"These Are the People Who Actually Did the Work"

Today I heard a fantastic seminar, and as for most science presentations, the professor ended the talk with an acknowledgements slide. "And these are the people who actually did the work..." she said, and spent about ten seconds reading some of their names.

Science is about people. Oh, we pretend it's about molecules and deep-rooted universal truths. But all of that is pie in the sky. What we really have is people, interacting on the day-to-day, performing experiments, discussing results. People.

For the most part these people - the ones actually doing the work - labor in anonymity. They don't get a lot of credit. They don't make money. They may dream of a Science paper. But for the most part, they leave it to their PIs to acknowledge them at the end of a talk.

So here's a turn. From now on, when I give a talk, I'm going to give the acknowledgements slide first. I'm going to introduce the people who did the work. And then I'm going to tell their story, through the data they have generated. Because that's the story that really matters.

People.

The Last Samurai

Out with the old, in with the new. I've graduated, relocated, and switched to working on kidney stem cells. And as much as I've enjoyed writing this blog, it peaked a while back, and now it's time to mix it up a bit.

This blog is dividing - and neither of the daughter cells look exactly like the mother. Science News and Views will continue on Science Consulting, hopefully a communal effort between me and some friends from grad school. Interested in becoming a science consultant yourself? Please join our Facebook Group - we're looking for a few good nerds.

More of a left-brain person? I'm compartmentalizing my more philosophical musings into The Shmlag, a retro blog. While everyone else marches forward, I'm going to try to march backwards through the bustling crowd in search of my inner child. Should be fun.

But first, I want to give Samurai Scientist a proper send-off into the vast binary yonder. I've enjoyed writing this blog over the last year and a half, and hopefully you've enjoyed reading it. I've tried to convey the idea that science doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's a reality to it, a people, a culture, who are actually pretty fun to be around. Once you engage in all that, it enriches your life and becomes part of you.

Research, like life, is surely suffering. It's also purifying, clarifying, and enlightening. If you're going for a Ph.D., it helps to adopt the ethos of a samurai. You must master nature, force her to obey - it's like sorcery. And there are also obstacles you won't be able to overcome. It may be the hardest thing you ever do, but then few things worth doing are easy. The trick, as with everything else, is to stop worrying and enjoy the experiment.

And smile - don't forget to smile.

Seeing Through God's Eyes

One of the pleasures of studying the physical world is perspective. When you work with molecules long enough, you gain a sense of scale. It’s a little like being Neo at the end of The Matrix - you catch a glimpse of the millions of 1s and 0s that make up your daily life.

I was recently reminded of this at a no-kids night at the California Academy of Sciences. If you haven’t been, San Francisco has done a truly amazing job with both the CAS and the de Young art museum directly opposite. The museum night was magical, with low lights, a DJ, and wet bar – the perfect way to experience science.

By the time we made it to the IMAX Planetarium show, I was perfectly buzzed. We flew out and looked down on the planet Earth and the International Space Station, and I felt like I was there. I knew this was the closest I’d ever be to orbiting the Earth, and for a whole lot cheaper.

Then we flew out farther, so we could see the entire solar system, and paused to watch the planets in their rotational orbits. It’s quiet out there in deep space, peaceful, beautiful. As a molecular biologist, I’m used to thinking in terms of nanometers – not millions of light years. We flew out further, seeing nebulae and galaxies in infrared spectra, like looking through the eyes of God. After the show, we strolled through a night reef, watching jellies with four perfect rings of fluorescent pink pulsate rhythmically.

Sometimes it’s hard, as adults who have been-there-done-that, to find an emotional connection to the universe. But if we're going to do science, we may as well enjoy it. And in the right setting, knowledge can open our eyes to fresh perspectives, and help us rediscover the child-like wonder that inspired us in the first place.

Really Beautiful People

The cast and set of Mad Men (3rd season starts tonight on AMC) are so good looking, I always come away feeling like I've got to install ivory handles on all my sinks. A short (spoiler-free) intro to the show's main characters so you can jump right in:

Betty Draper (left) - Don's sweet, elegant, gorgeous 1950's housewife. She lives only to serve.

Roger Sterling (below left) - good-natured heir to the agency, knows how to laugh and enjoy life.

Joan Holloway (front left) - sultry, stylish alpha secretary. When this redhead smiles, she gives Betty a run for her money.

Don Draper (center) - Mad Men's Ayn Rand-ian protagonist. The perfect man, he simply lives with no strings attached.

Peggy Olson (front right) - the agency's ambitious, creepy new girl. She's got more balls than the boys.

Pete Campbell (far right) - Mad Men's villain. Spoiled brat, alternatively admiring and jealous of Don.

Tune in to see watch these beautiful people every Sunday at 10PM/9C. Your eyes (and sinks) will thank you for it!

Cleaning Lady

She called me her professor,

though I was only seven then –
cleaning, washing, making beds,
she spoke in broken English.

I was only seven then,
I helped her learn to read;
she taught us games in broken speech,
we were her only children.

I tried to help her read, but still
she couldn’t understand. And soon
we weren’t children, didn’t need
her silly Polish games.

We mocked her, couldn’t understand
her broken English, crooked teeth;
“The stupid Pollack’s fault again,”
blaming her for everything:

the missing pen or broken lamp,
those teenage years were full of hate.
We blamed her for our own mistakes –
I led my siblings on.

Those teenage years were full of hate,
and where was she to run?
One night I led in the attack,
so cruel the words I said. . .

but where was she to run? Ten years
of cleaning, washing, making beds –
“I used,” she said with angry tears,
“to call you my professor.”

Moonwalkin'

In college, my friends and I entertained ourselves by watching old Michael Jackson clips. We marveled together with the audience to his first live moonwalk, 25 years ago:

The man was an unworldly dancer, a true artist. "Smooth Criminal" is my all-time favorite music video, a witch's brew of speakeasy noir, Jackie-Chan-esque choreography, and mind-bending zombie funk:

When I go to the club - which isn't very often, these days - I try to channel a little Michael Jackson. His jerky, frenetic movements fit my dance style, which started with tap dance lessons many years ago.

Goodbye, Michael. Rest in peace. Thanks for pushing the envelope. Thanks for taking us to the moon. You were right, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think. That's something we can all learn from.

Turkish Delight

My friend E recently invited me over for dinner with her parents, who were in town from Istanbul. I grabbed a bottle of Mendocino Pinot Noir Grape Juice ($12.95 at the neighborhood wine store), plucked a huge lemon from the tree in front of my house, and headed over on an empty stomach. E is a great cook, and let me tell you, the food was delicious. The first course was a lentil soup, amazing taste, I'd never had anything like it. While we were sipping, E let slip to her family that I was Jewish. E's father -- a short, mustached fellow with serious brown eyes -- got very excited about this.

E's dad informed me that there were many Jews in Istanbul. Apparently, the late, great Ottoman Empire had taken in the Jews when they were chased out of Spain by the inquisitors. "Yes, there are many, how do you say, hahams in Turkey," E chimed in. E's father, himself a civil engineer, had recently read a biography of Einstein ("He was religious!") and was greatly impressed. He taught me that inshallah is the Arabic equivalent of im yirtzeh HaShem, gave me a blessing that I should have good luck in my career, and offered to host me and show me around if I ever visited Istanbul. He was very friendly in his somber way and I didn't detect a trace of anti-Semitism in the man. (With his three daughters and his sister at the table, I think he was just happy to have another guy around.)

We retired to the living room, where we sat together on the couch and broke open the grape juice. "Nice color," E's dad complimented, holding his shot glass up to the light (the Pinot Noir grape gives a deep red color, not the dark purple of the concord grapes). We drank the sweet, cool juice with a twist of the lemon I had brought, a wild California lemon with a large rind. "The lemon tree in my garden tastes the same," E's father reminisced. Then E served up flan with caramel. It held together perfectly and had a clean, just-sweet-enough finish. It was one of the best desserts I have had in my entire life. I reminded her husband, a friendly PhD who makes microchips for a cell phone company, that he's a lucky man.

Only once did the Israel/Palestine issue come up (or as E's father malaproposed, the "Isra-el/Phili-stines"). He was opining about how our two cultures had so much in common. "You and I are cousins!" he exclaimed, squeezing my shoulder. "So why are our peoples at war?"

I had a flash. "Sometimes we fight most with members of our own family."

E's father nodded and smiled, his dark eyes flashing. "I understand what you said. I understand."

Ubirr

In the cliffs of Ubirr, in Kakadu National Park, we found an art gallery of the ancients. There the aborigines had painted sacred images of the animals that surrounded them and kept them fed - the wallaby, the long-necked turtle, the great fish barramundi. The figures lived on ceilings of high, jutting sandstone, which protected them from the elements and had preserved them for millenia. They were crudely stylized, stick-figured, skeletal, brimming with the rawness of the surrounding wilderness.

We hiked up further to the top of the enscarpment, where I looked out over all the Arnhemland, the wetland plain which still belonged to the aborigine. The land ran a gradient from yellow to deep green as it approached a sparkling blue billabong in the distance. The wind blew gently in my face, and two green parrots flew by, breaking the silence. This was a place of peace, a spiritual place - it was easy to understand why the aborigines chose it for their visions.

I remembered suddenly a scene from Survivor:The Australian Outback, that show's most brutal second season. Throughout it all was Colby, a ruggedly good-looking Texan who pulled his team to safety and then survived their slings and arrows by winning the last five immunity challenges. On the final day, Colby painted a wooden idol symbolic of his ordeal and carried it to the top of the highest cliff he could find. He wore a look of solemn indifference as he tossed his idol over the precipice, tossing away his experience even as it became a part of him, traversing from being the person he had been to the person he had now become.

The Commencement Speech That Never Was

Well, my commencement speech was turned down in favor of a classmate's. But that doesn't mean I can't give the speech right here... on my blog!

Esteemed professors, ladies and gentlemen, and fellow classmates,

As we stand here today, it’s hard not to look back at the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young students we were when we entered graduate school, 5, 6, or even 8 years ago. And if you’re like me, you can’t help but ask yourself: “What was I thinking?!” And yet, that is where the growth is. The fact that we can look back and see ourselves so far away is a reminder of how far we’ve come, each and every one of us.

My first year in graduate school, a professor told me, “In science, there’s a lot of delayed gratification.” At the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But today, I think every single one of us standing up here can appreciate the wisdom in those words. In science, a single experiment can take months, or even years. And you don’t know how it’s going to turn out! When you’re in the trenches, it’s only natural to question why you signed up for this mission in the first place.

But if you’re standing here today, it means you’ve learned to deal with that kind of uncertainty. You’ve learned to stop worrying and enjoy the experiment – discovered that it’s the process, not the destination, that counts. And once you realize that, you can’t help but feel grateful for the tremendous privilege we’ve enjoyed these last few years. We have gotten paid to do what we love. We have been able to play with molecules the way a child plays with tinkertoys, taking the pieces apart, putting them back together, or perhaps trying to build them into something new entirely. Yes, it has been very hard work. But precisely because it’s so challenging – precisely because it’s so uncertain – there’s a sense of adventure about every single experiment, and a pride we feel when we see the results.

So sing with me now:

"You can’t always get what you wa-ant.

You can’t always get what you wa-ant.

But if you try sometimes,

You just might find,

You get what you need!"

Congratulations class of 2009!

"I decided not to finish my thesis"

שוב יום אחד לפני מיתתך
"Repent one day before you die." --Avot 2:13

In a recent comic strip, scientist-cum-cartoonist Jorge Cham explains in naked pink why the war on cancer won't be won anytime soon. Along the way, he wrestles with the insignificance of both art and science in the face of life-threatening disease. In the final panels of this poignant piece, he describes being approached at a booksigning by a chemo patient:

What if you were diagnosed with cancer? If you only had six months to live? How would you change your life?

And why aren't you doing that right now?

--

Should Jedi torture?

There's probably no greater contemporary commentary on the futility of war than LucasArts' Star Wars: Clone Wars saga. What could possibly be more futile than a war between a droid army and a clone army? The whole thing is orchestrated by a Sith puppet-master with no interest in either side winning, but rather in wreaking chaos, weakening his enemies, and consolidating personal power. In envisioning the Clone Wars, Lucas has brought our generation a story more complex and relevant than the simple good-versus-evil semantic of the original trilogy.

In the trenches of the Clone Wars are the famous knights of the Jedi order. Their training has prepared them to keep a cool head, but they're only humanoid, and they've never been involved in a conflict this big or this scary. Try as they might, they can't help being sucked in by the murky business of war. In this scene, a younger Jedi makes a strong case to her mentor in favor of bullying a prisoner for information. The mentor stops her - "Terror is not a weapon the Jedi use," she says - but here, as later in the episode, the question of whose judgment is correct remains unresolved.

Pull the slider to 4:00 for some hot Jedi torture

The greatest example of how war corrupts, of course, is the star of the show - Anakin Skywalker, well on his way to becoming Darth Vader. Anakin's in over his head, and his emotions are beginning to strain even as his reputation grows (cartoon Anakin is actually a better actor than Hayden Christensen). It's impossible to imagine that this powerful Jedi's experiences in the Clone Wars played no role in his turning to the Dark Side. On the contrary - his exposure to violence, anger, frustration, and power were just what Palpatine had in mind.

It is... unfortunate... that Clone Wars has not been more popular with the American public. Perhaps it was the hackneyed dialogue of the prequels, or the complicated plot, or perhaps the message of the Clone Wars was simply not what the audience was expecting to hear (I'd have missed it myself had my brother, a Star Wars expert, not pointed it out to me after The Phantom Menace). But there are real wars out there, and universal challenges, and our generation is inheriting them. I am concerned that America is still thinking in terms of good versus evil, black and white, us versus them.  We would do much better to heed the harsh lessons of the Clone Wars: that all war is costly, and we often do not recognize the real menace until we taste his lightsaber. And of course, sometimes that menace is us.

What stands between us is only words

I'm damn proud of you people.

Maybe I don't say it enough. Definitely I don't say it enough. But it's true.

We may have different opinions, you and I. We may see life from two different points of view. But that doesn't matter. What matters is, you're an amazing person.

It's easy to get bogged down in politics, religion, ideology, etc. There's something in our crocodile mind that identifies ourselves with "truth" and perceives everything else as a threat. And yet what separates us is only words, only ideas. We have much more in common than we ever could have apart.

The way to overcome these barriers is through human communication. Face-to-face if possible, over the telephone or the internet if necessary. Seeing each other, hearing each others' voice, has a way of easing our fears. Of reminding us that we are all just human beings, each of us with an intricate life, dealing with challenges as best we can.

When we talk to each other, when we see each other, when we touch each other, I do not need to understand you, and you do not need to understand me. We only need to be in each other's presence, to accept one another, to spend time together. Then our monkey minds, always racing with thoughts and fears, is quieted. For isn't rejection our greatest fear? And if we're sitting together, then we are not being rejected.

So when I think of my family and my friends, this is what I think: I'm proud of you. You are amazing people. I learn from each of you. We may not always agree, and that's natural. That's to be expected. But let's not let it stand in the way of appreciating each other, just as we are.