Science

I am sitting in a little room in the dark. I have been here for an hour and have two more to look forward too. Lunch will be late.

I am on the confocal again trying to take a 3D time-lapse image. The software is not cooperating. I manually set the zero position three times. Three times it changed it too 4.00. Why? I don't know. So I gave up and now am taking stacks around 4. I say "around" 4 because each time-point is drifting up or down by .8um which is about half a z-slice. I do not know how well this will track. This may change the measured value.

Often when science is portrayed in the news, and especially in film you see scientists looking, searching, for the moment of discovery: big excitement, big thrills, It's alive! But in my own work, and in the work of most others I know, there are no big thrill moments. I collect data slowly (and I mean slowly) and then pile it together and then try to build a story out of it. Perhaps its the nature of real science versus Frankenstein science. Or maybe its just the way of this field.

I would love to see a movie where scientists are show during a normal, "real" day. No need for fancy goggles or lab-coats, no exciting or shocking results, just lots of little tubes with clear liquids that do not react. Stepping into the lab I work in you would find most people puttering about at the bench or reading at their desk. The biggest excitement would stem from a depressed conversation on how many more years grad school will take. So on second thought I wouldn't like to see a movie with "real" science. Perhaps that's why there isn't any.

Some blogs that I have been reading of late: The Loom and Ephphatha Poetry. The Loom is a Discover Magazine blog by science writer Carl Zimmer. Ephphatha Poetry is by Sara and Brian Brandmeier, two self-described "mystics on a journey of faith and discovery. I find both blogs interesting. Carl Zimmer's had a collection of terrible science tattoos. Perhaps that should make it into the "real" science movies. Scientists with really bad tattoos.