Neurotopia

Ok, I lied about the sex. That's only on Fridays. Cheese is great, though!

1) Tangled Bank is up! It went up Friday, actually, but I've been out of the loop. I recommend my own posts (of course), and also a post about the myths of picking up baby birds! I wish I had known this a few weeks ago. There was a poor baby bird cheeping in distress outside its nest. I was terrified to pick it up, and didn't know what I'd do if I did. As it was, Darwin got that poor baby bird pretty good, Darwin being the big tough cat down the street. I heard it's heartbreaking cheeps for only part of the night. Next time, I am totally picking up that bird.

2) The glorious Dr. Isis has been receiving some flak over on blog for some critiques she made of a paper. To my amusement, the authors took umbrage, and are now refusing to play. I would write something about what I think, only everyone else has already said everything so well! Check out DrugMonkey and Coturnix. Abel Pharmboy also contributed some interesting comments on Dr. Isis' post, as well as PalMD and Comrade PhysioProf. Mostly what this makes me think is how much I'm am going to LOVE ScienceOnline '09!! I really want to get in a room with these people and watch the discussions. I might need to bring a laptop and liveblog the bar. I want to grow up to be a blogger just like them!

What this also reminds me of is an incident that occurred at last year's Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego. My advisor met up with another prof with whom my advisor does not agree. A discussion ensued and got heated. While my advisor remained calm and collected, the other prof got increasingly insulting, I maintain that my advisor won the argument quite easily (dude, the data is THERE). These things take place in real life, too, and polite-sounding words can cover some truly nasty insults.

3) I know at least a couple of you have heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and I know a couple of people who participate every year. Basically, you try to get, I think it's 50,000 words written in a month. This is a heroic undertaking. I am not a novelist (my half written romance novel aside), but it turns out that there is a separate InaDWriMo for acadmics!! It started out as International Dissertation Writing Month, but now it's all sorts of academic writings. This is good, as I am sad and pathetic and nowhere near writing my dissertation. But it has motivated me and I have entered the fray! My personal goals are these:

- two full drafts of my first two first author papers, ready for submission to my committee, which is conveniently meeting on December 1.
- an hour long presentation for said committee meeting.
- papers read for said meetings, hopefully amounting to a boatload (more than 20).

I know, this doesn't seem like much, but in the intervening time I also have a conference, another presentation and due date for something else, and experiments to run. Not to mention, of course, this here blog, which will hopefully not suffer.

So I am relying on YOU. You, my thoughtful readers (I know there's got to be SOMEONE out there who reads me!), to help me out and motivate me to get through this insanity. By telling you what I'm planning, it's out there, and I have no choice but to get it all done.

And with that, into the fray!

Edit: oh yeah, and those 20 papers I need to read, those are NOT ones that I will blog (unless they are REALLY cool), they are rather the ones that need to be read for my dissertation. The blog reading is separate. Not because I'm trying to hide my reading from you, but rather because I seriously doubt you want to read about "5-HT 1B receptor-mediated serotoninergic modulation of methylphenidate-induced locomotor activation in rats." So I have to keep my geeky excitment about this REALLY COOL PAPER to myself.