Netanyahu on Bill Maher

This discussion between former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Bill Maher was pretty engaging. Aside from the kissy faces Maher and Netanyahu make to each other and each others' country, it's a really good interview.

The better part of the interview is towards the end where Netanyahu talks about the world opinion of Israel. Now as it happens, I thought Israel acted extremely or disproportionately in the recent war with Lebanon. I've made noises to that effect before, and I still believe it. However, Netanyahu stands there and makes a persusasive and intelligent defense of their actions. I don't buy it, but this was never a black and white issue, and what used to be a dark shade of gray is one step closer to neutral.

Now obviosly, it's important for Israel to curry favor with the US, but put that aside and consider this. Just watch how good at Netanhayu is at handling questions on the fly and answering them. He's fricking great at making his position look good! This is a skill some leaders have, it's called diplomacy. Now why on Earth can't we have a persusasive leader like that? Can you imagine George Bush going and doing interviews in Germany and England and Saudi Arabia, and answering honest questions (a different issue from answering questions honestly) about our rationales and behavior and rallying international support for our cause? With more allies, more troops, and more international pressures and concensus we might have had a different impact on Iraq. Diplomacy has gotten a bad rap lately as a cowardly alternative to the "hard work" of fighting, but Irsael demonstrates it's not an either-or situation. What if we'd fought and used diplomacy to fight too?

A popular neocon whine is that we aren't losing the Iraq war, we're losing the PR battle. I think Iraq was mostly screwed from the get-go, but I'll throw them this bone. If we'd had a diplomat of Natanyahu's caliber in office instead of a smirky, twitchy, bumbler, things would be different.

Internets buzz

Political fix of the week. (ok last week, I'm late) If you haven't seen it, watch Clinton's interview with Fox. It's good stuff.

Free advice worth at least ten times that...

From Kirsten at Enjoy Every Sandwich (bonus: gratutious shout-out to Battlepanda for having such diverse sidebar links)

Perhaps a bit longer than the usual fair excerpt, this is a new wording for some age-old advice. The reality is your attitude and outlook on life are immensely important to just about everything. But can people actually change their outlook? People who have anger issues don't want to be told to chill, people who are hardcore cynics don't want to try to improve their attitudes, and people who are anxious don't want to let go of obsessions. Watch as the fiery profanity of Kirsten's diatribe speaks truth, not to power, but to the bullshit that resides in everyone.

Shit has a tendency to happen. Shit does not have a tendency to unhappen.

A lot of people, maybe most people, get handed a big sack of shit at some point in their lives. Often it's not their fault. It's sad shit. It's scary shit. It's shit that makes you mad. It's shit that if all were just and right in the universe, some fucking bastard would die a slow and painful death for over and over again. You have every right to hang onto that sack of shit as long as you choose.

I hung onto mine for a good long time. Near the bitter end of an eight-year relationship, my ex-husband did me the biggest favor of my life by saying something that really got me thinking. He said that I liked to be angry. I thought that one over good and hard. I didn't like to be angry, but it was my normal mode of operation. Why was that? I realized that I was focusing on being right, not on being happy. My parents, an ex-boyfriend, my ex-husband all wronged me. I was right about that, damnit! And boy was I pissed! P-I-S-S-E-D! And I wasn't gonna let go until someone made it right! But when I realized that the only way to make it right was for those things to unhappen- and that was entirely impossible- I rearranged my priorities. Instead of waiting around for my idea of justice to never happen and being very miserable waiting for the impossible to inevitably not happen, I decided to see about the business of being happy from here on out.

And I found that the trick to being happy was not to carry my sack of shit around with me forever.

We all have qualms, fears, preferences, or bitterness that keeps us from being happier. We call them mental baggage, because they're cumbersome as we tote them around. Kirsten reminds us that the reason we carry them is because we choose to, and that we could just as easily choose not to. The candor of this post is what works. Malcontents don't want help from Dr. Smileyface, so here's a colder truth that's undeniably evident. Is it truth enough to rival your precious personal baggage? It barely scratches mine. Still, I'll absorb what I can.

More diversion

Kinda turned off political blogging these days, whether it be the bold steps taken by congress to determine what degree of torture should be legal, or the gearing up of inevitably acrid campaign seasons. There's also an interesting kerfluffle between the Pope and the Arab world, but I don't care to write much about it atm.

Instead, I'll stay true to my geek roots (like I have a choice) and bring you this work of true awesomeness! In response to the decade old debate of which was a cooler 1980's video game Metroid or Mega Man (metroid, duh), someone has recoded a version of Metroid in which you play as MegaMan!

If you've played both games and liked them, you'll love this. (If not, um, probably not )

Lanky's response to chain letters.

Since the phrase chain-letter came up in the last post, here's the Lanky method to avoid chain-letters. However many they ask for, send them all back to the person who sent one to you. I don't know if that breaks the chain, cursing either your butt or that of the original sender, but I can tell you: that person won't send you stupid chain letters anymore.

Chronicles of inanity

With props to a fellow grad student I bring you this:

What does one do with the enormous amounts of free bandwidth one can obtain on blogger, flicker, or you-tube? One person out there has decided to post pictures of toothpaste. Everyday. Twice a day. Toothpaste.

This went on for the bulk of a year. That dogged, pointless determination drew the attention of many, including such sites as Boing-Boing. But alas, in that the toothpastery flew too close to the sun, as aforementioned grad student (who has a peculiar genius that may be low-grade autism) noticed that two of the the toothpastes were the in fact the same picture!!

Oh the horror!

It appears that the toothpaste phenomenon has withered in the light of this sordid corruption and the toothpastery no longer posts daily photos.

At the end of this tale I was left asking: What the fuck is the point!? I felt as though data had been seared into my mind that was utterly useless; the very definition of inane. And so to lend it value, I've passed it onto you. Like a cursed chain-letter of inanity, whatever time it took you to read this post, you have learned nothing of substance.

Reminds me in a way of grad school.

Silly Brit notation

Friday night and I'm reviewing proofs from a paper I will soon have published. Mostly sucks to be me, but it's already past deadline. I am remiss in many duties, including blogging. The blog suffers because my life is busy with minutae. Egro, expect posts to reflect that.

Tonight I write about the British editing of scientific papers. Brit editors have changed a number of subtle aspects of the paper. For the most part, the edits are invisible, even to me (and I wrote the 7,500 word monster). Some, like the conversion of 100,000 to 100 000 were expected. And yet, I'm unclear on why the 7 instances of the word "since" were pared down to only two. A pattern emerges wherein any use of "since" at the beginning of a sentence resulted in it’s replacement with the word “as”. Use of "since" in the middle of a sentence apparently passes editing. Clearly this is a grammatical rule! I had no idea! One particularly robust sentence includes two semi-colons and an "and/or" conjunction. This is a fine edit of a brutal passage. Yes, it's a monster of a sentence, but it's just how I would have liked to have written it- except that I lack the knowledge and confidence to use semi-colons myself. (I mean in real writing; I'm happy to misuse them at will here)

As I have been busy of late (and specifically not "Since I have been busy") this is what you get to read. One hopes for all our sakes, that we can return to the normal status quo soon.

Categorically wrong

Individual strands of DNA are unidirectional. Typically we call one end 5' and the other 3'. My most recent experiment had good results (finally!). Earlier today I wrote and sent out a 2 page brief to my advisors telling them the results.

Unfortunately, in all the excitement I messed up my nomenclature and confused the 3' ends and 5' ends. All of my conclusions were exactly backwards. Ouch. The trends I brilliantly identified were all completely wrong.

The good news is the write-up was easy to fix, I just replaced swapped every place I wrote 3' or 5'. The other good news is I figured it out before ordering thousands of dollars of DNA for follow-ups. It was an easy mistake, but still, nothing makes one feel retarded like telling your boss(es)- hey, everything I told you a few hours ago is categorically wrong.

Things i hate

1. Writing a thesis.
2. Continuing experiments while writing a thesis.
3. Failed experiments with a looming defense deadline.

blogging will be light