to hockey than cycling, you know you're in for a fun morning. Terrifying, but fun.

Respect to Willford, who soldiered on after crashing 5 minutes into the 90 minute ride. Further respect for embracing his new nickname, "Ice Queen".

Conundrum

2009-01-28T19:35:00.002-05:00

My entire athletic history has capitalized on my capacity to get angry. I played soccer most aggressively after a foul went un-called. I ran with fierce purpose when my teenage body produced its teenage hormones and made me feel like a teenager. I ride beyond my limitations when I am - or think I am - the victim of some great transgression.

Exercise is my go-to catharsis.

Now I'm faced with a wonderful problem. For months now, I've been happy. In fact, for the past few weeks, I've been downright joyful. Even when things don't go perfectly, my spirits are high, and I am a happy, happy man.

What the hell? How am I supposed to race now?

90% of the above sentences have been first-person. "I", or a contraction thereof, occurred 10 times, accounting for 8.5% of all words. Add in the 6 "my"s and a "me", and the egocentrism-ometer reaches 14.5%, which is pretty ridiculous.

Who cares?! Join me in celebration of my good mood... or go read some other blog.

The more things change...

2009-01-27T23:28:00.005-05:00

While perusing the stacks of Barnes and Noble, I stumbled across this gem, from the New Brunswick issue of the Images of America series...

meticulously transcribed caption:
NEW BRUSNWICK BICYCLE CLUB, c. 1890. All those interested in riding the "big wheel" met on the second Tuesday of each month at the Masonic Hall. Organized on May 1, 1882, this group of city residents would spend the spring days tooling around the city, dazzling children and trying to win the hearts of young women along Albany Street. Comprised mostly of Rutgers students and young businessmen, this group remained active until about 1920.

We ride daily rather than monthly, meet at Brower rather than the Masonic hall, and we avoid Albany Street. Also, fewer mustaches (but more beards). Other than that... come on, "tooling around the city, dazzling children and trying to win the hearts of young women". Come on.

Now I have a blackberry

2009-01-23T16:39:00.002-05:00

See?

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Extra-Bad Karaoke Songs

2009-01-20T21:22:00.004-05:00

"Baby Got Back", Sir Mix-A-Lot

"I like big butts and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung"

First and foremost: what comes next? NOBODY KNOWS THE NEXT LINE. And most people who sing this song won't even be back in until "Unh, double up, unh unh". Your dead-air halfway through the first verse is generally a deal-breaker... and now I hate you.

Furthermore, this is a rap song. Consider this: can you rap? Do you have the rhythm necessary for hip hop? 99% of the people who select this song do not. I certainly don't, and that's why I don't choose rap songs at Karaoke. I'll rap in the car, on the sidewalk, while riding, and even while at Karaoke, but never when I have the microphone. Your arrhythmic babbling does you no service, believe me.

As for the meat and potatoes, I won't pull any punches... this song is about the sexual appeal of big butts. I have no problem with this, prima facia. What this means, though, is that selecting "Baby Got Back" makes a statement. When you sing it, you are saying "big butts are sexually appealing". Every time a group of girls (girls never do this one alone) sings this song, they are screaming "OUR BIG BUTTS ARE OKAY". They are okay, ladies, I promise. It's the fact that you need to justify it in shrill, drunken tones that concerns me.

When a guy sings this song, it's making the same statement, with a slight twist: "Your big butts are okay. I accept you as you are. I am a kind, sensitive, and enlightened man. Come home with me please?" If a girl falls for it, it's her own fault, and good luck to the both of them. I wash my hands of this case.

The last possibility is that the singer genuinely enjoys this song. Singing it at Karaoke is their celebration of Sir Mix-A-Lot's artistic genius, and they share it with us. Then again, have you heard the song? Let's not waste any more time on this one.

"Before He Cheats", Carrie Underwood

"Right now he's probably slow dancing
With a bleached-blond tramp
And she's probably getting frisky"

Probably? Probably?!? That crazy chick destroyed a truck on a hunch. Nowhere in the song does she mention "he has cheated on me before", nor "I know him to be the cheating type", let alone "he is cheating".

The best she's got is "probably".

Sure, you can argue that Ms. Underwood intended to cast doubt not on the "if" of cheating, but on the "how". We are to accept the infidelity as a given, questioning only the exact goings-on with the bleached-blond tramp.

I think a nice epilogue to the song would reveal to us that actually, the boyfriend was secretly taking Salsa lessons, or taking night classes. Intending some pleasant surprise for her. Something improbable.

Maybe the song's heroine is justified. My (admittedly unpopular) interpretation is that she is not. Do you know how many lunatic girls got empowered by this song to go take revenge on their absolutely innocent boyfriends? Me either, but I bet it's a lot!

"Paradise by the Dashboard Light", Meat Loaf

"I swore that I would love you to the end of time!
So now I'm praying for the end of time
To hurry up and arrive"

Don't get me wrong, it's a good song. I don't even mind that it's excessively long. Nine minutes long. Two songs long. Meatloaf really does know how to rock, we won't deny him that. And it's one of the few rock duets in the Karaoke book, which adds a little flair to the proceedings.

Taking a step back from the flair, we find that this song is about misery. Not love, not romance, but regret. Sex withheld for blackmail, and a failed marriage. Isn't it terrifying? "I'll never break my promise or forget my vow / But God only knows what I can do right now" Trapped, because ol' Meat couldn't control his Loaf.

The "Before we go any further / Do you love me?" section is what sets me on edge. The woman surely deserves to know whether or not she is loved, and by no means is she obligated to have sex; it's the ultimatum of "forever or nothing" that is just unsettling... remember, they're barely seventeen!

For what it's worth, I think the real problem, the root of all the discontent, can be traced back to the line, "Will you take me away and will you make me your wife?" Specifically, "will you take me away". She wants him to solve her problems, to lift her out of the mire, to rescue her from the badness of 'here'. She doesn't accept responsibility for her own happiness, and deludes herself into thinking that there's a quick fix.

The thing is, though, that it's a duet. With the exception of my uniquely bold friends, most duets are sung by a boyfriend and girlfriend. Every time I hear this song at Karaoke, it's a perfectly happy couple happily chirping about dysfunction. He turns to her, serenades her, "I'm praying for the end of time / so I can end my time with you". She is wooed.

"Living on a Prayer", Bon Jovi

I just hate Bon Jovi.

Good Science

2009-01-20T20:42:00.003-05:00

A good empiricist is cold, rational, and objective to the core. There is no desire in research, neither passion nor promise.

The science doesn't care what you want, it just is what it is. We should not care what it is, we should let it be.

Wouldn't it be nice if that's how it actually works?

Will loves calling me out at the first hint subjectivity. At one level, he's absolutely right to do so. On the other hand, I can't help it, and I'm not sure I want to. The thing is, when my results are good, it's not just good for my thesis; there is a direct result, right in front of me, in real human terms.

One of my subjects today had been in a car accident in the 90s. Since then, she's had impaired fine motor control, which is why she was participating.

Apparently, motor function isn't her only deficit. When I asked her how old she was, she gave me a look. "I do need to know your age," I prodded. "Umm." "Okay, what year were you born?"

She got flustered, she stammered and apologized and it broke my heart. She couldn't remember her age, or her birth year, and I was just pouring salt in the wound. What an asshole.

It took her more than two minutes to complete a simple task that would take you 20 seconds. She apologized more, the frustration wrinkling her brow. I tried to tell her not to worry about it.

After 10 minutes of using the device that is my thesis, she redid the task. Even though she was tired from training, she knocked 30 seconds off her time. THIRTY SECONDS. And that's just the simple result. Qualitatively, she was less tremorous, had smoother tone, and much better dexterity... and she knew it.

You tell me: How in the hell am I supposed to stay objective after seeing the smile on her face?

I am happy that my results fit my hypothesis. Report me to the Review Board, please.

DCCoD Prom

2009-01-20T19:13:00.007-05:00

The DCCoD is... well, it's just great.

The venerable Fatmarc Vanderbacon, host of the Prom and curator of all things blogtasic, invited me to join his crew for their informal off-season soiree. While his prom-posal didn't quite measure up to the lofty standards set in my favorite implausible cartoon, I was more than honored - the most I've ever contributed to the DCCoD was when I helped take down the course-tape at Granogue (when I rode through it mid-race).

They welcomed me into their group on Saturday night, and it warmed my little heart. These are my people, like. The house was packed with the cast of characters, many of whom I vaguely recognized from parking lot preriding and post-race handshakes, but most of whom had been strangers before the Prom.

You had to be there. No more stories, it wouldn't do.

In the morning, more than 30 people (I tried in vain to count) met at the Vanderbacon-Monkey estate to ride the blog-famous Fair Hill singletrack. Of course, we posed for a photo beforehand, because it's what cyclists do.

Why do cyclists act like such, well, posers? Does having a half-dozen professional photographers at every race spoil us? Is the pre-ride photo a record by which Search-and-Rescue squads can identify the shattered remains of whoever hadn't ridden enough base miles to survive? I think it's the knowledge that by the time we return home, we'll all be too shelled for standing, let alone posing.

So we did what we do.
And it looks awesome.

With 30 people on the ride, it was a bit overwhelming. I've been in smaller races. The pack stayed surprisingly cohesive, which I think is something in and of itself. From the back of the group, I watched dozens of riders, mostly in blue, snake their way along switchbacks up a hill. It was aesthetically pleasing, and I wish I had a picture of it for you.

Even in mid-January, I'd expected to be armed with some fitness and some skills, but my ammunition was all nerf, and I got whupped. It's okay, they're really fast.

Also they toasted the New Year.
In the middle of the woods.

Rather than lament my early-season status, I opted to work on my secondary skills, the ones I've honed over years of chasing Charlie and Jay. When I bobbled on easy obstacles, I cursed myself as bitterly and poetically as possible. When I bobbled in tougher spots, just barely saving it, I made noises, trying to empty the lungs in order to force myself to start breathing again. Through every loose turn and over every surprising log, every time my wheel wasn't where I'd expected, I let out a celebratory "woo hoo!", recognizing the joys of off-roading as well as the miracle by which I wasn't laid out on the frozen ground. Every so often I made a wrong turn... for practice, I told myself, and it was too cold for my cheeks to blush beet-red.

I will return to Fair Hill, and I will figure out how to ride this.

When we returned to Casa del Faticus y la Monkey - which you should never try to find with Google Maps, or you will be banished to hours driving through purgatory in rural Delaware - there were waffles and eggs and bacon. I could've wept, it smelled so good.

And then Mayhew started making cup after cup of espresso, with his fancy hand-press. I lost count of my intake after 4 cups, and I wasn't the only customer. He didn't even have time to change out of his shorts. He's good people.

Why is it that every post about the DCCoD seems sycophantic? Why can't they just be jerks?

Two Conversations in a Baltimore Starbucks

2009-01-17T17:10:00.003-05:00

With a whole day to kill, and all of Baltimore gridlocked by Barack Obama's speech, I've camped out in a Starbucks. A pen, a notebook, and an exquisitely-caffeinated beverage have kept me happily occupied.

My contemplative reverie was interrupted when an elderly gentleman wearing a Marine Corps cap sat next to me. "Cold enough for you?" he asked, which has to be the most inane conversation starter in the history of spoken language. Still, respect your elders and all that, so I humored him.

"I went to school in Cleveland, this is nothing"

He saw my latitude and raised me. "For a while, the Corps had me stationed in the Arctic circle."

Thus began a 90 minute conversation that completely caught me by surprise. "Rip" had been a Marine fighter pilot during WWII, and he'd spent the 50s as a test pilot. A widower, Rip is opinionated, outspoken, and a veritable fountain of stories. Our conversation ranged from Aviation to Grandfatherhood, from Dynamical Systems to the Gaza strip, from Graduate Degrees to Alzheimers.

We spoke of America's bright future, and we spoke of death.

It was the most pleasant conversation I've ever had with a complete stranger. And after hearing his story, how he's outlived his friends and siblings and wife, I think he needed someone to talk to.

It was the sort of conversation that just leaves you feeling warm.

I was in a talkative mood when he left, and standing on line for another large Americano (I still can't bring myself to say "venti"), I told a woman that her baby is cute. The discourse progressed according to standard protocol:

"Thank you!"

"How old is he?"

[Age of child]

"Oh, that's a fun age"

"Yes it is. Do you have any children?"

I stammered, completely taken aback. Of course I am physiologically capable of reproduction, and have been for quite some time. Many of my contemporaries are parents, and there is no reason for a stranger to assume one way or the other (except, I suppose, my conspicuously bare ring finger).

Still, no one has ever asked me if I am a father. Ever. No one has even acknowledged the possibility. Until today.

It almost feels like a milestone. Like a saltatory transition from young-adulthood to adult-adulthood. Like my future as a father, the not-yet-twinkling twinkle in my eye, is suddenly real and palpable. Like the imaginable is now imminent. Like conception is conceivable.

I've been shaken to the core, all because some lady asked a trivial question while making small-talk.

Maybe it's the beard?

A bad day for bad weather

2009-01-15T13:31:00.003-05:00

I was going to leave at noon for Virginia, to start my long-weekend roadtrip of goodness. Instead, I have to run all over Piscataway and New Brunswick to get forms and letters and other red-tapey documentation. Today is the deadline for a grant. We are almost certainly not going to get the grant... but we have to treat it like it's the real deal.

So, I may not get on the road until late. Especially late, because that whole snowstorm thing has f'ed all the roads up. Other people, y'see, don't know how to drive.

This is a high-stress sort of day for me. All the more reason to get this mini-vacation started.

New Look

2009-01-15T00:57:00.002-05:00

Now that I've got this new-fangled Google Reader thing, I no longer need to use the links in my blogroll as a set of bookmarks. Not that I ever needed to in the first place - browsers have bookmarks too, y'know - but for two years I've been using my blog as a basecamp for expeditions into the blogosphere. No more!

On a whim, I changed the template, knowing that all of my laborious formatting would be lost. Without my clever "Team" and "Misc" and "Too Cool for Bikes", the list just seemed... boring. So I got rid of it.

What's left is a short-list of blogs I think you should read. They meet both of the following criteria:

Quantity
Quality

Angry that your blog isn't on the list? Take it up with the complaints department, or answer the according-to-me deficiency. Don't worry, I still read your blog. Religiously.

Also I put a picture at the top of the page, 'cause I think it's stylin'. And there's a slideshow in the top-right corner. And there were some behind-the-scenes changes you probably won't notice.

And now, for something you might actually find useful: The "Day-Bow-Bow" song can be found at 25:31 and 1:30:29 of The Secret of My Success.

There was only one flaw in the plan...

2009-01-13T22:16:00.005-05:00

I couldn't believe my ears when I heard the news - but then, I've long suspected my ears of treason. Some financier is on the run from the law, but it's how he's run that captures the imagination:

In a feat reminiscent of a James Bond movie, the 38-year-old businessman and amateur daredevil pilot apparently tried to fake his death in a plane crash, secretly parachuting to the ground and speeding away on a motorcycle he had stashed away in the pine barrens of central Alabama.

It seemed like the perfect crime - and it sounds like he'll get away with it, so maybe it was - except for one small detail, one little flaw that might ruin the whole story... Simpsons did it

Update: He got caught

XTREME!!!1!

2009-01-11T22:32:00.004-05:00

A man pops a wheelie in a shark tank while dressed as Santa Claus. I challenge you to be half as extreme.

Attn: wcuk

2009-01-10T22:17:00.003-05:00

Dear Jerk,

Your blog has been prohibitively updateless for quite some time now. More than a month, to be precise. We here at the Society for Prevention of Blog Neglect (SoPreBloNe) must urge you to give your blog the care and attention it so dearly needs.

Blogs, you see, are delicate creatures, more like flowers than, say, armadillos. For example, the mixing of flaura and fauna in that metaphor has certainly done some harm to TheNinjaDon. Who knows what irreparable damage has been done to wcuk in the month since you last saw fit to grace its script with your hypertext?

Surely we needn't remind you of the responsibilities of bloggerdom. Surely you remember the cautionary tale of Hardtail for Life, whose once-vibrant blog withered away to rotted 404 Not Found-ness? Surely, surely you've done something since December 9th!

So, treat your blog well, we beseech you. Lavish it with essays, and pamper it with lolcats. Scribble sweet nothings in its ear. For the love of god, fight with Aaron.

Sincerely yours,
SoPreBloNe

Reductio ad Absurdum: Jersey Design

2009-01-10T17:51:00.006-05:00

It must be tough to design the uniform for a cycling team, the jersey moreso than the shorts. You, the designer, are given a blank canvas in the rough shape of a T-shirt, the logos of the minor sponsors, and a demand from presenting sponsor "Brand X" that the jersey really shout "BRAND X".

So you go back to your designing studio, wearing your designing beret and listening to your designing techno mix. Or something like that. And you create a jersey that really shouts "BRAND X". Voila.

Some jerseys are trendsetting, and some are timeless. Some are distinct enough to be recognizable on TV through the smoke of Western European pubs, but they're easily forgotten.

And then there are the jerseys that look cool enough, but also force us to ask, "how is 'Brand X' represented by six-pack abs?"

A classic example is CSC's 2005 jersey. It's a chic little number, playful and daring... and it has a six pack.
"If I wasn't wearing this jersey, my midriff would look the same"

Sure, it's mildly ridiculous, but so is shaving your legs.

New for 2009 is the Team Columbia jersey. It's neither innovative nor distinctive - honestly, white jerseys are so last year - but damned if it doesn't have a blatant six-pack."We were going for a comic book feel"
I'll give Columbia's designers some credit. It takes massive, ungainly cojones to pull off a look that obvious. I guess that's the benefit of being one of the top three teams in the world - you can make these bold choices, and odds are good that a year later, half a dozen pro teams' kits will make them look like anime characters.

Down here among the mortals, we take our cues from the top-tier. Still, our fashion sense is a bit less over the top - I'd feel silly walking into a coffee shop with a six-pack sublimated on my stomach, although for some reason I don't feel silly walking into a coffee shop wearing nothing but spandex and clicky-shoes. Take the Rutgers Cycling jersey for example (or better yet, buy one)

Sexy, no?

And slimming! Those white pointy thingies give you fake oblique muscles, better than a photoshopped "after" picture. The 2004 version of the jersey has its white pointy thingies aimed outward, and it makes the wearer look potbellied. It's an optical illusion, but the effect is dramatic.

But, what is the effect, if not looking silly? Even in the subtle Rutgers jersey, but certainly in the Columbia kit, are we trying too hard? If the average Joe saw a picture of Mark Cavendish, would he see "Columbia Sportswear", or would he see this?

Hell, as long as we're going down this road, let's just slap some pockets on the back, iron on some logos, and now we're talking real design!

Rutgers Cycling 2009 - Intimidated?

Albums

2009-01-08T11:11:00.003-05:00

The digitization of music affords us an opportunity not available since the heyday of vinyl. Instead of buying an entire album, we can collect songs one at a time, choosing only the songs we like. Where artists used to have hold over us for as much as an hour, now their spells last for three minutes, maybe four.

Where musicians used to craft a novel, now they have only a chapter. Or, rather, where we used to listen to a musician's story, now we only allow them a few minutes.

Just before Finals during my second semester of undergrad, my friend Chad dragged me, Ryan, and Seds to the little independent movie theater (which had never held any more significance than being next-door to Chipotle). Chad insisted that we watch Graceful Swans of Never, a documentary about the Smashing Pumpkins.

I left that theater with a profound respect for the process of recording an album. Who would've thought that so much consideration goes into the narrative? That an album is more than just a collection of songs?

After we left the theater, we went back to the dorm and played Flickerstick's Welcoming Home the Astronauts. Flickerstick was one of our favorite bands - we'd even driven to Columbus for their show a few months earlier - and we all had the album memorized. Even having listened to it start-to-finish a few dozen times, it sounded different in this new context. It really did tell a story... an astronaut's story, from liftoff to orbit to "my god it's full of stars". Now it was even more beautiful.

Now, 7 years later, I never listen to albums. CDs cost money, and downloaded songs cost money (at their most legal) and effort (at their least). Who among us would go out of their way to listen to "Underture" , the instrumental in the middle of The Who's Tommy that represents an acid trip, when all they really want to hear is an out-of-context "Pinball Wizard"? Would you spend $28 on all of the Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and sit through 9+ minutes of "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans", just to get to "1979"?

Musicians are still pouring their souls into their albums. It seems an injustice that we don't give their creations the same respect that we had to in the era of vinyl.

Not that I'll let that change my listening habits any time soon. Their art means less to me than my time and money, and I'm as cold as ice.

Assumptions

2009-01-06T13:35:00.000-05:00

Big Jake and little Phil are in the sandbox. Phil gets upset and throws sand in Jake's face. Jake proceeds to wail on Phil with a 2x4.

Jake is in the wrong, that much is clear. Even if Phil did start it, it was Jake who went too far, clocking poor little Phil like that.

This is a pretty straightforward case of right and wrong. Wouldn't it be nice if major international conflicts could be reduced to this clear-cut case, extrapolated into clarity by a few simplifying assumptions?

That's not how real life works. Surely you already knew that - most of my audience is older than me, and nearly all are wiser. I tell you, then, that real life doesn't have these Lowest Common Denominator analogues because over the past 10 days, my world has been aflood with just such analysis.

I am speaking, of course, about the Gaza conflict. Jake is Israel (a biblical reference... get it?) and Phil is the Palestinians (seriously, work with me here). The near-universal consensus among my contemporaries is that Israel's actions are disproportionate, inhumane, genocidal, and even Nazi-esque. The near-universal consensus among my contemporaries is wrong.

The problem that we Westerners have in trying to conduct some sort of level-headed discourse is that we have basic underlying assumptions about the situation, and that these assumptions are informed by facts of varying veracity. That was my diplomatic way of saying learn the facts. Learn the facts before you condemn self-defense as villainy. Learn the facts before you compare Israel to the Third Reich. Learn the facts before you say things that are patently false.

Let's tackle some of the assumptions. One of my favorites is the idea that Israel is "occupying" Gaza and the West Bank in an effort to expand its borders. This supposed land-grab serves as proof that Israel's intention is to drive the Arabs out and usurp the territory.

I could refute this by referring to the 2000 Camp David summit, in which Israel put 94% of the West Bank and 100% of Gaza on the table. I could refute it by reminding you of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2004. Instead, I'll just put the so-called occupation in familiar terms:

When American GIs are stationed in Europe, where do most go? Germany
When American GIs are stationed in the Pacific, where do most go? Japan
Is America occupying the countries it defeated in WWII?

Another fun assumption to rebut is the claim that Israel is targeting civilians, or even that Israel isn't minimizing civilian casualties.

Civilian casualties are terrible. I won't even try to diminish their import by comparing them to the 6 million civilian deaths in WWI, the 48 million civilian deaths in WWII, or even the 39-55,000 civilian deaths in the Bosnian War. Because every civilian casualty is terrible, and the bell tolls for thee, and so on. So Israel should be doing everything it can to limit civilian casualties.

It should, for example, use the highest-tech weaponry, to maximize the penetration of explosions while minimizing breadth. It should spend a year gathering intelligence on the location of Hamas infrastructure, to target only the combatants. It should call the at-risk civilians before attacking, to get them out of harm's way.

If Israel had just followed all of these completely reasonable precautions, then the civilian casualties would have been kept low... like, say, 6% of the casualties on the first day.

The way I see it, Hamas had two options after that first salvo from Israel. They could:
(a) stop firing rockets into Israeli towns
(b) continue firing rockets into Israeli towns.
Hamas chose (b), and honestly, it was a pretty savvy move. In doing so, they framed their own actions as resistance to Israeli aggression, as spitting in the face of Israeli tyranny in the spirit of "Don't Tread On Me" and "Live Free or Die". They relocated, deeper into the heart of non-combatant populations, and continued firing rockets at Israeli civilians. The only downside was that their human shields had a nasty habit of dying, but hey, it was the Israelis doing the killing.

There have been very few Israeli casualties. There have been many Palestinian casualties. The rockets are therefore just the Palestinians' desperate attempts to fight back - which is our next faulty assumption.

Hamas is not your run-of-the-mill political party. Their charter, their self-authored, easily-amendable charter, their racist and genocidal charter, has been translated to English for our convenience. I've taken the liberty of collecting some highlights.

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
"With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein ... there is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it."
"Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason"
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up."
"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

Hamas does not want peace, unless that peace comes by means of Israel's destruction (and as a bonus, the death of all Jews... which I'm pretty sure is genocide). But don't take their word for it...

As just a small example of Hamas' conduct, let's look at the 6-month cease-fire between Hamas and Israel that expired in December. In honor of this cease-fire, Hamas markedly decreased the number of rockets they fired at Israeli towns... so now they were only launching a few rockets every week. They also took advantage of the cease-fire to smuggle longer-range rockets into Gaza, perhaps because deep down, they really wanted to extend the cease-fire. For reals.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians showed their hand when the cease-fire reached its expiration date: Israel declared its desire to extend the truce, and Hamas said "no thank you, here are some rockets instead".

The civilian casualties are mounting not because Israel is firing indiscriminately into the Gazan populace, but because Hamas is hiding their equipment and combatants deeper and deeper among the civilians. This is in direct opposition to Article 28 of the Geneva Convention, which states that the presence of civilians "may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations"... fyi.

You may be wondering why so many of my sources are Jerusalem Post and YNet, which you may not think are as neutral as the New York Times or the Guardian. Well, my answer is best expressed as follows:

I am skeptical of Western news coverage
In closing, I want to remind you of one very important thing. This isn't a movie, and it's not a sport. The Palestinians aren't a ragtag team of hockey-playing misfits coached by a reluctant Emilio Estevez, and the Israelis aren't Ivan Drago.

The underdogs aren't automatically the good guys. You need to look deeper, to get the facts, to decide for yourself what is really going on.

The Softening

2009-01-05T12:32:00.006-05:00

So here's the scenario:

It's 4pm. Shadows are getting longer by the minute, and the sun is starting to flirt with the horizon. You're still 10 miles from home. Your fingers are numbed by the cold, and they feel blocky against the handlebars. You haven't felt your toes for hours, which is probably a blessing in disguise. Intermittent patches of black ice demand constant focus, and surprises - slick paint, strewn gravel, new potholes, sand and salt - lurk in every corner.

Fun? Absolutely. But only to a point.

Hardmen don't need cycling to be fun. Cycling is suffering, and suffering is beauty, and bloodflow in the extremities is a luxury. It's no big secret... I'm just not a Hardman.

Even as I work on toughening up - buying shoe covers, building up an adverse-weather bike, riding with a group of like-minded lunatics - I am also embracing the beauty of being soft.

There is no doubt that riding outdoors is better, but if we're going to wimp out because of cold and rain and overall softness, we might as well ride indoors, no? And if we're going to ride indoors, we might as well ride in comfort and style. Or so the logic goes.

A Hardman, by the way, upon being forced indoors by ice or sunset or zombie invasion, would not ride in comfort and style. To paraphrase Will (who can at least talk like a Hardman): "We'll set up our trainers in front of a brick wall, wearing blinders and ear plugs. We will put pictures of our enemies on the wall and look them in the eyes and spit in their faces. Vomiting will be the de rigeur end to our workouts."

That's a bit much for me.

Thus and therefore, I have totally pimped out my indoor training setup. Witness the beauty that is the basement:

There is enough room for three or four cyclists, there are weights and crazy inflatable contraptions, and because it's a basement, there is absolutely no risk of overheating.

Funny story... if you're wondering why I don't have the rollers next to the supporting column (it seems like the perfect just-in-case handhold), it's because the column is metal, and rollers generate static, and I really don't like getting a shock every time my elbow gets close to the column.

A man can only watch so many Scrubs reruns before losing his mind, and it would seem that I've reached that limit. TV is... well, it's crap. Utter crap. Fortunately, Netflix makes it really easy to give them your money, so now I have about 50 DVDs just waiting for my laptop.

Go ahead, judge my taste!
Despite weighing 10 lbs and being too big for most backpacks, the laptop is quieter than most Tamagachis (remember those? me either!). For when I have company, I bought external speakers (not pictured here), the better to overpower the roar of the trainers.

For when I don't have company, which almost always, I have headphones. Have you ever tried riding with headphones attached to a laptop? If, by some miracle, the cord is long enough to accomodate riding out of the saddle, it's also long enough to dangle around the spokes of your front wheel. No big deal when you're on the trainer (on which only the rear wheel rotates), but a competely different story on the rollers (on which both wheels spin).

Cords are bad. So I got cordless headphones! It's my first bluetooth device, and so far it seems like bluetooth is a giant pain in the ass... but it lets me ride the rollers, listen to crystal-clear sound quality, and avoid waking up the roommates.

Wireless Headphones and Extremely Lose-able Bluetooth Adapter
Everything is in place now for me to have a good winter. If I don't feel like braving the elements, I don't have to, and that will definitely help me put in the saddle-time that I'll need to have a successful spring campaign.

However, it is imperative that I not fall into the trap of riding exclusively indoors. It'll make me strong, but that fitness will come at the expense of bike-handling skills. Might as well transfer to Army.

And on that cheap shot, I end the post.

The Hardening

2009-01-01T15:23:00.003-05:00

The conversation went something like this:

Don: Coffee ride?
Jay: Time?
Don: 10
Jay: 11?
Don: Cool

Just like that, we'd committed ourselves to riding to Princeton, 30 miles each way. A decent early-season ride, perfect for the long, slow, steady base miles demanded by this time of year.

It was cold, but not too cold, and the forecast didn't call for precipitation until after our return. Throw on some leg warmers, some wool socks and booties to keep my little piggies warm, add gloves and a head band, and voila! Time for some base.

About 45 minutes into the ride, the sky darkened noticeably. For a moment, I worried that we would be stuck on the roads after sunset, having forgotten that it was only noon. This was on Canal Rd, not yet at First Bridge.

The dark, looming clouds weren't just for show. We'd hoped they would signify nothing, but they were full of sound and fury. A few snowflakes floated down en route to Second Bridge. By Third Bridge, it was coming down relentlessly. We'd been forced to take our glasses off, with fog and ice opaque-ifying the lenses, but that only allowed the snow to sting the eyeballs most unmerciful.

The descents, blessedly short, were not fun. Simultaneously, though, they were actually a lot of fun. Odd how that works.

Jay's "clear" lenses, and the ice in his helmet's vents.

The snowflakes were large and sticky - if enough had landed, it would've been perfect for snowman-building - but the asphalt was just warm enough to prevent accumulation. Apparently, the same could not be said of my groin. The nook, or cranny if you prefer, formed by my thighs and torso was covered in a disturbing amount of snow. There was a thick layer of snow encasing my bad-touch bits.

I've spent an inordinate amount of time coming up with phrases that might describe this phenomenon. Here's what I've got:

Frosted Naughty Parts
Crotch-cicles
Snow Balls

Please feel free to contribute to this list in the comments section.

Upon our arrival at the Small World coffee shop (the farther Small World franchise, which has more indoor seating), we were pleased to find Brian, a Rutgers Cycling alum. Neither of us knew he'd moved to Princeton, and it was an unlikely, pleasant coincidence to see him at the coffee shop. The irony of the circumstances, given the name of the coffee shop, was not lost to us.

They were serving coffees in pint glasses for some reason. My Americano looked like a stout, but it warmed my hands nicely.

In another coincidence, we sat down next to someone who turned out to be a friend of Jay's. He would later note that it's one thing to tell someone "I ride a bike"; it's an entirely different thing to appear at a coffee shop 30 miles from home in the middle of a blizzard. It makes you look like a total badass, or like a lunatic, depending on who that someone is.

With just a few sips of warm, caffeinated goodness remaining in our glasses, Brian asked if we'd mind if he joined us for the rest of the ride. Of course we wouldn't! Not only would the additional company be nice (not to mention the additional time I could spend in the draft), but waiting for him to prepare for the ride would delay our inevitable return to the snowstorm.

I never leave myself less than 45 minutes to get ready for a ride. Brian returned to Small World within 10 minutes. That bastard.

So we creaked out of our chairs and got back on our bikes, soggy chamois squelching against saddles. The snow stopped just as we left Princeton, and in its place we were treated to gusty winds. At times, we leaned precariously into the side-wind, just to stay balanced and ride straight. Sometimes the wind caught me by surprise, and I would just barely keep my wheels off the curb.

In what has become a wintertime tradition, I got a nosebleed. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

Most team sports have positions - forward, midfielder, pitcher, for example - and cycling does as well - climber, sprinter, roleur. It's less formal in cycling, but each rider has his speciality, and a good coach will strategize accordingly. Many sports also have designations for certain team members that is unofficial but real - "goons" or "enforcers"; cycling has "hardmen".

Hardmen thrive in the cold and wet, they prefer cobbles to pavement. Hardmen excel in the conditions that make other riders question their choice of profession.

Me, I'm not a hardman. I do not do well in the cold. However, just like hockey's technicians learn to take hits, cyclists like me need to learn to ride in adverse conditions. No, Jay and I didn't choose to ride in this ridiculous weather, nor were we particularly pleased to be surprised by it. At the end of the day, though, I think we were a little harder for having survived it.

Luxury

2008-12-30T16:29:00.002-05:00

In an interview with daily Mlada Fronta Dnes, Czech FM and incoming EU president Karel Schwarzenberg did not speak favorably of Hamas, not favorably at all. It's a completely different tack than his French predecessor took, in fact it's not a particularly popular stance at all.

"Why am I one of the few that have expressed understanding for Israel? ... I am enjoying the luxury of telling the truth," Schwarzenberg told the daily.

In these trying economic times, it's nice to be reminded that the best luxuries are free.

Astrophysics 1, Recreation 0

2008-12-30T13:51:00.003-05:00

Remember back in the day, when we met at 7pm and rode for 90 minutes? Well now we have to be out the door at 3 just to scrape out an hour in the saddle. Why? Because of stupid goddamn freakin' physics.

If you tracked the position of the sun at the same time every day for a year, it would trace out a route in the sky, called an analemma. In the summer, the sun would be at the top of the analemma, and there would be plenty of daylight.
Now, though, we're stuck at the bottom. No sooner does the sun creep out from behind the horizon than it gets sucked right back down. Or some less-anthropomorphized version of what I just said.

Sucks for riding, but the analemma sure is pretty, right?

I'd elaborate, but I have to go get ready for my ride. Stupid winter.

Errata: Just as I was getting up from my desk, the adviser walked in to discuss my Sisyphean manuscript. So we worked on it for an hour. No riding outdoors today!

Dream

2008-12-30T10:33:00.004-05:00

A brief preface: If this blog turns into a "here's what happened in my sleep" dream journal, then please, please punch me in the genitalia. You don't want to read it, I don't want to write it. That genre of blogging would be in the neighborhood of rock bottom for TheNinjaDon.

That said, I had a remarkable dream a few nights ago, and damnitall I'm going to write about the experience. So there.

There is a lot of storyline that I remember - a rarity for me - but that would be flirting with dream-journalism, so we'll gloss over those details. Instead, we'll pick up the dream where it gets interesting:

Amidst my adventurous goings-on, I realized that my friend Megan was missing, so I drove into the bad part of town to find her. The signs were all in Spanish, and I distinctly remember calling it Little Havana [are my dreams racist?].

Megan was standing in the road, next to Horatio from CSI: Miami (who, fortunately, never had opportunity to make a clever one-liner). I stopped the car - a 70s Cadillac pimp-mobile - a few dozen yards away, turned it off, and got out.

That's when the gunfire started, from the boarded up windows of an abandoned building [it really is a shame, the socioeconomic depression in the Little Havana in my subconscious]. I ducked for cover behind the car, but Megan was pinned down in the open, stranded in the middle of the street.

She used Horatio's body as a make-shift shield, and was screaming at me to drive to her. Crouched behind the Cadillac, I tried to get the keys out of my pocket, but they were stuck.

They were stuck.

They were stuck!

It was at this point that I awoke. It was after 4am, and my heart was racing. This kind of heart rate usually follows a hard effort up a hill, and each beat pounded in my ears.

Now here is where it gets really weird, so I'll recount it as accurately and without embellishment as possible:

Still half asleep, I thought back to what had woken me up. I couldn't get the keys out of my pocket. It woke me up. If I go back to sleep, I still won't be able to get the keys out of my pocket. I should fool myself. So I reached into my empty pajama pocket, grabbed at nothing, and pulled my hand out. My heart rate had slowed. I went to sleep.

Now I was sitting in the car, the motor running. I drove between Megan and the building, and she dove into the back seat. I sped away.

End of dream.

It is weird to me that I diagnosed a sticking point in the dream, and weirder that I devised a remedy in the form of self-deceit. It is weirdest that the remedy worked, but it is much weirdest-er that when I did resume dreaming, I resumed the exact same narrative, but had skipped a few steps.

Was I awake so briefly that the neural activity that had created the dream was still "cued" in my gray matter? Did the dream progress because the dream-related neural pattern had progressed in parallel, and independent of, my conscious thoughts? Had I not physically performed the act of removing (imaginary) keys from my (empty) pocket, would I have resumed the loop of stuck keys? Why did I remember this dream so much more vividly than any other dreams?

I therefore draw the following two conclusions:

Neuropsychology is rich and fascinating
I watch too much television

Get Your Fingers Off Their Asses

2008-12-30T10:30:00.001-05:00

These posts aren't going to write themselves, people.

Posty Post

2008-12-25T13:12:00.004-05:00

The past few weeks have proven to be surprisingly busy. I didn't have any finals (mostly because I didn't take any courses), but I had enough going on that I've had no energy, even if enough time, to blog. The dearth of posts has been tough for me - I really do take great comfort in this creative outlet - but it certainly must've been tougher for you, my voracious and dedicated readership.

Well, I'm glad we took this break, glad we decided to see other blogs. You do know that it wasn't you, it was me, don't you? It's like they say, if you love some blog, set it free; If it comes back to posting, then it was truly meant to be. Cliche #4 escapes me, but it would go here.

Anyway, now that we're back together again (couldn't split up Kato and Nash, couldn't split up Tango and Cash), I can guarantee a 40% increase in allusion, 63% reduction in parenthetical, obscure song lyrics, and 3 times the content. OR YOUR MONEY BACK.

Merry Christmas, by the way, to those who observe it.

In closing, here is a picture from Cyclocross National Championships, in bitter, frigid, barren Kansas City:

Yes, that is beer, frozen to my sweet-ass red mustache.

Oh Lord, They Gave Hack a Gun

2008-12-18T20:47:00.003-05:00

(This post is dedicated to Bill, who's back from the 'Stan, and Mark, who's en route)

Regardless of your politics, I think we can all agree that sending letters to servicemen stationed overseas, especially around the holidays, is a very nice thing to do. It's a classic "it's the thought that counts" gesture, and I doubt they'd very much care how eloquent your writing was.

If you know Hack - and if you attended Case Western Reserve between 1997 and 2003, you know Hack - then you'll understand why this letter was as eloquent as it gets. From the mouths of babes...

Dear Lieutenant Hack, I hope you came back safely. Thank you for helping our country. My name is David and I'm a kind of kid who believes in winning.

The Waxing Roadie-Douchization of Cyclocross

2008-12-17T13:08:00.006-05:00

It's hard to define the lines between the road attitude, the cyclocross attitude, and the mountain bike attitude. Lots of people, myself included, belong to all three subsets. Stereotypes abound - MTBers smoke pot, roadies are pretentious, etc - but they are accepted as stereotypes, not as reality.

I think we can all agree that the fights at Nationals were not in the spirit of cyclocross. Heckling during an interview? Fistfights?! One might characterize that as fitting in the realm of Roadies. It was, dare I say it, churlish.

You know who the innocent victims were in all of this? the bikes.

Update: Can anyone please enlighten us as to what in the hell happened between Myseron and Baker? The elder Wells' blog mentions a mid-race fistfight, but that's all I've been able to find. Inquiring minds demand to know!

Update 2: Oh, I see.

Art!!!?!

2008-12-15T17:53:00.003-05:00

My department is having a competition at the Holiday Party, sort of a science-meets-art contest. Participants will take figures - graphics, microscopy, protein maps, whatever - and present them as a gallery. There will even be prizes!

So, here's my submission. I'm leaving out the caption, because BORING. If you're really curious, it'll be added after the competition, or if you're Will, Aaron, or Chaz, you should probably just show up to the Holiday Party.

Decisions, Part 1

2008-12-11T11:18:00.009-05:00

Hi. Do you have free will?

No, I'm not asking if wcuk is a pay site.

The question of free will is fundamentally deep (and deeply fundamental... zing!). What is consciousness, what is "I"? Hofstadter took a swing at it, and while I'm only about 1/3 of the way through, my mind is already boggled.

There's a great clip from Waking Life that deals with this question. It doesn't answer the question, because who could hope to answer it? Instead, it looks at free will by way of physics, applying deterministic and probabilistic physics to neuropsychology. Both of these approaches are ... unfulfilling. To paraphrase: Either we're cogs in a giant machine whose initial conditions were set at the big bang, or everything is the consequence of random chaos and is therefore meaningless.

Surely there is a theological response to the question of free will. I am not aware of it, because as a policy, I've tried to stay away from theology, and I will continue to do so in this post. You understand.

In fact, let's abandon this level of thought. Frankly, the only reason I included it at all was to impress you with my cleverness and depth (Do you like me? Check one: ___ Yes ___ No ___ Maybe). Let's instead assume that we do have free will, that we do make decisions that are based on the Self and the Conscious.

The question now is: Just how free is our free will?

There's a program on NPR called Radio Lab. It is amazing. I can't recommend it highly enough. In one of their episodes, they did a better job of answering this question than I can ever do. You should probably stop reading and just listen to their show.

Still here? Well, that's your choice. Or is it? (Damn, that was a good segue).

The episode describes three experiments that were conducted by behavioral psychologists, each of which reveals something about the nature of our decision-making process. Namely, that this process is so easily manipulated as to be laughable. I'll summarize them here, and in Part 2, but please don't hold me to the details.

Do you like the Hang In There Baby cat posters? I don't, I find them puerile and saccharine. I, personally, would much prefer some Impressionist art, although I'll admit that I couldn't tell Impressionism from Cubism from a hole in the wall.

A few dozen people (enough for statistical significance, I presume) were given the choice between the two. They were sent into a gallery full of posters, half Kitty and half Impressionist. They were told, "here's a gallery, you can take one, and it's yours to keep!"

For half of them (Group A), that was it. For the other half (B), there was one more caveat: They had to write a paragraph or two explaining their selection.

The results are unsettling: Group A tended to choose the Impressionist posters, while Group B chose adorable little Kitties.

The group that had to justify their decision was driven towards the simplistic, inane, stupid choice. Now, it would be downright unscientific of me to do that, to let my own personal prejudices color my interpretation of the results. Instead, why don't I let the subjects' do the talking?

In a poll a few months after the gallery experiment, subjects were asked if they were happy with their selection. The trend was that Group A was happy, while Group B was not. Nobody wanted the Kitty posters! By simply making the subjects verbalize their reasoning, the experimenters manipulated them into taking what they didn't even want, even though they'd walked out of the room feeling satisfied!

Free will indeed.

to be continued...