I have a dream...

What if all the Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvds in the United States were connected to form a single coherent boulevard? Then we could take a luxuriously slow road trip around the United States, passing from city to city in a nonsensical labyrinthine path. This would benefit people who sometimes wake up in strange cities and find themselves confused by their orientation to home relative to the identically-titled but fundamentally unequal MLKJBs. I'm just sayin'-- it would save some people a lot of time that would otherwise be spent meandering around, burning fossil fuels, and trying not to cry in front of the gas station attendant.

Some people would also really benefit from intuitively renaming all roads according to her place of residence: "Direction of Ice Cream Store Street." "Intersects with Gym Road." "Pathway between Work and Home Skyway." "Full of Speed Traps Go Slowly Way."

Also, what if we outlawed parallel parking? I think it's discriminatory to people who never took the driving exam because they passed driver's ed with an extremely high grade. Some people can't help it if they are too smart for the system.

A roundabout excuse for not posting more often.

I love multidisciplinary studies. Specialization limits the accessibility of whatever topic you study-- sure, you might be an expert in the environmental theory of praying mantis egg-hatching dynamics, but if you can't communicate what you know to someone who studies the neurobiochemical interactions of crawfish mating rituals, what good does it do? We do need experts, though... it's just that, we need a few experts, and we need them to mentor people in a broader context than their own expertise. Multiple mentors-- that's the idea behind a thesis committee, I think.

I am writing about this today, not to change the face of science (I'll save that for another day, a greater blog), but to express my frustration with grad school lately. I work in a fantastic interdisciplinary lab that combines chemistry and neurobiology, and yet I find myself constantly tripping on the crack between the two. Imagine you have a study where you use a chemical technique to study a neurobiological phenomenon. Now you have a problem: write for a chemistry journal, and the chemists think you're doing chemistry wrong. Write for a biology journal, and the neurobiologists think you're doing neurobiology wrong. You're wrong from every angle, even if you're right. (My lab is really well established, luckily for us, but the problem still arises, especially when you're trying to do something new. Cough, cough.)

Now back to that age-old (beginning of this blog-old) notion that as a woman, I feel that I experience extra frustration. Most of the men I know are happy to step back and say "Yes, I'm a chemist-- who cares about the neurobiology?" or "The neurobiology is solid, so I am going to let it speak for itself." I feel this is easier for someone with a Y chromosome because society expects them to be great at one thing-- and everything else be damned. Women are supposed to be multi-talented: can you cook? do you keep a clean house? does your hair have bounce and shine? can you wiggle your hips attractively when Lady Gaga comes on at a club? please theorize about the themes in the Bronte sisters' literature as compared to Jane Austen's. how does NMDA antagonism in the hippocampus impact task-acquisition in various behavioral paradigms? etc. Maybe that's not true-- maybe that's just some neurotic pressure I feel because I can barely cook, clean, control my hair, and wiggle seductively, and I haven't read early 19th century women's lit since high school.

But my obvious neuroticism aside... my point is, taking a multidisciplinary approach to science is, in my opinion, the best approach-- and the most open for criticism. And unlike a lot of people, I don't let criticism roll off my back. I take it as a challenge to get better. Guess what? Being a first year grad student presents a lot of challenges (mostly because I don't know anything), and I'm EXHAUSTED. And that, my dear reader(s?), is why my posting has been lackluster lately. I'm just too tired to store up my vitriol. It leaks out of me all day like a car with a bad transmission. And your diaphragm (again, not the contraceptive) is the one that suffers. I apologize to diaphragms everywhere.

Queueing up

In an effort to not spend my money, I'm kicking television. Cable costs an extra $40-something a month and I would like to have that money in my bank account. Or to spend on concert tickets. The best part about not having television is that I won't have to see a single Grey's Anatomy commercial and wonder how Americans became so tasteless that they made it one of the highest rated programs on TV.

The cynic in me is crying out for some depressing and inherently-biased indie documentaries. Any recommendations? I'm partial to movies about America's obesity problem, but I also like macabre political agendas, doom-and-gloom nature prophecies, and anything with bizarre wooden puppets acting out modern day biographies in the style of Greek theatre. (Protagonist!)

UNCLE

North Carolina, I give up. Enough with the insects, okay? I give up. I concede that nature hates me.

I have good reason to think that my car has a nest of bees inside. Does that sort of thing happen to normal people? What would someone do if their car was full of bees? Will I at least get some delicious honeycomb out of the whole ordeal?

I still love Obama

I don't know a lot about politics, but I do know a lot about bitching. It seems that lately, a big mouth is all you need to put your two cents into debates about the economy and healthcare. People I went to high school with are posting daily rants on Facebook about how Obama's a communist-- the last time I saw these guys participate in anything was gym class, and I think that was only to prove who was the superior douchebag. Seems like the same thing now. My friends (who definitely know more about these subjects than I do) want to debate politics with me just to prove me wrong, as if making their point clear to me is useful. I guess political stress makes people a little bit aggressive. But hey, what's the point?

So I don't know a lot about politics, but I'm pretty sure that the government isn't taking tips from Facebook and Google Chat transcripts. I know that back before we had these online social outlets, people actually got off their fat asses and organized protests. Regardless of the effect, at least they sent a message of discontent to someone other than irritated social networkers (well, me). Some people that were frustrated with the system actually wrote great music instead of contributing to their gigantic beer guts all day. Our generation is fucked and that's not Obama's fault. We are lazy and fat (well, not me) and whiny. We aren't apathetic enough to quit complaining, but we're content pass the hard work on to that nebulous "someone else." I think we deserve whatever shitty future America that evolves for not taking action about whatever we believe in now.

It took me a lot of angsting teen years to unearth this nugget of zen, but I'll share it with you for free: If I can't control it, I'm not going to stress about it. I'm a biologist and I've got no business telling Obama what to do, unless he decides that all research should be creationism-based. I pay my taxes, obey traffic laws, spend too much on clothes, and think that the government's doing its job if a tribe of neighboring Neanderthals don't pull me out of my bed at night to rape and pillage me. Here's what I worry about:

• Poorly conducted fMRI studies influencing our view of neural processing.
• Lack of respect for women in science.
• Ignorant medical professionals-- every time I go to the doctor, I end up diagnosing myself and giving suggestions for my own treatment. Why don't we teach our doctors to THINK? About something other than money, I mean.
  
• Politicians who don't know anything about research and take pride in their blazing ignorance (I'm looking at you, Sarah Palin).
• People without a sense of humor and their sad, sad, sad, sad lives.
• The fact that I'm writing this blog on a Sunday morning when I should be cleaning my apartment.