A Brief Hiatus

For reasons I don't quite understand, and despite my efforts at planning ahead, all my deadlines have managed to converge on the next few weeks. I have two grant deadlines, two major presentations which will partly determine whether we receive funding, a technician position to fill, and an animal protocol to renew.

Lovely.

So...blogging will be sparse to non-existent for a while. See y'all again when (if) I emerge from under my mountain of paperwork!

Crazy Critters!

I have a question for all of you North American natives (or longtime dwellers). You see, where I come from, there are lots and lots of ginormous bugs and interesting reptiles, but not so many furry woodland-type critters.

As a result, I am endlessly fascinated by the ones that populate my neighborhood--squirrels, rabbits, the occasional raccoon, the possum I almost ran over, etc. But I came across a critter yesterday that I couldn't identify. So here's the question:

What is black and furry, has four legs but no tail, and is about the size of a big male B6 mouse but with a flatter body?

A. The critter that ran into Mad Hatter's garage as she was pulling in yesterday
B. The critter that hid so Mad Hatter couldn't find it and chase it out
C. The critter that Dormouse may try to eat
D. The critter that may end up dying and rotting in Mad Hatter's garage
E. All of the above

Seriously, what did I let into my garage and what are the chances it will die and rot in there?

Like Winning A Medal

Blogging's no Olympic sport, but I'm a winner anyway! Seeking Solace and ScienceGirl both nominated me for this award:




And Jennie nominated me for this award:

Thanks, everyone! You guys are awesome! The rules for passing the award along:

1. Put the logo on your blog


2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you


3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs


4. Add links to these blogs on your blog


5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog

Many excellent bloggers have already been nominated, so I'll go ahead and combine these two awards and nominate 7 other bloggers instead of 14. My nominees are:

• Candid Engineer


• Microbiologist XX


• Mad Chemist Chick


• El


• DrDrA


• Stepwise Girl


• Citronella

Rattus Weasellus

A while back, a professor in my department contacted my PI about setting up a collaboration. The professor had generated a new reagent and wanted to test a hypothesis using an technique in which our lab has expertise. My PI asked if I would be interested in doing those experiments, and since it was a neat idea and would likely result in a nice little publication if it worked, I agreed.

Many, many hours of work later, all I had were negative data, so we all agreed to abandon this particular line of experiments. Well, today I learned that the professor recently told someone else that he never thought these were the right experiments to do, that he didn't think they would work, and that it was all our idea to begin with.

Rat bastard! When I was still doing the experiments, he kept telling me how interested he was and how eagerly he was awaiting the data. And now that they didn't yield the results he'd hoped for, he's saying he never thought we should've done them?!

If he really hadn't thought they were the right experiments to begin with, why didn't he just fucking say so? Was I twisting his arm to make him agree to these experiments so I could have more work to do? I don't think so.

It was a good idea. It didn't work. End of story. What the fuck is the purpose of this finger-pointing shit? Fucking weasel.

Lame Music Meme

DrDrA tagged me for the lame music meme, also known as the Self-Humiliation Meme.

Sigh....

Alright, here goes. What shitty crap music is on my iPod?

1. The Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog


2. Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi


3. Baby One More Time by Britney Spears


4. Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead by XTC


5. Dude Looks Like a Lady by Aerosmith

Now the important question is: who do I want to torment? Let's see...

Cath because she inflicted the last embarrassing music meme on me...mwahahahaha!
Okham...I know you're just dying to share your ABBA collection with us.
Amanda...well, she's already shared her taste in TV shows.... :-)
ScienceGirl...cuz she just tagged me!
And Candid Engineer...this is a post that can definitely be written in-between watching Michael Phelps!

Dumbing It Down

March Hare and I have been having a disagreement over how a scientist should answer the question "So, what kind of work do you do?" when asked by a non-scientist. Specifically, how far can one "dumb down" the material before it becomes non-information and patronizing, and how does one gauge how far is far enough?

Our discussion was prompted by a recent conversation I had with my brother-in-law, who has a Masters degree (albeit not in science) and is the NPR-listening, NYT-reading type. BIL asked about what I do, so I explained that I study viruses and am particularly interested in how the immune response fights viral infection, and how some viruses can escape from the immune response. To illustrate why this area of research is important and interesting, I gave the example of viruses that are never completely cleared by the immune response and can remain dormant until the infected individual becomes immunosuppressed, at which time the virus can re-emerge to wreak havoc.

Afterwards, March Hare carefully and gently suggested that my entire spiel had been completely over BIL's head, and that I had rambled on and on about my work in the stereotypical manner of oblivious scientists while my audience's eyes glazed over. "I DID NOT!!!" was my reaction. Okay, so maybe I did ramble on...just a little. But I don't agree with March Hare that I should have dumbed down what I said even more than I already had for the following reasons.

1. I think terms like "immunosuppressed", which March Hare objected to, are used commonly enough in NYT and BBC articles to be fair game even though they may not frequently occur in everyday conversations.


2. Dumbing down even further would make the information essentially useless and prompt questions that would require less-dumbed-down explanations anyway. In the past when I've simply said that I study viruses, I am typically asked "Why?", which brings up exactly the same spiel I gave BIL, or "Which one?", the answer to which is actually much more complicated than the spiel I gave BIL. (I'm also often asked in a half-joking manner, "Um...you're not infectious, are you?" That one's only funny the first two times.)


3. I hate when people give me patronizing, grade-school-level answers to my questions because they assume I can't understand the real answer. Yes, I do appreciate efforts to reduce the field-specific jargon and to use more general descriptions, but I'd much rather someone overshoot my level of understanding and let me ask for clarification when necessary, than have them tell me something that I already know or is so general as to be uninformative.


4. I expect my "audience" to stop me and ask questions if I say something they don't understand. I certainly asked BIL plenty of dumb novice questions about his work in finance when I was confused about what he was saying. After all, isn't the point of having a conversation about a subject to learn something about it? And don't we all learn more when information isn't targetted solely to the center of our comfort zone?

The truth of the matter is that I expected BIL to understand most of what I had said based on what I know of his background and what he himself brought up as topics of conversation (he asked about some new development in HIV research which he heard about on the news). There are many other relatives with whom I wouldn't even have tried having this conversation because they've given no indication of interest. But perhaps I misjudged.

So what do you all do when non-scientists ask you about your work? Do you give generic, non-informative answers or do you try to explain what it is you actually study? And how much do you "dumb it down"?

Things I Learned Last Week

I'm back!!! March Hare and I went to Big Southern City 2 (BSC2) last week to visit family. It was unbelievably hot, but we had a great time playing with the kiddies and it was nice to see everyone again. BSC2 is not that far from BSC1, where March Hare and I met in college, and has a lot of the same restaurants. So we also got to eat at a few places that we used to go to when we were dating! Of course, they weren't exactly the same, but it was still fun and a bit nostalgic.

As expected, I am now completely buried under the mountain of work that piled up while I was gone. It's like Tetris...you've gotta keep clearing out the rows of blocks or it gets ugly very quickly! Anyway, I'm just starting to get caught up on blogging, so I'll be by soon to see what y'all have been up to.

In the spirit of getting back on the blogging wagon, I thought I'd share a few interesting things I learned during our trip last week.

Kids' toys are a helluva lot more complicated now than they were when I was a kid! We took the kids to a toy store and let them each pick out something they wanted. One Lego set had a gazillion teeny tiny pieces and friggin' moving parts! And it took 3 adults almost 20 minutes to figure out how to attach all the "accessories" to a doll!

Thank god I don't have to watch Hannah Montana on a regular basis. Since the kids were so enamored with the show, March Hare and I decided to watch an episode one afternoon to see what it's all about. We managed about 10 minutes of it before we just...couldn't...take...it...anymore.

I have a hard time watching other couples who live according to very stereotypical gender roles. I understand that different couples do things differently. But I gotta admit, there were many times when I just wanted to say, "Look, I know you've been at work all day, but your wife's been taking care of two energetic kids by herself all day. Would it really kill you to get off your ass and help take the plates to the kitchen?"

There will always be family drama. Suffice it to say that part of the family is progressive and accepting, and the other part...not so much. Everyone's nice and friendly in public, but all it takes is a private conversation for the claws to come out.

All in all, we enjoyed our visit and it was really nice to get away for a while. But I rather suspect that these trips are enjoyable precisely because we go infrequently!