This blog is going on a diet!!!

By that I mean for at least one month, I am not going to discuss politics or the government. It has corrupted the pages of this blog for the past several posts as you can see. Let's hope I have the discipline to adhere to this diet.

Before it goes into effect though... you probably want to know my feelings towards the election outcome though. Even though (as you can probably tell) I voted for McCain, I am not "Mr. Bitter Conservative" today. I am actually pretty darn proud of the election. Our nation whom just 40-50 years ago considered segregation acceptable has overcome that and elected our first black (or African American/culturally diverse/*insert desired non-offensive politically correct term* here) president. I think it is wonderful to live in a nation where a man can rise up from a difficult upbringing and become our president regardless of the color of their skin. The key word to that statement is "our". He is our... America's President, regardless of weather you are democrat/republican, liberal/conservative, black/white, etc. He has been fairly elected as my President... as our President.

As such, I will give him the benefit of the doubt. It is up to him to lead me as a citizen of this great nation. It is up to him to do a great job or to completely screw it up. I sincerely hope it ends up being the former of the two.

What does not change in this situation are my beliefs and values. My beliefs and values have developed into some very strong, deep and meaningful things to me. The beauty of the American Constitution is that I have the freedom to disagree with Obama over the next 4 years if he governs in a way that is in opposition to my beliefs and values, but nonetheless, he will still be our President for the next 4 years. It is our duty as Americans to treat him as such.

Check out this blog post to get more of an idea for what I am talking about.

P.S. Congrats to whol ever ends up being the 1000th viewer of my blog! :-p

Awesome!!!

I have to give props to my brother who has made his first break into the "blogosphere". He's writing a sports blog titled "Skiman Sports". Check it out.

I guess it's kind of like a sports talk radio show but on a blog. Nothing like a blog with a clear cut mission on subject matter... more than I can say about this mish-mash of random thoughts I put down here!

Perhaps following his discussions on sports will give me something else to think about other than current events, politics and the government.

My mind has been tied up with a few logical quandries at the moment.

O.K. I am so frikin fired up lately about the news! I have been struggling to wrap my head around it and learn about it enough to the point where I can understand it. Let's delve into it shall we.

Last week the U.S. House of Representatives voted on a $700 bailout for troubled assets. (How a country in trillions of dollars of debt can consider the idea of spending $700 billion of money that they don't have is beyond me... but that's another issue!) The House of Reps voted this bill down 228 to 205. They said it was a blank check, too much money and lacked oversight.

The House decided to send this bill to the Senate for further debate, revision and vote . They added about $150 billion in spending to the bill and voted for it 74 to 25.

The House of Reps then went ahead and... voted in support of this new bill totaling $850 billion dollars ( 263 yes/171 no).

WTF!? Do not think about the logic behind that for more than 5 minutes or else you will start to experience the symptoms of an anyerism and blood will shoot out of your ears. The human brain is not cabable of such things.

Secondly there is this story that is FINALY getting some attention:
The relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers.

Now that's a bit of a lengthy article. Basically it presents a professional and political connection (not just a coincidental one as presented by the media) between Obama and Bill Ayers. Ayers being a domestic terrorist, founding member of the Weather Underground (Wikipedia that), having bombed the Pentagon, police stations and robed banks. He has never expressed regret for this. Actually... (as mentioned in the story) on the morning of September 11, 2001, New York Times published a profile about this man where he says he only wishes he blew up more buildings and planted more bombs!

If you don't want to read the article, watch this Anderson Cooper video clip. Keep in mind... this is coming from the rather liberal biased CNN and not the typically conservative FOX news network. (Trust me... you will be suprized.)

Now I am not advocating any one political party here... I'm advocating common sense.

Wouldn't common sense dictate that if a political candidate chose to work with someone who is a self admitted domestic terrorist, they are demonstrating a lack of good judgment? A lack of judgment that may not befit them for the position of the highest public office in the land?

I learned early on in life that you can judge a lot about a person by the friends that they keep. I learned that from my parents.

Cathartic... I feel better now. (Slightly.)

Suze Orman is an iddiot...

I have been meaning to blow off some steam regarding the recent near catastrophic meltdown of our nation's economy. I am not going to sugar coat it... things are bad. Things are very bad... for our country and banks. Not necessarily for every average American though. Admittedly we are all paying more for food and gas. It could be worse... 35% unemployment rate and actual soup lines (as in the Great Depression). But if you are smart about your money, you understand how to make financial sacrifices and be disciplined during tough times... do you really need that big screen LCD HDTV that you will be putting on your high interest credit card?

What ever you do, resist the urge to listen to "experts" like Suze Orman. She made an appearance on Lary King and said this (emphasis added):

King: Is this a good time to get into the market?

Orman: No. It's not a good time to get in with brand-new money. I would let these markets kind of wash themselves out. On the other hand, if you're investing in a 401k every month with small amounts of money, that's OK as long as you don't need the money for 10, 15, 20 years. If you just got an inheritance and you have $50,000, should you be putting it in the stock market now? Are you kidding? These are the markets that you just sit on the sidelines and wait on the sidelines and stay away from them until everything works out.

I am no CNN expert, but I do know this... even during the Great Depression the stock market posted an overall gain. And typically in the long term, the stock market delivers a 11% rate of return. So anytime is a good time to get in the stock market... so long as you are going to keep your money there for a while... not until tomorrow, or next month, or even next year. Try 5 to 10 years... or even better a 401k that you are not going to touch for 20 years! And if your 401k has lost a big chunk of its value due to the recent market troubles, and you were hoping to retire in a few years... FIRE your fund manager because they are too stupid to know that your investments should not be in such volatile places when it's so close to your retirement!

As I mentioned I am no CNN economic expert... actually, I am a chemist. But all you need to do (and these CNN experts should do the same) is learn a little history and basic economics.

Watch this video here and get some real advice about what to do about your economic situation. I have been reading this guy's blog for a while. Smart guy... he's no CNN expert though. I( think that's a good thing.)

Breathe in... breathe out... just be smart... everything is going to be alright.

The zen of being a graduate student.

So in my day to day wandering of the myriad of knowledge (and trash) the internet has to offer I stumbled upon this page listing rules that will help you live more like a Zen monk. I used to be into Zen meditation and practicing mindfulness in my day to day activities but over the past few years I have gradually gotten away from it. I blame it on the fact that I have been a graduate student because graduate school life is pretty much the antithesis of the life of a Zen monk.

Allow me to elaborate. Here's the list from the site referenced above:

1. Do one thing at a time.
2. Do it slowly and deliberately.
3. Do it completely.
4. Do less.
5. Put space between things.
6. Develop rituals.
7. Designate time for certain things.
8. Devote time to sitting.
9. Smile and serve others.
10. Make cleaning and cooking become meditation.
11. Think about what is necessary.
12. Live simply.

Let's re-work this for graduate students:

1. Do at least 3 or more things at once. As a graduate student, multi-tasking is a way of life. Run at least 2 reactions while writing up results and reading a paper. If ever you are only doing one task... there is always something else you can find to be done. Do this as much as possible.
2. Do everything as quickly as possible. The set of experiments you are currently working on... well, your adviser needed the results for those yesterday even though he assigned the task to you today. Unless you know how to slow time down (or go back in time all together) speed is the key!
3. Do switch tasks and pursue tangents in research regularly. You will never manage to fully complete a set of experiments without stumbling across some bizarre finding or new question that will requite you to shift your focus and pursue a whole new set of experiments. If you ever do manage to fully complete a set of experiments… you likely did them wrong.
4. Do MORE. Pretty self explanatory, even for a lowly graduate student.
5. Put space between things... to do more things. So your NMR will take about an hour to run… set up a new experiment in the mean time. So you have a few hours until your reaction runs to completion… work through that pile of data on your desk. So your TGA will take all night to run… sleep while it’s running. (O.K. that last one it silly because you should not be sleeping while running an instrument… you should be running a second instrument!)
6. Develop [bizarre] rituals. If wearing your lucky lab coat, hopping on one foot three times and saying a prayer to the chemistry Gods before starting a reaction will insure a higher yield or better result in your experiment, go for it… just be sure to write those procedures up accurately in your notebook.
7. Designate time for research tasks only. Eat, sleep, and drink research. You only have time in the day for research… do not set aside time to clean your apartment, make your self dinner, spend time with friends, eating breakfast, leisure reading, etc.
8. Avoid sitting at all costs. Why sit when you can be standing in front of your hood setting up another experiment, or standing in front of an instrument gathering data? As a matter of fact… remove all chairs from your lab space and even get rid of the one in front of your desk. They are unnecessary.
9. Maintain a consistent frown and scowl. You are a graduate student, have been for years and you will continue to be for seemingly endless years… you have nothing to be happy about. Even when an experiment works… frown and scowl because you still do not understand what the result means.
10. Make cleaning glassware meditation. Unless of course you can pawn the job off on the undergraduate working underneath you in the lab. In that case take the newly freed up time to do another experiment.
11. Think about what is necessary [research]. Do not be caught thinking about what you are going to do over the holiday weekend, or when you will get to go out for a beer with your friends, or when you will be able to go out and enjoy the unseasonably warm weather… because all of those things are unnecessary and will be supplanted by research.
12. Live simply... because you have no choice. You get paid a yearly stipend… stipend is a Latin word that means you live off of Raman noodles and peanut butter sandwiches in a one room mold infested studio crap-shack apartment, wearing old out of style clothing and drive a rusted out sedan with +150,000 miles on it, a passenger door that does not open and it strangely smells of rotten cheese. You don’t need anything more than that (well… you get your notebook and laboratory space too).

VIDEO COMPLEMENTS OF PAT CONDELL: "More demands from Islam"

I have a desire to share this. I am not going to deal with accusations of me being a hate-monger or racist so I am not going to state my opinions on this piece but I encourage you to form your own opinions.

Figuring out how to re-light the fire (under my ass) on these cold cloudy winter days.

For what ever reason, much of my motivation and focus seems to have dried up since Friday. I am feeling frustrated with the whole graduate school thing at the moment. I do have just a few months left though, but am still feeling frustrated.

The pay is terrible, the hours are long and tedious and the benefits are meager. It is disconcerting every time I consider my finances for the coming months as I will be assuming a student loan debt that totals about half of an entire mortgage for a house! Getting a full time job as a chemist will help improve much of these things, but the job market around here seems pretty slim. At all costs, I just need to motivate my self to keep looking I guess.

In the mean time I have shown some initiative in starting a new training program. I am planning on running in a 5K at the American Chemical Society in New Orleans. Also I have been playing around (a little too much!) with this blog. New year and new look. I have to thank the “Tips for New Bloggers” blog for the step by step instructions on how to convert my existing two column template to a three column template. I am not well versed in understanding computer code… but I know enough to tweak things a little.

I like the new look! Thanks for bearing with me through the changes as things looked a lot worse before I figured it out and made it look better.

Al Gore v. U.K. High Court v. Alfred Nobel... and once again that queasy feeling is returning to my stomach.

OK, I am going to do something here that I did previously in my last blog post. I am going to take two pieces of information in the news and lay them next to each other and observe the effect. Now these pieces of information are not necessarily reported in the main-stream media but will be related in some way nonetheless.

1) Yesterday you probably heard about Al Gore and the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) splitting the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in spreading awareness regarding the threat of global warming. Gore has shifted his efforts from running for President to making the movie/book documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and promoting that information on a tour tour all over the world.

2) Now ironically, a few days before the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize award, there was a court ruling by a High Court in London (click here and here for more) stating that in order for "An Inconvenient Truth" to be shown to children in classrooms a disclaimer must be announced pointing out up to 11 flaws in the science and logic reported in the movie.

Hmmm... Right about now is when a nice queasy feeling sets into my stomach and I feel kind of... well... disgusted with the Nobel. It has lost its alure to me now that someone who has essentially delivered propaganda as irrefutable scientific fact is being rewarded. It disappoints me as a scientist because it is not ethical. I have watched "An Inconvenient Truth" and done a fair share of my own research on both sides of the debate. There are flaws in Gore's documentary, and he is exploiting people's ignorance in an attempt to make them accept his opinions as irrefutable fact.

Uggghhh... not even the inner rage can make the queasiness go away with this one!


***Little known fact: Alfred Nobel the founder of the Nobel Peace Prize made his fortune from the discovery of... wait for it... dynamite! That coupled with some other explosives made him a fortune as they were quickly put to use by miners and engineers and mainly by the military. That secured his reputation with the French who called him "The merchant of death" in a fake obituary which also stated "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday." Well, turns out Al had a guilty conscience, and decided to leave his fortune to funding the Nobel Prizes to reward people who did things that had a bit more of a positive effect on society. (!!!)

Re: 9/11

Jim Hill : What was it like to be at Disneyland and/or Walt Disney World six years ago today?

Take a moment to check out this link. This is incredibly surreal.

Everyone remembers where they were when the planes hit. Did you ever think about what it must have been like if you were in an incredibly happy fun place at the time when it happened?

9/11/01

On a comfortable, sunny, cloudless Tuesday morning I was coming out of English 101 class being held in the "trailer classroom", a temporary classroom set up as an extension of the space in Carroll Hall at Nazareth. My upon exiting, my friend Drew told me of a plane hitting the WTC. My initial thoughts were, "Those buildings are huge, how could a pilot, accidentally hit them?" I then proceeded to Biology Lab, thinking about all the hundreds of people who must have perished in such a terrible accident, confident that some major aviation malfunction was to blame.

About one hour into my lab class, I was practicing my micro pipetting technique as my lab partner (Sarah) drowsily helped set up experiments. A few others in the class speculated about what had happened. It was then that Dr. Temple (my favorite professor in the Biology Department at Nazareth) entered the classroom and filled in Dr. Hallahan on the more recent events that had occurred over the past couple hours. I over heard scary terms like "second plane hitting", "multiple planes hijacked" and "possible terrorism". Dr. Temple then filled us in on the details and announced that all classes after 12 PM were canceled. I then headed back to my dorm room to turn on CNN.

My room was dark... empty... unnecessarily warm, as most rooms in the O'Connor residence hall tend to be in early September.

I turned on the TV and chanced the channel to CNN.

My jaw dropped... I gasped.

I took a step back from the TV in disbelief as I tried to comprehend what I was seeing.

And the rest is history.

Please... NEVER FORGET. Or history will be destined to repeat its self.

Another work week commences.

It's been a while since I have posted. Personally I blame that on my job/school. Classes have begun last week and I have instituted a strict 10 hour work day (8AM to 6PM) into my schedule to increase productivity. I have been getting some very important high demand directives sent down from the chemists at B&L that are supervising my research and since they are also funding me... they are PRIORITY #1! I will give a bit more details about my job in time.

Yesterday Emily, Meridith (Em's roommate) and I ran the Bruegger's Bagels 5k Road race. The weather was a cool 65° with a cold rain. The weather was great for competative running. Much more comfortable than 90° and humid. I ran splits of 6:42 and (a surprising) 6:37 for the first and second mile then followed it up with a disappointing 8 minute third mile/finish. I still ran a season best by topping my Fishes and Loaves 5k by 9 seconds. Plus... I must give mega props to Emily (who admits she is not a runner) for topping her Fishes and Loaves 5k time by 2 minutes! GOOD JOB! This was only her second road race and she has already picked a third she wishes to do in late October. She is now a "runner in denial" as I say. :-) I am proud of you Em!

Now, very quick before I get to work, I direct your attention to the "Blogs of Note" section. "Jon's Exotic Adventures" is a relatively new blog by a former teammate of mine from Nazareth. This guy graduated last year and will be going to Mozambique with the Peace Core to teach science for 27 months! I find that very impressive. It is going to be quite an adventure to follow. Also, if you want to learn more about the city I live in, read Richard Shade Gardner's blog. This guy actually hiked around Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and dozens of other lakes in the Finger Lake region of New York! I also recommend The "Freakonomics" Blog is quite interesting and one that I read frequently. If you enjoyed the book you will enjoy the blog.

I'm out! Time to be productive!