2022 in review
Well I’ve been absent a bit, but I’m still around I promise! I’m trying to get back into the groove. It’s a bit hard with all the stuff piling up, but this blog and the 365 days of academia project are important to me. I’ve got at least a few topics floating around in my head for posts, so it’s not a shortage of things to write, just a shortage of time to write them. Since 2022 is now officially dead and gone, it’s probably not a bad idea to discuss all the progress made towards the finish line, because graduation is coming, sooner or later!! While there are a lot of sad parts to 2022, including the pandemic, for my education and career personally it was overall a good year.
(more…)Happy holidays!
It’s been a busy time. Work, school, weather, you name it. But, I wanted to make my yearly holiday wish. For those who don’t know, I’m a non-religious Christmas type. It’s just a fun holiday and I like to celebrate in my own ways. To all my friends, found via my blog or otherwise I hope you have a great day and a good new year. The holidays are a time to remind us that we’re all stuck on this tiny speck of dirt. Of course, we don’t need a special day to tell others how much they mean to us. Life is too short for us to need a reason, just a thought as we head into the new year every life has an end date and unfortunately we’re never sure when that will be. To sum it up, be kind, to others, but also to yourself. We’re all exactly where we need to be right now, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Happy holidays!
Dear future me…
What I wouldn’t give for a time machine. I think we all agree there’s at least a few things we wish we could go back and change. Wrongs that need to be righted and all that, or maybe it’s just to stop yourself from doing something you’ll regret, you know what I’m talking about *wink, wink* because we all have regrets. I think it’s one thing we can agree on and despite the trend of people suggesting they are living without regret, I’m sure there would be one thing they wish they could change. Hindsight is 20/20 afterall, even if it’s just to have a chance to say a missed goodbye to a loved one who’s no longer with us. I think a time machine is one thing we can universally agree we would use consequences be damned. But alas the past is closed to us for now, but the future is always open.
(more…)Intellectually curious
I don’t recall what sparked the memory, but I was reminded today of an email I got from school-PI complimenting my new job. He said I was intellectually curious and that struck me as a touch odd because I assume we all are in our own ways. It’s not that I’m not appreciative of the complement, because I am, it’s just that I never understood how we can live in a world full of mysteries and not want to at least glimpse behind the curtain.
(more…)Thanksgiving 2021
Well it’s thanksgiving. As usual for anyone who’s picked up a history book, celebrating thanksgiving is one hell of a choice. Granted it was made generations ago so we do it out of habit and I am happy to have the extra time off, although time off as a student is more of a concept and not an actual thing. Point being, celebrating genocide is something we do here in the US. Because that’s how we were founded.
(more…)The monsters were never under the bed
It’s funny that as children we all have the same strange fears. There’s monsters under the bed, in the closet, hell the feeling that something will take our foot off in the night is so universal there’s comics making fun of will happen if you leave a foot outside of the sheets. Parents happily reassure our childish beliefs, because it’s true, there are no monsters under the bed. What they don’t tell you is the monsters are real, they just live in your head.
(more…)On saying “thank you”
The day to day pleasantries, I’m sure we go through the motions on a regular basis, please, thank you, it’s pretty engrained into most of us. At least I would hope, broad statements like that always have exceptions, but more often than not I would like to believe that the majority of people are decent enough to say thank you to someone who is doing something for them, even if it’s just their job. Sometimes simply saying thank you can have a huge impact to a person, even if you don’t expect it to.
(more…)Not cool Robert Frost!
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” starts Frost in a poem that most people are at least familiar with, but typically is misnamed. The poem is often identified as, “The Road Less Traveled”. This makes sense because the poem talks about the thought process behind why he chose the road less traveled and that it was worth it. That’s not the name of the poem though.
(more…)Who’s Leonard Nimoy?
“I’m having a crappy day and to top it off Leonard Nimoy died today.” I told my friends as I was getting into the car after a particularly challenging day. No, I was not a huge trekkie growing up, but I did have a lot of respect for Leonard Nimoy and for Spock, the character that seemingly only he could bring to life. Truthfully, Spock and I had a lot in common, we were both mixed and neither one of us had an easier time for it. I typically don’t share my personal story here at the Labs, but I thought I would make an acception.
Hyper sleep- A “down to earth” space story
It was every kids’ dream to go into space, not understanding the perils or the boredom that comes with it. The idea of floating weightless and “boldly going where no man has gone before” permeated the imagination as nothing had ever done before. Space, why did there have to be so much of it?
A [Real life] Doomsday Prediction
Fire, brimstone, four horsemen, doomsday seems pretty bleak in the biblical context. From a scientific perspective, global warming and the need for fresh water will probably plunge people into chaos, which seems like a more likely doomsday model. Unfortunately there are other ways in which the world could come crashing down around us, today I wanted to shed light on just one of those ways.
The most plausible [in my opinion] doomsday scenario comes not from an external force but from our imagination. Let me explain, most money that we deal with is just a placeholder, a social construct, a number on a screen and when dealing with the stock market, it gets even fuzzier, you can essentially make bets for money on [you guessed it] money.
1 in 20 Misdiagnosed by Doctors: 10 things you can do about it
A new study out this week says that 1 in 20 adults will be misdiagnosed in outpatient clinics in the US. Thats roughly 12 million people each year, if that statistic isn’t frightening enough about half of those “have the potential to lead to serious harm.”
Five [Medical] lies the TV told me
Fad diets, miracle weight loss super foods, and vaccines! Oh my! We live in the information age, a time where webMD will tell me what kind of cancer I am suffering from today and Dr. Oz will be more than happy to give me advice on the 5 superfoods I should include in my diet so I can live to see a healthy 160. (more…)
Cyberdyne, Google, and the Rise of Drones
Set in a futuristic dystopian world where humans are pitted against advanced robots controlled by an AI, Terminator plays out like the hollywood blockbuster it turned out to be. Set to pit a person’s innate fear of the unknown against the fear of technology itself, it was a big hit.
Any good apocalyptic movie needs to have a grounding in reality before it can take the leap from ordinary to extraordinary, but when events slowly play out, that are eerily similar to the movie, should you be worried?
Tired of the weather? Blame the jet stream.
Polar vortexes, snow storms and hurricanes, oh my!
Who’s tired of the crazy weather that most of the US and the UK are dealing with? I suspect that most are, in fact I don’t remember the last time I heard someone talk excitedly about being snowed in.
There is good news and bad news though, and like a true gentleman I will give the good news first. We know what is causing the weather changes we’ve seen.
Indecisive? So is Quantum Mechanics.
This is a particle [or atom], cute no?
Or my personal favorite Heisenberg gets pulled over by a police officer, officer says ‘Do you have any idea how fast you were going?’ Heisenberg replies ‘No, but I know EXACTLY where I am.’
Lunatic Laboratories 