Yesterday I got a new ear piercing, at a studio in town that I had never been to but came highly recommended from several people. After three other ear cartilage piercings, I was prepared for the standard speech afterwards regarding after-care.
- Use a mild, unscented anti-bacterial soap to wash it at the end of my shower, to remove any residue from soap and shampoo.
- Wash hands thoroughly with anti-bacterial soap before touching the piercing.
- Rotate the piercing often, to prevent a crust from building up.
- If a crust does build up, gently remove it with clean hands or a damp washcloth.
- If uncomfortable swelling occurs, make a low concentration sea salt soak in warm water and soak the piercing for 10-15 minutes 2-3 x a day until the swelling goes down.
- Your piercing should be healed in approximately 6 months.
That is most definitely not the speech I heard.
This particular studio promotes "dry wound care", which recommends that you do not WASH the piercing, do not TOUCH the piercing, do not remove the CRUSTIES and keep it completely DRY and it will be healed within 3 months.
I asked why this was completely different from everything I had ever heard. Doesn't the piercing get dirty and oily from being attached to the side of my head all day? Doesn't the hypersalinity of the salt soak draw out moisture, decreasing swelling? According to this piercer, who certainly spoke as if he was very knowledgeable and experienced, most of what gets on my ear during the day is tolerable, unless I get dunked in a river or spit on by a cow and that any disturbance of those crusties will only slow the healing process. He likened the crusties to a scab on a normal wound, which I was taught to leave alone until it falls off of its own accord. He also pointed out how very, very non-sterile any sea salt soak I made at home would be, and that this would compensate for any benefits it might provide. (Although one of his complaints on the soak was that I would likely make it up wrong because I'm "probably not a chemist". Now, granted, I'm not technically a chemist, but... I probably did smirk a little.)
I found this after-care regime intriguing. I would be interested to hear opinions, especially from microbiologists and/or other folks that have been pierced (pierced microbiologists? Anyone?), as to which they think is better for a minor wound. I certainly see his point, although it's very difficult for me to believe everyone else is wrong... not because the original after-care regime was so well explained to me, and the evidence for the new one doesn't hold up... but possibly because of the mental phenomenon known as anchoring. Jonah Lehrer, at The Frontal Cortex, wrote a great piece on anchoring recently. It boils down to this: in light of overwhelming new evidence, we will stubbornly hold on to our first impression. In my case, it is piercing after-care, but Jonah extends this principle to the graver issues of how to handle a global crisis when the news told us it was going to be Just Fine. Go check it out.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Grow Stuff
I like to grow stuff, especially from seed. There's something instinctively satisfying and awesome about burying tiny seeds in the ground and seeing something grow out of it. My favorite way to plant from seed is to save the seeds from whatever produce I just ate and throw them in the ground without learning anything about how to grow them. I think it's amazing to see that things just grow most of the time. Of course, I'm sure things grow better and faster and bigger and more often if you learn something about it. I'm sure yield of edible product increases if you fertilize properly and give them the right amount of sun and spray with organic pesticides and cloche (haha). If my diet depended on what I grew, I'm sure I would pay more attention - but I think it speaks to the robustness of a plant that it will just grow after being tossed into the three-square foot plot of terrible Texas clay I hacked up outside my apartment and surrounded with rocks. That excites me. And if I get something edible off that plant? Get out of town. I'm ecstatic. Not to mention that my kid will eat just about anything if it we grow it ourselves.
Now if you're a serious gardener, you're probably laughing at me, or you might even be angry that I'm being so irreverent about my herbology. But I think it's the exact opposite - I'm in awe of a plant's ability to grow in spite of everything that's against it: Texas sun, irregular watering, poor irrigation, terrible soil, pests, being tromped by little feet and soccer balls, weeds competing for resources... it's like Christmas when something green pokes its head out of the soil.
Since last summer, we've successfully grown basil, green beans, hibiscus and potatoes. We're working on kale, tomatoes, carrots and squash. I got nice long pumpkin vines with promising orange flowers (that attracted a couple of bees, which was encouraging) last year but eventually succumbed to powdery mildew. I planted them from the seeds I scraped out of our jack-o-lantern. And they freaking grew.
I had actually given up on our potatoes this year because a friend told me the soil here had to be tilled for potatoes. In a cloud of defeatism, I pulled two of my four potato plants out of the ground this morning only to find eeny teeny potatoes sitting in the dirt. AAHHH!!! I immediately apologized to the plants (like one does) and tried to replant them. Hopefully they won't be too traumatized. Here are the itsy bitsies in all of their glory.
I grew these from pieces of cut-up potatoes. The internets told me to let some potatoes sprout, cut them into chunks, leave the chunks out for a few days to turn black and callous over, then stick them in the ground. I did it, and it worked. Come on, isn't that AMAZING? Have you SEEN what happens to a potato when you cut it and leave it out for a day? It's GROSS. You do not look at that black bruise of a vegetable and think "Something tall and green will definitely pop out of that if I bury it."
Now if you're a serious gardener, you're probably laughing at me, or you might even be angry that I'm being so irreverent about my herbology. But I think it's the exact opposite - I'm in awe of a plant's ability to grow in spite of everything that's against it: Texas sun, irregular watering, poor irrigation, terrible soil, pests, being tromped by little feet and soccer balls, weeds competing for resources... it's like Christmas when something green pokes its head out of the soil.
Since last summer, we've successfully grown basil, green beans, hibiscus and potatoes. We're working on kale, tomatoes, carrots and squash. I got nice long pumpkin vines with promising orange flowers (that attracted a couple of bees, which was encouraging) last year but eventually succumbed to powdery mildew. I planted them from the seeds I scraped out of our jack-o-lantern. And they freaking grew.
I had actually given up on our potatoes this year because a friend told me the soil here had to be tilled for potatoes. In a cloud of defeatism, I pulled two of my four potato plants out of the ground this morning only to find eeny teeny potatoes sitting in the dirt. AAHHH!!! I immediately apologized to the plants (like one does) and tried to replant them. Hopefully they won't be too traumatized. Here are the itsy bitsies in all of their glory.
I grew these from pieces of cut-up potatoes. The internets told me to let some potatoes sprout, cut them into chunks, leave the chunks out for a few days to turn black and callous over, then stick them in the ground. I did it, and it worked. Come on, isn't that AMAZING? Have you SEEN what happens to a potato when you cut it and leave it out for a day? It's GROSS. You do not look at that black bruise of a vegetable and think "Something tall and green will definitely pop out of that if I bury it."
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Accentuate the Positives
Wow, so I totally didn't write about the upside of being scooped immediately after the downside. Thanks for being forgiving, Internets.
There have been many upsides to getting scooped; most notably, it was a much-needed kick in the pants. I now realize that there is some urgency in doing and publishing science, even if you're not curing cancer so it seems like no one cares. There are other people out there studying the same model system and similar questions (see post on Science Inbreeding below) and it's unreasonable to think we'll never overlap. Whether it's accidental or not, overlap happens and there is only one person on top. My dissertation will not win any Nobel Prizes. That does not mean what I'm doing is not important or being dutifully studied by anyone else in the world. I think that in science, a balance between collaboration and competition is necessary. I think I have a little too much of the former, and not enough of the latter.
The tangible manifestation of this urgency is that I am analyzing my data in earnest, and actually writing. I am making figures! FIGURES! I can still publish my data thanks to some bells and whistles I have that the published study didn't have, but they probably have an expiration date. It is possible that this other group has my bells and whistles waiting in the wings, poised to publish.
Another upside of all this is that my results were validated. This is probably the most difficult of all upsides for me to be happy about, honestly. I think as a scientist, I should be happiest about this one, because what I was looking at was real! My results are reproducible! But... imagine the elation of going on a treasure hunt and finding something rare or valuable, something you can claim as yours. Imagine carrying it around in your pocket for a few months, getting more and more attached to it. You get excited about showing it to someone, and you finally reveal your prize only to find out your friend has one just like it. In fact, they're pretty common in these parts. Joe down the street has a collection, you can sell that to him for fifty cents! The conclusions and insights I drew from my data became precious to me; to see them in someone else's paper made them feel commonplace, like just another Fact brought to you by Science. But this is supposed to be about upsides. It is an upside that my data was validated because now I can present my study with a firmer foundation than it had before.
Lastly... getting scooped does make a cool story. Especially when I tell the version with pirates.
Totally a scientist.
There have been many upsides to getting scooped; most notably, it was a much-needed kick in the pants. I now realize that there is some urgency in doing and publishing science, even if you're not curing cancer so it seems like no one cares. There are other people out there studying the same model system and similar questions (see post on Science Inbreeding below) and it's unreasonable to think we'll never overlap. Whether it's accidental or not, overlap happens and there is only one person on top. My dissertation will not win any Nobel Prizes. That does not mean what I'm doing is not important or being dutifully studied by anyone else in the world. I think that in science, a balance between collaboration and competition is necessary. I think I have a little too much of the former, and not enough of the latter.
The tangible manifestation of this urgency is that I am analyzing my data in earnest, and actually writing. I am making figures! FIGURES! I can still publish my data thanks to some bells and whistles I have that the published study didn't have, but they probably have an expiration date. It is possible that this other group has my bells and whistles waiting in the wings, poised to publish.
Another upside of all this is that my results were validated. This is probably the most difficult of all upsides for me to be happy about, honestly. I think as a scientist, I should be happiest about this one, because what I was looking at was real! My results are reproducible! But... imagine the elation of going on a treasure hunt and finding something rare or valuable, something you can claim as yours. Imagine carrying it around in your pocket for a few months, getting more and more attached to it. You get excited about showing it to someone, and you finally reveal your prize only to find out your friend has one just like it. In fact, they're pretty common in these parts. Joe down the street has a collection, you can sell that to him for fifty cents! The conclusions and insights I drew from my data became precious to me; to see them in someone else's paper made them feel commonplace, like just another Fact brought to you by Science. But this is supposed to be about upsides. It is an upside that my data was validated because now I can present my study with a firmer foundation than it had before.
Lastly... getting scooped does make a cool story. Especially when I tell the version with pirates.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Write Right Now
I must not be managing my time well.
Clearly, other scientists out there have time to be Good Scientists and blog on a regular basis. I can barely remember to put pants on. I need to cut my fingernails and take out the recycling. I'm lucky if I do last night's dishes the next morning instead of three days later when every dish I own is dirty, even the ugly ones I don't like to use. Am I bad at managing my time or do I actually not have enough of it? If I spend some time watching TV with my husband instead of working should I feel like that time was wasted? I keep thinking that to become a writer, I have to write more while I'm still a graduate student! But how will I ever find time to write while being a good graduate student?? This turns into a vicious circle of not having time to write until I'm only a writer, not becoming a writer until I've written more, etc. There's just so much good writing out there, and I wish I were the one writing it.
I have been reading beautiful posts by folks like Carl Zimmer and Ed Yong and I'm falling a little bit in love. Their prose seems to come so seamlessly and in large, regular quantities. I think they are full-time writers, but I'm not so naive to think that a writer sits at home all day constructing flawless sentences about whatever they fancy. I'm pretty sure they have to do research, chase leads, pimp their stories, read the competition and market themselves, among other things. Although I dream about becoming a writer full-time, I am trying to keep in mind that even if I make it, I will still not have all the time in the world to write.
So the question is: how do they do it? Is there a magical system I don't know about that works for everyone, like how authors will write several books in a row but space out the publications? I often wonder how long it takes them to write something like a blog post, which is full of references and backstories, not to mention hooks and flows to keep the non-science geeks reading. How they craft multiple pieces like this every day is beyond me.
I'll keep reading in the hopes that something is sinking in.
Clearly, other scientists out there have time to be Good Scientists and blog on a regular basis. I can barely remember to put pants on. I need to cut my fingernails and take out the recycling. I'm lucky if I do last night's dishes the next morning instead of three days later when every dish I own is dirty, even the ugly ones I don't like to use. Am I bad at managing my time or do I actually not have enough of it? If I spend some time watching TV with my husband instead of working should I feel like that time was wasted? I keep thinking that to become a writer, I have to write more while I'm still a graduate student! But how will I ever find time to write while being a good graduate student?? This turns into a vicious circle of not having time to write until I'm only a writer, not becoming a writer until I've written more, etc. There's just so much good writing out there, and I wish I were the one writing it.
I have been reading beautiful posts by folks like Carl Zimmer and Ed Yong and I'm falling a little bit in love. Their prose seems to come so seamlessly and in large, regular quantities. I think they are full-time writers, but I'm not so naive to think that a writer sits at home all day constructing flawless sentences about whatever they fancy. I'm pretty sure they have to do research, chase leads, pimp their stories, read the competition and market themselves, among other things. Although I dream about becoming a writer full-time, I am trying to keep in mind that even if I make it, I will still not have all the time in the world to write.
So the question is: how do they do it? Is there a magical system I don't know about that works for everyone, like how authors will write several books in a row but space out the publications? I often wonder how long it takes them to write something like a blog post, which is full of references and backstories, not to mention hooks and flows to keep the non-science geeks reading. How they craft multiple pieces like this every day is beyond me.
I'll keep reading in the hopes that something is sinking in.
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