The finalists of the Scientific Blogging Competition were announced last Sunday. I was delighted to find my essay among them:

Autumn has arrived, bringing firework foliage, delicious squash, and, at least in the Pacific Northwest, an invasion of squid.

Humboldt or jumbo squid, sometimes mistakenly called giant squid, are grabbing fishing lures and washing up on beaches from Oregon to British Columbia. As a marine biologist fielding questions from reporters and citizens, my heart always sinks when I hear the inevitable query--delivered with a mixture of horror and fascination--"They eat people, right?" . . .

Yay! Honor and delight! Now, how are they going to select grand, second, and third prize winners from these thirty finalists? Public online voting.

Read my rambling thoughts about that . . .

Oh well, here goes. I submitted my essay to the Scientific Blogging contest, and while the judges hem and haw, I contemplate additional writing-related opportunities. I'm also keeping my artistic muscles limber by illustrating a card game about science. These pursuits, however, are mere sidelines to this year's primary task of Finishing The Thesis. Data analysis and paper-writing continue apace. A continued brake on forward progress is the near-incapacitating cuteness of my cats.

Read on for excruciating detail . . .

Or, An Illustrated Guide to Sorting Plankton.

First the motivation: why would you want to spend all summer sorting plankton? Especially why would you go to La Jolla, beautiful warm sunny La Jolla, just so you could sit in a basement laboratory behind a microscope all day--sorting plankton?

Because in 2006 I went on this cruise, and I sorted plankton every night, and my findings were preliminary, but intriguing.
Because as part of this scholarship, I had to do some kind of research collaboration at a NOAA facility.
Because it turns out that NOAA has been doing these cruises, and collecting plankton samples, every few years for decades, and that is an amazing dataset ripe for the picking.
Because it made sense for the fourth and final chapter of my thesis to focus on squid spawning in the tropics, and that means looking for squid babies in plankton.

So, for all of these reasons, I found myself spending the summer in a rather surreal environment . . .

I started a new blog (in addition to, not replacing, Cephalopodiatrist) which may or may not be very short-lived, called Squid A Day. Then I wrote a long post in Cephalopodiatrist explaining why I started the new blog, and whining about the awful UI I had to deal with to do so. Right now I am really excited about writing (I'm throwing my hat in the ring for two science journalism internships in 2010) and art (I'm illustrating my friend Kevin's amazing science card game) and only kind of excited about the act of doing science itself. It's a frustrating situation, because for once, I don't actually hate my thesis--I think it's coming together and making good sense--but I'm so overwhelmingly jazzed about the other stuff that I'm still having a hard time focusing on research.

I will finish this year. I WILL!

My husband and I went to Miyazaki's new film knowing only its title. We hadn't even seen any promotional posters, let alone the trailer. As Anton said, "I kinda like the idea of going to see a movie that I'll love without knowing anything about it."

 

Well, as it turned out, we didn't love it. Spoilers commence.

 

Well! I'm finally home from my two-month research collaboration in La Jolla. Any day now (any day! really!) I'll be posting a distillation of my experiences: Plankton Sorting and Identifying for the Layperson. It'll be riveting.

First, though, I'm going to wrap up the unexpected adventures that resulted from a few dozen of my study organisms washing up on the beaches while I was there.

I already wrote about the fun and inky times of finding and dissecting squid on the beach, with the help of some wonderfully enthusiastic chance companions who provided a knife and plastic bags for my samples. Well, they were so grateful--for what was probably the most unappetizing experience of a lifetime--that they insisted on treating me to dinner at White Sands, their (very posh) retirement community. Baffling! But very sweet! Here we are, the squid dinner crew:

The company was outstanding, the food was delicious, and the view is unbeatable--they're right on the beach, watching every sunset over the Pacific. Apparently I'm not old enough to apply for residency, but man, I know where I'm going on Februrary 19th, 2048!

Meanwhile, other people were losing their heads over the whole business--first the squid sensed an earthquake, then they started attacking divers, and wait a minute, they were GIANT squid, weren't they? Actually they were not. Big thanks to Deep Sea News for setting the record straight.

No thanks to the New York Times, who ran the disappointingly sensationalist and poorly-fact-checked AP article, with the addition of this hilariously captioned picture:

John Hyde, a marine biologist, and a jumbo flying squid, now swarming off San Diego.

That is the actual caption--no substitutions, exchanges, or refunds. Was the copy editor so harried that she missed the verb taking two subjects, or was she so entertained that she let it slide? I hope it was the latter.

Finally, the night before I left town, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak about squid to the San Diego Dive Club at their monthly meeting. I started off by introducing all the squid in the area--

 
--but I know more about Dosidicus than the others, so I spent a lot of time skillfully steering the conversation towards that species. It was an awesome discussion; I found the audience was more engaged and curious than those at many scientific meetings. Of course, it was 8pm at the La Jolla Brewhouse--a rather different venue from most conference presentations.

After meeting so many interesting and interested people, I was sorry to be leaving the next day! I hadn't even made time for a dive, just a few short swims and snorkels. Next time I'll get on scuba and look for some squid . . .

For now, it's good to be home, reacquainting myself with the mammals in my life.

If you haven't already, check out the video Trouble in Paradise. I'll wait.

Okay? Now. Take a deep breath and calm down.

The video is a beautifully filmed and narrated work of fiction. Inspired by real events, but fiction nonetheless. Yes, there are Humboldt squid in the waters and beaches of La Jolla. But is it true that "an undersea earthquake has driven these predators close to the shore"? No. Is it likely that local marine creatures "sense an alien presence"--other than divers shining lights in their nocturnal faces? Probably not. And the most important question of all . . .

"WILL ANYTHING SURVIVE THE NIGHT???"

I'm pretty sure there are still octopuses, horn sharks, and divers in the water, along with the squid, so it would appear that the answer is a dull and unequivocal yes.

Humboldt (a.k.a. jumbo, but not giant) squid have been swimming in California waters and washing up on Southern California beaches every summer for years. The biggest stranding events were in 2002 and 2005 and received abundant media coverage, but minor strandings in the intervening years passed pretty much under the radar. This summer's stranding has (so far) been one of the more modest. So why all the fanfare?

Yesterday I had a snorkeling date with a friend at La Jolla Cove (not to be confused with La Jolla Shores, where I was on Saturday . . . La Jollans really like the name of their town I think) so once again I was off to the beach. This time I cleverly brought my own knife, plastic bags, and measuring tape (newly purchased). I also warned the friend that if there were more squid on the beach, science might interfere with snorkeling.

Yes. Of course there were more squid on the beach. There were also more people on the beach--it was a summer Sunday in sunny SoCal, and there was a concert in the park. It was packed. I wish I had a picture of the crowd that gathered as soon as I started dissecting. My extremely patient friend referred to it, not unkindly, as a squid mob.

Just like the day before, it was wonderful and educational, with lots of curious kids and adults, great questions, and so forth. But the best part by far was one woman who came up to me and asked "Were you at La Jolla Shores yesterday?" I said I was. The woman gushed, "You showed those squid to my daughter and my husband and she told me all about it when she came home, she had such a good time! Thank you!"

This sort of thing does wonders for one's self-esteem, but then she went on:

Beach woman: She said you showed them a penis and she got to see where the sperm comes out! She wouldn't stop talking about it!
Me: Is that . . . good?

Apparently it was okay, or at least this particular mother thought it was a hoot, because she was laughing as she told me. She went on to ask me a bunch of great questions about the squid and the strandings.

All the onlookers were eager to inform me that there were more squid just on the other side of the rocks, so I tromped over there and fell in with a most helpful young lady, maybe in her early teens, who guided me over to the squid, took notes on mantle length, sex, and maturity, and asked lots of great questions. Young lady, wherever you are, you rock very much! As does the French family who gathered around, the father translating my explanations for his children.

Father: Poulpe?
Me: Calamar?
Father: Ah, oui, oui! Calamar!

Finally, I saw one fully intact squid in a tidepool, complete with head, arms, tentacles, everything (all the other squid had been partially pulled apart by seagulls and curious beachgoers). But it had clearly been sitting in that tidepool for a very long time and it was horribly putrid. I had a little game of chicken with the onlookers:

Onlooker: If you're going to dissect that, we'll watch.
Me: I'll dissect it if you'll pull it out for me.
Onlooker: Not me. Maybe my son will do it.
Me: Go for it! I'll open it up and you can see what's inside.
Onlooker's son: Yeah, sure.
Onlooker: Really, you're going to get it out for her?
Son: No way.

So that one didn't get dissected, and it is probably still sitting in the tidepool, slowly and inexorably decomposing into primordial ooze.

Oh, and I did eventually get to go snorkeling. GARIBALDI!

And then I put my stomach in the freezer.

For over a month now I've been living in La Jolla, mere blocks from the beach, without having time to touch the ocean. Yesterday I finally got fed up with being too busy to swim, so I just threw on my swimsuit and board shorts and walked straight down the street and into the water. Joy!

After a swim, I took a little walk along the beach to dry off. As I approached the curve of the beach where wave action piles all of the flotsam--mostly kelp and seagrass--I spotted a small gathering of people pointing curiously at something. I went to find out what it was, and possibly offer my services as a marine biologist.

In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion it might be a Humboldt squid, since I'd heard that divers were starting to see them in the water, and I'd seen photos of one washed up on the beach last week. Lo and behold, it was!

I introduced myself: "It is a squid! Hi, I study these! Yes, I study this particular species, and yes, I will study this specific instantiation of it before your very eyes! Wonder and delight!"

Maybe I didn't say all that; I don't remember.

Continue reading and find out how I explained sperm to a  bunch of kids on the beach . . .

In May, I went to this science writing workshop in Santa Fe. It was an utterly amazing experience in every way. Many conversational threads wound through the week; one that particularly caught my fancy was "found science." Rather than writing about science as it is done by scientists, you focus on the science of everyday life, and pop culture in particular. You can start with the obvious--science fiction--and write The Physics of Star Trek, or you can grab onto something extremely popular but not obviously scientific, and dig until you find the science. Then you end up with The Physics of the Buffyverse, a delightful book by Jennifer Ouellette, who incidentally was my instructor at the Santa Fe Workshop. She rocks, and as far as I can tell, found science is her whole mission in life.

I came home from the workshop, considered quitting grad school (don't worry, it's normal), and started thinking: what is popular right now? What is hot? Where can I challenge myself to find science? Since I have always known what cool is (not), I settled on the Twilight phenomenon. This slice of pop-culture has been thoroughly devoured by precisely the demographic that science (and math and engineering) are still losing.

More about the found biology of Twilight . . .

When uttered on a Tuesday, what does "this weekend" mean? It's intriguingly ambiguous! With the help of verb tense, it's obvious in the case of the entry title that I'm referring to the weekend just past, June 20-21. But if I said, "I'm going a reptile show this weekend," I would just as obviously be referring to the future weekend, June 27-28.

So we can all agree that verb tense clears up the ambiguity. Then we introduce the phrase "next weekend" and throw everyone for a loop. If "this weekend" refers to June 27-28 then "next weekend" must logically refer to July 4-5. Right? However, "next weekend" can also be used to mean "this weekend," and different people will use it that way on different days of the week.

Don't believe me? Bring it up with friends and family and brace yourself a really rousing quarrel! But wait, before you do, let me actually tell you where I wish I was this past weekend (note the clever addition of a modifier for extra clarity and verbosity!):

TONMOCON III. That is a conference about cephalopods. Need I say more? Okay, a little more: Tonmo.com is "committed to being the best resource available for all things cephalopod" and that is really all you need to know about it.

TONMOCON III was in my very own hometown, and my very own friends and co-workers were among those giving talks. But I, the cephalopodiatrist, was not in attendance. Shame! Sorrow! Regret! Instead, I was in San Diego, sorting plankton. And that is what I will continue to be doing for most of the summer. I am a plankton-sorting beast. Of which--more to come soon, in another blog post.

Anyway, I missed Tonmocon, and I have never been to a Tonmocon, and this year it was so close and yet so far, and next year it will probably be in some awful place like Chicago. (Just kidding! I love you Chicago! And your deadly temperature extremes!) So this is a lame post about how I am sad I wasn't there.

But, I also wanted to say that my labmate and sometime arch-nemesis did make an appearance; in fact he performed a Humboldt squid dissection. I can only imagine that this was the highlight of the whole weekend. Especially for the two kids who were there; one went home with the beak and the other with the pen and a cup full of ink. (The "pen" of a squid is a stiff internal rod that gives its body shape, unlike the amorphous blob that is an octopus. It is believed to be a vestigial shell. The ink, of course, is used by the squid for defense and by schoolchildren for awkwardly writing their names on "I Dissected A Squid" certificates.)

The dissection was supposed to be webcast live, which didn't work, but when they post it online, I'll try to remember to link it here.

Maybe next weekend.

Did you know that Monday, June 8th is World Oceans Day? If not, well, you've got all weekend to decide how to celebrate. I'm starting a two-month plankton-sorting project, but feel free to think smaller.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium, that colossal advocate of all things Ocean, celebrated with a webcast from Julie Packard, the Aquarium's founder and director, and Alton Brown, food geek extraordinaire. The picture of the two of them in front of the sardines (or maybe anchovies) is simply delightful. Julie Packard looks comfortable, professional, like the conservation matriarch she is. Alton Brown just looks crazy. His hair is disorganized, his glasses are thick, his smile is a goofy grin. He's ready to explode stuff, or at the very least set something on fire.

The webcast started with an introduction of our two hosts, sitting there with the sardovies (anchines?). I hate to say so, but it went downhill from there. If you want to experience it for yourself, once they post it online, I'm not saying you shouldn't. Just minimize your browser and look at something else while you listen to the audio.

After the initial video clip, the rest of the webcast is simply a series of photographs, without so much as a single Ken Burns effect. Sometimes the photos match the audio, as when a picture of a little kid accompanies Alton mentioning that he was raised on a steady diet of Jaques Cousteau specials. Other times they are almost comically mismatched, as when the aquaculture discussion is illustrated by a fishing boat hauling up a net. (A couple of powerpoint slides even make an appearance, but that's just so embarassing I'm not going to talk about it.)

I guess they were trying to keep bandwidth down, but in that case, why not forgo video altogether? My hopes were too high. I wanted explosions! Or at least fire!

Our IT guy streamed the webcast in the main lecture hall. About a half dozen of us showed up to start watching, and only three of us stuck it out for forty minutes, at which point we gave up and turned it off altogether. To be fair, it wasn't entirely the disappointing content. Warm sunny days are rare enough here in Monterey that they must either be spent a) playing hooky or b) working hard, oh yes working so hard, because you are so dedicated to science that you will not take even the sunniest and warmest of days off. Good little scientist!

Not-working and staying inside, for example watching a webcast, is inexcusable (blogging, of course, is an exception). So we quit, and yes, that means I am committing the sin of criticizing something that I didn't even finish viewing. Sorry! If anyone sat through the whole thing and wants to tell me what I missed in the last twenty minutes, I'd love to hear it!

Anyway, the most interesting topic from the first forty minutes was sardines. Actually interesting, I mean, I'm not being facetious. Here's a fun fact about Alton Brown: he adores sardines. He says he eats them, fresh or canned, at least five times a week. FIVE TIMES A WEEK. I don't even eat ice cream that frequently!

Sardines came up because sardines always come up when people talk about eating lower on the food chain, which in turn always comes up when people talk about sustainable seafood. It's an argument most famously presented by Taras Grescoe in Bottomfeeder: although is it certainly possible to overfish low-food-chain items, they are at much less risk than high-food-chain items, because there are more of them to begin with and their turnover time is quicker.

It's intriguing to note that all of our big terrestrial meats are bottom-feeders (grazers) with the notable exception of pig*. There are probably a lot of historical and ecological factors behind that, but I'll just mention one: on land, grazers outgrow their predators. Elephants are bigger than tigers. Bison are larger than wolves. But in the water, animals get larger and larger as you travel up the food chain. Tuna are bigger than sardines. Sharks are larger than shrimp. And whales are . . . complicated.** Given that a bison's got more meat than a wolf and a tuna's got more meat than a shrimp, it's pretty straightforward to understand why we eat at different trophic levels in different ecosystems.

Anyway, the point is that it would be more sustainable to gobble sardines the way Alton does than to scarf down salmon and tuna the way some people do. But most Americans don't want to. Why not? Alton suggests that the turn-off is that fact that you buy sardines with the head still attached: "Americans probably wouldn't even eat chicken if it came with a head. . . . we are a country of the cut, not the carcass."

(I bet he's been working on that one for a while. It's poetical!)

I'm reminded me of a curious ethical quandary that my husband and I banter over, sometimes more and sometimes less seriously: I'll kill it but I won't eat it, and he'll eat it but he won't kill it.

I've killed plenty of squid and fish for science, but I've never deliberately eaten any animal. My spouse, meanwhile, has never been a vegetarian, but readily admits he's too soft-hearted to kill anything larger than an ant in cold blood.

Who's the greater hypocrite?
Who's to judge?

Just to be clear, I'm not unconflicted about the scientific carnage I've perpetrated. I've tried to justify every animal death in terms of advances in knowledge contributing to conservation, but it still bothers me. A lot. In fact, it is a contributing factor to my not wanting a career as a research biologist. I suppose I could study plants, like my wonderful vegan friend who works on orchids, but they're not my passion. If I'm a biologist, I'm going to study cephalopods, because that's what I love.

That's what I kill.



* Pigs and humans have a lot in common.

** Many whales are big predators, like sperm whales. So they fit right in. But the very biggest, the blue whales, have to mess up my rule-of-thumb by being bottom-feeders (metaphorically speaking--they don't actually eat off the bottom, like gray whales)

One of the most wonderful aspects of being known far and wide (read: to friends and family) as a cephalopodiatrist is that I no longer have to read the news. Oh, no. It comes to me. And you know which cephalopod has been in the news lately? Cuttlefish. And TV screens.

Here's the rest of my rambling on optics and cephalopods. (I am trying an experiment of not cross-posting the whole thing--if you find this annoying or awesome, let me know. If you don't care, then, uh . . . don't let me know.)

In Which I Make Liberal Use of Blockquotes

Mark C. Taylor recently(ish) wrote an Op-Ed in the NY Times titled "End the University as We Know It," claiming that American graduate education creates "a product for which there is no market and develops skills for which there is diminishing demand, all at a rapidly rising cost." Awesome! But never fear--Taylor has six suggestions for thoroughly restructuring the university, to benefit not only grad students but all of society.

Before getting there, he explains that the model of academic research is all about division of labor, leading to endless specialization: "research and publication become more and more about less and less." Graduate students are trained in this ever-narrowing scholarship, forming the core of the university's teaching and research force. But all good things must come to an end, and, on an unrelated note, all students eventually graduate. (Or quit. A not unpopular option!) Newly minted PhDs are then treated to the pleasure of finding that the only jobs they're qualified for are already taken by their (better-qualified) advisors.

So, what the heck, grad school? Why is this situation not remedied? Basically, says Taylor, because the entrenched academics like it that way:

[An] obstacle to change is that colleges and universities are self-regulating or, in academic parlance, governed by peer review. While trustees and administrations theoretically have some oversight responsibility, in practice, departments operate independently. To complicate matters further, once a faculty member has been granted tenure he is functionally autonomous. Many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets vehemently oppose it in their own departments.

Hmm! That sounded kind of familiar. Here's another academic writing about academia, Stephen Quake in "Letting Scientists Off the Leash". He's grinding a different axe, but the sentiment is surprisingly similar:

It strikes me as one of the ironies of modern life that professorial faculty members, who by and large lean to the left politically, accept such a brutal free-market approach to their livelihood. If they can't raise grants to support their research every year, they won't get paid. So not only do they have to worry about publish or perish, it's also funding or famine, in the very real sense that without a grant there might not be food on the family dinner table!

I couldn't have responded with more appropriate snark than Aurelie Thiele offered in a review: "Quake's post doesn't enhance the image of academics, unless whiny is the new cool."

Of course, Quake and Taylor are opining on the granting system and the modern university, respectively, which are distinct (though related) topics. They're also coming from different fields. Taylor is the chair of the religion department at Columbia, while Quake is a professor of bioengineering at Stanford.

In my very limited experience, humanities grad students tend to be woefully underpaid in comparison to the sciences (not that grad school in any field is a particularly lucrative profession) and to have virtually no non-academic career options. While science grads are often ill-informed about non-academic career options, they're definitely out there: plenty of science PhDs holds jobs in government, non-profit, and for-profit sectors. (Quake himself is, in addition to a professor, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.) All this is to say: it might make sense for a humanities academic to be more concerned about the plight of graduate students.

Meanwhile, science is a lot more expensive than humanities, and the need and competition for grants is correspondingly fiercer. So this might explain Quake's (over-dramatic) attention to the granting situation.

Getting back to Taylor's piece, let's take a look at his six-fold path towards an enlightened university model:

1. Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs. The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.

As a recent grad from my program put it, "Interdisciplinary studies are great, but c'mon, welcome to 10 years ago." At least in the sciences I know, we're fairly well inundated with interdisciplinary classes, organizations, workshops, degrees, etc. But not every class can be interdisciplinary, either. If you want to learn calculus, there's no way around taking a plain old calculus class.

2. Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.

Okay, this is . . . a little spacey. I'm all for considering unusual, unexpected solutions to problems, but I'm considering this one, and . . . no. Again with the calculus: maybe you could offer calculus in the Space zone of inquiry, as a precursor to learning Physics, and then Astrophysics. And then when you abolish the Space zone, you can start offering calculus in the Water zone . . . but really, why not just keep a nice Math department where you can offer calculus year after year?

3. Increase collaboration among institutions. All institutions do not need to do all things and technology makes it possible for schools to form partnerships to share students and faculty. Institutions will be able to expand while contracting. Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff. With these tools, I have already team-taught semester-long seminars in real time at the Universities of Helsinki and Melbourne.

This is a pretty cool idea. We've got a new local thingy that's trying to get all courses offered at all local institutions cross-listed and opened to all local students, regardless of student affiliation. When the institutions are in close physical proximity, this is great, but I'm not sure remote classes are quite there yet, as far as providing the same level of intellectual engagement. (Incidentally, the idea of specializing educational institutions reminds me of the idea of specializing news organizations.)

4. Transform the traditional dissertation. In the arts and humanities, where looming cutbacks will be most devastating, there is no longer a market for books modeled on the medieval dissertation, with more footnotes than text. . . For many years, I have taught undergraduate courses in which students do not write traditional papers but develop analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites to films and video games. Graduate students should likewise be encouraged to produce "theses" in alternative formats.

As a student who has been producing school assignments in "alternative formats" since grade school*, I'm theoretically delighted by this suggestion. But I really don't think this will cut it in the sciences.

5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students. Most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained. It is, therefore, necessary to help them prepare for work in fields other than higher education. The exposure to new approaches and different cultures and the consideration of real-life issues will prepare students for jobs at businesses and nonprofit organizations. Moreover, the knowledge and skills they will cultivate in the new universities will enable them to adapt to a constantly changing world.

All I can say is: Yes, oh yes!

6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure. Initially intended to protect academic freedom, tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors impervious to change. After all, once tenure has been granted, there is no leverage to encourage a professor to continue to develop professionally or to require him or her to assume responsibilities like administration and student advising. Tenure should be replaced with seven-year contracts, which, like the programs in which faculty teach, can be terminated or renewed. This policy would enable colleges and universities to reward researchers, scholars and teachers who continue to evolve and remain productive while also making room for young people with new ideas and skills.

Ah, the tenure debate! I'm not sure where I stand on this anymore. My initial reaction to the tenure system is impatience and disappointment--but I've heard some decent arguments for its continued relevance and importance. I keep thinking: why can't academic jobs be like other normal jobs? The impression I have of normal jobs (which is just an impression, since I have, um, never had one) is that most people live neither in constant fear of losing their job nor in smug satisfaction that it can never be taken away from them. I guess part of the big difference is that an academic department is a network of peers, not a hierarchy of bosses and subordinates. And when your peers are the ones evaluating you and deciding your job security, everything is just a bit trickier.

I'll have to think more about tenure, and give it a post of its own later . . . any thoughts to contribute?


* When we studied Greece in elementary school, I wrote a series of letters from various Greek soldiers, reporting home to their friends and families about the Trojan war. But these were not ordinary letters. Oh, no. I wrote them on tiny pieces of paper, packaged them in tiny envelopes with tiny addresses and stamps, put all of them into a tiny mailbag that I cut and sewed out of scrap fabric, and then put this tiny mailbag on the arm of an OCTOPUS POSTMAN that I cut out of CARDBOARD. Yes. I managed to work an octopus into an assignment about Ancient Greece. Hi, I'm a dork! And apparently have been since I was ten!

Alas, poor James, so he believed,
But then they dragged the net too deep.
He knew swim bladders do expand,
But, unaware how much they can,
Eager James leaned o'er the trawl--
Crustaceans, jellies, fish, and all.
Dear Jim died when a fish exploded--
He didn't think rattails were loaded.


* A direct quote from a Deep Sea Biology lecture . . .

Back in January, I had to go out on a boat. This happens sometimes in my line of work, so you might think that I'm used to it. And I am, for it is surprisingly easy to get used to any unhealthy relationship.

I love boats! Every time I climb on board I hear Ratty, from The Wind in the Willows, exuberantly claiming that "there is nothing--absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." Fresh wind in the hair! Rainbows in the salt spray! It's incredible!

Boats, meanwhile, hate me. Boats want me to be as sick as possible. They want to wring as much pleasure as they can out of my whole boating experience. But I will not be daunted! I am determined to continue loving boats, and so every time I am invited on board I say yes! Defiantly I toss back my meclizine, chew the ginger, munch on Triscuits, and dare the boat: do your worst.

Generally speaking, it does.

It's an arms race: me finding new ways to stave off seasickness, and boats finding creative new combinations of yaw, pitch, and roll. Back in January, I thought I might have finally won. I took a tablet of prescription-strength meclizine hours before the boat left, and popped a chewable Bonine every two hours on the boat. I ate lots and lots of crackers, and I felt fine. I felt great! I could have stayed on that boat all day! Come to think of it, I did.

After that, I didn't have occasion to get on a boat again until last Tuesday night. I remembered to bring all my anti-seasickness weapons to work, and I remembered to take the meclizine a couple of hours before we hit the water. But other than that one quick swallow, I wasn't thinking about seasickness at all. Instead, I was caught up in the packing list, the float plan, the science to be done.

(This is my problem, you see. Selective memory. Unchecked optimism. It does not matter how vomitiously ill I have been on a boat trip, that sickness remains but the faintest of clouds on the horizon of an otherwise idyllic boating memory. So by the time another boating opportunity presents itself, all I can think is: Yes please! I love boats! . . . But I digress.)

Hah, just kidding, we've left the parenthetical only to plunge into another digression. Let's meet that meclizine I keep talking about:

It's an antihistamine (blocks allergic reactions, like Benadryl) and an anticholinergic (blocks the neurotransmitter acetylcholine). I got a prescription for it back when I was going on a boat for a month and asked a doctor for something to help me with my nausea. (Incidentally, this turned out to be pretty foolish, because after the first night I got my sea legs and was just dandy fine for the whole month.) According to the copious labels covering the little orange plastic vial, it may cause DROWSINESS and BLURRED VISION (the latter illustrated with a charming pair of noses).

What is awesome though, and I didn't realize until much later, is that apparently Bonine is made out of meclizine, and in fact it has more meclizine per tablet than my prescription. Does that make any sense? No. It is dumb. Even dumber is that I keep taking the prescription stuff, feeling like it should have more of an effect than an OTC drug, although there is less drug in it. Hi, I'm a scientist! I'm clever!

So, why does an antihistamine/anticholinergic think it can do anything about seasickness? And why did it perform so spectacularly well in January and so appallingly badly last Tuesday (as you will read about)?

Before answering those questions, I'm going to take a step back and try to understand seasickness itself. My thoughts (as you may have noticed!) are somewhat chaotic, so I have attempted to impose order by organizing the rest of this post in three parts: I. Seasickness, II. Drugs, and III. How Tuesday Night Was The Worst Thing Ever, The End.

I. SEASICKNESS

As I was educating myself on this subject, I stumbled across a 1926 article from Time Magazine. According to the doctor quoted in this article,

There are five theories for [seasickness'] causation: 1) the labyrinthine (the ear contains two tiny sacs, the utricle and the saccule, and three semicircular canals, all of which aid in special orientation); 2) "muscle sense" disturbance (the muscle nerves localize in space the position of the limbs, head, eyes and other parts of the body); 3) eyestrain (the patient gets dizzy looking at the ever-changing sea); 4) peripheral vagus-nerve irritation (the insides get shaken up by the complicated motion of the boat and by the minute, incessant vibration of the engines); and 5) psychic stimuli (the patient sees others kharouping and vomiting over the rail and gets sick).

Let's take a moment to lament the fact that "kharoup" might not have seen print since 1926. What a great word.

Okay, let's look at those theories. Dr. Desnoes kindly states theories 3, 4 and, 5 in layman's terms that make some intuitive sense. For theories 1 and 2, however, he takes care to define "inner ear" and "muscle sense" but makes no mention of how motion would affect them negatively. Presumably they are "disturbed" in some way.

In the intervening decades, medical science hasn't come a whole lot closer to a definitive explanation for motion sickness.

The explanation you most commonly hear these days is a combination of Dr. Desnoes' theories 1 and 3. Your brain gets one message from the inner ear and a different message from the eyes, and this makes it confused. This makes sense, whether you're looking at the boat (which is moving along with you, so it looks like you're still) or the water (the waves that you're looking at are not the ones underneath you, so you're not moving in sync with them) or even the horizon--although this latter option is an oft-touted method for staving off sickness.

But why should conflicting messages from the inner ear and the eyes make you nauseous? In the immortal words of Eddie Izzard,

Throwing up is controlled by three little bones in the inner ear. They're called Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And they control hearing and vomiting. Don't know why they go together. God went, "Inner ear, you shall have hearing and vomiting as well. Yes, that'll be fun."

I don't know why they do it! Do you? Does anyone?

In fact, there's a researcher out there who thinks this whole "conflict theory" (inner ear vs. eyes) is total bunk. "Stoffregen has branded the conflict theory with the highest-order insult a scientist can muster: unfalsifiable," reads the article in Scientific American. This guy Stoffregen has a new theory: postural instability. This is sort of like a combination of Dr. Desnoes's theories 2 and 4. Basically, your body is getting shaken around on an unstable platform, you have a hard time keeping your balance, and that makes you sick. An interesting theory, and one that's gaining some support.

But he's got nothing to offer to those of us still hungering for a mechanistic explanation. Even if it is postural instability that causes motion sickness--again, why with the vomiting?

So, we don't really know why you get seasick. But here, have some nasty medicine!

II. DRUGS

An endlesss variety of related drugs are used to treat nausea and vertigo. Here are some of the most common (brand names in parentheses): meclizine (Bonine, Antivert), scopolamine (Transderm-Scop, usually a patch, Maldemar), dimenhydrinate (Dramamine), promethazine (Pentazene, Phenergan), and cyclizine (Bonine for kids).

They are all both antihistamines and anticholinergics, and the reason they work against nausea is, well . . .  "The precise mechanism of action in inhibiting the symptoms of motion sickness is not well understood." Honestly, this shouldn't be surprising. Since we don't know the mechanism behind seasickness, how could we possibly know the mechanism behind the drugs that work against it? It's pure trial and error. Come to think of it, the situation is not unlike psychiatric medication.

However, I'm pleased to report that there are plenty of studies about the practical effectiveness of various treatments. And not just the drugs, either.

Various behavioral modifications can be effective treatments too. Eating constantly works well for me (when I can keep it down), and others swear by it. Where on the boat do you stand? Where in the world do you look? Stoffregen might suggest that if we all just walk around straddling the deck, we'd be fine!

As usual, attitude is often the best drug. If you're afraid you'll get seasick, you probably will. If you're determined you won't, you'll likely stay healthy. But no matter how fervently I believe in mind over matter, it just won't work for me. Case study: Tuesday night.

III. HOW TUESDAY NIGHT WAS THE WORST THING EVER, THE END

(No, it's not quite the end. I know, I know, have I ever been so verbose? If you are still reading, thanks! You're a trooper! I promise to be done soon!)

Tuesday night: I took meclizine. I got on the boat with a fellow grad student, our advisor, and an intrepid captain. I ate about a quarter of a box of Triscuits. We arrived at our first station, did some science. I took careful notes. We embarked on a very bumpy ride to our second station. The boat stopped, in the sense that the motor was turned off, but kept going, in the sense that we were being juggled by some of the more unperiodic, unpredictable waves I've ever felt. I looked up, noted the beginnings of mutiny from within, and announced, "Sorry guys, I'm not going to be much help."

I tried, I really did, to keep taking notes. With intense focus, I wrapped my hand around the pen, and labored to scribe each letter and number. My fingers were tingling as though asleep, so I began to work my hands vigorously, trying to bring them back to life. Instead, the tingling spread. I noticed it in my arms, legs, and torso. Have you ever felt pins-and-needles in your torso? It's novel. Also, freaky.

While Fellow Grad and Advisor engaged in Science, I engaged the captain in a conversation about the tingling phenomenon, and discovered that I was suffering neurological symptoms in my speech as well. That is to say: I was slurring like a drunk. Fabulous.

My fine motor control was pretty much gone, so I gave up the notebook and concentrated on keeping myself alive. It was freezing cold, so I pulled on my gloves and scarf, although sometimes I would get the sweats and have to open my jacket and pull the scarf away from my neck so I could feel like I was getting enough air. It's worth recording that I was practically hyperventilating at this point. The captain suggested that I breath more slowly. I told her that I couldn't.

What an interesting set of symptoms, you are saying, yes, yes, but what about the nausea? I was nauseous, but I didn't come close to throwing up until near the very end of the Science, and it wasn't until we were almost back home that I managed a really good kharoup. After that, recovery proceeded quickly to basic usefulness, but exhaustion and mild nausea clung to me persistently through the next day.

Wow, you are saying now, thanks for sharing! I didn't need to hear that story at all! Okay, true, but here is the interesting medical information: meclizine, like many another antivertigo drug, acts to prevent you from throwing up. (By blocking acetylcholine, apparently. Who knows why that works?) But it has no effect on the other symptoms of seasickness, like exhaustion and dizziness,and it doesn't even alleviate your nausea, it just keeps you from vomiting. Which would probably make you feel better. Thanks for nothing, meclizine!

But it's even better than that--blocking acetylcholine can have some delightful side effects of its own. Blurred vizion and dizziness are, of course, well advertised on the packaging, but I feel pretty comfortable blaming my slurred speech and tingling on the meclizine, too. I'm lucky I didn't get any hallucinations.

We did catch squid that night, didn't we?


* The title of this entry came from a friend of mine who used to be a naval engineer. If I understand correctly, part of her job was to calculate a seasickness index for every area of the ships she worked on--"vomitiously ill" being an unacceptable level of seasickness. Or something.

What is up with the poetry, you may be asking? That was weird!

Well, I love poetry, and although I have produced a great deal of it which ought never to see the light of day, some pieces seem sufficiently amusing to share. So instead of your regularly scheduled geekiness, there will occasionally appear here a poem, which is . . . I guess just differently flavored geekiness.

Particularly true of today's poem, which I would very much like to illustrate someday as though it were a children's book.

Pet Peeve

My pet peeve up and ran away.

It’s been gone since yesterday.

I’m worried that it may run wild—

Nip the neighbors, savage a child.

 

The police could help if it were under

Some official license number.

This works for dog or cat or bird

But my pet peeve’s not registered.

 

What if it finds a wild peeve mate?

And what if those two procreate?

They’ll grow with every generation,

Establishing a population.

 

What if the whole herd turns feral?

They might terrorize some rural

Village, or become invasive

In places where peeves are not native.

 

The ecologists will come back to me.

And so will the village authorities.

They’ll hunt me down and lock me up

For failing to keep my peeve chained up.

 

And that will be a lesson to me:

Never to let a peeve run free.

So keep your pet peeves locked away,

And always, always neuter or spay.

If you were asked to identify the heart of the world, what would you say?

The Earth's inner core?
An indy flick?
Tibetan beyul?

The anatomical heart of an organism is a muscular pump driving the circulation of oxygen and nutrients. In a physiological sense, then, I contend that Earth has two hearts: Antarctica and the Arctic.

Here's the story. The Earth is tilted. So it has seasons. Earth's seasonality is most pronounced at the poles, which oscillate annually between all day, all the time, and all night, all the time. During the light, warm summer, the massive ice shelves floating in the polar seas melt and retreat. During the dark, cold winter, the Arctic, Ross, and Weddell seas hunker down to hibernate under blankets of sea ice.

Freezing saltwater actually creates two products: nearly-fresh sea ice, and hypersaline, supercooled seawater. You may remember (and if not, take my word for it) that the colder and saltier water gets, the denser it becomes. Dense water is heavy water. It sinks. So every winter at the poles (and it's always winter at one of the poles!) a continuous stream of very cold, very salty, and incidentally very well-oxygenated (cold water can hold more oxygen) water pours down into the deep basins of the polar seas. These basins fill up, and then the cold salty water spills over the edges into other ocean basins. From the Arctic, it all flows into the Atlantic, since the shallow Bering Strait won't let it into the Pacific. From the Antarctic, it flows everywhere.

This sinking, flowing water leaves behind it an aching emptiness in the hearts of the poles. They try to fill the hole with warm water from the tropics. And as the warm tropical water rushes eagerly into lonely polar arms, the abandoned equator replaces it with cold water from the depths, an emotional rebound called upwelling. (If you don't like the anthropomorphic perspective, just think of the whole thing as some kind of boring convection current.)

Thus, formation of sea ice is the muscular pump for the world's thermohaline circulatory system, which provides oxygen and nutrients to the ocean ecosystem and also happens to regulate the entire Earth's climate, thereby allowing it to support life as we know it. All thanks to the world's two polar hearts, each beating steadily once per year. Q.E.D.

What's that? Organisms have only one heart? Look, okay, it's not the Earth's fault she's bipolar! Furthermore, cephalopods have three hearts, and nobody gives them a hard time about it.

We're all familiar with the hand turkey, that staple of second-grade Thanksgiving celebrations across America. (Though the enjoyment is apparently not limited to second grade.)

When I took an embryology course last summer, I decided to adapt the hand-tracing aesthetic to the illustration of marine larvae. The result? A Hand Pluteus in 10 easy steps!

PART I: The Body

Step 1. Trace your hand.

Step 2. Place your other hand over the traced hand, lining up the fingers. Trace only the thumb of this hand.

Step 3. Close the body along the bottom with a continuous curve from outside of pinky to outside of forefinger, cutting off both thumbs. Draw another line from inside of pinky to inside of forefinger, cutting off middle and ring fingers.

PART II: The Skeleton

Step 4. Get a new color. Start with the postoral skeletal rods.

Step 5. The outer branch of these skeletal rods is fenestrated, so add some holes.

Step 6. Now add the anterolateral skeletal rods. Don't forget to fenestrate!

Step 7. Finally, the posterodorsal skeletal rods. Note the lack of fenestration.

PART III: The Gut

Step 8. Get a new color. The digestive tract runs through the center of the pluteus, and its muscular wall is quite thick. The overall shape changes with peristalsis during feeding, so it's all right to take some liberties here.

PART IV: Finishing Touches

Step 9. Now that your pluteus has a gut, you can feed it. Green algal cells would be appropriate.

Step 10. Display your creation proudly!

What's that?

You don't know what a pluteus is?

Oh. Well. It's the larval form of echinoids (sea urchins and sand dollars) and ophiuroids (brittle stars). They acquire their arms in pairs as they develop, leading to progressively older two-arm, four-arm, six-arm, and eight-arm plutei. You've just drawn a six-arm pluteus, of course. Here's the six-arm pluteus of Dendraster eccentricus, the Western sand dollar, in two focal planes for enhanced 3D effect:

This is important.

I'm not being puerile, prurient, or (worst of all!) pedantic.

I recently saw the Vagina Monologues for the first time. But I'm not here to discuss the horrific, heartbreaking stories of Bosnian, and, this year, Congolese women and girls. And I'm not going to speculate on or contribute to the controversy surrounding the play.

Instead, let's talk semantics.

Here's a vocabulary lesson: the vagina is the female reproductive orifice, which functions in copulation and birth. The vulva is the external female genitalia, including mons, clitoris, and labia as well as the vaginal opening.

The Vagina Monologues are, for anyone who hasn't seen them, absolutely and unarguably about vulvas, and are also committed to promoting accurate and open communication. For such a theatrical piece to abandon a precise, anatomically correct term in favor of an ambiguous, inaccurate one is nothing short of a disappointment. To me. Personally.

I am aware (and have become more so during recent discussions on this topic) that the colloquial usage of vagina has usurped the definition of vulva, and that vagina is in fact the word that most people learn first and use most often. E.g. on the playground: "Boys have penises and girls have vaginas!" Okay. I know that language is fluid, that vocabulary re-invents itself, and I realize that languages constantly adopt new words and meanings while shedding those that are obsolete.

But I'm not giving up vulva without a fight.

The word vulva fills a real need in the English language: to describe the female external genitalia. We have excellent and unambiguous words for male genitalia. No one says "penis" and means "scrotum," or vice versa. Why can't we keep "vulva"?

Most of my friends are in the midst of their childbearing years. I make this plea to those who do, in fact, bear children: Let our daughters learn to name their vulvas (vulvae) at the same age they learn to name their elbows.

I did. Thanks, Mom.


Update

A friend lent me Vagina Monologues, the book. There are more monologues written than are presented in any single performance, so I knew I hadn't seen them all, but I didn't know that I'd missed "The Vulva Club". Eve Ensler introduces this piece by copying a letter she received:

As the honorary chair of the Vulva Club, we would be more than pleased to make you a member. However, when Harriet Lerner developed this club over twenty years ago, membership was predicated on the understanding and correct usage of the word vulva . . .

Hah. Apparently, the letter prompted Ms. Ensler to write another monologue, but not to make any concessions on her pre-existing usage of vagina.

If, as I was, you're wondering whether that letter is only a tongue-in-cheek jest on the part of a private disgruntled citizen like me, check out this article by Dr. Harriet Lerner.