Holy Shit, I'm finally back

Wow. April to August. Nothing.

WOW.

I mean, I knew I was super busy, but still. OK, excuses time:

1. I got adult onset chicken pox. I mean, do you know how painful that is? Apart from my beautiful visage being cratered for life, I also had lesions in my throat. Couldn't swallow. Or talk (probably worse). And the fatigue...

2. I almost got knifed in Puerto Rico. This is a LONG story, which I will get to when I carpal-tunneled wrists feel up to it.

3. Work. This would have been lame, except that it isn't. Work has indeed been tight.

4. I moved. Away from the boondocks, closer to civilization, which means I look more like a loser when I sit alone at home and blog.

5. The world cup (which the Germans should have won). I think I saw EVERY group stage match.

KR Sridhar and the BloomBox - must see video!

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Can this really be true? The "beach sand" is obviously SiO2, but I wonder what's in the green and black paints... at $3000/box, he is right, this will revolutionize the way we produce energy. Can't wait to read more on this. And a desi geek to boot! Yay!!!

Shaun White can board.

Damn! Well, OK, I'm not a big fan of the winter olympics; I watch it mostly to catch the wipe-outs, like this poor lady who crossed the finish line in the air, facing skyward, head first, at the end of the alpine. I laughed mercilessly as she picked her bruised body (and ego) up and trudged off to cry on her coach's shoulder. Well, OK, I chuckled a bit, and then felt bad. Anyway, my point is that I'm not much of a connoisseur.

But then I just saw Shaun White (not a big fan of him either) pull off a RIDICULOUS two runs on the half pipe. I mean, it was unreal. Un. Real. I have rarely seen such a separation between the top two athletes in any sport (barring Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps obviously) as I did today, when he thulped the competition into the ground. Bigger air, cleaner technique and great tricks. And then on his victory lap (he was already assured a gold after his first run), he executes a ridiculous I don't know what. Three and a half turns, double flip and oh I don't know, I think he made a bird's nest out of his hair at the end before he landed. Clean.

You could hear the announcers gush over it like 12 year old girls ad try to one-up each other trying to figure out what it was called. Thanks NBC for fucking it up for me. But except that, it was awesome.

Things I didn't do in 2009

Things I didn't do in 2009 (again, an egocentric list that I put together because I felt like it. And the mulled wine in my belly on this superbowl night makes me want to type). For no particular reason, the order is mostly reverse-chronological:

1. Didn't go to Turkey. Because my friends hate me and went without me.
2. Didn't go to Peru. Because the same friends also wimped out.
3. Didn't insist on going to a better cabin in upstate NY. Regretted that one, though it made for a good story.
4. Didn't cut back on the alcohol, coffee and hot sauce even though I knew hops, caffeine and habaneros give me the shits
5. Didn't go to South Africa, even though everything was already arranged.
6. Didn't murder my boss for having pulled the rug from under my feet re. SA trip. Came close though.
7. Didn't do as much endurance working out as I would have liked. This includes marathon sex sessions, which were non-existent in 2009, sadly.
8. Didn't help my friend when he wiped out badly in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country - laughed uproariously instead and cramped. Which I feel bad about now, but he did OK eventually.
9. Didn't move out, because I thought the vermin we caught in our crawl space in the summer was an isolated incident. This again turned out to be a mistaken assumption.
10. Didn't buy a house because the bankers are gigantic wankers. But I think I dodged a bullet on this one...
11. Didn't correct my barber when he thought I was a surgeon. He continues to think I am, so I hope he doesn't expect me work a miracle if his wife collapses at the shop.
12. Didn't call tattoo woman back. If you know the story, you know why. If you don't, it means I have a fragile ego. Just take my word for it.
13. Speaking of which, continued to have an abysmal track record of falling for unavailable women while ignoring perfectly fine single ones.
13. Didn't do my usual quota of NASCAR or NFL games. TV and living in the boonies took care of that.
14. Didn't get pubs even though I seemed to be working quite a bit.

Hm. That's about it - '09 was so quiet I didn't even feel that there was a bunch of stuff I missed out on. There you go. Here's a photo (taken in the basement of a building at work) that seems somewhat appropriate. I think it sums up my 2009.

"Climategate" destroyed.

I've had to deal with people asking me about climategate for a few days now, and to be honest, I wasn't *quite* able to convince myself that I was giving them a succinct argument as to why this whole made-up conspiracy was just that - made-up.

And then I came across this video, that in 10 short minutes absolutely destroys the whole argument. Fortunately, it looks like it's made by someone who understands the science and has linked to the original papers in question. Note also that there are no excuses made for Jones hiding data. But it should be noted that there's just a wee bit of a difference between one scientist talking about withholding data in an email, and the entire scientific community fabricating a global phenomenon over several decades.

So, the next time someone badgers you about the global warming conspiracy, don't slap your forehead (or their face). Hit them with this video instead.

Tweed Ride - Yogi is famous!

Who would've thunk that. Apparently if you hang around a Penny Farthing long enough you get your mug in the local paper. Either that or the combination of the Indian dude and the U-Haul was too much for the editor to resist. Anyway, just so you know, I am now officially a celebrity, so buy me a beer, will ya?

Yeah, I know, I got sandwiched (for eternity now) between Janet Jackson and Khaled Fucking Sheikh Mohammed. But you know how it is, you got to grab all the opportunities you have to tell everyone how awesome you are...

Rat Fail. Trap Win.

Looks almost like he's still alive, doesn't it? He's dead though.

Speaking of Stats... Check out Nate Silver

I'm sure you will have heard about the recent study that said that only 2.8% of Oklahoma High school kids passed a basic civics (citizenship) test.

Well, Nate Silver (or Poblano, as we used to know him) has a superb take-down of the statistics, and his analysis strongly suggests that the entire study was fabricated. You may know Nate from his electoral statistical wizardry - he got almost everything right, and he shows up every so often on MSNBC. "Are Oklahoma students really this dumb?" is WELL worth a read. This is how a stats dork should write.

Of course, this IS the deep red state Oklahoma, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bit of, ahem, an IQ issue here, but still...

Update: Apparently StrategicVision, the pollsters behind this study, is a REALLY shady outfit, and is taking some serious heat from all around.

Indian Ancestry on Nature's cover. Awesome!

I just got this week's Nature magazine. (Yes, I have a personal subscription. There are copies of Nature and Science on my TV tray. Yes, I am a dork.)

And this is what is on the cover:

The actual article by Reich, Thangaraj, Patterson, Price and Singh (and a really neat "News and Views" section written by Aravinda Chakravarti at Hopkins) basically looks at the variation in genomes of individuals from India. Without getting into the weeds, what they did was to analyze DNA from 25 different groups in India, from different geographical areas, from different castes and language groups, and then do some statistical heavy lifting to look at how similar/dissimilar simple variations in sequences (SNPs) are across these groups.

What these studies reveal is something that anyone (myself included) may have intuited just by growing up in various parts of India. There is an amazing breadth of established groups/communities. I mean, anyone who has seen Indian currency will know that we have 15 national languages, and it is quite commonplace to cross state lines and have absolutely no idea what the hell is being spoken (upon which broken English and furious gesticulation will work). But what this study says is that there are basically "Ancestral North Indians" (ANI) and "Ancestral South Indians" (ASI) who have two distinct lineages (Indo-European and Dravidian, respectively), and current day Indians are basically a melange of these two lineages, with ANIs strong in the North and fading towards the South, and vice-versa with ASIs (the other language groups - Austro-asiatic, Tibeto-burman, and Andamanese are sub-variants of ANI and ASIs). This spectrum is reflected in skin color (light to dark), languages, and even caste structure. (Upper and middle tend to be more ANIs, lower castes tend to cluster with ASIs.

The group also makes a case for "founder effects" (basically, genetic bottlenecks) well AFTER 3000 BC when the Dravidians showed up, and 1500 BC when the Indo-European speakers showed up, suggesting that many dispersed communities were established and then they stayed put. The paper also reveals little nuggets - the Santhal and Kharia tribes, which are Austro-asiatic, are descendants of people that arrived 60,000 years ago? Yep, sixTY thousand. The groups also makes the case for marriages within communities (endogamy) has been happening for many centuries, resulting in some interesting disease predispositions.

Overall, this is one really cool study, which you should read (even if the stats may be somewhat inaccessible). As Chakravarti points out, this is only the start - many more detailed analyses should be done on the Indian population to get a true picture of the genetic tapestry that is India.

But that being said, the concept of ANIs and ASIs brings me back to something I have always said : North and South India are two different countries, man...

The new movie about Darwin - nope, you can't see it

Why, oh why, oh WWWHHHHHYYYYY are we like this????

The Darwin movie (which has been getting pretty good reviews, and from what I gather is more about the man than making the case for a lack of a god/gods), is apparently "too controversial" for audiences in our blessed country of the United States of Am-oh-we-don't-want-to-piss-off-Jesus-and-his-devout-non-evolution-believing-followers-erica. So THEY AREN'T EVEN DISTRIBUTING IT.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THONK, THONK, THONK.... (sound of yogi's head slowly hitting wall)

Here is the clip. It gives me the goosebumps. I'd love to have seen it. Except of course, I can't now because of how the assholes that quail in fright at the thought of Jesus' army picking up their knives and guns and capping their asses for screening a movie that chronicles the life of a dude, who, you know, changed how we think about life. Idiots. And cowards.

WHO SAID NERDS AREN'T AWESOME???

Did you hear about this??? A Hopkins undergrad (one of those nerdy pre-med types apparently) capped an intruder WITH A SAMURAI SWORD. A FOUR FOOT LONG SAMURAI SWORD. Here's the news report:



And here is what it reminded me of. Of course.

Lab retreats are fun - in a really sad masochistic way

Here's the deal, apparently. If you are in a lab that is big and well funded and sufficiently hard-core (which big and well funded labs tend to be), your boss will sometimes decide that the best way to get group morale up is to go for a little lab retreat. Now this isn't the kind if retreat that your corporate types will relate to. No fancy yacht, champagne and strippers.

What we do is ensconce ourselves a secluded place and talk science amongst ourselves for two days straight. Which, if you really think about it, is like any other two days at work. Except with less comfortable chairs, unbearably cold air conditioning and catered food (to be paid for, thankyouverymuch).

Of course, the formality of the entire occasion demands that you actually prepare for a good week or so in advance, so you don't make a damn fool of yourself. And then your presentation gets ripped anyway with glee, either because it's way too ambitious or it isn't ambitious enough or the controls aren't quite right or the time line for experiments are incomplete. In other words, its almost exactly like a thesis committee meeting, except with more thesis committee members and no threat of failure. Of course, in this case, you just get fired for incompetence. Still, the whole thing while being incredibly tiring, was surprisingly fun (yes, yes, that means I'm a gigantic dork. I know)

Anyway, all of this is to explain away the absence for a week. And the incredibly hungover feeling this past weekend.

Like you all care. But still, there you have it.

sickness + parents = hectic weekend

Man, this whole sickness thing is beginning to piss me off a lot. I have the ears of a three ear old, so I have tinnitus, I have waxy ears, my ears hurt on flights, and yep, I get ear infections like I'm in day school for the first time every month.

And pushupmom&dad are in town too this week. Which means a lot of going around town with them. Fortunately they're all independent, so I don't have to do a bunch of chaperoning, but still, you know how it is, you've got to be on your best behavior, you've got to pretend you've always wanted to go to that museum...

Most importantly, you have to remember to clear your internet history. Pushupmom&dad and I might be best buddies, but, you know.

On the other hand, this is a great time to have your eustachian tubes all blocked up so you can't hear your mum harangue you about why you aren't married yet, as she feeds you some super delicious food.

The GPS makes you stupid - here's proof

Did you hear about this?

Well, a couple drove to Carpi in Italy instead of Capri, Italy. The fact that it is some 400 miles away from Capri is bad enough, but CAPRI IS AN ISLAND YOU MORON. When you don't cross an expanse of water to get to the place, maybe you should have had second thoughts...

Seriously though, I do feel that a GPS dulls your innate sense of direction. I have asked people how to get to a particular place, and ordinarily, you get a decent response: go this way, you'll see a McDonalds, take a right... whatever. You ask a GPS slave, and you'll draw a blank. Take their precious away, and they'll be reduced to a bunch of blithering idiots behind the wheel.

Steve McNair, and now, Arturo Gatti?????

Oh no!!!! This is terrible news...

This is truly a sad day for boxing. Arturo Gatti, for those of you who don't know, was Welterweight champion of the world in the mid 90s. But it wasn't his champion status that makes him a hero in my eyes; it's his absolute honesty as a boxer. The guy was a true fighter. A bit wanting on technique, maybe. But what heart. And of course, what a jaw. It was made of concrete. I mean, this guy would. not. go. down.

You've got to see his fights against Mickey Ward - one of the most thrilling displays of boxing you will ever see. I was watching the fight (for the nth time) just last week. Even if you aren't a fan, go watch the clips and tell me if your hair isn't standing on end by the end of the fight. And here is a bit from the HBO special about the fight.

Steve McNair, killed by jealous/evil mistress.
Arturo Gatti, killed by jealous/evil girlfriend. (or atleast, suspected to have been killed by the woman)

I'm not absolving them of wrongdoing (what the hell was Steve McNair thinking??? This woman was barely 20, and he has 4 kids...), and I'm not saying all women associated with rich/famous sportsmen are evil. But this is really lousy. I'm all pissed off.

Fawcett, Jackson... and Billy Mays????

Dude, what the hell??!?!?

Well, we knew Farah was going, but still, it was sad when we heard that she finally succumbed to cancer.

And then we heard about MJ (No, I am not going to link to it; the man's death took down the internet for a few hours, so clearly everyone knows what's up); incredibly sad, what a troubled childhood combined with an incessant spotlight from the media can do to a soul. Say what you may about how crazy he was, but the guy was genius. And he may have made it to a moderately normal life if only the media gave him a chance...

But today, I hear about Billy Mays. I mean, what the hell?!?!? That's just crazy! I loved the guy - who's going to sell us oxyclean now? (certainly not the shamwow guy - he's too busy busting up hookers)

RIP all you guys. And Billy Mays, I'm going to miss your annoying-as-hell high-pitched pitching voice dude...

Unluckiest man alive

OK, couple clarifications straightaway:

1. The title is moderately hyperbolic; I am only somewhat unlucky. It's just that the planets have conspired to align pretty neatly this week and give me a giant week-long wedgie.

2. I am actually SUPER lucky as far as the basic stuff goes: pretty normal family, didn't have a dad that beat the crap out of my mom, didn't have a mom that beat the crap out of me, born with all limbs and faculties. Monetarily stable, and intellectually, well, ahem, on the right side of the curve. Sure, I could've been easier on the eye, but we'll cry about that later. Basically all that shit is fine.

3. It's not even that I have had a lifelong streak of bad luck, like I get run over by buses or that my house keeps getting broken into or that I get shit on by passing birds all the time. No.

It's that I have NO luck for little things.

I have never won anything that required luck. Ever. Bingo? Never. Raffle? Nope. Lottery? You must be kidding. The one thing that I did win, a bag of cheap candy at the lucky draw at my sixth (or seventh?) birthday party doesn't count because I'm pretty sure pushupmom rigged it so I could stop whining like the little prick that I was that I hadn't won anything yet .

In science, you know what NO luck for little things translates to?
1. Nothing fucking works the first time, and
2. Shit always happens when its your turn.

Take this week.

There is this crazy difficult experiment that takes a week to set up, and I'm on a deadline because, well, I'm always on a fucking deadline, and this is the last shot to get this right, OK? So I set the damn thing up over the week, go to the microscope and start imaging with the help of the technician. All good. And then he gets a call from his wife - she was going into labor or something, so he had to rush off. Sure enough, ten minutes later, the microscope gives me a giant middle finger and breaks down to a point beyond my abilities to fix it. Calling is obviously of no avail, because there's little the guy can do over the phone, and he has to take care of his wife. So I give up and take a little break. I head over to the men's room, have a drink at the water fountain, and walk back.

To find that I had locked myself out.

Cursing loudly and beating my fists against the door did no good (this was late in the evening, no one was around to help me get in), so I left. This place is also in the middle of nowhere, so I had to walk a solid mile an a half before I could reach public transport. Not too bad, except that the heavens opened as I stepped out, and I was drenched in five minutes flat...

And this was Monday.

(The story has a happy ending though. An angel in the form of a long lost friend called me out of nowhere; I found out he was ten minutes away, so we went out to drink. All was good for the day)

Other highlights just from this week:

--> New roommate who was supposed to be hot chick turns out to be fat acne-filled dude. Agreeable and sorta fun kinda dude, but far cry from what was promised.

--> Got an email from admin regarding paperwork that should've been filed WAY back, that both parties forgot about . OK, this is partly my fault, but still, getting an email that says you will be fired in 24 hours if you don't provide some bullshit piece of paper is somewhat unnerving.

--> At the end of a 14 hour day, at 10:30 pm, I spill a bunch of concentrated acid in the lab. HCl, which stings, is corrosive, and is acrid as hell. Spent a solid hour cleaning up, with the accompanying cursing.

--> Car broke. Pushupcar was working fine, and then the dude just broke for no reason that I can figure. Which leads to the next wedgie-inducing story.

Had to transport reagents from one campus to another, which apparently you cannot do on public transport. Me and my (admittedly not-so-innocuous-looking) white Styrofoam container were promptly thrown out. Literally. I was thrown out of a fucking vehicle by its irate driver. And he yelled at me for trying to break the rules and endanger his life. And since this was another "it's now or never" kind of experiment, I had to swallow my ego and leave. Or, more accurately, run around like a headless chicken for an hour or so trying to find someone else who would drive my ass and my reagents to the place. Fortunately, more angels showed up to help out...

...

Hm. You know what, after reading all this, maybe I'm not so unlucky. I think what happens with me is that I keep getting wedgied by life, and then angels appear out of nowhere and set it right. So I get screwed over, but something always ameliorates the pain... Now all I have to do is convince those angels to drop some cash and a hot woman in my lap when they're straightening out that wedgie...

Speaking of being screwed, here is a somewhat appropriate picture; this was taken outside an ice cream shop in India.

Fox "News" is a lying, news-altering piece of garbage

Now, we all knew that Fox is entertainment. I mean, come on. Fair? Balanced? (Oh, apparently, these days they are fair, balanced AND accurate. Which is like me pretending to be a yogi and a pushup maniac). You've seen Bill O'Reilly and that idiot Sean Hannity with his shit-eating grin. They are hate mongers, and they reap their millions by creating straw men on the left and then knocking them down, and providing their audience with a bunch of vitriol and bone-headed opinion.

But that's the point - all that is opinion. As much as I hate BillO and his pompous ass, as much as I want to pull out Hannity's teeth with a pair of pliers (All their acolytes - Dick Morris and Ann Coulter and Bernie Goldberg and all the other wankers deserve to have pineapples shoved up their asses too), as much as I want to do all that, well, they are opinion makers. Their opinion might be a busload of bullshit, but its their opinion.

But when Fox actually crops and edits video to fit their news story (which usually is a critique of the admin), not only is it 1. Easy to detect and call them out on it, because the facts are open to all to see, but 2. It is worse than the usual chicanery and sophistry and deception; it's just flat out lying. Not that I expect any better from these assholes, but still.

Here's an example of what I mean, from mediamatters.org. Boy, we really do owe these guys for keeping tabs.

throwing hats into the ring, uh, rink...

So I was watching the Capitals beat the Penguins today in the playoffs, and Ovechkin (who is the big star in DC, if you didn't know) scored a hat trick, three goals in one game. And then the cap shower started. See, I get it, OK? Hat trick. So lets throw our hats onto the ice. Cute.

but this was ridiculous on multiple counts.

1. It holds up play for a while, and we get to sit with our thumbs up our asses as the crew cleans up.
2. Where were all these fans when the Capitals were the Crapitals? Huh? Huhh??? NOW y'all want to be fans when the tea is winning... we know fair weather fans when we see them. Fair weather fans thrown their stupid new hats onto the ice at the uh, drop of a hat...
3. Do you know how much those hats cost??? I hope that someone collected all those caps and put them in a giant trash can so people could fish them back out. Otherwise, that's a solid 25 bucks that you just threw away. In addition to the $60 tickets and $40 beer.

Here's a little embed to show you what happens, from an old game. It's just a little shot at the end. But this was NOTHING compared to today - there were a couple hundred hats on the ice...

Yogi is back + funniest youtube clip ever

Back with renewed vigor, and a new color combo (like it?). A few things had happened:

1. Got the flu (not the swine variety, just the old-fashioned thing that no one talks about, but still takes you out of commission for a week). I couldn't do very much at all. Except stay at home and sleep lots, which meant that I -

2. Have had to make up for the lost week by working like a dog.

So there you have it. But as a little gift, here is something that makes me laugh really hard. Really REALLY hard. Every time I see the clip.