botany, shoes, books, and justice
From The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope:
Who does not know that sudden thoughtfulness at waking, that first matutinal retrospection, and pro-spection, into things as they have been and are to be; and the lowness of heart, the blankness of hope which follows the first remembrance of some folly lately done, some word ill-spoken, some money misspent, – or perhaps a cigar too much, or a glass of brandy and soda-water which he should have left untasted?
I put off reading Haunted 
Reading a Palahniuk novel is like getting zipped inside a boxer’s heavy bag while the author goes to work on you, pounding you until there is nothing left but a big bag of bones and blood and pain.”
—The Miami Herald
But I did finally read it, and I did like it. Yes, there were a few parts that turned my stomach. But there were a lot more parts that made me laugh. It works very well as a satire of reality tv or a study of “‘the battle for credibility‘ that has resulted from the ease with which one can publish through the use of modern technology.”
Perhaps because my migraines have been rather awful lately, I couldn’t help but compare certain parts of the story to the feeling of having a chronic illness.
The setting of the novel – a theater that becomes a prison where horrible things happen – mirrors an illness, where you’re unable to escape your body, which is doing stomach turning and painful things, and you have to keep on playing at life.
The strange distance the characters have from their bodies and the things they do to their bodies for the sake of the story they’re creating is similar to how, in illness, your body can become a tool to use, an adversary to coerce or bargain with or punish.
And some of the characters have bodies that have changed in dramatic ways that don’t necessarily fit with their actions and personalities. Illness can turn your body into an awful thing that is certainly not you (or who you’d like to think you are), but is simultaneously something you’re stuck with that defines and shapes you.
Haunted was scary and sad and gross, but I loved how it was funny at the same time. I spend a lot of time lying in bed with a migraine making up migraine jokes that probably not another person in the world would find funny. Haunted takes the feeling behind those jokes and turns it into something just about everyone can laugh at.
When I began trying to convince my aunt that climate change is a very real, very risky, and human caused phenomenon, she sent me a list of questions she had about climate change. I answered all of her questions carefully and thoughtfully using scientific evidence and clear figures. After I finished the last post and sent it to her, I received the response
You say tomato, I say tomahto.Just another opinion.
with a link to this AOL news story suggesting that snow in winter might disprove climate change and perpetuating the myth that there is no scientific consensus on climate change.
I was annoyed. After all the time and effort I put into answering her questions, trying to impress on her the weight of evidence on the issue and the importance of long term trends versus single events and short term fluctuations, she still didn’t get it. Some people might stop here, disgusted, and assume my aunt is stupid. I’ve seen many conversations on climate change go this way.
But I assure you that my aunt is not stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Though she never got a college education, cleverness, hard work, and a knack for detail have made her quite successful. Her advice has gotten me out of more than one tricky situation. I think she’s very smart. So why didn’t our conversation – why didn’t the data – change her mind?
I’ve already mentioned how my failure to tell a good, coherent story in response to her questions hurt my case.
But I think it’s more than that. My aunt appended the phrase “figures lie and liars figure” to that list of questions she sent me. It’s not that my aunt doesn’t understand what I said. My aunt fundamentally believes that she cannot trust the data or the scientists.
All of the information I used was not only publicly available, but had usually been packaged for public consumption – translated from meteorological and statistical jargon into layman’s terms. My aunt was fully capable of finding the answers to her questions with a few minutes of googling. But she didn’t. She asked a person she knew and trusted. Unfortunately, her trust in me and my knowledge is not stronger than the distrust she feels for science and scientists.
“Figures lie and liars figure” is a bastardization of the original expression – “figures don’t lie, but liars figure” – that reflects the problem with the climate change ‘debate.’ The data don’t lie, but much of the American public is convinced that they can’t believe what science says.
I got a message yesterday addressed ‘Privet, …’ and spent a few minutes wondering what the sender thought I had in common with Ligustrum.
Ligustrum vulgare (aka 'privet'). Photo from Wikimedia commons.
Then I realized that ‘privet’ is just hello in Russian, transliterated – a much less cryptic greeting than ‘common evergreen shrub!’ Clearly, I am not studying hard enough if it takes me so long to realize the difference between Russian and botany!
From The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope:
The woman was affectionate, seeking good things for others rather than for herself; but she was essentially worldly, believing that good could come out of evil, that falsehood might in certain conditions be better than truth, that shams and pretenses might do the work of true service, that a strong house might be built upon the sand!
Free Money Collection by epSos.de on Flickr
Applying to graduate school is expensive – application fees, taking tests, seemingly endless transcript requests and score reports, and miscellaneous travel expenses that weren’t reimbursed. All in all, it cost me about $1500 to apply to grad school. If that number seems high to you, consider that many people applying for degrees beyond undergrad pay much more. I knew applying to grad school wouldn’t be cheap so I budgeted for it and didn’t run into any problems.
I also knew that moving for school would be expensive, but I’m not as prepared for that expense as I’d hoped. That’s partly because I’m not getting paid as much as I expected because of the changed finances of my lab. It’s also partly because moving is going to cost a lot more than I expected since I’m leaving the US. To make it work, I’ll need spend money I don’t have, which I hate to do.
So you can imagine how thrilled I was to find out that I’d been selected for a very fancy fellowship. And how terrible it was to find out that this is the first year the fellowship can’t be used outside the US. I haven’t officially turned the fellowship down yet because I need to go buy some chocolate ice-cream before I click the ‘reject’ button on upwards of $120,000.
While the stipend I’ve been offered at Awesome International isn’t as high as the one I would have gotten under the fancy fellowship, it’s still quite good. It’s even high enough to cover my moving expenses and buy a new computer if I’m careful. The problem is that I probably won’t see my stipend until October, so I have to get through several months of unusually high expenses on no income.
As whiney as I’m being here, my situation isn’t as terrible as it seems – once I get my stipend, I can pay off any debt I’ve racked up over the summer.