I read a pretty great quote a couple of days ago from the short fiction writer Katherine Mansfield “Far better to write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.” I am guessing twitter isn’t even twaddle?

These days my writing has been pretty sporadic. This is despite the fact that I told myself (not resolved, those never happen) that I would write more frequently. There are certain periods when I feel confident and inspired and can’t wait to get everything down on paper. But more frequently, I doubt my ability to express myself, to be creative– and become very reluctant to write anything, anything at all.

I’m not a follower of the Eat, Pray, Love cult (I only read a portion of the book), however, the book’s author Elizabeth Gilbert has given a fantastic TED talk on how we can dissociate creativity from productivity, and make both possible. She discusses the origin of the word ‘genius’ which I really liked. The concept behind genius is very similar to mythology of the muses, but even more personal. According to the OED the word refers to classical Greco-Roman beliefs where genius was an individual tutelary god or spirit present in each person, providing him or her with a divine nature and governing his or her fortunes. Gilbert’s main point in the talk is that while creativity can’t be forced, when we sit down and work on a given project, sometimes a stroke of genius will flash by and since we’re already working we can take advantage of it. And even if it doesn’t come by– we’ve still accomplished something.

This semester is probably my most challenging in terms of materials and courseload, but I am also talking incredibly interesting courses. Most of my classes now are with less than thirty people, a big difference from the three-hundred and six-hundred seat classes I was taking even up to last semester (not a fan). So while I have hundreds of pages to read and write, the chance to discuss readings in seminars and work on projects gives me a lot more to talk about, to write about- and an opportunity to rid this fear of expressing myself/writing inadequately. In short, henceforth I shall twaddle while my genius will do the writing.

* Image Source – A really interesting NYT article on Randall Munroe, the genius behind xkcd.

I have incredibly spotty wireless coverage in my room which means that I have to do amazing feats of gymnastics to be able to see more than two bars on my laptop. However, I wanted to take a few minutes to celebrate Alfred Russel Wallace’s 188th birthday. He, along with Charles Darwin (whose birthday is coming soon– cake pending– it’s going to be better than these– wait, where did they get Darwin action figures?– is that Père Noël dressed in black?), put forward the theory of evolution. As I wrote in an article a while back:

Alfred Russel Wallace is a truly fascinating character in his own right and one of the unsung heroes of science. He produced a massive body of scientific work in evolutionary biology, biogeography and ecology. He wrote extensively in areas outside science as well. Coming from a very modest background, Wallace considered himself a socialist and engaged extensively in social activism. He criticized free-trade and privatization, supported woman’s suffrage, and wrote against eugenics and social Darwinism which were ideas sported by some of his contemporaries. He also adhered to other beliefs, such as spiritualism, that caused some tension between him and scientific contemporaries.

In contrast to Darwin who took a conservative approach to science, having forestalled publication of his theory of natural selection for 20 years—the self-educated Wallace operated on strokes of genius. It has been said that developed the main points of evolutionary theory in a two-hour fit of malaria (how productive are your sick days? I thought so.) He clearly wasn’t afraid to be controversial, and almost to a flaw was willing to hedge all bets on an idea he believed to be right. And he was mostly right. At the same time, Wallace was incredibly humble scientist who sparked a modern revolution in science by providing Darwin with impetus and unconditional support.

Happy birthday!

I added a new sidenotes feature to the site inspired by the blog of the WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg (and countless other blogs). This feature allows me to post mini-entries that are somewhere between a real entry and a twitter post. I tried using several plugins including AsideShop and Miniposts, but none of them really worked with my blog or interfered with other features of the site. Finally I stumbled on Adding Asides in WordPress’ own codex and found it tremendously helpful. After implementing the code, one little feature I wanted to have was the ability to exclude these sidenotes from the main posts’ Archives. I use a plugin called clean Archives reloaded, so I added the following code:

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$rawposts = get_posts( 'numberposts=-1&category=-CATEGORYTOBEEXCLUDED' );

below this line

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$rawposts = $wpdb->get_results( "SELECT ID, post_date, post_date_gmt, comment_status, comment_count FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'post' AND post_password = ''" );

Replacing of course ‘CATEGORYTOBEEXCLUDED‘ with the ID number for the specific category that I wanted excluded. Adding the second line in there is kind of redundant, but the plugin uses a direct query instead of get_posts() for memory reasons and I didn’t want to mess with it.

Tonight is MSURJ’s submission deadline. Every year we, the editors of the journal, sit in front of our computer screens– refreshing the journal’s inbox fervently– and watch the submissions roll in. In the past three years I’ve noticed that the submissions tend to come in at around the same times– a day before, four hours before, exactly at the deadline, and occassionaly minutes after the deadline with a dog-ate-my-homework apology attached (it’s okay!). Of course there is always the occassional deflated email a couple of days later asking “when is the next deadline?“.

It’s so exciting to see all these interesting manuscript titles in your inbox, waiting to be read and potentially published. Given our anticipation I can only imagine what the editors in Nature, Science and other journals that receive breakthrough research every day must feel like. While I refresh the inbox, I know that we all fear that this year there won’t be a lot of submissions, or that we won’t have a good quality crop. I think that’s a fear that anyone publishing a magazine or journal faces, and is minimized substantially when you’ve publicized the publication well prior to the deadline. This year is specially exciting for MSURJ since we’ve opened up the journal and will be publishing Guest Articles from outside McGill. So many people put so much effort in the publication of this journal each year– may as well take it international.

Having been on MSURJ’s editorial board for the past four years, I’m savouring my last year. I’ll definitely be writing about our publication process for the 6th volume of the journal. In fact, right now I’m working on a 4-post series on starting and publishing an undergraduate science journal which I’ll be putting up in the next couple of weeks.

Here’s to hoping we have a good, productive semester ahead!

*addendum: yay… 100th post on this blog!

he printing press was developed and first used in 1439 by Johannes Gutenberg. It was quickly adopted across the world and laid the foundation for technological, socio-political and scientific revolutions in the following centuries. It has been estimated that since the time of Gutenberg some 130 million books have been published worldwide ^[1], and in the United States some 270-290 thousand books continue to be published annually ^[2]. However, with the advent of the internet and the introduction of digitization technologies, how books are published, marketed, distributed, and the way people interact with them have begun to transform.

*Image source

The digitization of books has been heralded by proponents as having the potential to democratize knowledge and push the kind of revolutionary impact that Gutenberg’s printing press did. These groups argue that digitization helps preserve knowledge by storing newer books and recovering rare and lost books and making them easily accessible to the public ^[3]. Others, however, take a more skeptical perspective noting that the digitization of books may lead to some undesirable technical externalities including taking publication rights out of the hands of authors and publishers, and threatening user privacy ^[4]. In this paper I examine what the digitization of books entails, the technologies currently being used to digitize books, the issues and complicating factors involved in digitization, and how some of these issues might be resolved.

Contents

1. Digitization of Books
2. From Paper to Screen
3. Complicating Factors
4. Future Directions
5. References

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This year, with its ups and downs, is coming to an end.

And there were some great ups. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to spend more time with my family, work an interesting job in the summer, and take some really challenging but enjoyable courses. In the spring I had a great time organizing the Montreal World Health Organization Simulation (MonWHO) as its Theme Director; and later launching the 5th volume of the McGill Science Undergraduate Research Journal as its Co-Editor-in-Chief. I read some great books this year, I believe more than all of the previous years combined thanks to… digitized books. As well, the summer festivals in the city, including Osheaga (Arcade Fire! Robyn! K’naan!), provided for great happiness for my ears. I’ve also been working on my own research project in a field I’m deeply passionate about, in Montreal which is emerging as a hub of neuroscience.

From every down I learnt a lesson. Don’t fall down on ice. It’s self-explanatory. If you do, do ask your physician how to use your crutches if you’re not sure (thanks to the kind gentleman who made me aware of the fact outside). Pride comes before the fall. So don’t be afraid to ask for help, and sometimes lean on people when you need it, there is tremendous kindness in the world. Time management is not exactly bunching things back to back, but ensuring that there is always padded time for unforseen circumstances– so you don’t end up in the back of a cab praying to every deity that you’ll make it to an important event in time.

I’d struggled for years with the fear of either being boxed into one field and missing out on a world of things to know and things to see, or being scattered all over the place without ever gaining deep insight and understanding of anything. But Life is not measured in absolutes– nor in coffee spoons. This year I learnt that we can allow many fields to inform and shape us– while we focus and prioritize what is most important to us, what we are most passionate about.

Going forward into the sixth year of this blog I’ve realized that I haven’t exactly been using this my little space on the web to its full potential. I figure this can be resolved by sharing more reflections and cute comics in the upcoming year. Or better yet– both!

Happy holidays everyone!

I saw a story on an interesting new paper review published in the December edition of Current Anthropology. The paper is entitled New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis (doi:10.1086/657397) by University of Birmingham researcher Jeffrey Rose.

Epic of Gilgamesh – Image Source

The basis of this paper is ‘The Oasis Theory’ put forward by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, and later popularized by Vere Gordon Childe in his 1928 book “The Most Ancient Near-East”. The theory holds that climate was at the heart of the Neolithic Revolution, and that first agricultural and domestication efforts by humans took place as a drying climate led them to form communities around oases in close association with animals. Paleoclimatic data and archeological evidence have provided data to leading credence this idea.

Inverse to the amount of annual precipitation falling across the interior, reduced sea levels periodically exposed large portions of the Arabo-Persian Gulf, equal at times to the size of Great Britain. Therefore, when the hinterlands were desiccated, populations could have contracted into the Gulf Oasis to exploit its freshwater springs and rivers. [source]

Rose’s review is significant in that it forms a theoretical framework based on archeological, genetic and paleoclimatic data to assert that human populations have existed in the Gulf for the past 100,000 years– and that the area was populated in the first wave of human expansion out of Africa.

In order to investigate the likelihood of an indigenous community within the Gulf Oasis, paleoenvironmental and archaeological evidence are synthesized, working to build a picture of prehistoric occupation over the course of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene… This evidence is used to construct a model of human occupation around the basin over the course of the last 100,000 years. The final section discusses the implications of the Gulf Oasis on current scenarios of modern human expansion out of Africa as well as the Neolithic demographic transition in southwest Asia. [source]

This theory accounts for both earlier migrations out of the gulf and for the sudden expansion of well-developed settlements that occurred around 8,000 years ago around the Gulf region.

The Gulf Oasis would have been a shallow inland basin exposed from about 75,000 years ago until 8,000 years ago… “Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago,” Rose said. “These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean. [source]

The expansion to Australia is thought to have been one of the earlier human migrations and that is placed around 50 thousand years ago. So the possibility that modern humans were in the Persian Gulf 100 thousand years ago is quite significant, specially when compounded with another study earlier showing that non-Africans populations possess 1-4% Neanderthal genetic material, and that the “hybridization” probably took place in the Middle East.

Another aspect, which is amusing to think about, is what this all means with relation to the Garden of Eden and the Great Deluge mythos that has prevailed in the region since the first written records. Every year somebody comes out with a new location which they swear is the Garden of Eden– and it still doesn’t get old.

Albeit epiphenomenal, it is interesting to note that the oldest known version of the ubiquitous Near Eastern flood myth, the “Eridu genesis”… was written by the inhabitants of this region.

While the paper has been lauded by all of the commentators and appears to be strong, some commentators have criticized the article for essentially jumping the gun without strong archaeological evidence from the Gulf itself.

I am skeptical about the relevance of mythology and equally so about reliance on genetic proxy data, given the huge margins of error in coalescence dates and the many other assumptions involved… Genetic inference has a role to play but, as Rose demonstrates here, the archaeological data are key to forming and testing new hypotheses. Moreover, many other shallow shelf regions would have had similar potentials at lowered sea level, so this is an issue of worldwide interest and not unique to the Persian Gulf. [source]

On a final note, I was relieved to see this particular comment from an archaeologist, Juris Zarins, who has some done fantastic work in the Arabian Peninsula (and whom I’d heard about before in the context of ‘Garden of Eden’ theories).

“The terms “Arabo-Persian Gulf” or “Gulf” cannot be scientifically applied to the studied region, which has been called “Persian Gulf” for the last two millennia. This name is also the only accepted term in United Nations documents. Although due to some political reasons some of the neighboring countries to this region have been trying to apply some other terminologies to the mentioned geographical zone, it is vital that in archaeological texts the researchers stand neutral in political debates and use the geographical names based on the UN official documents.”

Rose, J. (2010). New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis Current Anthropology, 51 (6), 849-883 DOI: 10.1086/657397

 

Side note: I really love the dialogue that goes in the commentary of many anthropological papers I’ve read as a part of my minor. It’s quite different from science papers I’m used to where people don’t openly question the methods and assertions of peer-reviewed papers (unless the paper is really bad) and don’t start a dialogue, instead opting to publish their own scientific papers disapproving or verifying the findings. I recognize that it’s important to confirm or reject data with other data, but at the same time, more scientific “dialogue” and placing researchers on the hot plate at the time of publication may (1) lead to the right questions being asked and answered (2) improve the quality of research in the future.

Today the first is the first “real” snow day in Montreal… “fake” snow of course being the kind that disappears after a couple of hours, and “real” being the kind that freezes turning your entire city into an ice rink. I saw this comic back in the summer in the Montreal Mirror and was quite amused because it’s so true. Every single year, that person is me hauling myself up the hill on which half of my classes reside– always muttering obscenities. A couple of years back I heard of a legendary time when city-workers and/or firefighters had actually put ropes across the frozen sidewalks up the aforementioned hills to help people walk up. It made complete sense and every day I asked myself– where are the ropes? But I came to question the veracity of the story after I heard variations like– the firefighters stood on the side and put their feet out so pedestrians could walk up the hill with a good grip– Nay! Nay! Verily they lay their own bodies onto the frozen path so that students could climb and get to class.

The first year I spent in Montreal, gloating in that I’d upgraded my living arrangements from a mere peninsula to an island– one of the most difficult adjustment for me was the weather. Montreal’s summers are much much more warm and humid than Halifax, and the winters that tend to be colder. Halifax has really gorgeous misty days… the best we can (usually) get here in Montreal is a day of smog in the heat of the summer. Although I will admit that we did get two days of fog in early November and I was very excited. On the other hand, we don’t have hurricanes and tropical storms, the really crazy weather here (although I hear Montreal sits on an earthquake zone?). Storms aren’t so bad though. It used to be fun to get a break from school for that period of time, once you got over the mild inconvenience of not having lights or water in your house for a week.

What was most unusual for me was that in Nova Scotia the weather changes from not only day to day, but hour to hour, and I think nature has left its mark on most of us raised in the province in the form of a moody disposition. In contrast, the weather in Montreal tends to be more stable throughout year. There will be a couple of days of sunshine, and a couple of days of rain… you can generally predict if you will need an umbrella. In Halifax trying to subvert the weather is futile and may anger the heavens inducing a tropical storm. Of course, I’ve had friends tell me that Montreal’s weather changes too frequently compared to their hometown. I can’t even imagine.

Despite knowing better, I am going to say (hoping I won’t regret this) that I am excited about the upcoming winter in Montreal. There always so much to do in the island that you frequently forget about the icicles on your eyelashes, and there is nothing more enjoyable than strolling downtown in winter– grabbing a cup of hot chocolate from a coffee shop that is always conveniently five steps away– in search those mythical ropes.

Today, Guardian is featuring some bold and moving pictures from across the world commemorating World AIDS Day 2010.

Since Larry Elliott wrote his column entitled “Evil triumphs in a sick society” condemning what many viewed at the time draconian drug patent policies by pharmaceutical companies, we’ve seen some improvements in the area. Owing in large to the production of generic drugs antiretroviral drugs necessary for patients, the prices for these drugs have have plummeted; as well companies have adjusted pricing policies for different regions.

Yesterday, however, MSF released a 5-page report which discusses how “stagnation in donor funding, coupled with trade policies” are creating barriers that threaten the progress that has been made in treating HIV/AIDS worldwide. It is important today to remember that while any progress to be made with addressing HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, NTDs will require scientific and health innovations; political will remains the determining element in facilitating innovation and providing access to treatment to any person who needs it.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered a rather cool Twitter account AdviceToWriters. The eponymous site “Advice to Writers” streams links and quotes about writers and I’ve found some of the resources quite helpful. For example, I discovered this comprehensive collection of articles by Caro Clarke, an editor and writer, describes the development of a novel from the start to publications.

To my great delight I also stumbled on “How to Write with Style”, a 1980 short piece written by Kurt Vonnegut for the International Paper Company. Where the article by George Orwell I posted earlier was concerned with the use of language to obfuscate and deceive in politics, Vonnegut’s article offers simple, sharp and compelling reasons why and how we can improve our writing. In Hamlet, a play which Vonnegut refers to in his article, William Shakespeare says “Brevity is the soul of wit“. I can’t think of an author more succint and witty than Vonnegut himself, and therefore who better to give tips on this subject matter?

*Scans are from Ebony/Spin magazines.

How to Write With Style

Kurt Vonnegut

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful — ? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.
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