...As I am wont to say...

Whew.

Here are the academic events of the past four days:

Thursday night: Public Lecture by E.O. Wilson at ASU for which I ushered (! He has his own Wikipedia site! How interesting!). This talk was on biodiversity and the future of life, standard fare for a Wilson public lecture.

Friday: Grand Opening of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, which entailed:

Morning: Graduate students in social insect labs are given 15 minutes/lab to chat with Wilson. Since the Fewell lab was at the end of the list, that meant we got 2 minutes. So basically Wilson told me about someone with a bit more dedication to leafcutters than me (she has them tattooed on her chest) and was then whisked away to meet with the Anthropology/etc. graduate students for their due time.

I don't actually put a whole lot of stock in such meetings with celebrities anyway, but the whole way the situation worked out was annoyingly predictable and I mostly just felt bad for Wilson (when he came in, he said, "Finally, my kind of people!" (most of the other labs do more honey bee work than ant work).

After that, Wilson gave another lecture which he supposed to be a bit more intimate than it actually was. Instead of the twelve to fifteen participants he expected, there were about 250 people present. This lecture was on something a bit more specific, the origins of eusociality, which has been the subject of his most recent academic publications and will appear in an upcoming book that he and Bert Hoelldobler are writing. Some of us social insect types have very carefully read and discussed his arguments, so it was neat to see how they had developed and changed.

After that, the CSDC had a lunch and then opening ceremonies, which were quite well-attended because a number of people had arrived early for a weekend workshop. Then us graduate student-types held a brief reading group discussion and went off for some appetizers with the workshop participants, which leads me into...

Saturday and Sunday: Evo-Devo and Social Insects Workshop

The CSDC held its first major event the day after it opened; a large workshop attended by a big group of faculty to discuss Evo-Devo (evolution and development) and social insects. As one of the lowly social insect graduate students at ASU, I was asked to help out with the workshop organization. So D, T, and I got bagels and coffee to feed the eminent professors and then I spent the rest of the day taking notes.

Over the remaining course of Saturday and Sunday, I took 35 pages of notes. By the end, my fingers were beginning to hurt from typing so much. But the good news is that I have good notes on what these extremely knowledgeable and smart people think about a number of subjects that I have been wondering about for a long time. Now that's gratifying.

On the other hand, my brain is tired now. So are my hands, so I think I'll stop typing shortly. Shortly. Not quite yet.

Update the Second: Non-Academic Events

Last Tuesday night, I tried to go to the ASU Art Museum's Annual Short Film Festival. The only problem was that the festival wasn't on Tuesday; an e-mail that I had received made me confuse the film fest with a modern dance performance in one of the museum's galleries. However, the dance performance was fantastic, and the film fest wasn't until yesterday, so it turned out to be a win-win situation. Modern dance can really be hit-or-miss, but this group appeared to be well-run; the choreography was great, and the moves were fantastic. I also hadn't realized that the art museum *had* upper galleries, so that was a nice discovery as well. Seeing the dancers' grace and beauty, and the grace and beauty of the art they danced around, was inspiring. It's no wonder Degas was fascinated by ballet. Dance always makes me wish I had my own developed repertoire of graceful moves. I know I have moments, such as when rowing well or playing the piano, but I suppose the artist in me always wants just a little bit more. But it's good to have goals.

On Friday night, I met up with the rowing girls. Our meeting was good, but sad. It was good because it was my rowing friends--the people I have spent so many countless hours with and who give me so much perspective on my life (every once and a while, I need them to remind me that it's weird to study ants, that not everybody is fascinated by biological minutae). But it was sad because it was a meeting about the state of rowing on Tempe Town Lake.

We collectively learned a lot from our experience with getting a boat together to go to the San Diego Crew Classic. First, we learned that we were all determined to make it happen. We learned that we could access some of the available resources on the lake. But we also learned that individual personalities (i.e. mostly coaches) and histories have thrown tremendous obstacles in the way of any group of rowers on Town Lake that tries to put together a REAL competitive rowing program. Of course, I knew these things individually, which is why I switched to rowing in the single with a small group of people. But pretty much all of the other women who row and want to be competitive learned to row on Town Lake. Town Lake rowing is severely inbred--there's a tiny pool of coaches and very little organization. Personally, the only individual that I would trust as a coach is in a leadership position that won't permit him to coach. And I'm not all that convinced that he really wants to coach.

Since I have an outside perspective, I was able to say some things to hopefully get the group thinking a bit more about their expectations for rowing. But it's really going to take a long time for Town Lake to get over its initial hurdles. It's hard to be patient through all of the growing pains, and it's hard to see all of these dedicated people struggle against unnecessary obstacles.

So that was Friday night.

Saturday night was the actual date of the Short Film Festival. Last year, a pretty big group got together to see it, but I didn't really feel like trying to get a group together, so it turned out to be just B and me (and the hordes of other people that went). There were no films about cats and pants this year, but the assortment was pretty much just as eclectic. There was also thankfully no rainstorm in the middle this year--last year, it forced us to leave early.

As the final adventure worth recounting, today I have ventured forth to downtown Phoenix, to The Willow House (their website is under construction and will be up in a little while). If it weren't for two things, I think I would live here.

Thing 1: They're located in downtown Phoenix. It took me an hour to bike here, and it wasn't a very pleasant bike ride (why is it that when roads are under construction around here, they don't retain bike lanes? Oh yeah--this is the Greater Phoenix Suburbopolitan Area).

Thing 2: They have a smoking section. I'm sitting in the non-smoking section, which is completely empty. As usual, there's plenty of secondhand smoke to go around. I am discovering that I am pretty damn sensitive to it.

Other than that, the atmosphere is awesome (it's definitely a HOUSE, so it has that fun, house-like character), the espresso is decent, the artwork is good, and they have plenty of kitsch to go around.

And that is all for now.