from the desk of stinkpot

i think i am in love with dr. laura garwin (pictured above).
i half-heartedly agreed to go to a talk she gave today at school. the biological engineeers here had arranged for dr. garwin to speak about post-doctoral careers outside the sphere of pure research. specifically, she was to talk about her own experiences [...]

those poor ivf surplus embroys. already headed for the trash. now, their chance to contribute to science and humanity has been delayed indefinitely once again. (that picture in the article, of bush surrounded by babies born of surplus embroys makes me want to throw up a little in my mouth.  don’t [...]

it’s been a good summer so far. i’ve already done 2 of the 27 things i’ve hoped to do in my life.
the first was #23: backpacking for at least 2 weeks in a foreign country. check.
the second has been #16: learn c. i finally took care of this one last week.
not knowing [...]

gawsh, i’m starting to appreciate how difficult it is to develop algorithms. it seems that the function representing the novelty & utility of an algorithm vs. effort exerted looks like 1-exp(-x): the first couple of breakthroughs in a field come easily, but improving on them can be quite hard. in my case, i’ve [...]

a profoundly old tortoise died today.
he was 250 years old, meaning his birth predated the american revolution … it’s absolutely remarkable that any animal could live so long.
makes you wonder what tortoises do that other critters don’t. sounds like a good phd project, in fact.

lately, graduate school has got me feeling like a manic-depressive.
the week started off smoothly: my current research was going well (which always makes me happy) and, in preparation for my final lab rotation, i had finished setting up meetings with all the relevant folk at mit who might be interested in bioenergy research.
and then, on [...]

i was playing with my camera the other night and snapped this picture of pythagoras’ bust on my desk. it reminded me of a question a professor asked me once in college. it was meant to test whether i belonged in science or business.
he asked, “would you rather own the empire state building [...]