mistypedURL

Wonderful article from Ars Technica that supports what I (an countless others) have been contending for ages.

A brave new world: the music biz at the dawn of 2008

Working in a lab means I have to wear exam gloves for just about everything I do during the day. Since it’s a global policy that gloves cannot be worn outside the lab (for safety reasons), I am constantly gloving and de-gloving. One of the coolest things about wearing exam gloves is that you can feel everything you are doing right through their stretchy goodness – I feel the dampness of liquid when working with solutions and the cooling sensation caused by evaporating ethanol. However, as soon as I peel off the protective membrane, my hands almost magically emerge dry and untouched. It’s such a great feeling.

On another note, it’s interesting how many companies got their start producing materials for the scientific community, as evidenced by our Pyrex glassware and Nalgene plastics.

Kyle recently purchased Guitar Hero 3 for the PS3 and it’s been keeping us occupied for the past few weeks. The final song that you play over the credits is “Through the Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce, and is by far the most difficult song in the game. I was finally able to beat it on medium the other day and was rather proud of myself, but as they say, there is always somebody better…

Even before I began my research position, I have frequently heard people of many different areas of focus, science majors included, talk about “curing cancer.” The implication is that somehow, it would be possible to find a treatment or technique that would be able effectively eliminate the phenomenon. This assumption is extraordinarily frustrating to me because it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what cancer is and how it operates, the basics of which should really be common knowledge in this day and age (especially among Bio majors).

One of the critical things that needs to be understood is that the disease encompassed by the term “cancer” is not the result of a single pathogen infecting the body. It is not a virus or a bacterium like HIV or staph showing up and deciding to hang out in your body. Cancer is at its core the result of the machinery that controls regular cell division going awry, resulting in cells that no longer obey the natural controlling mechanisms. Rather than a cell being attacked by an outside agent, cancer is caused by the cell itself “going rogue.” In this state, the cell will continue to divide uncontrollably which will ultimately cause all kinds of problems for the rest of the body.

The reasons why this can happen are quite diverse, immediately shooting down the idea that a “vaccine” or other such panacea could be developed that would prevent cancer from occurring. This brings us to treatment, which is again a tricky situation. Since the “bad cells” are pretty much the same as the rest of your cells, one of the only distinguishing features is their rapid, uncontrolled division. Treatments tend to focus on things that will hurt rapidly dividing cells, which has the unfortunate side effect of hurting all of the other, normal cells in your body that rapidly divide, like hair and stomach lining.

What I’m trying to get at with this is that there is no universal “cure” for cancer sitting around waiting to be discovered. Cancer is really just a name for a whole group of things that can go wrong with the body, the end result being a bunch of rogue cells replicating and making trouble. Every type of cancer has its own set of potential causes and typical outcomes along with its own methods of prevention. Not smoking will help reduce your chances of getting lung or mouth cancer, while a vaccination against HPV can reduce your chances of getting cervical cancer. Stopping smoking will probably not, however, do much about your chances of getting prostate cancer.

Please, remember this idea the next time cancer comes up in a discussion. If you are interested in reading more about what cancer is and isn’t, I suggest starting with the Wikipedia article.

Pullush
Originally uploaded by SilverSteelWolf

In general this problem is pretty simple, right? All I have to do is look for the visual cues – be it a sign with clear directions to “push” or “pull,” or more physical attributes like the presence of a handle (pull) or crash bar (push).

What gets me are the handled doors like the one shown in the comic I found on Google Images. It seems like a pull door, but in fact the handle often goes through to the other side, meaning it could actually be a pull door depending on which side I am on. To make matters worse, these types of doors are usually glass so my failure is clearly visible to all.

Lately when I have spent the night at Rachel’s house, I find myself waking up at 6:00 AM with her, ostensibly for reasons ranging from taking her to work in my car to studying. This particular week I have been doing some preparation for the MCAT, a task that has been considerably hindered by my inability to sleep soundly last night. When coupled with the early morning rise, the concoction has me yearning for the magical hour of 3 PM upon which both of us may go home and rest.

As part of my valient bid to remain awake, I enjoyed the recent podcast by Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade, in which comments were made on the recent reissue of the AppleTV and its remarkable similarity to another technology some of us may remember…

My day has included some rather interesting and unexpected turns of events and it’s barely afternoon. I’ve been struggling with my torrent client for weeks trying to figure out why I suddenly went unconnectable. After almost haphazardly trying a few things this morning I finally stumbled upon success, which happily coincided with my acceptance into another private tracker. Unfortunately I also found out that my membership in a different tracker appears to have been suspended due to inactivity. I had a massively favorable ratio there which makes the news a bit sad, but I never downloaded anything from them so it isn’t the biggest of losses.

I had a meeting with the pre-medical adviser where we discussed that while I am a “phenomenal med school candidate,” I should really wait a year to build my experience before applying to an MD/PhD combined degree program. How like me to reach for something more difficult upon attaining a goal. However, I am convinced that the additional work involved will strengthen my education and enable me to more effectively reach my career goals (sounds like an ad, I know).

At the end of the meeting I pleasantly noticed that it had begun snowing, and without much thought continued to do my other campus errands. Upon finding out that my last meeting was canceled, I hurried to move my car back to the apartment lot and make my way to the bus stop that would take me in to work. By the time I got to the bus stop, however, it had become clear that the snow situation was much more serious than it had originally appeared. In around an hour’s time we had already accumulated about an inch of precipitation, which to some may not be much but in Maryland counts as a big deal. I had moved my car just in time as I watched several cars and even one of the MTA buses get stuck, throwing the main campus entrance into chaos. I was finally able to walk down to where my bus was stopped and boarded, waiting for the driver to help another bus get turned around and out of the way. We took a convoluted route to some of the stops to avoid the mess and made our way into the city. The Baltimore City onramps and bridges were clogged with pulled-over cars, another stuck bus, and a partially jackknifed tractor-trailer.

As we approached what would have been my stop I was notified that UMBC Transit would be suspending service. With no alternative means of getting home if I disembarked, I was forced to stay aboard and ride the bus right back to campus – by the inner-city route to avoid the accidents and jams on the major roads.

I enjoyed the time off by waterproofing myself and walking around campus with a camera to try and capture some of the winter beauty, returning only after the snow switched into a stinging freezing rain. I’m downloading the camera now; hopefully some of them will turn out unspoiled by the water droplets that kept falling on the lens.

I’ve spent the morning (since about 6:50 AM today) working on various application processes, ranging from the stuff required for UMBC’s Health Professions Evaluations Committee (basically the gateway to the med school applications) to scholarships. I’m getting increasingly frustrated with this whole system as I continue to try and force myself into paper in a kind of reverse origami whereupon the crane is actually compressed into the paper, rather than being extracted from it.

I’m tired of having to know the financial information of my divorced parents in order to apply for a merit-based scholarship. I’m tired of asking my mom to file her taxes three months early so I can meet the FAFSA deadline, only to be told I can’t get even merit-based awards thanks to her income.

Who comes up with these processes? Who decides how much money a parent is expected to contribute and then opts to not factor in the costs incurred by your sibling? Apparently having a parent with a steady job means you’re literally bleeding money for your higher education.

The medical school stuff is related through some mysterious speciation event. Throughout your undergraduate career advisers are telling you how important it is to be a well-rounded individual for your medical school application. Then, when the time comes to start itemizing what you’ve done, what are the primary areas they expect you to fill? Clinical, research, and volunteer experience. A pox upon them! These forms make it appear as if there is absolutely no credit given to working throughout your undergraduate years to pay for your personal expenses, because that job was retail sales as opposed to mopping floors in a hospital. They say you need to make yourself stand out and be different, and then they tell you that you have no chance because others around you who are applying have 3+ semesters of research experience.

Make up your mind! Do you want me to be just another kid who lived his life for a medical school application since beginning high school, or somebody whose life experiences have shown him that becoming a doctor is the path for him? Apparently it’s the former and the only way to be competitive is not to be different, but to be exactly the same.

The TorrentFreak blog posted a guest article by author Matt Mason that I think hits on the same idea I was trying to get at in one of my earlier posts. He makes some interesting comparisons to historical events that I found quite interesting. Of particular note, from the closing paragraph:

…what pirates are actually doing is highlighting a better way for us to do things; they find gaps outside the market – and better ways for society to operate. In these situations the only way to fight piracy is legitimize and legalize new innovations by competing with pirates in the marketplace. Once the new market space is legitimized, more opportunities are created for everyone.

I have only recently returned to my apartment, and my internet-based mainstays, on account of the recent holiday season, my lack of a laptop computer, and because I am too cheap to add data service to my cellular plan. As a result, I have only recently been affectionately reunited with Tess, my lovingly constructed desktop computer that doubles as a repository for my life in a crude imitation of a cortical stack. The consequence is that a number of rather interesting things have occurred over the holiday weeks on which I have been unable to comment.

The biggest problem with college as it relates to holidays is its close proximity to finals week. Any Christmas-related tasks left undone prior to that special time remains so until its conclusion, and must be addressed in the few remaining days between my last test and the 25th. This situation has, over the past several years, caused me to miss out on a lot of the fun associated with the holiday season. My mom and brother too have their own priorities, so our family Christmases have been decidedly less festive since I went to UMBC.

Through an interesting alignment of a lack in motivation on the part of my brother and I, and the superfluous furniture in our living room, this year was the first in which we didn’t have a tree. However, we made up for our lack of internal festivities with a copious light display outside. With that many lux, who would have guessed at our treeless interior?

Christmas Lights 2007
Originally uploaded by SilverSteelWolf

To make this all possible, Mom had an outdoor electric outlet installed, which saved her the tackiness of running an extension cord out through the front door, her strategy in years past. The work did a number on the outward-facing wall of my basement room, and since we don’t have the paint color of my former sanctuary there are two very large spackled squares in that space.

Among other things, I also managed to join a research laboratory at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, which means I finally have a job that is related to my field of interest. It also means I have to actually wake up in the mornings, and in order to do so must go to bed at a decent hour.