Nostalgia on Black

Bachelors have nothing on Doctorate robes.

College commencement gowns have these big billowy sleeves that are great for hiding purses filled with sunblock, hand fans and iPods to play endless rounds of Angry Birds during really dull speeches. Those huge sleeves also remind me of the sailing ships I sometimes catch glimpses of out on San Francisco bay.

When those sailing ships have black sails it brings me back to 8th grade wood shop where I hid reading Thomas Bulfinch under my desk. I don't think I ever really got all of the saw dust out of the spine of my Dad's copy of the Age of Chivalry. Suffice it to say I didn't really do much in that class. I did eventually get over my power-saw phobia (about nine years later to be honest and it was with much goading by my Dad).

The whole of Junior High was spent in this painful need to consume the true classics, not "new" books like To Kill a Mockingbird because that book you could understand, it was written in the same English I used in my essays for homework. I craved the books written in stuffy British archaic dialects when the concept of consistent spelling hadn't come round and the letter Y was used much more often. For those unfamiliar these true classics some examples would be the Arthurian works like like the Age of Chivalry, Le Mort d'Arthur and The Black Arrow. Somehow I didn't entirely frustrate my teachers with outdated grammar and spelling. They were too busy being happy to see a student with their nose in elective reading of any kind. I eventually out grew this pretentiousness in high school...a little... at least I progressed on to reading books written after the 19th century!

Sadly this post isn't the lead in to regular posting being resumed, however if I find the spare moment and a tangent worthy topic we shall see. So what do Black Sails have to do with books that talked often of boons (not what you think they are) and historical academic fashion shows? Left out of most of the movies and updated versions, Tristan and Iseult didn't live happily ever after nor did they pull a Romeo and Juliet right away when their love life was thwarted.

Nope, in true Arthurian fashion they married other people and continued on with their lives. I know, what a terrible lack of teen angst! What were those writers thinking? That life does not work like an episode of The Vampire Diaries ....or does it?! I present the following recap as evidence that all drama tv draws it's tension from the classics and merely change the names on their love triangles.

The Actual Ending of Tristan and Iseult 

Life back in Arthurian times involved lots of combat when you were a Knight which Tristan kinda was and other knights would often cheat and use poison against really hard opponents - which Iseult was fantastic at healing. So Tristan goes and gets himself stabbed with some really potent stuff that his new wife, Iseult of the White Hands couldn't heal (she looked like the other Iseult and had the same name, hence why Tristy marries her).

Tristan sends for original Iseult with the instructions that the sails should give him the news so he doesn't have to hold out for a messenger running all the way from the dockside. Pretty smart way to use your time when you're dying.If the ship returned with white sails Isolde was on board and would heal him. If the ship had black sails she had refused to come.

Isuelt of the White Hands sees the white sails on the ship a few days later and gets super jealous, like you do. She tells Tristan that the sails are black. Tristan kills himself by throwing himself on his sword. Because noble suicide from emo pain was not against Christian morals back then...well more like it was overlooked. When Isolde (of the Regular Hands one could argue) learns of Tristan’s death she dies of a broken heart. We don't get to learn what happens to Iseult of the White Hands (except now they're a little red from the blood of killing two people I imagine).

Oh Hmmm

I'm out of canned posts. I haven't found much free time to write blog posts. There's this silly thing I've been doing instead of writing up blog posts like working on the research paper for the ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finale, and working full time (I have a long commute). The wee brain is also rejecting the idea of doing much else after exercising (weight gain another pesky writer hazards no one warned me about!!).

Enjoy these musical shiny diversions until regular blog posting can resume.

Resolution Read: Progress Report

February, was a good month overall but especially for reading. I finished 7 books off the resolution read pile! However today I'll focus on February's official read because I struggled like crazy to put into words my feelings and impressions about this book!

The Numbers:12 books.
3,952 pages.
12 months.

The Progress: 9 books read, 1 book in progress.
2,722 pages read. 977 pages remaining.
Ahead of schedule.

March's Read: The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab

I had huge reservations going into reading this book. Victoria Schwab was only the second author I found and started following via blogging before her debut book came out (the first was Kiersten White and the Paranormalcy series). There was an enormous amount of pressure on this book from that fact alone. Now add the fantastic hype, generally positive reviews and me coming off the high of finishing another good book? The odds were against me enjoying The Near Witch because generally yes, the hype machine fails me as a reader.

I enjoyed this book so much I had a buggering hard time expressing how I felt reading The Near Witch without dropping cliches or things that had already been said. So I won't. I'll suggest a few things not to try with this book.

This is not a book to start and then force yourself to put down. There are hardly any good stopping points. The Near Witch is not the book to read in the evening on a ferry creaking and shuddering in rainy weather. Especially when it's growing dark outside and you're surrounded by fog while reading the last few chapters.Unless you enjoy being scared, hearing your pulse in your ears and freaking out the poor bloke sitting next to you by turning super pale and making him think you were getting seasick (as if! My sea legs are just dandy thank you)

Future Readers beware the illusion of mornings too, don't think sitting in the warm sun that you won't feel like you're actually freezing reading Schwab's fantastic descriptions. The Near Witch is at once a book I wanted to let linger in my mind, enjoy the high of finishing a good book, but equally wanted to reread as soon as possible.

Belief: An Invisible Bullet Proof Vest

I did research because getting involved in huge projects is fun. As regular blog readers know, I go in phases with this project. One second it's the thing I love/hate then...I'm trying to figure out what to do with something that has run out of funding and my time as an undergrad. So I took the research to a conference last week as a sort of a last huzzah to a year's worth of work.

The real point of today's post is trying to explain in a rambling, probably not coherent attempt, that it wasn't the research itself but my research advisor, who made me thankful I said yes on a whim. Sure this research opened up some financial breathing room, real world opportunities to travel and get my job. Mostly, because of doing this I got the chance to feel like I'm not just another  dumb person who couldn't pass Calculus I. There can be future "I Am Smart" moments in my life too.

The research was serious stuff, I'd proven my hypothesis once I'd ran out of funding and time as an undergraduate. Not very many projects can claim this. All that was left was write an abstract, submit it to a conference, then put my research on a shelf and walk away. 

Hello sad void in my side.

After the submission I began to forget my research. Not the skills I'd learned of course! Just general moving on and looking for new things to fill the void and free time. Until I heard back from the conference committee: they liked me. That feeling when I got the email saying Congratulations....I felt so small. My emotions didn't fit inside my head. They barely fit on twitter. My abstract survived a peer review by a group of people way way WAY smarter than me. I felt validated.

At this stage I have to admit, my research adviser is a mentor and she's been amazing through this entire process. Maybe it's because I've had her as a professor since her first semester teaching that she's invested so much time in me.

Hello Competition Judges!

I keep coming back to this feeling that sounds remarkably like shock when I look at what happened last week. I competed against students who (because they go to Ivy league schools like Duke) should be smarter than me. I had no expectations of doing anything more than taking dorky pictures of me standing next to my poster like a kid on the first day of school.

When the semi-finalist were announced my mentor didn't doubt the list like I did. I thought they'd made a mistake and just sort of stumbled back in a numb state of happy relief to tell her the news. My mentor jumped right into the prep work for the talk I'd have to deliver that would make or break me becoming a finalist.

My mentor believed in me. The fact that I had a mentor got me through some incredibly stressful, hair ripping out difficult, crying, falling apart, break down times my senior year of college. This conference? No, it was not cake compared to those moments. But my mentor is better than any tiger mom. She grilled me on my talk even as she was fighting time-zone jet lag, a cold she'd caught on the plane ride out to North Carolina, and the fact we had one night to get everything prepared. She took all the best talks she'd given or seen and showed me how to incorporate those into the format of my talk so I would shine.

I walked away as a finalist with a medal.

Eventually it'll sink in that maybe she's right to believe in whatever it is that got me past the semi-finals. Maybe it was my personable approach, terrible jokes or actual smarts. In the meantime I can't express enough appreciation or gratitude to her. Thank You just is not enough and I'm sure she's more than little tired of hearing me blurt out thank you.

Like I said, maybe it'll eventually sink in that this really happened and my mentor knows I appreciate everything she's done.

All the same....just in case....Thank You.

Off Topic Geek Rants: Pandas and the LHC

When I hear people whining about pandas or the Large Hadron Collider findings it makes me want to build a book fort and simmer in my frustration. Research money is super hard to come by and those two projects are a money black hole. Money in research is tricky, because not only do you have to pay yourself for your time, you ALSO (normally) have to get separate grants to fund the equipment and maintenance costs. See that last bit? Maintenance costs. Things like the energy bill or truck loads of bamboo can really sneak up as a hidden cost.

That waste of money on these things pisses me off when you read about how Pandas refuse to reproduce.* If it has come down to Panda Keepers making panda porn, let the things go the way of the dodo bird. There are more animals out there that are equally endangered who are actually fighting for their survival like elephants, tigers, and tuna. Tuna! If a fish with a smaller brain is fighting against an entire eco chain collapse then dammit let's go save it! Yes, that last link is to a child's game about the food chain. How long ago was high school biology for you? Personally I love games that serve as educational refreshers!

Europeans are going to be smarter than us because of the Large Hadron Collider. No...the Europeans are going to be smarter than us because they provide funding schemes to get people into and graduating with Engineering degrees. The Europeans also have the Large Hadron Collider because 12 nations (CERN members) went in on funding that sucker and STILL fund it. The US is massively in debt. Also we already have a particle accelerator, it's in Illinois and had a cooler name. It was shut down because it was really really expensive. What the news outlets aren't going to report is that it doesn't matter where the science data is generated. Notice I said data? The academic community that will be chugging through this data is international and will include US institutions. So....new data without maintenance costs? I see win-win for a broke nation.

This concludes the first (hopefully last) off topic science rant. Feel free to chime in with your opinions on Pandas and the LHC, or other rant worthy Geek topics.


Monday there will be no post as I'm traveling for a conference next week and will be touch and go with internet abroad.

*Animals Behaving Badly blog is funny. It needs no modifier or synonym for funny. Don't drink, eat or intend to  make a bathroom visit before combing the archives.