Blessed by the Potato

What a crazy couple of weeks. This last week in particular featured back-to-back all-nighters as I tried to finish my thesis revisions. The crazy thing is the revisions weren’t even that bad, I just have enough trouble writing the fluffy bits that go around the sciency bits the first time around, and re-writing them seems to completely drain me. Since this week was largely fuelled by my discovery of delicious home-made onion rings, I’m afraid to even step on a scale to see where I’m at now. Anyway, it’s over, the latest revised version is out of my hands, and I just slept 24 of the last 30 hours; feeling much better now. I’ve got the penultimate exam to study for now, and hopefully a week of working out to make up for the weeks featuring dozens of hours in a chair per day…

On with the links!

The Neurologica blog has a few neat posts, including a follow-up to the CBC Marketplace report on homeopathy. A homeopathy advocate complained to the CBC, but their review found that the report was fair. “The achievement of balance does not mean mathematical equivalence; rather, the important principle is that different views are, in the words of the CBC policy, “reflected respectfully.” Also, a post about human echolocation.

A pair of articles in the Financial Post on condo speculators and using the housing bubble to sell out and fulfill your dreams. I know a few people my parents’ age who realized in the last few years that they could sell their house and retire off the proceeds if they moved even just a little ways outside the GTA. I’m surprised it hasn’t been more.

Google’s using its search data to discover interesting trends, such as uncovering the spread of flu-like symptoms. There are a lot of other possibilities for the correlation of search terms with real-life events, like getting a leading indicator of unemployment.

The CDC has created a clever page to use the threat of a zombie plague to inspire disaster readiness for more mundane emergencies.

Via BoingBoing, an interesting case in Texas on radiation in the drinking water, and the implications of margin-of-error. On the one hand, I can see the rationale for using the most liberal interpretation of the stats: who wants to tell a bunch of Texans that there’s slightly elevated levels of radioactivity in their drinking water (less than the margin-of-error above the limit), especially if the regulatory thresholds are set conservatively anyway. But, it’s not proper to consistently subtract the margin of error like they did. That’s the most optimistic interpretation of the data, but not actually the correct one. If it was a one-off reading, you could perhaps make that argument, but when it consistently happens then no, you know that the “true” value you’re measuring is indeed above the threshold.

Germany has decided to shut down nuclear power by 2022. I find that surprising: that’s a big shift to make in a deceptively short time period. According to the article, 23% of Germany’s power came from nuclear prior to the Japanese tsunami. In the wake of the fear that followed, Germany promptly shut down its 7 oldest reactors, and I’m surprised to see that sentiment following on for so long to have this much impact even on their newer reactors. 23% is a lot of power to have to find elsewhere. For comparison, roughly 8 years ago Ontario vowed to shut down our coal plants within 5 years, and it was a challenging goal to meet — indeed, the goalpost was moved to 10 years down the road pretty quickly (2014). We’re pretty close here in 2011: 8 of 19 units have been shut down, and the remainder are seeing less utilization. And coal was just about 20% of our energy mix before the phase-out. So the Germans have some pain ahead of them, and some hard choices: what on earth are they going to use to replace that much baseload power? Or will they have to pick one fifth of their things to turn off when the brownouts and rolling blackouts threaten?

I was just sitting here thinking about all the different ways I love grant writing. I mean there’s…

…er…

Ok, not much at all to love.

Well there is that unique state of mind, a seemingly impossible superposition of terrified and stressed into pulling your third all-nighter, while also being bored out of your skull. But the word I would use to describe that would not be “love”. (It’s actually pretty similar to thesis-writing).

I understand the need to justify why you should get money to do research, but it’s a pretty frustrating process. It takes a tonne of time since these grant applications are usually huge (even just doing scholarship apps earlier in my grad school days used to take up a full two weeks out of every year), yet the success rate is quite low, on the order of 10% (or worse!). So it’s especially frustrating to sometimes get rejected and find the reviewer’s comments were, well… stupid. Like they didn’t even read the proposal, or didn’t understand the point of the competition, or created a list of tiny nit-picks, but the criticism was enough to not get funded anyway.

I would much rather just give a 2-hour or whatever presentation to the grant committee, especially since it might let them ask questions, avoiding arbitrary denials due to a reviewer skimming a grant and missing a point, or misunderstanding something. Though I do appreciate that with the low success rate (small amount of funds compared to applications) they seek any reason to burn an application, it is just so disheartening to see a month’s worth of work (and the next 3 years of funding) go down the drain because some reviewer phoned it in.

Anyhow.

There was a little discussion at some other blogs about how we do science. I don’t want to comment too much right now since I don’t really have any good suggestions on how we should structure science, but something does need to be done, at the very least in the personnel department: as discussed on the other blogs, the post-doc system doesn’t really work. We shouldn’t be penalizing people for trying to put down roots and stay in one place, indeed, in other fields that’s called experience and is considered a virtue. I’m attracted to that idea of a scientist position: like a post-doc, where you do science on a day-to-day basis and aren’t a professor/group leader, except an actual job, with security, benefits, living wage, a place in the organizational structure (rather than a not-student not-employee), and a future. I can’t say though if that otherworldly romantic notion is at all practical, or how we get there from here.

Today is the 50th anniversary of JFK’s speech at Rice.

My favourite part of the speech — I’m sure the favourite of many — is in the title. There are many situations where those words apply, from choosing worthwhile courses over electives with easy marks, to bike routes for your daily work-out.

My second-favourite part:

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them.

My neighbour, who lives in the other half of the duplex here, moved out a few days ago. He left a bag of garbage on the front porch. I don’t know what happened to his garbage can (I’m 90% certain the landlord left a can with a locking lid specifically to deter the raccoons for his half), but bags are simply not an acceptable container for food waste in this area, especially not in the summer. So of course, now I’ve got a raccoon outside my front door, frolicking in half a loaf of stale bread. I tried to shoo him away, but apparently I’m not terribly frightening on the other side of the glass. He’d only run as far away as the bottom of the steps, and be back in less than a minute. I don’t really want to risk opening the door to become more menacing, in case I’m not.

So I decided to get creative and try deterring him with my laser pointer. I banged on the door and shooed him off the porch to the steps, then as he was about to put a paw down on the top step, started waving the laser dot in front of him. He seemed to bug out the first time, afraid the porch was protected by an evil glowing raccoon-demon-equivalent or something, and after the second time he went around the side and came across the railing. There, I spun the dot around right where he was planning to land, which stopped him 4 or 5 times from jumping down. But I guess he’s hungry — and he already knows that garbage has food in it — so the little light bug couldn’t keep him off for long. I kept playing with the laser in the hopes that he’d get distracted and chase it like a cat. That’d be fun for me, and also keep him from making more of a mess of the garbage. Unfortunately, though I’ve seen that behaviour on youtube, he quickly lost interest in the laser dot once he figured out it wasn’t a serious threat to his dinner.

I was just congratulating myself on a decent week for dieting and exercise. I picked up lots of fresh veggies and whole wheat tortillas for wraps, including a bag of vidalia onions, which were on sale.

But then I got to thinking: a whole bag of onions is a lot of onions. What else can I make with onions?

Onion rings.

I tried looking around online for recipes, and came up with this quasi-compromise. Many recipes call for beer, but I don’t drink beer. Though I do have a few in the fridge, they belong to others, and I don’t really want to open one just to try out an onion ring recipe. Plus, I doubt A&W is using beer for theirs, and that is the pinnacle of onion ring I am aiming for.

Batter:
1 egg
1/4 c milk
1/4 c flour
1/4 c corn flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
A pinch of cayenne pepper (about 1/4 tsp — this could really stand to be ~doubled)
1 tsp paprika (this could also stand to be increased)

Mix together. Cut up onions. Dip rings in batter, then coat in coating. Fry, salt to taste, enjoy.

I came up with my own coating using corn meal and ground up breton crackers, but Wayfare suggested I just use shake ‘n bake, which turned out to be far superior.

Now the key to shake ‘n bake is that it can be baked. I fried a batch first, and they were superb (even my home-brew coating was decent). The baking was merely satisfactory: this batch had the quadrupled cayenne pepper (which turned out to be a bit too much), and though the shake and bake came out nice and crispy on the outside, the texture still wasn’t quite as good as the fried batch. Still, tasty enough.

I was going to take a picture for you all, but could not find my camera, and was hungry. Now of course I sit down at the keyboard and there it is, just a little to the left. Oh well, I’ll just have to make them again to get the picture.

If you’re reading this, then we’re saved. The world has not ended, despite the recent predictions of some. Macho Man Randy Savage died to save us, by keeping Zombie Jesus in a headlock through the appointed hour. Thus every year henceforth, followers of this sect will celebrate Macho Mania on or about May 21 (Canadians may do double-duty with Victoria Day), to celebrate the Macho Man’s sacrifice for all. Ooooh yeah.

Of course, others believe that the prediction was nonsense to begin with, so little to no supernatural mercy can be ascribed to Saint Savage. Potatoism (the way of the Holy Potato) does not contain any explicit teachings on eschatology, no hints as to whether the world will grind to a halt in the freezing darkness, be consumed by flames, drowned by unstoppable seas, or devoured by ravenous zombie dinosaurs — and has certainly provided no sell-by date for the planet.

So yeah, either no danger to begin with, or our continued existence is owed to an unlikely hero’s struggle in the hereafter. Either way, life goes on, and the devout have their new hero, and the rest of us have an excuse to party and eat slim jims in the nice weather of early spring (any recommendations on vegetarian slim jim alternatives?).

I don’t understand what’s happening with TEPCO - the Japanese power utility that is the owner of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

I made a small speculative bet on it a few months ago, based on the theory that it was oversold based on nuclear fear. I figured the weak point in my analysis was the clean-up cost, as there was a Japanese law to protect nuclear operators from liability in the event of a natural disaster such as the tsunami.

Then in the wake of the disaster, the government seemed to be avoiding the implementation of that law, and I couldn’t figure out why. Sure, the optics weren’t great, but the lawmakers surely knew that a nuclear accident as a result of a natural disaster would be messy — that’s exactly what the law was for. The government seemed to be groping around in all directions: on the one hand trying to create bailouts and schemes for TEPCO and other nuclear operators, and on the other hand trying their darndest to sink them.

One less-important point in my analysis was that with the nuclear plants off-line, TEPCO was surely going to make higher margins on their thermal plants as power prices rose. Instead, the government has not allowed the prices to increase, forcing TEPCO to eat the loss (as fuel costs for thermal plants increased).

Anyway, I probably should have bailed when my initial thesis looked like it might not be true (legal protection to limit the risk of bankruptcy). It’s down over 20% this week, and based on the action in Japan last night, will probably open down another 10% today, putting me at a 60% loss. It’s a small position — I knew it was speculative from the start — but still hurts.

One big factor making me consider bailing is this recent article, which I simply cannot wrap my head around. It makes no sense for the government to be calling for loan forgiveness at this point, to try to pass the burden off to third-party lenders when there are other tools available (e.g.: direct government assistance, as per the previously-mentioned law). If a step as drastic as debt modification is needed, then that’s an indication the common shares are worthless, and it’s time to bail. Unless they’re also modifying that section of the law, where debt holders come before equity holders.

“Tokyo Stock Exchange President Atsushi Saito struck a slightly more incisive tone, and was quoted in the Nikkei business press as saying that Edano’s comments regarding debt waivers were “illogical.” “

But like I said, the government can’t seem to make up its mind on what to do, and it’s not yet clear how much this will cost TEPCO — we’re still largely in the period where fear reigns supreme over information, so it’s hard to say what the value is. Maybe months from now when the spotlight has moved on, the government can “do right” by TEPCO. Maybe it is doomed to bankruptcy and the banks will have to shoulder losses.

I just can’t tell anymore with this one what’s crazed government officials saying stupid, nonsensical things (which is often an opportunity for mis-pricing), and what’s an actual risk of total loss (which is to be avoided). My gut is telling me that this is perhaps the moment of maximum pessimism, and that this is a chance to buy, not sell. But, my brain is saying that the initial reasons for buying have been proven wrong, so it’s time to cut the losses, and that’s what I’ll do.

Well, my outreach event went fairly well for the morning half. The first class went almost exactly to plan: I went through my prepared material, the kids seemed interested, had a few good questions but were fairly quiet. The second class had a bunch of questions and we kept going off on tangents, so I only got through about 75% of my prepared material, but that was fine because the point was to get them interested in science and learning and engaged, and I think that objective was achieved.

Then in the afternoon, I was just getting going in my presentation when things fell apart. I got to the point where I was talking about feedback mechanisms between the brain and the body, and how if you hear a loud noise and are startled or scared, your heart rate will increase. And just as I finished that sentence, the fire alarm went off.

The teacher was reminding the kids to just get up and go, to leave their stuff. I grabbed by laptop and my backpack, but left the rest of my gear behind, figuring it was probably just a drill.

It wasn’t. There was unfortunately a real fire there, so I didn’t get to do the other two classes. We all had to wait around outside for a really long time — on a fairly cool May day with most people not having their jackets — with no news of what was happening inside. Finally, they let us into the cafeteria and the portables, after the last period had started. It was clear that there was an actual fire, and that the kids weren’t going back to class, but I guess since this is a school district with a lot of buses, they didn’t just release them.

So there we are, cooped up in the cafeteria with basically no news, nobody has their stuff with them to study or do anything productive, so the kids are basically just chatting, playing with their cell phones, etc. Some kids have some paper and start making paper airplanes to throw, and I go “hey, let’s take advantage of this opportunity.” So I start making a different paper airplane and throwing it around, trying to get them interested in perhaps doing something that keeps them interested in learning (that was the whole reason I’m there). I throw it down the length of a cafeteria table (an impressive distance), and a teacher at the other end picks it up, crumples it, throws it in the trash, and gives us the dirtiest look. Another teacher comes up to me and was like “I can’t believe it was a teacher throwing airplanes!” in this disgusted tone.

And I’m like “what?” It’s not like they’re throwing airplanes in the caf at lunch on a normal day. The fire drill has been going on for over an hour at this point. The police arrived to start an investigation, and no one was going back into the school proper. Some leniency in discipline should be allowed in the circumstances. Many schools have paper airplane competitions because they can be fun educational opportunities. Nobody seemed to want to do anything with the time — not tell stories on the stage, not find their class and try to continue a quasi-lesson in the field, it was just a matter of keeping the kids in-line until the buses got there at the normal end of the day.

I think that’s why, despite the fact that I like to teach, I never really wanted to become a high school teacher. Too much baby-sitting, not enough teaching. I have to temper that remark: not all teachers are more interested in getting through their day without trouble than they are in shaping young minds, kids can of course be damned draining on a person’s energy, and if you give them an inch, they will often take the yard.

Anyway, I had to wait over two hours before I could get back in the school (with an escort) to get the rest of my stuff and leave. What a day.

Brandon Sanderson fantasy epic. For some of you out there, that may be all you need to hear to go pick up the Way of Kings now that it’s out in paperback.

Once again he’s crafted a whole new world with its own set of magical rules, only this time the people themselves are only just re-discovering how the magic works, so we don’t get a clear picture of it ourselves. This can be a little frustrating at times, but that’s perhaps just the curious child in me wanting to know what the answer is, because I know he almost certainly does have one, and isn’t making this stuff up on the fly. The main characters are noble and engaging, with just enough of a flaw to their personalities to keep them interesting and relevant.

It’s extremely difficult to criticize the Way of Kings, but I don’t want to spoil too much by gushing. Fortunately, I’m very good at criticizing: first up, it’s looong. Most of it seemed very justified and engaging though, but be warned that WoK, book 1 of this Stormlight Archives trilogy, comes in at about the length of lesser trilogies. There were only one or two chapters I’d have cut, in particular the one with the fisher-people didn’t seem to have a point in this story, and wasn’t revisited in this book. I’m sure he’ll bring it up again in the next book, but it really stuck out for me as being out of place. Often, I wanted to follow one character’s story arc for longer than the chapters were laid out, so at a few points I found myself skipping ahead to the next Kaladin chapter, then going back and reading a few Dalinar chapters, etc. But that’s really stretching to find things to critique.

One final issue is that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the book in its own right. It was definitely an enjoyable read, and I’m eager for the sequel to come out, but a lot of plot threads seemed to be left open for the following books, so I would find it a little hard to read this one as a stand-alone work. That’s somewhat troubling because according to his blog, Brandon won’t have the next book out until 2013-ish. But the writing load he’s laid out is just incredible. What would be an extremely prolific lifetime career for nearly any writer, and he seems to imply it’ll just be the next decade or so.

My favourite Brandon Sanderson work though would still have to be the Mistborn Trilogy, which I reviewed the first instalment of earlier, but linked here to the complete boxed set (which has been available for some time). I guess I should briefly mention the other two books: they were quite good, but I fell in love with the world he created most of all. I really don’t want to spoil it, but at the same time, can’t help but mention that this isn’t your typical fantasy epic. The first novel starts off halfway towards a heist movie — except instead of the charmer, computer guy, demolitions expert, and thug, we have different classes of magical allomancers working together. The whole series takes a big twist in the middle, and goes in a new and unexpected direction. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

I do not have time to follow his blog on a daily basis, but he does have some interesting material up there. For example, the deleted scenes offer some insight into the process of revisions a real author goes through. I hope I can find that useful myself: I’m a terrible one-and-done author, and I always struggle whenever revisions are needed.

A final note: some of the links above are affiliate links to Amazon. If you use those links then buy the books, I’ll get a small kickback from Amazon, so if you’re going to buy them, might I suggest doing it that way? That said, I of course don’t allow that fact to influence my reviews.

PS: Have you heard of Claritin eye drops? Magic! I’m thinking of writing a fantasy trilogy of my own, based on the wizardly use of their magical essence.

I’ve blown through multiple thesis timelines now. My last one I printed off I thought I’d actually make: submit my thesis on Friday the 13th of May (a nice, ominous day to submit), defend sometime in late June, spend July and August as a post-doc in my current lab while I went job hunting for September (convenient as many academic jobs line up with the academic terms). But here it is dawning on the 12th and despite my most recent string of all-nighters and a location change, I’m still not done this round of revisions — and there are still more to come after this. Forget June, I’ll be lucky to finish by July at this rate. My dad says to relax, a few more weeks/months isn’t going to hurt, and I need to take a vacation. I do need to take a vacation (that was the plan for after I submitted). And as much as I wanted to be done by June, July isn’t that much worse… but I just can’t keep slipping behind.

So the rest of the world is wide awake now and I’m still not in bed. Overall, not a particularly productive day in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense (vs. the last few weeks), quite productive indeed, even if it did end with a rousing game of chase-the-kitty. Which was hilarious because she ran like 5 steps into the bathroom then realized her mistake, trying to scramble out of there. I could totally see her going “Ahh! Not in there, it’s all dead ends and bathtubs!”

Anyway, I can’t believe how much work there was still to do on this thing. I thought when I finished the draft at the beginning of April I was in the home stretch and it would be all downhill from there.