From the disturbed mind

Happy Brew Year!
75 years ago yesterday, Prohibition was repealed, at least enough to allow for the sale of 3.2 beer, and Americans could once again enjoy the magical elixir of barley, hops, and yeast. While this would be a minor holiday to some, I was happy to embrace this occasion by cleaning and resealing the keggerator, a suitable exercise for the holiday. She poured flawlessly and I celebrated with a couple glasses of a homebrewed altbeir! A tasty way to start the new Brew Year!
So as with any New Years type celebration, resolutions are in order... My Brew Years resolutions for this year are:

1. To incorporate beer into my cooking more throughly and to experiment with it more as an accompaniment to the meals I create.
2. To share my brewing knowledge with as many people as are interested in learning or willing to listen to me ramble on
3. To appreciate the product more while relying on the effect less
4. To continue/ resurrect the sub 1.040 beer series of experiments for my homebrewed beer
5. To clear out the cellar of HB and commercial beers in anticipation of relocation.

So there ya have it, my Brew Years Resolutions! Maybe you, fair reader, will be lucky enough to celebrate and share in my adventures in beer this year!

Reclaiming my Blog

More than likely you don't want to know what has been going on in my life the last 18 months, so I'm just gonna roll like there was no interruption.
It was actually good to see Dan the past couple days. Lab's been quiet recently, only me, and the Diaz lab. It was refreshing to have some discussion of science and goals and stuff. But he's leaving again soon, ie tomorrow, and I'm totally good with that!
A couple weeks ago, I got to visit my family for Easter. John and Sarah hosted and presented us with a fine meal and tolerated the disruption of their routine most amicably. My niece Gigi is now about 20 months and is really cute. She's strong and smart but she's shy around men because John is the only man with whom she interacts regularly. Before I left I got a hi-five from her which made my day! She's really cute, I wish I could see her more often!
So that's the beginning of my reclamation project. Am I as angry and disillusioned as before, you bet! There will be plenty of rants and raves moving forward, but hopefully I won't offend more people than I already have!

Cleveland Trip

I'm off to Cleveland in the AM to meet help my brother and sister-in-law and my new baby niece move back to the east coast. I could not be more excited about meeting my niece for the first time... sure, seeing my brother and sister-in-law will be nice, but my niece represents so much to me, and she's only a month old.
I showed my blog to a friend last night and she said, "Gosh, you're really cynical, you're totally not like that in person, why do you write that way?" Well, to be honest, I suppose I just don't play well with others. I have my life, I live in my world, I share my world with you. In my world there are not prejudices and everyone starts with a clean slate. The decisions and actions of those in my world which directly affect me will bias me and change my perception of the person taking the action or making the decision. I suppose that I'm cynical because I've projected a set of my own personal expectations onto people, their decisions, and their actions. People fail to meet these expectations because they are either unaware of them or don't share in those expectations.
I'm excited about meeting my niece this wekend, no matter what she does in her life, I'll love her. She has unlimited potential right now but no matter what course her life takes, she will always be my niece. Maybe I yearn for the innocence of childhood, maybe it's her newness but maybe because in my eyes she'll be forever incorruptable, I find the prospect of this new life, her present and future to be so full of hope that I will never grow cynical because of my relationship with her. Nothing she will do will curtain my love for her, and I find the concept of having such a pure relationship refreshing and revitalizing. Friends and aquaintenances come and go throughout life, but family is forever. My family is really my strength and tomorrow I get to meet the newest part of it!

A

Stony Brook Film Festival

The Stony Brook Film Festival is in it's 11th year and I've attended portions of the last 3 years. This year's movies have by far been the best films I've seen screened at the festival. The shorts Volare and Transgression have been very good and I really enjoy the form. Short films are an incredible art form that really condense emotion and message into film less than 30 minutes in length but often less then 15 minutes long. Some of the full length features seem to get drawn out and lose a themselves in their indie-ness or artisticness, but by the emotion, passion and symbolism used in these short films is conveyed more suscinctly and effectively.
I wish more short film would be made available either thru the internet or at commercial movie theaters, unfortunately, running these emoton-packed nuggets of film would not be economically viable and thus, once again, because of our cash-driven economy, great work that could really change people's perceptions and challenge ideas is left to gather dust in university film collections.
I urge any and all readers of this blog to check out your local film festival when it comes around and support the production, distirbution and viewing of independent short films as well as full length movies and those theaters who show them, whenever possible.

Shitting where you eat

There's an old addage that one should not shit where one eats. The implication is that to stay healthy and avoid disease born by the gastric workings of one's body, one should remove oneself from one's dining vacinity when defficating. Enteric bacteria which constitute 90% of mass of fecal matter can cause severe sickness and disease, thus there is truth to the addage.
Like much wisdom we as humans garnered over our many years of close contact with our environment, many people seem to have lost the implications of this old addage. Yes, modern technology and civil engineering have removed our defecant from our dining rooms, but the addage still hold true. Not only have people become too lazy and irresponsible to care about the condition of their direct living environment, but social responsibilty has allowed us to polute our only planet, essentially poisoning our selves, our mothership and our life force. This however is not purely an environmental rant, because in addition to the crap our modern chemical lifes spew, we produce plenty of mental, spiritual and emotional crap with which we poison ourselved and our relationships.
As I've said before and more than likely will say again, I belive the solution to this situation is a combination of personal actualization, personal responsibility and honesty. It is only by knowing oneself and the impact that one can have on their own life situation and the lives of those with whom we surround ourselves, either directly or indirectly, that we can really hope to improve the life of everyone. Selfishness and materialism will yet be downfall of you society if we let it. Only by accepting our individual roles as part of a functional society and realizing that our actions have greater implications, will we learn to respect the wisdom of those who told us not to shit where we eat.

Science Craps Out!


Back in college, I took a class my freshman year in rhetorical analysis. I really didn't understand or appreciate the class at the time and thought it was a waste of time that could be better spent pursuing more relevant ends; however, I've recently come to appreciate what the class was trying to teach and when I saw the cover of the June 30 issue of Science, I could not help but to offer an analysis of the picture, with my own biased interpretation.
There are four major features on the cover, the banner: Science in large white letters agains what could be taken as a gameboard from the Game of Life. There is a graphic of a medical professional holding a clipboard with a somewhat androgenous being standing beside him with the words Life Cycles underneath. There is a set of dice, one showing a 5 and the other a 2. Finally, there is a deck of "event cards" similar to those of the Game of Life.
Taking the cover as a whole, one can appreciate the similarities to the Game of Life, and yes we all can in some ways relate to how we are on a track in life and while there may be different goals for different people, the paths tend to be similar, decisions of education, career, marriage, child-rearing etc are common to all people and could indeed be considered a life cycle as one generation cycles into the next. This however is clearly the journal Science and the design of the graphic implies that the game board illustrated is that of a reader of Science, namely an educated, passionate intellectual many of whom put their dedication and passion for science primary and their personal happiness secondary in their life course. It seems like the traditional path of life does not apply to these readers, not because the decisions are not the same, but because they, we, look at life from a different angle. Surely some consider science end the elucidation of the natural world their mission, however we do have a greater, and more fundamental role to play in this society and yet few accept thier job as mentors and role models as readily or as early in life. What is worse is that the 7 rolled on the dice, considered a natural in the game of Craps, indicates a winning roll. Is it truely a winning roll for society when the intellectuals put their career before themselves and their family. Compounding this is the text of the Event Card in the picture which reads, "No dates last month! Move back two spaces." When the intellectuals are engaged in pursuit of their passion, the personal life that is so critical to one's well being and happiness takes a back seat to their passion for science. Not that we don't love life and enjoy sharing our life experiences with others, but often intellectuals find it difficult to relate to those who lack passion in their professional careers, and thus we are penalized moving us backwards in the Game of Life.
It is only by balancing our careers with our personal lives that we can hope to find happiness and progress and enrich both. A life dedicated to intellectual pursuit is not for everyone nor is family life, but we often fool ourselves into thinking that our work will make us happy. While Science may not have intended to do so, they have encapsulated the strugges of many in the academic profession on their cover, stigmatizing the academic life as a lonely pursuit which fails to balance the personal needs for personal progession with professional advancement. I agrue that while many academics, and single graduate students, can relate to this, it further alienates intelligent people who may wish to consider, and could contribute significantly to, an intellectual life from pusuing such because our the life of the academic derails us so significantly from the Game of Life.

The Graduate Army
Sorry for the long lag between posting, been a crazy time in the World of Bobes.
I was thinking today, I know that gets me in trouble often, but as a graduate student it is kinda my job. Anyway I was thinking about a banner I saw hanging on a garage in my neighborhood last night. The banner read "Welcome Home Michael- U.S.M.C." It got me to thinking, why don't people celebrate the graduate student like they celebrate a son/daughter/ sibling in the military?
I'm not saying that service for one's country should not be celebrated, but that we should expand our appreciation of the people who enrich this country as well as protect it.
Let me expand on the similarities between military service and grad school. Graduate students and military recruits are not that different in age. Both groups are in the early to mid 20s range when recruited. Both commit to long terms of service, 2-9 years of their life. Both groups undergo significant training to allow them to effectively do their job. Both are poorly paid and taken for granted by society at large. Both represent groups who are trying to improve their lot in life.
You may argue that a nation needs an army, a society doesn't need intelectuals, as long as there's a work force. I disagree, just as a nation needs an army, a society needs innovators, leaders and artists to enrich the life experience of the rest of society and advance the society beyond its current state.
Some may argue that service in the military is inhereantly dangerous and those who serve put their lives on the line everyday. While this is true, graduate students do the same, whether it is engineering supercoliders, handeling novel chemotherapeutics, braving the jungles of Africa or using materials so toxic that OSHA doesn't want to create an MSDS for it, graduate students risk life, limb and their future well-being for the pursuit of knowledge.
So why are graduate students looked down upon? Do we not contribute to the society by defending our intellectual freedoms ? Are we not sacraficing some of the best years of our lives toward to the service and advancement of society?
So what's my point? Don't overlook the intelectuals in society, while they may not get to trot around with a gun and grenades, they still deserve our respect for their contributions to society. So hug your local grad student when you get a chance.