There is that...

OK, I'm finally going to reward you 6-10 loyal people who are (somewhat inexplicably given recent history) visiting this blog every day only to find absolutely nothing new of interest.  I have been very crummy at updating recently because I have, in the last three weeks, gone from working on two projects to working on five projects.  This is good from a "learning new stuff" perspective; not so good from a "free time" perspective.  One additional complication is that most of the work I've been doing recently is biological (either animal studies or cell culture experiments) which, unlike the polymers and other chemicals I am more used to working with, are somewhat needy in terms of very regular and somewhat extensive attention.  Adding to this workload fun is the fact that I have now become one of the favourite manuscript reviewers of the American Chemical Society.  For those of you who aren't familiar with how the academic game works, the best description of whether you are successful or not as a professor is the phrase "publish or perish".  So, people submit manuscripts of highly various quality to literally thousands of scientific journals, most of which are sent out for review by 2-3 "experts" in the field.  Well, I am now considered to be an "expert" on hydrogels (which alone makes me highly suspicious of the entire review process).  In the last three weeks, I have received three manuscripts which I am supposed to read through with a fine-tooth comb and give a recommendation concerning publication.  Basically, this means that my opinion has either a 33% or 50% weighting on whether or not somebody gets a paper published and, by extension (eventually at least) gets promoted, tenured, etc.  As a result, each review takes a huge amount of time, requiring careful checking of not only the paper in question but also previous publications by the author (to ensure they are not double-dipping with the same data in different journals - something I actually caught one guy on before) and other publications in the field (to make sure the data is truly novel).  Interestingly, one of the papers I reviewed copied an entire paragraph verbatim from a paper I wrote (without referencing me)... tough break for that guy (although made my decision much easier).  It's actually kind of funny how the system can work and how lucky/unlucky you may get.  I actually got sent the same paper THREE TIMES - each time for a different, less good journal after I had rejected it previously and each time totally unchanged from the original version despite the two pages of comments I had sent in the previous reviews.  The last time I saw the paper, I returned the favour and sent back exactly the same review I had sent in the previous time (paper hadn't changed, why should my comments?)  I also got one of my papers rejected because one guy who obviously didn't like my supervisor basically trashed my paper for almost entirely unreasonable reasons - it can be a very personal process (although I actually ended up getting the paper accepted in a better journal at the end of the day anyway, so it turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise).  Anyway, enough whining about being busy/shop talk... on to some more interesting random stuff:

- Today I spent four hours doing neurological testing on diarrhetic rats.  For those of you who have not had the pleasure of being downwind of a diarrhetic rat, consider yourselves lucky.

- Becoming a post-doctoral fellow or a professor is hardly the wisest economic choice in the world.  They are both relatively demanding jobs (although the travel and relative freedom of what you are doing and when you are doing it are definite perks) and is relatively low-paying in comparison to jobs demanding similar time commitments and education levels.  In order to make up for the sacrificed income potential, the golden calf of academia is consulting, which can literally pay you hundreds or thousands of dollars for your opinion and/or a few hours of work on a particular project.  Last week, my pediatric surgeon boss pulled me into his office and asked me three questions (1) was I happy working in his group (answer: yes)  (2) were my parents rich (answer: two teachers, so not so much, particularly by MIT parent standards)  (3) would I like to be a materials design consultant for a company trying to deliver a therapeutic protein to joints to treat arthritis, a position requiring a limited time commitment and providing a fairly serious chunk of change in compensation (answer: well, duh yes!)  So, while I was once potentially going to lose money during my stay here, now I will definitely come out ahead - assuming I can confirm that my visa status allows me to receive money from an American company (still not confirmed!).  I would have probably done it (and indeed, more casually, have been doing it) for free anyway, even just to have the experience of working on a corporate project - I have always just been doing my own thing, which has a much different vibe.  So, this seems like a pretty exciting(and somewhat lucrative) turn of events, provided the Department of Homeland Security values my scientific advice as much as the company at least thinks it might.

- I attended a homemade Korean buffet dinner last weekend which was surprisingly good.  It is kind of weird that every other country in the southeast Asia region has had its food exported in a wildly successful manner to North America, yet I could not have named a single Korean dish prior to that evening.  To be fair, I probably still couldn't name a single dish since they were all denoted by incomprehensible multi-syllabic names a mile long.  However, I was very pleasantly surprised - kind of a mix between Japanese (featuring sushi-like kelp rolls, only without the uncooked meat which always grosses me out) and Chinese and not in violation of either of Todd's Two Rules of Eating: (1) no extraordinarily hot foods  (2) no internal organs. 

- A couple of interesting articles I've come across recently: (1) Can a football coach passively participate in a pre-game prayer prior to a high school football game while still upholding the principles of freedom of religion?  Good question.  (2) Many Canadians seem to think that our vaunted "role in the world" is to avoid picking sides, being the "good guy" if you will, helping out with peacekeeping forces when required to rebuild countries but never engaging in combat for a particular cause.  However, Lester Pearson (the former Canadian prime minister who literally invented peacekeeping and has the Nobel Peace Prize to prove it) seemed to think otherwise.  I couldn't agree with the premise of the article (and Pearson's viewpoint) more - it is not only impractical but also morally untenable to be "neutral" in a world which really does have good guys and bad guys (or at least whiter and darker shades of grey guys).  Sometimes wearing a blue beret and shaking hands with civilians in the streets just isn't enough if we are going to be taken seriously in the world and if we are truly interested in doing the "right" thing.  A very timely article in the wake of Rememberance Day/Veteran's Day last week - I missed not having a poppy to wear this year.

- As many of you know, I am a bit of a political buff, so it killed me to be living here and not having a vote in the midterm elections that happened last week.  Although the house of representatives and U.S. Senate races get the big national media play, the most prestigious race around here was for the state governor.  Unbelievably, seeing as this is Massachusetts , the incumbent governor was a Republican (probable 2008 presidential candidate Mitt (yes, Mitt) Romney), the ONLY elected Republican in the ENTIRE STATE, state or federal level.  He wasn't running for re-election (too busy traversing the country making fun of Massachusetts to try to win votes in other states for his presidential bid) and the Democratic candidate ended up winning, a seemingly decent guy (if not incredibly vague) and the second black governor in U.S. history.  It is absolutely unbelievable to watch some of the election ads that run here though (makes the "guns in our cities" and Chretien's face ads look like amateur hour) - you can be appalled along with me here if you wish.  In Massachusetts, if the ads were to believed, we got to choose between a Clinton floozie who defends serial rapists and wants to give illegal immigrants driver's licenses (~1/3 true) and a cronyism-obsessed second banana who was partially responsible for the panel falling off one of the highway tunnels in downtown Boston due to her incompetence (~1/2 true) - no wonder people are depressed about politics.  At any rate, I think that the Democratic sweep (and, even more importantly, the Rumsfeld resignation) was what had to happen here - something had to give in the wake of the disaster that is Iraq policy and hopefully the increased diversity of opinion in Washington will come up with some better ideas on how to fix some of the problems without bankrupting the country.  The interesting thing about the whole process is how oblivious most Americans are in terms of how closely their elections are watched around the world.  There are literally hundreds of millions of people around the world who would kill to have a vote in a U.S. election, but almost nobody here really seemed to care that much about the election at all.  I noticed that CBC Newsworld actually devoted more hours of coverage to the election than ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, which is kind of telling. 

- And finally, I am headed back to Hamilton on Wednesday to "officially" become a Doctor in McMaster's convocation on Friday.  I actually won the Governor General's Gold Medal, which is kind of the "best thesis" award for the university amongst all Ph.D. students who convocated in the same period, which is fairly exciting actually (however, I would hate to be on that committee... comparing my thesis, 280 pages of math and chemistry, to an English thesis on "The impact of rodents on character development in Shakespeare's early tragedies" and picking a winner... yikes!)  This means I also have to attend a banquet on Thursday night, which is nice in a way (free food is always good.. I am still a grad student at heart after all)although probably somewhat uninteresting considering I am likely to know absolutely nobody there and most people there will have little interest in talking to me.  Either way though, I am looking forward to returning to Canada and saying hello to all you Hamiltonians (as well as picking up some Canadian-only food staples I am craving... who knew that Libby's Deep Browned Beans are truly a one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable food item???).  I expect to be called "Most Honorable Doctor Sir" from now on though, just so you are warned

I have a bunch of other stuff I want to write about too, but I am getting tired and rat dissections await early tomorrow, so I will leave you in suspense. - keep checking up, you loyal 6-10 readers!