I'm in the midst of my last day at CERN. I'm about to leave the office to turn in my badge, keys, get the final signatures and have lunch one last time with my office mates.
Leaving CERN isn't easy, though it is a decision I made and a decision I'm happy with. Sad as I am to leave Geneva, I can't wait to be back in California, back with old friends and back in school.
While I'm clearly not the most dedicated blogger, I'll try to keep this alive, as I can, sharing new tid bits as I come across them. If it is CERN-news that you're after, let me share this amazing little link (CERNlove.org) that someone sent to me the other day. Items discussed? The peculiar signs in the toilets, our decaying buildings, the coffee machines and other hundred other niceties.
It is an amazing place here, someone someday will need to write a cultural history of the place. They would have plenty of material. I was speaking to someone the other day about the different cultures of the Physics and IT Departments. Within those groups, each division -- for example each experiment -- has a unique feel. Dividing things further, each subdetector has its own team and culture. Rivalries (friendly, or at least touted to be) are rife. As long as no one takes themselves overly seriously, it is all a lot of fun. (Physicists?? overly serious?? Never!)
Speaking of which, apparently it is a very serious matter if you do not take care of all of the administrational minutiae of leaving this place, so I'd better head out.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Checklists, complexity and patterns
If anyone keeping up with this blog hasn't heard already, my life is about to go through a big change. (I'm leaving CERN and Switzerland to go back to California, where I'll study at UC Santa Cruz.)
Standing on the brink of another transition (which I am thrilled about) I've been thinking quite a lot about what I want my future life to look like. And it occurs to me that, while defining what makes a daily routine “good,” a career “good,” a friendship, a book, or even a glass of wine “good” might prove elusive, there are useful things to look for, that will give you a strong indication of its quality. A kind of “checklist of goodness.”
I've been thinking about this because, after reading Atul Gawande's essay “The Checklist”, I'm convinced of their power. I've made many lists for the things I need to do before I leave Switzerland and move back to California. I've made a check list of what I want in my apartment in Santa Cruz that I will (I hope) share with my brother. I have even gone so far as to make a mental checklist of the things to me that indicate a “good day.” Let's turn this checklist from mental to actual, shall we?
Sufficient sleep; sufficient water; time to exercise a little, read a little and think or write a little; fresh good food (including two hot meals, I guess I'm sort of high maintenance); some satisfying work; and some social contact.
People talk about a “perfect day,” a concept which I've also been thinking about and have concluded is downright evil. The strive for perfection is paralyzing. “Perfect is the enemy of good” as Voltaire so astutely noted.
So what makes things inherently good? This is a pretty interesting question. We often have a gut reaction to things. You taste a wine or meet a person and think, “I like it,” “I like them,” “I dislike it,” “I dislike them.” If you never venture beyond reacting to things and people, that's not a terrible problem. But it is useful to examine things a little closer to understand why.
What you like anyway is more appreciated because you can see it more clearly. And appreciation is the mother of enjoyment.
What you dislike, once you understand why, becomes less frustrating. You are better able to navigate the issue as you think and talk about it. You make better decisions as you decide what to do with it or, in some cases, with them.
Want to know where these thoughts stem from? A book I've begun listening to. A book on wine no less. Making Sense of Wine by Matt Kramer. The author makes a powerfully persuasive argument for things that seem to indicate goodness. I quote:
“Inevitably, one comes to the essence of the matter: What constitutes quality in wine? How do you go about distinguishing between what tastes good to you and what is genuinely good? It's not as difficult as it may appear, nor as arbitrary as it sounds. In anything where matters of taste are important there is no one idea, but there can be standards.”
He goes on to say that, for wine, complexity is the single most important standard. He says that humans (and animals too research indicates) find complexity fascinating, possibly because this keeps us surprised and engaged. However, a certain harmony, the existence of patterns, a sort of cohesion, is required otherwise we find the complexity jarring and eventually irritating. Now, I find this idea fascinating. This is why we love studying science, reading Russian novels or seeing patterns repeat in plants and flowers.
Beyond that, he speaks of other needed qualities: balance, proportion, and “finesse” or fine-ness (the quality most elusive of definition, so we'll save that for another time). I put it to you, these are not just needed for good wine, these qualities, this checklist, are what makes anything good. Architecture. Fashion. Literature. A great dinner. Our day and, yes, our life.
Now, speaking of exquisite, balanced, fine, well-proportioned food, the Japanese do quite an amazing job. Mark Bittman (who I am adopting as a food fairy god-uncle) has inspired me with his column in this week's NYTimes. This is to be the afternoon's experiment.
(Photo above found here.)
Standing on the brink of another transition (which I am thrilled about) I've been thinking quite a lot about what I want my future life to look like. And it occurs to me that, while defining what makes a daily routine “good,” a career “good,” a friendship, a book, or even a glass of wine “good” might prove elusive, there are useful things to look for, that will give you a strong indication of its quality. A kind of “checklist of goodness.”
I've been thinking about this because, after reading Atul Gawande's essay “The Checklist”, I'm convinced of their power. I've made many lists for the things I need to do before I leave Switzerland and move back to California. I've made a check list of what I want in my apartment in Santa Cruz that I will (I hope) share with my brother. I have even gone so far as to make a mental checklist of the things to me that indicate a “good day.” Let's turn this checklist from mental to actual, shall we?
Sufficient sleep; sufficient water; time to exercise a little, read a little and think or write a little; fresh good food (including two hot meals, I guess I'm sort of high maintenance); some satisfying work; and some social contact.
People talk about a “perfect day,” a concept which I've also been thinking about and have concluded is downright evil. The strive for perfection is paralyzing. “Perfect is the enemy of good” as Voltaire so astutely noted.
So what makes things inherently good? This is a pretty interesting question. We often have a gut reaction to things. You taste a wine or meet a person and think, “I like it,” “I like them,” “I dislike it,” “I dislike them.” If you never venture beyond reacting to things and people, that's not a terrible problem. But it is useful to examine things a little closer to understand why.
What you like anyway is more appreciated because you can see it more clearly. And appreciation is the mother of enjoyment.
What you dislike, once you understand why, becomes less frustrating. You are better able to navigate the issue as you think and talk about it. You make better decisions as you decide what to do with it or, in some cases, with them.
Want to know where these thoughts stem from? A book I've begun listening to. A book on wine no less. Making Sense of Wine by Matt Kramer. The author makes a powerfully persuasive argument for things that seem to indicate goodness. I quote:
“Inevitably, one comes to the essence of the matter: What constitutes quality in wine? How do you go about distinguishing between what tastes good to you and what is genuinely good? It's not as difficult as it may appear, nor as arbitrary as it sounds. In anything where matters of taste are important there is no one idea, but there can be standards.”
He goes on to say that, for wine, complexity is the single most important standard. He says that humans (and animals too research indicates) find complexity fascinating, possibly because this keeps us surprised and engaged. However, a certain harmony, the existence of patterns, a sort of cohesion, is required otherwise we find the complexity jarring and eventually irritating. Now, I find this idea fascinating. This is why we love studying science, reading Russian novels or seeing patterns repeat in plants and flowers.
Beyond that, he speaks of other needed qualities: balance, proportion, and “finesse” or fine-ness (the quality most elusive of definition, so we'll save that for another time). I put it to you, these are not just needed for good wine, these qualities, this checklist, are what makes anything good. Architecture. Fashion. Literature. A great dinner. Our day and, yes, our life.
Now, speaking of exquisite, balanced, fine, well-proportioned food, the Japanese do quite an amazing job. Mark Bittman (who I am adopting as a food fairy god-uncle) has inspired me with his column in this week's NYTimes. This is to be the afternoon's experiment.
(Photo above found here.)
Friday, April 23, 2010
My travels back from Sweden
Late on Wednesday, April 15th a volcano in Iceland (known by the festival of letters “Eyjafjallajökull”) had unexpectedly erupted. It spewed plumes of volcanic ash into the atmosphere – at just about the elevation planes fly.
It is rare – and welcome – for a natural disaster to have so little impact on human lives and suffering. What misery there was being mostly limited to interrupted travel plans and inventive, lengthy journeys home. What journeys we had though!
Many of us spent a large part of the weekend following the forum sending flurries of e-mails to each other, trying to access websites that were forever crashing, making phone calls to lines that would not pick up, trying to get news of our workmates, and assuring ourselves that everything would clear up in a day or two. When it didn’t a group of us from the Project Office – who had considered 1) renting a car, 2) hiring a coach, 3) hitchhiking, 4) waiting it out or 5) surrendering to fate and starting a new life Stockholm (well, me anyway) – we finally settled on a plan of some daring.
After an epic queue at the train station on Sunday (no tickets for sale until Tuesday, and then only out of Sweden) one section of the team braved the line for coaches – seeking overnight passage to Copenhagen. Another contingent from their hotel rooms had found a means to book train tickets on an obscure section of a website and began booking the legs Copenhagen to Hamburg to Basel to Lausanne to Geneva. Assuming we could get to Denmark, it would work.
We needed four tickets for that evening. By a kind of miracle we got the very last four. We called Bob (who was poised to get the train tickets, assuming we could get the bus tickets) with the good news. No dice – it seemed. We wouldn’t be able to leave Copenhagen till Tuesday. We’d might was well take a car. We gave the bus tickets back – hoping someone else could use them.
A quarter of an hour later Bob called again – he could get the tickets. I rushed back to the coach counter. The woman I’d handed the tickets back to had thrown them away, since they couldn’t be resold. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to find them again and began to shake from fear and stress (this was a real low point of the journey for me). Happily, they were still in a dust bin in the back office.
With bus and train tickets (first class, no others were available) we set off from Stockholm at 10:45 p.m. at night. I had hoped that my days of long-distance bus travel had departed along with their heyday: my early 20s. But here we were again . . . in for a eight hour ride (my record, aged 22, is 27 hours from Barcelona to London). As an added pleasantry, the bathroom in our coach was broken. Specifically, the toilet was overflowing. Spewing Eyjafjallajökull-like out of the door and in to the central isle. Sheets of water slid forward whenever the bus downshifted or came to a stop. Heaven help us if we had been in flip-flops.
None of us slept well during the night. Catherine Gater, EGEE dissemination manager, shared a row with a woman who crashed, coma-like, for the first half of the journey (literally climbing over her left her undisturbed). At about 3 a.m. the woman turned particularly (one hates to use the word obnoxiously) chatty.
“You know, I was eight months pregnant before I suspected something was up.” “I can’t wait to get home to my guinea pig and my fiancé.” “How old are you? That’s a nice iPod.” Upon which Catherine said, “Yes, isn’t it?” and stowed the iPod in the bottommost reaches of her purse and tucked the bag away.
Upon arriving in Copenhagen we felt like we’d been spewed from a volcano ourselves, though it would still be a long while before we reached something like land.
We had first class passage on the train to Hamburg, the only available, but had to stand, perch on ledges or sit on the floor anyway – the train was woefully oversold. In Hamburg we had about 5 minutes to change platforms (most of the train seemed to be trying to make the same connection) but got on it somehow.
Following that we made some more train connections, missed some more, got separated in Basel (who knew there were two Basel stations?), had to take a taxi to catch a train from a different station (the driver kindly offered to take us all the way to Geneva for a mere 1,000 CHF. We politely declined. Even if he knocked off 10%? We politely declined again.) In the end, we got home at about 1 a.m. A journey in total of around 26 hours.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Coffee questions
Do you think the folks who first began to cultivate coffee had any idea what they were getting us into?
Coffee is so interwoven with Western and near-Eastern culture that its rightful place is as the flip side of wine: stimulating instead of sedating, steaming instead of cool, bitter rather than sweet, normally taken in the morning rather than the evening. Like wine it is normally found around food, at casual and formal occasions, often is accompanied by a ritual, but seems like a good idea anytime we feel like it. And the second helping is never as divine as the first.
Both encourage dependencies and in excess are clear vices. However, while the benefits of moderation in wine have been proved over and over (not least its anti-aging, anti-oxidative and letting-your-mother-know-what-you-really-think properties) the judgment on coffee is less clear cut.
A dear friend who – when she is not nursing patients – nurses a coffee habit of legendary proportions, once said that she could speak for five minutes and convince anyone that they should never again take another sip of coffee. This, she said, could be followed by another five minutes in which she could convince the same person that they should never let anything come between them and their two daily cups.
I'm not satisfied with this ambiguity though. Even more unsatisfying, something is awry with the way I make coffee these days. I (as usual) use a cone filter, ground espresso from the CoOp and have not noticeably changed the recipe – but it just is not tasting the same. Every morning tea is looking a little bit better, though I've been hesitating to trust it to get the job done. All this makes it imperative for me to know: cutting through the crap, is coffee good for you or is it bad for you?
But, as a deviation before I get in to that, I found a wonderful legend about coffee’s origins cultivation from National Geographic's Web site. It goes along these lines:
Alright, back to the science. Here is what I found:
According to the National Coffee Association’s Coffee Science Source (CoffeeScience.org) coffee seems to reduce the risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. There is some evidence that it can improve physical performance when exercising (types the girl who is meant to be training for a half marathon) and protects against heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver. Coffee’s fiber and antioxidants help keep our colons and DNA young.
The articles warning against coffee seem to be slightly more of the “paranoid wing-nut” variety. They mainly point out the dangers of adrenal exhaustion, psychological dependences and “dead caffeine” (as opposed to live caffeine in green tea – give me a break).
So . . . my coffee problem seems mainly to be that I need to invest in a better coffee maker!
Further reading:
Coffee as a Health Drink? Studies Find Some Benefits (August 15, 2006, NY Times)
Coffee is so interwoven with Western and near-Eastern culture that its rightful place is as the flip side of wine: stimulating instead of sedating, steaming instead of cool, bitter rather than sweet, normally taken in the morning rather than the evening. Like wine it is normally found around food, at casual and formal occasions, often is accompanied by a ritual, but seems like a good idea anytime we feel like it. And the second helping is never as divine as the first.
Both encourage dependencies and in excess are clear vices. However, while the benefits of moderation in wine have been proved over and over (not least its anti-aging, anti-oxidative and letting-your-mother-know-what-you-really-think properties) the judgment on coffee is less clear cut.
A dear friend who – when she is not nursing patients – nurses a coffee habit of legendary proportions, once said that she could speak for five minutes and convince anyone that they should never again take another sip of coffee. This, she said, could be followed by another five minutes in which she could convince the same person that they should never let anything come between them and their two daily cups.
I'm not satisfied with this ambiguity though. Even more unsatisfying, something is awry with the way I make coffee these days. I (as usual) use a cone filter, ground espresso from the CoOp and have not noticeably changed the recipe – but it just is not tasting the same. Every morning tea is looking a little bit better, though I've been hesitating to trust it to get the job done. All this makes it imperative for me to know: cutting through the crap, is coffee good for you or is it bad for you?
But, as a deviation before I get in to that, I found a wonderful legend about coffee’s origins cultivation from National Geographic's Web site. It goes along these lines:
“Goats will eat anything. Just ask Kaldi the legendary Ethiopian goatherd. Kaldi, the story goes, noticed his herd dancing from one coffee shrub to another, grazing on the cherry-red berries containing the beans. He copped a few himself and was soon frolicking with his flock.
“Witnessing Kaldi’s goatly gambol, a monk plucked berries for his brothers. That night they were uncannily alert to divine inspiration.”
Alright, back to the science. Here is what I found:
According to the National Coffee Association’s Coffee Science Source (CoffeeScience.org) coffee seems to reduce the risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. There is some evidence that it can improve physical performance when exercising (types the girl who is meant to be training for a half marathon) and protects against heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver. Coffee’s fiber and antioxidants help keep our colons and DNA young.
The articles warning against coffee seem to be slightly more of the “paranoid wing-nut” variety. They mainly point out the dangers of adrenal exhaustion, psychological dependences and “dead caffeine” (as opposed to live caffeine in green tea – give me a break).
So . . . my coffee problem seems mainly to be that I need to invest in a better coffee maker!
Further reading:
Coffee as a Health Drink? Studies Find Some Benefits (August 15, 2006, NY Times)
Monday, March 8, 2010
An afternoon at the Opera
Sunday afternoon I saw the State Opera's performance of Puccini's Turandot. The State Opera house is a lovely little building near the National Museum. It's not as sumptuous as the Paris Garnier or San Francisco War Memorial (I've not been to so many others), but it has a sincere prettiness that is immensely appealing. The chairs could be a bit more comfortable though.
Czech people are serious about dressing up, so I did by best to turn up turned out: heeled leather boots, black sheath dress, fuzzy turtleneck sweater (more in the interests of warmth than style), a tailored tweed jacket, dangly earrings, eyeliner and, and, lipstick. The opera staff and audience members addressed me in Czech, which felt like a reward for my efforts. (One of my definitions of successful travel is being addressed in the local language.)
Upstairs in the hallways hung portraits of notable performers associated with the opera house. By far the best was a delicious picture of Marina Vyskvorkina. She is shown, full locks flowing, oozing with scarcely containable fabulousness. I look at this photograph and think, “How cool must it be to be her?”
The performance began dull enough, but improved as the death toll rose. The most enjoyable singers were the comical Ping, Pang and Pong. These over-wrought ministers flitted around the stage like over-plumed birds in multi-layered be-sequened, be-tasseled headdresses, coquettishly fluttering fans in their hands.
At least one audience member did tear up at the show-shopping aria Nessun Dorma (click here to listen to a recording). Equally touching, though, was the crowd who came. Many large family groups: everyone from grandma to toddling little boy.
During one of the intermissions, I snapped a shot of a father instructing his young daughter: on his knees, sharing points from the program to an attentive audience of one.
Czech people are serious about dressing up, so I did by best to turn up turned out: heeled leather boots, black sheath dress, fuzzy turtleneck sweater (more in the interests of warmth than style), a tailored tweed jacket, dangly earrings, eyeliner and, and, lipstick. The opera staff and audience members addressed me in Czech, which felt like a reward for my efforts. (One of my definitions of successful travel is being addressed in the local language.)
The performance began dull enough, but improved as the death toll rose. The most enjoyable singers were the comical Ping, Pang and Pong. These over-wrought ministers flitted around the stage like over-plumed birds in multi-layered be-sequened, be-tasseled headdresses, coquettishly fluttering fans in their hands.
At least one audience member did tear up at the show-shopping aria Nessun Dorma (click here to listen to a recording). Equally touching, though, was the crowd who came. Many large family groups: everyone from grandma to toddling little boy.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Volunteering for a better world: harnessing technology and willing citizens
(From this week's iSGTW)By using the strengths of distributed computing technologies, both specialized researchers and citizens have the opportunity to participate in a new way of doing science.
We live in a time when nearly all information is available to nearly all people everywhere.
We are entering an age where all types of people can also contribute to many types of information. A school bus driver in rural Romania may be part of a biomedical research project. Or a banker in Los Angeles might moonlight as a collaborator in an astronomy project – classifying galaxies in her spare time.
This new movement in science, called “citizen science,” allows non-specialist volunteers to participate in global research. The projects are as diverse as backyard insect counts (the Firefly citizen science project), studies of how malaria develops and is transmitted (MalariaControl.net) or prime numbers searches (through PrimeGrid).
The marriage of distributed computing techniques with citizen science represents a potential revolution. It gives scientists access to more resources and makes “cybercitizens” participants in the research process. With a few mouse clicks and 20 minutes to spare a person can elect to aid scores of projects. They can aid as many or as few projects as they like, and their involvement does not damage the performance of their own computer.
Considering the average desktop is idle about 80% of the time, its spare computing cycles represent a large resource. After downloading the needed software, a computer’s spare analytical power is harvested to work on small pieces of a large problem that has been sent from the project’s server. Once completed, the results are sent back to the project. By sharing out large tasks to many computers a distributed “grid” of computers can reduce the time needed to solve complicated problems.
Where to Start?[Read more]
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