Stanford...

The reason for the lack of recent updates to the blog is obvious: I just started a new postdoc and am scrambling to get my new projects underway! Don't worry, this busyness is a good thing as it indicates that I'm finally doing something I'm actually interested in studying. I'm sure that I'll have more to say about my research (and what it's like to switch to a new research organism for the third time now) in a future post, but for now I figured that I'd blog a bit about my three weeks of experience working at Stanford.

Leland Stanford Junior University is 'widely considered' to be one of the top research universities in the world (or at least America according to a public Gallup poll where Stanford came second only to Harvard). I can only guess as to how such things are measured, but as far as my new department, Biology, goes, it certainly harbors many well-known and respected researchers.

Now if such a judgement was based on the number and/or density of obvious displays of wealth demonstrated by a university, then I could totally see Stanford being up there. Working around this place is honestly a bit surreal:

 The Stanford campus is absolutely gorgeous, with palm tree lined streets and walkways, fountains at most of the major intersections and meeting places, and beautiful adobe wall and terracotta roof buildings. I've said it multiple times to the agreement of fellow Easterners who have also come here - it's kind of like working on a resort every single day. The only downside, as has been pointed out by Stanford alumni, is that you're pretty much guaranteed to move on to somewhere less attractive, creating a nebulous, 'suckier' future.

Harvard, Stanford, Yale... We just don't have these types of expensive, private universities in Canada. Excluding everything but tuition (room and board, books, etc.), the average yearly cost of an undergraduate degree at Stanford is $38,700 USD1. Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that signs of 'money' are kind-of everywhere here.

I don't want to come off like a yokel or anything, and it's not like I grew up in a poor family, but it's somewhat mind-boggling to me to compare my undergraduate experience with what I can imagine is that of many students here. To give you an idea, I lived in residence at Dalhousie University with my meals covered, and had $20 in 'spending money' per week! Thankfully, most of my peers were in a very similar boat, so I didn't feel excluded (nor did I graduate with crippling, unreasonable student loans).

Stanford is apparently somewhat known for how large and spread-out its campus is. For instance, it's roughly a mile walk from where the commuter train drops you off at the entrace to campus, to the actual location of buildings and residences. So many, many people bike to get around (there are also frequent, free commuter shuttles). Unfortunately, a lot of undergrads cycle rather unsafely - too quickly, or on busy pedestrian sidewalks. That last point actually irks me a lot because almost all of the roads have bike lanes, and many of them are CLOSED TO VEHICLE TRAFFIC. Get off of the sidewalk!2

Scientifically, the facilities are great and the atmosphere of collaboration and comraderie appears to be quite excellent as well. That also extends beyond Stanford itself as UC Berkley, UCSF, UC Santa Cruz, and other universities are also rather close by here in the Bay Area, so there's always opportunity for meetings of minds and such.

This is Stanford's Hoover Tower, named after former president Herbert Hoover, who actually attended Stanford during its opening year (1891). The structure 'towers' above the rest of campus, and provides a much needed reference point for people unfamiliar with the lay of the land. 

Here's a photo of my building, Herrin Labs. This is the front, but on the opposite side of the building, there's a beach volley-ball court surrounded by palm trees (the actual view from our lab).

At this point, Stanford definitely looks like a nice place to work. I've taken a few more photos around campus, so if anyone's interested in taking a look at them, I've put them into a Picasa Web Album: Stanford Campus (Oct 2011). No matter how the research goes, at least I'll be able to say that I enjoy where I work! (Pardon the dark humor, I'm actually quite psyched about the research and have a really good feeling that it's gonna turn out great!)

1Of course, because the university can afford to be so selective about applicants, many students come here with scholarships and at least partial funding.

2As an avid cyclist myself, I find seeing other people being careless about their biking infuriating. Not only is it generally very dangerous, it also creates a bad reputation for cyclists in general. I've only been here a short time, but I've seen some of the most ridiculous biking faux-pas: People crossing perpendicularly through traffic without the right of way at full speed, and even some idiot who was biking on a busy pedestrian sidewalk while texting. The sidewalk thing really drives me absolutely mental.   

A Brief Walk about San Francisco...

My folks are coming to visit me today and will be staying for a couple of weeks. Obviously they'll be exploring the area whilst I'm at work, so I figured that I would look into how one goes about taking public transit into San Francisco from Redwood City. As it turn out, it's actually quite straightforward and getting to downtown SF takes roughly 1 hr from where I live.

I'd never been to SF before, but always wanted to visit1. Like New York or London (or any number of big cities), it's got several iconic landmarks in addition to many characterizations and stereotypes:

One thing that I've always heard about SF is that it is very hilly; this is true. The downtown 'core' is mostly flat, but you don't have to travel far from the harbor before you begin seeing some steep inclines in roads. In the above picture taken from The Embarcadero looking North West, you can see buildings in the hills.

One aspect of the city that struck me immediately upon coming out of the subway station was how colorful it is. In the Mission District, there are a lot of older buildings (the oldest in the city, apparently) that are covered in murals and artwork or simply painted in elaborate colors.

The downtown core of the city (along Market St.) is quite a bit bigger than I expected. I don't know why I didn't expect it to have sky scrapers and everything, but for some reason I always pictured SF as a 'smaller' city. Upon checking, I discovered that I was obviously way off as there are ~7 million people in the SF metro area. 

Here's a shot of the famous Vaillancourt fountain, which is near the harbor, across from Pier 1, close to the Bay Bridge. It's right off of Market Street and near many of the more touristy attractions of the city.

As usual, I took about 100 pictures, and for anyone who's interested in seeing more, I've put them into a Picasa web album. I didn't go to a lot of the more famous tourist attractions (e.g., Golden Gate Park) because my parents will definitely want to do all of that kind of stuff.

One interesting thing that I noticed right away is that San Francisco is considerably cooler than Redwood City. As people who live in the area have pointed out, this part of the state is famous for it's 'micro-climates', generated by proximity to large bodies of water and the hills that surround the peninsula. So far it's apparently been unseasonably warm in Redwood City, but the humidity is nowhere near as bad as D.C., so I've been able to deal. Because of the breezes and the cool nights, no one here has air conditioners. While this is scary, it hasn't been a problem; we'll see how I feel about it next summer!

1Principally because of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  

First Impressions of Redwood City...

There's always something terrifying about paying a deposit for an apartment that you've only 'seen' online. Descriptions are obviously biased by the renter, and it's tough to get an idea of the surrounding area without visiting. With the exception of the first apartment where I lived during my Ph.D., I've been pretty lucky so far. Thankfully, that trend seems to be continuing here in Redwood City, California.

The new apartment is approximately the same size as my previous one, and appears to be clean and perfectly suitable to my needs and lifestyle. The street immediately adjacent to the new place is a bit odd though, as it appears as though there's some kind of junkyard-thing going on behind one of the buildings. I was worried at first, but then discovered that it's an island of isolated weirdness in what otherwise appears to be a very nice town (all photos are taken from within very close walking distance to my place):

An interesting claim to fame... wonder if it pisses off the libertarians every time they drive beneath the sign? ;-)

Roughly 5 blocks away from my place is the Redwood City Historic District, which is really cool. It's basically a bunch of older buildings (by western North American standards) that are now used as locations for shops, cafes, and restaurants. There's also a really nice gym there with excellent rates ($30/mo). The Stanford gym is free, but with this place being so close, it's arguably much more convenient for me... Tough choices.

Directly off from the historic district is the Theatre District, which features very nicely maintained palm trees flanking more restaurants, pubs, nightclubs, and a large movie theatre.

There are many very nice buildings and interesting things to look at here. Wonder how long before they become 'part of the background'. There's me being cynical again. 

Overall, the city seems to be quite pretty and 'quaint'. I've put some more pictures into a Picasa Web Album for anyone who's interested in seeing more. Everyone I've met has been super-friendly and talkative. There are grocery stores, pharmacies, a 7/11 and a really nice bike shop near me so all is good. I'm also closer to public transit here than I was in Maryland as well, which is great, so things are looking up.  

I'll finish with a couple of observations about California so far: a) Beer, wine, and liquor are cheap and available for purchase at the grocery store. This is convenient, though I hope to not have any reason to 'take advantage' of this bounty. b) It's quite hot here (unseasonably so according to the folks I've spoken to) but nowhere near as humid as Washington D.C., so I think I'll be able to deal.

I begin my new postdoc on Monday, which will give me a few more days to explore the area. Hopefully I'll have more to say about it soon.

Book Club: Forged...

I'm beginning to wonder if I should keep reading Bart Ehrman's books. To be sure, I like his writing style and find the subject matter fascinating; however, it's becoming apparent that there's a huge amount of overlap among each of his popular works - you really only need to read a couple of them to feel like you've seen them all. I suppose that he's always writing  to an unfamiliar audience, but for anyone who's read Misquoting Jesus or Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, there's not a lot of 'new' to be found in the more recent work.

The major difference between each of Ehrman's popular works really boils down to where the emphasis of his 'message' is placed. In Misquoting Jesus it was to show that many alterations have been made to the New Testament over the years and that some its most powerful stories (e.g., 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone') were added centuries later. In Forged (2011; Harper Collins), Erhman wants to show (as he has before) that entire books of the New Testament - as well as segments of these books - were not written by the traditionally assumed authors (e.g., not all of the Pauline letters were written by Paul). Furthermore these books were written with the intent to deceive the reader.

This last sentence is really the major argument of Forged. Apparently serious scholars have realized for a long time now that many of the books of the New Testament must be forgeries. This is sometimes due to their anachronistic properties, because two books allegedly written by the same person espouse opposite theologies, or simply because there's abundant evidence from the Bible itself that the supposed author couldn't read/write and certainly wasn't familiar with the Greek rhetorical style required to write the books as they appear. However, Christian scholars have also posited a number of explanations for why, despite these details, this a) does not undermine the theology of the books and b) was never done with the intent to deceive (the reasoning is often somewhat tortuous, but for instance they may argue that a disciple of Paul wrote some of the Pauline letters and signed his name out of 'respect'). Ehrman deconstructs such arguments by showing that the obviously forged works always espouse unique organizational/theological viewpoints that were used as later additions to the Christian faith (e.g., that women should be silent/subservient, that the end of times is a distant event and not imminent as Jesus himself said, etc.).

Not all of the book deals with canonical gospels though, and in fact many of the examples of forgeries are extant documents that the author uses to show how diverse Christian views were before the consolidation of the Orthodox church a few hundred years into its history (a more technical and interesting overview of this is found in his Lost Christianities). All of the forgeries had the same intent of 'legitimizing' particular viewpoints and opinions. It's particularly interesting to see how sets of forgeries were used to counter other sets of forgeries and so on.

All of the arguments are sound and interesting like the rest of Ehrman's books, with lots of references and footnotes. However, there's always something that has bugged me a bit about all of this stuff, and it's one topic that Ehrman doesn't broach in the book (though I believe it was tackled a bit in Jesus, Interrupted). Let me explain by way of an example: 5 of the letters of Paul in the New Testament are self-consistent in writing style, bear no anachronisms, and espouse the theological views that have historically (from other parts of the Bible) been associated with Paul. The remaining letters are inconsistent and different in style and thus the author says that these 5 letters are considered to be properly 'Pauline' while the others are forgeries. If we're being honest here, is it that much of a logical leap to question whether the 5 Pauline letters were actually written by Paul himself at all? All of this stuff was only consolidated long after the great apostle died, after all. Ehrman makes some vague statements about how there are scholarly reasons to believe that they were written by the man himself and I would love to actually read those arguments in this book. Perhaps there's another popular work I could read, or maybe this author will eventually write that book.

Thinking about how much of this book is repurposed from his earlier work, I have to admit that I can't really fault Ehrman. It's pretty brave of the guy to be talking about this stuff at all when he lives in a conservative area of a very deeply religious country. I'm certain that many people read his books with nothing but scathing theologically based criticism of his arguments (this is obvious if you take the time to read some of the Amazon reviews), and therefore it probably is necessary to repeat the same points over-and-over to get people to think about them critically. After all, I'm probably in the minority when I say that he's preaching to the choir.

Regardless, I always come out of a Bart Ehrman book with the same feeling: How many people who profess Christianity to be a very important part of their lives know anything about the books upon which their religion was founded? Ignoring various outside debates about the existence of god(s), from reading Ehrman's work, it's clear that the 'Good Book' is a hodge-podge of very human arguments as well as very human foibles.

One Final Trip to NYC Before I Head Out West...

Before relocating to California (a week from today), I wanted to make one last trip to New York City. Lately I've spoken to quite a few people who really don't like 'The Big Apple' - the complaints are always the same: it's dirty, busy, unfriendly, hectic, etc. All of these issues are kinda true, but none of them really bother me. I don't know if I could spend the rest of my life there, but New York has so much world class stuff to see and do that I certainly enjoy it every time I visit.

 

The 'main' purpose of the trip was to see Steely Dan perform the entirety of their classic 1977 album Aja (as well as a large number of hits) live at the Beacon Theatre. 'The Dan' is one of those bands that most people my age haven't even heard of (despite their having won 4 Grammy awards in 2000 including 'Album of the Year' for Two Against Nature). However, those who are aware of the band tend to love them. The Dan's main duo only plays with the most talented of musicians and watching them live is a thing of beauty. They played an almost three hour uninterrupted set, which is amazing given the complexity of their music - most modern popular acts couldn't play a Steely Dan song to save their life. For those unaware of their stylings, here's a Youtube video of a live performance of their classic Kid Charlemagne (1976), which is in my top 3 favorite tracks of all time:

 

 

My two previous trips to Manhattan were mostly spent in the Midtown area near Times Square, with brief forays to Central Park or Downtown. This time I got to walk around and see a little bit more of the south west side of the island including Greenwich village and Soho. That part of Manhattan has such a different look and feel as compared to concrete jungle that makes up most of the sights, what with there being a lot of green areas and cobblestone streets. It's certainly worth checking out, just don't feed the hipsters.

 

One of two other notable highlights from the trip include seeing the Broadway 'musical' Rock of Ages. Unfortunately I've never been much of a fan of musicals; there's something about singing 'litteral' dialogue that I find off-putting. Rock of Ages is one of these shows that's part of what seems to be a trend involving sticking 'classic' songs into a story and giving them emotional context. It's hokey but at least this one's set to 80s 'Glam Metal'. I can get behind that.

 

The second highlight was visiting the famous Birdland Jazz Club and watching an amazing group play a selection of John Coltrane's classics. Most of the players in the quintet were quite old, but it obviously hadn't dulled their musicianship. It's been a while since I've been to a jazz club (the last time I took advantage of one was The Cellar in Vancouver) and it's something that I'd like to do more often, if possible, in the future.

 

 

We had a table up against the stage, which was great. Steve Kuhn on piano (left) is apparently a very accomplished jazz musician and played briefly as part of Coltrane's quartet. He's been recording since 1963 and is still playing live at 73 years of age! 

 

 

I took a lot of pictures while in town and for those that are interested in browsing them, I've uploaded a Picasa Web Album (New York City Trip 19-22 Aug 2011). Below I've posted a few pics that I thought were interesting and worth pointing out: 

 

 

It's difficult to believe that Soho was once the domain of artists and musicians. The place is so expensive now - I guess it's still the domain or 'artists': i.e., celebrities.  

 

 

The building on the left is 'Freedom Tower', which will be Tower 1 in the current reconstruction of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

 

 

 Finally, the view from the roof of the apartment building where I stayed in Hell's Kitchen.