I scream for Ice Cream!

There is nothing much better than an unplanned evening in an ice cream shop discussing bad poetry and dreaming about the future over a frappe and sundae.  

Note for all you wanna-be-poets.  Don't try and be romantic by using the word 'pheremones' in your art.  I don't care if it is a Haiku. 

Just wanted to beifly write about the benefits of spontaneous ice cream.  I'm feeling hopeful because events are conspiring to remind me that it's never too late to be the person you want to be inside... 

It's a small world...

I think that it's one thing to know intellectually all of the neat things that technology can do and another to see it in action.

It will never cease to amaze me how interconnected the world is through the Internet, and the things that high speed data make possible.  Talked to a friend in Australia last night via video chat over a lagless g-mail video connection.  Her sunlit balcony and cheery countenance was transported to our late night gathering as if it was a phone call to a neighbor across the street. We could see the skyscrapers of a distant city and hear the stock cars of the Australian grand prix roar around their endless circuits in the background.  A sense of life and humor transported across oceans and continents on a piece of fiberglass the thickness of a strand of hair to sit with us around the kitchen table and share our conversation like old times.  While an oversimplification of the engineering and science that makes it possible its the spirit that matters anyway.

A great deal of conversation yesterday revolved around other examples of the new found uses of technlogy. While we are all a little wary of the overreaching and all encompassing nature of technology in the modern world (I still keep paper journals and am a crusading advocate of paper snail-mail letters) we are still in awe of its potential applications.   I encounter other examples in my professional life.  Projects are taking place in my office right now to map the environmental hazards of neighborhoods and overlay them with census maps of income levels, crime and other statistics.  All of this data is available real time, uploaded by groups of high-school students from hand held GPS units and portable computers. 

Google can consistently predict the next location of a flu outbreak days before the CDC simply by indexing searches for flu and correlating them with locations of the computers performing the search.  Maps of other outbreaks are made simply by indexing news stories in local papers.  The city of Mumbai tracks its garbage men on google earth to make sure they are doing their jobs properly in the jumble of the million person slums. This year they will be able to track the flood waters of the monsoon in real time with a map that updates every time people text in that the water has reached their doorstep.  This will allow for better allocation of emergency resources and more organized evacuation plans.

It's exciting to live in a time where the possibilities of technology truly seem to be bounded only by the imagination.  Now all we have to do is imagine!  And communicate, whether it be with our neighbors or the other side of the earth.

Spring into spring...

Went out for the first time yesterday to play some disk.   Frisbee is by far one of the highlights of my summer and I was super excited that the time has come for the season to begin anew!

 Whenever I get together with my friends for any reason I can't help but be reminded of how awesome they all are and how lucky I am to be where I am in life and had the opportunities I've had.  We are all excited about exercise and the outdoors and health... (minus the part of the evening where we scientifically tried to stuff twizzlers with pixi-stick sugar.  And we all look out for each other.  I'm proud to be part of such a wonderful group of people.  It constantly makes me happy to think about it!

Anyway, disk was awesome.  I'm sore, but the good kind, and I'm looking forward to start playing actual games.

Why birds are smarter than most people...

Sitting outside eating my sandwich on a park bench enjoying the sunshine and the (relatively) warmer weather I was joined by a flock of house sparrows. These little guys were NOT shy but hopped all over my feet screeching at each other over each dropped crumb. I went through an exercise of tapping my foot progressively harder just to see how loud a noise or fast a motion would scare them off. Nothing phased them... They didn't so much as blink.

Eventually, about 10 of them all lined up along the back of the bench next to me and each cocked their head to the side to stare me down, as if to say "that's really the best you've got?"

I dug into my pocket to get out my camera and document the long line of identically canted birds on a bench and I was just about to push the button when my flock of of feathered friends flew away in fright. Momentarily confused because my motion to grab the camera was well below their previously demonstrated threshold of annoyance I eventually looked around and noticed the red tailed hawk that lives in the neighborhood.

These little birds with tiny brains had learned that I posed no immediate threat, even in close quarters, because I had about a zero percent chance of being able to catch one of them. Yet they were able to recognize a much more serious threat at a great distance. Who among us could so deftly determine the level of danger in a situation and quickly extricate ourselves without a fuss?

Nature... never ceases to amaze me, even in the middle of the city.

The cutting edge...

I've come to the determination that working at a university (or other academic setting) has a lot of advantages over other places of employment.

Not the least of which is that even when doing mundane tasks related to being an administrative assistant it never fails to be different and often more than a little strange.

A few examples:

One of the professors in my department is on a trip to London... not to have any sort of business meeting, or to sightsee, but to offer testimony before the house of Lords in Parliament about environmental health exposures on soldiers. Other members of the department have repeatedly testified before various congressional committees here in the US. The scope of projects that are routinely worked on range from the office itself, to neighborhoods across the city, to huge global research studies.

And these are some very smart people... Creating mathematical models to improve public health, monitor the cleanup of some of the worlds most toxic dumping grounds and generally go around using lots of big words. Dr's of all types abound. Its hard not to sometimes feel overwhelmed.

Yet my favorite moments almost always involve technology, because as smart as these people all are when it comes to computers, they're still stuck in my parents (or in some cases grandparents) generation. They know what's going on, but when it comes to change it's like watching a glacier move...

Which is why I was surprised when one of them came up to me today and asked if I was on Twitter (I'm not... so far...) This caused a moment of reflection. I was beaten to the technological punch by a 65 year old college professor who's previous technological experience was limited to e-mail and the occasional blog post. I think that's ok though. (I'm on facebook and he's not HA HA HA) One does not have to ride every popular wave yes? (oh no! I'm starting to sound like my parents).

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the ensuing conversation about all the pros and cons of various social networking sites and their possible applications for the advancement of global and public health and coordination of intra-office parties with the doctoral students. How's that for an office environment? Hmm.. Maybe I'll start twittering after all!

**SMILES**

Highschool Flashback...

Went out last night to a swing dance.

Usually these dances are held in church basements or converted warehouse dance studios because the unfinished old fashioned wood floors are perfect for the fast paced slip and slide dance shoes that the hard core dancers prefer.  However, the onset of lent had displaced this particular dance from it's usual hangout in the church basement to the Gym of the YMCA across the street.

Walking in to the darkened gym... with discoball lighting, wooden bleachers and small groups of people hanging out in the shadows on the edge of the room one could not help but be reminded of all those old high school dance scenes.  The in-crowd on one side... the people that just like to be lost in the music out on the floor, the wallflowers hanging out on the bleachers.  Chinese lanterns hanging from basketball hoops and people criss-crossing the floor over the "Y" emblazoned in the center court circle.  It was great.

I think it might have been even more of a flashback for me since I spent so much time in YMCA's growing up.  I love the Y.  I think that they do wonderful things fro a community and keep alive the spirit of good health through exercise and involvement in positive activities.  They do however, all have the same feel... Except for its slightly smaller size and added security, this Y could have been completely swapped with the one in which I came of age and no one would have been the wiser.  In the age of modern gyms with all the latest and greatest equipment and exorbitant membership fees to match I'm glad there are still places where the philosophy and the people are what matters most.  Staffed by underpaid but caring employees and volunteers they are not really a business so much as part of the community.

The dance turned out to be amazing and fun, with live music (more on this later perhaps) and more people active on the floor than in any high school dance than I ever went to...  Not to say that the wallflowers didn't exist...  I think that the high school ambiance ended up being more of a bonus.  There's something to be said for the illusion of time travel and the freedom of youth.

School Bus Epidemic

A crowded city bus I was riding on the other day drew to a stop at a red light. Also at the light, the next lane over, was a school bus filled with students from Plymouth on some sort of field trip to the Big City.

All down the length of the bus curious faces stared out little square windows at tall glass buildings, traffic and the men dodging rush hour traffic to sell single roses to commuters. One child focused instead on our bus and slowly made a goofy face out the window at us. Someone on my bus noticed this and laughed which made the young student laugh in turn.. His laughter caused the pair of girls sitting in the next seat forward on the school bus to notice the face he was making and focused their attention on our bus also. They started making faces. In a matter of seconds the entire school bus was making faces at the passengers of our bus, most of whom were studiously ignoring the display but grinning despite themselves.

Only one student did not participate... immune to the epidemic. Instead he simply flipped us all the bird as the light turned green and the buses separated, leaving one to wonder what the next 'epidemic' might have been if the light had been longer.

I love that the science I'm learning in the classroom can be demonstrated by such a simple situation as students making faces on a bus.