Weblog of Quotes and Rants

I finished listening to "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt a while ago.  For once, either my luck/skill at choosing books, or my agreeableness, has failed me.  I wasn't thrilled with this book.  It definitely had its moments, but it also lost me a lot of times.  I had trouble identifying with the protagonist.  And the whole thing was much longer than I think it really needed to be.  That said, I'm sure there are many people that will enjoy the story.  I'm simply not one of them.  

The author does have a way with words:

But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.

I recently read an interesting article/letter/blog post about the state of education.  It was especially interesting as a daughter of two teachers, and one who is friends with several. From what I have heard from my friends, this article rings, unfortunately, very very true. But from what I can tell growing up with teachers, it hasn't always been this way.  My mom was known as a "hard" teacher...but she got results.  Kids who deserved it, they would fail.  She didn't fail them; they failed themselves by not doing the work, not putting in the effort, and not caring.  

People too often lose sight of the ultimate goals of a project for more the immediate rewards that the system originally set up to reach those goals.  However, those rewards have gotten corrupted along the way such that they no longer work efficiently to achieve those ultimate goals.  This loss shows up in education where unearned grades becomes markers of success even as the children are performing well below grade level, as they are no longer being prepared for life. It shows up in science where the impetus to publish is so strong that junk is being published simply to boost a resume. Scientists put up papers with questionable results, or questionable relevancy, all the time, without critically asking themselves if it will actually contribute meaningfully to the scientific body of knowledge. They are not trying to be disingenuous, they are just playing along with the system so they can continue to do their work (i.e., continue to be funded), so that eventually they do produce something of worth.

Here is one of the quotes in the article linked above, that I really liked: 

"Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, and understanding is not wisdom."

-- Clifford Stoll  

People tend to stop at the "information" or "knowledge" steps.  I would even settle for at least getting to "understanding".

Overall, I enjoyed this book.  I liked the semi-epistolary format, wherein it alternates between the diary of a Japanese schoolgirl, and the life of the American woman reading the diary.  There was a lot of interesting cultural information (to me, as an American) and very interesting settings.

At times I found the tone/language of the diary segments a little bit annoying or silly, but of course, that's precisely how they should be, in the voice of the young girl.  I especailly liked the parts with the grandmother, probably because the reader (this was in audiobook format) did a great job with her voice.

And now for a couple quotes that I liked:

“Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren't tears. She wasn't crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.” 

― Ruth Ozeki

“Information is a lot like water; it's hard to hold on to, and hard to keep from leaking away.” 

― Ruth Ozeki

This was a very interesting, personal look into the world of slavery in the early and mid 1800s. It also touched on women's issues as well, so I could relate and be extra outraged.  I definitely enjoy this book, and the audio version is great. It alternates between two readers, one for the daughter of slave owners, and one for the slave she (unwillingly) owned.

A couple of quotes I liked:

“If you must err, do so on the side of audacity.”
― Sue Monk Kidd

“I saw then what I hadn't seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete, intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I'd lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I'd grown comfortable with the particulars of evil. There's a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it.”
― Sue Monk Kidd

From a young age, I used to collect quotes in a notebook.  Here are a few that have (so far) withstood the test of time.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition

 -- Timothy Leary

While I do not typically approve of man-bashing feminism, I make exceptions for humor

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors

-- William Ralph Inge

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including American.

-- Adlai Stevenson

Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety

--Aesop

Read more

I am currently 5/6 through "Winter's Tale".  I can't decide if the reason I haven't finished it is that the version I've been listening to is difficult to use without going over my cellular data limit, or if it just got too weird. Too wordy. Too...I really don't know.  Normally I like weird and unusual, but this just keeps spreading out more and more and I no longer have a handle on the point of it.  Maybe I'll just watch the movie.

Read more

Recently NPR has been running a series of articles on lack of funding in biomedical science.  They are all quite interesting, if a bit depressing for someone currently in the field.

I've gathered a couple of the more interesting quotes and phrases I've come across in them.

His NIH grant ran out in 2012 and he hasn't been able to get it renewed.

"We're in survival mode right now," he says.

"The only people who can survive in this environment are people who are absolutely passionate about what they're doing and have the self-confidence and competitiveness to just go back again and again and just persistently apply for funding"

--Robert Waterland, associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine 

...he could only get funding to do very predictable, unexciting research. When money gets tight, often only the most risk-averse ideas get funded

he has written a blizzard of grant proposals

According to a research paper published earlier this year, corner-cutting turned out to be the rule, rather than the exception ... because there is little incentive for scientists to take the time to go back and verify results from other labs. "You want to be the first one to show something," he says — not the one to verify or dispute a finding, "because you won't get a big prize for that."

--Stefano Bertuzzi, the executive director of the American Society for Cell Biology

 In the United States, more than 40,000 temporary employees known as postdoctoral research fellows are doing science at a bargain price. And most postdocs are being trained for jobs that don't actually exist. ... The entire system is built around the false idea that all these scientists-in-training are headed to university professorships.

The worst part: The boss spends a huge amount of time in his office writing grants because money is so tight these days even many top-flight ideas don't make the cut. Nearly 90 percent of grant proposals get rejected.

The Secret Keeper is the second book by Kate Morton that I have read, the first being The Forgotten Garden.  They both involve weaving intertwined stories from the past and present into a sort of mystery, but with very human elements. I found them throughly enjoyable.

Some quotes:

It's a terrible thing, isn't it, the way we throw people away?” 

It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it's wondrous, don't you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things? 

It was unsettling, Laurel thought, suppressing a shiver, how quickly a person's presence could be erased, how easily civilization gave way to wilderness.