Happiness in pixellated form

Snow

I walked out of work today to find it snowing. To put this in perspective, this is only the second time this decade that it’s snowed in Houston.

And man, was it ever snowing. Big, fat white flakes were dropping - the kind that swirl in the wind and cling to your hair long after you’ve come in from the cold. People were gathered on the steps, laughing and taking pictures. A 6 year old girl was running around trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue, almost certainly for the first time ever. It made me sad to think that she’ll never get a snow day, and won’t ever know the childhood joy of making a snow angel.

It made me remember coming in from sledding in the backyard and having hot chocolate with marshmallows in front of a crackling fire. It made me remember how beautiful Truman’s campus is after a fresh snow, and how much fun we had sledding down the hill in Red Barn Park wearing trash bag ponchos. As much as I bitched about the cold then, this snow has me missing it now.

So enjoy your snow, Houston. It’s probably going to be another long while before you see it again.

Published Again

The second paper to go out with my name on it has just been published online:

A sequence-level map of chromosomal breakpoints in the MCF-7 breast cancer cell line yields insights into the evolution of a cancer genome. doi:10.1101/gr.080259.108

That’s me, listed as “Christian A Miller”. Yeah, we’re working on getting that fixed…

As an added bonus, this one is open access!

Slow internet on Ubuntu 8.10

A week or so after updating to Intrepid on my work desktop, I started experiencing really slow internet connections. (around 100k/s). Tried a different network port - no change. Booted into windows, and got 2M/s. After perusing the ubuntu forums, I found this solution:

edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add:
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 0

edit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases to remove:
alias net-pf-10 ipv6
and add:
alias net-pf-10 off
alias net-pf-10 off ipv6

This turns off IPv6, which seems rather heavy-handed, but disabling ipv6 in firefox alone didn’t fix the problem. I suspect that it was the result of a change somewhere in the school’s network, but dealing with their IT dept is like banging your head against a wall repeatedly. Hope this can help someone else with the same issue.

Q: “Any of you had any experiences with caBIG?”

A: “caBIG provides a scalable infrastructure for discovering and obtaining grant money”

Eric Jain, responding to Deepak, via friendfeed

New World Order

Barack’s new digs

1) Obama’s transition team has a website up and running already. Good to see that he intends to continue leveraging the internet for campaigning and dissemination of information.

2) Damn. Look at that site. His team continues to do amazing graphic design work. The coherence of the graphic design and branding throughout the campaign was phenomenal. His website, his signs, even the stage at which he gave his acceptance speech - they all meshed beautifully. Marketers and politicians, take note. That is how you build a brand.

3) Note the quotation on top of the site:

“Today, we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.”

It’s going to be good to have the president I’ve always wanted.

The Demise of the Grand Old Party

Boy, I’d hate to be part of the republican leadership right now, faced with trying to piece together a fractured party. It’s always been an uneasy alliance between the religious right and big business/fiscal conservatives, but this year the cracks have turned into a chasm. The wealthy and well educated could give a rats ass about gay marriage. The poor could care less about tax breaks on capital gains.

I see two ways they can rebuild. The first is that Mike Huckabee or someone similar makes a serious play for the party in 2012. He’s got religious credentials, but is less fiscally conservative, because he believes in that “be my brother’s keeper” stuff. I think it will play to the center well, especially with the economy tanking. People are tired of wars, tired of trickle-down economic bullshit - if he can moderate the ‘values’ message a little to appeal to the middle, he could have a shot.

The other route, combining centrist social values with fiscal conservatism is more likely, in my opinion. Here’s why: The GOP is losing young voters, and the base of their party at a phenomenal rate. In just eight years, they’ve gone from a 48/48 split (Gore/Bush) to a 66/32 split between Obama/McCain. Also consider that Prop 8, banning gay marriage in California, was opposed 66 to 34 by young voters.

It’s just unsustainable to build a party on wedge social issues like gay rights. Change is going to happen eventually, so their party would do well get out ahead of it. (comparisons to the civil rights movement in the 60’s seem apt). Leading this side, think of people in the Mitt Romney mold: Unafraid of gay marriage (at least until he had to run for the current GOP’s nomination), but fiscally conservative and pragmatic. See, religious dogma has a way of hampering a politician’s ability to build coalitions through compromise. They’ll still get a grudging evangelical vote, but can focus on playing to the center instead of to a shrinking (and increasingly out-of-touch) right.

Either way, this election has proven that the real base of power is in the grassroots, in the working class, and in 5 and 10 dollar donations from millions of people. Until the GOP finds a face for the party who can connect viscerally with this part of the electorate, as Obama did, they’ll continue to be an opposition party.

Chill

President Barack Obama

Damn, that feels good to write.

This country is a mess, and there’s lots of work to be done, but just for tonight, let’s celebrate.

Yes We Can.

Why Care?

via Pharyngula

Super Bubble

Had some Super Bubble today, and after all these years, it always reminds me of fishing with my dad. We’d get up at 3am, stop at the Dunkin Donuts right around the corner, then make the drive out to a nearby lake. I’d sleep for most of the trip. After putting the boat in, we would stop in at the marina for some minnows and we’d pick up a few pieces of Super Bubble. I think they were a nickel each back then.

Amazing how potent the link between memories and certain smells and tastes can be.

Published!

The first paper to go out with my name on it has been officially published in this week’s Nature:

Comprehensive genomic characterization defines human glioblastoma genes and core pathways.

Sure, I’m one of about 200 people credited on the paper, but I was happy with my contribution to the group effort. Unfortunately, it’s not in an open-access journal, so I can’t link to anything but the abstract.

Our lab has another paper in submission that I’m an author on, and the plan is for me to clean up some data over the next few months to get a solid first-author paper out the door. That sounds great and all, but the hard work is really just beginning.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.

– Charles Darwin

Woah.

Obama drew a crowd of 100,000 in St. Louis today. Incredible.

Photo: Associated Press

“Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels — men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Just a quick note - My wishlist in the sidebar has been updated.

Show Me

“I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

– Willard Duncan Vandiver

SOS, Missouri - State Archives Missouri History FAQ.

In these chaotic times, it’s nice to be able to count on the Cubs not going to the World Series.

–badbanana