So today I was tweeting with Carl Zimmer about imagination. This brought up something of a shock for me. You know when people talk about picturing things in their heads? The minds eye?
Turns out they actually see the pictures.
I had assumed all my life that this was a metaphor. I have never been able to conjure images in my head. I have an excellent relational memory but not a visual one. If i need to picture something I draw it. I am famous for my whiteboard use.
Seems this is a condition known as aphantasia. And it is relatively uncommon. estimated as 2%.
So OK lets review the Inky lottery. The following are estimates of the occurence frequencies of what I have. the Ehlers Danlos one is actually a high estimate. many references state it as 5 to 10 times less common.
Aphantasia ~2%
Ehlers Danlos 0.1%
Aspergers 0.29%
now I am not captain probability but i think to get the likelihood of having all those, assuming they are independent, you multiply them. That means a probability of 1 in 17 000 000 000 or so.
Winning Lotto is around 1000 times more likely at 1 in 14 000 000
the odds of being killed by a meteorite strike is 1 in 700 000
given there are around 6 000 000 000 people on the planet and at least one of them has had sex with Joanna Lumley I was more likely to get me some Purdey than all of this shit.
this is seriously looking like a personal grudge not random chance.
RantingScienceZebra The rantings of a bitter, twisted, sometimes crippled and rather mad scientist
Monday, 22 June 2015
Saturday, 20 June 2015
Cannot stand dinner suggestions
I apologise to lamb purists but i cannot stand for more than 5 mins so here is a recipe that can be cooked in such circs. A note for vegans...will work with big mushrooms too.
set oven to 190c
You will need...
2 lamb leg steaks
oregano
corn cobs
balsamic vinegar
blossom honey
olive oil
butter
salt
loadsa foil
Wrap corn cobs in foil with knob of butter in each.
Put leg steaks in a shallow dish. Put a tablespoon of honey, loads of oregano, a pinch of salt, a drizxle olive oil and drizzle balsamic on each.
Put in oven 15 mins. Also put cobs in.
after 15mins pour liquid from lamsteaks into another shalllow dish, with more balsamic and honey. Turn oven up high. Wait 5 mins.
you should have cooked lamb, balsamic reduction and roast corn.
Thursday, 18 June 2015
Welcome to Airstrip 1
Ok so more on the psych issue. I have put in a formal complaint about the psychiatrists behaviour. I have specifically asked that she not be gjven any access to my notes and be asked to leave the room when my case is being discussed, pending the complaint being dealt with.
Today my caseworker said his manager told him that the psych is part of the team and so cannot be excluded.
I talked with the manager and said that was absolutely inappropriate. She should be asked to leave the room when I was being discussed. He said he could not do that. I pointed out that as I refuse to be treated by her sharing info with her is breaching confidentiality....round we go.
Net result is that I cannot access any support until this changes. I have had an awful awful week, this weekend will be worse. Cannot think of Sunday without thinking of swallowing all my trazodone at once with whiskey. And am abandoned. No drugs, no help, nothing.
The procedures here are a joke and absolutely unethical.
Monday, 15 June 2015
Do you have duck legs? No I always walk like this
So today a drive to Luton to persuade a surgeon to remove the hernia repair mesh which has been paining me since he put it in... turned an asymptomatic hernia I didn't know I had into a constant literal ballache. The drive has left me in a lot of pain. And then the luton and dubstable hosputal charged me for parking. Blue badge notwithstanding.
When I got home I had some duck legs to cook. Having cooked them I now lack the energy to eat them. But here goes.
Caramelised Fondant Duck Legs.
When I got home I had some duck legs to cook. Having cooked them I now lack the energy to eat them. But here goes.
Caramelised Fondant Duck Legs.
First prick the legs. Deep.
Set the oven to 140c. Put the legs on some foil then tent the foil up over them, crimping the top. Try not to let foil touch the top. Cook them this way sealed in with tgeir own juice for 1.5 to 2 hrs until tge meat is very tender. Open up and tip out the juice, saving it to make gravy. Turn oven up to 180c.
Using a brush brush soy sauce over the legs. Let them dry a little then grind salt on top, then druzzle over thoroughly with golden syrup. Pop em in the enhottened oven and cook till browned. Take out and repeat glaze and caramelise again. Repeat until desired shinonomminess.
Then be too tired to eat.
Set the oven to 140c. Put the legs on some foil then tent the foil up over them, crimping the top. Try not to let foil touch the top. Cook them this way sealed in with tgeir own juice for 1.5 to 2 hrs until tge meat is very tender. Open up and tip out the juice, saving it to make gravy. Turn oven up to 180c.
Using a brush brush soy sauce over the legs. Let them dry a little then grind salt on top, then druzzle over thoroughly with golden syrup. Pop em in the enhottened oven and cook till browned. Take out and repeat glaze and caramelise again. Repeat until desired shinonomminess.
Then be too tired to eat.
A little sciencerant to pass the time
I was having an..well argumoid...the other day online with the delightful Rich Boden about whether or not one needed to collaborate in order to save time learning techniques. I think there are points on both sides, and also think we were talking at cross purposes. But let me spell out where I am coming from by an example in my own field.
My thesis is that the literature as it exists today is often an insufficient document of techniques to allow reproducibility. This may or may not be recognised by those recording the results. Actually I get the impression this is something they do not care about.
My field these days is microfluidics. But just to show this is not new there is an example I am aware of from my birth-field, organic chemistry, where someone recognised this problem and actually put it right.
in 1984 Henri Kagan discovered that sulphides can be oxidised asymmetrically to sulphoxides using a modified Sharpless reagent. This was good news, but many people struggled to repeat his results and boy did they try. So later on Kagan pubished a much more detailed procedure and explanation to help others along. This one worked fine. I used it myself at least once.
The thing is that the original had described what they had done, but only gave enough detail for someone who was used to the system to effectively repeat it. Insufficient dissemination of knowledge.
In my field now this is a huge problem. Microfluidics, when I started doing it, was a field only for a few labs. partly this was because the fabrication facilities needed were expensive. then the inimitable George Whitesides published a paper on soft lithography which showed you could make easy biocompatible devices from polydimeethylsiloxane (PDMS) quickly and do it in a small clean cupboard. This led to a democratisation of the process. When biologists wanted to do microffluidics they got a grant, then hired a biologist because microfluidics is easy and the lit teaches it to you, right?
Oh boy are they often in for a surprise.
PDMS itself is not so much a compound as a loose confederation of warring tribes. For a start actual pdms is dimethicone, mainly a sexual lubricant. It is a messy compound that operators of mass spectrometers hate because it gets everywhere. Even in your lipstick. But the PDMS used in chips isnt PDMS it is mainly Sylgard 184. This compound is marvellous for many things. It was developed as a diggable potting compound. It is closely related to bathroom sealant. But it was never ever meant to have chips made from it.
What is not mentioned much in the lit is how variable the results from chip to chip are with PDMS. The pros know things like DO NOT MIX KITS (each kit contains monomer and setting agent, each is titrated. the setting agent from one kit does not work well with another kits monomer) and TIME STAMP THE CHIPS ( PDMS continues setting and changing at room temp for weeks. experiments on chips from the same batch at different times will vary). We know the chips drink oil, leak water, transpire gas. We know they will absorb dyes (put an m and m one and leave it...). We even once did an experiment which showed, reproducibly, that the speed and DIRECTION of stirring of the premix could give variable results.
So you need to standardise a lot. the big fellas know this.
But the democratised user does not. I commonly hear tales at bio conerences of people who could not get microfluidic experiments to work and gave up after months of trial. Also commonly I can tell them in 20 mins what went wrong and how to fix it. So why dont we publish?
Try it. We recently managed to get a paper published on the problems in a related field, droplets, which showed many of the problems and systematised them. This took several rejections. why? Not novel.
Well no, not novel, just desperately needed.
And the rejections took a pattern. professors rejected. Students and postdocs who saw it at conference wrote to us begging for a transcript. We distributed over 500 copies of our poster. Why is this?
The people doing the experiments know the problems. The professor only sees the good results at the end of the week.
This is a multivariate problem. As scientists we edit our results, showing the working system. the journals kinda want this. But we run the risk of editing out vital information that allows reproducibility. the number of microfluidic designs you only see once is too high. And i do not think my field is alone here.
My thesis is that the literature as it exists today is often an insufficient document of techniques to allow reproducibility. This may or may not be recognised by those recording the results. Actually I get the impression this is something they do not care about.
My field these days is microfluidics. But just to show this is not new there is an example I am aware of from my birth-field, organic chemistry, where someone recognised this problem and actually put it right.
in 1984 Henri Kagan discovered that sulphides can be oxidised asymmetrically to sulphoxides using a modified Sharpless reagent. This was good news, but many people struggled to repeat his results and boy did they try. So later on Kagan pubished a much more detailed procedure and explanation to help others along. This one worked fine. I used it myself at least once.
The thing is that the original had described what they had done, but only gave enough detail for someone who was used to the system to effectively repeat it. Insufficient dissemination of knowledge.
In my field now this is a huge problem. Microfluidics, when I started doing it, was a field only for a few labs. partly this was because the fabrication facilities needed were expensive. then the inimitable George Whitesides published a paper on soft lithography which showed you could make easy biocompatible devices from polydimeethylsiloxane (PDMS) quickly and do it in a small clean cupboard. This led to a democratisation of the process. When biologists wanted to do microffluidics they got a grant, then hired a biologist because microfluidics is easy and the lit teaches it to you, right?
Oh boy are they often in for a surprise.
PDMS itself is not so much a compound as a loose confederation of warring tribes. For a start actual pdms is dimethicone, mainly a sexual lubricant. It is a messy compound that operators of mass spectrometers hate because it gets everywhere. Even in your lipstick. But the PDMS used in chips isnt PDMS it is mainly Sylgard 184. This compound is marvellous for many things. It was developed as a diggable potting compound. It is closely related to bathroom sealant. But it was never ever meant to have chips made from it.
What is not mentioned much in the lit is how variable the results from chip to chip are with PDMS. The pros know things like DO NOT MIX KITS (each kit contains monomer and setting agent, each is titrated. the setting agent from one kit does not work well with another kits monomer) and TIME STAMP THE CHIPS ( PDMS continues setting and changing at room temp for weeks. experiments on chips from the same batch at different times will vary). We know the chips drink oil, leak water, transpire gas. We know they will absorb dyes (put an m and m one and leave it...). We even once did an experiment which showed, reproducibly, that the speed and DIRECTION of stirring of the premix could give variable results.
So you need to standardise a lot. the big fellas know this.
But the democratised user does not. I commonly hear tales at bio conerences of people who could not get microfluidic experiments to work and gave up after months of trial. Also commonly I can tell them in 20 mins what went wrong and how to fix it. So why dont we publish?
Try it. We recently managed to get a paper published on the problems in a related field, droplets, which showed many of the problems and systematised them. This took several rejections. why? Not novel.
Well no, not novel, just desperately needed.
And the rejections took a pattern. professors rejected. Students and postdocs who saw it at conference wrote to us begging for a transcript. We distributed over 500 copies of our poster. Why is this?
The people doing the experiments know the problems. The professor only sees the good results at the end of the week.
This is a multivariate problem. As scientists we edit our results, showing the working system. the journals kinda want this. But we run the risk of editing out vital information that allows reproducibility. the number of microfluidic designs you only see once is too high. And i do not think my field is alone here.
Saturday, 13 June 2015
Seriously
Am having panic attacks about fathers day. Cannot face it
So this morning was rushed getting foal ready for her amdram. They are dojng a junior show which I have to witness this evening. It will be excruciating. Part of it is ripoed off from the mechanical lkayers in midsummer niggts dream...foal is the wall who stands between the lovers etc.
Msinky had work to do so i was going to get some modelling tweezers and go to the gym. Only she needed help gangjng stuff up. And like a mug i went.
We worked so well together. Got the job done. Like ateam. Her eyes are so blue. And her tits are magnificent.
Afterwards we sat and had a coffee.
And she was making plans to go out with someone else.
My heart is broken.
My joints are unstable and very painful. Nearly fell off the ladder a few times.
Wish i had
Also should mention first daytime bradycardic episode. Down to 30bpm standing up.
Friday, 12 June 2015
Teusdays, and forgetfulness, and a bit of money saved
Today I want to die.
Theres emotional stuff going on i cannot begin to cover here yet but i feel worthless and so mucha failure.
But mainly...today i wanted to go back in my wheelchair.
I have been in remission for months. But my pain levels today are through the roof. Hips and back gone. Shoukders agony. Cannot lift and hold things. One working finger.
I did all myerrands. But it has nearly killed me. Lying hurts. Sitting hurts. Only curling fetal ssat on edge of bed is pain free.
I dont want to be like this again. Bad enough failed husband, scientist, man, father. Now unviable organism again? Fuck this.
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