Columbine

I've spent this evening rewatching Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. I confess I'm not a huge Michael Moore fan; I've only seen three of his movies (Fahrenheit 9/11 and Roger and Me, which I watched in high school). I'm not generally in the habit of choosing demagoguery over sober analysis of facts, and so I find myself frequently disagreeing with Moore's tactics, if not the motivating arguments. I do, however, respect his right to do his thing, and while the films do irritate me, at least they make me think.

Which is a lot more than I can say for the vast majority of modern American film.

I first saw BfC a few years ago on television, and I'd missed the first twenty minutes or so. Thinking back on it, I remember being most surprised by the interview with Marilyn Manson. I was caught off-guard by Manson's articulate reflection on the relationship between entertainment and violence. Sure, I have a couple of the guy's songs, but I was never really curious about his mental faculties. The celebrity mind holds little temptation for me.

This time around, however, I was struck by the visual imagery of Littleton, Colorado, home of Columbine High School. The imagery held two-fold resonance for me, with the first being the recollections of watching the tragedy unfold on CNN back in 1999. But there's another aspect to it -

You see, I grew up there.

We lived in Littleton from my third grade year until seventh grade. Our home was in Columbine Hills, a staunchly middle-class neighborhood. Our neighbors were nurses and policemen, with a scattering of Martin engineers. My brother and I spent our afternoons running around like savages with the neighbor brats until it was time to come home for dinner - except for the summers, when we spent all day doing that. And in winter, when we sledded down the precipitous slope of our backyard and tried to avoid tumbling down the terraced face into the next house's porch. Things became decidedly worse when my parents erected a wooden fence at the end of our hillside property.

You know, I think this picture might have been taken the very first day we moved into the house. Look, there are no curtains in the windows or furniture on the deck. I also appear to have been dipped in cotton candy. Ah, the '80s.

My mother used to take us to the high school in the summers because at the time there was no public library in Littleton. The high school backed up against Clement's Park, and usually after an afternoon in the library we'd be set loose in the park. I seem to remember orange and blue playground equipment; we had our birthday parties there a few times. Just before entering the Columbine High School library, I would minutely examine the mural on the wall. We'd moved to Colorado from Florida, and I think I found the Disney figures in the mural oddly comforting - if Mickey Mouse had found us all the way in Colorado, surely Santa Claus would be able to as well.

Now, of course, my memories of that library are overlaid with the security camera footage from the shooting. Students crouched under desks. White t-shirts. Shooting. Running. Bombs. Fire. Bodies. I can remember an incident I wasn't a part of.

The shooting happened my sophomore year in college. Go ahead, do the math. It was the middle of the afternoon and I'd dragged myself back into the triple I shared with two other girls on Washington Square West. It was April, and through the windows I could see the leaves on the trees and across the park, the science building I'd just left. I dropped my bag on my ridiculously elevated bed (flipped-over bunk) and casually glanced at the TV.

"That looks like Clement's Park," I said, mostly to myself.

My California-girl roommate looked at me with uncharacteristic focus. "That is Clement's Park." She paused. "How do you ...?" She reached for the remote with one hand and my arm with the other.

And so I spent the afternoon sitting on my bed, watching it happen. Knowing that none of my friends were still there, but wondering about their families, and my brother's friends. Trying to decide whether to call Colorado, and who to call, and what I would ask. Picking out my backyard from the CNN footage that framed the school against the hills.

Thinking about Mickey Mouse.

In March of 2007 I joined KC in Denver for a few days while he attended a conference. During the days I nominally worked on my thesis and puttered about downtown Denver. One day KC agreed to drive with me out to Littleton and look at the old house and my old school.

It's true you can't go home again. We drove through endless strip-mall territory between Littleton and Denver, all in repeating units of Borders-Pet Smart-Target for solid miles. The prairie dog towns I remember had been replaced with Costco, Chili's, and TGI Friday's parking lots. The entrance to Columbine Hills had a new sign proclaiming its status as a "covenent-protected community," which made all the short hairs on my neck stand up. After getting a good look at - I'm not joking - the Jesus-fished/gun-racked pick-up truck in our old driveway that disgorged a mulleted man, a case of Budweiser, and a verminous child, I'd had enough.

We visited my elementary school, Governor's Ranch, which was brand-new when I attended. It still seems cheerful, but a bit old, somehow. Smaller. Tired.

And of course, we went to Columbine High School. I tried telling KC about how the memories in my mind lie on top of each other. I tried to tell him that in order to get to the bottom memories, I have to push through the top ones first.

In the end we just stood in the parking lot and looked at the trees, and the school, and the mountains. Now that's the top memory for me, the one I push through first. Just looking.

Back Blog : Dolphin House

Dugongs and dolphins – the two reasons I went back to Marsa Alam last week.

Despite 6 dives I still struck out on the dugong. I’m starting to think that the damned thing doesn’t really exist. Well, I’m lying, I did see two dugongs – on a postcard and on a sticker adhered to a nitrox tank. And I believe in the theoretical possibility dugongs, since I was a kid in Florida and I’ve seen manatees.

Dolphin House, on the other hand, seemed like a sure shot. About an hour away from Marsa Alam lies a horseshoe-shaped reef that’s been colonized by a group of spinner dolphins. Unfortunately, it’s also a very easy tourist destination, and as a result, “casual” tourists have access that usually is only enjoyed by marine biologists and other researchers.

It seems, though, that a coalition of NGOs and the Egyptian government are trying to prevent Samadai Reef (the reef’s “real” name) from becoming DisneyLand Egypt. The reef and its enclosed lagoon are divided into three zones: an outer zone for diving boats and zodiacs, a middle zone for snorkelers, and an inner zone that’s dolphins only. This zoning system is to ensure that the dolphins have “control” of the encounter – and to minimize the potential for animal harassment. A surprisingly robust authority presence and a US $15 entrance fee seem to keep the site functioning along its intended purpose.

Our boat left the Oasis very early in the morning to try to beat the rush. Since it’s forbidden to dive with the dolphins – unless the dolphins come to you – the diving attraction of Dolphin House is the lovely system of swim-throughs, caves, and pinnacles that lie around the edges of the horseshoe. In between the two dives, you hit the water with your snorkel and your ridiculously oversized flotation vest, and hope for the best.

We were the first boat there, which was gratifying. We could see the fins of the dolphins on the surface, but they were in the no-swim zone, so we got on with our first dive as best we could. It’s really hard to suit up properly when you’re craning your neck and hoping for a miracle.


The diving was quite lovely. We had spectacular visibility due to the almost complete lack of wind – the surface of the sea looked like pack ice, it was so smooth. I’ve discovered that I really like swim-throughs, which are basically underwater tunnels. They can be a bit tight and they usually have silty bottoms, so it’s great buoyancy practice. And it’s just scary enough to be thrilling without engaging the part of the human brain that’s a gibbering idiot during a dive (it’s usually gibbering something along the lines of are you crazy??? All your air is in this tiny hose!!! Surface! Surface!! That’s what 3 billion years of evolution gets you if you’re a land-dweller). I also got to see an enormous anemone studded with clownfish, all of whom were prepared to beat us to neoprene pulp.









We gulped down our lunch after the first dive and watched with sinking hearts as the swim zone filled up with snorkelers. The vast majority of them were the worst kind of resort trash – the Italians and Russians who ruin ecosystems due to ignorance and irresponsibility (case in point: Sharm El Sheikh). When the dive masters finally let us in the water, we divers scattered through the dive zone in small groups of 2 and 3, trying to dodge the herds of Italians.

The dolphins hovered just over the line in their zone. They clearly were not pleased by the huge groups thrashing in the water by the marker buoys. My Swiss friends and I drifted a bit away, and since I was getting cold I put my face in the water to try to amuse myself. And then, just at the edge of my vision, I saw –


I have jumbled recollections of the next forty minutes or so. There was a lot of splashing, a lot of swimming, and the occasional shout followed by a gurgle. The guides for the Italians led their locusts in broad swathes across the swim zone, disrupting encounters. Basically, this pattern happened over and over: a group of 5-7 dolphins would dive deep and swim below us. We’d look down and try to ignore the sounds of frantic splashing from a few feet away. And while we were looking down, but before the herd got to us, I’d feel a huge shape rocket past my shoulder on the surface – and suddenly a dolphin would be in front of me, circling, until the snorkelers caught up and chased the dolphin away.


Chasing after dolphins is dumb for two reasons. First and foremost, because you’re never going to catch them. Never. Secondly, it irritates the dolphins, who then give you the flipper and head home. The dolphins seemed a bit overstimulated by all the snorkelers and kept dashing around from one group to another, until enough lifevests had accumulated in one place to drive the dolphins back over the line. We got luckier as the snorkelers left, but everyone has to be out of the snorkel zone by 2 pm and out of the reef system by 3 pm, so we had to dash to fit in our second dive.

It's also important to remember that wild dolphins have never seen Flipper and don't quite realize they're supposed to be cute and fluffy. Dolphins are intelligent, fast, big, heavy, powerful animals that gang up on sharks for fun. I heard once that more divers are hurt by dolphins every year than by sharks, and I'd believe it.

The second dive was more of the same as the first, although we spent more time swimming long figure-eights among the pinnacles. We were all worn out from the dolphins, but we were still disappointed when none of them came to the pinnacles while we were diving. The highlight of the dive – which I only fully appreciated afterward – happened when our dive master discovered a pair of rare robust ghost pipefish under a coral. He nearly wrenched my camera out of my hands to get this shot:


There are two pipefish in this picture, and they both look exactly like sea grass. The larger pipefish is facing up in the foreground. The second pipefish is in the plane of focus behind the first pipefish. It took me quite a while of clinging to the bottom and thinking what is he so excited about? before I could finally distinguish the fish. I only noticed them because they weren’t moving in tune with the very slight surge that was pushing me about on the bottom.

The nicest part of the whole day happened on the way home. We were all straining our eyes at the water’s surface because exactly a week earlier in the same place, the dive masters had spotted a whale shark – the unicorn of diving. We didn’t end up finding a whale shark, but the dive master found something else – another group of spinner dolphins. When we slowed the boat down, the dolphins came speeding over to us. They swam around the boat, they jumped in the air a bit, they came to the surface and looked at us, and all the while we whistled and cheered (which the dolphins seemed to like). None of us could get in the water, but we had an intensely good time.









When the boat resumed motion, first one, then another, and then a third dolphin raced to get under the bow of our boat. They swam just under the keel for several minutes, popping up once in awhile to breathe. One by one they dropped off to rejoin their pod, and we gave the winner a round of cheers and whistling as he peeled away.

Lots of fun. Lots.

Photojournal 3

Time for a little cleaning of the ol' cell phone pictures directory ... Let's see ....

Ah! Here's something I snapped during one of my commutes home. I spent HOURS in traffic in the bus - literally, an unbelievable amount of time - and finally got to the source of the problem. Fortunately we drove within 6 inches of ...


Ta-da! An accident involving a truck carrying compressed air cylinders. What you can't see from the photos is the gasoline all over the road and the smoking emergency workers. Brilliant! My EMT training almost gave me apoplexy when I saw this.

Here's a delectable offering on a menu in Maadi. Yum, yum - apparently they add a little somethin' special in the kitchen -


This next thing was absolutely incredible, again seen while shopping in Maadi. This is what happens when you have workers blindly churning out products without thinking about them. I would've bought it, except the guy refused to reduce the price for me (a joke is only worth so much money to me) -


At the local supermarket, if you buy a squid, they throw in a little something extra -


And now, for something completely different - juvenile humor -


This one I took in the airport the other day. Egypt is great for crazy juxtapositions like this -


In Egypt, apparently, radios are JUST as dangerous as loaded weapons. Tells you something about the mentality here.

And last but not least, I took this picture yesterday. Something about the jubilance of this subway car appealed to me.


I don't know about you, but there just don't seem to be enough instances of butter thrown into milk, don't you think?

Marsa Alam, redux

I’m back from my very nice diving holiday down in Marsa Alam. The diving was good but not great, I’d say; I think it was still a little early in the season. The coral is exquisite in Marsa Alam, but I found my animal encounters to be less thrilling than the ones I had in Dahab in August.

Before I go any further, let me get this right out there:

I did not see the dugong.

Six dives total in Abu Dabbab, including two last June, have yielded no dugong sighting for me. [sigh] I’m starting to think that the damned thing doesn’t actually exist. At least this video assures me that if it had actually been there, there's no way I could've missed it.

I did, however, get to see dolphins! The encounters were good enough that they deserve their own post, so I’ll leave them for later.

We had a few days with the wind murking up the sea, and several days where the sea looked smooth enough to skate on. The water was cold but mostly bearable with a hood. I picked up the usual number of injuries, I’d say, and did the usual amount of damage to my hair and my pedicure.

Best of all, I finally broke 50 dives! The dive itself wasn’t that memorable – poor visibility at Marsa Samadai, down to 16 meters – but I did it! Finally! Current diving status: 52 non-training dives, 2 of those unguided (another first for me).

I also had quite a cultural experience, being the only American at a dive resort full of Europeans. I learned that nobody likes Italians and that Dutch people talk too loud. I acquired the words for “coconuts” and “dominatrix” in German (two separate conversations, I hasten to add). I also learned that all Americans carry guns, drink Starbucks, and voted for Bush. Intriguing.

Here are a few pictures from my trip that I especially like:

Lessons learned

I'm grading ... again ... midterms ... again ....

[sigh]

On the plus side, I constantly learn from my students. Let me share with you a few of the gems I've picked up today from them.

1. All plants have the same shape because they're descended from a common ancestor - seeds.
2. Wearing glasses changes your DNA.
3. Tatoos are caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. [I'm still scratching my head over this one.]
4. We have disease-resistant drugs, which change over time. [Also perplexing.]
5. If there were intelligent life in the universe, there would be amino acids on Mars.
6. Carbon isotopes are visible to the naked eye.
7. It is not actually necessary to read a question before attempting to answer it.
8. I am a total failure as a teacher. [sigh]
   

The sand is always ... sandier ...

Last Friday I danced off the airplane in Cairo with a song in my heart, thinking about how much I love this city and how very sorry I am to leave it.

Since then I've had a few aneurysm-inducing experiences that could only happen in Egypt.

• I went through the university's moving policy for faculty returning to the US. This document is 12 pages long. Some (but not all) of the phone numbers have the digits inverted. The attachments - in the middle of the document - are ordered 4-3-2-1-5. Actually, attachments 2 and 1 are two labels on the same page.

• Two weeks ago, before break, I had a meeting with a highly-placed administrative assistant. She and I reached a compromise on my weight allowance and she said she would send out the memo making the allowance official. I returned from break and found out that she hadn't sent the memo - over TWO WEEKS - because she stayed home sick from work one day.

• I finally badgered her into sending the memo, and she sent a memo with the original weight allowance - only half our agreed amount. When I called her to ask her why she'd negated our agreement, she said, "Oh. I forgot about that." She then sent another memo out fixing the weight allowance, but saying my home destination was NJ, even though I'd tied myself into knots arranging for my shipment to be sent to San Francisco.

• I went to the bookstore with a friend yesterday and found the textbooks for my graduate course. Why is this so upsetting, you ask? Because at the beginning of the semester the bookstore informed me (after a panicked visit a week before the start of classes) that they hadn't ordered the books at all. My co-instructor and I (mostly me, since I'm the useful instructor) reorganized the class overnight to operate without the textbook - a left-handed victory for me, since I've been maintaining for more than a year that graduate students should be using primary literature, not a textbook.

• During a discussion with students yesterday, I discovered that the biology graduate program here is listing two bioinformatics courses in the fall, one for undergraduates and one for graduate students. This is cute because

1. I designed the undergraduate course last year, which they cancelled.
2. I designed the graduate course, which is offered in the spring.
3. To be offering the courses in the fall, the department must have made this decision before I submitted my resignation - without consulting me.
4. I'm leaving, and my co-instructor for the graduate class is quite possibly the worst teacher I've ever seen! I'm really curious to know who they think is going to teach these courses.

• The university sent an email several weeks ago announcing that it was possible that either today or next Sunday would be a holiday to commemorate "Sinai Liberation Day." First, we've had two weeks of vacation already this month. Second, I think rather cynically that the holiday should be called, "Jimmy Carter Gives Back Sinai Day." And third, how can you not know when the holiday is?? Needless to say, the university never followed up and we still don't know if today, Sunday, or no day is a holiday.

• Egypt doesn't seem to know whether to switch to Daylight Savings Time tonight, even though this is the day the change usually happens. The government is silent on the matter. We're all waiting to see what time it will be tomorrow.
  

• And yesterday, as we've long suspected, I finally uncovered proof that the laws of physics do not apply in Egypt. The projector wasn't working in one of our large lecture halls on campus because, according to the technician, the lights can't be on or they interfere with the infrared transmission on the projector. Let me say that again - the overhead lights interfere with infrared transmission. Did I miss an important day in physics class, or does this not make too much sense?

Welcome in Egypt.

Back Blog: Marsa Alam, The Sequel

Marsa Alam, day 1, April 10

I wasn’t too sure about this trip when I got here yesterday [April 9], but things are turning around.

I had a hell of a time getting here. I’d booked myself a car to the airport through the university, as usual. The driver showed up a few minutes late, but I thought, no big deal. And the traffic was terrible since it was the middle of the day, but again I thought, no big deal, I don’t have to check in too early.

Then the first shoe dropped. My driver (who was a bit surly) took me to Terminal 4, which as everyone knows is the terminal that only serves Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada. I tried telling him that it was the wrong terminal, but he was adamant. So when we pulled up, I walked straight into the terminal and confirmed that, indeed, it was the wrong terminal. After a 5-minute argument with the driver, the intercession of a porter was the only convincing argument spurring him to take me to the right place. We got back in the car … and when he turned the key, nothing happened. The car was dead. Cue second shoe.

At that point I had exactly an hour until the flight was scheduled to leave. After 15 minutes of turning the key and peering quizzically into the engine, my driver shrugged and said “Maelesh.”

Things were definitely not “maelesh” as far as I was concerned. I got on my cell phone and frantically called the woman at the travel office, who proceeded to get into a fight with my driver. I hung up and spent the next 10 minutes checking my watch.

In true Egyptian fashion, the day was saved. A guy pulled up – I had no idea who he was – but I got in with my bags and he whisked me over to the right terminal. His car was very nice, he spoke beautiful English, and he refused to let me pay him. So if you’re inclined to get a car from someone else, do try Mr. Eyman at 010 610 6802.

I checked in fine and then had some time to kill before we boarded. I struck up a conversation with a man whose shirt said “Stanford dad,” and before I knew it, I was bosom buddies with a group of 13 people who had come from Thailand to dive Marsa Alam.

Let me say that again. They came from Thailand to dive in Egypt. Obviously the diving here is world-class.

These very nice people had reserved a live-aboard for a week and there was still room on their boat. They asked me to join them, but I declined – graciously at first, and then with increasing desperation when the word “kidnap” was bandied about. The only reason I turned them down was because I’m still hoping to get out into the Eastern Desert here, although the odds are looking slim. Maybe I should’ve thrown caution to the winds and joined them!

Speaking of wind, it was very windy here yesterday. The wind persisted today, but right now it’s died down a bit, il’hamdu’illeh.


The Oasis is nice – a bit stark, but small and quiet. The property has 50 rooms and is built out of limestone. Bits of fossilized coral peep through the sidewalks and walls every so often. Oh, and this place is about 90% German. A little weird – I’m definitely the only American – but everyone is nice and the place is clean and efficient, as one might expect.

Today I did two shore dives. The first was at Marsa Egla, a super-easy dive no deeper than 10 meters. The visibility was a little low due to the wind, but I saw all the Red Sea regulars – blue spotted rays, goatfish, crocodile fish (a HUGE one!), anthia, lionfish, wrasse, triggerfish, unicornfish, parrotfish, fulsiliers, cornetfish, stonefish, and pipefish. I saw a fish I’d never seen before: the Red Sea walkman, a marvelously camouflaged (read: ugly) fish that can’t swim but walks along the bottom on legs. Yes, legs. Apparently they’re both extremely poisonous and inclined to attack people. I found this out after I’d come within 6 inches to get a good picture. The cleaner wrasse here are shyer than in Dahab – I wasn’t able to convince any of them to give me a cleaning. I did manage to convince the dive masters, though, that I’m neither an idiot nor an unsafe diver.


My two diving buddies here are a Swiss couple. We agreed to follow along on another check dive with a whopping 9 divers and 2 dive masters in the afternoon. When we arrived at Marsa Asalai, we got a surprise – we’d demonstrated our experience so well that the dive masters decided the three of us could go on our own! I’d never dived without a dive master before, but it was another easy dive, so after 10 minutes the first dive master turned in the water, waved “bye-bye” and then we were on our own for the next 40 minutes.

I was quite cold after the first dive. I very stupidly only brought my 3 mL wetsuit instead of my brand-new 7 mL suit. How could I have been so stupid, you ask? Well, I didn’t want to overpack, so I checked a website that listed the water temperature here at 28 °C. I figured that was fine, but I figured wrong. Turns out the air temperature is 28 °C; the water temperature is only 22 °C. Fine for normal people, but a bit chilly for me.

I decided I’d wear my hood on the second dive to try to warm up. In principle this sounds fine, but I have an abnormally small head. Not “Amazonian head-shrinker” small, but small enough that I don’t wear hats because I look dumb. When worn, my hood has an empty pocket at the top that looks silly; I call it my “dorsal fin.” I still look dumb. Even worse, the hood gets a little pocket on my face – which breaks the seal of my mask. I had all kinds of mask issues until I finally got deep enough that the pressure sealed off the mask. I was in fact warmer, but I had water in my eyes the whole dive.


The vis was a bit low at this place too, but we had a lot of fun on our own. The dive master had told us that a small turtle liked to hang out on the reef, so we had our eyes peeled for her. Almost right away I spotted a large beautiful octopus an arm’s length below me who let me snap a few photos before swimming away. I love cephalopods – diving and with a nice deep fry and some lemon. Mmmm, biology.

I was leading our trio and swimming on my side, trying to convince a cleaner wrasse to come play. When I rolled back over, I was staring the turtle right in the eyes while it barreled down on me. I attempted to simultaneously skid to a halt and find my partners. Not a terribly graceful maneuver, and at first I couldn’t find them because they were right behind me. But they did finally see the turtle, and she also was kind enough to stop for a few pictures.



We had a couple other good encounters. I saw an enormous triggerfish – its head was easily the length of my arm. Its head. It was nestled in a chunk of coral, having its huge mouth cleaned. I got as close as I dared, which coincidentally was close enough to see its gigantic teeth with perfect clarity. We also found some type of tiny black worm with yellow spots, a mottled moray, a tiny crab, and a lot of gorgeous coral.

So things are turning around for me. I’m signed up for a boat trip tomorrow to Shagra Marsa Alam, a reef system that has a wreck and the occasional dolphin. And on Tuesday I’m heading for the dive that brought me here again: Dolphin House, where last Tuesday they saw the dolphins and … a whale shark! I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I’m staying hopeful that I’ll finally see that damned dugong too.

Cataxtrophe

I hate doing my taxes. Loathe it.

Part of it is the good ol' American outrage at having to give away money that I've earned through my own hard work. As a scientist who frequently benefits from federal and state funding, I find it incredibly ironic that I have to pay taxes to support my own salary. What is that???

The other ingredient in the mix is the fact that I'm a delicate, nutured, feminine flower ... that doesn't understand a thing about money and isn't motivated to learn.

I've never cared about money one way or the other, growing up or after becoming independent. I've never been rich, but there's always been enough to do what I want - generally - without worrying too much. My needs are modest, I haven't bought into material consumer culture, and generally there's enough to go around.

Likewise, I never studied finance, and I've never been much interested in understanding things like investments, mortgages, and the like. I'm not even a fan of banks - if I had my way, my money would be buried in the backyard, just next to the generator and the gun rack.

So today I'm trying to get my tax returns done before jetting off to parts exotic. This year should be easier, since I have a bona fide foreign residence. I've had a little trouble filling in the online form - do I put my W2 in twice, once as a W2 and once as foreign income - but the federal form went ok.

Then I started the NJ form. After much digging around - why isn't this easy? - I think I've discovered that NJ does not offer a foreign income exclusion. On top of that, the university's US address is in NY, so I'm not sure what's going to happen there.

I especially like the part in the NJ form where it says, "Income from sources both legal and illegal is subject to tax." Are you really going to report illegal income?? I love New Jersey!

After 20 minutes figuring this out, I attempted to complete the NJ form ... and the tax website went down for "routine system maintenance." Who schedules routine maintenance on a tax website less than a week before taxes are due???? It may be 5 am east coast, but some of us have additional needs!

Gaaaaaaaaah!

I am so going to jail. For stupidity.

Back Blog : London Museum Crawl

What do three scientists do in a long weekend in London?

1 - Spend gobs of money on food.

2 - Hit as many museums in London as possible. Especially the free ones - which is almost all of them! Thank God for civilization - take note, America! They didn't even try any sneaky "donation" schemes like the Met or the Natural History Museum!

Wow. I really miss New York. Especially in spring, when it's so lovely ....

But I was talking about London, wasn't I?

I've already blogged a little about the first part of our London trip, including our misfire at the Petrie (stupid door signs) and the surprise of the Soane's museum. We did a few other museums, including the National Gallery, the British Museum, and the Natural History museum - not once but twice.

Our first trip to the Natural History museum was most notable, I think, for the sheer surprise of the splendid architecture of the museum. Those Victorians sure knew how to design a building! We spent hours and hours, looking at fossils, hominids, marine critters large and small, and two precious stone exhibits. I probably could've spent days there. I almost walked past archaeopteryx - who knew it was so small? I admit I was disappointed by how many of the fossils and indeed, models, were reproductions. I'm not sure why this mattered, precisely, but it did.










When we first walked into the museum, I noticed the sign for the Darwin exhibit tickets, but we marched on by, figuring that we could just pick up the tickets later. Wrong - we underestimated the popularity of the exhibit. When we returned, we found out we could only buy tickets for the next day, so we bought the first possible entry. Next morning we returned, bright and early, to be confronted with the massive line outside the gates of the museum. Fearing we'd miss our entry time (and we had other fish to fry, after all), we headed to the other entrance around the corner ... and breezed right in. The lesson? Never try the front door. There's always a faster way.

I was a bit disappointed by the Darwin exhibit. This always happens to me when I go to science exhibits - especially biology ones. I really want to learn something new, because I really love science. But inevitably I get almost nothing out of these exhibits, because I'm simply not the target audience. My students are. So unless there are unusual samples, or originals of something, I'm just not that thrilled. The Darwin exhibit had the same problems. I don't need to be convinced that evolution is fact - I'm on board. I'm on the front lines of that battle, for cryin' out loud. And I was embarrassed by all the references to the American resistance, and the American battles over evolution. Nothing to do about that, I suppose.

I don't need to see reproductions of Galapagos animals - I want to see the real ones! Ditto Darwin's letters - what do I need a copy of an illegible letter for? I was pretty moved by seeing Darwin's lab notebooks, and his sketch of a phylogenetic tree (I was similarly moved when I saw Mendel's notebooks in Brno). But other than that, a few hundred-and-fifty-years-dead stuffed birds on a velvet pillow don't do much for me.

Incidentally, I read this great article in the NYT about dissociating Darwin's name with evolution, and I couldn't agree more. Calling it "Darwinism" just gives fodder to the ignorant, and gives the impression that what we call evolution now is the same as what was thought 150 years ago. Don't get me started on evolution. Or rather, on anti-evolution. I just got out of that mess with my students. I mean, every damned semester there's one 17-year-old who thinks he's the one who's clever enough to overturn 150 years of science that he doesn't actually understand.

Ok. Rant mode off. I swear.

After finishing with Darwin, we headed for the British Museum, where we made a beeline for the Rosetta Stone. I found it very amusing that I'd been to Rosetta - how many people can say that? - but I'd never see the real Stone. If you don't know the story of how hieroglyphics were deciphered, do read up - it's a fascinating story. And I've just found this article claiming that an Arab scholar cracked the code 1000 years earlier - Western bias, or revisionist history?

I was intensely interested to resolve a rumor I'd heard from a few different sources; namely that the Rosetta Stone is actually made from pink granite (like from Aswan) and that the Stone turned black from the ink that was used to make rubbings of the inscriptions. If this were true, I figured, then only the inscribed side should be black; the other sides should still be pink.

I was the only idiot looking at the back and sides of the Stone. I found some British graffiti on the sides (which is always fun) - but all sides were a uniform basalt color. Furthermore, to my (admittedly inexpert) eyes, the stone exhibited the texture of basalt rather than granite, but I suppose if it hadn't been polished it would be hard to tell. I falsified my own hypothesis, but now I don't know what to think. Again. Scientific thinking strikes again.

I dragged my sister-in-law and KC through just about all the Egyptian exhibits in the museum. It was fun and eerie, reading descriptions of places I'd been, sometimes repeatedly. I was a bit perplexed as to why the Sphinx's beard was in London; maybe I'm coming around to Zahi's repatriation idea after all. But unlike in the Egyptian Museum, I felt enormously gratified to see these splendid pieces taken care of so lovingly. I wasn't blown away by the collection, but again, that's probably just from the bias of living here. I'm sure if I'd come here 5 years ago, I'd have been kicked out at closing time with my fingernails still stuck in the doorframe.

We also checked out the friezes from the Parthenon, the Elgin Marbles. I think we were pretty tired at that point; we were horsing around a bit, making up stories about the friezes and reenacting some of the scenes for pictures. KC got called an "art terrorist" by a fellow patron, which I suspect was the high point of his adult life. Also at some point, someone either puked or peed on the floor. I don't know what happened, but there was a smell and a lot of sawdust. Weird.

I'll end this post with one innocuous example of art terrorism, and a shot of us with our science grandaddy. Cheers.

Welcome to purgatory, take a number

I'm trapped in grading purgatory ...

Trying to plow through these bioinformatics exams and all I can think about is diving ...

I think purgatory is worse than hell - at least hell is exciting ...

Just a few more hours ... must ... finish ... exams ... gaaaaaah ...

Spring Break!

I'm so happy right now!

Thursday afternoon I head for Marsa Alam again for some diving! I had a really great time in June, and since my stupid Canadian friends planned to go to Syria (rrrrr, visas! I can't send my passport to Washington! ) I realized if I was going to actually do something this break, I'd be doing it on my own.

This time I'm diving there with Sinai Divers, the company I used in Dahab in August. They offered me a nice loyalty discount to dive with them again (20% resort, 10% diving). I tried playing them off Emperor Divers, who also offered me a discount (15%), but I wasn't able to negotiate a better price. Both companies said it wouldn't be fair to their other guests - although if I'm willing to go to the effort, and the other guests aren't, I don't see the problem.

This is the first time I'll be staying at a dedicated diving resort, The Oasis. The place has its own house reef, and the diving package includes a third dive at the house reef every day. We'll see if I'm not too tired to take full advantage - 3 dives a day for 5 days is a lot of diving!

And I'll have the underwater camera this time! Woohoo!

I'm so excited, I feel like packing right now!!!

Brain dead in Cairo

I've been forcing myself to relax lately.

My stomach is in bad shape, my hair is falling out, and I have more spots on my face than I've seen in 10 years.

What am I anxious about, you ask? Let's see ... wedding ... unemployment ... move ... future ... career ... wedding ...

So last night the kitties and I had a chick-flick double-header. Thanks to KC's sister I have a few new movies, and last night I picked Atonement and ... erm ... [sigh] ... Twilight.

There, I said it. Yes, I watched the preteen vampire movie last night. Sober. Why don't I take the second part first, so your last thought of me today isn't this one.

Twilight has been touted as a preteen phenomenon, an abstinence parable, and the first in a series of four "doorstops." A few months ago I saw a woman on the bus reading the book, and when I asked if it was any good, she blushed and gave me a slightly ashamed "no." I have not read the book.

The movie wasn't so bad that I switched it off, but it definitely reminded me of SciFridays - the Sci-Fi Channel, that is, not NPR. Actually, come to think of it, the heroine didn't have her clothes mysteriously shredded in the course of the show, so I guess it wasn't a dead ringer.

I was mildly intrigued by the premise: Boy meets girl. Boy is vampire. Girl doesn't care ... and so on. I wonder why the female is never the undead in these scenarios? I mean, wouldn't that be sexy too? Or maybe only girls are turned on by this premise, so a gender bender wouldn't make much sense. Do males find the impossibility of consummation erotic? I'm guessing not.

What's even more intriguing to me is how the preteen set has latched on to this idea of abstinence as erotic. Remember the X-Files, and how much worse the show got when Mulder and Scully finally started, you know, touching? I guess that was the same sort of tension, but that was what, 10 years ago? When people actually wore clothes on TV and we watched because things weren't real.

I watched Atonement first last night, the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's acclaimed novel. I read the book last summer and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as Saturday, which I thought was one of the best books I'd ever read. There was something deliberately obtuse about the prose that turned me off from the beginning - although maybe I was just well-set-up for the ending.

I wasn't crazy about the movie either. I enjoyed the first bit, diction, sets and scenery a la Gosford Park. [While I'm confessing things here, I might as well admit that I had to turn the subtitles on the first time I watched GP.] Yes, I like period-piece chick movies with a bit of romance and a bit of tragedy.

But I became far less invested once the movie transitioned into the war period. I just couldn't grab onto anything emotionally rich in the later parts of the movie - all I could see was how incredibly thin Keira Knightley looked. And the very end of the movie lacked the impact I felt at the end of the novel; it just seemed tacked on.

Ah, well. At least I wasn't working!