Is Science 'Fun'?

After a long week of stressful meetings, long work, and failed experiments, I'm driven to ask myself the question: Is science fun? At any point during my Ph.D., past the initial problems I faced putting together a research project, I definitely would have answered 'yes'. Though often stressful in its own way, a Ph.D. still feels like school, with a certain detachement from having to think about 'real life' and 'the future'. A year into my postdoc now, I can definitely say that the pressure to actually accomplish something is much more acute.

I'm now in the process of juggling multiple projects, each of which is a) more fascinating than what I've done before, and b) more challenging than what I've done before. My lab mates and I are forging new ground in a field that's quite 'the rage' at the moment, meaning that anything interesting that we produce will likely lead to high-impact papers. It also means that many other competent folks are thinking of doing the same sorts of things that we are - increasing the likelihood of being 'scooped'.

For a long time during the past year, I found myself less inclined to think about science outside of the workplace. I stopped reading science-related books, stopped frequenting science blogs, and really toned down the amount of working from home I did1. It took me a while, but I recently realized that this pattern was far more like a 'real job' than a beloved career (if I'm going to be doing something that I don't enjoy, I'd better be making a heck of a lot more dough than what a postdoc brings in!). To clarify though, it's not that I didn't enjoy what I was doing - it's that I was stressing out over it too much.

As a postdoc, you can't really afford to work less, but you can think of ways to work more intelligently. You can do things like better organize your projects, make sure you're working on problems that you personally find exciting, set concrete and well-defined goals, etc. Good time-management skills are a must to have even reached this level, but like any art, one can always improve. Somewhat paradoxically, I also also think that it's important to make sure that you're productive during the time that I'm not working. I want to feel that my time off is actually relaxing, and not contributing to my stress in other areas.

So I guess the new question for me is: "Do the increased responsabilities and stress level associated with postdoc-ing diminish some of science's allure?" Unfortunately, my answer is a 'yes', but only partially. Some of the grand mystique of the entire enterprise is diminshed by the reality of working towards one's future and realizing that unlike most people, you still don't have a 'real' job yet. However, anyone who doesn't love science to begin with and yet still chooses to postdoc is looking for dissapointment. Though the honeymoon may be over, recognizing that the reality of real life has set in is not necessarily a bad thing, right?

1To cover my own butt, I should note that this also coincided with spending many more hours in the lab, frequently staying past 7 pm, and working weekends.

Rant: My Bike...

I'd been planning to buy a bike for many years now, at least since my M.Sc. when I was living back in Vancouver. Not only does a bike seem like a good way to get around, but commuting to work is an excellent way to get some exercise and stay in shape. What finally pushed me over the edge though, was D.C.'s rather unreliable mass transit system. By any reasonable standard, I live quite near where I work, and according to transit schedules I should be able to make the trip in ~22 mins plus waiting times. There have been many, many times, however, where it's taken me > 45 mins (I think the record was 1.5 hours) because of frequent delays and constant weekend track maintenance. Furthermore, both buses and the metro are pretty much always packed, meaning that I can't sit down to read away the monotony anyways.

So back when I got my tax return, I bought a hybrid 'commuter' bike (a 'hybrid' bike is basically a mountain bike frame on top of tires that are more similar to those of a road bike):

  Here's the bike, notice all of the chrome colored spokes (see below). 

I find that I like biking a lot - more than I expected, actually. I know that it takes me 40-45 minutes to get to and from work in the morning, which gives me time to do things like listen to podcasts and generally think about what I want to accomplish. Plus, as I've said before on my previous blog, I think that exercise is pretty much the best thing one can do to deal with the stress associated with the scientific life.

Unfortunately, all is not rosy in bicycle town; I've had a lot of problems with the thing in the past few months - so much so that I fear I've bought a lemon. The very first time I took it out, a tire burst, then another two weeks later. About four weeks after I bought it, the crank (the device that holds the pedals and drives the chain, broke and had to be replaced. Soon afterwards, spokes started snapping. I've basically been snapping about 1 spoke every week to week-and-a-half since they started breaking. I've been bringing the bike into the repair shop so often that the folks behind the counter have been asking me if I've been using it to take jumps off of curbs. Every time I've explained that I only use my bike to ride the 7 mi to and from work along a mostly even trail with a few rough patches. I used to ride my bikes way harder when I was a kid, and I can't remember ever snapping a single spoke (incidentally, I weighed about as much then as I do now).

So after several months of seeing me in the store almost every week, the folks at Performance Bicycle are going to 'rebuild' my wheels, essentially replacing each of the manufacturer's spokes with thicker chrome ones. Hopefully this will finally solve the problem1. Also, I should say that while my issues with the bike have been many, the folks at the bike shop have been quite nice about the situation and have never complained, nor tried to charge me for any of the repairs. If I'm lucky, the only trouble I'll be having in the future are dodging inept drivers who completely ignore the existence of cyclists altogether2. I'd really prefer not to have to buy another bike in a few months.

1The technician is of the opinion that the black spokes that come with my bike are of inferior quality - he sees them break more often. He called the manufacturer to see if they would replace the wheels themselves, but they claim that they've had no issues.

 2This is worthy of a discussion in itself. A few motorists I've spoken to have complained that cyclists are dangerous because they ignore the rules of the road. I've seen this multiple times with my own eyes, and it pisses me off everytime. However, it's usually the same sort of casual cyclists who don't wear helmets who are the ones that ignore road signals. On the other hand, I frequently run into drivers who treat cyclists like they don't exist, despite my signalling and eye contact. Is it worth hitting a person on a bike because you're too impatient to wait a few seconds in order to make a left turn? Also, I wish I could avoid riding on sidewalks, but some areas near where I live are just too dangerous to allow it :-(

Thanksgiving 2: The Turduckening...

Last year was my first American Thanksgiving, and as I said at the time, a simple turkey would not suffice to mark the occasion. If there's anything I've learned from the 14 months that I've been a guest in this country, it's that here you can either go big, or go home1. Thus the only solution was to put together one of the famous 'Frankensteinian' abominations known as turduckens. I was proud with how the birds turned out last year, but in building the monstrosity I learned a few things; a few tricks, if you will. Tricks that I wanted to put to good use on this Thanksgiving's much improved bird:

 Really, the only difficult part to making a turducken is that the birds have to be painstakingly deboned. Last year I left the legs on each of the birds, which led to a turkey giving birth to a duck, which was giving birth to a chicken as the dish shrank in the oven. I learned my lesson this time and only left the legs and wings on the turkey for presentational purposes. Here we see a deboned turkey with a layer of traditional stuffing upon it.

We then of course add a completely deboned duck, upon which a layer of cranberry stuffing has been spread. Note that each of the birds must have their skins completely intact for presentation and flavor.

Upon the duck goes the chicken, which is stuffed with a southern corbread stuffing, the recipe for which I obtained from Paula Deen's website.

The entire thing must now be skewered and tied together...

... so that it can be flipped over into the roasting pan. We then seasoned the turkey with an herb and butter mix and cooked it at 350 F for a long time. This thing is pretty dense, and our 12 pound turkey variant of the turducken took about 5 hours to cook.

In the end, she came out all right. Succulent and flavourful and smelling fowl (pardon the pun).

One overlooked benefit to the turducken is that the removal of all of the bones prior to cooking makes the dish quite easy to carve, and carve away we did! I must thank Arnauld for taking the above pic.

Last year's turducken was consumed by only three people, but I think that our stories about the dish caused it to become a minor legend in my circle. Thus when I talked about making another turducken this year, I got a lot more interest. In fact, we ended up serving it to a dozen or so people! Thankfully I got nothing but positive feedback on the dish, and I'm excited about cooking another semi-challenging dish in the near future!

1This sentence may not be true.

P.S. You'll have to forgive me all if this post seemed half-assed. I typed a longer version of the entire thing earlier today and my webhost 'lost' my post. Ungh.

The American Museum of Natural History...

As a huge fan of Stephen Jay Gould's, I've always wanted to visit the American Museum of Natural History in New York City1. I've always heard that the fossil collection of the AMNH is better than that of the Smithsonian Museums, and having grown up a childhood dinosaur aficionado, I couldn't resist. Last weekend I got the opportunity to travel to NYC for the second time and promised myself that I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to visit the museum on this trip.

The AMNH is a bit of a taxidermist's paradise, with the majority of exhibits displaying preserved specimens of the sort of wildlife that born-and-bred Manhattanites are likely unfamiliar with:

For some reason, I get the impression that many people aren't aware of how terrifying moose actually are. They're really, really big, and those antlers are very large. It's no big surprise that you frequently hear stories of people getting seriously injured (or even killed) when striking moose with their cars. (forgive me for bad pictures but the lighting in the museum was poor).

While I must admit that I prefer the zoo for observing extant North American wildlife, I have to commend the AMNH for providing a lot of interesting information along with their specimens. Each of the animals is described with a good amount of both physical as well as ecological detail.

I'll skip all of the extant animals except to praise the museum for its 'Hall of Biodiversity', which really boils down to an excellent illustrated overview of taxonomy:

Nothing really beats seeing a decent portion of the whole diversity of life's 'endless forms most beautiful' when it comes to appreciating evolution. Both the AMNH and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History do a great job of presenting the science behind displays.

As mentioned above, the dinosaurs are what I really came here to see:

Isn't the T-rex awesome?!?!? On top of simply getting to gawk at the magnificent skeletons, there's also an good amount of technical description about why the fossils were assembled in such a pose and what this may tell us about the beast's ecology.

The majestically enormous Apatosaurus. It's interesting to note that like any good scientists, the museum is quick to explain what we don't know regarding the beast - namely that the head is actually a plaster cast made by Henry Fairfield Osborne (the paleontologist who discovered the Burgess Shale) based on a guess as to what the creature's head may look like. No Apatosaurus head has been found attached to the skeleton.

I'll end with one of my childhood favorites: Stegosaurus. Those bony plates on its back are cool, but we're still not sure exactly what they were used for. It would help if we has a Jurassic Park2 type of situation to test our theories. However, if I've learned anything from film and television, such things typically end badly.

I'll spare you from posting all of the photos I took while at the museum. In fact, if you're interested in seeing how many specimens they have on display, you can get photos and descriptions of all of them on the AMNH website here. I'm just glad I finally got to see the museum after hearing so much about it. If you ever get the chance to visit New York City, why not take a stroll through Central Park capped off by a trip to the AMNH?

1Gould frequently claimed that seeing dinosaur fossils in the AMNH inspired him to become a scientist.

2At the risk of beating a dead horse yet again, I must point out that the most iconic dinosaur from Jurassic Park, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, was in fact, from the Cretaceous Period.

Trying Something New...

One of my great pleasures during my Ph.D. was blogging and participating in the community surrounding blog culture - The 'blogosphere' if you will. I managed to post somewhere along the lines of 3 posts per week on average, which I was satisfied with given the demands of school and life. I'd hoped to keep up a similar regimen during my postdoc, but for a while, it just didn't seem like I could pull it off.

So far, I've found postdocing to be far, far more time consuming than doing a Ph.D. This is partially work-related (I generally work from 10-7ish plus weekends, whereas during my Ph.D. I was more 9-5 plus weekends), but also compounded by 'externalities'. I now commute by bike 45 mins each way and try to go to the gym every morning. Thus I leave at 7:30 am and get back at ~8 pm. Factor in getting stuff together for the next day and there's little time left.

All this being said, I'm finding that this work all day followed by vegging out at night is becoming unsatisfying. Between Monday and Friday, I accomplish little in the way of non-work related personal development. Looking back, I know realize that this extracurricular stuff was a major factor in what got me so heavily involved in research in the first place. I read tons of science and humanist related material, which kept me immersed in the culture. I also got to incorporate some of the former into my own research.

Keeping up a website (or blog) is a form of personal development as well. On the rare occasions during which I felt the desire to revisit earlier posts on my former website, I realized how much I've improved at writing down ideas over the years1. My current focus on getting a research program up and running (which seems to be going quite successful so far!) hasn't left much room for writing, and I fear that I've been falling out of practice.

A few months ago on my former blog, I said that I wanted to get back into blogging. I meant it, but did a very poor job of following through with my intentions. There are many reasons for this, but one critical factor hinged on the baggage that my former blog carries. It was written druing a different period of my life, under different circumstances from which I've now moved on. I'm happy with the discussions I had on Musings of the Mad Biologist, but it's time for me to start something new.

All of my future musings will be here. Stay tuned.

1Please don't misconstrue this as tooting my own horn. I'm constantly trying to improve my writing, but it's heartening to see the progress that I've already made.