Hi everyone who follows this blog!
Tropes and Trilobites will no longer update. Instead, I will be moving my blog over to The Clockwork Trilobite!
But why this change, you demand? Well! That is where the big news comes in.
A publisher just accepted my novel, Weather. This means pen names and new shiny websites and blogs and all that jazz, and I'm pretty sure that I can't keep up with both this blog and the new blog and school and stuff.
So come follow me on my blog and on Twitter and on Tumblr! Maybe one day I'll come back here and be just plain old me but for now...
....the new blog awaits. Seeya there!
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Today was...fun
So, today was going well, up until about 10:45. Which was when I checked my email and found that my algae had arrived.
O_o
These cultures of algae were supposed to arrive next week, which was why I'd planned to go into lab tomorrow and autoclave culture media and culture flasks, so I could transfer the little critters into their new homes. But no, they arrive today and I get to go and fight with the autoclave between classes. It was exciting.
It was raining, actually, and I saw a lovely brown salamander on the way to lab. It was just hanging out on the sidewalk. Made the entire thing worth it.
(May I just add that wet hiking boots and linoleum do not mix well? It's something about hiking boots--they get really really slippery, and before you know it you're flat on your ass... Never mind.)
So it is time to go back to the urchins! It'll be fun juggling this project and the tadpole project and then also doing class and office hours (One of my professors has an adorable French Bulldog, which is an excellent motivating factor to go to office hours) and remembering to sleep! Woohoo!
O_o
These cultures of algae were supposed to arrive next week, which was why I'd planned to go into lab tomorrow and autoclave culture media and culture flasks, so I could transfer the little critters into their new homes. But no, they arrive today and I get to go and fight with the autoclave between classes. It was exciting.
It was raining, actually, and I saw a lovely brown salamander on the way to lab. It was just hanging out on the sidewalk. Made the entire thing worth it.
(May I just add that wet hiking boots and linoleum do not mix well? It's something about hiking boots--they get really really slippery, and before you know it you're flat on your ass... Never mind.)
So it is time to go back to the urchins! It'll be fun juggling this project and the tadpole project and then also doing class and office hours (One of my professors has an adorable French Bulldog, which is an excellent motivating factor to go to office hours) and remembering to sleep! Woohoo!
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Tropes and Tadpoles!
I came home today and my inbox was full of tadpoles.
Academic papers on them.
It was excellent.
I just picked up a new lab; I'm working for a graduate student who's studying the chytrid fungus (you know, the one that's been wiping out the better part of the world's amphibian population). My goal is to learn basic techniques in structuring and executing an historical epidemiological survey.
Which is a complicated way of saying that I'm learning how to study the history of a disease in a certain area.
May I just add how utterly fascinating the idea of a pathogenic fungus is? Apparently, this one has some incredibly weird behaviors, too. It swims. And some species are affected by it and some are asymptomatic carriers. Science is awesome. Prepare for more details once I do my reading.
But no worries, I'm still working on that project with the sea urchins. We're just waiting for our algae to come in -- we made the mistake of getting somewhat shady algae from another lab, and were quite distressed when the red algae turned green two weeks in, and then the brown algae did likewise. Once the algal cultures are happy and established, we can start spawning urchins. I suppose if I were a good scientist, I'd be up to my neck in urchin papers just now... but tadpoles!
All in all, I have the most excellent way to procrastinate on my genetics homework now. What joy!
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
College!
...is shaping up to kick my butt. Here I am, at almost one in the morning, realizing I need to be up at eight and off to a class I didn't even realize I wanted to crash until two hours ago, and also realizing that it and another class I kinda need to take are going to conflict, while also fretting about pitching a novel and getting the rest of the glassware down the stairs to the lab it belongs in and telling the esteemed professor it belongs to that I cracked one of his beakers, and finding housemates and also keeping some sort of a social life. Also Genetics assigns problem sets and I can't find my good calculator. I have a perfectly adequate one but I miss my nice shiny black one with all the buttons, even if I don't know what half of them do. And I can't do a bit of good about any of these things at almost one in the morning but that's not gonna stop me from fretting!
Oh well! At least life's interesting, and I don't have to worry about the urchins.
Yet.
...
I'm going to start on that early. No sense in procrastinating.
Oh well! At least life's interesting, and I don't have to worry about the urchins.
Yet.
...
I'm going to start on that early. No sense in procrastinating.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
A review of a review
The New Yorker reviewed Les Miserables.
Predictably, it hated it, like every other popular (read nerdy) film that has been produced in the last year or so.
I think it's full of shit. The review is trite, offhand, obsessed with making clever remarks, and gives the impression that the gentleman reviewer took a notepad with him to the theatre, allowed his Inner Editor to come to the fore, and spent the entire time scribbling clever remarks without really watching the film. The result is a disjointed mess that makes the gentleman appear utterly ignorant of French history and of literature as a general field.
As I've rather disagreed with the New Yorker in many respects, over many movies, I do not think that this is unreasonable partisanship on my part. Les Miserables is simply the most recent example, and one that I know very well indeed, as Victor Hugo's book was pretty much the first book I learned how to dissect in a properly literary manner.
The gentleman who wrote the review for the recent movie, on the other hand, shows a complete and startling ignorance of the source material. This is rather distressing; the New Yorker is supposed to be a magazine that is generally well-educated, and Les Miserables, no matter what certain people may have to say about adverbs, is one of the greatest works ever produced in any language, and a piece that even now contains relevant and revolutionary sentiments. It is a view of huge social movements and issues through the eyes of a few; it is a story of small secret deeds of courage and love in dark places; and of quiet deeds of evil in the light. It is a vast, grand allegory with its feet planted in the muck of the streets. So when our gentleman review complains that, "...you can't help wondering if this shift into grandeur has confused his [the director, Tom Hooper] sense of scale. The camera soars on high, the orchestra bellows, and then, whenever someone feels a song coming on, we are hustled in close..." it is clear that he has completely missed the point. He then bemoans the lack of farce, accusing Les Miserables of "inflationary bombast".
What Les Miserables is is of its time. It is a work produced in the nineteenth century, and trying to update it to fit a modern audience's exacting tastes would ruin its charm and beauty. A certain amount of pedantic preaching is to be expected -- do remember, dear reader, that a work published in this period was expected to have some moral material if it was not to be labeled sensationalist. Sensationalism was far more damning then than it is now -- a quick perusal of Little Women should substantiate this nicely. Les Miserables is, at its heart, a moral tract, much as many of Dickens's works are. A good reviewer takes note of these things, and does not complain about a work based on the fact that its content contains things that he finds uninteresting.
However, our gentleman reviewer does not spend much time discussing either. He is far too absorbed in his own cleverness to pay attention to such small things. He comments, concerning Valjean's 19 years in prison, "...a punishment that he regards as unjust, though in fact it reflects well on the status of French baking. Had he taken a croissant, it would have meant the guillotine..." Though a bit of lighthearted frippery such as this is perfectly appropriate in many contexts, given the rest of the article's complaints about 'inflationary bombast' and so on, it takes on the unfortunate and hopefully inaccurate air of a jest borne out of pure ignorance of both time period and source material.
There is a pattern in this column. If the film reviewed is a small film, an unknown film, the reviewer sings its praises to the sky; if it is a popular film, it is dismissed with offhanded amused contempt. An action movie is called brainless and foolish; something like Les Miserables is damned as bloated and pretentious. It seems that the magazine has a fear of enjoying anything vulgar, which renders it more Victorian in sensibilities than even Hugo.
I wonder how many of the reviews featured in the New Yorker are genuine, and how many are the result of office politics. It seems that no reviewer can hold his or her or their position on those last two pages and allow themselves to be genuinely moved by the material they watched; in short, a reptilian heart seems to be a prerequisite. I do not want reptilian hearts to shape opinions about movies; I do not possess a reptilian heart, and I go to the cinema to enjoy myself. It is too expensive to do otherwise.
I would like to take the gentleman who wrote this review to the movies. I would like to sit him down with a bucket of well-buttered popcorn and a soda of a size illegal in New York in front of a screen playing some kids' movie and tell him to turn off the inner editor and enjoy himself. I fear this would not be enough to cure this cold, calculating view of entertainment, but it's worth a try.
Predictably, it hated it, like every other popular (read nerdy) film that has been produced in the last year or so.
I think it's full of shit. The review is trite, offhand, obsessed with making clever remarks, and gives the impression that the gentleman reviewer took a notepad with him to the theatre, allowed his Inner Editor to come to the fore, and spent the entire time scribbling clever remarks without really watching the film. The result is a disjointed mess that makes the gentleman appear utterly ignorant of French history and of literature as a general field.
As I've rather disagreed with the New Yorker in many respects, over many movies, I do not think that this is unreasonable partisanship on my part. Les Miserables is simply the most recent example, and one that I know very well indeed, as Victor Hugo's book was pretty much the first book I learned how to dissect in a properly literary manner.
The gentleman who wrote the review for the recent movie, on the other hand, shows a complete and startling ignorance of the source material. This is rather distressing; the New Yorker is supposed to be a magazine that is generally well-educated, and Les Miserables, no matter what certain people may have to say about adverbs, is one of the greatest works ever produced in any language, and a piece that even now contains relevant and revolutionary sentiments. It is a view of huge social movements and issues through the eyes of a few; it is a story of small secret deeds of courage and love in dark places; and of quiet deeds of evil in the light. It is a vast, grand allegory with its feet planted in the muck of the streets. So when our gentleman review complains that, "...you can't help wondering if this shift into grandeur has confused his [the director, Tom Hooper] sense of scale. The camera soars on high, the orchestra bellows, and then, whenever someone feels a song coming on, we are hustled in close..." it is clear that he has completely missed the point. He then bemoans the lack of farce, accusing Les Miserables of "inflationary bombast".
What Les Miserables is is of its time. It is a work produced in the nineteenth century, and trying to update it to fit a modern audience's exacting tastes would ruin its charm and beauty. A certain amount of pedantic preaching is to be expected -- do remember, dear reader, that a work published in this period was expected to have some moral material if it was not to be labeled sensationalist. Sensationalism was far more damning then than it is now -- a quick perusal of Little Women should substantiate this nicely. Les Miserables is, at its heart, a moral tract, much as many of Dickens's works are. A good reviewer takes note of these things, and does not complain about a work based on the fact that its content contains things that he finds uninteresting.
However, our gentleman reviewer does not spend much time discussing either. He is far too absorbed in his own cleverness to pay attention to such small things. He comments, concerning Valjean's 19 years in prison, "...a punishment that he regards as unjust, though in fact it reflects well on the status of French baking. Had he taken a croissant, it would have meant the guillotine..." Though a bit of lighthearted frippery such as this is perfectly appropriate in many contexts, given the rest of the article's complaints about 'inflationary bombast' and so on, it takes on the unfortunate and hopefully inaccurate air of a jest borne out of pure ignorance of both time period and source material.
There is a pattern in this column. If the film reviewed is a small film, an unknown film, the reviewer sings its praises to the sky; if it is a popular film, it is dismissed with offhanded amused contempt. An action movie is called brainless and foolish; something like Les Miserables is damned as bloated and pretentious. It seems that the magazine has a fear of enjoying anything vulgar, which renders it more Victorian in sensibilities than even Hugo.
I wonder how many of the reviews featured in the New Yorker are genuine, and how many are the result of office politics. It seems that no reviewer can hold his or her or their position on those last two pages and allow themselves to be genuinely moved by the material they watched; in short, a reptilian heart seems to be a prerequisite. I do not want reptilian hearts to shape opinions about movies; I do not possess a reptilian heart, and I go to the cinema to enjoy myself. It is too expensive to do otherwise.
I would like to take the gentleman who wrote this review to the movies. I would like to sit him down with a bucket of well-buttered popcorn and a soda of a size illegal in New York in front of a screen playing some kids' movie and tell him to turn off the inner editor and enjoy himself. I fear this would not be enough to cure this cold, calculating view of entertainment, but it's worth a try.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
A meditation on dishes
It is a well known fact that any new scientist spends an awful lot of time washing glassware. Indeed, "washing glassware" is a catch-all term to describe the work assigned to the newest person in the lab -- boring, repetitive, generally unattractive, and most importantly, very difficult to screw up. At this stage, the newbie spends a lot of time watching everyone else in the lab with varying degrees of envy, looking forward to the day when their competence will be recognized and they can move up to spawning urchins/counting glumes/keying insects and leave the sink far behind.
I spent an hour and a half washing glassware today, and spent a lot of it wondering how in hell I'd managed to escape the task this long. It was all glassware that I'd produced, too, so there was a sort of poetic justice to it.
Which was when I found that I couldn't turn the sink off.
I did the big girl thing: I went and found my advisor and asked for help. The sink was fixed.
As soon as my advisor was gone, it started gushing rusty water. Fortunately, we have a spigot with DI water, so that was not too much of a problem but I think the reader now has something of an idea of why I was so relieved when my friend called me up and suggested a picnic.
Unfortunately, I have no pictures of said picnic, but it was glorious. We ate sandwiches with honey mustard, cheese, turkey and avocado and drank sparkling apple cider out of plastic champagne flutes on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. I may have a slight sunburn.
There are a number of reasons that I'm going to find it difficult to leave this city for grad school. More glassware and fewer picnics... but I daresay I'll find a replacement!
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
...oops.
Keep a blog, they said.
It'll make you a better writer, they said.
Good for discipline, they said.
In defiance of everything 'they' have said, I appear to be just as undisciplined as ever. Which is fine with me! Except when I saw the little 'tropes and trilobites' bookmark in my browser every time I snuck some time on tumblr between exams last quarter, and then I felt guilty.
See, dear reader? I had pangs of conscience over this! I'm not entirely irresponsible in writing.
And to be honest, the irresponsibility here was a direct result of trying not to be irresponsible elsewhere. I refer, of course, to my research. I applied for a grant (lots of tears involved), and got it, and had to make a poster (even more tears, never use Photoshop for ANYTHING important ever, got it?) and managed to display it and it all was very shiny and scientific and there were a lot of pictures like this:
And then there were a lot of other pictures of dissections of sharks and so on, because I finally sat down and took one of the labs offered by one of the most difficult professors at the college, and it completely ate my life. My housemates grew used to me pacing up and down the hall of our apartment muttering in Latin under my breath as I tried to memorize the nerves and circulatory system of a singularly odiferous dogfish.
After ten weeks of wailing and gnashing of pens, winter break started. To say that the beginning of it was less than peaceful would be like saying I was slightly vexed last quarter when the fire alarm went off the night before my eight am final while I was in the shower.
Unlike my inpromptu bathrobe fashion show, however, the beginning of winter break was productive. I finally got to go see the HMS Surprise.
Best Christmas present ever. I spent hours squeeing over her. We spent more time on her than in our hotel room. I was a happy puppy.
And then Les Miserables came out and I was an even happier puppy. Go see it if you haven't seen it already...
After that, this break has been one long blur of glorious sloth. I woke up at about 11 this morning, and realized exactly how useless I had been, and my conscience smote me. So I had to face the blog once more.
It'll make you a better writer, they said.
Good for discipline, they said.
In defiance of everything 'they' have said, I appear to be just as undisciplined as ever. Which is fine with me! Except when I saw the little 'tropes and trilobites' bookmark in my browser every time I snuck some time on tumblr between exams last quarter, and then I felt guilty.
See, dear reader? I had pangs of conscience over this! I'm not entirely irresponsible in writing.
And to be honest, the irresponsibility here was a direct result of trying not to be irresponsible elsewhere. I refer, of course, to my research. I applied for a grant (lots of tears involved), and got it, and had to make a poster (even more tears, never use Photoshop for ANYTHING important ever, got it?) and managed to display it and it all was very shiny and scientific and there were a lot of pictures like this:
And then there were a lot of other pictures of dissections of sharks and so on, because I finally sat down and took one of the labs offered by one of the most difficult professors at the college, and it completely ate my life. My housemates grew used to me pacing up and down the hall of our apartment muttering in Latin under my breath as I tried to memorize the nerves and circulatory system of a singularly odiferous dogfish.
After ten weeks of wailing and gnashing of pens, winter break started. To say that the beginning of it was less than peaceful would be like saying I was slightly vexed last quarter when the fire alarm went off the night before my eight am final while I was in the shower.
Unlike my inpromptu bathrobe fashion show, however, the beginning of winter break was productive. I finally got to go see the HMS Surprise.
Best Christmas present ever. I spent hours squeeing over her. We spent more time on her than in our hotel room. I was a happy puppy.
And then Les Miserables came out and I was an even happier puppy. Go see it if you haven't seen it already...
After that, this break has been one long blur of glorious sloth. I woke up at about 11 this morning, and realized exactly how useless I had been, and my conscience smote me. So I had to face the blog once more.
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