RBO Cycling

• I've commuted by bicycle almost every day since I started my PhD in 1998. That's a lot of kilometres, a lot of near accidents, a lot of hills, and a LOT of rain (we're talking Glasgow and Vancouver here, two cities notorious for their wet weather). And yes, I've always ridden year-round, rain or shine, although I do take the bus on icy or snowy days. Really, if you have the right gear and your journey takes less than half an hour or so, how wet are you gonna get?! Plus it's still cheaper, faster, cleaner, and more fun to ride in the rain than to take a steamed-up bus full of wet people. With a hot shower available at both ends of the trip, the worst thing about wet weather riding is the ickiness of putting still-damp leggings and shoes back on at the end of the day before the ride home, but that's just a fleeting sensation. I've done this for so long now that it's part of my identity, and if I'm 100% honest I do feel a certain sense of superiority over fair-weather cyclists, enabled by friends and colleagues who say things like "you rode today?! Wow, you're so dedicated! I'd never ride in weather like this!"
  
  This autumn, though, feels different. I sense a growing reluctance to ride in the rain, characterised by a bad case of the DON'T WANNA!s when I look out of the window on wet mornings. I blame the Vancouver-Seattle ride I did in June: I got thoroughly drenched on one of my long training rides, damp on a couple of others, and soaked to the skin to the point of what a nurse colleague tells me was almost certainly early-stage hypothermia on the ride itself*.
  
  Now, if you'd asked me back in hot and sunny August what effect those experiences might have on my commuting habits in the future, I'd probably have said "none" - surely after all that misery, I'd power through my wet 20 minute commutes thinking "this is NOTHING!", right?
  
  Wrong.
  
  I think that second day of the ride just plain ol' exceeded my tolerance limits for rain for the year, if not longer. Rainy rides now just take me back to the misery of that second day, when the rain and the hills just. Would. Not. Stop., and I got so cold I started making near-fatal bad decisions. I just DON'T WANNA! any more.
  
  I'm going to try to push through this. I don't want to be a fair-weather cyclist, I don't want to take steamed-up buses full of wet (and germy) people, and more importantly I feel the need to get out there and make all the naysayers realise that yes, there IS a point to building new cycling infrastructure in a rainy city, because people WILL use it year-round (a major point of contention in Vancouver right now as our awesome mayor and council commit to building more and more separated bike lanes downtown and elsewhere).
  
  I'll let you know how it goes...

(don't worry, the remaining bullets are much shorter)

• As a caveat to the above: I no longer ride on (most) Fridays. I started this habit during my training, as I did two long rides most weekends, and Friday seemed like a good choice of rest day. But I quickly realised that there are other benefits, such as not having to choose between the "leave bike at work and then not have it over the weekend" and the "ride bike to pub/friend's house and then either ride home after drinking or leave it at friend's house" options when a friend texts at 3pm on a Friday to suggest a spontaneous get-together.

• When I first learned to ride a bike, I started on a two-wheeler with removable stabilisers (training wheels, if you're from North America). So did all the other kids in my town. But all the kids I see around here who are just learning to cycle have two-wheelers, no stabilisers, and no pedals - they push themselves along with their feet. I guess that sometime in the last 30 years or so, someone decided that it's better for kids to learn balance first, rather than mastering pedalling/steering first, as I did. It makes sense, actually, and I wonder how many bruises and scraped knees I might have been spared if I'd learned this way!

• Once the local kids graduate to pedalling normal bikes, many of them start to accompany their parents on rides on the city's designated bike routes (side streets with some traffic-calming measures in place, but which are unfortunately still very popular with drivers because you get favourable stop signs, plus lights to cross all the major cross-streets). This is great - with the right parents! Some let their kid(s) ride behind them or on their left, where they're prone to wander all over the road or make sudden changes in speed and/or direction, which is very dangerous when faster riders and cars are trying to pass. And of course you can't say anything to these parents without getting yelled at (I've tried).
  
  So it was such a joy to see two counter-examples in the last couple of weeks. In the first case, a father was riding behind his son, keeping up a constant commentary along the lines of "go wide! That driver's stopped in front of a parking space, so she might start backing up and swinging out!", "I don't think that driver's seen us, so let's slow right down even though he has a stop sign and we don't", "wave and nod to say thank you!", "remember to keep in a straight line", "look behind you if you want to slow down", etc. It was awesome, and I told him so ("great job on the training!") as I passed. The other case, on a different route and a different day, involved a mother riding behind her daughter, giving similar advice and reminding her to always try and figure out where other road users want to go and what they might do next.
  
  Awesome job, guys! I salute you, and I wish there were more out there like you!

• That is all. Sorry this got so long. Bullets FAIL.

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*apparently my self-treatment prescription of hot-tub, beer, and spicy Thai food was "kinda dumb", but hey, what doesn't kill ya makes ya stronger, right? :)

A tale of two sisters

My sister is one of my favourite people in the whole world. She's the person I miss the most from the UK, and although I love my three Canadian sisters-in-law dearly*, it's just not quite the same.

There was only ever going to be one answer to the "so who's gonna be your bridesmaid?!" question

Sis is two years younger than me, and always managed to be better than me at everything. I got excellent grades, but she always went just a little bit further, taking more subjects and managing to avoid the B I got in GCSE music. I sucked at sports, but she was in the school and county and/or city netball, field hockey, and cross country running teams. I got my Grade 6 music exam (classical guitar); she got her Grade 7 (clarinet). Thank the flying spaghetti monster that I'm the older one and didn't have to follow her and meet the expectations she set!

Fortunately for me, we chose different subjects in high school. There was lots of overlap in the GCSEs (the exams we took at the age of 16) we got, since certain core subjects are compulsory. However, when it came to our A level courses, we diverged significantly. At the time, students had to choose three (or occasionally four) subjects to study for the final two (optional) years of high school. I chose biology, chemistry and maths; sis chose history, French, and English language.

The interesting thing - and a sign of what was to come - is that when sis was making her choices, my Dad asked what we each would have chosen if we could have taken five subjects. I would have added French and history to my choices, and she would have added biology and maths to hers. So from no overlap at all in our three actual choices, with five we would have 80% of our subjects in common.

As it was though, we each followed our own paths. You know mine: undergrad degree in genetics, PhD in molecular cell biology, postdoc in molecular biology and genome evolution, marketing in the biotech industry, cancer research grant wrangler. My sister followed in the footsteps of both our parents, plus an auntie and a cousin, and did her degree in modern languages - French and Italian, to be precise**. Her department wanted her to stay and do a PhD, but she decided that this time she wouldn't try to outdo me, and went off to do an internship in the publishing industry in London (hence continuing her trend of moving ever further south, while I kept moving north and/or west).

Sis chose non-fiction, rather than fiction publishing, because editors get to have more input into the final product than in the fiction industry; they can suggest additions to the content, for example. To be honest I've lost track of her exact series of jobs because she moved around a lot in the first few years, but I know that she started off in the mind/body/spirit field (everything from astrology to fitness to psychology) before moving into a more medical/scientific space; her last job was at a journal publishing company that specialises in annual compilations of scientific review articles.

She just started a new job though, one she's very excited about. Like me when I moved into my current job, she's absolutely delighted to find herself in the non-profit sector, where the pay may be lower but people are (generally) nicer and everything's not just about the money. She's now helping to manage the publishing arm of one of the British medical professional societies, or Royal Colleges. Their output includes a journal, textbooks, electronic learning resources, special reports, clinical guidelines, and information for the public.

So, although we took very different paths through high school, university, and the early years of our respective careers, my sister and I now both have jobs where a large part of our role is to write and edit text about the same kind of cancer.

I say "it must be genetic", she says "Mamma Mia!", but we both think it's hilarious and awesome.

Well, something's definitely genetic.

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*I decided at the weekend, at the wedding of Mr E Man's brother to my newest sister-in-law, that if men get to "brothers from another mother", we get to be "sisters from distant misters"

Me and my lovely three sisters-in-law sisters-from-distant-misters on Saturday

**Mum: Spanish and French; Dad: French and German; Auntie: Spanish and Italian; Cousin: French and psychology. Plus one of my uncles has a degree in English, and another cousin who didn't go to university is fluent in German. I'm considered a freak in my family, although both of my male cousins are in technical fields, so I'm not completely alone.

Budget oasis

Biology is messy; grant applications even more so.

There are so many intangibles: is the scope too big, too small, or just the right mix of feasible and ambitious? How's the balance between hot topic sexy science and safe reliable techniques? Have we adequately addressed the specific aims of this RFA? How much preliminary data do we need? Should we include two fall-back alternatives to the shiny new technique we're planning to use, or will one be enough? Should Dr. X be a co-applicant, or just a collaborator? Who's on which review panels this year? Is the wording of the hypothesis the very best it could possibly be?

It goes on and on, and you can never really be sure you've got it right; there's always more second-guessing and tweaking that can be done. And of course it's not just a matter of learning "the rules" of a single agency, like the NIH or NSF: the Canadian research funding ecosystem teems with an incredible biodiversity, a tangled bank of government, charity, and private funding sources, with even the federal health research dollars being split between multiple funding agencies.

During my first few rounds of grant wrangling, I found budget development to be the most confusing part of my new job (I even wrote a limerick about it!) However, I've since come to view budget wrangling very differently, and in fact it's now my favourite part of the whole process.

A couple of years worth of experience and the resulting increase in confidence are a large part of the reason. I've worked on so many grants by now that if a PI wants to do some next-gen sequencing or build a tissue microarray or whatever, I can usually find an older grant that used the same methods and use its budget as the starting point for the new one. I've also learned who to go to for help with statements of work & service quotes, salary grades & benefits rates, and equipment quotes.

However, I've also learned that the true joy of budget development lies in its focus on those lovely tangible, quantitative things:

numbers.

Thank the flying spaghetti monster for numbers! They can only ever add up one way, and there's always a definite right answer. The maximum amounts you can request for salaries, trainee stipends and equipmentare listed in the competition guidelines, and the grand total is always either over or under the stated limit. No quibbling, no second-guessing: if it's wrong, you fix it, and if it's right, you move on with a great sense of satisfaction.

I remember feeling the same way about maths lessons in high school; they were an oasis of certainty and logic amidst the hustle and bustle and messiness of history, English literature, music, French, and yes, biology*. None of this "which of these conflicting sources is the most reliable?", "what analogies does this poem draw on?", "how did this composer use changes in instrumentation to evoke different feelings in the second movement of this symphony?", "j'ai mangé but je suis allé", or "how might an increase in the numbers of a given species affect the population dynamics of its prey and its predators over time?". No, in maths lessons 2+2 was always 4, and when you'd solved an equation you got to write "QED" next to the obviously correct answer and feel extremely pleased with yourself.

Of course, grant budgets aren't quite this simple; there are always some messy intangibles involved. This agency has never once awarded a PI more in a given year than 85% of the stated maximim annual limit; that agency doesn't like chunky budgets, so be sure to spread your most expensive activities over the whole term of the project to make it look more even; the other agency always trims the budget by 8-10%, so put some cannon fodder in there**.

But overall, sitting down with a cup of tea to play with numbers in an Excel spreadsheet, rather than with pages and pages of messy words, still gives me the same joy as a high school maths lesson. Just as I did way back then, I do enjoy the messiness, too, but it's nice to have a break from time to time.

To use a different part of my brain.

To get a right-or-wrong answer.

Writing "QED"? Well, that's up to the PIs... but I'll be happy to write the progress report and edit the papers!

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*with the exception of genetics; I think there's a reason why the logic of Mendelian inheritance, with its nice neat phenotype ratios, appealed to me so much when my biology teacher first introduced it to us!

**as with the other grant wrangling Dark Arts, none of this stuff is ever written down - you have to learn it by asking experienced PIs, especially those who've served on review committees, and from your own experiences (I re-read old grant reviews before each new round of applications to the same agency).

"How much have YOU done?"

The Ride to Conquer Cancer is now just a few days away! At some ungodly time on Saturday morning I will be off and pedalling on the first of two consecutive 130 km days! Erm, yay?

The last few weeks have felt much like the run-up to exams at high school and in university. But instead of comparing how much revision everyone's done, we're all discussing how many kilometres we've done on our training rides.

Now, if there's one thing I have ever truly excelled at in my life, it's passing exams. I was really, really good at it. But I worked my arse off for it, putting in hours and hours of revision. Probably too many hours; I think I was the only one of my high school friends whose parents (teachers both) told me to study less, rather than more. The problem was that no matter how much I did, I still felt underprepared.

And so it is with this ride. I lost two weekends due to my parents being here, and us all going out of town together - and because I've done less training than I'd originally planned, I feel completely underprepared, underconfident, and overintimidated.

People have tried to reassure me - Ironman triathlete Mermaid (my training guru) in particular has been awesome, and even encouraged me to "taper" this past weekend by keeping up the intensity but reducing the distance. I felt really blah this weekend (I had a slightly upset stomach and a slight temperature from Friday lunchtime until Monday morning), but I did manage to get 55 km in before the England game on Saturday. (I knew I wasn't well when I couldn't even finish one pint during the game). On Sunday I just could not work up the energy, so I cleaned and tuned my bike* instead of riding it. I'd originally planned to do at least 100 km on Saturday and then another 60-70 on Sunday, but Mermaid made me feel better about my failings by saying that long rides this close to the event wouldn't help my muscle tone or cardio, and might just get me injured!

Mermaid and others have also pointed out that most (i.e. all but one) of my long training rides were done by myself, and that the distance feels easier when you're part of an event and surrounded by other people. The ride's supposed to be really fun, positive and social, and I'm really looking forward to that aspect of it.

Other people have tried to reassure me, too. Someone told me that they know a woman who did last year's ride on a folding bicycle. I know who this person is (but don't know her well), and she's not the fittest-looking person in the world, so that did help. Also, I work with a PI who will be riding for the second time, and when he heard I'd done one 95 km ride, he said "you can stop worrying. You've got it".

But still my brain cries "but that was only one day**! I have to do 130 km! Two days in a row! I caaaaaaaaan't dooooooo iiiiiiiiiiit!!!!"

I'm trying to remind myself that I always did well in exams, even when I felt like this. But of course it's different; I'm used to mental exertion, but have never done anything this physical before. I have nothing with which to compare my current level of fitness and readiness.

Despite the differences between mental and physical training, I'm hoping that the familiar "this is what I prepared for so I'm just gonna do it" exam day feeling will kick in once I get my feet moving on Saturday morning!

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I'm also going to carry with me a list of everyone who's donated to my campaign, to look at for inspiration if I get tired. I am ridiculously grateful to everyone who contributed, and I'll be thinking of you all often.

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*to the best of my ability. It's in getting a thorough professional tune-up at the moment.
**I did 38km the day before, too, but that kind of distance barely feels like a training ride any more. Which I guess is a good thing.

The ties that bind

This BBC article about school tie styles brought back lots of memories!

Many British schools are apparently introducing clip-on ties in order to force their students into monotonous conformity "ensure consistency" and "provide an atmosphere of discipline". I think this is a terrible shame; while I agree with the underlying reasons for school uniforms (principally to minimise bullying due to discrepancies in how much parents can afford to spend on branded clothing), there is a proud British schoolkid tradition of subverting uniform codes to rebel against authority and express individuality, and diverse tie styles are a large part of that.

The BBC says "No-one can be precisely sure when the process started - it may even have been decades ago - but it's clear that it's reached crisis point." Decades ago sounds about right to me!

My primary school didn't have a uniform while I was there, and it was only when we moved up to secondary school that we had to learn to tie a proper tie knot. Our uniform consisted of black shoes (not trainers/sneakers), white socks, a navy blue skirt or trousers*, white or pale blue shirt or blouse, navy blue cardigan or V-neck sweater - and a navy blue tie with thin yellow diagonal stripes.

The official uniform code didn't mention shoelaces, and so we expressed ourselves chiefly through that medium. I remember having tartan and then fluorescent laces, while one of my male friends had laces printed with "left" and "right" (and insisted on wearing them on the wrong feet). Our shoes sported a veritable rainbow of individuality.

The official code also neglected to specify tie style, other than saying we had to have our top button done up and the tie knotted just below it. I turned up on my first day, age 11, sporting the traditional tie style that my Dad had taught me and that I'd spent hours perfecting. Only the first-years without older siblings were wearing our ties in this "kipper" style, which immediately marked us out as targets for ridicule.

On the second day, I tied my tie back-to-front, with the narrow part in front and worn long enough to tuck into the waist band of my skirt, and the wide part tucked inside the shirt - just the way the older kids did. My parents both protested, so I retied it the "proper" way - and promptly switched back as soon as I left the house. I wore my tie in this way most days for the next five years, occasionally experimenting with the 1-inch-long-narrow-tie that was the most popular alternative. A few of my friends went for the 2-inch-long-super-wide-tie look, and even unpicked the tie's seams and spread the edges out to get it even wider. (This was, of course, an "ironic" response to the narrow ties of most of their peers). Some of the stricter teachers would make us fix our ties at the start of their classes, but as soon as the bell rang, the styles would magically revert...

Sixth-formers (those of us who stayed on for the optional final two years, from age 16-18) didn't have to wear the uniform. And the school ditched the ties not long after I left, anyway, and switched to a more modern trousers-polo shirt-sweatshirt combo instead. Most kids were pretty happy with the change, but - and here's the important thing - they continued to rebel through the medium of shoelaces.

As the BBC article says, "there will just be other ways to rebel."

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*For my first couple of years at the school, girls were only allowed to wear trousers from November to March. This unpopular restriction was finally overturned when we got our first ever female Muslim classmate.

Hierarchy in the UK

One of the things I love about Canada is the relative freedom from snobbery and classism. In the UK your accent gives away so much about your class, your education, and your region of origin, and people do judge you based on this information. I know, because I used to do it too.

In my case, inverse snobbery was deeply ingrained into me by classmates at my state (=public, in North American terms) comprehensive school*, and it took a few years to start to erase those impulses. "Posh" was used as an insult, and we mercilessly took the piss out of the kids from the city's public (=private - yes, posh schools that you have to pay for are called public schools in the UK, don't ask me why) schools whenever we met them on the streets or on the hockey field. As a frequent piss-taking victim myself, for my good grades and perceived "posh", non-local (at first) accent, I had to work a bit harder than normal to prove my inverse snobbery credentials to my peers, and consciously changed the way I pronounced certain words in order to try and fit in with everyone else.

I didn't really encounter classical (i.e. top-down) snobbery and classism until I went to University. Former public school kids who heard my accent and learned I was from a state school in Yorkshire assumed I was "thick" (direct quote), and were "amazed" (another direct quote) to hear that I was one of the top three students on my undergraduate degree course. Others saw my grades before they really knew me, and assumed I was from a public school "because you're intelligent" (yet another direct quote). My sister, who moved South instead of North, had an even harder time; some of her peers had never heard a real-life Yorkshire accent before, and actually laughed out loud when she spoke. She also blames her accent for her failure to get into Cambridge, despite getting straight As and being on multiple city and county sports teams and two musical ensembles.

Oh, and I'm sure I unfairly disparaged plenty of people with posh accents. Sorry.

But really, despite this divide persisting well into my undergraduate years, I'd barely thought about state vs. public school education since moving on to grad school 11 years ago. I was under the naive impression that the further you get from your school years, the less they matter. Surely, once you have a degree or two and a few years of real-life work experience, no-one cares where you went to school.

But this report on the BBC website yesterday gave me a wake-up call. How depressing that this state of affairs still persists:

Granted, I have no idea how the corresponding Canadian or US figures would look. Maybe they'd be quite similar. But somehow I suspect that the depressing graph above is an indicator of a very British problem. Both top-down and inverse snobbery, along with that pervasive British anti-intellectualism streak, contribute to this sad state of affairs, and to the waste of far too much potential.

Ugh. Now I feel icky.

ETA: this new article is an interesting take on social mobility. Canada is in the top five countries for social mobility, alongside the Scandinavian nations (yay socialism!) The US and UK are at the bottom. There are some very interesting points about how state education is funded, and the relative influences of parents vs. the state. Highly recommended if you're interested in this issue!

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*charitably described as "mixed ability intake". Two thirds of kids in my year left at age 16, and only about half of those who continued went on to University at 18. Three girls in my form of ~25 kids were pregnant by 14; one of them was divorced with two kids by the age of 19. But, thanks to some wonderful teachers, those of us who did well, did very well. The opportunities were certainly there for people who had the ability and the desire to take them.

The Five Question Interview

Crystal from "Chances Are I'm Going To Hell For This" was recently interviewed by her friend - and posted the results on her blog. She also chose to perpetuate the meme by asking for willing interview victims subjects in the comments, and I obliged, because I'm egocentric like that. So here are my answers to Crystal's five questions!

1. What/ who influenced you to go in to science?

Good question... I've often thought that I was just plain destined to get into science, because it matches my personality and thinking patterns so well. But there were lots of people who helped me to discover this compatibility.

I got interested in biology through loving cute animals, so I would have to cite James Herriot and David Attenborough for sparking that interest. And of course I have to thank my Mum, who watched all the wildlife documentaries with me, and successfully argued with my Dad that we should get a cat.

As my knowledge of biology matured, I became interested in smaller and smaller units of life - from cute lion cubs down to organs, then cells, then finally viruses and genes. I had an amazing biology teacher by the name of Ann(e) La(w/u)rence (sorry Miss, can't remember the spelling!) from the age of 14-18 - I've actually been planning a series of posts about great teachers, and you can bet she'll be in there - who was incredibly animated and enthusiastic about her subject, but especially about genetics and evolution. And once she taught us those things, I stopped searching for smaller and smaller things to investigate, turned 90 degrees, and headed off into an in-depth exploration of genetics. I guess if she hadn't intervened, I might have continued on to chemistry and then subatomic particle physics...

2. What would you do/be (besides science) if money were not important?

I'd be living on a sailboat (summer) and little rustic cabin (winter), travelling around the BC coast and writing a book.

3. How did you know your hubby was "the one"?

(Super-lameness alert).

When we first met, I was halfway through a two-year postdoc / work permit. So when I met this hunky Canadian carpenter at a big group dinner one night, I didn't automatically think "long-term relationship", let alone "future husband". But I really enjoyed talking to him, and when he gave me his number, I was more than happy to call him up (after the obligatory two day wait, of course) to arrange a date.

Still not thinking any further ahead than a month or so at a time, we started to see more and more of each other, and the more I got to know him, the more I liked him. The first time I knew we had something really special was on our first overnight kayak camping trip, about five months into our relationship. We went skinny dipping at midnight (yes, in the sea, in Canada, in May - just about worth it for the awesome phosphorescence) and then snuggled around a campfire on the beach.

But the first time I knew he was "the one"? We were hanging out in my shared house on a rainy Saturday afternoon, playing cribbage. He said something that made me laugh - and it kills me that I can't remember what it was - and I just suddenly realised that I wanted to spend all my rainy Saturday afternoons with him, and that I would be delighted to find myself playing cribbage and listening to his silly banter when we're both in our eighties.

I told you it was lame.

4. Are you planning on having kids anytime in the future?

Nope.

As discussed before, I have multiple reasons for this choice, the primary reason being that I just innately and emphatically know that it isn't for me.

Plans can change... but I am at least 95% sure that if you come and find me in 10 years, I still won't have any kids.

I'm VERY excited though that two close Vancouver friends are pregnant (after years each of trying, they'll be giving birth two weeks apart - wonder what was in the water that month). I've already told them both that I want to be a very active and involved Auntie.

Kids are awesome - as long as you can give them back.

(On my research retreat last week, I had four female colleagues (aged 30s - 50s) separately ask me the same question. When I gave my answer, all but one said "oh, you really should, you know". So the next time someone tells me that they have kids, I want to say "oh, you really shouldn't have done that, you know").

5. What is the most embarrassing drunk thing you have ever done?

OK, this is pretty shameful. One drunken night in my shared student flat in Glasgow, my flatmate and I somehow got into a discussion about the Seven Deadly Sins. Except that we weren't sure what they were. Her version (from her Catholic school education in Ireland) was different to my version (from the movie Se7en, heh), and we had no Bible, encyclopedia or internet to hand.

So... we went to the phone book and got the number for a local convent. Because we were drunk and the answer just simply COULD NOT WAIT, we ignored the fact that nuns are mostly in bed well before 11 pm, and called the number anyway. (When I say we, I mean that I dialled, but she encouraged me and assured me that the nuns wouldn't mind).

Me: "Oh hello, I was just wondering if you could tell me what the Seven Deadly Sins are?"
Nun: ".............................no." (click).

We looked the answer up on our other flatmate's computer the next day. My version was right.

Now it's your turn! Do you want to be interviewed?

If you do - here are the rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me" AND leave your email address (or blog link) in the comment!
2. I will respond by emailing you (or commenting on your blog with) five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions. (If you don't have a blog, I can post your answers here).
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

2009 is looking up

“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.”

President Barack Hussein Obama, January 20th, 2009

The ghosts of St Patrick's Days past

1997. I’m an undergrad in Newcastle. The lunchtime pints of green Caffrey’s. The late arrival at a small group seminar in a darkened room. The realisation that the only chairs left are stacked up at the back of the room. The knocking over of said stack of chairs by my drunken friend. The giggling. The staring. The sudden improvement in our street cred.

1999. I’m doing my PhD in Glasgow. The realisation that it’s much harder to get away with a hangover when doing lab work rather than attending lectures. The group decision to make an exception to the weeknight drunkenness ban. The massive party. The epic hangover shared by all students in all labs in the department. The rolling of many PIs’ eyes at this dreadful behaviour. The shaking of my friend’s hands as he tried to pipette into teeny tiny PCR tubes. The dropping of my CAT assay thin layer chromatography plates into the tank of solvent. The CAT assay that, instead of looking like this,

looked like a frog. The legendary response of my supervisor, who’d had a few hangovers in his day: “Well, that’s not much use to me. Maybe you could submit it to the Tate”.

2003. I’m a recent immigrant to Canada. The confusion at the different manner of celebrating St Patrick’s over here. The “family-friendly” parade downtown (WTF? St Patrick’s is not supposed to be family friendly). The bar. The arrival of the kilted Scottish bagpipe band. The realisation that when in Rome…

2008. It’s Monday. It’s not fair. I’m too old for such bad behaviour these days. I did celebrate a Patrick’s 40th birthday on Friday, and I’ll have a glass of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey tonight. That’ll have to do. I’m only half Irish after all.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

p.s. another conspiracy theory and some actual peer-reviewed science on my Nature blog.

Am I a walking stereotype?

I came across an interesting site recently. It's called "Stuff White People Like" and, well, it's a list of things that white people are supposed to all be into.

There are several different ways to approach such a list, many of them resulting in indignant offense. I think, though, that the blog is meant to be approached as observational comedy, and with that in mind it's very entertaining (and sometimes cringeworthy) reading.

One thing I noticed is that the site is written from a very specific angle - that of a white North American male. The list is therefore an interesting mix of racial, cultural and gender-based stereotypes. But is it accurate? I am the daughter of the Whitest Man in England^TM, so let's give it a shot and see how many of the items on the list I can relate to.

I've colour coded the list - green for yes, red for no, blue for partial credit, and black when I got confused.

Coffee

Coffee makes me way too jittery. I drink the occasional decaf, but I'm really more of a tea drinker.

Religions their parents don't belong to

Atheism is not a religion, so I'm claiming a no.

Film Festivals

I've been to the occasional festival screening, but not for years and I'm much more likely to watch a DVD than go to the cinema anyway.

Assists

Alien concept in European sports, in which assists are not tracked unless you play in some kind of fantasy league. Which I don't. I do like hockey, but don't care about stats. Just results. (Not too many of those in Vancouver at the moment).

Farmers' Markets

Love the idea, don't go as often as I would like, which is something I plan to change this summer.

Organic Food

Ditto.

Diversity

Yes. Homogeneity is boring, and I should know! I went to a school of about 1500 students, of whom around 1496 were white.

Barack Obama

Yes we can.

Making you feel bad about not going outside

Lots of Vancouverites are very outdoorsy and will make you feel like shite if you didn't spend the weekend fending off bears and cougars. I am outdoorsy-lite. I do like skiing, kayaking and camping, but I enjoy lots of other things too and besides, I'm too lazy to get out there very often. So I will never ever rip on someone who'd rather stay in the city at the weekend.

Wes Anderson movies

Yup. Just watched the Darjeeling Limited. Not as good as the others, but I still enjoyed it!

Asian girls
I think this might be one for the boys.

Non-profit organisations

Work for one, volunteer for a couple more!

Tea

Ooh yes please. Don't forget to warm the pot and put the milk in the cup before the tea. My home and office tea stashes are the stuff of legend and I have my own kettle on my desk at work. I am English after all.

Having black friends

I love having friends, period. I've never had the opportunity to have black friends (in real life anyway, I have no idea about the ethnicity of most of my blog buddies), having lived in predominantly white and / or Asian areas my whole life. But my friends do reflect the ethnic make-ups of the places I've lived in. I guess this is a partial...?!

Yoga

Loved it when I did it, haven't done it for years. Planning to start again.

Gifted children

Don't know really, I don't have kids and don't plan to have any, so I don't really have an opinion on gifted children programmes, having never encountered one in the UK.

Hating their parents

I have some issues with my parents (doesn't everyone?), but nothing major and I certainly don't hate them.

Awareness

I'm more into direct fundraising and research than awareness.

Travelling

I like going abroad, but I'm not a hard-core traveller. I've done my fair share of backpacking around Europe and North America, and I have a long list of wish-list destinations, but you're more likely to find me hanging out in Prague or Madrid than seeking enlightenment in Tibet.

Being an expert in YOUR culture

Not unless YOU are British or Canadian, which doesn't seem to be the point of this entry!

Writers' workshops

I've never done one, but it does actually sound like something I'd enjoy.

Having two last names

Nope. I changed my name when I got married and never even considered hyphenating. (Dunn is a very difficult name to hyphenate anyway - it sounds dodgy whether you put it first or last).

Microbreweries

Yesh, what'sh yer point? *hic*

Wine

Ditto, but I'm not too snobby about it. I'm still a student at heart, I'll drink anything if it's free...

David Sedaris

Yep, he's represented in my book case.

Manhattan (now Brooklyn too!)

Fun for a few days, but NYC scares the bejebus out of me and I always come back completely exhausted.

Marathons

Dear god no. Running was considered a punishment for misbehaviour at my school, and I've never seen a reason to change that mindset. I only run if chasing (e.g. a football) or being chased (e.g. someone who wants to tickle my feet).

Not having a TV

Yeah right. I LOVE my TV. I would never have made it through my PhD without Friends and the Simpsons.

80s night

I went to many an 80s night in University. Hopefully the photos have been destroyed.

Wrigley Field
Huh? (Another one for the white American male).

Snowboarding

Skis all the way, baby. I tried snowboarding once and couldn't even stand up. It's not natural to not be able to move your feet independently of each other.

Vegan/vegetarianism

I like it in principle, just not enough to, y'know, actually do it or anything. I have cut down on my red meat intake and started to cook more meat-free meals though.

Marijuana
Um, no officer, never ever ever. (OK, maybe once or twice a year. Fun while kayaking).

Architecture

I know what I like, but I don't really know the first thing about it.

The Daily Show / Colbert Report

I wasn't too keen on the Colbert Report when it first started, but now it's actually my favourite of the two. There's hope for America yet ;)

Breakfast Places

Ooh yeah. My favourites being the Cuban place near our old apartment and the Caribbean place near our house. A regular feature of our weekends.

Renovations

It's coming... at the moment we're just constantly patching up the raccoon-inflicted damage to our roof.

Arrested Development

...was indeed awesome. Sadly missed.

Netflix

Who what? This is something to do with movie downloads, right?

Apple Products

I don't own a single one. I went for a Sony MP3 player just to be different (it's crap, but Mr E Man likes his higher-end Sony), and I almost, but not quite, went for the Mac instead of the PC last year. So this No is really a Not Yet, Maybe When This One Dies.

Indie Music
Of the British variety, yes. I'm a wee bit out of date these days though.

Sushi

It's a Sunday night fixture at our place! Japanese tourists apparently rave about the quality and price of Vancouver's sushi. Yum.

Plays

Meh, I can take them or leave them. I usually go if invited, but I never instigate a trip to the theatre (the one exception was when I won some tickets to the Reduced Shakespeare Company, which was fun). I prefer opera actually, if I can say that without sounding too, well, white or anything!

Public Radio

No, unless you count BBC radio when I'm in the UK, but the context is very different to that of public radio in the US.

Asian Fusion Food

Probably. I'm not sure if I've ever had it, but I do like most Asian food.

The Sunday New York Times

Our local paper runs the Sunday New York Times crossword on Saturdays, which we do religiously, but that's the only part of it I've ever read.

Arts Degrees

BSc Genetics, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1998.
The site says, "But what about the white people who study Science, Engineering or Business? Unless they become doctors, they essentially lose white person status (and can only be regained by working at a non-profit)".
So that's OK then.

Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops

Only when I'm not being lazy and going to Safeway, or virtuous and going to farmers' markets.

Vintage

Not so much any more, although there is a genuine 1960s top lurking at the back of my closet. I bought it for a themed band concert in high school and couldn't bear to throw it away.

Irony

Yup.
Best definition ever: Mr E Man was hanging out with some drunk British girls in Mexico (before he met me I hasten to add) and they accused all North Americans of not understanding irony.
Mr E Man: "Gee, you're right, I've never really understood the concept. Please could you explain it to me?"
Drunk Brit: "Well, it's sarcasm"
MEM: "No, it's not the same thing"
DB: "Yes it is"
MEM: "No, they're different"
DB: "Well what's the difference?"
MEM: "Sarcasm was me pretending not to know what irony is. Irony is you actually not knowing what irony is".

Living by the water

Sounds great, doesn't it? Why is this A White Thing?

Sarah Silverman

She's pretty damn funny all right.

Dogs

Who's a good boy? I will have a dog one day. When I'm working from home or something. In the mean time, the adoption of a cat has been successfully negotiated and the search will begin after Easter. Photos will be posted when available.

Kitchen gadgets

Come to momma. Populating the registry was my favourite part of the whole wedding planning thing (I didn't get to sample caterers' goods, Mr E Man did that part).

Apologies

I'm English. And I live in Canada. Apologising is a way of life.

Lawyers

WTF? No. Unless they happen to be my brother-in-law and work for the UN.

Juno

Haven't seen it yet.

Japan

Erm, I like sushi... Actually I would quite like to visit rural Japan, but it's not all that high on my list. Maybe I can get sent to a conference or something.

Natural Medicine

No, I'm a scientist. Besides, whoever developed Ibuprofen made those days bearable. Before that I was incapacitated, curled up on the sofa with a hot water bottle and moaning softly, for at least 2 days each month. Big Pharma is OK by me.

Toyota Prius

They are soooo cool. A lot of Vancouver taxis are switching to hybrids, and all the drivers I've talked to just love them. Mr E Man's car is only 6 years old and still running well, but when it's been run into the ground we're definitely going to get a hybrid, or whatever greener technology is best at that time.

Bicycles

Extensively documented on this blog!

Knowing what's best for poor people
Erm, a social welfare system? Is this another one with an American bias?

Expensive sandwiches

Yes, that would be my first choice on the days when I don't bring my own lunch.

Recycling

And composting too, for extra points no doubt.

Co-ed sports

I really, really suck at team sports. Drunken football or cricket on the beach is the only post-school exception to my self-imposed ban.

Divorce

Yikes, let's hope not!

Standing still at concerts

Not totally still. I sway a bit. But only if the band's good.

Michel Gondry
Who? (Seriously. No idea).

Mos Def
The only people to emerge from the Hitchhiker movie with any credit were Douglas Adams and Stephen Fry.

Difficult breakups

Oh yeah, I just loved those months of crying in the toilets at work and feeling like my personality had been removed and replaced with that of a complete stranger. Awesome.

Being the only white person around

It's certainly a rare and interesting experience for a girl from York!

Study abroad

I actually made a conscious decision not to move away from the UK, where an undergraduate degree takes 3 years and a PhD no more than 4. There's a whole other post in there somewhere.

Gentrification
It would be really really nice if this happened in our neighbourhood!

Oscar parties
I don't even watch the ceremony.

Threatening to move to Canada
I have no idea what colour this one should be - I mean, I did move to Canada, but not for the reasons implied by this entry. I just really really liked Vancouver.

Bottles of water
I do indeed have two Sigg metal bottles - one for work and one for the gym.

Musical comedy
When it's good, it's very very good!

Multilingual children
Again, no plans to have kids. But if I did they would definitely be bilingual. You can't get above a certain level in some careers here if you don't speak both official languages - e.g. the civil service, the military etc. Plus it opens up careers with the European Union, which requires at least 2 different languages in all employees. I'd be daft not to teach my kids French. Besides, both my parents are French teachers and they'd kill me if their grandchildren turned out unilingual.

Modern furniture
I'm a fan, Mr E Man is not. He's a carpenter and has very high standards - it took us forever to find an acceptable dining table. Other rooms are full of donated Ikea furniture. The house will probably be a mish-mash for many years to come.

The idea of soccer
I don't like the idea of soccer, I just love football (as I will always insist on calling it). I grew up watching it and will always be a fan. I think this is another North American idiosyncrasy.

Graduate school
Been there, done that, got the thesis. Not an arts degree though.

Hating corporations
Nope. Most of my wardrobe comes from the Gap, and I don't even have any serious beefs with Microsoft or Starbucks.

Bad memories of high school
I've got 'em. Do I like them? I guess it is a bonding opportunity when conversing with other geeks!

T-shirts
There's nothing I like more than freshly laundered dark denim jeans and a nice well-fitted long sleeved t-shirt.

The Wire
Not my cup of tea.

Shorts
Only for cycling in in summer.

Outdoor performance clothes
C'mon, this is Vancouver. It's practically compulsory to wear fleece and Gore-tex in the pub.

So how did I do?

43 Yes, 24 No, 13 Partial and 7 Don't Know / Not Applicable.

I would say that my nationality, education, gender and class influenced my answers more than my race. I really don't see why t-shirts and sushi are supposed to be "White Things". Maybe even the definition of a racial stereotype is different in different cultures? Would a white North American female see this list differently? How about a straight black male Canadian? Or a gay Asian-American man?

Anyway, the list makes me laugh and I'll continue to read it. Wearing a t-shirt. With a cup of tea in hand, Gomez playing in the background, and maybe even some sushi.

Sorry.

Explaining my scarlet letter

This post has been brewing and fermenting in my mind ever since I added the scarlet A to my blog a few months ago. The A is for Atheist, and you can read about the purpose of the corresponding "Out Campaign" here.

I was finally spurred into action by a recent thread on Pharyngula, in which commenters gave their "deconversion" stories. Plus I wanted to tell you my own story before reading and being influenced by "The God Delusion", which is lurking near the top of my reading list. So here is the tale of Why CAE is an Atheist. My apologies for the length, but it was a long process...

Unlike many of the people on the Pharyngula thread, I do not come from a particularly religious family. My Mum is Church of England and my Dad is a lapsed Catholic. My Mum is definitely the more religious of the two. She teaches French at a church-sponsored state school and attends services with her students, but apart from that she doesn't go to church except for the obligatory hatches, matches and dispatches. My Dad effectively gave up on organised religion after his family priest refused to acknowledge my Mum's existence - they had visited him together to try to persuade him to change his mind and read the banns.

So what did this mean for my sister and me? We were both baptised Church of England, and I vaguely remember going to some kind of Sunday school once or twice, but it wasn't a major feature of our home lives. I went to a Christmas Eve church service with my Mum one year, because we wanted to hear the carols. I once had a discussion with my Dad about how he wants to figure out what he believes in before he dies, but I was quite young at the time and hadn't really formulated my own opinions yet. (We're not really a deep discussion kind of a family - our weekly phone calls are 50% personal news updates, 40% sport and 10% dreadful jokes). I did find out last year that my Catholic Godmother tried to buy me a catechism and rosary when I was a kid, but was deterred by my parents. As it stands, she's taken me to more pubs than churches.

Most of my religious instruction therefore took place at school. I went to a perfectly normal state primary school, but since there's no formal separation of church and state in the UK our teachers were apparently free to discuss religion in any way they saw fit. (I have no idea what the actual law was at the time, but I do know that no kids or parents ever complained or thought that our teachers were doing anything wrong or strange in any way. It should be noted that our school was almost 100% white at the time, although my best friend (then and now) is Sikh - more on that later).

Our exposure to religion mostly took the form of teachers telling us the nativity, crucifixion and resurrection stories, with none of the "some people believe" phrases that you'd need to include nowadays. So, for all intents and purposes, the same people who told us that there are two high tides and two low tides each day, and that the Earth goes around the sun, also told us that our saviour was born in a stable in Bethlehem and died for our sins before coming back to life and ascending to heaven. No context, no caveats, no nothing, and we had no reason not to believe every word they said.

I was a quiet, well behaved and academic kind of girl, and I wanted to please my teachers. When I was about 8 or 9 my favourite teacher asked everyone in the class to raise their hands if they went to church. When only a couple of kids did so she reacted in shock and horror and said that she couldn't believe such a thing was possible. I went home that night and asked my parents if we could please start going to church? They were quite taken aback and quizzed me for my reasons, never guessing that it was only so I could report back to Mrs Lawson and receive her praise.

They really, really like to remind me now that I was the one who wanted to go to church when I was a kid. And that they didn't take me. We usually went on hikes on Sundays instead.

Things changed when I went to secondary school - again, a perfectly normal state comprehensive. I think our non-white contingent went up, from 2 students to 4 or something like that, and our new teachers didn't tell bible stories or make us sing hymns. Instead we started to learn about history, biology, and, more importantly, other religions. This was my first "hang on a minute" moment. You're saying that the Hindus, and Moslems, and Buddhists, and Jews, all believe different things, all with the same conviction with which my former teachers believed those bible stories? And what about the Greek, Roman and Norse gods? People back then knew that those stories were true, too.

From "well, they can't all be right" it's not too much of a stretch to get to "maybe they're all wrong", but in fact it took me a good few years.

I spent much of my time in high school with my two best friends, one Sikh and one Methodist. They both came from religious families and attended church or temple regularly, and we had some interesting discussions as I started to question what I'd been taught at primary school. My Sikh friend and her family maintained that Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, the Hindu gods and Sikh gurus were all different manifestations of one unifying truth. They took my sister and me to their temple in Leeds one weekend, which was a very interesting experience for us. Coming from such a white area, it was especially strange to enter the temple and be the only white people in a room of several hundred people. It certainly gave me some perspective on what my friend and her sister went through every day. And the food was excellent.

On the other hand, my Methodist friend was shocked at my statement that "if there is a God, and to get into Heaven you have to worship him and obey him, rather than just do good things, then I'm not sure I want to go". I should say that this friend is one of the few very religious Christians I've ever known who truly practiced what she preached. If she saw a homeless person on the street she would drop whatever she was doing to buy them some food and have a conversation with them. Imagine a large group of semi-drunk 18 year olds on a Christmas Eve pub crawl standing around in the cold and wondering what she would do if we told her to bloody well hurry up so we could go to the White Swan... Interestingly, she's now an agnostic (it wasn't my fault) and still just as lovely.

My ideas continued to mature as I got older. I read "I Claudius", which described the Roman reaction to the burgeoning Christian faith and disparaged Christianity as a religion for slaves. I started to see how the concept of an eternal reward in the afterlife - if you obey certain laws and generally behave yourself in the present - could be used to control a population, and how invoking an all-seeing, all-powerful deity was the best way to ensure compliance. I heard someone make an off-hand remark that avoiding pork and seafood in hot climates was a really good idea and that, again, invoking a deity was the best way to make an uneducated population understand the importance of food hygiene. And how better to explain where we came from than to say we'd been created by the same all powerful deity? I realised that there must be a deep-seated human need to know where we came from, and that every culture in history has come up with a different explanation to satisfy its people.

We first learned about evolution at around the same time, and it just made so much sense. It was so logical, so elegant - how could it possibly be any other way? Now, I haven't read "The Blind Watchmaker", but I do know one of its most famous quotes:

"Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Charles Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

Dawkins' quote sums up my own feelings perfectly. Evolution, along with abiogenesis theories such as the RNA world hypothesis, provides us with an explanation of where we came from that is supported by actual evidence and doesn't need to invoke a magical deity. Some people might not like the fact that we're related to monkeys, but that doesn't make it any less true, and the supporting evidence is right there for anyone to see - if they're willing to look. I began to see the myths and stories of all extinct and extant religions as nothing more* than attempts to explain (and control) from an era that didn't have access to any better explanations.

I called myself an agnostic for a few years, and really, agnosticism is the only truly defensible position. I can't know for sure that there are no gods, just as no-one else can know for sure that there are. But for the last few years I've called myself an atheist. In the absence of all evidence to the contrary, I'm happy to say that there are no gods.

Of course, if I'm struck by lightning as I publish this post, or see any other evidence, I'll be more than happy to change my mind.

I hope I didn't offend anyone - that wasn't my intention, and I'm sure boredom and indifference are the more likely reactions anyway. I'm heading off on a ski trip today, back next week, so if you leave a comment and I don't reply right away, it's not because I'm not willing to debate and to examine my logic. It might be because I got struck by lightning though. That Thor bloke has a temper on him.

*or less. In that context, I find the stories absolutely fascinating.

Friday's Primate Party

While past Friday's Primate Parties have included the occasional scientific article, I tend to find most of my stories via Google Alerts. This approach does bring up some good stuff, as well as an awful lot of quotes from athletes who want to get the monkey off their backs. For example, this week I'd already decided to mention SpongeBob, the Bolivian spider monkey who just can't get a date (but he's so cute!) and some Chinese escape artists who are now living free on the zoo's grounds.

Must... find... my square pants before my big date...

But future parties might be a bit geekier now that I've discovered this resource at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's National Primate Research Center. It's a veritable treasure trove of bloggable delights - they must have a much better search system than me.

The Mid West is also home to this online primate behaviour course that I'd love to take, but don't have the time or money for. Sigh. Maybe one day. There's still time for me to be the next David Attenborough, right?

By the way, I've just switched to using Firefox (yes, I know, I'm kinda behind the curve here) and I'm loving the spell-check-as-you-type feature. I'm an excellent speller but a sloppy typist, especially in the morning, so it's saving me a lot of backtracking!

Why I got into science

I don’t usually believe in fate, but I do believe that I was meant to be a scientist. Whether it’s innate curiosity and logic, or a mixture of other traits, I seem to be very well suited to biology in general and genetics in particular.

The various jobs I aspired to over the years changed as my understanding of science matured. I’ve noticed that young children always want to enter the professions they’re most familiar with. Most kids in my elementary school wanted to be a teacher, nurse, firefighter, train driver - jobs we were familiar with and understood. I decided early on that I wanted to be a vet, preferably in a zoo.

I grew up reading James Herriot’s books and watching All Creatures Great and Small on the BBC. It seemed like such a great job, spending time with all those cute and interesting animals. Then I spent some time volunteering at a vet’s surgery in my early teens, and realised that my career would be an endless procession of overweight cats and dogs getting their annual shots.

My next career aspiration again came via the BBC; I wanted to be David Attenborough. (yeah, OK, I still kinda do). I even entered a couple of competitions through the BBC Wildlife magazine, hoping to win the first prize of a day at Kew Gardens or the BBC Centre with my hero. If I couldn’t be David Attenborough, I wanted to be a field zoologist or marine biologist. Whales! Dolphins! Tigers! Orangs!

Greenpeace membership in hand, I paid extra attention during biology lessons. I was lucky enough to have a fantastic teacher who was a true inspiration to me. (If it wasn’t for her, I might have had to become an engineer instead). When I was about 14, she started to teach us about some monk in Central Europe who bred pea plants in the 19th century. I remember the lesson to this day. She told us what was understood about the nature of heredity at the time. She told us how Mendel designed his experiments and meticulously carried them out. She told us about the famous 3:1 and 9:3:3:1 ratios of different traits that he observed in first generation hybrids. Then she told us how the theory of discrete and independent allele inheritance with no blending was worked out, and showed us how to logically map out all possible allele combinations, according to that same theory, to arrive at a ratio of 3:1 or 9:3:3:1.

Well, I was hooked. It just made so much sense. Subsequent lessons were just as logical. Descent with modification, natural selection? Made sense. The modern synthesis, incorporating Darwinian theory and molecular biology? Yep, made so much sense, how could it be any other way? The more details I learned, the more everything fell into place. I once had a different biology teacher tell me that she felt she never had to teach me anything, that I always seemed to know it already. I explained that partway through every explanation she ever gave, some area of my brain would light up and complete the process before she finished speaking. Genetics was so logical, so elegant, so obvious once you started to think about it.

I went on to study genetics at university, where specific fields started to appeal more than others. I was particularly interested in molecular evolution; viral genetics; cell cycle control; and the transformation from normal to malignant cells. My PhD thesis combined a couple of these areas, focusing on the transformation of chicken fibroblasts by a growth-promoting gene carried by a virus. My data led me into the field of gene expression regulation.

My search for a postdoctoral position had two parameters. It had to involve gene expression regulation, but in an interesting, exotic kind of way. And it had to be in Vancouver, a city I had visited and fallen in love with. An early literature search brought up a paper that fit the bill perfectly, co-written by a graduate student who was later to become a colleague and friend. So a few months later, I was on a plane to Canada to study the evolution of transcriptional regulation by endogenous retroviruses. (More on these fascinating pieces of our genome will come later; anyone who’s interested in them right now should visit ERV’s blog).

I am immensely proud to have contributed, even in such a small way, to the field that has fascinated me ever since my high school lesson about Mendel’s pea plants. My papers are still cited, which brings me more pleasure than it decently should. A newly arrived postdoc in my former lab once told me that one of my papers was a fairly major factor in her decision to emigrate to Canada and join our group. The circle was complete.

As my profile says, I am still a scientist and always will be. However, I am no longer in research. The reasons for that will be the subject of my next post.

The Creation Museum Carnival

PZ Myers has co-ordinated a fantastic response to the opening of a Creation Museum in the States. I'm afraid I didn't get around to contributing anything myself, but here's a nice juicy link:

Creation Museum Carnival

On a recent trip to Washington DC I visited the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. It was a week day, and the place was full of noisy school groups. I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised to see such an excellent display on human evolution - my daily diet of Pharyngula etc. had almost led me to expect that human origins would not be explicitly mentioned in an American museum! Let's keep kids coming to real museums like the Smithsonian, and away from the Creationists' lies and religious propaganda about humans living side by side with dinosaurs.