Month: April 2003

Good technology day

All my docs were printing out wrong: the content would be too high on the page, cutting off the running header and sometimes the first line or so of text. I learned how to hack around the DSSSL stylesheets to adjust the top margin, but that only changed the space between the running headers and the body text. Turns out it was a bug in the dvi to PostScript conversion. So, instead of letting docbook2ps handle the docbook->DVI->ps conversion, I run it manually and use the -t “letter” option, and it works right. Sweet.

She Blinded me with Science

Today I went to work early so I could finish things up by five, so I could get out to Charlestown by six for the exciting evening I had planned: participating in an EEG/MEG scanning study. Yes, the whole mad scientist electrode cap and all.

It actually was like some sort of erotic sci-fi nightmare: after hours on a weekend at a huge medical research lab, uncomfortable equipment, two incredibly beautiful female scientists, one American and one Russian. Sadly, we all conducted ourselves very professionally.

For the experiment, I was supposed to look at words that flashed on a screen in pairs, and tell if they sounded the same by pushing two buttons. The idea was to understand brain wave activity in children and adults with and without learning disabilities. I was supposed to be in the non-disabled group, but for the first group of questions, I had the buttons backwards, and so I got nearly every one wrong. It reminded me of the time I was in the fifth grade, and I messed up on one of those test forms where you have to fill in all those little bubbles. I filled in the wrong section or was off by one row, and was crushed to find that I had scored in the fourth percentile.

By the end of it, my back and neck hurt and my hair was full of gritty electrode goop, and I was hungry because I’d skipped dinner. Still, I was kinda reluctant to leave. Maybe it’s the weather, but my experimentors had this completely mesmerizing combination of brains, beauty, and complicated electronic equipment that requires the application of conductive gel.

Clever Title

Been very busy preparing slides for Zee Germans. But here is some arbitrary linkage to tide you over:
The Guardian, ever the right-thinking editorialist, has two articles on the decline and fall of the West: Scientific Illiteracy is widespread, and of course superstition and mumbo-jumbo are encroaching. The next thing you know, we’ll have faith-healer MDs.

Fortunately, we can laugh: at other people’s fashion and of course at their drunken shenanigans.

Two other neat things: Guardian Media is just media news. And a study on depression and biology which I haven’t read all the way through but which looks interesting.

Today’s Word is Peevish

Media Stupidity: A new study released today confirmed viewing of hardcore pornography was widespread among teenagers and regarded as normal behaviour, especially by boys. I am peeved by alarmism at the fact that lots of boys like to ogle naked ladies. Also, I get shirty whenever I see the word “normal” used to mean “healthy” or “acceptable.”

I am petulant this evening as I have discovered, yet again, that I am not actually a home-decor whiz. I tried to nail a shelf to the wall, but that didn’t work very well. So I reinforced the nails with glue. Result: lots of glue and nails on my wall. Not a lot of shelf.