Someone had the lovely idea of planting daffodils on campus. Seeing them makes me happy and reminds me that days of sunshine will soon be here.

Daffodils

Two things happened when I started grad school: one, I started drinking more coffee, and two, I started noticing how frequently my name gets misheard, mistaken or mispronounced. The two things are highly correlated: coffee shops are where my name is most often lost in translation. Spelled on my coffee cups have been names from Jill to Gel to Jeff to Josie, none of which I mind and all of which are close, or somewhat close to Jo.

This weekend for the third time, I got JF.

Most of the time people’s tendency to be bad with names gets blamed on memory, but when name mishaps only occur on first encounters (i.e. with unfamiliar people in coffee shops), it is hard to blame an unmemorable past. For a while, I blamed my diction. Maybe my “o” sounds like “f” or “l” or “s.” Maybe I am so in need of coffee during these times that my uncaffeinated grumblings sound like word slurrs. Maybe coffee shops are too loud to hear the distinction between “o”s and the 25 other letters of the alphabet. Maybe I have an accent that causes my words to sound full of consonants. So I told myself it was my fault, I needed to speak up, lean in, I tried spelling. And now instead of Joans and Jills, I get JF.

My new hypothesis is that it is not me as much as it is my name. If my name was Jill it would probably never get confused to Gel. Do Rachels ever get Richards? Does Karly ever get Carl? Probably not. The problem here is living androgynously in a gender schemata world. I am guessing that names that are androgynous but have a stronger association with one or the other gender are less expected when meeting a new person, and thus more frequently mistaken.

Though we don’t think of our minds as expecting a particular name when we first meet someone, we likely are. A study at Miami University explored why it is that certain people seem to “look” like or “fit” their names while others don’t and what facial features trigger certain name expectations. Gender is an obvious cue for most people to remember names, but less obvious features also play a role in setting up our expectations for what someone’s name should be. The study linked specific facial features to specific name associations: The name Bob is generally linked to a rounder and larger face, Tim is thinner. Perhaps it is when name and feature are incongruous that names on coffee cups go awry. A large faced Tim or a skinny Bob — would they get as high a frequency of mistakenly named cups as a girl named Jo?

If expectations for names alters our ability to hear a person’s name, where else are our mind’s expectant neurons veering us away from being more perceptive of our surroundings? We hear often that memory is unreliable, but it seems like our minds can be just as unreliable in the present when we let our expectations dominate.

My oldest nephew is seven. The last time I saw him, we spent hours and hours reading Harry Potter together. One of the things I love about this kid is his natural tendency to turn the ordinary into the wonderful and mysterious. For example, when he heard I was moving to Pennsylvania, he paused for a moment and then said,” Hmmmmm. I guess that’s like Transylvania except instead of teeth for fangs the vampires have pencils”. At first I just thought this was very clever and funny ……….. but lately I’ve been looking a little wan and my teeth have been hurting …….. and now I’m concerned that he had a much deeper appreciation of the risks involved in moving to Pennsylvania than I did.

A large part of my choice to specialise in disease evolutionary biology was (and is) a belief that it’s the most interesting part of biology. In turn most of my decision to become a biologist rather than another flavour of nerdy scientist was that I thought other forms of science were boring in comparison (and almost certainly harder). However, I do count myself very lucky to have friends who are equally convinced that their area of specialisation is the most interesting thing in the world and who are willing to patiently explain some interesting titbits in their attempt to convince me. I especially appreciate this when we are on runs as not only does it feel like I am expanding my mind while getting fit but it also has the great side benefit that if I time my dumb questions right I can get out of doing any of the talking on the uphill’s.

Something I learnt about recently while running with my friend Jay is biomimetics in the design of airplane wings.  The fact that basic airplane design started with observing bird morphology is not surprising, what impressed me more is that NASA is still studying bird adaptations in order to further improve design and therefore fuel efficiency. Large birds such as eagles, hawks etc. have feathers at the tips of their wings which can curve up eliminating the vertical vortex created around the wing and reducing drag. Recently airplane designers have started using similar winglets with the same effect of reducing drag. This means fuel consumption is reduced and also that planes can have smaller wings while still generating the same vertical lift.  There are also many other examples of where biology is being studied to help in aeronautical engineering. For example, North African desert scorpions have patterned exoskeletons with groves that help them withstand sandstorms so forceful they would strip paint off steel. Small grooves and bumps on the scorpions amour distribute airflow and reduce abrasion, something that again can be copied in the design of plane surfaces. I would like to say that I impart as much fascinating biology to my running partners but sadly I am normally too busy trying to breath.

I should start by saying that I don’t really believe in reincarnation.

(Well, I should probably start by apologizing to Andrew, who probably was expecting other kinds of topics on the blog. Don’t worry- part 2 will be more related to science.)

I think that I first heard about reincarnation at a pretty young age, when my grandmother mentioned that she felt like she had done such-and-such in her past life. I was probably freaked out by this possibility then. Souls, spirits, ghosts, magic, and aliens were basically equivalent and equivalently confusing to me as a child and, while my default stance towards natural things was to be curious, my default when it came to supernatural things was to be afraid. This fear of the supernatural I blame on the neighbors who tried to save me by taking me to church, without having had anyone explain to me that there is some debate about whether or not Hell is actually a place.

I spent a lot of time being afraid as a kid because people didn’t sufficiently explain things to me. In the absence of explanations, I wasn’t always even able to characterize things correctly as natural vs. supernatural. When I realized this later, I used to think about whether rain would have terrified me if I grew up in, say, the Atacama, and then moved somewhere else. (Most likely yes.)

Also later, once I figured out that eclipses had nothing to do with aliens and I wouldn’t go to Hell for wondering if aliens existed, I also got to thinking about reincarnation. And I came to the conclusion that, if it did exist, then I must be a newbie. Reincarnation is where, I reasoned, people’s intuition came from: you learned these things in your previous life. Since I usually feel like I don’t know anything and that the thing that I use to make decisions besides logic (which is what I would describe as intuition) is so often wrong, this must be my first time around the block.

The recent warm weather has been a delight after what seems far too long a winter. Going for a run now is not the brass monkey exercise it has been for the last few months and jogging between the trees on a sun-dappled path is a pleasure(1). But the woods hide a number of dark secrets. As Peter’s grandfather said so portentously, “Its a dangerous place. If a wolf should come out of the forest, then what would you do?”

Well, maybe not a wolf round here but there is an equally, nay more, dangerous creature that goes through a strange transformation in a few weeks time.

I encountered it for the first time last year and still don’t feel I have fully recovered. There I was, sometime in May or June, running along, few cares in the world, a latter-day Fotherington-Thomas(2), when there was a rustling in the undergrowth and a rufous bundle exploded onto the path and began to bear down on me with murderous intent.

Yes, there. That animal. See? Vicious little bastard. Mean glint in its eye. What? What do you mean “where?” No, its not behind the ruffed grouse, it is the ruffed grouse. Huge sharp …

Okay, they might not be large but size, as we all should know, isn’t everything. After all, when on the rampage they ruff their neck feathers like Nedry’s nemesis, point their wings like the pectorals on a great white shark making its very final approach while at the same time they utter blood-curdling clucks. True, their excuse may be that they were only protecting their newly precocious offspring – “well honestly officer, look at him, all that heavy breathing and dayglo spandex. Wouldn’t you have feared for your children?” – but they are wholly undeterred by any difference in size between them and the object of their fury. They savage ankles without fear or discrimination.

All in all a terrifying experience, enough to make anyone soil their armour. The only thing one can do, in the absence of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, is, of course, run away. Or if cornered, fend them off with a suitable twig.

Thankfully the rabid grouse season is relatively short lived (coincident with the fledging of offspring) and the chance of encountering ones imminent demise passes by the end of June. Then we can run unmolested again and go back to monitoring whether the chipmunks are stockpiling ordnance for a summer offensive.

But that, as they say, is another story.

1. That may be a gross exaggeration if not a downright lie considering that, aside from the ever present nag of age, the sore achilles, the recalcitrant knees, and the slight lisp the only real pleasure comes when it ends.

2. “He sa, Hello Flowers! Hello Trees! he is uterly wet & a wede.”

Get psyched, because tarping season is here!  With a 30-foot tarp and four tent spikes in my car, all that’s left is to find a hill and wait for a storm.

Some of you might be unfamiliar with the sport of tarping.  I feel sorry for you.  Or maybe I envy you.  I feel sorry for you because you have never experienced the most enjoyable sport ever created, but I envy you because you are still able to experience tarping for the first time.

Tarping is a sport that was invented by a team of astronomers, physicists, and biologists in Madison, WI during the summer of 2004.  The sport of tarping is comprised of a series of slides in which the participant (slider) travels down a tarp-covered hill.  The goal is for the slider to achieve a higher tarping score than his or her opponents.  Scores range from 0 to 6, with a 6 representing a perfect slide.  These scores are tabulated from 3 equally weighted categories: difficulty, style, and distance (measured on a log scale).  The only rule in tarping is a “no blatant cheating” rule.  Violation of this rule results in the disqualification of that slide’s score (or the previous/next slide if the cheater was not the slider).  There is no longer-term penalty.  Refereeing and judging are performed subjectively by anyone other than the slider (but see no blatant cheating rule).

The regulation tarping field is comprised of 1) a grass-covered hill, 2) a tarp spiked into the ground, and 3) fresh rainwater.  Even with these regulations, every tarping field is unique because of variation in hills, tarps, and rain intensity.  This feature keeps the tarping experience novel, and often results in a “home hill advantage.”

And as a final tip, it gets pretty muddy out there.  Wear old clothes.

One question that I sometimes interject into awkward silences as an emergency conversation starter is “what superpower would you wield if you could pick any superpower?”

Should we find wordlessness filling the space between us, I should warn you now that this is kind of a trick question: I will judge you if you pick flight. Lame. That answer totally lacks imagination. Clearly, if they were handing out superpowers, any Tom, Dick, or Stanley in front of you in line is going to take flight, and you’ll be left scratching your temple, earthbound, while the distributor calls “Next!” I’m sorry to be a snob about this, but…come on. You are a biologist and know about all sorts of awesome “superpowers” that other species have; think outside the box!

Anyway. My top two choices have in the past been “not having to breathe” and “the ability to communicate in any language.” Not having to breathe could be useful in all sorts of situations- running and free-diving, for example. I’d also probably live a pretty long time, if sharks or whatnot during the free-diving didn’t kill me, assuming that my cells had some other awesome way of getting oxygen. Being able to communicate in any language would also be very, very awesome. I am tempted by this possibility (haha) especially because people consider “music” and “R” to be languages, so I could be a rockstar in any sense I chose.

Lately, as I’ve been reading things and writing up, I have been thinking of a similar, scientist-specific, conversation starter: “If you could pick one scientist whose entire body of work you would have instant (superpower-like) recall of, who would it be?” I’m currently leaning toward Chris Curtis, because I’m pretty sure that he already thought basically every mosquito-control-y thought I ever had, and so I feel like I’d be better able to move into some novel brainspace, knowing for sure that my question had already been answered.

Words are very important to me. For example, one of the main things that worries me about going to a cool place in Asia is that there might not even be letters that I recognize on signs. I imagine it being like having one of my senses taken away: I need my sense of reading!

For another example, I have trouble remembering a person’s name unless I know how they spell it. This could be a consequence of having a name that is inevitably misspelled, but I really think it’s because my brain finds it difficult to hold on to something unless it’s been condensed into the form of a series of letters. It’s kind of an “if a tree falls in the forest…” type of issue. That is, “if a thing without a name falls in the thing without a name…” You see my problem? (Perhaps you see more than one, ha ha.)

Together, these examples provide a metaexample of why I love to read: I love to understand. I love when words are aligned in just the right series to suddenly bring an idea into sharp focus. “Aha!” moments, if you will. They feel so good on your brain, and tend to be great things to revive lagging conversations.

I must admit, though, that my favorite thing to read- and to write- is a phrase or sentence that conveys a thought or feeling you’ve had in exactly the way that you mean it, so that you pause, and re-read it, and say, “yeah.”

Here’s the passage that caught me in The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman, and made me think about this…

“And each of them saw their own expression on the other’s face. Will remembered that moment for a long time afterward.”

In my role as bridge vector between our research group and the seamier side of OPP and EHS I have, while trying to maintain up to date knowledge viz a viz health and safety, taken any number of courses and read all sorts of pamphlets appertaining to life in the laboratory. Recently one such document caught my attention. Put together by a special EHS sub-division (Services for Health, Environment, Employee Trauma and Ennui) the authors had looked into and subsequently produced a report on “Alternative Late Night Laboratory Companions: A Guide to Non-Humans.”

Being familiar with the echo of empty laboratory corridors I have often felt, as I am sure you have, that in the absence of a colleague a bit of alternative, but still real-life conversation would be more desirable than having to load yet another Barbara Cartland onto the ipod. A whole report assessing the conversational abilities and other merits of non-human animals as late working companions was definitely something to peruse and report on to the group. So I dipped into the weighty volume and came upon the section headed “Domestic Fowl,” which started enthusiastically by stating:

“Everyone loves chickens. Be they Light Sussex, Rhode Island Red, Longhorn Leghorn or, praise be, a Buff Orpington Cock. Conversation is never dull in the lab when there is a chicken around. They have that knack for small talk that makes a long day at the microscope fly. Even if they can’t.”

Despite this high praise the section goes on to conclude:

“However, chickens cannot be recommended as companion animals in the laboratory. Though their conversational qualities are well documented they are wont to preen.”

In the same section ducks get short shrift as they are “inclined to waddle” a distracting behaviour the author notes, “which can be much better observed at Walmart.” Geese receive the most scathing assessment:

“Geese have no saving graces in the lab. They are haughty and inclined to a variety of neuroses which, over the course of an evening spent sorting pupae can be overwhelming. What is more they regularly sod off somewhere north. You might be on your eighty-first dissection and in dire need of a good chinwag, when there is a sudden flapping of wings, your notes get buffeted into the chloroform jar and all your carefully prepared samples end up in the fag ash on the floor. The geese meanwhile depart for Svalbard and a summer of sex and sunshine.”

Mammals barely figure in the report with cats being described as “only wanting to talk about foreign policy,” horses “lugubrious in the extreme” and porcupines “prone to emotional outbursts.” I feared dogs might be discussed but thankfully all they authors say is; “Dogs cannot be seriously considered as companion animals as they have no conversational ability whatsoever.”

As if the latter really needed pointing out. Finally I found the important section:

“One might consider fish,” the document stated. Yes, I do. Often, I thought. “The particular choice of laboratory companion fish is a difficult one. Some swear by carp. They are intelligent, thoughtful and ruminative conversationalists. However, the pace of their discourse is not to everyone’s taste. For those inclined to snappier repartee the experts suggest one of the cleaner wrasse. Naturally cleaners, given their original job, have the full hairdresser type repertoire complete with a range of put-you-at-ease entrees, a lightening quick ability to change topics when the previous one flags, a surprisingly thick skin for those awkward moments and the ability to make a really good cup of tea.”

Excellent, we should get one for the insectary I thought. But then I noticed an addendum:

“Beware however, the Fang-toothed blenny, the cowboy of laboratory conversationalists. They may look like wrasse and even act like wrasse but once let in the door turn out to be surly, uncommunicative and if pressed, prone to violence. While this may increase the excitement, losing your focusing finger will not facilitate the oocyst counts.”

There was much more but in the end I had to settle for the disappointing fact that, what with the variety of options available and the lack of any clear choice, the lab would have to continue to echo with the earnest tones of NPR’s “This American Loofah.”