What were you thinking?

Some days you just have to wonder what you were thinking, getting an education where the employment prospects are so dim (well, where the jobs are not the kind that you are interested in). I guess it's not really fair to blame your young self because your old self is a different person.

Lessons learned from recent failed interview - learn to fake enthusiasm better, be better prepared, it's hard to get something like a job if you can't show that you want it.

I looked at business school applications last night. Somehow writing blog posts,which are basically essays, are so much fun, but looking at a business school ap where you are forced to write essays is a totally different beast. And also brought with it all the horrible memories of taking classes and exams and having homework. No thanks. And of course there is also the cost of business school.

I need a plan.

The thoughtful dresser

One of my boyfriends (it's always neck and neck between Cary Tennis and The Manolo) has led me to a great new blog, The Thoughtful Dresser, by a British writer/journalist who writes on life and fashion. She is very funny but also thoughtful (as her blog states) - her blog's motto is:

Because you can't have depths without surfaces.
Linda Grant, thinking about clothes, books and other matters.

I like this quote she has on her sidebar from a book about a very serious and sad time in recent history:

'The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and his right to these peculiarities.' (Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate.)

The post which caught my eye today is this one with a still from Ugly Betty and an Edith Wharton quote:

It's almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim you are beautiful. Edith Wharton

I'm firmly of the belief that the image we project is supremely important to the way people respond to us. Dressing nicely and neatly projects (to me) an image of self-confidence. After further thought, I realize that for some of us it's actually a false shell.

Books for kids

My sister's son has started really enjoying books, and she asked me if I could recommend more books. Of course I said, sure, and then did nothing. Fortunately, Teeny Manolo has two posts on books for younger kids and books for older kids that lists really excellent books. I love the internet - it allows you to harness the work of others so that you can laze around all day eating bonbons (or working, whichever).

What's the cause?

CNN has this amazing graphic which shows the increase in obesity in the US since 1984. It's pretty amazing to watch the map go from no color to red (>25% of the population with a BMI of over 30). What is the cause? Why? It really blows my mind (and illustrates the power of images over words, as the "obesity epidemic" is something I've been reading about for a while now, but it didn't hit me so dramatically until I saw this graphic).

On beauty

From today's Manolo:

"And a spasm of pure rage passed through me. Who was this fat bastard to tell women that they were obese if they couldn’t fit into a size 10? To make clothes that half the population couldn’t wear? I am tired of fat men telling non-skeletal women that they don’t exist."...

It is difficult to desire physical beauty so intensely and yet have it denied to you, as the Manolo, from his own personal circumstances, can tell you.

Word of the day - equipoise - and poetry in unexpected places

I've been reading scientific journals again, and have been finding a lot of poetry (strangely). Today's find includes my word of the day - equipoise. Here are the first two definitions from wikipedia (which I love):

Equipoise is the state of being balanced or in equilibrium, usually connoting something that is a product of counterbalancing.

Equipoise is also a poetic term.

The phrase I found today's word of the day in was here (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 6, 871-880 (November 2007)):

Thus endowed with remarkable regulation and an extraordinary versatility, the cell may respond decisively or maintain its equipoise as appropriate, filtering out signalling noise, resisting harmful assaults and orchestrating specific and coordinated responses. In this way, a strange harmony of contrasts is born from the union of two pivotal paradoxes — a simple complexity that enables the cell to exhibit a sensitive robustness.

It is pretty amazing the way the cell can exist in a complex and changing environment, and pick out the most relevant pieces of that environment to respond to. I think the "simple complexity" refers to the limited repertoire of biochemical mechanisms through which signals are relayed to the interior of the cell (the simple part) but the complexity refers to the actual architecture and wiring by which these simple mechanisms are connected - in ways that seem to me to be much more complex (possibly because of the way they originate) than man-made electrical engineering designs. And the "sensitive robustness" refers to the way the cell can respond the same way, repeatedly, to signal, even if the internal wiring is damaged, or suffering from other perturbations.

My reading from two days ago also had a pretty excellent passage (from The EMBO Journal (2007) 26, 4555–4565, Published online 11 October 2007):

These discoveries highlight unexpected flexibility in the genetic code, but do not elucidate how the organisms survived the proteome chaos generated by codon identity redefinition.

I like the idea of "proteome chaos" - it sounds so dramatic! - and "codon identity redefinition" - it sounds like gender reassignment, or something like that.

When I heard about the new airbus...

this was the first question that came to my mind:

Singapore Airlines: They'll take you there, but they won't let you come.