“Was trying to discover a new life form” has just become a valid defense if you get caught feeding arsenic to your labmates.
Category: Quickies
The Sting of Rejection
Dear PLoS editor,
I know our relationship was doomed from the start and it’s not like I did have high hopes for it.
But dumping me with an email and some very generic editorial comment? After our three months together, I feel I deserved at least a little peer review love.
Ouch, baby. Ouch.
Vapnik’s Principle
When solving a problem of interest, do not solve a more general problem as an intermediate step.
Feel free to apply to general life problems… or limit to the field of transductive inference in statistical learning.
Waste of memory storage
Try as I may, I keep forgetting the kanji for 遺伝子 (いでんし: “gene, genetics”)…
On the other hand I have absolutely no trouble remembering words like 居合い (いあい: “act of drawing one’s katana, killing with a single stroke, shaking out the blood and sheathing the katana back, as one single movement” — yes, it means all that; no, I am not kidding) after seeing them used exactly once.
Which would be great if, you know, there was more assisting with friends’ seppuku and less messing around with genes, in my life right now.
Get paid to be sick…
Local campus health center is currently advertising a study on the effectiveness of TCM (漢方) vs. Western medicines as treatment for the common cold. In addition to free medications1Provided you are one of the lucky 33% landing in the one group that won’t provide you with sugar pills or dragon scale extract powder., you get a bonus ¥2,000 (in bookstore coupons) for agreeing to be their guinea pigs!
All you have to do is show first-day symptoms of the common cold and sign up.
Screw that scarf-and-winter-coat thing, I am biking home in my underwear tonight…
Refreshments?
My kitchen sink currently has two tap water temperatures: warm water and hot water.
Lost in Irony
It is just mind-boggling how many Japanese have come away convinced that I must be a US citizen, on account of my shirt having a tiny US flag shoulder patch (right above where it proclaims in large gold stitch letters that I am a “Boy Scout of America”).
On the other hand, this lack in the whole irony concept, puts some of the clothing commonly spotted through the streets of Japan in a radically new, slightly scary, perspective…
Startup Sound
The cicadas outside my window have started singing.
Summer is officially here.
Election Fatigue…
Dear local Kyoto-fu LDP candidate for the upcoming upper-house election:
True: I cannot cast a vote in this election and sway your chances either direction.
But let me assure you that, if you keep insisting on circling my block multiple times, every morning between 8 and 8:30, inane election slogans blaring from your van’s speakers at top volume, I will be more than happy to contribute to your historical legacy by setting post at the closest grassy knoll with whatever long-range weapon I can get my hands on.
Thanks.
Cultural Sensitivity Quarter
Really, Hawaiian… it’s just Japanese pronounced with a thick US accent, right?