I don't care, I love it

I ordered a free informational poster today from a pipet company with the pure intent to use it as decoration in my home.

http://us.mt.com/us/en/home/supportive_content/news/GPT-Poster2010.html

Packed and all eyes turned in

You're going to freak out about this.

But for even for scientists, sometimes life needs to take the front seat.

We just moved into our San Antonio townhouse (before the complex was completed with their renovations or turned on the air conditioning). It's been a flurry of angry cats, drywall dust, and achingly painful flea bites in our 85 F degree abode.

OMGWTFBBQ

Big Brother is this Behavioral Neuroscientist's crack cocaine

I am addicted to Big Brother.

For those that don't know - Big Brother is a reality TV competition that runs in the summer, airing three days a week. Approximately 13 people get locked in a camera-filled house without entertainment, outside contact, and limited access to resources. Over the course of the show, contestants compete for power, luxuries, and survival. Housemates vote each other out of the house until only two individuals remain. The winner is selected by a group of the most recently 'evicted houseguests,' making Big Brother a complex social, physical, and mental game.

I realize that many people think that reality TV is trash, but I would argue that Big Brother is psychologically fascinating. Because of a lack of outside stimulation, contestants quickly become immersed in the environment, frequently citing that they forget that the house is brimming with more than 60 cameras. There's some alcohol available, but things rarely devolve into a Bad Girls Club-level meltdown and the drama doesn't feel as exploitative as therapy shows for vulnerable people and doesn't make people sick. What makes Big Brother amazing is that you can watch as people become increasingly entrenched in the mind-warpingly intense game.

The game is so different in every incarnation that here is a brief description/commentary of the previous season's winners (that I've watched):

2012: Ian - awkward young dude who managed to outwit (and piss off fewer people) his Big Brother mentor, the infamous previous winner Dan.

2011: Rachel - Vegas resident with an obnoxious laugh and in-your-face attitude that used both brains and brawn to win despite being in an unpopular 'show-mance.'

2010: Hayden - Strong, handsome fraternity-type dude who forged a strong alliance and used it to easily navigate into the final three.

2009: Jordan - perhaps the most clueless contestant to win, the adorable houseguest bumbled to half a million dollars by the end of the summer by staying likable.


To become the winner, it takes a combination of physical, mental, and social gaming. As briefly touched upon above, winners come to that end using a myriad of strategies. I find it positively fascinating. So might the 6 million people that tune in for every episode of the people that pay more than $15/month to watch the uncensored, 24-hour live feeds. There's an after-hours cable show featuring action from within the Big Brother house.

There is at least one blogger that is making money by soliciting donations for covering the live feeds, and their coverage is good enough that I'm considering supporting them financially.


If you're into psychology or behavioral neuroscience, Big Brother is worth a watch as a fish bowl of human behavior. You can easily discount it as cheap reality TV, but that sort of closed mindedness might be a bit shortsighted. After all, as researchers we have ethical and logistical constraints from ever doing anything with the experimental realism that is evident in that house. Zimbardo (omg! not dead!) would get a kick out of it.

Time goes by SO SLOWLY

I have a confession:

At every lab meeting, I track how much time one of my colleagues speaks.

Yes, I am a jerk.

No, I don't care.

In graduate school, lab meetings were held sporadically - but not at all for most of my graduate school career. This is a probably a large reason as to why I find anything but the "Reader's Digest" version of the whole affair absolutely excruciating.

And why I time my colleague in our lab meetings.

Content-wise: This person struggles with saying anything clearly, effectively or efficiently. They use lab meeting to think out loud to themselves. They don't think through their presentation's narrative and then I end up watching them sort through old presentations and graphs looking for the "one".

We hold data meetings every other week - and  this person speaks for about a half hour at each gathering.

It is the water torture of lab meetings.

So... I bemusedly count. Because the alternative would be to dread the whole thing and bitterly stare at the otherwise nice individual while they talk about their work.

...

Did I mention that they gave a more formal project update using a Word document? It was ridiculous. I could hardly hold back the humored and amazed smirk as they slowly and awkwardly scrolled through their graphs in Word.

Do your labmates and/or co-workers a solid and make that presentation quick, obvious and to the point. We'll thank you for it.

Being poor was not such a drag in hindsight

There are certain things about my scientific upbringing that sometimes makes me feel like a curmudgeonly asshole.

One of these things are privileged and un-self-aware* assholes who have only ever known labs that are flush with $$$BUX$$$ and take those conditions for granted.

I, however, spent a couple years in a lab when funding was scarce. I fought for, and eventually won, a teaching position to guarantee that I would be paid during the summer months in graduate school. Soon thereafter, my advisor was awarded a sizely grant, and we were suddenly a rich and powerful lab in our department. That didn't change how I approached my science work - I constructed the bulk of the behavioral testing apparatuses used in my dissertation study from abandoned materials found in the next door lab.

When I started in my current lab for my postdoc, we had substantial start up funds. Slowly, my active frame of mind has changed, but my perspective hasn't. Now, if I need something to complete my work, I simply order it without substantiating any of it to anyone, including an administrator. It was strange and new, but also amazing and liberating. Still - not something I planned to embrace mindlessly.

In fact, I switched to and learned a whole new statistical program because it was the cheapest through the university's IT department. I also negotiated aggressively with the vendor of our behavioral testing equipment - a system on which the lab invested more than $50K - to send us various free extras at every opportunity. Another major source of cost in an animal lab - the animals themselves - is often a poorly managed expense. With the help of my student assistants, I've been able to effectively manage and cull animals, keeping the smallest necessary group of animals.

Science is ridiculously expensive and the further the money goes, the further the science goes.

Now, as our current funding situation becomes increasingly dim - I'm even more thoughtful about how the lab spends its money.

So today, when I overhear a new graduate student flippantly declare that the lab needs to put forth $300 for statistical software on their personal computer, when it's available on numerous other computers in the lab, I pause. They probably don't know that it's possible that they got a position in the lab through the department's financial resources (rather than from the PI's funds) or that three of his coworkers are potentially losing their funding/jobs in only a few months. The Ivory tower of academia, it's sometimes called. And it is.

Even so, money is one of those taboo subjects in science - no one really talks about it. Sure, the PI is usually thinking about it, but few make a conversation out of it. Especially in the current funding climate, it appears that the predominant strategy is apply as often as possible and count the moments until the next grant review and score cycle. And probably pray, too, if they believe in that sort of thing.



* Yeah, I'm going to make up words. I use logic. Follow it.

If you liked it then you shoulda put your name on it

Dear everyone who's applied to or for anything ever:

Label the files that you email to someone in a way that would make the file names in someone else's possession make ONE MODICUM of sense.

For example, if you send me an email, and attach a resume(or CV), these file names make me want to reject you without further thought:

resume.doc
myresume.doc


This annoying little thing makes my frustrated mind over-value the resumes of people that actually put their name in the file. It's such a dumb little thing, but when there's a stack of applicants for a position, you might be surprised what people use as their selective criterion.



Like that one time, when someone forgot to spell check their email to me, and called me Dr. Swam.










... And then I stupidly and mockingly posted the above on Facebook, and now some of my roller derby family (lovingly?) call me Dr. Swam or Swammy.


So... yeah. Label those files.

I'm such a fool for you

Because of my need of organization, I have now accepted that I will forever be in charge of cleaning and putting things away - both at home and in the lab.

FML.

Now, I'm not saying that my lab mates are filthy pigs - in fact, I have a great lab family and I really like them. It's just... that there's a pervasive culture of not putting things away. In my experience, the outlook is poor for getting people to put their lab equipment away after it's been cleaned and dried. That minuscule area by the sink is constantly brimming with tools to be autoclaved or put away. It's literally limbo for lab tools.

Once a week, I've now resigned myself to putting things away. Sometimes I need to, because it's the only way I can place my used tools there to dry. Sometimes I'd prefer to postpone whatever science I have slated for the day in favor of the mindless indulgence that is organizing. Sometimes I do it because I have undergraduate assistants around me almost all of the time, and they need to be taught how to be good lab citizens.

There's absolutely nothing harder than trying to get a lab member to change a bad lab citizen habit. It's easiest to pretend it never happens, and hope that you can eventually have more good than bad lab mates. Maybe you can approach a poor citizen individually, and appeal for considerate behavior. ...And sometimes you let it roll, suck it up, and clean up after them silently. Not all lab mates are perfect or permanent, and sometimes it's easier to simply wait for the ticking time bomb to explode (or graduate, because that happens sometimes).

So today, I raise my glass to my lab mates. I put away your shit like a bitch.

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma

So... just so everyone knows:

Orientate is not a word.

Noun: Orientation
Verb (present tense): Orient
Verb (past tense): Oriented

Orientate is not a word and I reserve the right to snortle when you say stupid shit.


UPDATE: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orientated

It's a word according to my Facebook and interwebs, so I gouged out my nasal passages to prevent future undeserved snortling.