Questioning Darwin

I've been thinking a lot about science education recently, having just given a two-day lab on bacterial transformation to a group of high school freshmen in the Bronx. It's really a great lesson; the kids get to transform bacterial with GFP and make them glow green. It shows them, first hand, the concepts of cloning, antibiotic resistance, and the link between DNA and protein expression. It really piques their curiosity. Which is what science is supposed to do. And why I was both pleased and dismayed by an article in the WaPo today.

The author goes on for a bit about some old high school history teacher that made him question everything and made history fun for him, whereas his science classes were boring and rote memorization. And if it's one thing the IDers have done for him was show him that biology can be questioned in the same, exciting way.

And it can. But not the way that IDers do it. He writes:

The intelligent-design folks say theirs is not a religious doctrine.
They may be lying, and are just softening up the teaching of evolution
for an eventual pro-Genesis assault. But they passed one of my tests.
They answered Gould's favorite question: If you are real scientists,
then what evidence would disprove your hypothesis? West indicated that
any discovery of precursors of the animal body plans that appeared in
the Cambrian period 500 million years ago would cast doubt on the
thesis that those plans, in defiance of Darwin, evolved without a
universal common ancestor.

See, that's all fine and good. That is a great way to disprove Darwin's hypothesis. Only such an ancestor has yet to be found. And until it has, evolution has not been disproved. Now, this author must turn around and ask the IDers how to disprove their hypothesis. What? They can't do it?

See the difference? Not questioning the facts of Darwinism in a science class is bad teaching. Bad teaching is a problem that is entirely exclusive from whether or not evidences for intelligent design or theories of irreducible complexity should be presented to students. If students aren't being forced to ask tough questions in their science classes, they aren't being educated properly.

But to introduce ID, specifically, alongside evolution and proffer it as another possible explanation is like teaching medical students that mental illnesses can be diagnosed by phrenology. Sure, there are probably a few doctors out there who may think that that is an alternative method, but any curriculum that gave phrenology any semblance of credence would be laughed out of accreditation. Saying that our current methods of diagnosis are incomplete, however, is a whole other story...

Don't Piss Off a Scientist

Earlier this week, P.Z. Myers lambasted some recent idiotic ID claims by David Berlinski of the dreaded Discovery Institute, which actually does more than just attack science (who knew?). Honestly, he's more restrained than he should be. When I was working on an Evolution v. ID workshop a few months ago, I spent many a day fuming at my computer (or the boy) and when I heard William Dembski speak to a bunch of Christian fundamentalists I nearly curled up under my seat and cried. Which is presicely how Myers (and other scientists) feel:

So what should I do in a debate with some sleaze like Berlinski, who
pulls this kind of dishonest crap? Spend 20 minutes teaching the
audience about Hardy-Weinberg, pull up the results of a half dozen
studies, and get all technical and detailed? Or walk across the room,
beat him unconscious with any one of hundreds of readily available
books that demonstrate his dishonesty, and kick him until he pukes?

And better yet, when Berlinski's essay had devolved into random babbling:

What the hell…?

This doesn't even make sense; all I can imagine is that Berlinski,
sitting in his little fantasy bubble, imagining how biology works
without ever consulting reality, has drifted off into some bizarre
alien plane where he is now warring with his own misconceptions.

Check out the article...

Bad Store Layouts

It's a well-known grocery store trick-o-da-trade to design your aisle layouts to maximize sales. The tricks are many and varied. For example, items that you want the shopper to focus on are usually on a shelf that's about 5'2" from the floor, because that is the average eye-level of a middle-aged woman which is your average supermarket shopper.

Apparently the shelf-stockers at Rite Aid didn't get the memo. This weekend I injured my back (or re-injured as it's a recurring injury from my more youthful, collegiate days) and so I hobbled to the drug store to look for some nifty product marketed especially for and yet not necessarily designed especially for back pain, like Doan's or something. And maybe some sort of insto-heating pad or other nifty contraption to make me feel better. And they had a plethora of back pain specific products, since this is America and we must be given 534,297 choices for everything.

And the were all on the bottom shelf. The shelf I couldn't reach because I couldn't bend over due to the back pain I was trying to alleviate by purchasing a back pain specific products that Rite Aid had convenient put on the bottom shelf.

I ended up purchasing plain old generic ibuprofen because a) it was cheaper and b) I could reach it.

Thoughts On My Commute and Stuff

There are a few things that are nice about not living two blocks from where you work. First, I get to ride the bus. Now many people probably think that that is a horrible thing, but I take it shortly after rush hour now so it's pretty empty. And I get to see new faces. The same new faces. I have bus buddies. And my own special seat. And I now know which buses are the good ones and which buses are the bad ones. I'd never stopped to think before about how relatively few buses were on one single line.

But maybe one of the best things about commuting is the advancements I've made towards entering the 21st century, technology-wise. First, I thought it was cool that I was the first kid on my block with DVR. TV watching becomes a whole new experience with it. But better than that, now I have an iPod. And all of a sudden I see the world through different eyes. The world has a soundtrack now. And I notice more and more people with those white earphones in their ears. It's like an Apple cult. See, there are bus buddies and there are iPod bus buddies.

And to even one-up myself, yesterday Amazon delivered my iTrip, so I can play my iPod through my receiver which is attached to my kick-ass surround sound system. Just think, less than two years ago I was stuck watching network television in real time and only able to listen to a Sublime compilation CD which was stuck in the broken CD drive of my five-year-old iMac in my apartment with only one floor.

More Shameless Self-Promotion

Often in my free time I get into long, heated discussions on other people's blogs. But sometimes I write letters to the editor. Rarely do I do so because it's harder to be short and concise than blustery and long-winded. So, ladies and gentlemen, yours truly has just had a letter to the editor published. Granted, it was for the Cornell Daily Sun up in Ithaca, so I had a better chance of getting in than the general public, but it's still a letter and it's still print and I have officially defended evolution in a more public arena.

Go me.

It's also interesting to see the editorial process in work. The letter was not edited for content or clarity, however they chose to emphasize in the title what I would have considered the minor point (that ID isn't a testable hypothesis) rather than the major point which was evolution is not a theory of origin.

Oh well. Go me anyway.

What's Worse for Western Society?

Polygamy or same-sex marriage?

This is the question that I think all opponents of SSM should be thinking about when the argue so vehemently against it, because I am afraid that the more they push against gay marriage and against the acceptance of homosexuality in general, the more likely polygamy will be to follow.

I think it is safe to say that polygamy is generally harmful to our society and I don't think I'd get any arguments from SSM-opponents. I'm not convinced that any new style of polyandry is actually beneficial to a significant enough population to outweigh the backwards slide to women's equality that would undoubtedly occur due to the use of polygamy by more inherently misogynistic populations, namely your more fundamental branches of Mormonism and Islam. We should, of course, be concerned with the possibility of polygamy in the United States since traditional polygamy is gaining popularity world-wide.

It is clear to many supporters of SSM, however, that polygamy does not naturally follow from gay marriage, yet to many SSM opponents it remains a mystery as to why this may be the case. The reason that SSM opponents find the slippery slope argument so compelling is because of the way they have been forced (and are forcing the rest of us) to shape the debate. And this all comes down to the refusal to choose to recognized sexual orientation as a suspect and protected class.

If sexual orientation were considered along with religion, race and sex, then the entire debate is an open/shut case. Restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples discriminates against gays, therefore gays should be allowed to marry. End of argument. The conservatives don't get their way, necessarily, but they get to keep marriage defined as a monogamous relationship. It would then be up to the polygamists to come up with a specific reason why they have the fundamental right to marry more than one person and why this would not only be beneficial to society but not harmful to an already protected class, oh, let's say women. I do not think that this would be an easy task, especially considering that a judge in Utah already found a compeling state interest in defining marriage as a monogamy.

But without any legal protection of sexual orientation, gays are forced to look outside of legislative means in order to secure protection for their families, namely suing in court. This leads to two problems for those of us who wish to keep the lid clamped firmly down on polygamy. First, marriage equality has to be argued for in terms of freedoms of choice (right to choose one's life partner) rather than on suspect classes. Second, arguments in favor of OSM-only have to exclude both SSM and polygamy.

While Gabriel Rosenberg (and others) makes some brilliant arguments for same-sex marriage based on sex discrimination, as well as against polygamy, it is becoming increasingly obvious that liberal-leaning courts will probably rule in favor of SSM not based on sex (which while articulate an argument, often comes across as clever world-play and manipulation of a system), but rather rule based on issues of privacy. And that leaves the door wide open for polygamy. Understand that I'm not making claims of a slippery slope. It's still possible to argue against polygamy even if the SSM debate is won over privacy; it's just that it's going to be a bit harder.

This leaves us with the opposition. How do they argue against SSM? Their two main pieces of ammunition seem to boil down to tradition and procreation, neither of which are terrible blows to polygamy. If we take a broad look at tradition, we lose to polygamy almost immediately, since polygamy was practiced not only by our own cultural ancestors but by the more recent ancestors and living relatives of a population of our country as well. And even if we limit the tradition argument to the traditions of our own country, since the Constitution was ratified, the traditional argument against polygamy is stronger, but not absolute given that the Church of Latter Day Saints has its roots in America and practiced polygamy in territories controlled by this country. And the procreation argument makes absolutely no sense against polygamy, since many children born out of wedlock could potentially benefit from having their father marry their mother, even though he is already married to someone else. In fact, it can be argued that outlawing polygamy can have a detrimental effect on those children, since it seems extraordinarily important to SSM opponents that children have "mothers and fathers" and that they be married to each other.

So what does that leave us? What's the bottom line? Same-sex unions cannot be stopped. They are legal in Vermont and Massachusetts and we can hopefully add Connecticut to that list soon, not to mention the millions of informal arrangements gay couples have already made. The path to recognition of homosexuality as a non-deviant orientation is well underway. Gays are already having families and the government has a compelling interest to protect its citizens, even ones that might not have 100% popular approval. Any evidence for the harm gay marriage causes to society is tenuous at best; the harm of polygamy, however, is well-documented.

So in arguing against same-sex marriage, we don't automatically exclude polygamy; but by arguing in favor of same-sex marriage, we can reinforce the importance of monogamy to a healthy society. It is essential for opponents of same-sex marriage to figure out exactly what about "traditional" marriage is important enough to fight for and what ideas can be sacrificed. Is it monogamy? Or heterosexuality? Or simply misogyny?

Activist Judges on the March

This week, the Supreme Court held, in a 5-4 decision, that the execution of juveniles is unconstitutional. Five unelected, robed men and women (women!) have decided, once again, what the American people can and cannot do. It should be up to the legislature to decide whether or not we can kill children, not a bunch of intellectual elites.

Our society has had a long history of executing children. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake at the age of 14 for being a witch. Are we to deny other children the honor of being martyred? We've been executing juveniles in the country for over 350 years! Before we were even a country! I'm sure we would have executed those Columbine kids if they hadn't done it themselves. Actually, that's a great point. The teenagers themselves like to execute each other so why does the government need to step in? For the few who don't want to be executed?

People will say we've been on the wrong side of this. But who are these people? Blue-staters? Europeans? Personally, I don't think we should be even looking at the Europeans for help. Their society is in such a decline that women are abandoning their husbands to get implanted with lesbians' babies just so they can have abortions! It's madness!

And it's not like executing children is discriminatory. They are being treated just like every other citizen who does something to get them executed. Where does it say that a child has the right not to be executed? Why are these unelected judicial elites inventing constitutional rights that aren't there in the first place? Where in the Bible does it say "thou shalt not execute kids"? Nowhere is where.

If we want to preserve the union that our forefathers intended us to have, we must stop these elite bastards from rewritting all of our laws and morals. Pretty soon they'll be telling us that we can't execute Michael Jackson because he has the mentality of a child. Look, there is absolutely nothing wrong with executing children, at least after they've been born.

It's the Third of the Month...

... do you know where your plaid is? I can tell you where mine is but I can't show you since it would be considered sexual harassment to my fellow labmates.

But we don't worry about silly things like sexual harassment on this day, do we? Nope. Not today. Today is the day that everyone is without judgment or regret or anxiety, even if your figures which you'd assumed were statistically significant are not quite in fact entirely unlike statistically significant. No, we don't worry about these things today. How did that line go in that edgy 90s musical? Today for you, tomorrow for me? Well, guys, today is for you you you!

Treat yourself to something special today, like maybe instead of a normal cup of coffee in the afternoon you get a half double decaffeinated half-caf, with a twist of lemon. Or instead of taking the bus home, take a cab. Or instead of committing sodomy, spice it up with a little gommorrahy. Do whatever suits your fancy; and do it twice. At least. Because you're once, twice, three times a wonderfully awesome person. Each and every one of you. Even those of you who stumbled onto this page because I somehow offended you in a blog comment box. Yes, even you.

Because while the Third of the Month is about celebrating your own very special uniqueness (which, by virtue of it's uniqueness is automatically special and can't be modified by a comparative since something can't be less unique if it's unique, but I digress), it is also about celebrating our humanity. Everyone's got some humanity, even Ann Coulter and James Carville. Heck, I bet buried deep down there somewhere, even Saddam Hussein's got a little humanity. If he'd celebrated the Third of the Month a little bit more we probably wouldn't even be in this pickle. Not that I think that the Third of the Month can cure all of our ills. Not at all, but it can sure make you forget about everything but the beauty that is you (at least for an average of 3-8 s).

So love yourself. And give me a shout out for my one year blogoversary! Because it was this day, one year ago, where I started my semi-daily web-musings. And I still don't average more than 100 hits a day, no matter how many times I mention the Gotti boys or Charisma Carpenter's breasts.

Go moist towelettes!

Dawkins and the Pope

This weekend there was an article about Intelligent Design in the New York Times Magazine. While the author doesn't say anything particularly new, one paragraph at the end pretty much sums up my entire position about evolution v. theism, namely that it's not an either/or situation. He writes:

One beauty of Darwinism is the intellectual freedom it allows. As the arch-evolutionist Richard Dawkins has observed, ''Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.'' But Darwinism permits you to be an intellectually fulfilled theist, too. That is why Pope John Paul II was comfortable declaring that evolution has been ''proven true'' and that ''truth cannot contradict truth.'' If God created the universe wholesale rather than retail -- endowing it from the start with an evolutionary algorithm that progressively teased complexity out of chaos -- then imperfections in nature would be a necessary part of a beautiful process.

He perfectly juxtaposes an avowed atheist and an avowed theist in the same paragraph, something that needs to be done more frequently. I'm becoming more and more convinced that we need an organization called "Christians for Darwin" or something like that. Kind of like "Jews for Jesus" only not as cult-y...

I'm Just Mad About Saffron

Like most environmental art, The Gates must be viewed from afar, because if you get up too close, you realize that they are made from cheap, industrial plastics and are proportionally off. However, if you don't look to closely and just amble through the park beneath the billowing fabric, it's quite breath-taking, even though Christo and Jeanne-Claude fail to convince us that Home Depot orange is really "saffron".

It did, however, lead to an amusing exchange between me and the boy. I, of course, began to immediately sing "I'm just mad about saffron / Saffron's mad about me". Of course, it was badly off-tune. A short while later, we were looking for baked goods at Two Little Red Hens and they had orange fabric in the window with a sign that said "We're Just Mad About Saffron". The boy was quiet for a while and then asked, in sheepish bewilderment, why the bakery had a sign up with the same words as my stupid, ficticious song. He apparenlty didn't remember the ubiquitous Gap commercials of 1999. Or Donovan. Or bananadine.

I wonder what life would have been like if he'd continued to think I made that warped song up. Apparently he didn't have hippy parents.... E-lec-trical banana!!

Why Does It Always Rain On Me?

Was it because I lied when I was seventeen?

California, for those of you who care, was fun. But wet. Very wet. The first five days I was in Long Beach, which, because I lacked a car and couldn't go anywhere, reminded me very much of every other convention town I've ever been in. They even had a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. The conference (Biophysical Society) was long but good, chock full of lipid-y goodness. The National Lecture left something to be desired, although some of the pretty videos of protein synthesis at the atomic level was pretty damn cool. I have no idea what science is going to be like even ten or fifteen years down the road, let alone when I'm an old man.

My poster presentation was long and arduous but I got some good feedback. And yes, for those of you who have never gone to a science conference before, it really is pretty much just like a science fair. Two prominent scientists who'd gotten into a pissing fight over their differing models a few days earlier resumed their battle over my data while I stood by in wonderment, like watching a ping pong match. It was flattering that they chose me to argue over, to say the least.

The Long Beach aquarium was wonderful, mainly because they let you touch stuff. The Queen Mary is a very big boat. The House of Hayden is a very bad goth bar. And the beach, while admittedly long, isn't so much a beach as it is a garbage dump.

And then, it rained. A lot. Just in time for my vacation part. The boy arrived late on Wednesday and after a delicious breakfast of crepes in the "East Village" artsy neighborhood, we rented our car and went to Hollywood! The Ho-Mustang, as I like to call it, was a sweet ride. 2005, less than 400 miles and shiny silver. I felt good driving into Beverly Hills.

I made a few observations while I was there:

1) Smoking isn't as anathema as I had thought it would be in California, although I'm assuming there's a huge difference between the Bay Area and LA. Cigarettes were sold in bars and as far as I could tell, everyone smoked.

2) Celebrity's do exist. In actually real life. I shouldn't be that shocked, considering I live in New York, but I've seen very few since I've moved here, probably because I don't get outside of the Upper East Side all that much. And don't pay attention even when I do. But I had two, genuine, A-list celeb sightings. First, I dined next to Tyne Daly at Lucques. I don't consider that all that exciting because a) I was in an upscale restaurant in West Hollywood and b) she's on Judging Amy. But she's definitely A-list. Second, after a miserable experience at the Museum of Television and Radio which was less of a museum and more of a warehouse of old Apple IIe's, we were driving around the neighborhood, in the rain (which was a running theme) and, stopped at a stop-sign, I spied a well dressed woman walking briskly. "Does that look like Rachel Griffiths to you" I asked the boy. As if on queue, the woman turned and looked at us. And it was most definitely, without a doubt, Rachel Griffiths, which was really exciting because a) she was just, like, walking on the street in the middle of nowhere (relatively speaking) and b) she's like totally on Six Feet Under which is like the totally most awesome show ever!

3) The desert is both beautiful and scary. Saturday we drove out to Palm Springs in search of a Starbucks mug. Needless to say, when it wasn't raining, the dark rolling clouds over the mountains, the vast expanse of white windmills and pink sunset were, um, breathtaking. If I had any semblance of writing ability I would attempt to say something poetic. However, in the dark, in the rain, with massive amounts of flooding and gigantic looming windmills, the desert is, um, terrifying.

4) It is extraordinarily disconcerting to be showering when the only thing separating you from the bedroom and the person watching TV in it is a glass wall which doesn't quite entirely fog over all the way.

That said, rain and all, it was a great trip. Except for the 8 hour airplane fiasco getting back, the landing in the snowstorm (FYI, planes: they land on snow), and the world's scariest taxi-ride back where the cabbie kept stopping to fix his windshield wipers when he should have been stopping to replace his tires.

More Miscellaneous Crap

I wanted to post about this talk I went to on Tuesday in which William Dembski spoke about Intelligent Design and Robert Shapiro of NYU responded. I also wanted to comment about Connecticut, New York and gay marriage. I've also had this short essay that I've been thinking about writing about polygamy....

But I have to leave for California in an hour. So it will all have to wait. I will, however, leave you with an image of the view from my old balcony, this time at night:

A World Without Pat Kiernan Reading the Papers to Me in the Morning at Forty Past the Hour...

... is like a world without sunshine. Color me crazy, but I don't want to live in that kind of world, a world in which I have to actually read the papers myself.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Yesterday, besides being the Superbowl, was also another important day. The Gipper would have turned 94. God rest his soul. "Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15." The man was a genius, even if his wife's "Just Say No" campaign was a dismal, misguided failure.

And speaking of old people, I also realized that the Third of the Month used to have a very special meaning for them, up until 1997 and probably never again after 2042. Apparently, social security checks used to be received on the third of every month! How exciting that right around 1997 was when the Third of the Month was first celebrated in its official capacity, back when we, no stranger to plaid or moist towelettes, began to spread the self-actualizing joy that is the Third of the Month to the myriads of people who need an excuse to love themselves. I think that old people getting money is an extremely appropriate way the Third of the Month can be celebrated. Are we not doing good for others by paying into social security and doesn't doing good for others in turn help us appreciate our own marvelousness? Or have I been sitting in front of my computer too long trying to link a linear Y axis to a logarithmic one and scale by a factor of RT?

Happy Third of the Month!

Well, the Third of the Month is upon us again and, if as if history was mocking me, I'm pretty much in the same boat that I was in last February around this time. According to my records I was hopped up on Day-Quil and stressed about my poster for a conference. Today I'm still getting over my miserable cold from last month and stressed out about my poster for a conference. But unlike last year, tonight I'm going to see a kick-ass friend perform in the one-act play of another kick-ass friend. Neither of these kick-ass friends knew each other until I joined them together with the awesomeness that is me.

See how awesome I am? See how awesome this day can be?

So what do we do on a day like today? We love ourselves. We love ourselves because, even though that frickin' groundhog saw his shadow and that I'm still exhausted from my move u-town, I still love myself enough to treat myself to an evening of off-off-off-Broadway drama. Because this day isn't about how much colder it's inevitably going to get; it's not about how you're never going to get this damn poster finished; it's not about how you've piddled the day away in meetings.

It's about how smart and beautiful and wonderful you are.

And how much you love plaid.

Oh, and moist towelettes. Don't ever forget about the moist towelettes....

Time Warner Cable v. Drug Pushers

My move has apparently coincided with the loss of my introductory high speed internet rate. It also has apparently coincided with rate increases. They slapped a big ol' package at me without my being aware of it so that now I have HBO, Showtime, Starz! and Cinemax, plus On Demand plus Roadrunner plus DVR, all for a whopping $132 a month. A hundred and thirty-two dollars a month! Well, all I really want is HBO. With DVR I never use my On Demand and I hardly ever watch movies on the other channels. But to only keep HBO, Roadrunner and DVR will cost me $119 a month. One hundred and nineteen dollars a month! So for 13 extra dollars I get three more channels and On Demand.

What I could is drop stuff like the internet, or the DVR or even HBO. But I can't! I'm addicted. And why? Because when I first signed up there were all these wonderful introductory offers and they were cheap! And then they started offering me more features! And I bought more! And then they raised the price, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't get rid of DVR! Do you know how hard it is to watch live TV and not be able to rewind or pause?! Do you?!?! It's so frustrating to be watching someone's provincial, regular TV and be a slave to real-time and predetermined time-slots. You see the problem, don't you? I can't stop. I just can't. And it keeps getting more and more expensive and I keep paying and paying and sooner or later I'm going to realize that 4 premium channels isn't enough and I'm going to have to order a sports package or get a TiVo or something. Because TiVo is smarter than DVR. Actually, I think I do need a TiVo.

See, the thing is, I told myself I could cancel my account at any time, if it got too expensive. But what's too expensive really? In the whole scheme of things. I'm not poor. I can afford it. Maybe not after I buy me an iPod, but I can finance it. Hell, I have good credit. I've got that 20 minute commute now; I need that iPod.....

Oh God. Somebody. Please. Stop. Me. Ah! Amazon! Damn you and your super-saver shipping!!!!

Farewell, Sweet Balcony...

Yesterday I turned in the keys to my apartment. I was there for almost four and half years. That is a very long time. Last night I had some friends over to help me say goodbye and only two of them even knew me before I'd lived there.

There is something extraordinarily monumental about something like this and it seems as if it happened all so fast.

That was my first real apartment. I entered it with a futon and some old Dartmouth posters. I left it with whole living room set and bonafide art. I threw the best party the graduate school has seen in a long time. I threw the best New Year's Eve party I'd ever been to, which included both vomiting and fire. I learned to grill and roll sushi in that apartment. I spent so much time on my balcony that I invested more money on lanterns from Pier 1 than I spent on bedding. I learned the ins and outs of horticulture there (well, more the outs than the ins, as my rotting parsley will attest to). Lisa and I performed "Once More With Feeling" in its entirety in that apartment. With a sword. Sam coated every wall with some form of alcoholic beverage. I came out in that apartment. I changed thesis labs and turned my life around in that apartment.

I fell in love in that apartment.

And I wonder, will that apartment see such levels of debauchery again? Will it's new inhabitants set fire to the window by grilling with an open flame? Will they leave fish on the balcony to rot throughout the winter because they completely forgot about it? Will my beloved Contessa return when spring comes and wonder where I am? Will the new inhabitants hurl objects from seventeen floors, some of them lit? Will the labs at SKI wonder where that guy who used to have blue hair and sunbathe half naked on the balcony went off to?

Well I'll tell you where he went off to. He moved into a pre-war duplex in the East 90s, where he has is first real lease, his first queen bed and his first (and hopefully last) real boyfriend to share it with. I guess I'm moving up in the world, even though I've moved down about 15 stories.

So to say goodbye, here I am (you'd think that's the only shirt I own), and my beautiful view. And if you look closely, you can see the Chrysler Building in all it's glory....

Where Have They Been Hiding?

I've lived in the city for over five years now and when you live and work in a place as bustling and diverse as New York, you tend to see a myriad of people. But one thing I've never really seen before is children. Oh sure, on the weekends you see teenagers playing basketball in the park or young families at brunch. Or at lunch-time you see small kids being strolled by differently shaded nannies, especially here on the UES. But I've never really seen any schoolchildren. You know, pre-teen to teen, hang out at mall, text each other on their Sidekicks kind of schoolchildren. I always knew in the back of mind that they must exist somewhere, just like you know, way deep down, that every time you watch American Idol, Randy is going to look more like a woman than he did in the previous episode until one day the horrible secret will be revealed that he's really Star Jones and you go "Aha! I just knew it!" You know, that kind of nagging suspicion that it is impossible for this city to be inhabited only by multi-ethnic adults and Aryan toddlers. So where are these pre-teens? And do they ever show themselves? I mean, I have seen Kids, so they must be somewhere.

Well I found them. Apparently they only come out in the wee hours of the morning, before I usually get out of bed. And they all travel via the Second Ave bus.

Microsoft Strikes In The Most Unlikely of Places...

So, in case anyone was wondering, my research is on polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), specifically long-chain PUFAs, and they generally come in two varieties, omega-3 or omega-6. The omega means that the first double bond (or first locus of unsaturation) is the third (or sixth) position from the terminal carbon. Carbons are usually named from the head-group, beginning with the alpha carbon, followed by the beta and gamma carbons, etc, but when you're talking about 22 carbons, for example, that gets unwieldy.

Now, if you read the literature, you often see omega-3 or n-3 interchangeably. Now why n, do you ask? I've often wondered that. Classically, omega and n aren't really related. And if you look in the literature, the terminology only changed in the past five or ten years. Before 90s, they are never referred to as n-3 or n-6 fatty acids. What's up with that?

Well, I will tell you. Microsoft apparently doesn't use standard symbol encoding, so when transferring from Word to Adobe or a Postscript printer, omegas magically turn into ns and they are a pain to get back. And somehow, over the years, the fatty acid community has just come to accept the fact that n-3 = omega-3.

Damn you, Microsoft!!!

Gays and Wealth

An idea that is often floated around is that gays, as a group, are wealthier and more successful than the average bear. This is often used by gay supporters as evidence that they will generally make good homes for children, are useful members of society, are more creative, etc, etc. It's also used by the far right to show that gays aren't really an underprivileged class since they do so well financially and occupationally.

But does this mean that gays are actually more successful or that gays who have come out of the closet are more successful? Or, similarly, does one's success help determine the ease with which he can accept his sexuality? Successful people have access to better psychiatric care; they are more prone to live in urban areas, which are more liberal; they tend to have jobs where the barriers to success are no more than women and probably less so; and they tend to be more self-confident due to their current or projected affluence that the negative social and emotional consequences may not affect them as much as if they were in a stifling or confining work environment.

Basically, what I'm getting at is that there may be the same ratio of gay to straight factory workers as gay to straight stockbrokers or academics, it's just that they're not very visible. Although it's hard for me to pinpoint why I'm smarter than the average bear.....