Closing time

Today is Good Friday in whatever is called the "western christianity".
I am starting to get a bit superstitious with the observation (or fact?) that Good Friday tends to be cloudy no matter if it's March, April or May, if it's a Catholic "Good" one or an orthodox "Big" one. Then my well-hidden scientific side rises on the surface with a profoundly sound argument which claims that since we are talking about a whole day and since it is practically impossible that a whole day remains cloudy all over the world we have to be talking about an observer-biased phenomenon. Meaning Good Friday looks to be always cloudy to me, wherever I am, and perhaps to my mother, whose superstition can only be traced back to this same observation, every year.

In any case, cloudy or not, Good Friday in a Catholic country like Spain is a holiday, which means I should be having my siesta instead of seeping coffee in the lab. Nonetheless, here I am, trying to organize my stuff before I leave for my real holiday in order not to come back in 10 days realizing I don't even remember in which folder I keep my e-mail messages, a useful -though admittedly boring- practice I learned from my previous boss Yannis. But it somehow looks that neither today's blue and moody weather nor my slightly hang-overed head can help me in carrying out this task with the minimal decency. Instead I am reading poems by Miguel Hernandez, as a tribute to today's international poetry day, I browse lyrics on the web and keep blogging with musical references. Whoever notices the subtle one in this post, as compared to the immediate previous one, shall irrevocably earn my admiration.

By the time the evening approaches and my need for a late siesta can only be battled against with a huge mug of the lab's strongest coffee, I start putting stuff into order. I sent the last updates to our collaborators, sure they want read them today and supposing they want care even when they eventually do. Then I organize my shell terminals with tags denoting the project I am working on each, thinking that I am doing it (and writing about it) just to piss off Julien and Sylvain ....(got You!). Next I post my to-do list on my google calendar and pile up properly the -mostly unread- papers on my desk. I am left with a bunch of small scripts lying around on my desktop, tiny unfinished lines of code, striving to accomplish a function which lingers undecided, desperately trying to reach the end of the loop while self-aware of their rough-hewed ends. As I try to browse through this incomprehensible stream of dos and whiles it seems to me like I am reading geeky, surrealist poetry of the strangest kind.

Then, disgusted of myself for having dared to think of such an obscene metaphor, afraid of Sylvain preparing his geek-card all the way from North California, I decide to send most of it to the recycle bin, or in any case away from my screen. I am stuck in front of the last one, which is supposed to solve a simple problem but in the fastest possible way. I slightly tilt my head to get a better view of it, thinking that I should be looking like one of this apes of the "Space Odyssey" upon facing the famous black column. Which reminds me of the news of Arthur Clarke's death, which reminds me that it's a long time since I last listened to some classical piece I really like from that great Kubrick film, which, which, which.... the series of digressions can now only compare to my friend Filipe's thoughts. I am confused....

No I am not. I just realize that today is not a day to work. Before I finally leave the lab for good for the coming ten days, I take a last look at my script and decide it would be nice if I placed it somewhere it wouldn't be lost, but without getting in my way all the time. And I guess I 'll leave it there, at the back of my mind, like a small riddle, like this pair of snickers hanging from a power cord in Barceloneta, which Julien captured one day, so insightful of the small everyday problems of a poor bioinformatician at the verge of a nervous breakdown.

It's closing time. I am off to Greece.

Grapefruit moon

Last night I left the lab at 9 pm. It was the fourth day in a row, after having been here last Saturday and Sunday as well. At some point, even the usually indifferent -about such stuff- Micha, turned to me and asked me: "Is something wrong?"

To me it looked like nothing was wrong, except perhaps from a growing headache in a shrinking head, my back that ached, my elbows that felt stiff and my shattered humour. I was coming to the end of two of the most useless weeks of my adult-so-called-productive career, which even for someone like me, whose moto is "we have to do what we have to do" could not simply look like nothing was wrong. In any case and whatever it was, I was getting over with it. Having just sent some uninteresting -according to my not so humble opinion- analysis to some experimentalist I was leaving the lab on the eve of the holiday with the soothing -yes it can be that too- voice of Tom Waits hitting me smoothly on my way out of the elevator.

" Never had no destination, could not get across.
You became my inspiration, oh but what a cost."

And as I was getting out of the patio towards the beach in search for a bike, I saw exactly what Tom was singing about. A big, beautiful "Grapefruit moon" gloriously standing above the Barceloneta. As I rode the bike steering with my right hand, trying to use the left to call Demetra, I could not take my eyes off it. And neither could a great number of people who taking advantage of the holiday were strolling down the beach on this rather cool night at the doorstep of spring. When Demetra managed -by a stroke of coincidence or fate(?)- to reach me first, I had already joined all these modern city, moon-howlers, taking dangerous manoeuvres with my bike, while talking on the phone and whistling alongside Tom Waits at the same time. I guess it had only taken my stiff elbows, my aching back and my weary head, five minutes to return to normality. And it would be rather cheesy to state the obvious that sometimes the simplest things can have such an uplifting effect, so I won't say it. Perhaps because the moon -especially a full one- cannot be qualified as something simple and because it would not do any harm -even to really rigorous scientists like us- admitting the influence the stars have on us, every now and then.

Much later the same night, going down the Rambla at 3am, I found myself walking with the company of a prostitute trying to lure me into temptation on the dawn of Good Friday. As we both walked down, side by side for a couple of seconds, she noticed I was still staring at the moon, still hanging over the top of Columbus' column down the street . Then as if -I 'd like to think- the moon exercised a romantic effect on her she turned to me and instead of the typical "Let's go fuck" line, she told me: "Let me make love to you".

I stopped and looked at her for a very brief moment, until I realized that she was being professional trying to guess what I wanted to hear.

Then I thanked her very politely for that excellent choice of words and went straight home.

Scientist's block

I copy from Webster's dictionary:

Writer's block: a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity.

carrying on from Wikipedia:

Writer's block can be closely related to depression and anxiety, two mood disorders that reflect environmentally-caused or spontaneous changes in the brain's frontal lobe. This is in contrast to hypergraphia, more closely linked to mania, in which the changes occur primarily in the temporal lobe.

I do not really know which lobe or other topological entity of my brain to look for, in order to better define my state of mind, one which I would dare to call "scientist's block". I apologise for this somehow poetic definition but it's the closest thing that my tormented frontal, back and side lobes can come up with, having gone through two frenetic working weeks with minimal if not disappointing outcome. If in the last post I was metaphorically "introspecting", looking at the interior patio of the Institute, today I can only look at it like in this photo, extending upwards, too steep to climb, too tiring just to think about going up there, and that is both metaphorically and literally.

Scientist's block has not so much to do with loss of ability to work. All the contrary, in my case at least it appears to be highly correlated with working overtime. During the last tow weeks, I found myself spending far too much time in the lab (including late shifts and Saturdays). In all, it has been a period during which I felt rather active and prone to work but -alas- it appears that the excitement one looks for in science, (this little spark that comes when looking at a long-anticipated plot) is not so easy to achieve. In the end, a load of data fell into place, some scripts were better organized, a few new R functions were perfected but that is not so much of progress and falls far from being qualified as success.

Then came fatigue and an increasing craving to take my iPod and my copy of "Voyage au bout de la nuit" to the Ciutadella park and lay on the grass until it gets dark. And perhaps I should do exactly this. I tend to tell people that working in the lab and thinking are two mutually exclusive activities and although their usual reaction is a smile of consolation, deep inside they know, that like myself, they have had their best -or like myself their less mediocre- ideas exactly when they took some time off work, a small pause to ponder and reflect about a problem of scientific nature. Therefore, having just introduced the term "scientist's block" I would tend to say that it is more connected to "mania" and "hyperlaboria" than the contrary (if not caused by them). And I would go even further to cite some of the most prominent symptoms, which apart from the obvious (fatigue, frustration, depression, denial, appearing in this order) include object-specific side-effects like : failure to blog, persistence in playing chess on the web instead of attending seminars and self-inflicted damage of the inner ear by listening to Rage Against the Machine full blast.

Such is my case. Good thing though the catholics stuck with their calendar. This means Easter Sunday is this week and a long-awaited holiday is just around the corner. Let's hope I take advantage of it to do some serious work. And by this I mean, having ouzo and "mezedes", while waiting for a decent idea to pop up.

.....
Oh and in case it doesn't, I don't care.

with doubt and in denial

I 'd like to take one more look at this photo taken by Julien, just to get a positive feeling. It constitutes of a rather misleading image of our institute, with lights glooming allover. What it fails to capture, what is impossible to be captured actually, is the obscurity of the greatest part of everyday work produced in this -otherwise idyllic- environment.

Yes, I am being bitter, as you might have expected by the title of this post. Over the last week I have been thinking about a great number of very interesting projects. None of them had an even distant relation to science and the only reason for me calling them "projects" is my almost complete intoxication of "scientificism" of the "geakiest" nature. Thus, what normal people simply define as "interests" or "activities" I have ended up classifying as "projects". And it is exactly this introspection that brought about the aforementioned combination of doubt and denial. But let's take it one at a time.

My increasing doubts in the whole meaning of scientific research were largely speared by a friend's and colleague's (Sylvain's) final talk before leaving the Institute, last Thursday, the most interesting and educating part of which was the following: 5 or 6 consecutive slides quoting the reviewers' comments on a paper of his, finally published in Cell (to the unaware, one of the most highly rated scientific journals in the field of what was formerly known as Biology), after two years of submissions, appeals and re-submissions. Ordinary process one might think. Until you took a look at the reviewers' comments themselves, which were usually mean and rude, most of the times impolite and -most importantly- always contradictory. When one reviewer would talk about a "revolutionary work" the other would have no restrictions in considering the "errors so serious and grave that I [he] would suggest that someone else conducted this analysis". It ended up that it was only due to the strong drive of competitive researchers to publish their work -perseverance was a term which was used more than once throughout this part of the talk- that the paper finally made it through. And, moreover, it was only Sylvain's uncontested optimism that allowed him to carry on, until the final acceptance of the paper.

My optimism, on the other hand, has its limits. And although I 'd like to think that these limits can be stretched quite a lot, they appear to be a bit stiffer when it comes to science. After all, I have been raised and educated to think of research as an objective field, where truth, constantly under the strains of scientific rigour, is safeguarded by personal opinions. How could I then explain so contradictory views on the same piece of work? It looked to me that conducting scientific research could end up being no different than putting out a musical record, publishing a novel or painting a portrait and have half of the critics receive it with glorious reviews, while the rest deny to even compare it with rubbish. I conclude that I refuse to deal with this kind of science. After all, if this is the case, why not try art instead? It's more fun, a lot more rewarding in terms of personal pleasure and by far more useful for society no matter what people may tell you. I mean how many times have you admired a nice scientific paper compared to your favourite song or book, and by the way, DO YOU have a favourite scientific paper or theory? If yes, please stop reading.

To sum up, we are into science for two main reasons. Because it is supposed to be objective and because it pays the rent. Since last Thursday I am convinced that I am only in it for the money. And with this I am also through with denial. Now let me go listen to some Led Zeppelin while taking one more look on my miserably discouraging results.