"Even if I am a school of medicine professor..." - showdown at orientation

Howdy. Our serene and mostly peaceful school has been recently hijacked by hordes of eager, goggle-eyed first-years. The firsties started orientation yesterday and a majority of them spent last week getting to know each other and the great city of St. Louis by participating in a community program.

Yesterday wise second years who are involved in various student-run groups were invited to give brief presentations (and by brief, I really mean brief. We were told not to exceed 45 seconds) to the firsties. Yours truly grabbed the opportunity and gave a smashing presentation. Standing ovation and all. Nah just kidding.

Anyway, that's not the story. The story is something that happened right before the event. Our benevolent school always provides enough Pappa John's pizza to feed an army regiment at most events like this. Since the welfare of students is priority numero uno, a bunch of stern guards admissions staff guards the pizza with great zeal and pride.

Perhaps tempted by the sweet aroma of the sausage pizza a faculty member stopped by. Now I know quite a bit about this dude, and he is a baller. Baller with a capital B. He is young, charismatic, creative, and insanely smart. He sauntered up to the lunch table and the following scene ensued:

Poem of the week - "One day a Woman"

This week's feature brought to you by Miller Williams who, wikipedia tells me, is from Arkansas and is known for reading a poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration.

One Day A Woman

One day a woman picking peaches in Georgia
lost her hold on the earth and began to rise.
She grabbed limbs but leaves stripped off in her hands.
Some children saw her before she disappeared
into the white cloud, her limbs thrashing.
The children were disbelieved. The disappearance
was filed away with those of other women
who fell into bad hands and were soon forgotten.
Six months later a half-naked man in Kansas
working on the roof of the Methodist Church
was seen by half a dozen well-known
and highly respected citizens to move
directly upward, his tarbrush waving,
until he shrank away to a point and vanished.
Nobody who knew about the first event
knew of the second, so no connection was made.
The tarbrush fell to earth somewhere in Missouri
unnoticed among a herd of Guernsey cows.

Pretty surrealist. Would fit perfectly in a movie trailer about supernatural happenings. 

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...

 

Badass mathematicians - 1: Evariste Galois

Most people don't tend to think of mathematicians as being badass. Popular convention - so vigorously and boisterously propagated by the media - sees them as hapless dorks. Thick glasses, messy hair and awkward social skills, the world sees the prototypical mathematician as a portrait in pitiful meekness.

On the contrary, the most influential mathematicians throughout history were people with an extraordinary zeal for life and were full of contagious vitality and energy. Sure, a lot of them were shy or preferred to stay isolated, but that was because they preferred to spend their time working on equations, not wasting time engaging in mindless pleasantries. Most of them maintained a healthy interest in music and reading, and some even went as far as to host lavish parties at their houses to entertain their guests.

In this and the next few posts (probably one a week), I want to highlight the lives and personalities of some of the more "colorful" mathematicians throughout the ages.

Let's start with Evariste Galois.

This is Evariste Galois:

"My jacket collar beats your entire outfit!"

Poem of the week - "Kyrie"

Haven't done one of these in a while. Here's Tomas Transtromer (I have written about him here and here) again:

Kyrie:

At times my life suddenly opens its eyes in the dark.
A feeling of masses of people pushing blindly
through the streets, excitedly, toward some miracle,
while I remain here and no one sees me.

It is like the child who falls asleep in terror
listening to the heavy thumps of his heart.
For a long, long time till morning puts his light in the locks
and the doors of darkness open.

Short, uneasy and bleak: just the way I like most of my poetry. 

The greatest western blot machine west of the Mississippi

Readers of this blog: I want you to pause whatever it is you are doing (the redditing can wait till later) and take a brief moment (or two or three) to behold the greatest western blot machine west of the Mississippi, aka me.

For those uninitiated in the glorious ways of molecular biology, you might be scratching your head (or in some cases, that glaringly obvious bald spot), "What the hell is a western blot?"

Here's a brief primer (for those who get this lame pun, you can politely snigger): a western blot is an experimental technique used to detect proteins from sample/tissue/organ/cell/culture plate of your choice. Let's use me as an example. I roll into my research lab some time around 10:30, grind up tiny mice brains in a solution, do some hand waving - and voila! - I end up with some protein. Over the next few hours, I put my feet up and beast people around on Scramble with Friends, solve a couple crosswords and chug coffee. By some force of nature, the proteins are ready to be visualized on a digital imager the next day. And the cycle begins anew. Also, a bunch of rabbits and mice were probably bled to make the process work.

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.