Science (non) Fiction

Our head pastor, Hunter, has a knack for finding the best confessions that we use in the Sunday morning worship services - sometimes confessions of what we believe, sometimes confessions of failings on our part, just depends on the week. This week was no exception, so I thought I’d share it, titled ‘A Cry for Deliverance’:

Heavenly Father, save me entirely from sin.

I know I am righteous through the rightesousness of another, but I pant and pine for likeness to yourself;
I am your child and should bear your image, enable me to recognize my death to sin;
When it tempts me may I be deaf to its voice.

Deliver me from the invasion as well as the dominion of sin.

Grant me to walk as Christ walked, to live in the newness of his life, the life of love, the life of faith, the life of holiness.

I abhor my body of death, its indolence, envy, meanness, pride.

Forgive, and kill these vices, have mercy on my unebelief, on my corrupt and wandering heart.

When your blessings come I begin to idolize them, and set my affections on some beloved oject - children, friends, wealth, honor;
Cleanse this spiritual adultery and give me chastity;
close my heart to all but you.

Sin is my greatest curse;
Let your victory by apparent to my consciousness, and displayed in my life.

Help me to be always devoted, confident, obedient, resigned, childlike in my trust of you,
to love you with soul, body, mind, strength,
to love my fellow man as I love myself,
to be saved from unregenerate temper, hard thoughts, slanderous words, meanness, unkind manners,
to master my tongue and keep the door to my lips.

Fill me with grace daily,
that my life be a fountain of sweet water.

I’m working on putting together a list of books I want to read this summer, when I’ll hopefully have a bit more time (or make more time) for pleasure reading. I need a mix of fiction and non-fiction, more skewed towards fiction, since it takes me longer to get through non-fiction than fiction. So here’s what I’ve got so far - do you have any suggestions? (Thanks to Kari for a lot of these ideas from her ‘fave books’ list )

- ‘Finding Darwin’s God’ - Kenneth Miller (started but never got very far)
- ‘Total Truth’ - Nancy Pearcey
- ‘Desiring God’ - John Piper (I WILL finish it this summer!)
- Lord Peter love story series (’Gaudy Night’ and ‘Busman’s Honeymoon’ left)
- ‘The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency’ - Alexander McCall Smith
- ‘Saving Fish from Drowning’ - Amy Tan
- ‘Evensong’ - Gail Godwin
- ‘Circle of Friends’ - Maeve Binchy
-’The List’ - Robert Whitlow

I need more ‘classics’ I think, but I don’t have many good ideas for ones I haven’t read… what have you read recently that you’d recommend? What’s on your list to read this summer?

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Oh, and my brother bought a new (to him) car this weekend - I took him to pick it up in Concord (that whole experience is a WHOLE different story ), and it’s quite cute (he’ll hate that)! It’s a 2002 VW Jetta, silver, with something like 25k-ish miles, and a good deal. Here’s a pic of ‘The Dubya’:

So the trip to Florida for my first big national meeting was a success!
The poster session went really well - everyone was really nice and receptive to the ideas, and most everyone said something like ‘well done’ or ‘good job’ after I’d walked them through the data - it felt really comfortable, which is a first for me, I’m usually really awkward talking about my work, esp with people who know so much more than I do about the field… but it was good, and generated some good discussion/ideas to think about.

And I got to meet some great people - my boss’s old boss (like my ‘grandfather’ in the science world :lol:), several of his old students (which was great, cause we talk about them all the time and I’d never met them - and they were awesome!), other famous people in the world of my research… so a good trip altogether… I’m still glad it’s over, as it was kinda stressful and exhausting (that’s a lot of lectures to attend all day starting at 8am) - but it was definitely worth it, and I’m kinda excited about spending some time this summer looking at post-docs and other opportunities for post-PhD work!

Well, I’m back in NC, but here are some random thoughts from my time in the Sunshine State this past week:

~ There were altogether TOOOOO many lycra/spandex/sequin/tube-top-wearing people in Orlando - it was hard to remember that just because I was there for work, didn’t mean everyone else withint a 30-mile radius wasn’t there for vacation - but when did being on vacation mean you’re exempt from just basic common sense? I mean, women over the age of say, 60, should not wear tube tops

~ I saw a billboard on the way to the airport today - guess what it was advertising? Cars? Cell phones? Strip joints? Guess again - it was an ad for this - yes, that’s right, vasectomies! That’s how much the state cares about its residents!

~ Apparently there’s a big trend in the scientific community for men to have long hair - who knew that was back in? (or maybe it never really went away with scientists?)

~ Also, I think every person over the age of 60 in the greater Orlando area was working at the Convention Center this week - seriously, I didn’t see one CC employee who didn’t look like they didn’t have several grandkids - and there were hundreds of them, everywhere!

OK, I think that’s enough for now… I might think of more later on…

I went to the opening session of my conference this evening (after a slight struggle to actually get to the convention center, solved by a cute ‘trolley’ bus) and I hadn’t really paid much attention to the actual topic of this session, since I already knew I would be attending it no matter what the topic. So it turned out to be a series of lectures on evolution, or more pointedly, on the problems with the anti-evolutionism movement that has been sweeping the country resulting in lawsuits in several states, some of which have even made it to trial (see: Dover PA last summer - ruled to exclude ‘Intelligent Design’ from science curriculum). I haven’t been able to fully process the entire set of lectures, but it’s really gotten me thinking… certainly thinking about this from the ‘other side’, as I most often hear about ‘Intelligent design’ in the context of religious groups as its proponents. Now what I can say is that, ultimately, I believe in the sovereignty of God in the process of creation, and that His presence in the foundations of the world is clearly evident to me all around. And I also believe in the evidence for natural selection (which is good since I use the concepts of natural selection every day in the lab) and, as a scientist, I understand the importance of that the ideas of evolution play in shaping the way we think about the world and especially the natural world.

But I generally feel that religious ‘fundamentalists’ put God in a box, saying ‘I don’t think God would have done it this way, or that way’ as if God’s way of thinking is based on our small human understanding of the way the world works, as if we could ever fully understand the ‘how and why’ of God’s creative process. Not to say that we shouldn’t keep trying to understand, to strive to keep getting closer to wisdom, just that we shouldn’t expect to acheive full understanding. I do know that there are things that I believe that I am willing to die for, but the specifics of origins of the world (other than that they were God-directed in some way) are not on that list for me - maybe they should be, maybe not…
What do you think?

I’ve arrived, in the land of sun and sand and animated creatures - my hotel is pretty nice (though they put me in a smoking room, which I’m not too happy about ), lots of amenities (fitness center, pool, laundry room, etc) and a bit closer to the convention center than I figured, which is good considering how incredibly HOT it is here, even at 5pm! Toasty! We’ll be inside during the hottest parts of the day, inside this incredibly cool-looking convention center:

And there’s this adorable pink castle hotel next door (called ‘The Castle‘ ) - wish I’d thought to book my room there…

The trip was pretty uneventful, though I did see a girl getting taken off to the side after a drug-sniffing dog got VERY happy sniffing her bag - and it was funny how I could pick out several other people going to the same convention based on the long poster tubes they were all carrying on the plane - plus us science geeks can always sense each other - it’s a gift

I’m off to look through the program for the convention, so I can plan what I want to attend when during the week - still open for suggestions for fun things to do in Orlando (keeping in mind I won’t have a car or too much to spend on it)…

I’m off to the airport for my flight to Orlando - I decided to take my computer on the plane with me (ran out of room in my suitcase to check it ), so I might be able to check in a bit later! Send a quick prayer up for me, will you?

So as admitted in a previous post, I am a big fan of Queen’s music - this addiction is enabled by my brother (who, when asked what category Queen belongs in, says, ‘the best band EVER’ :lol:). So I was listening to my Queen playlist on the way home to Charlotte today, and I was thinking about why I like their music so much. It’s not cause it’s especially profound (any more than any other rock/pop music of the 70s/80s), or that it’s especially good vocal performance (though I do like Freddy Mercury’s voice). I think I like it for the same reason that I like Meatloaf’s music: each song is like a mini-musical, oftentimes encompassing a huge span of emotions or time or life events. Meatload’s ‘Paradise by the dashboard light’ covers the dissolution of a very dysfunctional relationship, and Queen’s ‘Barcelona’ is almost operatic (helped by the fact that Freddy sings with an opera singer ) in its soaring phrases and intense emotions. And the brutal honesty of the songs just draws me in and takes me along for the ride - and even if I don’t completely agree with the idea behind some of the songs (I’m thinking of ‘I was born to love you’, which I love, but I somewhat disagree with the whole idea of there being ‘only one person in the whole world for each person’…), I get totally sucked into the emotions of the songs.

I don’t know what this says about my musical tastes, that I can listen to Queen and Meatload and then a minute later listen to Derek Webb or Patty Griffen or Over the Rhine - I’m either well-balanced or schizophrenic - let’s go with the former, ok?

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And, finally, I can say that my paper has been submitted for publication in a leading scientific journal!!!!!!!!!! I got the email today from our collaborators and almost fell out of the chair I was so happy - now comes the mind-numbing waiting process, and then the heart-breaking critique from the editors saying what we need to fix/add/remove/completely change… at least it’s off my desk and onto someone else’s! I’m now one step closer to having that elusive DR. in front of my name!

So in a span of about a week, we’ll be submitting my first ‘first-author’ paper and I’ll be presenting a poster at my first national conference in Orlando I’m a little overwhelmed by how fast things are moving, after so much slow-moving progress for the last couple weeks/months - I’ve bee perusing the program of posters/presentations for the conference and it’s quite mind-blowing the diversity of research interests represented by the hundreds of participants who will be there. These meetings are generally considered to be a great place to make contacts for future employment, which is also a bit daunting - I’m not exactly sure what the next couple years hold for me career-wise, whether I’m going to persue a traditional post-doctoral fellowship or consider a more ‘alternative’ teaching post-doc, which would allow me to gain more teaching experience while completing a couple years of research as well. Anyway, that just complicates things as far as what I’m looking for in a ‘next step’ - but this conference will hopefully be a great way to see what kind of exciting research is going on elsewhere in the country, at other great schools where I could potentially end up. Plus I just found out that the wonderful lady who let us use her beach house (who is working on her masters in biology at UNCC) will be there presenting a poster as well, so hopefully we’ll be able to get together and compare notes while we’re there

Once the paper is officially submitted and then finally accepted, I’ll let you know - in fact, there will be much joyful celebration and maybe even a couple foofy girly drinks to be had! In the meantime, I’m going to get back to packing for the conference (hard to decide what to wear to meet potential future employers/colleagues)…

Two girls I know have gotten engaged in the past month - now, at my age, this would not be that unusual, as I seem to have friends getting engaged/married/pregnant on a daily basis, but what IS unusual is that both of these people have known their new fiance for less than 6 months, and they’ve both set the wedding date before the end of the year, meaning that they’ll have known each other for less than a year when they tie the knot! What the?!?!?! I mean, I know that as we get older, the time necessary for deciding who to marry typically goes down, as people generally know more about what they’re looking for, are more secure in who they are, etc… but these girls are mid-20s, and I wouldn’t have thought we were to that age yet. Does this scare anyone else? I can’t really imagine marrying someone I’ve known for a total of less than a year - it seems like you’d still be in the middle of the infatuation stage of a relationship at that point, not allowing the other person to see the real you for the most part (and vice versa). I don’t know… just seems kinda fast to me…

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In other news, I have a place booked for my stay in Bozeman, MT this summer while I attend a ’summer school’ science conference at Montana State University - it’s called the ‘Lewis and Clark Motel’ and it looks fabulously tacky - check out the website and see the luxury I’ll be reveling in, come July!