danny’s space

I guess the SMH Heckler isn’t interested in publishing an article that, in part, bags its own readers out. So here is is on my personal publishing platform, Wordpress.

There’s always much whinging about the standard of train services. I don’t disagree with these sentiments, but I reckon other factors like passenger etiquette have much to do with how much you enjoy your train ride. Or not. This is but a selection of the shining examples on show inside CityRail trains, in no particular order.

Big Kahunas are boys who have trouble keeping their legs together. Be it a low sperm count or overzealous showmanship, they decide that they must take up two seats worth of leg space to air their boys out, while pressing their leg against yours. Euck.

The Blackberries are close cousins. These overfed, overpaid executives must stay connected using all sorts of telecommunication paraphernalia which live in, of all places, their pants pockets. It’s great fun sitting next to one of these types, if you like an antenna in your thigh.

Mobile Megaphones, in the spirit of sharing their dinner plans with the rest of the carriage, choose to scream their conversation at their mobiles. I pity the person at the other end of the line. Oh, and TALKING LOUDER IN TUNNELS doesn’t make the signal any stronger, only the anger of fellow commuters.

iPod Blasters are sharing folk who blow their eardrums while polluting their air. I don’t want to hear JT bringing sexy back, and don’t care much for the latest hard trance groove. Alas, if only I were an otologist.

Knee Rubbers overestimate their flexibility and slenderness, and choose to always sit in the aisle seat. Doesn’t matter if there are two empty seats next to you – just block people from sitting down. And better yet, when people try to get past you, just casually sit up in your seat because this will obviously give them enough room to manoeuvre past your protruding knees.

Broadsheet Readers are also a pet hate. Pulling out their broadsheet newspaper behind you, they decide your hairstyle needs drastic remodelling and proceed to fluff your hairdo with today’s news. The most time-starved offenders even bring the newspaper in its delivery tube and perform a splitting rendition of nails-down-a-chalkboard while unwrapping their hairstyling device.

And if you’re fortunate enough to knock off early in the afternoon, you’ll be rewarded by hoards of school kids (travelling for free, no less) who make it their job to fill up empty seats with bags, talk like Mobile Megaphones, and like, are like soooooo like whatever to the death stares they receive from disgruntled co-passengers.

Now pass this article through someone’s hair and give it to that eavesreading Big Kahuna sitting next to you, and squeeze past that Knee Rubber blocking your exit from the aromatic evening train.

Was chatting to Matt, a friend from church, last night on MSN. He’s a fan of rock music (which I’m oblivious to) and made mention of a new song out by Good Charlotte with lyrics:

Baptized in the river
I’ve seen a vision of my life
And I wanna be delivered
In the city was a sinner
I’ve done a lot of things wrong
But I swear I’m a believer
Like the prodigal son
I was out on my own
Now I’m trying to find my way back home
Baptized in the river
I’m delivered
I’m delivered

Lately I’ve noticed quite a few ‘Christian’ ideas seeping into popular culture, especially songs (which I guess you could say reflects this pop culture well). Words like heaven, sin, and even Jesus and messiah pop up time and time again. Just do a search on any lyrics engine and you’ll find a load of songs to do with these. Of course there are heaps to do with love as well.

And then this morning, saw a blog on the SMH about Junkies, Christians and the void, in which ‘the void’ was described as:

“Growing up, I thought I was weird or depressed because so often, I’d sit back and feel like I was going to be swallowed by an aching emptiness, this void and that everyone else was just getting on with their lives and didn’t feel it as well.”

Seems teenagers may feel this void, and that it may be linked somewhat to the hardcore punk rock that has been picked up by this age group:

“Ive just turned 18 and like many teenagers have become obsessed with the void (the reason for the rise of emo-ism and basically any band that can be labelled as whinge rock). I found that I blamed this feeling of emptiness, absolute shittiness, and the desire to adopt genocide as a profession on other people.”

Or, is this an attributing factor to why people drink?

“I find that the feeling of emptiness also goes away when I drink, but it comes straight back as soon as I sober up. Drinking isn’t a very healthy way to fill the void though, so I guess I’ll just have to keep on travelling.”

Or is God just another way to fill the void as one comment suggested:

“Oh my goodness. Sam you hit the nail on the head! I went to a Catholic School and every year we had reformed drug users come and tell us about the horrible lives they used to lead and how Jesus saved them. I thought it was about replacing one addiction with another (they really REALLY seem to get into their faith, almost as if it was a substitute for their prior addiction.) Perhaps it’s about filling the void?”

Or perhaps Christianity really does shed some decent insight into this matter…

“It became clear to me that right from the very beginning of mans [sic] separation from God; he has been trying to figure out a way back, how to fill that void, without even realizing that might be what he is looking for. However, just by his very nature, every chance he gets he stuffs it up…. Each of us has our own Egypt our own wilderness and our own forms of slavery, be it drugs, sex, addictions, overeating, depression… it [God] gives me constant affirmation that I dont need to spent my life sweating the small stuff. Im not a happy clappy Christian, just a regular quiet believer who stuffs up on a regular basis.”

Food for thought.

A very happy Hallmark day to all!

February 14th - what card companies, chocolate manufacturers and rose growers look forward to in the shortest month of the year. Too much commercial hype around a very simple concept that shouldn’t be restricted to one day of the year.

A few selected quotes from people on the SMH News Blog about Hallmark Day:

February 14 doesn’t mean anything and is simply a commercial reason for giving gifts. How about giving someone some flowers when YOU feel like it?!

…if you need valentines day to remember to give your partner some flowers or some extra attention, then some thing’s wrong with you…

When did we actually need a special day to remember and love someone? Why not do something special on any other day of the year and not be such a cliche.

Of course this represents one extreme, but I lean towards that extreme. Why need February 14th in order to do these things? From now on, I declare the new Valentine’s Day to be June 7th. Go the rebellion. Starting 2008.

And to smother flames, I do agree with those that say Hallmark Day is just a nice opportunity to stop what you’re doing and do something different/special. But why follow all this commercial hype - it’s a shame, it’s like what Christmas and Easter have become…

Online tests used to be the craze in high school. Dodgy websites asked you questions about your kitchen utensil preference and bowel habits to determine what type of dog you were. Sometimes personality tests also have a bad wrap, putting people into distinct ‘categories’.

But there are some uses that stem from knowing your ‘personality type’. They can help you understand in a more concrete way how you relate to people, how you deal with stress, what to watch out for, and so on.

A good one to use is the DiSC test. This is useful in group situations, figuring out how each person in the group handles tasks and relates to each other. We did this at our church’s leaders’ retreat earlier this year and it was quite helpful. It categorises people into the categories of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness (there are other descriptions that are largely similar). Free online versions of this test are available at this link and also on this current website (I didn’t realise this was like the DiSC test until I did both!). A description of the DiSC personality types may be found here, or within the temperament survey. Note that the DiSC test should be performed in terms of a ‘role’ - that is, you should take the test in terms of your mindset in a particular role or position, like youth group leader, team member, etc. It makes a difference.

One test that’s been around for ages is the Jung-Myers-Briggs test. This is the more well-known test that assesses your personality in terms of four factors: Introversion/Extroversion, Thinking/Feeling, Intuition/Sensing, and Judging/Percieving. The most useful indicator I find is the introversion/extroversion factor, which tells you where you need to gain ‘energy’ from (very useful to understand!). A nice description of this test can be found here. Free online versions of this test can be found here, here, and here.

So go forth and find out your personality types. It might help you understand how you relate to people or how to recharge your batteries. For DiSC, I’m a high D and high C. For the Jung-Myers-Briggs, I’m an ISTJ.

The good ol’ US of A style with turkey! Apparently these start in the early afternoon; and there I was thinking it was actually like a traditional Asian ‘dinner’ which started around 7. But it was great of Michelle (from Penny’s lab) and her husband, both relatively fresh from the US, to host an early thanksgiving dinner for the associated labs today. Nice to get everyone together in an out-of-lab setting for food and chat. Only problem was that it was in Quakers Hill, which is about as far west as Prospect Reservoir. A few observations about westie roads:

• Everyone drives at the speed limit.
• Roads are very wide. A two-lane ’surburban’ road easily trumps the Pacific Highway in width.
• Pedestrian users of westie roads are scary. They come right up to your car while walking past (ever heard of the footpath???) and stare at you.
• There is an unbelievable amount of road-side parking.

So anyway, back at uni tomorrow to do some follow-up work on my project. Hopefully won’t be too long. Sara finishes tomorrow which is good. Many movies to catch up on, like Da Vinci Code, X-Men III, Bridget Jones’ Diary II (I didn’t just type that…), High School Musical… Fun!

Also, another thing about being on ‘holidays’ is that you actually don’t get much holidays because people (who are still going with exams and whatnot) pile things onto you. I’m not complaining, it’s great to be able to help; it’s just an observation. Today after church was a bit crazy - Nuggy and I were running around trying to recruit people for ministry teams next year while trying to organise the signing of Ernie’s farewell book and also trying to entice people to go to Ernie’s farewell BBQ. Not a big list so far which is disappointing.

What a rort.

Thank you for purchasing an article through the Nature Publishing Group.

You purchased the following article(s):

Identification of DNA sequences required for activity of the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter

The total cost of the order is: US$ 30.0

The article is three pages long. That’s US$10 per page. But it’s not available on USYD, UNSW or UTS library servers, argh! Which meant I would have had to go into uni just to get a three page article. At this stage in the game I thought it would be worth it. Maybe I’m an idiot for purchasing it. But hey it’s done and I can (perhaps) sleep easier. It’s an article I needed - that’s my excuse. Mind you I haven’t read it yet.

Hmm, that’s almost as much as this server costs a year… I feel so jipped.

Why do they call it science a collaborative exercise if all people ever publish is successes? Very rarely in the literature do you find articles on artefacts or, *gasp*, failures. Unless of course you study the artefact/failure to bits and then maybe some obscure journal somewhere may publish it.

Even many of the successes that get published probably have some degree of artefactuality in them anyway. The big names can publish without much fear of reprisal because they’re so revered in the field. So many people worship these researchers and go with the flow that the O’ revered ones can probably get away with saying ludicrous things like plants actually dance around at night when no-one is watching.

I think general scientific collaboration would be greatly improved if people talked about failures. Since 90% of molecular biology experiments are failures, there will be plenty to publish. This way, not only can honours students actually publish stuff, but scientists can learn from others’ mistakes so that the same bleeding mistake doesn’t have to be repeated in hundreds of labs across the world, wasting everyone’s time and money.

I say set up the Journal of Failures and Artefacts (abbreviated to J. F. Art. for obvious toilet humour reasons) and let the papers roll in. Let’s learn from the mistakes of others - who knows, perhaps we’d have a cure for cancer and AIDS already if people actually published failures.

Even the SMH has taken on this topic that seems to be plaguing every man and his dog in today’s society.

Check out the Frankenstein replies on time-saving tactics. Everything from changing your pants while driving (as in moving, not stopped at a red light), weeing on your feet in the shower to avoid tinia (is this true?), eating while umm egesting, and of course moving away from Sydney. No doubt more interesting replies to come.

Public transport (as expected) is posted as a major time waster. I probably spend 2-3 hours a day dealing with Cityrail and State buses - dealing with and not ‘on’ because most of the time is spent waiting for the damn thing to arrive. Why must buses come in packs of 6? Are they beers? Why must trains terminate at Lindfield? Why must the air conditioning be switched off on trains during the summer but work perfectly well in the winter? (Okay the last one wasn’t about time, but it sure makes a train trip feel longer.)

That basically means what does your personality have to do with your blood type. I’ve always held the theory that your blood type is correlated with your personality, albeit loosely. Maybe it’s like one of those horoscope things - like when you read a description and think, “Hey yeah, I’m like that!”

So anyway my theory, from looking at family and friends whose blood types I actually know, is this (generalisations and hyperboles here!):

A - angry and stressed
B - more relaxed, easygoing
AB - narky, wound up
O - the miscellaneous group

Turns out, thanks to Angela’s web hunting, that other people, especially the Japanese, have looked into this as well. Check out this site and also this one.

Basically, their descriptions are:

A - stressed, conscientious, perfectionists
B - relaxed, unconventional, strong minded
AB - unpredictable, set own conditions, trustworthy, Anime villains
O - average, sociable

So, what does your blood type say about you?

7:15pm - Transferred from Optus internet helpdesk to telephone helpdesk, promised that it was open until 8pm.

7:16pm - Muzak. Your call is important to us. An operator will be with you shortly.

7:20pm - More muzak. We apologise for the delay.

7:25pm - Ditto.

7:30pm - Hang up the phone, ring them again. 133 937. Follow the prompts.

7:32pm - Our telephone helpdesk is open between the hours of 8am and 7pm. Please call back.

7:33pm - Dial tone.

The machine hung up on me! The gall…