20 Hour Flights Suck

So this shouldn't come as too surprising but being stuck in airplanes/ports for 20 hours straight really sucks. I'm finally back at my parents house after finishing up the Oxford Internet Institute's Summer Doctoral Program. This was a fantastic experience overall.

As I mentioned in my last partial post the weather and overall area of Brisbane is completely awesome. The city is very beautiful and there are a bunch of different cultural and out door activities there to do. The food in the area is particularly great as well. There is a strong Asian cuisine influence but finding other types of delicious edibles isn't very difficult. On the final dinner of the program, our sponsors took us to a closing dinner at an authentic Australian restaurant. I ate kangaroo. Besides being incredibly cute and fuzzy, kangaroos are also extremely tasty! They also allowed us to taste a emu and crocodile as well as a wide variety of local berries and nuts. And because my roommate was offended when I intimated otherwise, Australia has a wide variety of excellent wines. We had a different one almost every night and I wasn't disappointed with any of them.

The program itself was very enlightening. Everyday we had 2 - 3 student sessions where each student had to get up and speak about their dissertation research. We have a pretty diverse group of students there from journalism, communications, architecture, IT, and others. People were also in very different stages of their research: some just made their slides and picked a topic the night before their presentation, others like myself are doing data collection and just need to start writing. After each presentation there was time for feedback and questions from the tutors as well as the other students. This was great because it really allowed you to get excellent and personalized feedback and a very friendly environment. The tutors often laid out some though provoking issues while many students were able to offer support and advice on some of the more mundane issues that one goes through during a dissertation as well as astute and often unthought of issues.

The tutor and guest presentations were very stimulating. They often focused on the research done by the tutor but were from a very diverse set of topics that often pushed the boundaries of modern science. There were also many valuable methodology workshops that were great because of their interdisciplinary approach. So often methods classes in school are offered from a particular disciplines perspective. It was great being able to understand the different methodologies and how they apply to a very broad range of studies. It was great to be able to then approach these individuals in a friendly and open atmosphere and discuss their work. There wasn't the same pressure to shut up and let someone important talk as there often is at conferences.

Everyone there was so incredibly smart it was unbelievable. I never felt out of my depth but it was great to be able to walk up to any particular group at tea and find an interesting conversation to listen to. Speaking of teas... I've never had so many coffee breaks in all my life. We had coffee and tea available every morning. Then at ~10:30am we would have the first tea. At 12:30pm it would be lunch. 2:30pm another tea and at 5:00pm we'd go home to have dinner and wine. Most of us students were crazy caffeinated but even then there were some sneaking away during lunch (the only time they didn't offer coffee) to buy another cup. Considering that we were just sitting there all day it never got boring or tiring.

Of course, it helped that we had discovered this little tool called Etherpad which was fantastic. I wish I had it during all my classes. It's a combination collaborative note taking tool and chat room. Mostly I used it for the chat since it allowed everyone to have a back channel where awesome conversations could happen. Instead of waiting for the question period at the end of a presentation, it allowed us to engage in a rapid conversation during the presentation and develop complex thoughts and ideas. Also LOLsdp. It was also great when presenters threw a particular reference or work out there that most people didn't catch. It almost always showed up within a few minutes in the chat log, meaning you could save/follow the actual articles and references speakers use. It also allows you to save and export all your saved files and chats so that I'll have the notes from the institute well into the future! This is also one reason I didn't feel a pressing urge to type up a synopsis in this blog for every presentation. Once I found out they were being recorded like this it allowed be to concentrate on what was being said and develop my own thoughts.

Overall I had a great time. I made some good friends and did a lot of useful networking during the entire event. If I'm lucky there may be some collaborative papers coming out of this expereince as well to boost my CV in the future. I really look forward to seeing several people at the AOIR Internet Researchers 10.0 conference in the fall!

Pictures can be found at the shared public Flickr group.

Sciency BAYM!

The video that we made as a legacy project:

Australia Update and Retrospective

Well, we're heading into the last day of the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Program. It has been quite an experience here in Brisbane. Firstly I'd just like to address the fact that I love this town. It's simply beautiful, today has been the coldest day so far at 64F. Now keep in mind it's the middle of the winter here! I can deal with that kind of winter.

EDIT: I'm posting this late. I had saved it as a draft but this is as far as I got.

Eventually I would like a tattoo of this either on my wrist or the back of my neck:
It's a generic bar code for Meat.

So I ran my dissertation proposal through wordle to see what would come up as a result. Some of the big words aren't at all surprising but the second level ones were interesting. I like to use the word however a lot.

Update Letter to Mom

Mom,

Hello! Sorry I couldn’t talk long I was pretty tired and confused when I called. I will talk to David tonight about how exactly calling with his phone works. If I can I will give you a call later this week.

The flights went well. We managed to catch the first flight out of Philly and I took the chance to sleep most of the way. We ran into a bit of a problem at LAX since our flight landed at 10am (LA time) and we couldn’t check in for the plane until 5pm! Even then the flight wouldn’t board until 10pm. So we had a lot of downtime on our hands and we also had all our baggage for quite some time. Luckily the international terminal had a food court that did not require you to go through security and we were able to get some food and find a lounge to sit down and relax there. LA is amazing. As we were landing I thought that I was seeing a lot of desert because it was all brown. But as we got closer I could see that it was all the roofs of the houses. As far as the eye could see it was neighborhoods. Pretty amazing in the scale of the city.

The flight over from LAX to Brisbane was very nice. The plane and service were fantastic! I slept most of the time however despite being in a small mostly upright seat. Customs was surprisingly easy to get through. It took only 20 minutes to get through everything, very different from the US. It was cold in Brisbane but not as chilly as winter at home. It was much closer to the temperature of the early spring (mid-50s).

The apartments are nice but I don’t have internet access there. We had a small problem with the roommate and ended up having a swap in roommates made. Getting along very well with our current one however. Really spent much of yesterday asleep so not too much happened. Today has been spent in listening to talks which have been pretty interesting and I’m looking forward to giving my talk. We will be trying to take our camera around a bit as we go out during the evening and day. I have no idea what Dave is planning I think he was spending today planning his two weeks.

I will talk/write you again in a few days! I’ll be updating my blog when I can http://negativekarmaengine.blogspot.com and may be uploading pictures to my flickr account or dave’s picasa. I’ll send you the link as we upload them.


Love you!
Bridget

A quote just for phil

This came up during one of the talks today...


“[the sudden increase in creations of studies about] GenY is just the fear of people getting old and living in ghettos because they can’t do all this digital stuff.”

The Doctors - Misinformation for the Sake of Entertainment

So I have a bad habit. Around 5pm most days I will frequently tune my TV to The Doctors. This show features a panel of 4 "doctors" who address different medical and health issues. The show is a spin off of Dr. Phil and an Oprah affiliate. As such I don't really watch the show for any real medical information, actually I seem to watch the show more for the opportunity to scream at my TV than anything else. I have a number of problems with this show, many of which are encapsulated by the episode being aired today, Teen Health Questions.

Well first off.. the hosts keep mentioning "important teen health questions" but what they really mean is girl's questions. What about young men? Don't they have important teen health issues that need to be addressed? Admittedly, some of the questions are pretty general and could apply to a teen of any gender but all the specific questions are related to women. As if only female teens ever feel awkward or unknowledgable about their health. Men are inherently born with all of this information in their heads, I guess.

There is also a specific question about getting pregnant while having a period and immediately the hosts all break into a discussion about how "you can't trust what boys are saying" regarding sex. Boys just want to have sex, for both the social status and the experience, and have an uncontrollable sex drive. It's the young girl's responsibility to control the sexual experience and harness the male sex drive. This is such a common and bullshit sexist statement. It ends up harming both young women AND young men by forcing them into uncomfortable roles that end up limiting their feelings about sex and their own body. And this message (girls must be in control and men just can't) is repeated over and over again every time a sex question comes up. Talk about misinformation!

In addition, the panelists all impress upon the girls in the audience the dangers for them if they start having sex "too young." The usual suspects end up here: pregnancy, STDs, getting fat (?), poor personal image, etc. Actually I'm surprised social reputation didn't show up as well. Once again, what about young boys? If girls are having sex young... well it takes two to tango. Do boys some how manage to bypass all the negative aspects of engaging in sexual activity at a young age? Instead of looking at the sociological issues it's really meant to be a scare tactic, reinforcing the sex=bad message for young girls. Boys have many of the same health risks in terms of disease and emotional trauma caused by engaging in sex before they're ready. Now admittedly its much easier for men to walk away from some issues such as pregnancy. There are also the continuing social differences between the genders regarding sexual knowledge and participation, with boys being "players" and girls being "sluts". However, this doesn't excuse advancing different advice.

Then the show starts in about birth control pills being hormone control pills. Now of course the entire time they're talking to the mother of this young girl.. not the girl herself mind you. Parents do have a lot of control over their child's health but really something as important as changing a girl's period really should be the option of the girl not her mother. And SO WHAT if she decides to have sex while on birth control? Why should that really be her mother's business or if mom is concerned why not discuss sexual health and responsibility with your daughter instead of dragging her onto a nationally syndicated TV show.

In general the show also gives too equal a footing to "alternative" medicines which haven't been shown to be at all useful for what they actually are talking about. In some instances this can be quiet dangerous. At one point they held up sprouted grain breads and claimed they were gluten free (they're not). Now luckily I read up on the bread before buying any since it would have set off my celiac's disease if I had just bought some on their advice. But how many people in the audience would question them about this and look up the information beforehand? In this episode it was yoga and acupuncture for cramps. Now, to my knowledge, neither of these methods has ever been scientifically proven to aid in the pain management of menstrual cramping. Could they help? Maybe.. but we have no way of knowing if they do or how well they work or if it would just be easier to take several Advil. In the absolute worst of this they actually had Jenny McCarthy (and through her the loons at Generation Rescue) on the show. I didn't watch this episode... I couldn't even make it through the commercials. It seemed like generally the panel gave her a real argument against the trash she was spouting. However, even having her on the show legitimizes her point of view. For individuals like this they don't care if all of their arguments are shot down. They were able to get the spotlight and spread their message.

I will give them this.. I was expecting the show to be a big push for abstinence education with the panel coming down hard on any type of teen sexual activity. Despite giving out and distorting sex information the panel did well at acknowledging that teens have sex and trying to provide some good information to them. However, the show often seems to run a thin line between medically valid information and crazy woo. Not to mention they pretty systematically buy into cultural stereotypes that at best are dull but can be further damaging when taken seriously as medical advice.