Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

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The German occupation of the Ukraine, as told through an incredibly talented artist.

I don't think I've seen anything quite as diagnostic of humanness. Only our species is capable of such extremes as to produce a cruelty so intense that it is rivaled in magnitude only by our potential to create beauty.

Evacuations now extend to three blocks away.

Don't worry, my parent's house is OK, as are most of the houses in La Crescenta. This is still slope driven and not Santa Ana driven. There are firebreaks in place that will hold it at bay as long as the winds stay calm. Keep your fingers crossed.

Christ.

Two firefighters are dead.

If you don't know, my parents' house is in an area affected by the "Station Fire" in La Crescenta.

The fire adapted chaparral has been fire-suppressed for 60 years, despite the pleas of ecologists. California chaparral is so fire adapted that the plants will actually emit flammable organics and molecular hydrogen during the summer. Some plants have seed pods that will not open until they have been exposed to flame. The chapparal doesn't just want to burn - it needs to burn.

Smokey the bear is not an icon of conservation as much as that of a profoundly ignorant arrogance; he is an icon of westerners imposing their cultural values and ideas of property on to the natural world. The policy of treating fire as the enemy has created a situation where all fires are suppressed. The NIMBY ethos and cultural distaste of fire ensures that controlled burns are only permitted on days with absolutely ideal air conditions - days that never come in the LA basin. Thus the puny semi-annual fires that would normally clear the chaparral of accumulated debris and renew the soil, become 60 years worth of accumulated material all burning at once.

The knowledge of the fire adaptations of Chaparral are nothing even remotely new or controversial. And yet, to spare the inconvenience of a controlled burn on less than ideal air quality days, we have this:

Humans are curious creatures.

Penultimate day

Delicate arch - Arches national park, UT.

I was so exhausted from hiking all morning and driving all day, that by early evening I could barely stay in my lane. I'm now in Cedar City UT, and tomorrow, I will arrive in my old home town of Los Angeles. I'll upload photos, perhaps tell some tales of the trip, and immediately strike back out on to the road and savor what I can of the world, one last time before graduate school starts.

Somewhere in Colorado
39.602481, -107.182875 to be exact.

It was so beautiful in this colorado canyon that my heart strained as though it wanted to simply burst from such fullness.

Life just makes sense out here.

I feel so competent and capable. Something in my Jeep breaks down about twice a day; it's usually fixed within 20 minutes, and I'm back on the road. So far both doors have broken in different ways, the roof rack has cracked the body of the vehicle, and the heater motor started sagging and blocking the gas pedal. Everything is now fixed save the crack in the body, and that's only because I don't have a welding rig with me.

I just flow. Whatever life gives me, I work with.

I don't know that I was meant for the current world. I am apparently far better adapted for living out of a Jeep than living out of an apartment. Perhaps I was meant to be born during the age of exploration, or perhaps I was meant for the tinkering and ingenuity that drove Victorian era science. All I know is, when the apocalypse comes, you probably want me on your team.

Until that day, I suppose you can laugh while I struggle to balance a budget or keep a clean room, or have a functional relationship.

And now for a nice night in Moab, UT. Arches national park tomorrow.

Goodbye Boston.
I want to be sentimental about it, but I just can't at the moment. I'm exhausted in a hotel room in Pittston PA, and I should be getting up in about 4 hours to get back to the wheel.

Goodbye Boston. I think we haven't seen the last of each other. I would like to return to you again some day when I'm more in control of my depression and less liable to simply shut down during your bitter winters. You were by far the most beautiful town I ever lived in, and I wish I could have stayed.

And now, the long journey west.

If you've been living under a rock the past hour...
The California supreme court just ruled to uphold proposition 8, legally defining "marriage" as strictly between a man and a woman. I am seeing a lot of knee-jerk rhetoric and reactionary despair on the internet, but I firmly believe it is unwarranted. Perhaps in this instant bigotry prevails, but an unstoppable global change in attitudes is taking place. Back in 2000, proposition 22 was the first attempt at strictly defining Marriage as a heterosexual union - it passed with 68% of the popular vote before being invalidated by the CA supreme court. Proposition 8 passed with only 52%. That is a pretty incredible change to take place in only 8 years, and that trend towards acceptance is only going to continue.

Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine have all legalized same-sex marriage, and New Hampshire is almost certain to follow suit. Things are changing and there is an inexorable global trend towards acceptance. Perhaps change is not coming as quickly as we would like, but do not despair. As more and more states embrace same-sex marriage and fail to become dens of satanic debauchery, California will warm to the idea. If not in 2010, then in 2012. As more states accept same-sex marriage, California will find itself one of the few blue states to reject a truly progressive movement; if nothing else, they will be shamed into change.

Change is coming. Do not lose hope.

What a mess.

My bank card was cloned and used to make about 2000$ in gift-card purchases somewhere in Ohio. Although this is a bummer, it's still kind of interesting to see how the theft was carried out. My card was never stolen, so either my card was cloned via a skimmer, or there was some information breech. A few other cards from my bank have been used in this same scam, so it is possible that cardholder information was stolen from an employee at the bank.

Apparently three people used my card in different lanes at the same store at the exact same time. Assuming ID was requested (the purchases were about 1K each, and I can't see them not asking for ID) They must have had multiple clones of my card and multiple IDs to match. They purchase large gift cards for gasoline or businesses like the Home Depot, where the cards can't be traced and are as good as cash. What an amazing amount of forethought.

It is just odd to think that somewhere out there, there are people who do this sort of thing. I can understand crimes of desperation, crimes of emotion, crimes of opportunity, but not this. What choices lead a rational person to use their intellect in order to inflict harm upon others and benefit themselves?

It will probably be about a week before my account is unfrozen. I have a little bit of rainy day money stored in another account, but had it not been for that foresight, I would not be able to even buy groceries. I am relatively well off: I have friends who would loan me money, family who would do the same, but had this happened to some single mother struggling to feed her children, this could have been an absolute disaster.

I suppose I just do not understand how an otherwise rational person accepts that sort of risk.

Just watched Craig Venter give a talk. There was a lot less snake oil than I would have predicted. I ended up riding the elevator back up with him and watched a grad student accost him for an autograph, no joke.

*shakes head*

EDIT: His second talk of the day was a real let down.

Where did my 20s go?

There is no need to editorialize beyond that. I think Mr. Gurewitch said it far better than I could have. Thank you again for all the kind birthday wishes. And now I'm off to go watch the Wolverine movie and otherwise be distracted until today passes.

I am such a damned snob.
I am putting in my bid for graduate housing at Stanford, and it is so apparent that I have become an urban snob. My heart quails at the idea of wall to wall carpeting, and the generic modernist prefab construction of on campus housing literally makes me anxious.

Give me well worn buildings with gouged hardwood floors and creepy basements. Give me unique craftsman homes that sag on their foundations, give me charm and quirks, not the aesthetics of a damned taco bell.

I'm not thrilled about the cost of housing either - I really wanted to live alone, but I just don't think it's feasible to pay 1100$ for a studio while only grossing 29.3k.

Oh yes, I am alive by the way. Things have been ok; I have just turned my focus inwards. I don't know if it's healthy or not, but I spend most of my time alone. Not investing energy into a social life seems like a bad idea for someone who craves social contact as much as I do, but I feel like I've always been looking for positivity to come from other people rather than myself. I'm wondering if that's not akin to trying to pour sand into a sieve. I seem to be disappointed with life whenever it doesn't conform to my lofty expectations, so maybe this part of my life is about tearing down expectations altogether. Maybe that's just someone who is clinically depressed and anhedonic putting a spin on being socially withdrawn. Who knows. Who cares.

Apathy and isolation notwithstanding, I have managed to get out and see at least see a few good shows recently. I saw the Presets at the Paradise, Great Lake Swimmers at the Brattle, and the Bowerbirds are playing tomorrow night at TTs.

Everything is a work in progress
I was uploading the photos from the grad school tour, and it became apparent I need a new tag: Creations.

I made a couple of these sort of autobiographical ripoffs of Pictures for Sad Children and I might redraw the few other good ones in illustrator. Anyways, it's just nice to see that I still create.

So on that topic, I've started recording another cover song. This time it is Iron and Wine's demo track - Thousand Miles.

I'm still learning how to use a condenser mic to record vocals. The distance attenuation is turning out to be more of a challenge than I expected, and I really suspect I need to add a compressor - and learn to sing, of course. It is especially hard to get a rich tone without it being breathy. When I offset the mic, it seems to be a bit tinny, and I feel like it is cheating to just use EQ to bump up the lows.

I am hesitant to leave commenting open but I would really be appreciative of recording tips and critical feedback.

Current Music: Sonata pathetique 1st mov. C min - Beethoven

And then suddenly there was relief.
Sometimes when the weather changes abruptly, or my sleep is interrupted, I get to briefly experience what it is like to live life without pervasive clinical depression.

It's remarkable how the depressed brain processes information differently than a healthy one. A depressed brain sees a Sisyphean quality to everything - especially work. Simple tasks are magnified and distorted into climbing unimaginably high peaks. Doing something as simple as the laundry feels overwhelming, exhausting, and it surely will deplete what little energy you have.

Depression is not a "mood disorder", it is a distortion of perception. It changes the very eyes with which one sees the world. To the depressed brain, the simple satisfaction of a job well-done is almost inconceivable. One of the tools of cognitive behavioral therapy is to rate the expected reward of a task on a scale of 1 to 10 before doing it and after doing it. Invariably, the task is more rewarding than the depression sufferer predicted, but cognitively knowing something is not the same as the way it feels. Consider it akin to riding a roller coaster: you can be certain no harm will come to you, but damn if it doesn't make your heart race anyways. Similarly, you can "know" that "this isn't going to be so bad" but your insides are still screaming that you are exhausted and this is going to suck. Through such training, you might be better capable of performing tasks, but you are still constantly fighting for even basic self-sufficiency. Beyond that, a depressed person's self image becomes grossly negative, and we frequently withdraw from society because of that.

It's interesting to get perspective and to be able to see things clearly for a time, but even as I write this, I feel that distorted way of thinking creeping back into me. For a couple of hours today, everything was suddenly interesting again. When I looked into strangers faces, I didn't automatically sense indifference or disapproval. The pervasive feeling of "things are not ok" was just gone, and getting work done became so much easier.

*sigh* and then the quale of "something-is-missingness" has returned, and it is back to pacing and smoking cigarettes and feeling awful. I've got to keep fighting. C'est la vie.

Current Music: Bowerbirds - The Marbled Godwit

I have a new career crush...
In her own soft-spoken way, Dr. Eva Harris, 38, has become the Robin Hood of biotechnology.

She takes new discoveries in molecular and biological technology, breaks them down into their simplest forms, figures out ways to replicate them at lower costs and then transfers the information to public health workers in the developing world.

Read on

Beyond all that, she manages to keep her own basic science lab running, and is somehow also a parent. I guess I still do have a few heroes out there.

Not part of the 5 things, but something neat nonetheless.
Today was housing day at Harvard. The undergraduate housing system here is deeply entrenched in tradition, and superficially resembles the Hogwarts housing system. Today was Harvard's "sorting day." Groups of up to 8 freshmen self select into "blocking groups" which are the fundamental units of the housing lottery. The groups have no say as to which house they will be spending their remaining years, but at least they will be doing it together.

Since this is a lottery, all sorts of superstitions and traditions have evolved: flaming shoebox boats are sailed down the Charles river, drinks are consumed in honor of the houses and the housing gods, and there is a fair bit of chaos about. Especially today on housing day, where people have just found out where they will be spending the next few years.

As I was reading up on this phenomenon I came across a great tidbit:
In a 1928 report, President A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877, argued that students should not have full control over their housing, because they would naturally congregate towards students with similar backgrounds and interests.

"Large communities tend towards cliques based on similarity of origin and upon wealth," Lowell wrote. "Great masses of unorganized young men...are prone to superficial currents of thought and interest, to the detriment of the personal intellectual process that ought to dominate mature men seeking higher education."

Ah, the academic ideal, what a pleasant notion you are. All this optimism, all this energy, all this youth and naivete - it all makes me smile.

Final decision
I will get my PhD from Stanford.

I made the decision while I was talking to my dad and listening to the timbre of his voice. He mentioned that some day we would take a camping trip together, and suddenly I was in tears. That is my blood, that is my father, and we don't have a lot of years left. If only for that one extra camping trip we wouldn't have otherwise been able to take, I'll survive Palo Alto and that awful commute just to be near them.

This is not what I would have imagined, not what I would have predicted when I started this journey long ago, but it is the right thing to do.

I think I have narrowed it down
To Stanford or Harvard.

Stanford:

Pros: Proximity to my aged father, lots of people who like the same "kind" of science I am into, access to the kind of nature that I adore, great weather, large community of graduate/professional students, potential to live in SF again, grad students seemed reasonably happy and had interests beyond just science.

Cons: Living in SF may not be feasible with the stipend, Commuting 45 min on the train each way from SF/Palo Alto is a huge time sink and may ultimately be soul crushing, Living in Palo Alto beyond my first year is out of the question (it is a disgusting, artless, snooty, rich suburb), Finding community/friends in SF may be tough and there is a very serious potential for isolation.

Harvard:

Pros: Living in Cambridge provides easy access to all the urban amenities I need (Can walk to the best venues, great clubs), I am perfectly happy with the number of people I would like to rotate with, there is an opportunity for me to be an undergraduate live-in tutor so I could continue to mentor, Boston has the best community of scientists to learn from and I could draw on the resources at MIT and beyond, I already know how this department works and I could hit the ground running - it is likely I'd finish a PhD in under 6 years and there is pressure to get people out quickly, and although I know I am not happy here - I know that I can survive in this area. Surviving is not the same as thriving of course.

Cons: I'd have to choose against living near my parents, and if my dad were to die while I'm in graduate school... and then there is the weather. Hands down, this is the most awful weather to live in - the winters are so cold that my breath freezes in my beard and I become a batshit insane recluse, and the summers are humid and repulsive. Bostonians rub me the wrong way and I've been horribly isolated since moving here, graduate students in this department tend to be pretty antisocial past their first year, and as I mentioned - I haven't exactly been thriving. I got so frustrated trying to date out here that I threw my hands in the air and declared myself celibate. This place has been nurturing my depression, and I spend most of my time dicking around on the internet because it is the only social contact I get out here. Of course a lot of that is self perpetuating and there is no reason to believe that things couldn't be better if I pulled myself together and tried harder to make a life in Boston.

This would be a tough choice even for a sane person.

I ruled out the following schools for the following reasons:

UW Seattle: There are 55 sunny days per year in Seattle. The academics were fine, the grad students were pretty happy and balanced, but nobodies work spoke to me so intensely as to overshadow the fear that I'd undergo a complete shutdown by virtue of the constant gloom. I like the gloom of the bay area, because it is just right. Seattle is just too dismal.

MIT: The program was phenomenal, the grad students were happy, and the kind of work being done there was a good fit. But it is very much a tech institute and I cannot live on science alone. I need to at least have the chance to be around people who pursue art, archeology, philosophy etc. That and honestly, the buildings I'd be working in just made me feel uneasy - too brutalist, too artless, too factory-like. I can't articulate it. Something about MIT just made me want to run.

Columbia: The department was underfunded and had only a few people I wanted to learn from, and although I could work closely with people in AMNH, I would still be going for the wrong reasons. I'd be going to be near Nina, to have a vibrant social life amongst the creatives of Brooklyn, I'd be going for the women, I'd be going for everything except the science. Beyond that, I think hanging out with hipsters would get pretty old pretty quick, and it would suck to be dirt poor in such a materialistic town.

Few people will understand how sad this is
I apparently left my XLR cables at my old apartment.

I moved out of there 9 months ago.

I only noticed they were missing now.

Current Music: Bowerbirds - In Our Talons

Wrapping up columbia
Well, interviews went well. I strongly feel that if I came here, I could find science that I liked, but I'd be here primarily for a vibrant social life. I adore New York, and it is fun to see how much the creatives get a kick out of what I do for work. It certainly doesn't hurt that this town is brimming with gorgeous and stylish women.

It *really* doesn't hurt that I seem to have some modicum of game in this town as well - and that is something that I certainly lack in Boston. I let a young woman exit the train ahead of me and she beamed a smile at me that felt like a flower smiling for the summer sun. In Boston, I feel like she would have clutched her purse and fumbled for her pepper spray. Bostonians are a nice enough group of people if you meet them through "proper" channels, but it just isn't that common to be warm to a stranger.

Every time I come out here, I learn something new about art, design, and fashion. Every time I come here I end up buying something great to add to my wardrobe. I have never been much of a materialist, but I really have come to enjoy personal style as a means of artistic expression. The critical thing was learning it doesn't have to be grossly flaunting your socioeconomic status in order to be stylish. But I digress.

*sigh* It really is fun to be here, but seriously, women are my Achilles' heel. Coming to grad school here would be like a former alcoholic seeking work in a liquor store. I've got to be a better human being than that.

Notes from the road
I'm sitting in yet another science building named after Sherman Fairchild. I met this morning with a positively amazing scientist, who is just too good for this department, and she seemed really enthusiastic about my ideas. *sigh* it seems I will always be most interested in science that bridges the gap from concepts and molecules to real world phenotypes. She is studying how different frog songs evolved, and doing so by looking at the evolution of neural pathways involved in singing. The amazing thing is, she caught a number of her species herself, and it is funny to see how much I respect that.

There will always be some part of me that wants to get his feet muddy. At heart, I am a naturalist, not a biochemist, and I really should keep that in mind as I make my decision. People are going to tell me to go to the best funded place where the science is "sexy" by their standards. Things like noise, systems/network analysis, cancer, they are all great to study but just do not captivate me. I guess I just have my own strong ideas about what kind of science I like, and that comes down to this:

Somehow, all the majesty in the world was created by natural processes. Back in the days that biologists thought they could know the mind of god by studying creation, JBS Haldane famously reported that "He has an inordinate fondness for beetles." I am not so different from those old naturalists, except the brush strokes I want to study belong to a creative force known as evolution. It is a creator that sculpts through gene duplication, exaptation, mutation and presumably processes like exon shuffling. How does novelty evolve? That is my central question.

Not all salmon swim upstream. Some highly derived species have found a different life path, with its own unique drawbacks. These salmon take different risks and stay out to sea their whole lives.

Who shall I become? This choice impacts everything.