Turning the Page

New chapters begin so abruptly...

I know there are words there, but I can't decipher them just yet. Perhaps it begins "Frei aber einsam..."

"I Won't Revise"

Nicked from a friend finishing up exams 'cross the Pond...(you don't mind, do you, KBee?)

'I won't Revise' (to the tune of 'I will Survive')

At first I was afraid, I was petrified!
Kept thinking I could never pass with no revision guide,
But then I spent so many nights, getting all the questions wrong,
And I grew strong,
And I learned I could scrape along,

I won't look back, to any place,
When I can swallow 15 shots and get completely off my face,
I would have revised by the clock,
I would have had no spare time free,
If I'd thought for just one second my exams would bother me...


So all my notes, are on the floor,
Don't even matter... that there's no rock night anymore...
Weren't you the one who tried to get me to revise?
You think I'd crumble?
You think I'd work towards the skies?

Oh no, not I!
I won't revise!
Unless I die of beer stains, I know I'll stay alive,
Though my money's at an end,
I've my overdraft to spend,
I won't revise,
I won't revise!!

Hey, hey

It took all the strength I had, not to act the part,
But in the end my real revision didn't even start.
I used to sit at home at night, feeling guilty to myself,
I used to try, but now I hold my head up high ..

And you see me! Somebody new!
I'm not that mixed up weird girl who wants a good 2:2
So if you feel like dropping in,chances are that I'll be free,
Coz I've done sod all revision,and I'm failing my degree ...

So all my notes are on the floor,
Don't even matter... that there's no rock night anymore...
Weren't you the one who tried to get me to revise?
You think I'd crumble?
You think I'd work towards the skies?

Oh no, not I!
I won't revise,I think that I may scrape a third,
But I could be telling lies!
Let the lecturers all scorn,
My bed's far too nice and warm,
I won't revise,
I won't revise!!!

Rising Star

It's always heartwarming to see good things happen to people you know, whether it is someone you know well and love dearly, or one you knew only fleetingly.

Many years ago, I auditioned for Bay Chamber Concerts' summer chamber music camp for the first time, and received in return a part for a four-violin piece (by Telemann?). Upon our arrival at the first rehearsal, we discovered that the first violinist was not from Maine but from Chicago--a nice little girl named Tai, who was already quite good. Somewhere is the picture I had in my case for a long time: four little girls in concert clothes standing in front of the Rockport Opera House stage and smiling in the afternoon sunlight.

As it turns out, Tai is not so little anymore, and is doing well, as per an article the Nomad Mom sent along just this morning:

Violinist Tai Murray, a 23-year-old from Chicago who spent two years getting her artist's diploma, is also among the lucky ones. She had a budding career before she got to Juilliard, starting with solo concerts when she was 9. She now has a New York manager and a CD on the way, and she lives in her own Manhattan apartment on money earned playing concerts.

"For me, Juilliard was a haven. It gave me a base to hold on to in the bigness of New York," said Murray, who recently returned from an appearance with an orchestra in Denmark.

So, congratulations, Tai, whatever notes you're playing at the moment--here's to your passion, your talent, and to what I hope is your continuing success! You may never see this, but...Make beautiful music, and I hope to hear you play someday!

Yet another quizzie: Intuition

Very Well-Rounded You have: 62% SCIENTIFIC INTUITION and 70% EMOTIONAL INTUITION

The graph on the right represents your place in Intuition 2-Space. As you can see, you scored above average on emotional intuition and above average on scientific intuition. (Weirdly, your emotional and scientific intuitions are equally strong.) Your Emotional Intuition score is a measure of how well you understand people, especially their unspoken needs and sympathies. A high score score usually indicates social grace and persuasiveness. A low score usually means you're good at Quake. Your Scientific Intuition score tells you how in tune you are with the world around you; how well you understand your physical and intellectual environment. People with high scores here are apt to succeed in business and, of course, the sciences. Try my other test! The 3 Variable Funny Test It rules.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Scientific You scored higher than 99% on Interpersonal The 2-Variable Intuition Test

Whoa

Today the Joint Degree Program sent the current members an end-of-year email, including a list of those who will be entering the program this fall and what their other degree will be. There are not one, but TWO brave souls signed up for JD/MD.

Wow.

I bow. Seriously. That's hard core.

(That, and I lived in mortal fear of the MCAT and had no intention of taking it, so I applaud those who did.)

Be the gene

Be the gene...

Repeat ad infinitum.

One Red Paperclip

Has the last good idea been taken? I don't know, but it's crazy and creative...and I wish I'd thought of it first!! Although I don't think I'd trade for a house just yet--probably couldn't afford the property taxes. Of course, if someone out there wants to make an offer for a binder clip (small or large) or a GOP elephant Beanie Baby, I won't stop you... (Although, the elephant is kinda cute; might require a particularly good offer to part with it.)

An interesting study in valuation, Little Bro?

(h/t Table of Malcontents)

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Body Works arrives in Minnesota...I have secured a ticket for later this month and am eager to attend!

[Disclaimer: You may find the pictures available through those links shocking or disturbing--please don't feel compelled to look, but I hope you do browse! These exhibits are not without inherent controversy, although the official program publicly maintains that all bodies have been ethically obtained. I don't think I see anything in those promotional materials of previous exhibits that I would term vulgar or disrespectful to the real persons who lived in those bodies, and hope to find the actual exhibit consistent with that theme. I hope it is a way for all of us to better appreciate and understand the marvel of the body.]

Making Sense of History

A brief perusal of the news this morning before turning to the last day to work on the paper (not a good thing--there is yet much to be done) yielded this warm tribute by Fouad Ajami to Bernard Lewis, full of deepest respect for Lewis as a gifted and perceptive historian. The following four paragraphs struck me particularly, further brightening the proverbial light bulb. (Any emphasis added is mine.)

The rage of Islam was no mystery to Mr. Lewis. To no great surprise, it issued out of his respect for the Muslim logic of things. For 14 centuries, he wrote, Islam and Christendom had feuded and fought across a bloody and shifting frontier, their enmity a "series of attacks and counterattacks, jihads and crusades, conquests and reconquests." For nearly a millennium, Islam had the upper hand. The new faith conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa--old Christian lands, it should be recalled. It struck into Europe, established dominions in Sicily, Spain, Portugal and in parts of France. Before the tide turned, there had been panic in Europe that Christendom was doomed. In a series of letters written from Constantinople between 1555 and 1560, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, imperial ambassador to the court of Suleyman the Magnificent, anguished over Europe's fate; he was sure that the Turks were about to "fly at our throats, supported by the might of the whole East." Europe, he worried, was squandering its wealth, "seeking the Indies and the Antipodes across vast fields of ocean, in search of gold."

But Busbecq, we know, had it wrong. The threat of Islam was turned back. The wealth brought back from the New World helped turn the terms of trade against Islam. Europe's confidence soared. The great turning point came in 1683, when a Turkish siege of Vienna ended in failure and defeat. With the Turks on the run, the terms of engagement between Europe and Islam were transformed. Russia overthrew the Tatar yoke; there was the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula. Instead of winning every war, Mr. Lewis observes, the Muslims were losing every war. Britain, France, the Netherlands and Russia all soon spilled into Islamic lands. "Europe and her daughters" now disposed of the fate of Muslim domains. Americans and Europeans may regard this new arrangement of power as natural. But Mr. Lewis has been relentless in his admonition that Muslims were under no obligation to accept the new order of things.

A pain afflicts modern Islam--the loss of power. And Mr. Lewis has a keen sense of the Muslim redeemers and would-be avengers who promise to alter Islam's place in the world. This pain, the historian tells us, derives from Islam's early success, from the very triumph of the prophet Muhammad. Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land; he had led his people through wilderness. Jesus had been crucified. But Muhammad had prevailed and had governed. The faith he would bequeath his followers would forever insist on the oneness of religion and politics. Where Christians are enjoined in their scripture to "render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's," no such demarcation would be drawn in the theory and practice of Islam.

It was vintage Lewis--reading the sources, in this case a marginal Arabic newspaper published out of London, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, in February of 1998--to come across a declaration of war on the United States by a self-designated holy warrior he had "never heard of," Osama bin Laden. In one of those essays that reveal the historian's eye for things that matter, "A License to Kill," Mr. Lewis would render into sublime English prose the declaration of bin Laden and would give it its exegesis. The historian might have never heard of bin Laden, but the terrorist from Arabia practically walks out of the pages of Mr. Lewis's own histories. Consider this passage from the Arabian plotter: "Since God laid down the Arabian Peninsula, created its desert, and surrounded it with seas, no calamity has ever befallen it like these crusader hosts that have spread in it like locusts, eating its fruits and destroying its verdure; and this at a time when the nations contend against Muslims like diners jostling around a bowl of food. . . . By God's leave, we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God's command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions whenever he finds them and whenever he can."

Mr. Ajami's full article is here, do give it a read. (I wouldn't be surprised if TigerHawk comments on the same thing when he's out from under the weather. But consider this recommendation for now.)

"Cornelia’s opinion was not recorded"

[Snicker Alert]

Present-day developmental biology is indebted to both the tremendous efforts of centuries past and also to those fascinating cells, the gametes, without which there would be no new embryonic organisms to awe and intrigue us.

That said, OxBlog has ever so kindly provided the teaser for today's history of science interlude, a review with the delightful opening paragraphs:

Not for Antoni van Leeuwenhoek the post-coital cigarette that day in 1677. No sooner had he finished making love to his wife Cornelia than he was up at his home-made microscope, discovering in his semen a “vast number of living animalcules”, little wriggling creatures with rounded bodies and long, vigorous tails. The Dutch draper and microscopist had confirmed, for the first time, the existence of spermatozoa.

Van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery is the climax of Cobb’s lively if sometimes uneven account of the endeavours of 17th-century scholars to understand the reproductive process in man and other animals. It was a period of remarkable process. In 1650, knowledge had hardly advanced beyond the misguided imaginings of the Ancient Greeks - Aristotle believed the embryo originated from the union of semen and menstrual blood. Yet by the early years of the new century, the roles of the human egg and sperm had been established and a reasonably accurate account of embryonic development published.

Grins aside--I saw that--I think this will probably be going on the to-read list.

Egregious Procrastination...

...does yield interesting items. Among them, Likelihood of Confusion's mention (under the catchy title "No More Star Chamber Rulings") of a new ruling handed down from On High: starting next year, lawyers in federal courts may cite unpublished opinions. (The non-lawyers or non-law students out there may in fact have been unaware that there are such things as unpublished opinions--yes, there are, and there are lots of them.)

This move is, I think, correct--to my mind the continued existence of unpublished opinions is an uncomfortable concept of questionable constitutionality--and am therefore in agreement with Mr. Coleman's comments:

"The issue of non-citability and “not precedential” rulings in the federal courts is a troubling one, because it goes square against the idea of the common law and statutory interpretations as being based on accretions of precedent. There is usually no way for the mortal to know why one decision is regarded as worthy of being deemed precedential and others are not, nor to understand why, if it is not good enough for precedent, the ratio decidendi (if you will!) of a given opinion was good enough for that case. Judge Kozinski takes a shot at explaining why citation to unpublished opinions is not allowed here, essentially arguing from the not-too-principled position that they’re not written all that well, but this still leaves us with the question of published TTAB decisions not being citable."

...Back to work...

Tick-Tock-Tick...

Ah miss mah fishies...

Only a few more days--the project approaches its end, whether I like it or not. As usual, when searching for answers in the realm of muddly legal problems (and I maintain this is a pretty muddy, if entirely futile, one), I am inevitably frustrated at being unable to dice up the collected materials and run them out on a gel; or I lean towards dropping the whole thing in a huff, picking up a pipet, and running a therapeutic PCR or two. On the other hand, an approaching deadline means I'll stop whining soon. Exciting, no?

<Oh my Lord, she'll find something else to talk about! Cheers from the peanut gallery!!>

Ha! Careful what you wish for, or you may find yourself stuck with a "Fun Transposon Fact of the Day" feature or some such thing. Actually, that's not a half-bad idea...

Unfortunately, methinks I may have to take multiple law classes next semester due to some technical requirements on the part of the law school. On the up side, Patents is being offered at a reasonable hour (read, afternoon), and the Lottery kindly gave me both the Patent Prosecution seminar and the IP Transactions seminar, of which I would take one. At this point, I'm unclear as to which that would be, although I lean toward the prosecution one.

However, I inwardly echo a lab mate's sentiments: enough with the classes, already! They take time away from research!

On a non-personal--and therefore more interesting--note, Christina Hoff Summers' review of Harvey Mansfield's Manliness book is here. While tempted to make comment, I shall not do so until after I've read the book. I remain intrigued to read his work. (But I must say, if the relative big-screen depictions of Achilles and Hector were remotely faithful The Iliad, which I admit to not yet having read, then my vote for the most manly is for Hector all the way--no, not just because of Eric Bana, although that certainly doesn't hurt.) [h/t Corner, of course]

And if you're looking to read beautiful thoughts exquisitely expressed, run to Think Denk.

Fanfare for the College Senior

I believe some congratulations are in order...

...to my Little Brother for completing his thesis! I believe it was on something econ-y ;-)

I'm proud of you, Little Bro! And someday, after you've graduated and moved on, you may even look back (almost) fondly.

What Would Beethoven Think?

It is well known that Yours Truly has great affection for nerdiness &/or geekiness in their various incarnations, is terribly proud of her "nerd's dream girl" title, and herself aspires to be a supreme nerd of zebrafish development and transposon biology--and possibly of IP law as well, but that remains to be seen. She, however, was previously unaware that scanners could play music. No, really.

Does this explain my long-dead printer that insisted on printing a page with a solitary happy face when it was turned on?

{quasi-h/t Sandmonkey}

Travel Bleg

Hi y'all...a travel bleg on behalf of a friend...this is the sort of thing I should know, but as I've been shamefully bad at keeping in touch...which '03s are in or around London?? (I can only think of one at the moment; to all the rest, I apologize.)

Please email me if you think of some names!! Grazie!

[cross-posted]

Ghosts of Congresses Past

Since the theme of late is the Paper of Doom...The Legislative Branch: Resistance is futile?

"The 3 percent federal telephone excise tax was a temporary funding tool for the Spanish-American War. The U.S. defeated Spain on December 10, 1898, yet this "temporary" tax creeps into its third century. Enough." The entire article is here.

I'll acknowlege that the Court's position, which in my reading more or less leaves the door open for Congress to act under the guise of "necessity" due to a war's "rise and progress" even after said war is "over," is not specious (not entirely). However, it is precisely this sort of power creep, this metastasis, to which I strenuously object. Sigh. Maybe I should just capitulate; maybe the dream of legislative responsibility is an impossible dream...

Happy Easter!

What better way to celebrate Easter than by listening to Symphony of Psalms? And, of course, the Hallelujah Chorus!

Happy Easter!

Not-so-trivia(l)

I know, I said I wouldn't be blogging, but given the sheer enormity of the task before me, this won't kill me.

Behold, the excerpt whose import is of some concern:

"...the war power includes the power 'to remedy the evils which have arisen from its rise and progress' and continues for the duration of that emergency. Whatever may be the consequences when war is officially terminated, the war power does not necessarily end with the cessation of hostilities. ...it is adequate to support the proservation of rights created by wartime legislation."

Your task, should you choose to play, is to guess at the author. I did leave out some identifying bits, but the substance is pretty much there.

The above excerpt encapsulates my problem, which I don't yet know how to tackle. Is that really constitutional? If yes, how the heck do you transition out of a wartime legal regime?

The Usual Suspect

Es yo.* Mea culpa, as per usual. Although I've always lived more or less "on the back of the beat," there was a time in my life when I was fairly good about getting things done and not leaving them until the very lastest of minutes. I'm a little foggy as to when exactly that was but I do know it existed. Such capabilities also seem utterly to have vanished.

Case in point: it's been a long week filled with frantic studying and the two exams are now complete, the final take-home portion having been turned in today. But will it be an enjoyable weekend filled with delightful activities like a lecture, a friend's little gathering, and otherwise savoring the sunshine, chirpy birds, and warm(ing) air marking the beginning (more or less) of Spring? Oh no, no it will not. It will be spent indoors on the clock, reading, noting, highlighting, and frantically typing away--with no TV or movies or cybergoofing.** This evening marks the beginning of the effort to gather more material and sit down and produce the paper draft due Monday. All I have to say is thank God it's a draft. It's a difficult and complex subject that I should have started on a long time ago. It will be a rather drafty sort of draft, at that. I know the error can be remedied and a respectable, upstanding paper produced by making it the primary focus of my existence until the end of April, but it won't be anywhere near that by Monday. However, at the end of Monday, something will exist at least. Pretty, no; something, yes.

Therefore, the Nomad commences an "Imitation of Reading Period" in...5...4...3...2...1...Now!

*Soy yo? I've never been entirely clear on the grammatically perfect way to say "It is I" in Spanish.
** Even more poor timing on my part, for I very much want to see Take the Lead.

Isn't It Nice to Know...

...that some things never change?



(How could I resist? :P)