Elections, version Y2008

We've overcome one major civil rights hurdle with Barack Obama being elected president. However, with the passage of Calif Prop 8, Flo Prop 2, and various others (all except Calif 8 by huge margins) we still have much to do. One of the more interesting (awful?) facts is that 70% of African-Americans voted for Prop. 8, which was enough to tip the bill to the pass side (it would have failed, barely, had African-Americans voted 50-50 for-against) . This is a higher correlation than Christians (about 67% voted for) and the second highest correlation overall (90% of nonreligious people voted against). One would think a group with such a history of discrimination would vote vehemently against discrimination for other groups. This is apparently incorrect - nobody likes to be discriminated against, but people also, apparently, enjoy discriminating against others. Not surprising, as history has shown time and again.


Complete Prop 8 exit polls: http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2008/11/05/18/prop8.source.prod_affiliate.4.pdf

Science

I haven't posted in a while, but I came across this http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science the other day. It's not so much about women in science (it starts out with the Larry Summers thing, and discusses a little bit about opportunity costs being greater for women), but more science careers in general. Excerpt: "Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States." This is true, especially for young scientists, i.e. graduate students and postdocs. I could be making $50,000/yr with benefits and the possibility of raises while working 40 hours/wk in industry instead of the $20,000/yr with benefits for working 50-70 hours/wk right now. However, would I be any better off? I don't live below my means and can still live a middle-class lifestyle, and I have access to wonderful resources like the university library and have stimulating colleagues with whom to converse on a regular basis. Graduate school offers much more freedom in terms of working hours/places (if I want to work from midnight to 10 AM every day nobody would care as long as stuff got done, "work" can be defined as reading or writing or editing papers at Starbucks). If monetary reward is is all that someone wants, and a person is indifferent about intellectual stimulation, then sure, careers in American science, at least in academia, can be considered unwanted. The problem is that science is necessary for society to advance, and we need some nontrivial segment of the population doing science.

Winning

The Physics Grads Team won the May 6th Trivia Night at the Pub competition. Winning freally eels good. My life is now complete.

Lab continued

I found out that the post-doc in my lab has renewed her funding and will be here for I don't know how much longer (originally she was supposed to be done in May). This is a post-doc who doesn't speak English, doesn't talk to anybody in lab and monopolizes some of the equipment. Lab is going to be really crowded this summer with two (maybe three) more students joining. At least two of them are pretty cool and do things like speak English and attend pub nights so things should improve.

Life

Research is going fairly well. Slow right now (waiting on wafers so I can get new samples), but going well otherwise
My main problem is my adviser's apparent lack of desire to publish anything - it sucks getting good results, having my adviser tell me to write a paper, making figures and writing a draft, then having my adviser sit on it for a month and longer. Oh well.

crossword

The UCI student paper's crossword puzzle takes me an average of 10 minutes to do. I need to be able to waste more time than that on my various nonacademic pursuits.

Philosophy

When a broken heart heals, does it build up emotional scar tissue?

3:00 AM

The Major League Baseball regular season started today. Notice that it's almost 9:00 AM and I said "started." This is because the opening game was played at 3:00 AM PDT in Japan. I don't object to broadening the world audience, but it seems that MLB's doing this is a big digitus infamis to the fans in the US and especially those of Oakland and Boston (I won't discuss the ethics of torturing Red Sox fans or say "what Oakland fans?"). Also baseball is already very popular in Japan. Will playing a major league game there increase interest and, in the long run, revenues to MLB from Japan? I'm guessing maybe, but not much.

Game Theory meets Real Life

I feel like I'm stuck in a twisted, poorly played Ultimatum Game. [Explanation of the ultimatum game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game. Quick recap: Player A offers some fraction of a commodity to Player B, who then accepts or rejects the offer. If accepted, the commodity is split according to the offer; if rejected neither player gets anything. Since any amount of the commodity is beneficial, the rational choice is to accept any offer greater than zero.]
In my case the commodity is dates (not the fruit kind) and the two players are me and Girl X. I offer various dates - lunch, dinner, movie, party - and have my offers mostly rejected, usually not flat-out but with some sort of dignifier/apology (e.g. "I'd love to but I have to finish a project for class").
There are a few ways to interpret this.
One is that the commodity offered (i.e. time spent with me) is considered to have negative value. This is perfectly legitimate, but if it is true I'd like to know for my own benefit.
Another is that time spent studying/researching is considered more valuable than time spent with me. Again, I'd like to know so that I can stop worrying about the situation and move on with my life.
Another option is that she is insane. I don't know how to describe or deal with this possibility.
[Note: there may be other possibilities, but I think these are the main three.]

[Note: Nobody reads this blog, so I feel safe posting this stuff here. I'm debating posting this as a note on Facebook, at which point this situation would be visible to more people including Girl X. My current strategy is to lay low.]

Trivia

Question: If you start in Vermont and go two states east, then keep going east, which province will you hit?

Answer (according to the trivia master at the pub last night): New Brunswick.

Now, I won't say that this is wrong, per se, because New Brunswick is the province just east of Maine. The problem is that if you look on a map none of New Brunswick overlaps with Vermont - it's too far north. Nova Scotia, however, shares most of Vermont's latitude, meaning if you start in Vermont and go directly east the first province you will hit is Nova Scotia (unless you start in the south of Vermont, in which case the first province you'd hit would be somewhere in China). Now, I have no problem with New Brunswick as an answer since it borders Maine and there was nothing precluding traveling north when in Maine. However, technically the first province east of Maine is Quebec, as part of Quebec lies east of the very top part of Maine.
I consider it a poor question. I don't have too much of an issue with one poor question, especially since it didn't effect the outcome, but we did have a lively debate amongst our team as to the correct answer.

Also, distinguishing this dude: from this dude:














really seems like a trick question.

At Barnes and Noble yesterday I saw that Anna Karenina was recommended by Oprah's Book Club. Do people actually base certain life choices, such as what to read, on what Oprah says? It seems to me that there are many better role models in the world of reading fine literature than Oprah Winfrey.

MLB Predictions

I've posted this elsewhere too - my predictions for the outcome of this baseball season.

NL West
1. Colorado Rockies
2. San Diego Padres
3. Arizona Diamondbacks
4. Los Angeles Dodgers
5. San Francisco Giants

NL Central
1. St. Louis Cardinals
2. Chicago Cubs
3. Milwaukee Brewers
4. Houston Astros
5. Cincinnati Reds
6. Pittsburgh Pirates

NL East
1. New York Mets
2. Atlanta Braves
3. Philadelphia Phillies
4. Florida Marlins
5. Washington Nationals

AL West
1. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
2. Oakland Athletics
3. Seattle Mariners
4. Texas Rangers

AL Central
1. Detroit Tigers
2. Cleveland Indians
3. Kansas City Royals
4. Minnesota Twins
5. Chicago White Sox

AL East
1. Boston Red Sox
2. Toronto Blue Jays
3. New York Yankees
4. Tampa Bay Devil Rays
5. Baltimore Orioles

If need be I will defend my picks.

I feel like my life has no direction now. I work, take data, analyze data, etc., and I wonder where exactly I'm going. Things are complicated by my falling self-esteem and self-confidence (caused by a combination of girl problems [see previous blogs] and mild problems with publishing and my adviser). The net result of this has been more drinking, which I realize is probably bad for me but feels so good at the time. Ugh.

I like reading, and learning about lots of things. I play games, like Scrabble, that require a working brain to be good at. Are these such awful things? Recently a coworker criticized me for playing Scrabble via the internet in lab - not because I was wasting valuable research resources for (God forbid) pleasure purposes, but because one shouldn't enjoy activities that tax one's brain. I say bah - if I'd rather read "Ivanhoe" than "Us Weekly," and would rather play Scrabble than stare blankly at a computer screen while the machines are taking and recording data for me, does that make me a bad person? Maybe a weird person or an elitist or some other such nonsense, but not bad or wrong.

Valentine's Day

Another day celebrating (sort of) St. Valentine is approaching. This day, for many, serves as an excuse to pay extra money for their significant other. For me, it is a reminder of my past attempts and failures, as well as my current situation. As if life as a graduate student isn't already stressful and ego-deflating enough.

Fermentation is one of the the greatest inventions/discoveries in human history. This afternoon I felt like crap because of labmates/adviser/research/girl problems/other, and I consumed a large quantity of alcohol, and felt okay. I went back to lab, took some data with no labmates around (which means I can yell at equipment and listen to loud music) and I felt pretty good. Now if only I could solve the "woman problem".

B12

Various steroid users (Clemens, Palmeiro, Tejada, among others) have taken the stance that they were just shooting up Vitamin B12. This, of course, begs the question of why one would inject a substance when it is readily available in pill form and every food on earth these days is fortified with it. Basically, these athletes are calling us all gullible fools.
Of course, there is another option. These athletes actually were unaware of what they were doing. In this situation they were given steroids by a third party and told it was B12, they took it, felt that extra burst of energy and all the other benefits of steroids, and thought, "Hey, this B12 stuff is awesome! I should keep using it." This would make the users essentially innocent (sort of like the insanity plea), but it also would show how little they know about health and medicine.
Personally, I think there's no way anyone, mush less a world-class athlete, should put substances into their bodies without understanding ahead of time what they are doing and why they are doing it.

Women

I don't understand women. Well, at least one particular woman. Is it so hard to give a definite answer to a question? I'd prefer an honest, straight up rejection to the vagueness that I get now. (E.g. "I'd love to [whatever I asked - movie, dinner, whatnot], but I really have homework to do all night.) Is it so hard to say, "no, and never in the future" so that I don't sit and wonder whether homework actually is a priority and debate in my head whether or not asking again is worth it?