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June 24, 2005
Flight tracker
From this week's edition of the Internet TOURBUS, a cool little web page for letting you know when you can expect those out-of-town guests. Head on over to RLM Software -- Flight Tracker and check it out.
Posted by rigd0003 at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2005
So that's what those are...
I'm a little slow to pick up on the latest crazes, so I was thankful to the New York Times for answering a nagging question: what are those weird, stiff necklaces that so many pro baseball players are wearing?
Thanks to today's article, Is Your Bat Speed a Bit Off? Try a Titanium Necklace, I can now move on to other, more pressing, baseball apparel questions like what's the proper way to wear stirrups and will they ever make a comeback in the majors?
Actually, I do have a few more questions about the titanium hoops. Aren't they distracting to wear? I understand that they're light (being titanium) but they look like they bounce around a lot. One question I don't have is "do they work?" since that seems to be in the eye of the beholder...
Posted by rigd0003 at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2005
Hennepin Canal Trail, Central Illinois
My husband and I have had great success in finding ways to do some exploring on our bicycle as we travel to visit family and friends. This past weekend we were in Davenport, Iowa, for a lovely family visit and also happened to discover a great piece of history.
The Hennepin Canal was designed to link barge traffic between the Illinois River and the Rock River which flows into the Mississippi at Rock Island, Illinois. But by the time construction was completed in 1907, seventeen years after building began and thirty-six years after Congress authorized survey funding, the Canal had "missed the boat" in terms of commerce innovation since by then the rail system was well established and a cheaper way to ship goods. By the 1930s, the Canal was mainly used by recreational boats.
Luckily for us, one person's expensive commercial disappointment is another person's fabulously beautiful and serene biking, hiking, and horseback-riding trail. The entire 155 miles from Bureau Junction/Hennepin in the East to Colona in the West is now the Hennepin Canal Parkway State Park.
We biked from the western end at Colona to Geneseo and back, about 24 miles round trip. For much of the way you are riding on the old towpath right next to the canal. It reminded us both of an old European tree-lined boulevard. I'd only seen canals in BBC television mysteries like Inspector Morse, never in person, so it was a totally new experience for me. We saw lots of birds and sunbathing turtles, plus a few people fishing and some scouts out for a hike. But for the most part we were quite alone. Many of the original locks are still there and some have been refurbished. Here's an old lift bridge the trail crosses over near one of the locks.
The biking was good and quite easy since it's very level. One thing we found odd was the recommendation to use mountain bikes instead of road bikes on the trail because of the surface. But the surface was quite good for our part -- a tar base layer with small rocks a crushed rocks on top. The was a short dirt section of 100 yards or so through a wildlife preservation area, but the dirt was very firm so no problem there. There were nice toilet facilities at major access points along the way and information for finding food and other services in the larger towns we passed.
Check out this best website for the trail to see more pictures, maps, elevation charts, and more.
Happy trails!
Posted by rigd0003 at 11:51 AM | Comments (2)
June 15, 2005
I'm just guessing here...
I just realized something about my dissertation project: I'm just guessing. I'm working on something that I know will not give me one true, definitive answer. When you get down to it, isn't that what all probability models are? Sure you have weights and likelihoods for the different outcomes in different situations, but you're just guessing. It may be an educated guess; it may be a guess that's come out of a very sophisticated algorithm or model. But it's still just a guess.
It's not that this 'revelation' has freaked me out or anything. It's just made me realize the simplicity of the truth. Guessing is okay (said in my best Stuart Smalley "Daily Affirmation" voice*). And acknowledging that I'm guessing leads to some good questions: What is the benefit of guessing? What is the harm? What would I need to know to improve my guess? What is the ideal that I'm working towards? It's actually kind of nice. It gets away from that 'know-it-all' posturing and gets down to the heart of it -- seeking answers that will help us improve.
Look for my best guess at Salmonella attribution to be published this winter! (Do you think the journal editors will be as opened minded to the whole 'guessing' thing?)
*Wikipedia rocks! I can't believe they have a minor pop culture reference like Stuart Smalley!
Posted by rigd0003 at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2005
Using Wikipedia for public health preparedness
One of the foundations of a good public health system is dissemination of information -- getting the knowledge about diseases and risks out to the public whom you are serving. There's lots of room for improvement and innovation in this area. That's why I was intrigued by an article on a outbreak reporting site -- Preparing for Influenza Pandemic at Wikipedia.
It turns out that people were using Wikipedia in the wake of the tsunami to get information. This has sparked an idea in the minds of the scientists who lay awake at night worrying about another flu pandemic (it's a fairly large club). Why not preemptively post information on the web about avian flu preparedness and prevention? The editors of ProMED-mail have started to bulk up the avian influenza entry and are encouraging other scientists to lend their expertise to the site.
Granted, the Web doesn't reach all the people, but I love the idea of using Wikipedia's strengths -- free, collaborative, fairly well known -- to help educate people around the world. That's cool!
Posted by rigd0003 at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2005
Just no pleasing everybody
I competed for one of the University's Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for next year. It's a really great funding opportunity for doctoral students to focus on completing their dissertation in their last year as a student.
I thought I'd be a bit of a long-shot and heard a few weeks ago that my proposal wasn't accepted. (You can flat out say it was "rejected" but in these times of good feelings towards all, the language has been altered ever-so-slightly. Kind of like how the Academy Awards are now announced, exchanging "And the winner is..." for "And the Oscar goes to...")
I'd just gotten around to reading the reviewer comments. I don't know why I get nervous about such things, maybe it's because I have a bit of trouble with criticism. Actually, it's not the criticism that's the problem, it's the anticipation of criticism. And as criticism goes, this wasn't so bad.
For example, all four reviewers thought that my writing was very good. (I am a good writer when I put my mind to it, and it's carried me through a lot of otherwise tough spots in my professional career.) My application was "well written" with a "strong personal statement"; best of all, it was "lucid."
Most of the criticism was regarding two acknowledged weak points: my lack of publications and the vagueness of my proposed methodology. As to the first, that's a common problem which I am trying to remedy. This reinforces my need to get some publications before I enter the job market, but overall it wasn't a shocker. As to the second weakness, that's kind of inherent in what I'm doing for my dissertation. I'm devising a model -- a method -- for linking human illnesses with pathogen rates on certain food and animal sources. I've never done anything like this before and there's no step-by-step formula. So, yeah, the methodology was a bit vague because that's the meat of my dissertation -- coming up with the method! I knew this was going to be a problem and didn't know how else to describe what I was doing, so this wasn't a big shocker, either.
While that was the heart of the criticism, there were some other little tidbits that seemed to reflect the idiosyncrasies of the individual reviewers. One that has caught in my craw a bit is the following:
"Weak undergrad GPA (3.16); never commented upon."
Well, thanks to the personal soap box that is my blog, allow me to comment on what Reviewer #4 considers to be a glaring omission. First of all, I was floored by the idea that anyone cared what I did in undergrad as long as I had graduated. I thought that my exceptional academics through my Masters and PhD careers might over-shadow my solid B average in undergraduate studies. But now that the subject has come up, let me tell you, dear Reviewer #4, why my GPA was probably so "weak":
• My microbiology major was very hard, requiring many high-level mathematics and chemistry classes in addition to the micro classes and labs,
• I wanted to challenge myself, so I took classes like Multivariate Calculus,
• I believed in a strong liberal arts education, so I took challenging non-science classes like History of 19th century China and Contemporary British Literature,
• I wanted to challenge myself physically, so I became a member of the Tae Kwon Do club and worked my way up to a green belt, something I never thought I'd do since was not an athletic kid,
• Grade inflation may be rampant now, but it wasn't in the sciences and mathematics departments at Iowa State University in the early 1990s,
• Many of these classes kicked my butt, but I got through them, earning my B or C and am proud of what I accomplished and that I never had to retake a class (except for Library, which is a hilarious tale in and of itself).
Jeez! It's this type of nit-picking mentality in academia that sours me on the whole profession. But despite my rant, it hasn't gotten me down. Criticism isn't so bad as long as you put it into perspective.
Posted by rigd0003 at 07:30 PM | Comments (3)
June 09, 2005
Midtown Greenway
We went on a great urban bike ride yesterday evening. Up to campus, over the river, then hooked up with the bike path heading South along the Hiawatha Light Rail line. It crosses over Hiawatha at 28th St SE and picks up the Midtown Greenway.
The Midtown Greenway is spectacular! There are newly planted trees, flowers, and sod. It really is like a beautiful park -- a long and narrow beautiful park right through the city. We'd not been on the middle part since they finished it. Well, it was finished and then closed for construction of the Midtown Exchange at the old Sears site on Chicago & Lake. There's still a detour around the construction, but it will be finished and there will be a Grand (Re)Opening party on June 25th.
The last section of the Greenway yet to be built will extend the trail to the Mississippi River. This will be great for us Saint Paul-ites to have a trail that can link us more directly to all of the great Minneapolis bike trails around the Lakes and further West.
Posted by rigd0003 at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2005
Calling all procrastinators...
Procrastination is a common occurrence, but over the years I had become a pathological procrastinator. Now that I'm ABD (all but dissertation) and I've set my sights on finishing my Ph.D. over the summer, I've realized I need some serious help. And I may have just found it in the form of a self-help book.
The Now Habit by Neil Fiore bills itself as "a strategic program for overcoming procrastination and enjoying guilt-free play."
Sounds good, but how? Fiore starts out by trying to explain what's behind the procrastination and the feelings of laziness and guilt that go along with it. He describes it as a defense mechanism for fear of failure, fear of being overwhelmed, fear of finishing, or resentment towards a boss or your job. These manifest as thoughts of "I should be working on that report" or "I have to get that literature review finished" that plague us procrastinators non-stop.
The next step is to own up to where we are now, stop being a "should be" victim, and start making choices. After all, I want to -- I actively choose -- to earn this Ph.D. every day that I'm still here at the University. That's all well and good, but up to this point there's a lot of thought but no substance. All pop and no corn, so to speak.
The heart of the book is what Fiore calls the Unschedule. This is a motivating tool that insists upon:
• scheduling time for play: exercising, socializing, reading, gardening
• shifting your focus to starting (not finishing)
• replacing your "To Do" list with a "To Start" list
• aiming for only 30 minutes of uninterrupted, quality work at a time
Starting with a blank 24-hour week, first fill in time committed to meals, sleeping, meetings, and appointments. Also fill in time committed to exercising, free time, and recreation. This shows you how much time you really have to work on those big projects. Then fill in your Unschedule with periods of work on your project that you've spent at least an uninterrupted half-hour on. When you've completed 30 minutes, you may choose to continue, or reward yourself by switching to another, more enjoyable task.
If this sounds like kindergarten psychology -- giving yourself a gold star for every 30 minutes of work -- I totally agree. And yet, I find myself looking forward to the end of the half-hour when I can take my yellow highlighter and fill in another 30 minute block of project time. Plus, Fiore is right -- I'm able to enjoy some down time without feeling guilty, and I'm ready to start my next half-hour block. I think in a different job setting, I wouldn't need to reward myself for every 30 minutes I managed to do my job. But this Ph.D. thing was starting to kick me around, and now I really feel some momentum.
If you're struggling with a project, I'd recommend giving The Now Habit a try. It's a quick read and since it's been around for a while (published 1989) it's probably at your local library.
Posted by rigd0003 at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2005
Trikes and the Trans Iowa
Two students and a professor at Purdue University have designed a whole new way for young children to learn to ride a bicycle. Gone are the training wheels, replaced by two rear wheels that start off wide apart for stability but merge together as the bike gains momentum. This gives kids a safety net when they are going slowly and most likely to fall over, but gives them experience balancing on two wheels all on their own as they pedal faster. What a cool idea! They call their bike SHIFT and it's won first prize in the 9th International Bicycle Design Competition in Taiwan.
In other biking news, my home state of Iowa keeps surprising me. It's home to the very popular and much-beloved RAGBRAI tour but now it sprouts a mean and tough-looking biking cousin, the Trans Iowa Mountain Bike Race. It's a "two day, 300 mile, non-stop, self-supported, solo competition along the gravel roads of rural Iowa" -- from the town of Hawarden, on the Missouri River, to Decorah that is one county shy of the Mississippi River. The inaugural race was April 23-24 and it's reported that out of the fifty-some starters, thirty-some made it to the half-way point in Algona, and only eight made it to the finish. I'm not surprised at the attrition. I've seen those roads and I wouldn't want to drive on them let alone bike them. More power to you!
Posted by rigd0003 at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)