Thinking of the bees; Thinking

One of my dissertation committee members is in town for a visit, so our lab had dinner with him last night. Ahh, it was such a nice evening!

Over the course of dinner, we discussed no small number of things, but here's an anecdote that stuck with me. There's a honey bee researcher at ASU who divides her time between ASU and a university in Norway. One of her colleagues in Norway has been studying the microbes found in the honey bee gut; there are seven major classes of microbes. To understand what the microbes are doing, he goes through and selectively removes one of the classes by applying antibiotics specific to each of them.

He wants to do this in the US as well, but discovered that all of the microbe strains in US honey bees are resistant to the antibiotics he's been using in Norway.

This is an epiphenomenon. Where are the honey bees acquiring the microbes, and how on earth are the microbes gaining antibiotic resistance? It's unlikely that this results from the smorgasbord of miticides and other agents applied directly to hives to control other, known honey bee pests.

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One of the main reasons I was convinced to adopt a writing schedule was a figure on page 25 of How to Write a Lot. It has two panels, one of which documents the number of pages written per day by three groups of scientists. The first group was instructed to not write - a control group (so they wrote less than half a page per day). The second group was instructed to write only when they felt inspired; they wrote an average of one page per day. The third group was forced to write during scheduled writing periods; they wrote an average of 3 pages per day. [They were held to this schedule by threat of having to write a check to a disliked organization if they failed to keep this commitment.]

All well and good. It's the second panel that's more interesting - the number of days between creative ideas. The non-writing group had an average of 5 days between creative ideas; the "spontaneous" writers, two days, while the scheduled writers averaged one day.

For me, establishing a writing schedule is giving me things to think about while I'm out riding my bicycle, and when I wake up in the morning. Right now, I have a lot of head-scratching to do while I work on revising Diss Chap 1 for resubmission.

Overall, I have a longstanding, deep, dark fear of becoming stupid. You might think I'm crazy to admit this, but there you have it. This scheduled writing time is an attempt to counteract a tendency towards intellectual laziness and stupidity for me. Maybe other methods work for other people, but I'm not so arrogant to think that's the case for myself.

Pad Thai, for S

Here's a Pad Thai recipe I've been using lately.

Pad Thai
1 egg
4 teaspoons fish sauce (I use Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce)
3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon ground dried chili pepper
ground pepper
1/2 lime
1 minced shallot
2 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoon tamarind paste
1/2 package Thai rice noodles
1/3 cup extra firm tofu
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
Optional: 1/2 banana flower, 1-1/3 cup bean sprouts (rinsed), 1-1/2 cup Chinese chives cut into inch-long pieces, 2 tablespoons peanuts, 1 tablespoon preserved turnip

Start with soaking the dry noodles in lukewarm or room temperature water while preparing the other ingredients. Getting the noodles just right is the trickiest part of making Pad Thai. By the time you are ready to put ingredients in the pan, the noodles should be flexible but not mushy. Cut the tofu into matchsticks. When cut, super firm tofu/pressed tofu should have a mozzarella cheese consistency. You can fry the tofu separately until golden brown and hard, or you can fry it with the other ingredients below. Mince the shallot and garlic together.

Use a wok. If you do not have a wok, any big pot will do (I use a giant cast-iron frying pan). Heat it up on high heat and pour oil in the wok. Fry the peanuts until toasted, and then remove them from the wok. (you could also toast them sans oil) Add shallot, preserved turnip, garlic and tofu and stir-fry them until they start to brown. The noodles should be flexible but not expanded at this point - I like it best when they're on the chewy side, because I like to get them to absorb some of the sauces while cooking. Drain the noodles and add to the wok. Stir quickly to keep things from sticking. Add the tamarind, sugar, fish sauce and chili pepper and stir. The heat should remain high. If your wok is not hot enough, you will see a lot of juice at this point. Turn up the heat, if this is the case. Don't be afraid to add a bit more water if the noodles are still too tough - they'll soak it up and soften. Make room for the egg by pushing all the noodles to the side of the wok. Crack the egg onto the wok and scramble it until it is almost all cooked. Fold the egg into the noodles. The noodles should soft and chewy. Pull a strand out and taste. If the noodles are too hard (not cooked), add a little bit more water. Sprinkle white pepper around. Add half the bean sprouts and most of the chives, reserving the rest to add fresh. Stir a few more times. The noodles should be soft, dry and very tangled.

Pour onto the serving plate and sprinkle with ground pepper and peanuts. Serve hot with the banana flower slice, a wedge of lime on the side, raw Chinese chives and raw bean sprouts on top. In Thailand, condiments such as sugar, chili pepper, vinegar and fish sauce are available at the table for personal taste. Some people add more chili pepper or sugar at the table.