iDesign #1

I enjoy listening to a good discussion. Especially one that relates to science.....or politics.....or both. Today I had the pleasure of attending Dr. Francisco Ayala's talk on Darwin and Intelligent Design. Although I thought that his statements would be met with disdain, as most of the OC seems to be highly religious and conservative, I was surprised as to how open most seemed to be to the idea that a "designer" could not have created such an imperfect world.

His talk began with various examples as to how natural selection has changed the organism and how an "inelligent designer" would not have been able to correctly predict all of the required adaptations for that organism to be able to survive. Instead, each adaptations was slowly created into what we now observe.

Although there were some discourse about vocabulary (everybody was upset that he used the word "designed" when he in fact was not talking about a "designer") things didn't get too heated until someone possed the question (or rather statement):

"People choose to believe in a designer because they are ignorant about how science trully works".

Overall it was an awesome experience.

Meeting with the Boss

I finally mustered up the courage to set an appointment with him about an idea for a project. Too bad that the night before I discovered that Hoffman has been working on it since the early '90's.

I had nothing to talk about except how I had thought it would be a good project until I saw all the work that had been done in Drosophila. I thought that instead of approaching it from an interspecific point of view we could look at intraspecific differences in respiration pattern due to loss of water or changes in amount of oxygen. We could also look at behavior, etc.....and tie it all up with some genetics.

He said: "Well, we're not looking to win the Nobel prize with your first project, but we should try to find an interesting question".

I think that means he didn't like it. I thought it was interesting. He said he wasn't trying to be insulting, but that a lot of people where already looking at that sort of stuff. And I completly agreed, even before we started talking.

My major goal was just to go in there and talk to him. I haven't been able to do that. That was accomplished. I am happy with that.

My first Interview Weekend as A Grad Student

I can't believe it's been a year since I came to interview. This weekend we had 16 people (mostly girls) come out to see if they were a good fit with our department. There were the same parties and busy get togethers, but it was so much easier being on this side of the coin. Although surprisingly, it was just as tiring.

I had one student stay with us for the weekend and I was surprised that as her arrival date got closer my anxiety level rose. I cleaned my apartment for hours on Wednesday night, and Thursday I didn't want to go pick her up. She was very nice and polite. Married, just like me. Interested in behavior, just like me. You'd figure we'd have lots to talk about. We didn't. It was awkward. Luckly she was tired most of the weekend and we didn't have a lot of "alone" time. I was worried that I would say something stupid.

I was glad that I could help out as much as possible. It gave me a good feeling about what the weekend really means, which surprisingly, was something really different as to what I thought it was for when I came last year.