Secret Science Club, Post Lecture Recap

Last night's Secret Science Club lecture featured Dr Partha Mitra of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, speaking about his inquiries into the architecture of the brain.

Architecture? Brains? Sounds like this post should be on another blog. Enough of my joking, here's a brief summary of Dr Mitra's talk, with a couple of smartass asides...

Much of the brain's functions deal with the analysis of sensory information, and with locomotion, both crucial to survival and successful reproduction. In an extreme illustration of the "brain's" role, when a free-swimming larval sea squirt settles into a sessile adulthood, it's cerebral ganglion atrophies.

While single neuron analysis is very good, the analysis of the brain as a whole has been inadequate. The "brainscape", the architecture of the mass of neurons in your skull is largely terra incognita. One theoretical model for the brain is the "chemical soup" model, which emphasizes the importance of neurotransmitters. The "place theory" point of view stresses anatomical features of the brain. Neither approach is fully adequate to an understanding of the workings of the brain.

While studying the brain, any analogous structures resulting from convergent evolution would point to adaptive significance of said structures.

Mice are the typical laboratory subjects in mammalian brain studies- the Allen Brain Atlas has a plethora of information regarding the mouse brains (though, oddly enough, no studies have been made of the brains of evil supergenius mice).

Dr Mitra is also involved in an arts project, producing sculptures inspired by the structure of the brain.

After the lecture, some bastard in the audience raised the issue of plasticity in the brain. While the underlying "architechture" of the brain is important, there is some degree of plasticity.

All told, while we have come a long way from the glory days of phrenology, there's a lot of work needed before the architechture of the brain is well understood. Dr Mitra indicated that this had been a hot topic back in the 70's but had largely been "shelved". Here's wishing him well in his endeavors- without understanding the structure of the brain, how could we possibly be able to surgically remove it for travels throughout space?

News, Out of this World

So, the odious Rupert Murdoch's News of the World is going to be discontinued due to outrage over illegal hacking of private citizens' phones. Any diminution of Rupert's Reach is to be celebrated, as is any excuse to post a video by The Jam:





I'd be remiss if I didn't link to a poem about Paul Weller by the Antipodes' most dreamboaty poet.

In the face of Obama's caving in to the GOP on budget cuts, how about another Jam song (perhaps my favorite)?





Scary how topical this song is:

You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust

The Jam had a remarkable ability to perform heartbreaking songs which absolutely rocked... rave ups for the run down. The compilation Snap! is an essential document of the late 20th Century. Buy it, blast it! You'll have tears streaming down your cheeks even as you shake your boo-tay.

After a Rural Sojourn: Work, Work, Work

I'm putting up a perfunctory post because I am catching up with current events after spending time in the woods and, upon my return to urbanity, working a major fundraising event on the job. I'll have to

The event went well, although it pretty much occupied the entire long weekend. I had a good time, though I spent quite a bit of time running around in an attempt at bilocation after the public left the vicinity, and "i's" needed to be dotted and "t's" crossed.

I did have a run-in with a none-too-bright local freelancer. I knew she'd be a pain in the ass when I saw her in the company of another loopy "journalist" who wasted a lot of people's time after an autumn fundraiser by losing her Blackberry outside, in the dark, in a crowded location, and then pitifully beseeching anyone within earshot to help her look for it (outside, in the dark, in a formerly crowded location, at the end of a long workday- yeah, I've got a gajillion things to do in the course of an eleven hour endurance tour, but I'll help you look for a needle in a haystack). After the event, this individual came to me looking for a soundbite or blurb:

N.T.B.L.F.: "What is the significance of this event?"
B.B.B.B.: "I'm not authorized to make a statement for the organization, you need to talk to the public relations department."
N.T.B.L.F.: "...But the event, why did you choose to do it?"
B.B.B.B.: "I'm not authorized to make a statement for the organization, you need to talk to the public relations department. One of our P.R. reps will be here tomorrow."
N.T.B.L.F.: "I need to finish the story by tomorrow afternoon."

In other words, she wanted me to possibly put my extremely-cushy-except-when-it's-not job in jeopardy because she didn't do her own job properly. Hello, you got a press pass, didn't you call ahead to contact an appropriate representative of the organization? The first time she asked me to give a statement was okay, the second time, she asked, it was annoying, the third time was downright offensive. I enjoy a cordial, yet distant, relationship with the main office- I show up, do what I have to do, and avoid calling negative attention to myself by making unauthorized statements to the press. Part of me wanted to say, "Numbskull, the significance of the event is that we need money to maintain operations- it's a fundraiser!" I could very easily have given her a lofty statement about the event, and it's possible inspiration, but doing so would have been a gross presumption of authority I don't have. To cut her inquiries short without telling her to piss off, I mentioned that a possible inspiration for the event could be found in a nearby location, informed her of a feature of the landscape which suggested the event, and tersely told her that I had a half-dozen tasks I needed to perform pronto.

On a happier note, after the end of the fundraiser yesterday evening, I had to perform a couple of tasks that took me to a portion of the grounds which gave a good vantage of the local fireworks display. If I lingered over these tasks for a good long while, I think I can justify my actions... I didn't want to perform them hastily, thereby botching the job.

Independence Day

Last year, I posted the video for X's remarkable Fourth of July, a song which I will doubtlessly blast several times over the course of the day (before heading off to work the big summer fundraising event). The song still resonates, with it's tale of a couple trying to get through a rough patch. This year, I'm posting a jittery number by England's Comsat Angels, a band I really don't know a lot about. While the music of the Comsat Angels sounds nothing like the roots-rock that X specialized in, both bands would have been lumped into the "New Wave" or "Post Punk" categories. Any charting of hits by the bands would have been in the "College" charts. That being said, here's a song which sounds almost entirely unlike anything X ever recorded:





Happy Independence Day to all U.S. readers, and a healthy, enjoyable July 4th to all of my readers outside the States.

Leave Fireworks to the Professionals

Passed just in time for mid-July, missing the 4th of July completely, the New York legislature has lifted the ban on certain forms of fireworks. I am not a fan of amateur fireworks displays- leave the pyrotechnics to the trained professionals, people (a couple of years ago, I had the great good fortune to work an event which featured fireworks, and the pyrotechnics crew was an awesome bunch of fellows). Of course, the local fire department is also on hand whenever there's a sanctioned fireworks display, thus mitigating the potential dangers of wildfires.

A few years back (I've worked on July 4th for the past four years), I was at a friend of a friend's house for a Fourth of July party. The host had loaded up on a metric shitton of illegal fireworks, and was going to put on a display. His hard-drinking (she's the one who fell into the pool) cousin's even harder-drinking boyfriend was in the basement of the house, looking over the fireworks selection, cigarette dangling from his mouth...

Seeing this, the host yelled at him, "What the hell are you doing smoking?"
The drunkard's reply, "What the hell? You smoke in the house!"

At that, I went outside, and made sure I was ensconced in the farthest corner of the yard.

Happy Canada Day

I want to take an opportunity to wish all Canadian readers and the shockingly high number of Canadians on the bog-roll a very happy Canada Day. I don't know how Canada Day is typically celebrated, but I imagine it involves a lot of maple syrup, poutine, rye whisky, and socialized medicine. It's too bad I had to return to the job today, because I was in one of the most Canadesque states in the union, and could have been standing in the shadow of the Chateau du Frontenac, guzzling bloody Caesars after a few hours' drive. Sigh... my misfortune was being born beautiful instead of rich.

Enough of my smartassery- happy Canada Day to all my Canuckistani peeps (peops?).

Bastard's Back

I've returned from my brief sojourn in the north woods, and will be blogging about the trip (with pics) in the near future. The next couple of days will probably be nuts (big summer fundraising event this weekend), so my posts will most likely be pretty perfunctory. Suffice it to say, Maine was gorgeous, but my time was largely occupied with the work that needed to be done to open camp for the season.

I traveled up with my dad's sister and one of his brothers, and we arrived at camp around 7:30PM. With about an hour of daylight left, we had to open the camp, give it an intitial sweeping-out, and move our stuff into the cabin. The rest of the week was spent working- cutting vegetation by the grey-water leaching field, registering the boat, and getting it in the water. I was able to take a couple of jaunts in the kayak, and spent a good amount of time swimming (bathtime involves jumping into the lake with a bar of Ivory soap).

I took Thunder's advice, and took some pictures, so I'll be posting about the trip as soon as I get through the sheer madness of this coming weekend.