I'm back, with a topic dear to my heart. Hayrides.

My wife asked me the other day, "Why do Americans like to go on hayrides?"

Who knew that that was the stereotype of Americans going around?

I replied with a scoff, "Duh! People like to ride around...through a field...when it's cold."

Realizing this wasn't the strongest argument I'd ever put forth, I regrouped my rhetorical forces. "And there's hay! And sometimes cider!".

So I thought about it more a bit later. Why do people pay money to go on hayrides? My first thought is that it appeals to the U.S.'s collective nostalgia for its agrarian past. That's a little strange, though, since most of us are not from agrarian families going back at least 4 generations. On the other hand, it might be overly simplistic to shrug and say white people like doing stuff outside.

I guess it's another example of people liking to experience the power of nature in controlled doses. Autumn is a time when cold is a bit new. A hayride is a slow exposure to cold, starting near the end of the day when it's not so cold, then letting you ease into it. By the time the ride is done, and you're cold, now it's time to stand around a bonfire and drink cider. Experience the novelty of cold, but not so that it's too cold.

The other aspect of the hayride is the scenery, I suppose. I've been on one hayride. We rode around a field in Illinois. Not a ton to look at, honestly, and it was dark anyway. But it was relaxing, I suppose. And the smells were probably better than the visuals. There was brisk, cold October air, as well as the smell of burning leaves off in the distance. Oh, and hay. I like to think that the hayride was horse-drawn (anyone who was in my 7th grade band class at Huth and/or went on a Pipes n' Pizza trip can jump in here if they remember), but it might have been tractor-drawn. In any case, the slow pace contributes to the overall laid-back feel of the hayride.

In my experience, the hay itself is really just there because we're all in a wooden wagon in the cold, and it would be a sore trip if there wasn't some sort of padding made of a material freely available when you're surrounded by pasture.

This argument satisfied my own curiosity, but it didn't do much to convince my wife that suburbanites aren't strange. She's probably right, but I wondered what other people thought of hayrides. Or hay.

mood: okay

It's 7:16PM, and I'm scrawling out a handwritten LiveJournal entry while waiting for a bus in the rain. I'm staying at James Cook University for 2 weeks to run a mosquito experiment, but there isn't much experimentation to be done with two thousand pupae. So I took the afternoon off to go downtown and watch Wolverine.

If I were Wolverine, by the way, I'd have stuck with the red bathrobe he had going on as a kid. Sort of a Big Lebowski type of vigilante superhero. Others may disagree.

I can barely read my writing. Not only do I not write more than 50 words at a time by hand these days, but I'm still twitching like a crackhead from one cup of Gloria Jean's coffee I had 3 hours ago. My first shot of caffeine in 2 weeks. Back then, soneone asked, rhetorically, when was the last time I went two weeks without coffee. Honestly, I had to say high school. Early high school. So I decided to abstain from Juan Valdez's donkey juice, as they say, to see what happened. I didn't tell anyone I was doing this--except for my wife, and now the internet. But no one else. My wife told me that I did this before, after I got my PhD. I guess memory loss is a symptom of caffeine withdrawal, at least, the only symptom I remember. This time, I'm blogging it to be sure.

I'm staying in a student accommodation-type place. I have my own bedroom, and I share a common room and bathroom with two other bedrooms. Right now, I only have one flatmate, though I've never seen him. I know only what kind of shaving cream and deodorant he uses. Or I would, if I noticed the brand names when I read the rest of the labels.

It's a good thing I do have a flatmate, because I locked myself out of the flat as I left for downtown today. If Pierre is home (his name is probably not Pierre, but his deodorant label is printed entirely in French. I still don't know the brand), then I can get into the flat, brush my teeth and sleep on the couch. I'm still locked out of my bedroom, unless Pierre is an expert lockpick. Normally, you don't want a stranger you're sharing a flat with, whom you'll never see again, to be an expert lockpick. Tonight, I'm not so sure.

The bus just showed up, and I don't have exact change on hand. Funny how I sat on that bench for half an hour, just to hastily fish coins out of my pocket with a queue of passengers behind me. Pierre the red bathrobe-clad lockpick would never have done that.

location: Room 52-3

This can only be good!

http://www.dexhamilton.com/

I like going to the grocery store after work. The timing is just right. The sun is just starting to go down. Day eases into twilight.

At this hour, a large chunk of the Brisbane population of flying foxes decide that they really need to move from somewhere southwest of the grocery store to somewhere northeast of it. They need to move, they need to move now, and they need to move one at a time.

So I wander down the street at this time, my neck craning to watch the large bats (I guess they're mostly wing...their bodies might only be rat-sized) as they fly overhead. I am always surprised how everyone around me trudges along, absorbed in their own little worlds, as if there NOT bats flying overhead. I want to yell, "Hey guys, pay attention! There are a bunch of BATS flying over our heads ONE AT A TIME! Isn't it AWESOME!"

But I don't.

Come to think of it, after living in the U.S. for 32 years (including 5 in upstate New York), I still say, "Hey, look! Deer!"

location: home mood: contemplative music: people outside

(Example of a common conversation)
Australian: Looking forward to November 4th?

Me: I am! I voted absentee about 2 weeks ago, so all I have to do is sit tight and watch the news. I still can't wrap my ahead around the fact that the rest of the world probably realizes the weight of this thing more than the people in the U.S., you know? If only U.S. voters were half as aware of global issues as (babble babble)

Australian: (blank look)

Me: Oh, you're talking about the Melbourne Cup, aren't you?

Australian: Yeah, we're gonna leave early and have a barbecue (blah blah blah)


In other news, a coworker has invited me to join our workplace's Movember team. I'm a big fan of growing facial hair (even though I don't do it very often). It's in many ways the ideal hobby--it's free, and continuous facial hair growth allows one to multitask! Also, thanks to the American Moustache Institute, I have access to a variety of moustache styles that I might attempt. In general, I find that moustaches that I like really only look good on cartoons. On real people they come off as a bit white trash, particularly if you don't have really dark hair. For instance, I'd like a English style moustache, but I have the feeling my hair is too light-colored to properly pull it out. Then there's the Fu Manchu Paradox--it'd be great to have the full-sized Fu Manchu, but I don't really want to get through the intermediate lengths. I wonder if there are moustache extensions?

Well, I'll post reports on my progress. Since Movember is supposed to benefit research for prostate cancer and men's depression, I should invite you all to sponsor our team. Ask me for futher details!

location: office mood: chipper music: Who's Gonna Save the World, Now the Crocodiles Have Taken Over? (Tripod)

Honeybees: smarter than gully dwarves.

location: home mood: relieved music: Blonde

I keep meaning to put together a post of things about Brisbane/Australia that are different in ways that I hadn't originally anticipated, but today is not that day.

I will mention that we just tried out Hell Pizza. We ordered an "Underworld" and a "Pride". Both were tasty, and I admire how thoroughly the chain sticks to the theme when designing their menu.

Finally, I learned that Dutch police have convicted two teenagers for stealing someone else's character's items in Runequest.

Seeing as how virtual items apparently count as real items for purposes of theft...hey etoiledesoiree, remember that time you Graverobbed Ian Forestal cross-table? Expect the police at your door any minute now, buddy!

location: home mood: amused music: a song from "Summer Heights High"

It's kind of sad what topics ultimately motivate me to update my LJ blog.

I was trying to teach my wife how to blow bubbles with bubble gum the other day. I bought the only bubble gum available at my local 7-11: watermelon-flavored Hubba Bubba. I remember HB being a reasonable bubble-blowing gum, but this stuff was disappointingly subpar. Bubble radius was far short of a golf ball, and the bubbles popped almost immediately.

Other random comments. I pretty much stopped chewing gum once I got braces at 13, and I never got back into the habit. Twenty years later, I find that the advent of facial hair makes bubble gum a little more problematic (particularly when bubble gum pops all over your lips).

Does anyone chew bubble gum anymore? Which gums are good? Is it me, or has Hubba Bubba gotten worse? What other bubble gum-related insights do you have?

location: office music: Fear the Boot podcast

So now I live in Brisbane. We arrived last Friday. Google suggested that the trip would take 15 hours. What Google needs is a checkable box titled, “I am a moron.” That way the algorithm can account for the fact that the driver will miss no fewer than 6 exits along the trip, including the exit necessary to avoid driving straight through Sydney during rush hour, to come up with an actual driving time of 19 hours. I have not been so frustrated on a road trip for a long, long time.

Brisbane is an interesting place. We’d heard that people here were more laid-back than in Canberra. Coming from the U.S. to Canberra, we were wondering how people could be more laid-back without a shot of botulin, but now I see what they mean. The people in reception of our hotel are so laid-back that they don’t work weekends, and on weekdays they’re gone by 3:30PM. At least three property managers were so laid-back that they didn’t show up at the inspection time that they announced on their website. One in particularly takes the cake for laid-backedness. Mariana called to confirm an inspection, and the person confirmed the appointment, just to call back and cancel after Mariana made the 20 minute hike to the apartment. Mariana’s reaction, most ironically, was not very laid-back at all.

We finally did land an apartment—we’re signing the lease tonight. It’s in Chinatown. I’m looking forward to being in the middle of everything, and living in a dynamic area to boot. It’s also a ~25 minute walk to work, so we can continue not owning a car. So far, so good.

Other bonuses: the Brisbane River cuts through Brisbane (who knew?), and there’s a public transportation service in the form of a boat called the TCat that zips from stop to stop. It’s a fine way to get from place to place. An added bonus is that bull sharks are often seen in the river! Queensland also hosts three of the four most venomous snakes on the planet, though I’m unlikely to find them downtown. I will keep a lookout for the white-crowned something-or-other (I can’t remember the full common name, though I guess “snake” would be a good guess for the rest of it), which can be found throughout the city.

My typical day has been working some or all of the day (I’ve been ducking out early to go to inspection times, the success of which are subject to the laid-backedness of the property manager), then going home and watching the Olympics. Australia takes its Olympics very, very seriously. Other TV shows are starting to appear during prime time now only because the swimming events are over. While there was swimming, the only thing on TV was Olympic coverage, or the news (which included Olympic coverage). The coverage and commercials are a startling display of emotional propaganda. I’m pretty sure that if the Olympics lasted another 3 weeks, I would be totally brainwashed.

Obligatory tangent accomplished, I will sign off.

location: shared computer area mood: accomplished

In two days, I've learned two things that woke me up a bit.

First, you can look up an address in Google Maps and see a photo of the address. I spent a few minutes looking at my parents' house, then at my apartment building in Canberra. I looked up my wife's parents' house in Mexico, but Google couldn't find the address. I figured they would be satellite photos, but these photos seem to be taken at ground level, from the street.

Second, a woman in the U.S. paid $50,000 to get her dog cloned, and she recently received the 5 cloned puppies. It's hardly auspicious that the original dog's name is 'Booger'.

location: office mood: indescribable

One reads/hears "drunk" used as a metaphor for various emotions: drunk with lust, drunk with rage, etc. I like to try to combine "drunk" with emotions that aren't particularly well-described by "drunk". The first one I came up with was, "drunk with respect". It amuses me, but I've never had an opportunity to use it on unsuspecting participants of a real conversation.

Any suggestions for other emotions which could be likened to drunkenness, but probably shouldn't?

location: office mood: quixotic music: Telephone Call from Istanbul

As a reward for achieving staggering feats such as booking a rental car and scheduling the cancellation of our utilities, I have been catching up on my favorite scientific journals.

A Short Communication from the most recent Journal of Medical Entomology caught my attention. Where to start? There's this idea floating around--news to me--that pollution can increase ticks' ability to transmit pathogens like the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Pollution such as car exhaust contains cadmium ions, which end up in the soil, then eventually in water. People have measured soil cadmium levels in Russia and found them to be 10x as high as "maximum permissible levels" (I have no idea who sets these levels). Anyway, rodents and ground-dwelling birds ingest cadmium throughout their daily lives, and it ends up in their bloodstream. Ticks of the genus Ixodes, which have a major role in transmission of Lyme disease and a number of other diseases, feed primarily on rodents and ground-dwelling birds, so pick up cadmium when they suck blood.

Then it gets wackier. Calcium is one component of arthropod exoskeletons. Cadmium ions are sufficiently similar (chemically!) to calcium ions that cadmium can end up being used to build exoskeletons of ticks. Ticks with exoskeletons with high levels of cadmium have a number of aberrations to their exoskeleton. We're not talking good things--like super-powers--we're talking corrugations and valleys on a sheet of exoskeleton that's supposed to be smooth. Extremely aberrant exoskeletons tend to lead to misshapen mouthparts, which tend in turn to be lethal to the tick.

Further studies have shown that ticks with non-lethal aberrations tended to have higher levels of pathogens than ticks with normal exoskeletons. I'm not really sure why, but I can offer some informed speculation. The foregut and hindgut of ticks are lined with exoskeleton, so having a wonky gut lining may make it more likely for ingested pathogens to enter the rest of the tick's body. badnoodles has actually worked on ticks--maybe she can weigh in here. In any case, I find that if I think of a tick with a wonky exoskeleton as akin to a dented soup can re: possibility of infection, I am superficially convinced. And this is the internet, so superficial is good enough.

The authors of this short communication also found that ticks with nonlethal exoskeletal aberration (plus cadmium) tended to be more active when foraging. This could be because they are less efficient feeders, or it could be for another reason entirely, but it means they are probably more likely to find something and bite it.

The authors also sampled ticks from around Russia and the Baltic states, along with token populations from the U.S. and the U.K., and found that 10-15% of their U.S./U.K. ticks had cadmium in their exoskeletons (they sampled from somewhere in South Carolina for the U.S. group), whereas over 30% of ticks collected in Russia/Lithuania/Latvia/etc had exoskeleton aberrations and cadmium in their exoskeletons. Those are some surprising numbers.

Now, I'm not saying we're all going to die because ticks have eaten a lot of fourth- or fifth-hand car exhaust. I've given a tentative chain where each link is labeled with a "more likely to" or a "tend to", and all these levels of "more likely" and "tend to" need to be taken into context. I posted this because it's representative of the sort of unpredictable ecological cascades that I find endlessly fascinating. It's also representative of the fact that are amazingly adept at creating the very conditions that facilitate infectious disease.

Insert catchy wrap-up line here.

location: office mood: thoughtful

The other day (week) I was reading about potential drive mechanisms for transgenic genes. The idea is that even if someone came up with a gene that makes something like a mosquito do something like be more resistant to malaria, one would still have to come up with a way to get those mosquitoes to spread that gene through the population faster than by random chance. There are a variety of genetic elements, bacteria, and other assorted things that can do something like that in some other creature, but that's not important right now.

What's important is that there's a gene that they found in flour beetles that has an odd effect. It doesn't do anything in male beetles. In female beetles, it kills any female offspring that do not have that gene. The males are OK (except they carry the gene and will give that gene to 50% of their offspring), the females with the gene are OK (except they carry the gene and will give that gene to 50% of their offspring), and the females who don't have the gene die while they are eggs.

So, some reasonably well-read geneticist named this gene Medea, presumably after the Greek woman who was betrayed by her husband Jason, so killed his new wife and all of Jason's children, including Medea's. The name is also an acronym, for "Maternal-Effect Dominant Embryonic Arrest".

At first, I was a little disappointed. I liked the idea of this reference to Greek mythology just hanging out there to be understood or not. If this is the value of a liberal arts education to the field of genetics, than so be it! I'll keep my copy of Euripides on the benchtop next to the thermocycler. But I was saddened to think that some well-meaning pedant, who perhaps has wholly sacrificed knowledge of Argonauts for knowledge of arginine, had to come along and transform the word from a literary reference (which, frankly, isn't all that obscure, even without Google) and turn it into its own decoder ring.

But then I looked at the elegant redundancy and realized, isn't this a victory for the liberal arts after all? My friend Will took an art class in college where he had to build a sculpture out of its opposite (he made a caduceus out of cigarettes). Medea has been named by its own definition. That's gotta be worth something! It's almost as good as hieroglyphics!

Now I'd like to come up with another example, but it's not happening. I guess I spent too much time in college in biology class.

location: office mood: recumbent music: my sharona

This is the only consistent LJ pattern I've maintained, so I'll continue to maintain it.

I've been busy and not highly motivated to blog as of late. We're moving in less than a month. Work is going well. I just did my Australian income tax return (I owe $17).

Last night we went out to dinner at Chairman and Yip, a Chinese place of good repute. We call it Chairman Mao's, to the extent that I call it that to other people, who apparently don't see the joke (how can you not see the joke?). Chairman Mao's has really good slow-roasted duck with coconut and chili plum sauce. But what really, REALLY floats my boat is the green tea creme brulee. Mm, mm.

Our other project is watching the entire series of Inuyasha on youtube. The catch is that the only version that is of good quality and has the entire series is dubbed in spanish. The idea is that this will serve as good practice for my spanish listening skills. In practice, so far it means that I'm only following about half of the plot.

location: office mood: blank music: House, Red by Waits, Tom

[Bad username: ”cueyatl”] and I discovered a fascinating website about on which side of the road people drive, both in different countries and in history. It’s worth a read.

http://www.brianlucas.ca/roadside/

Highlights:

1. Unsurprisingly, it seems that the British empire was by and large the number one transmitter of the drive-on-the-left-hand-side-of-the-road meme.

2. There are more areas in the world than I had thought where you drive from a right-side driving country to a left-side driving country (or vice versa).

3. I could have sworn I’ve driven I-5 south into Los Angeles, but apparently there’s a short stretch of highway there where one drives on the left.

4. I definitely want to check out the 10-20km stretch of road near Montreal where one drives on the left.

5. Thailand drives on the left. This is a bit embarrassing for me, since I was there, and I rode in motor vehicles, yet I somehow didn’t realize this. I have one memory of staring out the back of a moving truck at a sea of motorcycle riders, some of whom couldn’t have been older than 14. I thought I remembered us being on the left side of the road in that memory, but I don’t have any memories to back it up. Maybe I spent too much time on one-lane streets. Or maybe all of the 14-year old motorcyclists also think they were supposed to be driving on the right.

From my own experience driving cars with the steering wheel on the right, I’m really glad that the brake and pedal are in the same relative positions to each other (brake on left, accelerator on right). It is probably why I am still alive.

location: office mood: hungry

Australia has a weekly news parody show (a la The Daily Show) called Newstopia. In an episode from a couple of weeks ago, they did a bit in response to the banning of headscarves for women in Muslim schools in Holland. That bit falls under the category of "I Wish I Had Written This".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9gGJ6eu5vk&NR=1

[EDIT: I changed the link to one that shows the whole bit.]

location: office mood: pleased

Mariana thinks I should compile all of these workplace stories into a book.

I was chatting with my officemate about British television when a co-worker walked into our office carrying a yellow helmet. With a completely straight face she said, "A suspicious object has been found in the building."

At first I thought she meant the helmet. Then, I thought she she meant that there was cake in the office lounge (what can I say? wishful thinking). It was only when she said, "We're evacuating the building," did I realize the full significance of that yellow helmet. So maybe white helmet means fire, and yellow helmet means suspicious object?

Anyway, we filed out of the building and onto the front lawn. I saw fewer people milling about than last time. I also only saw a few hats. I did note that two people from my greater office area both have yellow hats. I tensed in preparation for the inevitable power struggles, but we were fortunate this time.

After a couple minutes, "Pat" (see here for previous references to Pat) made some sort of announcement on the far side of the front lawn. Since she didn't attempt to use any sort of megaphone or PA, or even use an "outside voice", we couldn't really understand what she was saying. We caught enough of it that we figured this was just a drill, and we could go inside. So we went inside. It just occurred to me now to ask if there had been long discussion or arguments as to what sort of imaginary suspicious object was the cause of this evacuation drill, but I didn't want to re-open old wounds.

In other news, I found a redback spider in my lab yesterday. I put it in a plastic container and plan to let it go somewhere outside. I thought about organizing a building evacuation, but I didn't know what color helmet to wear.

location: office mood: tired

It's been a long time since I've been this addicted to a website.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage

Must...break away...from computer...

location: office mood: enthralled

It's 3AM. Who do you want answering that call?





A vote for vimnelius is a vote for tens of thousands of Batmans.

My name is vimnelius, and I approve of this message.

location: office mood: determined music: Star-Spangled Banner

Yesterday, I received the following email addressed to all staff at my workplace:

Colleagues,

on a number of occasions over recent months joggers out of Land and Water have happened upon a partially clothed young man reclined by the side of the track. His behaviour is quite inappropriate and he actively draws attention to himself.

Being confronted by this individual could cause some distress - especially to the young.

On the occasions we know about he has been observed by the road marked in red on the following graphic. [snip Google Earth photo]



While the fellow is probably 'harmless' the police have been notified - but acknowledge apprehending such a miscreant is difficult.

Although this activity occurs off-site, and his appearances intermittent, it's appropriate that some form of notice be given to staff who venture onto the mountain.

location: office mood: amused music: "Cold as Ice", but at the end of This American Life