The brain from the inside out

(Actually, you have to click here to go the TED site and watch this video).

Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who experienced, and recovered from, a stroke, gives an impressive talk. Her insights on right and left brain function, and their meaning to your life, are worth considering. I’m just sayin’.

The TED site is a terrific place to browse if your 1) want some fascinating talks on a variety of topics, and 2) want to learn/steal some tips and techniques on giving excellent presentations.

Two secrets to a long, healthy life: exercise and…umm…

A colleague of mine who knows a bit about the evolutionary biology of ethanol use, forwarded me a recent article in the European Heart Journal, entitled “The combined influence of leisure-time physical activity and weekly alcohol intake on fatal ischaemic heart disease and all-cause mortality.”

The upshot? Light to moderate physical activity (>4 h week) combined with moderate alcohol intake (4-10 drinks/week) minimized rates heart attacks and death in general in a sample of 19,329 Copenhagans. Abstention from alcohol, or 19-41 drinks/week, both tended to increase mortality in a similar fashion.

News you can use. Now it’s time for my martini.

The GTDA blogroll–43 Folders

I don’t have a huge blogroll at this site, largely because a long blogroll buries the sites that are consistently, absolutely, worth checking out on a regular basis. One such site is Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders. I like this site because Mann is tech savvy, funny, and not afraid to experiment.

The other thing I like is that 43 Folders is a wee bit agnostic about Getting Things Done, the time management system that inspired the nifty title of this blog. Ultimately, your system is your system–a series of tips and habits that accrue in your toolkit because they allow you to work effectively and increase your happiness. Toward that end, one of my goals here is to point out some promising stuff to add to your toolkit. And 43 Folders is so consistently, over the top useful, that it resides in the GTDA blogroll.

If you haven’t visited 43 Folders lately, here is a good place to start. A recent mention by NPR spurred Merlin to highlight some of the better posts on the subject of GTD. Enjoy.

QoTD: On boredom

“Being bored doesn’t mean that “there’s nothing to do,” as children imprecisely complain to their parents on a rainy day, dragging their feet on the rug and kicking the sofa. It means that something big–whether it’s rain, other people, or our own hot-to-the-touch-fears–is keeping us from doing what we want to do, from playing outside, from expressing ourselves, from moving forward.”

Nancy Franklin, critic for  The New Yorker

3 ways to overcome life out of balance

Koyaanisqatsi is one of the great films of the ’80s. It uses video and a kick-ass Philip Glass score to explore life in turmoil (the eponymous title comes from the Hopi indian word for “life out of balance”). Koyaanisqatsi is a feeling common in grad school (and life) when all you seem to be doing is reacting, putting out fires, spinning your wheels. Needless to say, it can be disorienting. Here are three time-tested ways to fight life out of balance.

5 useful websites for grad students

As a graduate student, I am assuming you live cheap, work a lot, and travel. If so, these sites may be of some use.

Flightstats — If you have a day of travel ahead, know someone who does (and who’ll you’ll be picking up at the airport), or are booking a ticket and want to know which flights/airlines/airports are always delayed, this is your website. So, by default, this is your website. Extraordinarily useful for the traveling scientist.

Seatguru — So you are online booking a flight. You get to pick a seat. But beyond aisle vs window, how do you know which seats are drafty and cold, which roar with engine noise, and which are next to colicky children? Good news. Seatguru has the plans, and the advice, for seat selection for every type of plane for every major airline. OK, the colicky kid thing is a crapshoot.

39Dollar Glasses — One of the last great scams is the eyeglasses biz. Optometrists often run a 90% markup. Even chain outlets like Pearl Vision make you pay through the nose. And for what? To buy lenses from someone else and insert them into a frame. Now there are a number of outlets for online eyeglasses, and 39Dollar glasses is the one I use. To give you some perspective, I got my prescription reupped at Pearl Vision and had them order the new lenses for my frames (which, needless to say are tres chic). Then I ordered some spiffy prescription sunglasses online. Sunglasses arrived in 2 weeks: cost $139. Pearl’s phoned me 4 weeks later, had botched the order, and charged $179.

What does 200 calories look like? — This one could be filed under “visual explanations”. If you are trying to eat healthy (and, honestly, that diet of Mountain Dew Red and Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwhiches has got to stop, bubby, people are beginning to, well…talk) this site gives you a quick look at what you’re getting. The surprise for me: 1 bagel = 1 big wad of french fries.

Online Ukulele tuner — If your stuck in an airport, destined to sit in the middle seat across from the restroom if your flight ever arrives, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, and hepped up on Mountain Dew Red and Wendy’s Spicy Chicken, what better way to lift your spirit and that of your fellow passengers than to whip out the ole Uke and rip off a plucky version of “Stairway to Heaven?”.

Your welcome.

OK, any other websites that make life just a bit more bearable?

Why your best idea may never see the light of day

From the late, great Creating Passionate Users.

In place of “fear”, you may substitute “committee meeting”.

QotD-Regina Spektor

This is how it works
You’re young until you’re not
You love until you don’t
You try until you can’t
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don’t get harmed
But even if it does
You’ll just do it all again

from On the Radio, by Regina Spektor

Eight reality checks for new grad students

Graduate school is not your undergraduate education on steroids. It is a transformative journey in which you spend most of your waking moments training yourself to think and act like a scientist. Along the way you have many mentors and guides, not least of which are your fellow graduate students, the vast literature, and fussy, know-it-all blogs.

But your advisor is undoubtedly the partner most responsible to help guide your way, protect you from egregious political crap, steer you from some mistakes (you will find ways to make enough the way it is) and basically give you the time and space to transform yourself. The advisor’s role is complex and may best be described as your academic parent.

This realization is hard for some, particularly those who just spent some pretty harrowing years discovering both the joys of puberty and that their parents were batshit crazy. But just as every set of parents is different, advisors come in every stripe. The problem is, it is often not clear at the outset what you are getting yourself into. The more considerate, literate, (and, by definition, not batshit crazy) professors go out of their way to lay out their expectations early on. These vary, obviously, but the most basic advice is timeless.

Toward exploring these issues, I present below just such a “Manifesto of Expectations” (repeat to yourself, “It’s all about M.E.”). The author is a colleague who wishes to remain anonymous. I will respect his wishes, save to say that his short-lived career as a left tackle for the Golden Buffaloes was plagued by scandal, not all of which was his responsibility. What follows is some pretty frank (and dead-on) advice. It is lightly edited (MK: and annotated) toward removing the author’s frequent and rather strained metaphors to offensive line play.

Why you should manage your dissertation like a stock portfolio

We conclude our discussion of Ira Glass’s excellent podcast on broadcasting.

The message here is simple. Any person who wants to be innovative must try a lot of things that don’t work. Which is to say, you will frequently find yourself  one minute, one hour, one month into a project that in the end doesn’t pan out.  If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.

This also applies, on a longer time scale, to your dissertation.

The great thing about science as a way of knowing is that failure, properly managed, is still success. The more hypotheses you test in a given project, the greater the variety of evidence you bring to bear, the more interesting the paper will even if your supercool hypothesis bites the dust. And, at the same time, you have given yourself every opportunity to see why it did or didn’t work. You’ll know more than when you started.

So make sure you build the chapters of your dissertation with the eye of an investor who is in it for the long haul. Combine sure fire, more conservative and descriptive work, with projects where you shoot for the moon.  Because, rest assured, some of those gambles will pay off.