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You know, it has been months since I last held a sword in my hand and advanced down a strip towards my opponent and swiftly flashing destiny, and I miss it. While I can find peace and balance in other sports and activities, few things center my mind so effectively as the dance of steel. I miss it terribly. Perhaps the fencing community around Miami will prove more amenable to a casual fencer who fights not to win, but instead to understand himself and his opponent.
My goals for graduate school were as follows:
My friends are always so helpful:
[We] came up with a proposal in haiku format:To my professors:
I'd like to do bugs and stuff.
All for now, Andrew.We were thinking about replacing the final line with something deep like:
"My soul screams in vain"but figured that was putting too much effort into it.
My thanks as always to the family Ketcherside.
Don't you wish you could convince your cat to do this?:
The most amazing part is that when he pointed down, the cat actually came down off of his shoulder instead of say, climbing higher on his head.
Sun, iced and spiced coffee, David Bowie on the radio, and another four hours of hammering at my proposal. I've managed to refine it to three major topic areas, but defining specific questions to answer and hypotheses to test has proved somewhat difficult. I am a creature prone to wandering from one idea to another as part of an interconnected whole, but science is better written when it is focused and addresses particular details instead of drifting aimlessly across the map. It does not help that at least two of my major topic areas experience some significant overlap, and extracting the effects of particular variables is either going to require a lot of little experiments or one massive multivariate mess that may not be able to extract the significance of any particular element. In this light, writing my proposal has been a bit like biking uphill: you'd best switch major gears before you get there, because changing topics in the road is likely to slip your chain and find you going nowhere.
"A scientist, like a warrior, must cherish no view; for a view is the outcome of intellectual processes - whereas creativity, like swordsmanship, requires not neutrality or indifference: but to be of no mind whatever."
- Buckaroo Banzai, as chronicled by Earl Mac Rauch
"The girls were punished not because of what they said but because they disobeyed orders not to say it."
- Associated Press
Ah, irony - blissful is thine ignorance.
Speaking to power is always difficult, but it is an essential part of defending the freedoms that we all should be so fortunate to enjoy. When authority presumes to legislate the ridiculous and relies upon absurdity to justify their actions, you can tell that you have already won.
"It just doesn't make sense for an administration to expect me not to talk about my body - it's mine."
- New York Journal
You have taken a stand for what you believe in, and it is always a difficult thing to screw up the courage to resist power - and to then prepare yourself for the inevitable consequences of your civil disobedience. You are part of a long history of struggle, and are in excellent company.
"We came up with 'option C,' which was to read the entire monologue," Elan Stahl said. "It upheld the message of the monologue, the moral integrity of the piece of literature, and it better represented women across the world."
- Rob Ryser, New York Journal
Ladies, in the face of this absurdity, I salute you.
"Most quests for unusual goals are motivated by the conviction that the end is attainable if only the correct combination of fortune and persistence can be struck."
- Richard Fortey, Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution
There is a certain truism that I have been loathe to admit: for all my frivolity, I am not an impulsive man. I often achieve a realization about six months before I react to it. These range in nature from matters of the human heart to the purchase of significant household electronics, but I stand off and do not act until my certainty builds to a critical mass. I do not know whether it is reluctance or caution that holds me from direct action in response to such a decision, but I will prevaricate and avoid committing myself to a decision already made. Perhaps this has saved me from making a few too many impetuous advances, but it has also been used as an excuse allowing me to avoid certain unpleasant facts. Refusing to face them does not make me immune to their consequences, just incapable of dealing with them.
You know, after considerable thought on the subject and some reflection on the desires of my past, I have arrived at a conclusion of sorts: if I could say something about the future trajectory of my life based on where I have been and what I would like to be doing, I would like to be responsible for developing and releasing genetically modified organisms into the environment for specialized functional purposes.