Horror indeed

Perhaps I should go as a physicist this halloween...
I just attended a colloquium of three graduate students giving talks on their research in magnetism. Two of them were brilliant Chinese students, and the last speaker talked on the Hall effect, which with the accent came out as "Horror" effect. This student had just handed in a draft of his thesis (PhD) to his proud supervisor, who introduced him - after 2.5 years. He had also published 11 papers. The effect on my already fragile self esteem was pretty horrendous...
Other halloweenish features were invented in my dreams of last night. Imagine mutated bedbugs, taking on the characteristics of ticks, in very detailed and credible dreams. Yep. I didn't have a hard time jumping out of my bed this morning. After the fumigation, life has been glorious for a few weeks, but the morning David jumped the ocean to surprise his mum on her birthday, I accidentally created a bridge to the bed by leaning the backpack to it, allowing a small bedbug to get a last supper off of my finger, before being trapped in a trap and killed with a hairdryer (no, I'm not evil, that is the quickest way of killing them!). Hence the nightmares...
Now going back to face the first horror. I don't know which is worse - finishing a PhD or bedbugs, but right now the PhD wins. IF my nightmare turns true, it might change later on...

(good thing the rest of my life is so beautiful... :)

Thesis update

My life, as most of you know, has one major component, which has grown bigger and bigger the last year. I don't want to be as asocial as I am, I'd like to have people over for dinners etc (the latter has another reason though - upstairs neighbour saw fit to acquire "new" furniture, that apparently was bedbug infested. Gravity and the nature of bedbugs did its thing and yes - we got a few new pets as well. We barely had noticed it until our truly sweet and awesome caretaker called us about a spraying, but since it was just precautionary, I'm not sure if they were as thorough as they could have been. We had an intense week of vacuuming, freezing bedding, scratching, sleeplessness, and searching, combined with finding the darn bugs a little here and a little there as they were affected by the poison along the walls. Then I discovered that despite the metal bedframe, some bugs had managed to make themselves comfortable in the bed slats (wood underneath mattress). 2 rolls of duct tape later, we're now bite free, and haven't seen a bug for quite some time. van Vliets vs bed bugs 2-0 (as far as we know...). One thing is for sure - we have the most spacey bed slats I've ever seen... end of longest parenthesis I've ever written).

The thesis is getting substance, and substantial as well. I've written an introduction draft, a chapter on classification (chapter 5) and a chapter on modelling (chapter 4). I've received feedback on chapter 5, and am now back to it. But today, I started writing the data and reductions chapter (2) for some reason. Might as well, as long as I get stuff done. With these 2.5 chapters I'm already at 100 pages. I am however about 1 week behind schedule (a schedule that has already been revised twice). Some tension is the result of that, I can assure you. I am so much looking forward to the weekend's general conference to relieve some of that tension. It would be so much nicer if all the research and analysis was already done, but there is SO much to do in parallel with the writing. Some days I wonder if I'm ever going to get done. And other days I'm sure I'm going to go nuts...

At the time of writing, the smell of a banana cake, Swedish version, is filling the apartment. It smells rather divine (a new recipe I had never tried before). If it tastes half as good as it smells it's going on the recipe blog.

Now dear readers, I would like to invite you to make comments on my previous entry. I am intrigued and really would want to know what people feel about the topics presented therein. Be frank. Write anonymously if that feels better.

Eating habits

When I was little, I observed my grand parents farming. They had a little farm, with cows on the fields, roaming the rocky landscape of the Swedish island Tjörn, chicken running around and hiding their eggs in some cases, making my grandmother go and look for them. She had fake eggs though, so she could trick the chicken to lay their eggs in certain spots. Being naïve (at age 12 or so), I thought that's how all farming was being done in the world. Then I grew up, realising that theirs was what was later to be classified as (very) ecological farming.

The last few years, I've taken an interest in what I eat. Especially since I live in this location, where lots of meat is being imported from the US, a place where hormonal treatment of livestock seems to be a normal thing. During this my extra-curricular research, many a disturbing story has reached my ears/eyes, and I've decided that I do not feel comfortable eating meat from a host animal that has been treated in a way with which I do not agree - i.e. a way I would not treat it. Question to readers - what are your feelings about this? And how do you justify them? I'm not asking this in a confrontational way, I am just interested.

One of my biggest issues, familiar to those who've ever discussed this with me, are eggs. The sacrifice involved in choosing a package of eggs from free-roaming chicken (a.k.a. "free roaming eggs" :) is in most cases negligible - most people can afford the extra few dollars a month, to get eggs from happi(er) birds. They are available in all stores, you don't have to go looking for them, and they have stronger shells (a sign of healthier hens laying them). So this is a case where I tend to be pretty firm - buy free-roaming eggs, people! (Question #2: do you buy free-roaming eggs, why/why not, and could you consider starting, why/why not?) (this question I'll freely admit, is more confrontational* in its nature, but please don't refrain from answering, I'll love you anyways...)

(*I am a big opponent of contention due to confrontation otherwise. It just never works. The free-roaming eggs issue is the one "luxury" I allow myself, due to the above reason - the lack of sacrifice involved. This doesn't mean I never fall for the temptation to be confrontational in other matters. It is however not endorsed by myself, and I try not to - because it never works.)

I recently came across an article about a movie taken by an employee/spy at a hatchery, i.e. a farm where incredible amounts of chicken are being hatched, to be sold on to egg-farms. Obviously only female chicken can do the job. The story's scary part is that what happens to the male chickens is rather gruesome: they are being ground alive. For the not-so-fainthearted, the story and the movie are available in links (click the word) (no, I could not watch. I love birds, the mere thought gives me nightmares)

Actually, what bugs me the most is not the main reason for the story, but what lies behind it, and here's where I'm faced again with my own naïveté: I always thought male chicken were grown to be slaughtered for food. Why are they then being killed as little yellow fuzzballs? The reason is mentioned in the article: They don't grow fast enough. Is there anyone else that finds this just slightly disturbing..? Ok, so I've heard about how chicken have been selectively bred to be as big as possible in as short a time as possible (it takes 50% less time today compared to 1950 for a chicken to reach 2 kg, which I personally find disturbing). But killing all these male chicken, because they are male and because they don't grow fast enough, is to me, a sign that the society's need for cheap meat fast has gone a bit too far (opinions?). I guess it is too expensive and unfeasible to ship them to starving countries?

(Yes, I'm obviously disturbed about the way they are being killed as well. I'm not going to go into that topic though, because that is entirely based on feelings, and is nothing I can logically argue about - everyone dies at some point, and there will in most cases be discomfort involved. It is obscene if we as humans don't choose the most "humane" way of killing animals so they would not have to suffer needlessly due to barbaric methods, when there are other options available to us, unlike the case for an eagle snatching the chick from the ground for instance - but my main issue in this particular text is that they should have had acceptable - calm and happy - lives before getting it ended.)

In all my research on this topic - diets, common sicknesses in developed countries, handling of animals, etc etc, I've come to the conclusion that people eat way too much meat. Mind you, since my own topic of research is astrophysics, I don't claim to be an expert on this. My findings are based upon research of other people, thoughts and opinions of other people, mixed with my own view of life, and attempts to see this from all different angles (the Word of Wisdom might have something to do with it as well). Thus, I don't expect you to immediately agree with all that I write. I would however love it if you do your own research (trying to see and understand all different angles available), mix with your own understanding of life, and come to your own conclusions (feel free to share those here))

I'm not arguing for complete vegetarianism, even though I'm getting closer and closer to it myself. I do however argue for a healthy lifestyle of flexitarianism, Theresa-version. This includes: Eat well, not too much and mainly vegetables**. Eat meat perhaps once a week (I try to do it even less at times, and the meat I choose is mainly fish), and choose organic/ecological meat from farms in the neighbourhood if possible (bringing down unnecessary transporting is another issue I'm not going into this time, but I think that most people would agree with that somewhat). Make your own bread (a bread machine is a wonderful tool for this) (this advice is mainly for people in north america, whose bread at best is edible, at worst is filled with unnecessary preservatives and sugar) - and avoid sugar! (Chocolate exempt of course...) .

But organic meat is so expensive you might argue. It is. Thus you will automatically diminish your meat consumption. Win-win situation accomplished.

But I don't like eating only veggies, you might say. (How do you know, I ask.) One very nice thing about the internet is the law of recipe posting: in most cases, most people don't post recipes not worth posting (unless they have a lousy taste I guess). Thus, I've never found a recipe that didn't do the trick. There's a neverending supply of amazing flexitarian recipes around. I will shamelessly advertise mine and my best friend's phenomenal site Sofias och Theresas fenomenala recept. Don't get fooled by the seemingly Swedish title and text - Our tireless translator Steve is doing a great job translating most of them, and google translate does the trick rather nicely in other cases. If not, just send us a line, and we'll tend to it. This site includes recipes of every different kind, in fact, the number of vegetarian ones is not yet so large (but they are great), so just try to get meat from nicely treated animals for the other recipes.

I challenge you to try one (1) new vegetarian recipe this week! Let me know how it goes. Let me know if you'd like me to send you one.

I was going to post a few links to good articles and blog entries in the end here, but of course I can't find most of them. Until then, here is an excerpt:

** very long article, but very much worth reading (start it up, and skip to the end if out of time): Unhappy meals

education=socialist ideology=bad?

This story on bbc makes me both roll my eyes and feel uncomfortable at the same time. A few questions come to mind: Are the conservatives concerned about a) the message itself or b) the fact that the president is delivering it? If a), does this mean conservatives are against people getting an education? if b) why would it matter *who* delivers an awesome message, as long as it is good? Shoudn't both "sides" have the same goal, work for a better future, and thus embrace what the other side does, as long as it is good? Isn't in fact the president a perfect person to deliver such a message?

I do realise that a newspaper rarely delivers a full version of a story, but generally, bbc does a very good job at being rather unbiased, compared to all other media I follow. So far, the ideology of Obama seems to be sane, fair, and balanced, in my opinion (still based on newspaper reports of course) (and then again, I was once called a communist by an american while discussing health care! good memory :)). When a call for doing a good job in learning and educating oneself is seen as a step in a socialistic agenda, it seems to me that the paranoia is going a little bit too far.

The day has apparently come when I start writing about politics. I think the day is near when I will start writing about faith as well :)

update: there's a link to the actual talk in the article, and I just read it. I really fail to see what is bothersome in that talk. It's a good peptalk for not giving up, for working hard, for repenting when having done badly "... you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time.", and not expecting anything to come for free. It might even help me doing a better job today!

Return of the Lunicrax Lumbago

UGH! so it's time again, for my (seemingly) annually reccurring bout of lumbago. This time it came slower, and hit me as I took off cycling to the university, and had reached full power by the time I rose up from my chair about an hour later. I really should record the date. Perhaps it's the same time of the year? The same spot in earth's orbit around the sun? We enter a personalised lumbago dust cloud and the result is a few meteors and Theresa needing a cane to get out of a chair. I'd like to think that's how it works at least...

For all those worried about my fil-withdrawals, I made some kefir from a powder (not nearly as yummy as a-fil of course, but it's still fil), and will re-attempt using the yoghurt maker for making new. Buying the powder is rather expensive. I will also make yoghurt, and report on the results.