Science = Awesome, plus a free derail.

The whole point of education, from the very first day of preschool or kindergarten, is to better understand and interact with the world around you.  This includes both the natural world and the human environment.  Where this education and its pursuit of knowledge ends, as well as it particular direction or focus, is, largely, a personal choice.

 

I was first introduced to academia when one of my uncles was pursuing his Ph.D. in hydrogeology (I don't know if he got it; I'm thinking not), I really didn't understand it.  I actually really didn't even understand how higher education worked; every teacher I had ever had treated college as some distant mystical land you would only reach if you were extremely fortunate.  Furthermore, the concept of theses, dissertations, and the like, were totally foreign to me.  I remember asking him what a thesis and dissertation were, and he told me that they were basically a combination of a question he had asked about the field, and his work to find and answer.  I then asked him, "Well, won't people run out of questions?"

 

This was maybe my freshman or sophomore year of high school.  Needless to say, I've come a long way from there, and I'm maybe only a third of where I want to be.  Wherever that is.

 

I spent the better part of yesterday discussing scientific papers, listening in on a conversation about the organization of science and research institutions, making mutations, and helping set up equipment for a whole new scientific project in the lab.  I love this job and this work, but above all else, science in general.  I know it sounds boring, but hidden in my day yesterday, which might not be evident from by brief description, was a huge breadth of activity which rivalled my typical day at Columbia.  This is the beauty of science, and working within the field in a place that is challenging and invigorating.  Unfortunately, this experience varies greatly by workplace, but I'm glad I found this one.

DC Car Free Day and Bikes!

So I realize that the title of this post is a little misleading, because it seems like I'm going to write about DC Car Free Day and the role of bikes within that, but I'm not. They're two separate entities that I'm going to talk about individually, but they're linked. You'll see in a little bit.

Car Free Day

I was reading a copy of Express, the Washington Post's free daily newspaper on the way to work this morning, and saw an ad that said today was Car Free Day in DC. There are a bunch of events today, but I think a couple might be more interesting than others:

Alexandria has a "Local Motion" website (http://www.alexandriava.gov/localmotion/) and there's a "Car Free Pledge" contest with the possibility of some sweet prizes (http://carfreemetrodc.com/Home/tabid/54/Default.aspx). (I can't sign up from work because I don't have flash on this computer and can't install it.)

Also, the Circulator Bus in DC is free today, so I was going to take the Orange Circulator from Union Station and go by the Georgetown Barnes & Noble and get a copy of the Washington, DC Moleskine so I can keep track of interesting places and things to see/do/eat in an organized fashion. I bought one of these for London and Paris when Pam and I went for Spring Break, and they were very useful for getting around -- I had also marked the location of our hostels on the maps inside, so that was more helpful that you can imagine. Anyway, the Circulator bus website is here: http://www.dccirculator.com/routemap.html.It's normally a dollar, so it's pretty cheap on a normal day when it's not free.

Official Car Free DC Day website: http://www.carfreemetrodc.com/Information/tabid/57/Default.aspx

Bikes

Pam and I walked around DC yesterday, starting from Dupont Circle, going up New Hampshire to U St, then down 16th St to Rhode Island, then across on M St to Georgetown before crossing over the bridge to Rosslyn. Just before crossing the bridge, we passed three bike shops (Revolution Cycles, Bicycle Pro Shop, and Big Wheel Bikes), and one was still open (Revolution Cycles) and carried the Trek bikes I've been eyeing for the past couple months, the 7.2FX and the 7200. I've kind of been dragging my feet with this because the only place in Alexandria that carries Trek bicycles is too far away to walk, and would take maybe half an hour to get to after walking to the bus stop at the Metro and then busing it up there. This bike shop, on the other hand, isn't too much of a detour off my route home from work, and they have a larger store in a neighborhood in Arlington that's close to an Apple store (Pam and I are also eyeing Spore).

Anyway, I'm excited. Sorry if this was incoherent.

Edit: Since my text-only description of where we walked didn't make sense, here's a Google Map of the route (blue line):


View Larger Map

Testing Blog Posting by E-mail

So I haven't really been keeping up with writing this blog mostly because I spend 10+ hours away from home and my computer, and the nature of my job is such that blogging doesn't really fit well in that environment. (By that I mean I have way too many things to do away from my computer.)

Enter e-mail blogging! I had heard of this before on a couple other blogs, so I was trying to see if Blogspot supported this feature. If you're reading this post, it means that it does!

When your help isn't particularly helpful...

From the Washington Post:

John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters' opinions of the candidates.

"The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent," Feehery said. "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."

At what point did being an "insurgent" in this country make you popular or otherwise desireable as a political entity?

"Politics," or, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore"

The realm of national politics is extremely puzzling to me; not because I don't understand the process, but because the shit stuff that happens doesn't make any sense.

Honestly, I don't identify particularly strongly with either of the two major political parties, but I find that my values most often coincide with those of the Democratic Party. That, and people in leadership positions within that party appear to be less batshit insane than those in the Republican Party. Notice that everything I've said in this paragraph so far has been qualified with what amounts to a "maybe" in front of each statement.

I don't know too much about Biden, the Dems' nominee for VP, or really Palin, the GOP VP nominee. However, I've come across some information about Palin over the past few days, and just about all of it sets off the "wtf" alarm in my head.

She's a woman. Great, good for her. However, she has been quoted as saying something about breaking through the "glass ceiling," claiming that it's more than Hillary Clinton could do. Stop. Being appointed by a man to the second-highest office in the country isn't breaking through any ceiling. If anything it's reinforcing them.

Also, I found this AP article about claims made during the RNC. Here's a good one:

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

In a city of about 5,000 at the time of these elections, she was elected mayor with relatively fewer votes than I had when I was elected as a class council representative at Columbia (~110 out of 350 eligible voters). Seriously?

I also don't really understand why people are so keen on having the Presidential and/or Vice-Presidential candidates similar to a "typical" American. This was a major selling point pushed by the Bush campaign in 2000 -- "He's the kind of guy you could go to the bar and throw back a beer with." I would insist that a President be better than me, and I'm almost positive I wouldn't want to have a beer with him or her, mostly because I think that as President, they should have something better to do.

Also, since when have conservatives been in favor and supportive of women (and teenagers, even) having children out of wedlock? I really don't understand this one.

Hooray, I don't have TB!

Hospitals have a standard pre-employment procedure to administer a brief physical exam and screen for tuberculosis. In many hospitals, this means two separate skin tests (PPD) administered a week apart, and each read 48-72 hours after being placed. My second PPD was placed on Tuesday, and I went in this morning to have it read and also for te physical exam. Conclusions: I don't have TB and my blood pressure is low. Good news and news I don't know what to do with.

Anyway, having passed the physical exam and testing negative for TB, I was issued an ID badge, which looks something like the image to the right. Pam saw it and asked why I wasn't smiling. Really, it's because I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to smile or not, and even still, what Pam, and really most of you all, consider to be a smile is really a grin. In any case, technically, I am smiling in my ID picture. I'm just not grinning. This is just a quick mock-up I made of my badge. Points if you can pick out the things that I added and aren't actually part of the real ID. The read badge itself is simple, straightforward, and made ridiculously cute by the Children's National Medical Center logo.

That's right, it's a teddy bear with a stethoscope.

Orientation is Monday, at 8am.