tRYPtoPHAN Winkle

Ok, my effort at being cute for the title of this post is pretty lame. But no worries, I'm back from the mountains of Arizona after my "nontraditional Thanksgiving" but I've just been too busy (or sleeping, if you believe my poor joke) to post about the trip. I'll get something up soon.

By the way, I guess I failed in my "aspiration" of last week. Too bad.

View this article

A nontraditional Thanksgiving ahead.

Rather than sitting around a dinnertable with family, the centerpiece of the table being the cornucopia, smell of turkey in the air, with sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie and cranberries (as I drool on my keyboard here), I will be somewhere near here. Where is this, you ask?

My family is flying out to Arizona, pretty far south, to "visit" my grandparents. In reality, we're going to be, starting early Thursday morning, in the Huachuca Mountains, sleeping under the stars, eating powerbars instead of turkey, carrying all our gear and food, trying to avoid rattlesnakes and scorpions, exploring abandoned mines, pretty much just having a ball.

When I get back I'm sure to post a debriefing and probably a picture or at least a link to another online album.

View this article

Once an hour I light the flower...

Why on earth would a laundromat allow smoking? I go there to get my clothes wildflower-clean and smelling mountain-fresh, and the woman who sat down next to where I'm folding my still-warm sweatshirts, jeans, and towels is determined to impregnate every article with the odor of her Camels. But honestly it's not even my place to ask her to move or take it outside, since the owners of the 'mat provided ashtrays for her smoking pleasure. Umph, I need to find a new place to do the wash.

By the way, a nickel for the first person to identify the source of the title of this post. (Nick, I suspect you'll know, so maybe give someone else a chance...)

View this article

Aspirations

I wonder if I'd have larger readership and commentership if I were to post less about my own life and more about news or politics or something otherwise interesting and incendiary? At the least, I'd probably be doing myself a service by forcing me to read something other than my friends' blogs and the occasional textbook passage or journal article.

My goal for this week (and it will be a tough one, seeing as I'm leaving for AZ Wednesday early morning): write at least one semi-intelligent post on some form of news or current events.

View this article

Feed me!

Prompted by an anonymous commenter to "sync" my blog on LiveJournal, I did a teeny bit of research. It looks, from reading LJ's help files, that in order to syndicate a blog to a LiveJournal I'd need to be a paid member or have a paid member add me to their "Friends" list. Now, this is the internet and everything is supposed to be free, right?

Thankfully, Blogger allows us to create a site feed for free. Mine is here: http://gearsandcoffee.blogspot.com/atom.xml If someone out there wants to syndicate my blog on LiveJournal or elsewhere, feel free to use that link. And let me know where it's syndicated and why you're doing it. It makes me feel good that e-friends and even strangers care to read my ramblings.

View this article

A joke related to the previous post

A group of engineers are sitting around, discussing life.

"What sort of engineer was God, to have made something so complex as a human being?"

"He must have been a computer engineer. The brain is so much like a computer."

"No, he was an electrical engineer. Look at all the electrical signals in nerves and muscles."

"Well, maybe he was a mechanical engineer. How else could he have designed all the joints and structures?"

"In fact, he must have been a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste line so close to a recreational area!"

View this article

Medicine: an engineer's perspective

Practicing physicians are much like auto mechanics. Research physicians are much like "tinkerers" who sit in the garage and take apart anything they can get their hands on.

This is not to be taken as demeaning! In fact, it should be seen as a compliment!!

...continued

As a doc in the clinic, working with everyday patients, one must run some tests, figure out what is probably wrong, and follow standard procedures to fix it. Sometimes you need new brakes, other times your transmission is blown. Sometimes the same symptoms may result from several different, unrelated problems. It is the doctor's job to figure out what is causing it and use an appropriate solution.

Research doctors look at black boxes. Very engineering: "The Black Box." In ancient civilizations, like Greece and Rome and China, the thinkers and doctors had little idea about the inner workings of the human body, virtually no knowledge of biochemistry, and couldn't even dream about cellular and subcellular mechanisms. They cut open cadavers and criminals to learn about gross anatomy, what was connected where, which parts could do this-or-that function. A lot of guesswork. They didn't need to understand the mechanism of muscular contraction--in fact, until the 1800s it was thought that there was some sort of fluid that caused body movement--in order to see the effects of body position when certain muscles contracted. They viewed what they didn't know as a black box.

As medicine developed into the modern era, there were and are still countless black boxes. Most of these are at much lower levels than before: What causes a membrane channel protein to fold properly? We say "thermodynamics" or "chaperone proteins," but to a large degree we don't fully grasp the mechanisms, for if we did then there would be no protein-folding diseases. What is the signal that tells a cancer cell to metastasize? Again, we see correlated factors, but the underlying cause and mechanism are still hazy, and therein lies the cure.

When I want to know how my vacuum cleaner works, I'll disassemble it. I start by taking off the cover, opening the case. I see belts and gears and motors. I see cables and cords and wires. I take out the motor and disassemble that as well, going another level down to a smaller black box. The more pieces I take apart, the more I see what is going on inside. But as for what really drives it, I need to "take it on faith" the explanation about how electricity works. I can't take apart the black box of electrons in a wire to see it myself.

I applaud you, research physicians, for disassembling each level of black boxes, figuring out the micro mechanisms that cause the macro results we see as symptoms. You are truly reverse-engineering the human body.

View this article

Why not?

I saw an advertisement for a book, Don't Just Say No, which is basically a list of excuses. For the low price of $9.95 $7.95 plus shipping and handling we can now buy 96 pages of excuses, divided into chapters based on the main subject of the excuse. I'd explain more, but a bird just flew in the window and I need to get it out....

View this article

Utter nerdiness

Did I mention that I forgot to print off notes for today's biomechanics class? Yeah, so we were discussing models of several types of motion of a contact lens, looking at the fluids equations from the thin tear film on the eye and such....

Seeing as I did not have time to run down to the computer lab and print off the 19-page PDF of today's lecture notes, I decided to download said notes on my WiFi-enabled Pocket PC and follow along with the notes on there. And people ask why I feel naked without my PDA!

View this article

Pure genius

Did I mention that I was running a little late this morning? Yeah, so I had my yogurt and a half-cup of coffee at the apartment, but I grabbed a to-go mug and a banana for when I got to class.

Did I mention that I was running a little late this morning? Alright, so I decided to jog instead of walk to the shuttle bus stop. (The rain prevented me from biking.)

I got to class and opened my backpack to ready my notebook for lecture. There was slime on the bottom of my bag and on my notes where the binder had bounced on the banana.

Somehow I managed to salvage some edible parts of the banana. A few paper towels did a sufficient job of cleaning the slime, but I fear the scent will linger.

View this article

Don't try this at home

Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that a guy has a meeting with his academic advisor in 5 minutes. He is currently at home, which is a 3-minute bike ride, or a 12-minute walk, or a 2-minute drive followed by a 3 minute walk from the parking lot, to get to campus, where his meeting will be. Suppose he chooses to bike there.

Now, again for the sake of argument, let us assume that as he is halfway down his block, he hears a pop and a hiss--not from a record, but from his rear tire. Given that he is already on his way and cutting time very close, he chooses to continue riding on a deflating tire. What do you think would be the result of such an action?

In such a hypothetical situation, I believe that as our protagonist nears his destination, the now-completely-flat tire may render the bike completely unridable. In fact, under these circumstances it is not unreasonable to believe that the tube may actually dislodge itself from inside the tire itself and become entangled in the frame of the cycle. It is also possible that the valve is sheared completely off the tube and that the tire, upon inspection, has a peanut-sized hole in it.

Viewers, please recall that this was simply a dramatization meant to demonstrate what may happen if you choose to ride on a flat tire. Do not attempt such a stunt at home, and always wear a helmet when you ride. Children under age 6 should ride only under careful adult supervision.

View this article

Attention, John:

I found this nifty little challenge while looking up stuff in an engineering database. Immediately I thought of your fascination with the trebuchet.

View this article

Blah

Saturday nite. I went to the laundromat earlier and couldn't believe how crowded it was. Seems I'm not the only one without any desire to go out. Now I sit here after having talked to my parents and to my girlfriend, after finishing up my frozen pizza dinner, getting ready to put together projected financials for a class project. Right, I feel terrific. Sure.

View this article

Warm and fuzzy...and hazy

Last nite I had my "Meet The Parents" experience when Kristin's folks were in town. Things went pretty well, and I feel good overall about it. They were very friendly and pretty laid-back. Yeah, I like parents.

Other than that good feeling, I'm actually pretty lousy. Since about mid-week, I've had the darndest time focusing on anything, and I'm generally tired and scatterbrained. Thursday classes were awful--I just didn't follow MFM or Biomechanics, so I've got a bit of studying to catch up. I hope this is just a short-term phase, perhaps brought on by my poor diet and low physical activity of late.

View this article

Being American

I went to the polls today after my first class. I got there around 10:10am, what I thought would be an off-peak time given that many folks of voting age have work during the day. I was surprised at the line when I got there, and by the fact that it kept growing. This is apparently a good sign that people actually care about this election. Though I heard the man and woman behind me discussing several issues, one of which I think but am not sure was a joke, that there was expected to be 105% voter turnout this year.

If you're reading this post, and it is still Tuesday Nov 2, and you haven't voted, stop reading and contribute to that 105!

View this article

Give Blood. Give Life.

I just got home from the American Red Cross donation center. I'm one pint of blood lighter, and I'm wearing a pin that makes me maybe 10 grams heavier. The pin was given to me with a card that says "Just the kind of recognition you'd expect from us. A small, sharp, pointy thing."

Cute joke. Serious pin. It signifies that I've now donated 1 gallon of blood at the Red Cross (though I've also given to other donation centers in years passed). I'm pretty darn proud of it. Giving blood is so simple but very important, and it is sad that so few eligible donors actually give: "While 65 percent of the population is eligible to donate, only five percent do!" So go do something good.

View this article