Thursday, January 22, 2009

Sweet memories of motherland

TRS and LE7 (who love Minnesota and Wisconsin respectively) inspired me to share how I love my state. Meaning, my birthplace.

It’s mostly scenes like this that bring up the memories of my sweet, happy, innocent childhood:

20 comments:

shmulie said...

Hah! Serves those oligarchs in their SUVs right!

shmulie said...

I do say, you blog rather prolifically. Now I don't get around much, but if my small sampling is any indicator, the same could be said about your commenting.

Makes me wonder whether this alleged "school" thing you keep talking about is all just in your head. (no pun intended.)

Anarchist Chossid said...

What “school” thing?

shmulie said...

You know, that you like study the brain or what have you. I'm not buying it.

Anarchist Chossid said...

Are you saying the IQ of my posts is too low for a grad student? :) Otherwise, I don’t get it…

Anyway, I would say that I wish I was free from all the obligations and be able to go spend some time in yeshiva, but in reality, I love the obligations.

le7 said...

Thanks for the live link, I better post something of quality quick to retain any new commenters.

le7 said...

Oh deary me I forgot to subscribe.

So let's see.

"Oh Neeskara Oh Neeskara Colors Gold and Blue! Here's a Cheer for Old Neeskara..." TTTO On Wisconsin.

shmulie said...

Axe: I was talking about the volume of your posts and comments as they would presumably affect your schedule.

"Presumably", of course, is that tip off that I was being presumptuous.

Anarchist Chossid said...

Oh, that. :)

The more I look like I am wasting time, the busier I am. :) There is nothing to do when you’re acquiring data except some shtus. Computer and amplifier do everything by themselves. (At the same time, I am monitoring how things are going, so I couldn’t really concentrate on anything serious. Although sometimes I listen to Rabbi Paltiel’s shiurim.)

Thank G-d I am not in Molecular Biology. There you just pipette stuff from one tube to another and sit and wait. At least in electrophysiology you get instant gratification of seeing live data.

le7 said...

Plus, dedicated students/bloggers don't sleep. At least I know I don't... (while maintaining a 4.0 thank you very much).

shmulie said...

Does it leave you wishing for the days when talking to a computer was accomplished through the intermediary of a hole punch?

shmulie said...

That would keep you busy.

Anarchist Chossid said...

Well, thank G-d I am not taking classes. (Or TAing.)

le7 said...

Oh yeah, you're a grad student. The only reason I'm going through the pain of being an undergrad is for the glory of graduate student status!

Anarchist Chossid said...

Does it leave you wishing for the days when talking to a computer was accomplished through the intermediary of a hole punch?

Not at all. Data analysis was crazy. I actually cannot even fathom how Hodgkin and Huxley, for instance, did their work. Even 15 years ago…

I am not even going to mention no Internet. No pubmed.com, no Google Scholar. How did they manage?

Anarchist Chossid said...

Well, presumably also for the “excitement” of research. Meaning, crawling in a maze full of sharp pointy things with your eyes closed.

le7 said...

How did they survive without pubmed.com and biosis.com?

shmulie said...

It was the enormous discipline required to do such research in those days that produced the intellectual rigor of once. Also why the University was a more venerated institution.

At least, that's what I like to believe. Everything was better in black and white and 10 frames per second.

Anarchist Chossid said...

Well, I think the intellectual vigor remains; we can bypass the grunt work and focus on ideas and the fun stuff (and believe me, science is still excrutiatingly difficult and requires utmost interest — something again I am troubled with, considering A"R's approach to chochmas chitzoinius).

On a related subject, do you think Yiddishe velt would be better off without ArtScroll?

Elisheva, they used reference rooms, had periodicals and whatnot with abstracts published and organized and spent a lot of time reading. We are very privileged to be able to find all existing articles on a certain topic published within last few months in seconds or minutes.

le7 said...

I said it more jokingly, but yes we are privileged. One of the greatest advantages to being a part of a large university is free access to so many online scholarly journal databases.