Brief commentary on the weather

For those who live in the Pacific Northwest and are experiencing a "heat wave," I thought you might like to know that the forecast high for the Phoenix area today is 114 degrees. Unlike my admirably crazy friend D, we have turned on our a/c at home. But you don't need a/c if forecast highs are under 90, people. Seriously. Here's what you should do instead:

-hang out in your basement (at least you folks have basements. They're uncommon out here because of the soil/rock composition)
-take a quick cold shower--don't towel off afterwards
-turn on a fan and point it at yourself
-drink lots and lots of water. Keep going. Then drink some more.
-go to a movie and sit in the a/c there for a few hours
-do laundry and leave it to air-dry for some evaporative cooling effects
-fill a kiddie pool with some ice/cool water and put your feet in it
-find somewhere to go swimming

Good luck. And remember, it's okay to sweat a lot.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Today is the day in-between painting ants and beginning the observations. For all that the ant observations are grueling, they do lend a lot of structure and focus to my days, which means I don't have to make as many decisions about how to spend my time. The answer is: watch ants.

In contrast, today I have to figure out how to tend to all of the loose ends I've been neglecting, and so I am in one of those wandering-limbo states where I'm not sure what to do next. I mean, I'm still at school--I won't take any days completely off until the last round of observations is done. I just hope I'm not forgetting anything really urgent/important...

After today, there will be eight days of observations. If all goes well, that will conclude this experiment. I hope I hope I hope...

Topsy-turvy summer [ants, science]

The latest: We did not get the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant that we applied for at the end of last November for my research. We do have some good ideas for how to tighten things up in response to the reviewers' comments (apparently none of which were outright negative, but apparently just not positive enough), and will resubmit this fall. It took them a bit longer than anticipated to get feedback to us, but in some ways, I'm just relieved to know so I can carry on with the available resources.

There's a part of me that is attracted to the idea of dirt-cheap research. The problem is, nowadays most high-profile research institutions pass judgment based on one's fund-raising capabilities (for some of that funding is returned to the institution's research machine as "indirect cost recovery"). Good/interesting science and oodles of money don't go hand-in-hand, though.

I spend so much time thinking about this whole scientific enterprise, relative to my personal experiences. I had to get out of Psychological research because I felt like a lot of it went in circles and just wasn't that interesting from an exploratory perspective. I am sure there are many Psychologists who do work that is an exception to this perception, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. I think it's really hard to predict which of the ideas/insights created by this generation of scientists will be latched onto by future generations of scientists.

Well, back to the science.