Ah, the joys of dual citizenship! (Winter Olympics pool sign-up thread)

Honestly, I am sooooo glad that my two countries are good at different sports!

The Olympics start in two weeks! Yay! Does anyone want to repeat the pool from Beijing?If so, please declare your country(s) and estimated medal count in the comments.

I'm going for Canada, with eight golds, seven silvers, and five bronzes. And, um, Team GB I guess. Two silvers (curling) and a bronze (skeleton).

Rules from last time:

Bragging rights will be assigned according to the number of medals per head of your country's population (otherwise you Americans will win waaaay too easily). 3 points for each gold medal, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze. Declare your nationality if possible, but if this will breach your anonymity then you can just trash talk the rest of us and then tell us your country's final score at the end. We'll obviously have more than one person supporting some of the countries, so please predict the number of gold, silver and bronze medals your team will win. (Again you don't have to declare the country, just let us know how closely you guessed. I'm assuming that we're all honest!). I'll use these predictions to award a winner in the almost inevitable case of a tie-break.

Memes as mental fibre

Right after EcoGeoFemme pointed out that there haven't been many memes circulating recently, Amanda went and tagged me for one! The assignment is to write about seven things that I've never talked about in my blog.

This is a tricky one for me, because like in real life, I talk/blog too much and with too few filters. It's easy enough to find seven things I've never written about, but that aren't meaningful to me: porcupines, ravioli, WWII tank design, the history of ten pin bowling. My other initial reaction was to go too far in the other direction, into TMI territory, but luckily I decided to tone those ideas down (there still might be TMI for some people). So I present to you a mix of subjects I just haven't got around to, and subjects I've tried to blog about before as a full post but couldn't find the right angle, or that otherwise caused a severe case of writer's block.

1) I have a rather impressive scar on the inside of my left arm.

I got it in a rather embarrassingly cliched middle class way, by falling off a pony at a riding lesson when I was seven and breaking my arm just above the elbow. Contrary to everyone's first reaction, the main scar isn't from the bone breaking through the skin (although I do have a much smaller scar from that - just barely visible in the photo, slightly above and to the right of the mole). It's actually from the multiple surgeries I had to have to repair the blood vessels and nerves that the broken bone cut through at the point where they all bunch together at the elbow joint. My arm swelled up after one surgery, bursting a couple of stitches and stretching the scar tissue out, and it stretched further as I grew. I'm lucky to still have my arm at all; during one surgery that was supposed to last a couple of hours but was well into its seventh (my parents were freaking out at this point, as you can imagine), the surgeons discussed amputation as the best option. Luckily, they persevered and saved my arm. I was in traction for two weeks (apparently there's a published case study about how they set up the traction apparatus - I remember them videoing it - but I can't find it in PubMed), and it took a year or so of intensive physio before I could use my hand properly again. It still sometimes spazzes out on me and I lose my grip on whatever I'm holding with no warning: this is good in that it got me out of playing the viola in high school (the position I had to hold my wrist in seemed to aggravate the problem), but bad in that I once dropped an open 2L bottle of conc HCl while doing my undergrad research project, destroying my lab coat and a patch of the flooring. I've never held anything that scary in my left hand since, even though these incidents are much less common than they used to be.

I remember freaking out when I first saw the scar emerge from inside the cast I'd been wearing; it was hideously red and swollen and flaky and gross. I cried. A lot. However, I soon realised that I could use it to scare younger kids and chase them around the playground, and I almost always win "biggest scar" competitions. It's in such a discrete location, and it's faded and flattened so well, that people sometimes know me for years before they notice it, and it's such a normal part of me now that I barely even remember it's there. Also, the position of one of my moles makes it look like a winky smiley face.

Funnily enough, I have two friends with similar scars in the exact same place, following motorbike accidents. Motorbikes are much cooler than ponies.

OK, that one went longer than I'd intended... I'll try to be more concise in the remaining six points!

2) I sometimes have dreams about people I know that make me think about them in a completely different way. Usually just for the next day, but sometimes permanently. These dreams are sometimes the first conscious sign of something going on subconsciously, e.g. that it was time to let one friendship fizzle out, or that a formerly platonic friendship was heading in a new direction that had to be addressed. But other times they're just completely from left field and make me giggle with their weirdness.

There's a episode of Friends where Phoebe finally remembers why she's mad at Ross:

"Oh, come on! Yes... remember that time on the frozen lake? We were playing chess, you said I was boring, and then you took off your energy mask and you were Cameron Diaz! Okay, there's a chance this may have been a dream"

I couldn't find the clip on YouTube, but it sums up the latter category of dream perfectly.

3) Being around my friends' babies has had a complicated effect on me: it's made me feel very secure in my own decision not to have kids, but also made me less scared of an accident. We had a scare just before last summer's baby boom (my previously 100% reliable record of years of 27 day cycles suddenly disappeared with an unprecedented 42 day cycle) and I totally freaked out. We had another scare in November, and I freaked out considerably less. Although there was still some freaking, obviously.

4) I always used to say that if I won the lottery, I'd still want to work. But the older I get, the more I think I'd just want to bum about, living on a boat (summer) and in a ski cabin (winter) and maybe dabbling in a little writing. I think this is the opposite of how you're supposed to change as you get older.

5) I believe in ghosts. Well, I don't not believe in ghosts. I don't believe in the usual way; I don't think there are self-aware / conscious spirits floating around, trying to avenge their own deaths or otherwise deliberately haunting the living because of unresolved issues from their lives. I cycle through the local cemetery in the dark all the time: I aint afraid of no ghost! (Campfire stories are another matter entirely). But too many people I know and trust have told me too many, too convincing stories. There are also too many examples of multiple people seeing the same thing in the same place and/or at the same time.

The most convincing stories are where the person sees a ghost that doesn't interact with them. "This white apparition rose out of a grave and waved at me" doesn't cut it. But the other stories do. For example, my Dad has a story about a fellow student from his hall of residence who died after breaking his neck in a rugby scrum. A few weeks later my Dad was walking past this student's room (which had been emptied and locked up for the year; no-one else wanted to live there), and saw the dead guy open the door, walk out into the corridor, lock his room door behind him, and walk away without acknowledging my Dad, who was standing a few inches away with his mouth wide open. He says it was unmistakably, undeniably, definitely, the dead guy (in the dead guy's clothes). This student definitely did not have a twin or any other similar looking relatives (my Dad knew him well enough to go to the funeral and meet his family).

Now, I'm no physicist, but I do try to read the complicated physics articles in New Scientist, and I know that our understanding of time is incomplete and there are some unresolved problems with the current theories. Is it possible that we might sometimes catch a glimpse of someone or something from the past? That my Dad, and other people I know and trust who have similar stories, somehow watched a play-back of a moment from this guy's life, like watching a video?

I can almost hear Massimo (and any other physicists who read this) laughing at me right now.

Possible alternative explanations:

a) cognitive dissonance
b) my Dad is crazy
c) my Dad has repeatedly lied to me about this experience (I don't think he his. You should see his face when he tells this story).
d) lots of other people are either crazy or lying
e) I'm crazy
f) I've watched too much sci-fi

6) Um. Baby porcupines are cute?

7) The sad demise of Mad Hatter's blog had really got me thinking. I totally understand her reasons. Don't worry / celebrate, I have no intentions of shutting down my blog. But blogging really is a trigger for wasting lots of time on the internet, time that would be better spent reading, writing, playing my guitar, and hanging with Mr E Man and the kitties. I spend a lot of time reading and commenting on blog posts, and I don't want to stop completely, because I love it. You guys are my friends, and I want to know what you're up to! Also, you can't / shouldn't be a blogger without also contributing to the community by reading and commenting on other people's blogs.

I think the solution (for me) is to try and be more selective. I went through my Google Reader account yesterday and deleted some feeds. I pruned way back to the bare bones, i.e. I unsubscribed from eight blogs (and resubscribed to three of them this morning). It's so hard! There are too many good blogs out there! So I think rather than reading fewer blogs, I need to read fewer posts on each blog. Almost every blog contains a mixture of things I'm really interested in, and things I'm less interested in (speaking of which, I do apologise for the recent flood of posts about Canadian politics. Please bear with me). For example, it's now five years since I last held a pipette, and I really don't have any useful, current advice to contribute to conversations about lab work and related aspects of the grad student / postdoc experience. Similarly, not being a prof or lecturer, I have nothing useful to contribute on posts about teaching methods and such.

So, if you see fewer comments and page hits from me, please forgive me! I'm still skim-reading in Google Reader, but applying more filters to my thorough reading and commenting. And I'll always click through to celebrate your highs and commiserate with your lows.

Unless they're about breaking a pipette while teaching.

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I tag: anyone willing to post their own scar photo!

Hockey pool, week 17

Deep breath:

"WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That is all.

Perogies good, proroguing bad

Well, we couldn't have picked a nicer day for my first protest rally!

Looking all patriotic at the Olympic countdown clock (hockey is too patriotism)

It all started off a bit chaotic; lots of signs, a carnival band, an underpowered PR system, and no visible organisation.

I did spot my MP, Don Davies, and I was just about to go over and introduce myself when we started our march to Victory Square.

Here's one of my first ever videos... I'm still getting to grips with the camera (a Christmas present from my sister) and with iMovie, so please bear with me! (And can I just say once again that Macs and iLife RULE??!! Adding the music* at the end was super easy. I am very impressed so far)

The march was really good fun (and I was ridiculously proud of my "more cowbell!" moment). The first few speeches at Victory Square were good, too, and we enjoyed some more creative signs.

The MC was fantastic. Best moment:

MC: "And we have some elected representatives with us on stage today,"

Heckler: "Booooooooooooooooooo!"

MC: "Are you protesting the concept of elected representatives? Because I think you might be at the wrong rally"

Heckler: "Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

MC: "Elected representatives are kinda the whole point"

Heckler: "(Something) Harper (Something Something Mumble) power!"

MC: "Oh, Dad. I asked you not to come".

But to be honest, an hour of speeches was enough and we took an increasingly cold and disgruntled Morgan to warm up in a pub.

Overall, it was a very positive experience. I do have to say, though, that the crowd was smaller than I'd been hoping. Enough to stop traffic, enough to make a point, but nowhere near the crowds they attracted in Toronto and Ottawa. In part this is because of the skewing of parliamentary representation towards the East - a mixture of not keeping up with greater population density in the West, appeasing Quebec, and the effects of the time zones means that elections are pretty much already decided before the polls in BC and Alberta have even closed. Hence greater voter apathy in the West - and we all know that voter apathy is the true enemy, especially when skillfully manipulated by people like Harper**.

So it was interesting that among all the usual special interest groups that piggy-backed on this protest***, the electoral reform people were the most prominent, handling out lots of literature and having a speaker on the programme. We've discussed this before on here, and I still maintain that a mixed system like the Scottish one would be better than the pure PR system that others favour. But the current situation is clearly not tenable. The rally's organisers stressed that Saturday should represent just a beginning, and I have to agree. Harper won't care how many people came out to protest against his shenanigans unless he takes a much bigger hit in the polls, so while I'm not going to give up protesting prorogation, I am also going to look into what I can do to help the electoral reform movement. It's obviously not in the interests of the ruling party (or the Liberals, as official opposition) to change the status quo, but it does feel like momentum is building (in Ontario if not in BC), and people are in this for the long haul.

---------------
*K'naan. He (and this song in particular) are gonna be HUGE when the World Cup starts this summer, and I get to say "I saw him when... :)

**You might be able to overhear in the video part of a phone conversation with a friend we thought would have wanted to attend the rally. This person is very politically aware and has been to other protests in the past, but didn't think this rally was for them. But really, what's the point of protesting environmental or foreign policy decisions when there's no parliament in session to do anything about it?

***I got a flyer from the Marxist-Leninist party of Canada (good luck with that, guys), and Mr E Man and I were both approached by a rabidly anti-Olympics protester. 


Protester: "Do you want some information about how to protest the Olympics?"


Mr E Man: "No thanks. The Olympics are paying my bills right now."


Friend: "Don't tell him that!!!"


Protester: "Yeah, I wouldn't admit to that in public. Not around here anyway"

Mr E Man: "Would you rather I was collecting EI?"



Then:


Protester: "Do you want some information about how to protest the Olympics?"

Me: "Hell no! I've got hockey tickets!"


At that point, he gave up and went to bother some other people.

Well, this is a good sign...

From my stats page:

Canadian flag? Check!

Team Canada hockey jersey? Check!

Stills camera? Check!

Video camera? Check!

iPhone (back-up camera and for organisation/meet-up purposes)? Check!

Angry mob? Check!

Wish us luck!

Anti-prorogue rally: Vancouver details

Just a quick note for local readers about tomorrow's anti-prorogue rally. The rally starts at 1pm at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and I'm going to be meeting Kyrsten and other friends at 12.50pm outside Future Shop (the entrance on Robson, next to the Ecco Store) before walking down. Feel free to join us!


The organisers would like everyone to wear red and white and carry Canadian flags. I have one from my citizenship celebrations, and I'll be wearing my Team Canada hockey jersey. It'll be too cold to show off my tattoo, though...

Review of my coffee date with Mermaid

(Hey, she asked for it!)

Mermaid and I try to go for coffee together at least once a week. Last minute meetings sometimes get in our way, but we generally manage to pull it off, usually by pretending we're discussing work (our two bosses collaborate closely, and sometimes we do actually talk about their current projects). We rotate our custom around some of the (I think seven*) coffee shops found in the four blocks between our two work places. Earlier today, we met up at our current favourite, Elysian Coffee (who are NOT paying me any kind of commission!) on the South-East corner of Broadway and Ash.

Now, this place has the unfortunate nick-name of "Pubes". As in "let's have this week's 'meeting' about the 'sequencing pipeline' at Pubes". The reason is that in a previous incarnation of this coffee shop, Mermaid once spotted a suspiciously short and curly hair bobbing about in the foam on her latte. (And the bread in my sandwich was stale. How gross is that?) We never went back... and for some reason that place didn't do very well and closed down soon afterwards. When it reopened with a new name, we checked that it was indeed under new management before venturing back in. And I'm glad we did, because the coffee is excellent and they make the best chocolate cookies in town.

I arrived a little later than Mermaid, who said that the scone that didn't quite make it into this photo was delicious and highly recommended. At least I think that's what she said, through the crumbs

Mermaid does have a head, by the way, but wishes to remain pseudonymous.

Pubes (the name will remain for ever more) is a bit of a victim of its own success - Fridays at 10:30 are almost unbearably busy, with a long long wait for your coffee and a scarcity of seats. But today we got a table and felt unhurried enough to have a lovely half hour conversation about Mermaid's upcoming move, cats, the (possibly doomed) Olympics (there's no snow at what is now likely to be the mudboarding venue, and Whistler resort is going to be auctioned off halfway through. Plus the opening ceremony is almost guaranteed to be embarrassingly cheesy. But we're both still super excited about our respective event tickets and the party in general). Oh, and the anti-prorogue rally, which seems to be getting a lot of publicity, an idea for a future blog post (about some recent papers on which our two bosses are authors - was too a work meeting!), and cat poo.

As we parted, Mermaid said that she was looking forward to reading my blog post about discussing cat poo at Pubes. I hope it lived up to those high expectations!

-----------------------
*Pubes, Mad Mike's, Daily Perk, Bread Garden, Blenz, Starbucks, and Java Express (in my building) - did I miss any?

Question for my readers

I read a post on the Blogger Buzz last month about their new integration with Amazon Associates, and have been mulling it over ever since. The full post is here.

When I first started this blog, I had a Google AdSense widget in the sidebar that displayed ads that were supposedly relevant to my blog's content. I removed the widget six months later without making a single cent from it; believe it or not, this blog started with a high level of scientific content*, specifically new research in evolution and my weekly Primate Party feature (any current readers remember that?!), and most of the ads I saw on my blog were for creationist drivel (mildly annoying) or baby monkeys for sale (completely unacceptable).

But this Amazon Associates programme looks like an interesting alternative. The way I understand it is that it makes it easy for me to insert links to Amazon products into my posts, and I get a small commission if anyone clicking through to the Amazon site from my link buys the product.

How would you guys feel about it if I tried this programme? I review books (and occasionally movies, music and TV) anyway, so would it be OK to add a link or two to these posts? I'd use the following guidelines:

• I'd only review products that I'd usually blog about anyway
• I'd give a 100% honest review every time
• I'd state on each eligible post that I get a commission on any sales resulting from my links
• I'd link to these guidelines on each eligible post
• I'd only spend any income I earn on more books, music, or DVDs that I would subsequently review for my readers. (Oh, and maybe iPhone apps...)
• I'd declare how much money I've received (or maybe just what I've bought with it) every six months or so

I don't want to breach any trust I've built up with my readers, so I'll let you guys make the final decision for me! Please let me know what you think, and feel free to suggest any additional guidelines. I've finished a couple of books since my last review post, so I'll hold off on posting those reviews until I've seen the first few comments on this post.

BTW, I very rarely get any hits on my book or movie review posts from people searching the internet and randomly clicking through, so any income (and I aint expecting much, if any!) would be from my regular readers. I don't think my traffic's as high as some of you seem to think it is... I think I just have a higher than average commenter to lurker ratio!

-----------------------

*you can blame Nature Network for the current state of affairs; they made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and most of my sciencey posts end up over there now. 

Hockey pool: week 16

Hey, Chall and ScientistMother, you may want to consider adding a certain player to your team! 10 points this week, and the reason for the difference between your two slopes, and mine and That Damn Alyssa's!

Perhaps you've heard of him?

Just sayin' ;)

Good morning!

How 'bout a little relaxing music to ease you into the week?



This video (found via the Best of YouTube podcast) reminds me of seeing the percussion band Stomp in Glasgow. Being impoverished grad students we bought tickets in the cheapest section of the theatre, way up in the Gods. When we arrived, we found that they'd only sold about a quarter of the tickets and were seating everyone in the stalls to help build the atmosphere. It was an amazing show, highly recommended. It's just incredible what you can create using brooms and assorted other household items.  There was a group of about twelve developmentally disabled kids right in front of us, and they got so excited and started yelling and hollering and jumping up and down and stamping their feet. The adults with them tried to get them to sit down and be quiet, but the performers made a point of saying to the adults, "let them join in! We love it when people join in! You should too!"

I can imagine a clear line of descent from primitive humans banging sticks together around a camp fire, to Stomp, to Techno Jeep.

Music and human ingenuity make me happy.

While the cat's away...

Mr E Man is working in Whistler at the moment, building wheelchair access ramps for some of the Olympic venues. The entire crew are movie set carpenters. I’ve reminded him that the ramps are not supposed to collapse, explode, or otherwise provide any spectacular and/or hilarious visual effects. I’ve at least established that they’re using real wood, rather than plywood, or Styrofoam painted to look like wood.

Anyway. He's only been gone for two days of a probable seven to ten day stretch, but it's been interesting to see how some of my pre-cohabitation habits have already returned...

• I'm going to bed at my night-owl body's natural midnight or thereabouts, rather than Mr E Man's usual 10:30 pm.
• I'm reading in bed before going to sleep
• I'm sleeping diagonally across the whole bed
• (One thing I haven't done is change the alarm from our usual 6:00 am. Blegh. Sleep deprived. Which leads me to:)
• I will probably sleep until 11:00 am on Saturday and Sunday mornings
• I'm eating omelettes for dinner (Mr E Man still refuses to believe that Brits think this is perfectly normal)
• I'm eating the same thing two nights in a row (on Wednesday night I grilled some lovely Portabello mushrooms and steamed some asparagus, and had this mix plus mature cheddar in an omelette with a side of baked potato on the last two nights. The asparagus-mushroom mix has also been mixed with wholewheat pasta and some balsamic dressing for yesterday's and today's lunches. I did this kind of thing as a student all the time).
• I'm watching re-runs of Friends, even when I've already seen the episode a few times

It's quite nice for a change, but I'll be glad when Mr E Man's back. The cats aren't such a good source of conversation.

Look at me, I'm Sarah Palin!

(Pose just for photo, Mr E Man did all the driving)

I am a very clumsy person, as you will see in the video below. I'm also a terrible coward.

Well, physically, anyway.

Move thousands of miles away from home to a city where you don't know a single person? No problem! Change career twice in as many years? Bring it on!

But subject me to any combination of downhill slope, speed, and slipperiness, and I'm a mess. I somehow manage to ski (really quite badly, as you'll see in a future post), but I don't know how, because I don't even like walking downhill when it's a bit frosty.

So, when I decided to buy Mr E Man a snowmobile tour at Sun Peaks for Christmas, I booked it for just him. I told him that I could add a passenger of his choice to the trip at any time up to 2 hours before the tour started, but he should be warned that if he took me, there was a good chance he'd get seriously frustrated by me shouting "slow down!" the whole time.

He wanted me to go anyway. "It's my Christmas present, and I want you to come", he said. It won't be as much fun without you. They probably won't let us go all that fast anyway". All that. So I abandoned any thoughts of spending the afternoon trying out the snowshoes that he bought me for Christmas, and decided to try this snowmobiling lark instead.

I quickly found that snowmobiling and me are not a good mix. Too fast, too bumpy; I had a nice comfy seat with a back rest and everything, but I didn't spend much time on it as I got bounced up and down and struggled with all my strength to keep hold of the handles down by my hips. And the engine was far too loud and our helmets were too well padded for Mr E Man to hear my shouts of "aarrgghh!", "noooooo", "I don't like it", "ow, my arms really really hurt" and "slow the fuck down, you fucking maniac!"

Things did get better when we got off the main bumpy track and into some fresher, deeper snow. It really was beautiful as we proceeded more slowly on winding tracks through the snow-covered trees. But oy, the noise! I kept thinking how much nicer it would be to see this same view silently, while on snowshoes, or cross country skis.

But of course, the main advantage of snowmobiling is that you can get much further and higher than when self-propelled. After another too-fast-too-bumpy spell on a logging road, we ended up at a viewpoint looking down on a cloudy Shuswap lake at sunset. The snow was so deep I couldn't even walk in it;



and we did indeed have to dig the sled out when we restarted.

The beautiful view started to win me over, and I pondered that snowmobiling might not be so evil after all.

Not evil

Not evil

Fucking maniac speed demon, but not evil

By the time we started the downhill section of our loop, I was getting a bit more used to the bouncing and the speed, and it really was pretty cool to see the convoy of headlights snaking in and out of the trees as the light began to fade. We stopped at a warming hut as the stars started to come out, and being pretty toasty already I walked alone through the trees and onto a frozen lake. The photos didn't come out, but take my word for it that it was stunningly beautiful.

And, of course, the silence was golden.

I did end up enjoying myself. And we only fell off twice, both times at low speed (once on a turn in deep snow, and the other while stopping at the viewpoint). But I don't think I'd go snowmobiling again. Mr E Man had tons of fun though, and didn't stop grinning for at least an hour afterwards.

Me? Well, I recovered tolerably after a little help.

My biceps, shoulders and wrists hurt for days, though.

Response from Don Davies

(Original email here)

Dear Cath,

Thank you for taking the time to write me regarding the prorogation of Parliament by the Conservative government. I share your outrage at what is essentially a suspension of Canadian democracy for two months: the people's elected representatives have been barred from meeting and holding the government to account. I, too, intend to attend the rally in Vancouver on the January 23rd, and I appreciate your action and participation.

This episode is the latest display by this prime minister and government of utter disrespect for the democratic system. Over the past four years I have watched the Conservatives disregard majority votes in the House of Commons, ignore legislation (including their own law on election dates), and forcibly shut down committees and the whole of Parliament to avoid defeat or embarrassment.  This is their second prorogation in a year, and combined with their dissolution in September, 2008 to hold an election, the third time they have intentionally dissolved Parliament's legislative agenda.

They are betting that Canadians don't notice or care, and they win when Canadians become cynical and disengage from the political process.

Many Canadians have been calling for the parliamentarians to return on January 25th in defiance of Harper's prorogation, citing England's 1640 Long Parliament as precedent.  I have also heard from constituents who propose passing legislation that would limit a prime minister to one prorogation per Parliament.  I appreciate these creative suggestions. I will be consulting with my caucus colleagues and other MPs to find a solution that is appropriate to the Canadian context in the 21st century. Rest assured, I will be joining my New Democrat colleagues in working hard to speak for my constituents and all Canadians whether in Parliament or elsewhere.

The government's rationale for prorogation is insulting: if they want to "consult Canadians" about the next phase of their economic action plan, they should consider consulting the MPs who are elected and paid to represent Canadians to the government. Regardless, Parliament was already on a six week break (Dec. 11-Jan. 25). Were they not already in their in their ridings, talking to their constituents? I was.

Meanwhile, their true motivations are clear: avoid accountability over the Afghan detainee issue, stack the undemocratic Senate in their favour, and try to convince Canadians that Parliament is unworkable and irrelevant. They argue that only 22 sitting days are lost; however, much work can be done in 22 days in the House of Commons if the government were to take a cooperative approach. Committees that could have met outside official sitting days have been dissolved, preventing all oversight of the government's work over the next two months. This underhanded tactic begs the questions: What is the prime minister afraid of? What is he hiding on the issue of Afghan detainees? What does he know that he doesn't want the world to know before the Olympics?

In addition, prorogation eliminates all government legislation and committee work from the Order Paper.  This means that all government legislation, studies and work must be completely re-introduced  -  and months of parliamentary work have been rendered meaningless.

This prorogation may be technically legal under our system, but it is morally an affront to our democracy and unacceptable, I believe, to most Canadians.

Thank you for showing Stephen Harper that Canadians do care about their democracy.  I will make sure your views are expressed clearly and forcefully.

Sincerely,

Don

Don Davies, M.P.
Vancouver Kingsway
New Democrat critic for Public Safety
ph: (613) 943-0267
fax: (613) 943-0219

 Excellent answer! I think I'll be voting for this guy if he stands again! (yeah, Massimo, I know, tactical voting. But this is a pretty safe NDP seat. ABC!). I didn't expect to be given more reasons to be angry...

No, nay, never, no more

No responses to my letters yet, but my MP, Don Davies, did have an article criticising prorogation in the Georgia Straight (our weekly free paper), and I gather from Facebook that he'll be attending the rally (now set for 1pm on Saturday January 23rd at the Vancouver art gallery).

Hockey pool, week 15

Look, Mr. Harper! I'm being a good Canadian and am using hockey to distract myself and others from the suspension of our democracy!

I can not believe I dropped the lovely Alex Burrows from my team for the first time this season, only to see him score seven points this week, including back-to-back hat-tricks. (One of my other consistently performing stars, Patrice Bergeron, injured himself about eight minutes into the week).

Alex, you rule, and I will never, ever doubt you again. You're back in my team, as is Luongo. Nabokov did well for me for a few weeks, but with only one win to his name this week, it's back to Bobby Lu.

The hottest Canuck, in both senses of the word

Right, now where was I? Oh, right, PRO-DEMOCRACY, NOT PROROGUE! HARPER OUT!

Pro-democracy, anti-rogue.

Imagine a leader with George W Bush's politics, and Tony Blair's tactical brain.

Scary, right?

Meet Stephen Harper.

Quite possibly the most right-wing Western leader still standing, after the US and Australia saw sense

Responsible for Canada being awarded several Fossil of the Day awards at the Copenhagen talks, and walking away with the Colossal Fossil grand prize.

You may remember that I wrote about Harper's anti-democratic tendencies back in December 2008. Facing almost certain defeat in a no-confidence vote tabled by a (sadly short-lived) coalition of opposition parties, he asked the Governor General to suspend ("prorogue") parliament. He gambled on the self-interest of the individual party leaders overriding their enthusiasm for the coalition - and he won.

And now, he's done it again.

"We're in ur parliament, suspending ur democracy"

This article in The Economist provides a nice summary, especially for non-Canadians. Briefly, facing very difficult questions about the government's knowledge of the abuse of Afghan detainees captured by Canadian troops, our esteemed Prime Minister has used the Olympics (~4,600km from Ottawa) as an excuse to prorogue parliament until March. Every bill before parliament, no matter what stage it had reached, now goes back to square one, and oh look, Harper gets to appoint senators to the upper house without going through the usual vetting processes.

He's gambling again.

He's gambling that the shamefully low voter turnout in the last couple of elections means that Canadians can be distracted from the suspension of their democracy by Olympic hockey.

This time, though, there's a backlash.

I am angry. Seriously pissed off. So is Mr E Man, and so are many of our friends, who between us vote NDP, Liberal, Green, and the Work Less Party. (I've read online that even some Conservative Party supporters are angry and joining the protests; this is bigger than party politics). We've been talking about it a lot (yes, in between hockey talk), and it looks like we'll be taking a decent sized group of people to the rally planned for January 23rd. This will be the first political rally that most us has ever attended. I've also signed a petition, joined the Facebook group (>150,000 members and climbing), and (again for the first time in my life), written to my MP and the Governor General.

Astroturfers, this is what a real grassroots movement looks like!

-----------------------------------

Letter to my MP

Don Davies is from the NDP, the third party, and therefore a) will most likely reply to say "I agree" and b) can't really do much about it. But if I can add my name to the list of "X people in my constituency have written to me", and perhaps even help persuade him to attend the rally, then hey, can't hurt.

Subject: prorogation of parliament


Dear Mr. Davies,

Like many Canadians, I am extremely upset and angry about the Prime Minister's decision to prorogue parliament for the second time in as many years. I am writing to you to ask that you ignore Stephen Harper's request to prorogue parliament, and join Liberal party MPs in attending anyway. I think that this would make a very powerful statement to Mr. Harper that the Canadian people and their elected representatives will not tolerate his attempts to derail democracy in our country.

My husband and I, and many of our friends, are planning to attend the anti-prorogue rally that is being planned for January 23rd. For many of us, this will be our first ever political rally - a measure of the strength of our feelings about this issue (this is also the first time I have ever been moved to write to my MP). Do you, and other local NDP MPs, plan to attend this event? Again, I think that your attendance would make a very strong statement to Mr. Harper. The details are still being arranged and will be posted at http://citizensfordemocracy.ca/rallies/.

I look forward to your reply

Sincerely,

Find your MP's contact info here.


-----------------------------------

Letter to the Governor General


Michaëlle Jean is the current representative of the Queen, our nominal head of state. She seems like a very nice, thoughtful lady who took a largely ceremonial role that has not historically held any real power. However, by allowing Harper to prorogue parliament the first time, she set a very dangerous precedent. There's no doubt that he's put her in a very difficult position, but she has to take a large share of the blame for our current situation. Long-term, the biggest impact of Harper's decision may well be the end of the monarchy in Canada. As a Brit, I'm ambivalent to weakly pro-monarchy (for Britain). As a Canadian, I'm quite strongly anti-monarchy (for Canada). Let's have a Canadian head of state, eh? This is the 21st Century... (join us, Aussie and Kiwi brothers and sisters!)

Anyway, I digress. Here's what I wrote (following the guidelines of "styles of address for federal dignitaries", of course. This is a Canadian revolution, there's no need to be rude):

Excellency,

I am writing to you to express my disappointment and anger that you have agreed to the Prime Minister's request to prorogue parliament for the second time in as many years. Mr. Harper is placing party politics above his responsibility to democracy and to the people he is supposed to represent. As Governor General, I would wish for you to be a voice of the Canadian people and a defender of our constitution, not simply a stamp of approval on all of the Prime Minister's requests.

I understand that you did not take this decision without a great deal of thought, but I hope that the growing public reaction to this second prorogation has convinced you that you acted counter to the wishes of millions of Canadians. A lot of us are very upset and angry; this is the first time I have ever been moved to write to my MP, to you, and to attend a political rally. And I know that I am not alone.

As a proud dual citizen of Canada and the United Kingdom, I expect more from the representatives of my monarchy.

Yours truly,

I told her, eh? You can write to her yourself at info@gg.ca


I'll keep you posted with any replies, and with photos of the rally. 


Let's keep our land glorious and free!

Fishbowl Fridays!

At the Fogg 'N' Suds in Richmond.

It's almost sacrilegious for a beer drinker such as myself to ignore the extensive international beer menu at such an establishment, but when I saw the giant Caesar on our friends' table as we walked through the door, I knew I had to have one.

Also in this photo: Long Island iced tea,  raspberry margarita, lime margarita.

Mr E Man let me try the latter, and it was also excellent.

Mmmmm, sacrilicious. I don't know why anyone would use the straw when the salt is so yummy.

My definition of a bombastic project management style, Part III: Metrics

In the first post of this series, I explained how my funding source (and therefore my job description) has changed in the last couple of months, specifically to include more project management. Still undecided about pursuing formal PM training and qualifications, I'm currently trying to adopt the optimal combination of best practices from my prior experiences to apply to each of several projects.

AKA, winging it.

My adaption of the stand-up meetings we used in my industry position seems to be working pretty well for my biggest, broadest, overarching project that encompasses several distinct yet interconnected sub-projects. However, I'm going to be trying a different approach to managing some of my other, smaller, stand-alone projects.

As I mentioned last time, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences (more best practices to adopt!)




"Wake up, n00b. The metrics have you": the industry experience

Ah, metrics.

My former company was all about the metrics.

The big pushes that required stand-up meetings also required metrics. We all had quantitative targets to hit, and reported back on them at regular intervals. My own metrics included completing a certain number of product inserts, labels, internal documents etc. My progress was tracked and graphed and disseminated and analysed. R&D, QC, QA, Sales, and Tech Support all had their own progress similarly tracked.

I fit into this system rather well. I like numbers. I love graphs. And the system really did make it easier to spot bottlenecks and other problems, and keep people on track; if QC's "signed off on product" metrics are lagging three weeks behind R&D's "released to QC" metrics, there's a problem. If Marketing get so sick of making labels that they decide to shirk their duties and spend three days doodling ideas for the next ad campaign and/or staring out the window instead, their "signed off on label" graph line will plateau well short of its target value and people will comment (this never actually happened, although I was sorely tempted at times).

We used metrics outside of big product launch pushes, too. Everyone was assigned their own metrics for the next year at their annual review; complete five email ad campaigns, publish twelve print ads, launch 20 new products, grow sales of product X by 5%, etc. Our metrics were reviewed quarterly with our immediate supervisor, and were used to assess performance in the next annual report. Meeting or exceeding your assigned metrics was a good way to get the maximum performance-related pay increase (or bonus, some years; I myself managed to work at that company during the only two years in its history in which no bonuses were paid).

I did not like this use of metrics, and will definitely not be proposing to introduce it system in my new job! Job performance is about quality as well as quantity, and in my opinion we relied far too much on measuring the latter. For specific projects, though, and if done right, the type of metrics I described first can be a very useful tool.

"What is the metrics?": persuading academics to take the red pill


I'm managing a new translational research project that will start recruiting patients in February. The team includes a nurse, radiologists, a medical oncologist, a statistician, pathologists, molecular biologists, and bioinformaticians. Everyone's role is very clearly laid out in the protocol, and we have a clear target number of patients to recruit. On a day-to-day basis, the nurse and radiologists don't need to know about the DNA sequencing steps. The statistician doesn't need to know about patient recruitment. The bioinformatics team don't need to know about the pathological assessment of the samples.

For these reason, and because organising meetings with clinicians is a bitch, I'm going to manage this project by getting everyone to report on specific metrics by email on a monthly basis. I'll compile the numbers, and no doubt spend a happy few hours fiddling about with graphs to figure out the best way of visualising our progress.

Here's a blog-safe version of the spreadsheet I'm going to ask people to fill in each month:

(Page numbers refer to the grant proposal, which lays out all the steps and which I've asked everyone to re-read to understand how they fit into the big picture).

The whole team will meet after each of the first five patients has cleared the first three phases, to make sure everything is working as it should and that no steps are being missed. After we're up and running, I'll set up a monthly alert in Outlook as if this was a meeting, reminding everyone to fill in the numbers for the tasks assigned to them in the spreadsheet, and email their version to me. I'll obviously also make sure that all problems are reported to me. This is a good team and I have no worries about compliance - I won't even need to bribe them with brownies!

This will be the first time I've used a metrics reporting system to help me manage a research project. I'm sure there will be wrinkles to iron out, but overall I'm reasonably confident that it'll work. After assessing how it's going in this new project that I can set up as I like, I'll also impose the system onto some of our department's existing stand-alone projects. I already have the metrics listed for one of these projects - an easy task if the grant proposal is well organised and progress is readily quantifiable. A couple of people (i.e. the statistician and lead bioinformatician) will end up with multiple sets of metrics to complete, but most other lab members are only involved in one or maybe two of these projects and won't have to spend much time on it at all. As with the meetings it may take time for people to adapt and form the appropriate habits, but hopefully everyone will be reasonably happy with the system.

Especially me. Remember, I get to play with graphs!

My definition of a bombastic project management style, Part II: Meetings

In my last post, I explained how my funding source (and therefore my job description) has changed in the last couple of months, specifically to include more project management. Still undecided about pursuing formal PM training and qualifications, I'm currently trying to adopt the optimal combination of best practices from my prior experiences to apply to each of several projects.

AKA, winging it.

As I mentioned last time, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences (more best practices to adopt!)

Stand up and be counted - the industry experience


The senior managers at my last job were sent on training courses once or twice a year, coming back with the latest and trendiest management speak (ducks in a row, push-back, etc.) They also brought back the latest and trendiest management practices, some of which actually turned out to be useful, if sometimes rather painful. One such example was the stand-up meeting.

Unpopular due to their 8.45 am start time and compulsory attendance, stand-up meetings were a daily get-together of at least one representative from every department involved in a specific project. The meetings only lasted fifteen minutes (in theory), and everyone except the scribe stayed on their feet, to discourage idle chit-chat and other agenda killers. We'd go around the room, and each person would describe progress towards their team's goals, as well as any problems they'd encountered. These problems could often be solved on the spot by a representative from another department, and if not, an action item would be written into a designated lab book along with the name of the person responsible and the target date. Once everyone had given their update, the scribe would read out all outstanding action items, and the person responsible would report on their progress (or excuses). The meetings kept everyone informed and on their toes, and really were enormously helpful when we were pushing towards a specific product launch date or other large-scale initiative.

Sit down and be grumpy - adapting industry practices to academia

I decided that the stand-up meeting format would be a good fit for one of my biggest projects. Actually comprising several sub-projects, the work is being done in collaboration with a corporate partner. We have well-defined milestones to hit, and a formal system of scientific and financial reports. Several people are involved at our end, including molecular biologists, a pathologist, a statistician, a team of bioinformaticians, and (from this week onwards) a new lab-based project manager. We all get together with our partner's team two or three times a year, and people have regular teleconferences set up for some of the sub-projects. As is common in research, however, most people have an excellent grasp of the details of their own projects, but don't always see the interconnections evident in the big picture (this will a topic of a future post that I've been drafting in my head for months). For example, hits from a screening project drop into the pipeline for several other projects; the statistician works on data generated by the pathologist and the bioinformaticians; the statistical results inform refinements of the screens; etc.

This lack of cohesion became clear when I had to submit our first quarterly report; I had to get everyone's updates individually (involving lots of reminder emails, phone calls, and lurking at people's desks for them to get back from the lab), and then turn them into a report that covered everything in an integrated way. It wasn't easy, and I had to go back to some people several times to ask follow-up questions that they couldn't always answer ("no, I don't work on the validation, just the screen. No, I don't know who's doing the validation"), but I got it done on time, and ended up with a much better grasp of where the gaps lay and the best way to fill them.

So, a few months ago, I described the stand-up meeting format to my boss. He loved the idea, and agreed that it would be a good fit for this project.

In my last job, many of the team's tasks were doable in a day or two - complete a piece of documentation, repeat one experiment, contact three beta testers for feedback, proofread the manual, etc. This is why a daily meeting made sense; you could usually report real progress in that time-frame. However, daily meetings wouldn't have made any sense for a purely lab-based project. So I started us off on a weekly schedule, for half an hour at a time. After a few meetings in a row of "well I haven't got the data back on that project yet", I switched to biweekly meetings. A fortnight is not a long time in science!

The 8.30am on Mondays scheduling was grossly unpopular with everyone except my boss and me. I'd thought back to my own days in the lab, when mid-day meetings would disrupt experiments and end-of-day meetings excluded some parents and other people who had to leave early, and was surprised at the backlash. Even after I explained my reasoning, there was much grumbling for the first few weeks - partially placated when I bribed everyone with brownies.

And this is the biggest hurdle to adopting corporate practices in academia: people just aren't used to it. What was just one more meeting to add to the list in my last job is A Big Deal for postdocs with only one other meeting in their weekly schedule, and no prior knowledge of these alien things called action items. The more relaxed atmosphere of academia (which I mostly love, by the way. Mostly), also sees people regularly showing up late, so what is supposed to be a team meeting sometimes turns into a series of one-on-one interviews between me and whoever's just showed up. (We've also taken to sitting down instead of standing. The room we use has way too many comfy chairs in it for people to resist at that (apparently) ungodly time of the morning. This really doesn't make any difference, however).

Even in the series-of-one-on-one-interviews format, though, the meetings have been extremely helpful to me, if perhaps less helpful to the other participants than if they were all to show up at once. I type, distribute, and archive each meeting's minutes, and used them to write the last quarterly progress report in a tiny fraction of the time it took me at my first attempt (the ctrl, c, and v buttons on my keyboard are in danger of wearing out, but it's a small price to pay). I've also been able to answer the frequent questions I get from my boss, other team members, and our collaborators much more easily and quickly than before, and our accountant has found the information very useful too.

Overall, this experience can be written into the "Success!" column. The problems we've had are primarily a function of the department's culture, which is not as collegial as some others I've experienced, and those things don't change overnight. But as people get used to the format, and as personnel rotate out of the lab and new hires are told "this is the way we manage this project", things are already improving.

I have the support of my boss, his accountant, admin manager, and lab manager, and I can always buy more brownies if I need to.

My definition of a bombastic project management style, Part I: Background

Salary support sources and their impact on my job description

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my job (originally a two year position ending in November 2009) has been extended "indefinitely" (i.e. for as long as funding is available). My original salary support was provided by a tumour group - i.e. a group of pure scientists, pure clinicians, and clinician-scientists who work on a specific kind of cancer. This funding may or may not be renewed in the tumour group's next budget - the decision is not solely in my primary supervisor's hands, and apparently other members of the group are divided on the usefulness of continuing to pay all or part of my salary. (As I've observed before, I'm in a classic Catch 22 situation in that I'm most useful to the junior members of the group, but the decision about keeping me is made by the senior members).

So, for now, I'm being supported mainly by funds from my primary supervisor's academic department. Said department contains a couple of MD/PhD PIs  whose research overlaps with the original tumour group, but also PIs who work on other kinds of cancer. So I will be working on fewer purely clinical grants, and will see more diversity of tumour types within the set of translational and basic research projects I handle. This is fine by me - my training was in basic research, and while I've learned a lot about clinical research in the last couple of years, I'm still much more comfortable writing and editing grants that focus on lab work. I've also learned an awful lot about the tumour type I've been working on so far, and am looking forward to learning more about other forms of the disease.

Would a Venn diagram help at this stage? Well, you're getting one anyway...

I once was lost blue but now I'm found red

The remainder of my salary comes from specific grants - I was listed in the proposal budgets as a project manager, typically at 2.5% - 5% effort. I am also taking on more of a project management role on other projects which do not provide any specific salary support. My key role is to track progress compared to the milestones laid out in the grant proposals, and write the resulting progress reports as required by the various funding agencies.

To PMP, or not to PMP? That is the question

Now, I don't have much (some would say "any") project management training. I've been to one half-day course, and have tried to pick up the best practices in the field by observing other people in a similar role. (In some cases I learned more about bad practices to avoid, but that's a post for another day). I know several people who have gone through the training and exams to become a Project Management Professional, which apparently is hellishly difficult. At the moment I don't really feel the need to go this route, although part of this preference may be a reluctance to be pigeon-holed as a "proper" project manager when I prefer to be thought of primarily as a writer and editor. (And really, I'm only responsible for the pieces of the project management pie that facilitate progress report writing). Long-term, the qualification would certainly open up a wider range of future jobs - always a concern when you're geographically limited in your career and there are maybe one or two local jobs a year you would be qualified for / actually want to do. But for now, I'm following the "wing it" philosophy.

Winging it: methods

Every project is different, and is best fitted to different management practices.The common thread in my department is that we're going all high-throughput and fancy, with interconnecting and crossing pipelines all over the place. My boss has said that we need to adopt a "more corporate approach" to our projects in order to cope. This is where my industry experience comes in; I've tried to adopt the best practices of my former company in ways that fit my department's different projects. My next couple of posts will describe a couple of different examples, and I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences (more best practices to adopt!)

It's an evolution, not a revolution...

Hockey pool, weeks 13 and 14

That Damn Alyssa kicks off the new year by consolidating her lead...

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Massimo for winning the First Annual VWXYNot? Readers' Choice Comment of the Year Award!

Here's your virtual trophy that you may display on your blog if you choose:

and please let me know what you want from Amazon (up to CAD30 value), and where I should send it!

The final scores were as follows:

1     Massimo: Moose: 17 votes
2     Ruchi: Obama and God: 13 votes
3     Microbiologist XX: Sailboat: 10 votes
4     Prof-like Substance: British-Canadian relations: 7 votes
5     Hermitage: Professional Help Desk: 4 votes
6=   Eva: Public Religion: 3 votes
6=   Ricardipus: Homeopathy: 3 votes
8=   Bob O'H: Hockey pool: 2 votes
8=   EcoGeoFemme: Miracles: 2 votes
8=   Hermitage: Boob grab: 2 votes
11= Mermaid: Christmas whales: 1 vote
11= Nina: Quebecois French: 1 vote

Thank you so much to everyone who voted, and to all my awesome commenters, whether they made the final list or not! This was really fun, and I hope that 2010 will be another great year for comments, blogging, and life in general.

I felt like I was in a holding pattern for much of 2009. We started the year with a very enthusiastic New Year's Eve midnight countdown, with a friend poised to pop a bottle of champagne on the exact stroke of midnight. Instead, the cork broke in half with the thin end still in the neck of the bottle, and we had to go and get a corkscrew. This really seemed to sum up the whole year. As early as January 6th, bad things had happened to lots of friends and family, and I declared that I'd like to skip straight to 2010, please.

Deaths. Broken bones. Floods. Divorces. Lay-offs. Friends leaving town. Swine flu that made me miss an awesome Hallowe'en party. Broken pipes, leaky sinks, collapsed gutters, and other household mishaps. Flat tires when we tried to go skiing. It really wasn't a stellar year.

There were some very bright spots in the year - our trip to Cuba, for example, and the baby boom that brought Morgan, Lilah, Jack, Sydney, Zoe, and Simon into the world. Oh, and my first freelance writing income, my first byline (not for the same project), and my contract at work being renewed in a rather anticlimactic fashion. But overall, I can't say I was too sorry to say goodbye to 2009 and welcome 2010.

Olympic year!

Team Canada for hockey gold! England for the FIFA World Cup!

Happy New Year to you all. Keep up the good work!