There is that...

Back to your regularly-scheduled, amusing anecdote blogging:

- Forgot to mention this one last time I posted - my car got egged on Halloween.  Sort of.  Actually, my car got egged on the evening of November 1 while parked at MIT.  Yes, the same people who bring you the latest technology in health, defence, and electronics either (a) cannot read a calendar or (b) cannot figure out anything else to do with a perfectly good leftover egg besides whipping it against a car.  I do, however, now have a whole new appreciation for the superior material properties of the egg (as a materials science researcher, this counts as the "silver lining").  I got the egg white remnants off my car pretty easily, in a couple minutes or so... however, the yolk took me over a half an hour to pry off my car (the stuff is like glue, absolutely incredible).  Anyhow, next year I will be sure to avoid parking at MIT on All Saints' Day, lest another batch of MIT students hand in their Halloween "assignment" a day late.

- Last weekend I was back in Hamilton to officially become a doctor (of philosophy... please do not start coming to me with a suspicious rash).  I have to admit that as I exited the highway and drove through the urban splendour of east and downtown Hamilton, I was subconsciously comparing Hamilton to Boston and thinking "why did I agree to spend an indefinite period of my life living in Hamilton again?"  However, as I went through the weekend, particularly while visting McMaster and even more so coming back to Philpott on Sunday, I was reminded of why I am excited to return to Hamilton.  It was great to say hello to so many familiar faces again, however briefly.  I was in town for three and a half days but it seemed as if I was running around the whole time and did about half of what I really wanted to do.   Between a dental appointment (which turned into two appointments, one on Thursday and one on Friday, and featured my first filling, a particularly exciting event given that it happened on my first appointment without dental insurance :), my McMaster visit (involving technical meetings with two people whose projects I am still co-supervising remotely as well as a bunch of informal meetings with other grad students, professors, and office staff to say hello), a bunch of banking and shopping errands I had to do (got my deep browned beans, thanks for the concern!), a graduation banquet, the ceremony itself, church on Sunday, and family stuff, I think the term "vacation" is a bit of a misnomer for the weekend. 

The graduation banquet was a particularly strange event.  I was invited as the winner of the Governor General's Gold Medal, so I knew exactly one other person in the room (the dean of engineering who interviewed me for my job).  After about a half an hour of exceedingly surreal "networking", primarily with the son and daughter of one of the associate deans (I despise receptions at any event), I was seated at my table for the dinner with the dean of engineering, the dean of science, the dean of graduate studies, the vice president of development for the university, and the vice president of research for the university, plus a couple of spouses.  These events are always strange when you are a grad student or a relatively unaccomplished scientist - you know that the "famous" people at the table really aren't that interested in talking with you (much preferring to talk shop amongst themselves) and, frankly, you aren't that excited about talking to them either, but everybody puts on their game face and pretends to be having a great time for the cameras.  This event wasn't nearly as awkward as others I have attended - the fact that I had already been hired as a prof at McMaster and the fact that two of the deans had cottages in Haliburton and had fond memories of shopping at the IGA (meaning I probably played a key role in fulfiling their lettuce-related needs back when I was a produce clerk for the summer) both helped immensely in filling in the conversation gaps - but I can't say "fun" would be a proper description of the evening.   It is, however, amusing to me how much fun academics have in giving awards to each other.  It is actually kind of important to get awards to fluff up your CV and make you appear more intelligent and, more importantly, well-respected and widely-recognized in your field of research.  As a result, a bunch of random awards are created and granted by and to many of the same people, sort of a self-sustaining mutual admiration society which is ultimately beneficial for everybody involved come research grant writing and tenure promotion time.  

The graduation ceremony was actually kind of fun, despite the relative pain that is watching four hundred people individually cross the stage to get their degrees one-by-one (particularly when you are the seventh person to walk across the stage - you have lots of time to kill afterwards).  The keynote speaker was by Martha Piper, former president of UBC, and was exceptionally good.  The one thing she mentioned that struck me in particular was her pointing out what were almost certainly the two defining events of the last 15 years: 11/9 (the day the Berlin Wall fell, in 1989) and 9/11 (which is obvious).  She emphasized the contrast between 11/9 breaking down artificial walls between people and 9/11 erecting new artificial walls between people, all to encourage us to be not only technically competent but also good citizens of the world who endeavour to use our knowledge to build bridges and hope instead of knocking them down.  She said it much more elegantly than I did, but even so the comparison is really thought-provoking on many levels.  I got hooded by my supervisor, which is a nice touch - graduate school is a very person-driven experience as opposed to an institution-driven experience, so it means a lot more when your degree is granted by the person who you worked with (pic below, my supervisor is behind me hooding me, the chancellor is shaking my hand, and the university president is waiting for me to the left).  This is something I definitely look forward to after becoming a professor - you really are a big part of your students' lives for four or five years, and this moment is a bit of a payoff for both the student and the supervisor I am sure.

(By the way, those gowns are obscenely heavy - you need a bit of a running start to get up out of your seat without tripping over the thing).  I got my award later in the program - it is an actual medal, adorned by sthe picture of the Michaelle Jean (understandable, given that it is the Governor General's award) as well as her adorable, quasi-separatist husband Daniel Lafond (much less understandable).  There were also a lot more people than I expected whom I knew at the ceremony - two girls from my old small group, five other chem eng graduates, and Larisa (and Mike, not graduating himself but there for the show) were there, which is 7 more people than I was expecting to know at the ceremony. 

Philpott on Sunday was a ton of fun - it is a really neat feeling when you literally have trouble walking down the aisle because so many people want to stop and talk with you.  I didn't get out of the sanctuary for about 20 minutes, and I still think I missed many of you to whom I wanted to say hello.  I ended up also staying for oXyGEN and lunch afterwards, which meant for a very late return to Boston (midnight), but it was totally worth it.  It is really amazing when you can disappear for five months, show up again, and feel as if you are right back at home again, which was totally my experience last Sunday.  I will be back in Hamilton just after New Year's, so hopefully I can catch more of you next time!

OK, enough sappiness for one evening... another post will be coming soon, right after I get some pictures from Ashley regarding a somewhat eventful Thanksgiving dinner experience we had on Thursday. 

I had no intention of blogging tonight until I saw this story and got mad.  (Advance apologies to anybody who reads this blog and has no interest in politics)

I am very proud of being a Canadian.  Particularly living in the U.S., I find that I bring up the fact that I am Canadian to virtually everybody I talk to through some backhanded way (I have surprised myself at my innate creativity at bringing it up in totally unrelated conversations).  However, I have never (and will never) consider myself a hypenated Canadian.  I am not an Ontario-Canadian, even though I have lived in Ontario my whole life.  I am not an Anglophone-Canadian, even though English is the language I speak.  I am not a British-Canadian, even though that is my cultural heritage.  I am not even a Christian-Canadian, even though that is my faith.  This is by no means to say that these addendums to being Canadian are not important to me; I am proud of where I grew up and what my background is, and my faith is a huge part of who I am, much moreso than any other of these hyphens could possibly be.  However, if somebody was to ask me my national identity, I would answer simply and without any hesitation: "Canadian".  I do not understand how anybody who has the privilege of living in Canada could possibly answer in any other way.  Indeed, I was happy to read an article a couple of weeks ago that the government was reviewing whether or not Canada should allow dual citizenships - I do not believe that you can truly hold an equal allegiance and responsibility to two nations (who would you cheer for in a sporting event?  A slightly non-serious example of this, but it drives home the point).  However, as of tonight, the government and indeed the whole Parliament of Canada has effectively decided that being Canadian isn't really that important.  By effectively endorsing a motion recognizing that "Quebeckers constitute a nation within Canada", our elected representatives have more or less decided that Canada is little more than a filing cabinet, housing all the distinct file folders but of no particular inherent importance itself.  Why does this tick me off so much?

(1) This smacks of political opportunism.  With Tory poll numbers dropping in Quebec and the Liberals consumed in a debate on Quebec's nationhood, the Tories brining forth kind of motion calls out the Liberal divisions and may well buy a few nationalistic ridings in Quebec in the next election.  Thus, I'm sure Harper will be applauded for a political masterstroke in some quarters, and perhaps (politically) it was - the people who hate this will probably vote for him anyway given the lack of alternatives on the right.  However, with a few recent exceptions (the income trust decision comes to mind), our politicians are almost exclusively consumed with buying votes as opposed to doing what everybody knows is right in the long term.  You cannot tell me that this motion, constitutional or not and however cleverly it may be worded, will not lead to (1) increased weakening the central government to the point at which it really has no point any more and (2) more demands from Quebec (not that I blame them for a second - when the national policy on demands is capitulation, I'd keep making demands too).  What appals me even more is that it sounds like, outside of the Bloc Quebecois (who are upset about the "within Canada" part, boo hoo), not a single MP will vote against the motion - that's right, not a single one of our elected MP's in our parliament will stand up and say "Canada is the only nation we should be talking about".  The American congress is pretty messed up in its own right, but I cannot even dream of this kind of thing getting debated here in any form without getting laughed and booed off the floor (and kudos to them for it).  I think politicians would be surprised how many people would vote for them if they acted based on principle instead of calculated strategies to win votes. 

(2) The Liberals have spent the last four months of what is supposedly a brainstorming and reinvention period of picking a new leader arguing whether Quebec is a nation.  Now, Canada's parliament is spending time talking about the same thing.  Perhaps the most maddening thing about it all is that, in all these discussions, nobody has agreed what exactly a nation is (is it a civic nation?  a linguistic nation?  a cultural nation?  a political nation?) or what exactly Quebeckers are (only French Canadians?  if so, are other French Canadians living in other provinces in or out?  are English-speaking, British-heritage Montrealers in or out?).  So let's review: this means that we have devoted approximately one third of a year of our political discourse to discussing whether or not we agree with a statement which may mean about 16 different things depending on who says it and thus has no real meaning besides dividing us into camps.  As far as I am concerned, I want my government to take care of three things: (1) Maintaining or improving our economic standard of living (i.e. innovation, education, infrastructure, economic management)  (2) Maintaining or improving our personal standard of living (i.e. health care, the environment, public safety); (3) Representing our interests and values in the world (i.e. foreign affairs, defence).  So, as our productivity continues to fall behind that of our major competitors, as our funding for research and development as a percentage of GDP continues to fall in relation to other countries (admittedly, a pet issue of mine given my personal stake in it), as we continue to increase our greenhouse gas emissions in direct violation of an international agreement we signed, as health care costs spiral upwards at a rate far in excess of inflation, as our population ages to place unprecedent demands on our pension system and on our skilled labour force, we have chosen to spend time debating a semantic question which has consumed political conversation in our country for at least half of the past 25 years.  What is the point?  How does this conversation enhance our national interest?  How does this bring us together to face the challenges we have as a country?  How does this improve our lives?

OK, enough political ranting for one night - back to your regularly-scheduled, personal anecdote blogging in the very near future (I've got stories ranging from graduation to hockey to eggs, it's good stuff).

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!