The terrifying specter of death by car wash

Not many things on this planet, material or otherwise, scare me. I am not afraid or terrified easily. Valor is practically my middle name and courage my favorite drink. In fact I am regularly known to indulge in acts of bravery and daredevilry (I once jaywalked in Washington, DC! A mere two blocks from the White House!). One might safely say that I live and thrive right on the edge. 

But that's not what I am here to talk about today. Today it is time to discuss my fears. Fears with a capital F. FEARS.

Now you may wonder - why is this guy blabbering about his fears? 

And I will counter right back - what is braver than discussing our deepest fears, our strongest foibles, our starkest shortcomings? Take the case of the philosopher/vigilante billionaire Bruce Wayne. He embraced his fears and look where that got him. 

On that note, let's move on. 

Kanye West is a visionary and other critical musings

Take a good deep look at that chiseled face. I'll wait.

That, my friends, is what visionary looks like. Now I'll admit, I am not a huge rap/hip hop person. Sure I do love me some old school Snoop 'doggy doggy' Dogg Lion but I am not what one would call a fanatic. Occasionally I listen to some Jay-Z as well.  

But Kanye? Man he blows me away. His songs are symphonic. Perfect blend of melodies, rhythm, lyrics creates a pretty powerful experience. I understand he probably has a whole army of sound engineers, sound technicians, sound advisers, sound managers, sound quarterbacks whatever tweaking every little note but the finished product still carries his stamp of authority and approval.

Here's 'Homecoming', a great example of what I mean by symphonic:



The dude from 'Coldplay' is on the piano and the song begins with a beautiful piano riff that forms the backbone of the whole piece. It was everything, the clever puns, a catchy refrain, good meaningful lyrics. Pretty powerful song, really, that stays with you long enough and succeeds at evoking strong nostalgia and a tinge of wistfulness.

John Coltrane, the legendary Jazz innovator and renowned saxophonist, pioneered a technique called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheets_of_sound"> 'sheets of sound'

with his improvisation and creative arrangements. I think Kanye does something similar with his songs. He puts in a lot of thought, a lot of effort into creating the right blend of sound. Pick up his new album 'Yeezus' and listen to any of the songs on there ('Black skinhead' is my favorite) and you'll see what I mean.
Kanye may be a jackass, as President Obama so memorably called him in an off-the-record remark during a routine interview, but damn he is a visionary.

And since I promised other critical musings in my title to the post, you will be rewarded aptly:

Start the car and thank you for holding

 David 'Bumble' Lloyd is one of my favorite cricket commentators. Btw please don't be Jennifer Lopez and confuse cricket with croquet (as she does here). If you, as a loyal reader of this blog, are also confused, do the following:
a) Take a full minute to feel unbearable shame and
b) Read some of yours truly's excellent posts highlighting this very excellent game here and here.

He's an Englishman through and through and a bit of an extravagant joker. He played a few matches for England here and there, and coached for a few years before taking his talents to the much more lucrative (I presume) career as a commentator and a sports pundit. Bumble likes to the use the phrase 'Start the car' a lot and liberally peppers his sentences with that phrase, especially when he is on air. Bumble tweets here . 

Right then, onward.

I recently had the distinct pleasure of moving apartments. Mercifully my new abode is a mere floor above my old digs so it wasn't as bad as it can get. The new place is exquisite. Since I am not a man prone to exaggeration, you better believe every word I say. Seriously, this place is huge. Massive. Gargantuan.

It is lofty! (no literally  -  because it is a loft)
It has a balcony!
It has a wine rack! (not that I would every be caught dead putting anything in it)

The biggest surprise about moving is the sinking realization how much random shit you've recklessly accumulated over the years. I bet if everyone in America were made to move every two months, consumerism would die a gory death overnight.

The other dark side about moving is making calls to utility companies. I recently purchased new internet and made changes to my cable. All of that took me nearly five hours over three days. Seriously, we can put a man on the friggin moon but we can't come up with a better way to figure this shit out?! The metallic monotonous voice that greets you so blithely every time you call one of these entities gets so grating. Who in the right mind programs these things? And even the operators. Their obsequiousness is, quite frankly, unnerving. 

But that's all done with and here I am, sprawled across my majestic sofa, pecking away at my laptop like a boss.

Before I go, here's a link to what has surprisingly turned out to be by far the most popular post on this damn blog: post. It is a silly little post about a little experiment I did where I pseudohallucinated using ping pong balls and static noise. As of this writing it is responsible for close to 20% of this blog's traffic. We've been getting comments from all sorts of random people in far-flung places. 

Do tune in from time to time for more jazz and pizazz!

College basketball is boring and other random stuff

• I am coughing a lung out over here in sunny Southern California, but I must soldier to feed the insatiable urge of my dear readers. The show must go on, as they say (btw who the hell comprises this murky "they"? Why don't they ever reveal "them"selves?)

• For the first time ever, I deigned to fill out a bracket for march madness. Why, I don't know. Just wanted to get a taste of, I guess. Quite frankly, I am completely baffled by all the attention and hype. Let's be real here people: college basketball sucks. The level of play is obnoxiously abysmal, and the games are so boring and slow, even espresso shots can't keep me up. These teams get a 35 freaking second shot-clock and two 20 minute halves and yet games end with shitty scorelines like 64-60. What the hell are these people doing? It's an insult to the viewer. I would rather watch a far more superior product, the NBA. Meanwhile, feel free to clog up my facebook newsfeed with your inane complaints about bad coaches, bad referees and your desperate analysis of a sub-par sport.

• Just finished a block of exams. One more block to go. Infectious diseases was the biggest class of this block, and definitely had the most amount of stuff to learn/memorize. Which makes sense I guess, considering the myriad bacteria and viruses and badass worms have it in for you. And oh man, the cats. So many diseases transmitted through cats. Moral of the class: stay the hell away from cats. They are cute little furry monsters of death. Speaking of which, here's a picture of a cute kitten:

Patiently plotting world domination

                                      

That's it for now. Have a Happy Easter. 

Ascaris: the subtle, understated badass

Nature is full of badasses. They come in all sizes and shapes and flavors. Some are big, obvious and downright terrifying: your leopards, cheetahs and other their ilk. Some are ruthless, relentless and overwhelm by the numbers. Army ants fall into this category. Never cross the path of an army ant. Some prefer to take the subtle approach. They display their badassery not by devouring you whole or laying eggs in your dead bodies or ripping you systematically apart. Nope. They believe in the power of invisibility.

The badass on display is from this camp.
It looks like this:

Ascaris: all-around badass

Coffee: the drink of the gods

The days are getting longer. The wind is getting nastier, sometimes enough to blow you off the bicycle or knock you off your feet. Most of the snow has melted but you always dread opening weather.com because, well, maybe the next storm is peeping around the corner.

There are drugs to be memorized, an absurdly long laundry list of infections to commit to memory. And don't forget the zebras - your pheochromocytomas, your metachromatic leukodystrophies. Pesky undergrad neighbors are holding ragers well into the wee hours of Saturday. Don't these brats have anything better to do on a Friday night?

Who do you turn to in this time of troubles? (which, by the way, is also the name given to an awesome period in Russian history. Do check it out here if you are into that sort of thing)

Coffee. That smooth, bold liquid gold. Each drop infused with pure awesomeness. Ever sat back and just hear coffee brewing? The coffeemaker gurgles so deliciously. With each drop of fresh coffee made, it makes a deeply satisfying rich chortle. Decaffeinated coffee is an affront to human existence, a sin beyond human comprehension. But you, you know the value of the pure stuff. No creamer, no sugar. Why would you want to insult coffee? When it's all done, you take out the filter. You glance almost wistfully at the uniform mound of used coffee as you throw the filter in the trash. Can I collect it in a jar and store it? With each sip, each heavenly sip, each trouble melts away.  The room smells of coffee. It smells of victory.

So here is an ode to you, coffee, the drink of the gods. 

Random thoughts

Happy thanksgiving to you all. Quick hits to keep you going through this holiday break.

1. Survived what seemed like the flight from hell on Tuesday from St. Louis to LAX. Got stuck in the dreaded middle seat, was only two seats behind a wailing toddler and right next to a dude with a tiny dog in what looked like an oversized lunch bag. On top of that the plane just sat there, just chilling, on the runway for eternity. On the plus side I blazed through a novel during the flight. This one: Sense of an Ending .

    Pretty great (and short) read. I like novels that effortlessly blend philosophy with literature and this one succeeds at that.  Difficult for me to explain the "plot" because it doesn't really have one. It's just this dude Tony Webster who is looking back at his life reminiscing about the nature of memory and history and friendship and relationships. He ruminates about how one seemingly trivial decision on his part ended up changing the lives of four people irrevocably. If you are into literary awards (and scour literary blogs to check out the nominees every once in a while, like me), this one won the Booker prize.

2. Couple weeks ago I whined about how my friends forced me to buy a bicycle helmet and how it would spell the end of my days as a rebel bike rider. Well turns out I was wrong. The helmet is pretty awesome. When I walk around holding it, I feel like a goddamn football player. The closest I will ever get to that feeling, I suppose. Plus it keeps me warm when I fit it snugly over my beanie.

3. Speaking of football, thanksgiving offered some exciting football. The Jets embarrassed themselves in royal fashion in front of a massive national audience. This gif of Mark "The Sanchize" Sanchez fumbling the ball after running headfirst into his lineman's ass sums it up:

4. For the heck of it, here is one of my favorite paintings. It's called Wanderer above the sea of fog by Casper David Friedrich. Enjoy:

Random stuff

Random stuff that I want to talk about.

• I have made no secret of my intense passion for bikes and biking. I have blathered about the topic several times, like here and here . This week my days as a glorious and proud outlaw came to an end. I surrendered my gritty, badass ways and agreed to abide by society's repressive laws. That's right. I finally purchased a helmet. For 10+ years I rode around unfettered, like an untamed majestic beast of the wild. Now after months of persistent pushing, both by friends and family, I am a rebel no more. Here is the heinous object that made it happen:

Random stuff

I'll have another installment of 'Badass Mathematicians' up tomorrow, but in the meantime if you are hungry for more, here are some random tidbits from my life:

• Feeling particularly like a boss right now. Mastered the art of riding my beloved bicycle without the use or need of my hands. That's right - I can now turn, swerve and roll around the streets of St. Louis on my bike AND read stimulating fare like this or this at the same time. (Both reads highly recommended, btw).

• Visited Kansas City (unofficial motto: "We have a shitload of fountains and fat geese") last weekend. Great city, great food. A surprisingly large number of sex shops off the freeway en route, but hey, whatever floats your boat. There is an art museum with four GIANT SHUTTLECOCKS there. Easily the highlight of my day. Here's a pic of this bizarre sculpture: 

•  Second year starts in a week. It's time to kick things into beast mode. Being a devout textbook nerd, this is my latest acquisition:

           I plan to read the whole damn thing (~1500 pages). Let's see how well that goes.

• Not a big fan of sci-fi, but recently read "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov. Blew. My. Mind. 

Happy to be done with 100 degree weather for now...

 

To bike is to live

St. Louis is a very bike friendly city. Roads are littered (probably not the best choice of verbs, but whatever) with proud signs saying "Bike St. Louis" with a little dude (or dudette) on a bike. There are numerous bike trails around the area. Significantly, there are at least three bike shops within a 3 mile radius. Although the bikes they sell are very expensive (the cheapest are around $300), just the fact they have $4000 bikes shows how serious biking is.

That's all splendid for me because I am a huge fan of bikes. Have been ever since I learned how to ride and earned my "badge of honor" in form of a nasty scar on the knee. I rode it to school for many years growing up in India, and even at UCLA lorded around the campus at odd hours. When my Diamondback got stolen the very next day I bought it, I felt like I was having an acute case of MI.

On Anger

I am now back in St. Louis working in my neurology/neuroscience lab. There is a lot of downtime when I waiting for western blots to get washed or brain lysates to get centrifuged so I have been doing a lot of thinking. Mostly about silly, abstract things. But if I didn't gleefully unload those ideas on my blog and inflict them on you loyal readers (I have quite a few by now), what purpose would this blog serve? Exactly.

So today's topic: what is the biological significance of anger? What is the neurochemical basis of it? In our neuroscience class we went on a whirlwind tour through various emotions and structures in the brain involved in mediating them, but this was more like window shopping. Despite the briefness of this tour, anger was never explicitly mentioned.

And that's weird. Anger is one of the most primal emotions/drives out there. It is rooted in human nature and ranks right alongside lust, hunger and hope. Yet it doesn't seem to serve any constructive purpose. Sure, cultures and creeds of all kind are replete with lores describing in detail the nature and consequences of wrath. Real history is full of examples of rage. But nothing useful has ever come out of this. In all these stories and real life examples, very bad things have resulted from anger.

April aardvarks

If you came here looking to read about aardvarks, sorry to disappoint you. I needed a gimmicky title. Just so you don't leave angry at me and at life, here's a picture of everyone's favorite aardvark Arthur, sporting one of my favorite outfits:

Moving on. Currently we are three weeks into the third and final block of first year. Neuroscience is the flavor of the month (or rather, the block).

First day of neuroanatomy lab, we were handed a bucket with a brain sloshing in formaldehyde, a rusty set of dissection tools, and a giant-ass steak knife. What a beautiful knife. I couldn't stop staring at it. So when the time came to chop the mushy brain into half, I wielded the beastly looking thing and went to work. The first thing I realized is the brain is disturbingly soft and food-like. Brain slices look like banana bread from a distance and one of my classmates even went as far as comparing it to a steak.

Having never taken neuroscience before, this is mostly uncharted territory for me. But I have found I get easily excited by G-protein coupled receptors, signaling cascades and ascending somatosensory tracts, so this has been a very fun journey. Nothing like a good view of lateral geniculate nucleus to brighten the day.

Enough about academics. In the past four weeks, I read five books - a pace I have not been able to match since my senior year of high school. To take up more space and give this blog post some more substance, here are capsule reviews of each:

The curious malady of the modern novel

I am currently reading Snow , by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. Written in 2002, it paints a very nuanced and detailed picture of modern Turkey and its problems, particularly the schism between conservative Muslims and the more western-learning republicans. The ostensible plot is this: Ka, a minor Turkish poet, returns from a 12-year exile in Germany to Istanbul and sets off to the border town of Kars to cover the alarming rise of suicide rates among young women. These women had recently been condemned by various outlets (government officials, school officials, family, media etc.) because they heeded the call of conservative Muslims and began wearing head scarves. I won't go into too much detail about the story because that's not what I want to discuss here.

Snow has flashes of utter, overwhelming brilliance, which are unfortunately punctuated by periods of unbearable stupor. And this seems to plague a lot of modern/postmodern novels. The authors tend to get tangled up in their own web of symbolism, meta-narratives, and abstractions. They lose focus and as result, the novel tends to lag. Now I don't mean the novel lacks "excitement" or a "binding plot." I have read plenty of things where nothing seems to happen for long stretches of time (Lampedusa's Leopard comes to mind) but still manage to provide a very enjoyable reading experience.

Haruki Murakami's Wind-up bird chronicle, a 600-something page behemoth is a classic example of this. A very mundane event opens this long, twisted, exhilarating novel: the protagonist Toru and his wife Kumiko become concerned when their cat disappears. As Toru begins the search for this cat, bizarre things start happening in his life. The rest of the plot is too convoluted for me to describe here, but suffice it to say it includes weird dream sequences, a mysterious mother-son duo who claims to cure people of unspecified problems by touching them, a gruesome detour into the forgotten Russo-Japanese conflict along the Manchukuo border right before WWII started (a man gets skinned alive), and a disturbingly blase 16-year old who works in a dreary factory and spends her free time thinking the duck people talk to her.

There are parts where the novel becomes very frustrating. It just bogs down. It's like Murakami got himself stuck in a quagmire and had to figure his way out. Emotionally draining novel. I think Murakami could have slashed 150 pages easily and still conveyed the same message and tone.

At the same time, I can't stop reading post-modern stuff. The flashes of brilliance abso-frickin-lutely make it worth reading the whole novel. They are so good at giving a glimpse into the complex thought process of their respective authors that they more than make up for the dreadful lags in the middle.

Wishes for the day

Eh I am kinda tired right now and I have to wake up early tomorrow morning to go work in lab. So here we go:

• I want to follow American Idol again. I hear it's getting quite good. "Nail biter", "Surprisingly good", and "really good" are words that I have heard being used to described it so far and I am a sucker for such descriptors.

• I want to hear back from medical schools already. You are very annoyingly coy medical schools. Time to get it done. Don't waffle around, alright? I am tired of obsessively checking my emails every 30 seconds. 

• I want to be a freshman again. Life was very uncomplicated then. Plus dining halls have very delicious desserts.

• I want the weekend to be here already.

My day in pictures

This was my breakfast:

The most important meal of the day done right

For lunch, I had the fine gourmet cuisine served by the experts at Panda Express. As is customary, I got a fortune cookie with a little nugget of wisdom:

Damn right I am!

This came in the mail for me (and don't you dare go OMG CDs are so archaic):

The best of Judas Priest

And finally, I made me some mighty delicious dinner:

Who needs moms when I can cook so fine?

Some random thoughts

On this wednesday, a lot of random thoughts are swirling around in my head, like a freshly stirred cup of good coffee. Allow me to share them:

• Pearls before swine is on my favorite comics. The absurdity of the cast and the pungent wit make it a very delightful read every day. Take a look at this one from last week featuring the Pillsbury dough douche boy (click to enlarge):

•  The other day I was driving around my hometown and made a stop at CVS. There was a tiny video store next to it called "Video Joy". Hmm, I don't know about you, but with a name like that, I don't think I want to visit that video store.

• It's med school rejection season right now. Most schools are done sending out interview invites so now they in the business of notifying the rejected candidates. Almost all emails are stiflingly formal but there are some unintentionally funny ones. For example, this one:

Your application, although reviewed multiple times, was not selected for admission.

         

          The subtext here is "you were a loser each time your application came up...hahahahaha"

• Some human genetics research papers have more than 50 authors on them. We read one for a class last week that had 55 authors from 39 institutions, representing 7 countries. Talk about the summer olympics sheesh.

Hey Lakers, you do know the object of this game to win, right?