Training Archive: barbIn the 7 days ending 2007-07-28:
| [csv] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| « | » |
| » now | |||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||||||
| S | M | T | W | H | F | S | ||||||||
Saturday Jul 28 | ||
| Note | |
| From news article in 20 July 2007 issue of Science:
"the Portuguese rid the small West African island of Principe of tsetse [flies] in 1905, largely by equipping plantation workers with sticky backpacks." | ||
| C • ! 2 | ||
| Bicycling 40:00 [2] | |
| to the Fells. A little pain in the right knee. | ||
| Running 52:40 [3] | |
| Planned to run Skyline Trail, but 25 minutes into it bailed and came back via Reservoir Trail then Skyline. Wore O shoes, not so great on rocks. | ||
| Bicycling 38:00 [1] | |
| Home from Fells. | ||
| Note | |
| Plimoth Plantation with brother Doug and his family, and Dave's dad & brother. | ||
Friday Jul 27 | ||
| Note | |
| Plane reading:
Harry Potter (beginning to end, British version picked up in Vienna) Middlesex (ah, I finally get the title) by Eugenides Both very good. | ||
| C • Middlesex 2 | ||
| Bicycling 8:00 [3] | |
| commute | ||
Thursday Jul 26 | ||
| Note | |
| Other books touched upon (skimmed some pages) while here:
A Beautiful Mind - saw and mostly forget the movie, but only in reading the book realizing that I know some of the other profs mentioned at MIT - Minsky, Mattuck. The Road Less Traveled by M Scott Peck - heavy on the therapy, but I love (!) the distinction between feelings of love and love itself which is not a feeling but an action, an activity. | ||
| C • Peck love 2 | ||
Wednesday Jul 25 | ||
| Note | |
| I'm feeling the major gut-wrenching depression that often hits me when I go to these conferences. It wasn't really bad until today - maybe all the biking helped, and I didn't bike far last night or this morning because I stayed in a hotel in town. I'm not sure what fuels the bad feelings, but I think it's related to feeling like an outsider.
Maybe this is a CLUE? That I should maybe not go to these things? That I should find some avocation that is more in the comfort zone? I handed out the prizes for the orienteering event at the closing ceremonies for the conference. A guy in the audience recognized me from undergrad MIT days and approached me afterward ("did your last name used to be Moore?"): Lee Newburg; he lived on my dorm floor (Jack Florey). He's married with 4 kids ages 1, 3, 8 and 10, and working in New York on transcription factor analysis. | ||
| C • the solution 5 | ||
| Bicycling 10:00 [1] | |
| Hotel to the Prater to return the bike. | ||
| Walking 10:00 [1] | |
| Walked to the center of Moedling with my cousin Dave, whose apartment I've been staying in, for dinner. Then up the hillside to some fake ruins build in the 1800s by the Lichtenstein prince for a more scenic view from the castle awarded him by Austria for help in some war.
This is the first I've seen of Dave this visit; he's been in the US most of the time I've been here. He is a civil engineer specializing in water. He told me that Boston managed to cut water consumption by 40% over a 10 year period starting in the late 1980s, by building code changes (showerheads, toilets) and so on, thereby avoiding spending billions of dollars on bringing in more water and treating it. He says that in Europe they've gotten their act together about water management in a whole river valley, even if it crosses more than one country, doing a good job of identifying all the stakeholders and bringing them into the decision-making process, and using science and modeling to optimize water plans. The EU requires that there be a water plan for every major river valley. In the US, there has long been a problem that dams were built by the Bureau of Land Reclamation for irrigation purposes and dams were built by the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control, and there wasn't good coordination. 
Cousin Dave 
Modern-day Moedling 
Still a hint of Moedling's luscious landscape from the museum paintings I saw several days ago. | ||
Tuesday Jul 24 | ||
| Bicycling 2:05:00 [3] | |
1:45 from Moedling to the conference. :20 back to the hotel to leave the bike and check into the hotel for one night. Then subway back to the conference, and bus to the conference dinner and back to the hotel. At dinner, I sat with David and his fiancee Lissa from California - they're very much in love which is kind of fun to be around. Also Janet and her son Christof and husband Johann who are from South Africa and now living in Germany. Christof is about 4 and very engageable. It's fun to see him each year, because he's a lot bigger each time, but with the same fun-loving personality.
Janet, Christof and Johann 
David and Lissa I was sad that it was my last bike commute from Moedling. I took some photos. 
Sunflowers. Some of these photos lean to one side because I took them from a moving bike... 
Tree-lined path through fields, first half of commute. 
First glimpse of city in the distance. 
Getting closer... 
In traffic. Store on the left is called "Love & Fun Megastore". 
Lots of bikes. 
Note the "Do not ride your bike across the street right now" sign. 
OK to go now. 
Monument to someone. 
Along the bridge over the Danube, toward the conference center. Conference duties today included moderating a panel discussion on the controversial issue of software and data sharing. | ||
| C • Controversy 5 | ||
| Note | |
| Read "The Nanny Diaries". | ||
Monday Jul 23 | ||
| Bicycling 3:00:00 [3] | |
| Biked to the Hilton, and left my bike there, taking the subway to the conference. I like biking better than the subway.
Ran the Public Affairs and Policies Committee meeting; as usual, not a lot of people. In the evening, I went to a Vienna palace for a scientific organizing committee dinner. Very fancy. But hot. I left early, and biked to the Prater where they were showing "Westworld" as part of their old sci fi series. It was very fine: free, outdoors, with chairs and tables, and drinks for sale. 
Chris and others at the dinner. 
My heroine Terry (on the right) and anti-hero Temple at the dinner. 
Westworld on the outdoor screen. | ||
Sunday Jul 22 | ||
| Bicycling 2:31:00 [1] | |
| Woke up somewhat refreshed at 6:15 am and decided to take the bike in after all!
1:15 Moedling to the Hilton. 0:16 Hilton to conference center 0:40 back and forth to get my computer... 0:20 back and forth to get my bike light fixed. They gave me a new bike, which I think I like slightly better than my old one. | ||
| Bicycling 1:45:00 [1] | |
| Biking home after dinner in old town with PLoS Track chairs, approx. 10pm-midnight. A little tricky navigating through the city, but once I got onto my familiar route it was easy.
Felt great - enjoyed flying through the night and the caress of the light wind - this was a huge contrast to how tired I felt biking home the previous night. The difference was partly due to still having a buzz from drinking beer and wine at dinner, and partly due to the lingering pleasure of fine dinner companions, nearly all of whom I was meeting for the first time. I was the chair of one of the parallel tracks at the 4-day conference; mine was "sponsored" by the Public Library of Science Computational Biology journal, of which I'm a deputy editor-in-chief. (A title I like because it confusingly implies both that I'm in charge (chief) and that I'm not (deputy). So far, the later is more accurate.) For our track, we solicited and reviewed abstracts in a number of areas, and had chairs in each area selecting the abstracts for presentation. I've had a number of phone meetings with these folks, and with the amazing staff from PLoS - but I'd never met any of them in person. So my impressions of them had been, first, that they must be distinguished mid-to-late-career scientists, and second, that they were more or less annoying depending on how much trouble they were to manage through the reviewing process. Well, I get to this dinner where I finally got to meet them all face-to-face, and there were a few surprises, and all the people were really cool and really nice. It started with John saying that I looked completely different than he'd expected from my rather severe manner on the phone. John is wonderful - he is indeed a distinguished mid-career scientist, but super nice and funny. He's from Australia. 
John is on the right; Mark on the left. Doris was a dark-haired beauty who speaks German and translated the menu for us. Evie is just totally awesome and I am more of a fan than ever - she's the PLoS staff person who managed most of the logistics for this track and she's smart and clever and a hoot to talk with. When I met Lyle, he did a double take and said, "MIT?". Apparently I knew him 20 years ago when I was a grad student, and he had the same advisor, but honestly I did not remember at all. I tried not to let on of course, and he apologized for not having put it together earlier. (I had a different name back then so it would have been awfully tricky to have known it was me.) Terry and Steven and Mark were people I'd known previously. Terry is about my age, but she's really smart and accomplished, and most of all she is unbelievably gorgeous in a blond fit dancer sort of way. I confess I used to be envious of her, but now I just enjoy watching her. She told me about a cool website tracking new developments in Alzheimer's (alzforum.org) that might serve as a model for our society's web site. Also she told me about this interesting phenomenon in lung cancer where a splicing factor (nova) is overexpressed (normally it only is expressed in a couple places in the brain), and therefore the body creates antibodies against it, and this leads to bad neural side effects. I'm wondering how often this antibody-to-genes-overexpressed-in-cancer thing happens, and want to learn more about it. 
Left to right: Evie (from PLoS), Lyle (evidently a former MIT acquaintance), Doris, Terry, Judith Steven and his wife live in Berkeley and recently had a baby, and I got to see pictures. Mike is one of my scientific heros; he does great work and is passionate about open access to scientific literature, and sharing of data and software. (All of these interactions take place in the context of me feeling extremely out-of-place and inadequate and stupid and unaccomplished in the presence of these successful scientists.) At last year's conference, Mike bailed at the last minute on giving a session introduction, and I was asked to step in. So there were 100s of people in the audience expecting to hear Mike's wisdom and insight, and he is well-endowed in those gifts- and instead they got me stumbling through a hastily pulled-together summary of the talks to come. "She's not Mike." 
Mike is on the left. I ended up sitting between two absolutely stunning young men, Marco and Edmund. Marco is from Italy and currently working in New York. Since I was fresh from the visit to Trento where I'd been struck by the recent history of war, I talked to him about Mussolini and his family's experiences in WWII, and the lineage of fascism and communism into present-day politics. 
Edmund talking to Doris Edmund is from the UK and works in New Zealand. He recently went on a bike trip in France, doing some of the cols that the Tour de France subsequently visited. He told me about a graduate student in his department who has been working on mathematical algorithms for rogaine route choice. Peter sat across from me. He spent some time living in Edinburgh, though he is American. I did end up thinking about how (relatively) old I am, sitting with these fine lads. 
Steven and Edmund Judy is from Evergreen College; she was talking to Terry about how she's worked with bioinformatics people in the past (she's an ecology person), and mentioned Tim Hunkapiller and "that guy from Zymo." I thought, she couldn't mean... "That Chinese guy," she elaborated, trying to think of his name. You don't mean Dave Yee, do you, I asked her. And she did mean Dave, and when I told her that he's my partner and lives with me in Cambridge she seemed actually disappointed, maybe that he wasn't in Seattle anymore, or that I had snatched him up, or something. She seemed quite taken with him. A small world... | ||