CSHL Day 1

Woke up. Went for a run. Finished writing a talk. Spent fifteen hours hearing about and fiddling with yeast. Going to sleep now.

CSHL Day 0

One thing this space is good for is for impromptu travel diaries. I don’t have a camera with me this trip, so unfortunately there probably won’t be any pictures. But anyways, after 11 hours of busses, borders, trains, and one van, I’ve arrived at CSHL.

One thing I find funny when travelling is getting so caught up in trying to catch the aforementioned trains, busses, etc., that when I realized the bus I was on went to the Port Authority, and not Penn Station as I had thought, I actually spent awhile trying to figure out elaborate transportation plans for how to get there before realizing that I could just walk ten blocks.

The CSHL campus is pretty gorgeous - a collection of hold houses re-fitted into research and teaching labs, nestled at the base of Cold Spring Harbor. Here’s a satellite view of the campus, I’m at the base of the inner harbour right now. It’s much less humid here than Montreal, and it feels really nice to get out of the city for awhile.

Now, time to write a talk for tomorrow! Updates in the future will probably be something like “Woke up. Spent Twelve Hours Fiddling With Yeast. Going to Sleep Now.”

Back To The Ocean

Hey, I’m heading to Long Island for three weeks! I’ll be attending the Yeast Genetics and Genomics course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. Three weeks of late nights in the lab, and lots of yeast talk.

Since I don’t really do any field work, I never get a chance to grow a cool field-work beard. So I’m taking this opportunity to give it a shot. Pictures may or may not follow.

Speciation by Musical Isolation

One of the principal mechanisms thought to be responsible for the evolution of new species is the process of allopatric speciation. Simply put, populations that are capable of interbreeding are separated for a long period of time (by, for example, a mountain range or ocean). Out of contact with each other, each new subpopulation adapts to its new environment, while neutral genetic changes also accumulate. After enough time has elapsed, the two subpopulations may no longer be able to breed with each other, because of the accumulated genetic changes in each.

I’m kind of feeling this week like I’m undergoing a musical allopatric speciation event. I keep listening to music on my own, and if at some point I end up trying to talk about music with my friends, we’ll have nothing at all in common anymore. I mean seriously, how often can one person listen to Sweetheart of the Rodeo in one week, and still be able to interact with other people? I’ll have to move to South Carolina or something.

If future scientists are trying to decipher how I ended up here, I think it went something like Wilco -> Uncle Tupelo -> Gillian Welch -> Gram Parsons.

I Remember You Well

So there I was in my old blue raincoat watching the new Leonard Cohen biopic/concert film Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man. A lot of the artists in the film told their stories about how they first heard of him, so here’s mine. My dad used to play Leonard Cohen all the time, mostly the I’m Your Man album, and I thought it was the worst music in the world. I was probably ten years old at the time. He couldn’t sing! It was all cheesy eighties keyboards! One day, I thought I had a telling argument. In “Tower of Song”, he sings:

        I was born like this, I had no choice, I was born with the gift of a golden voice

This was clearly untrue! I thought I’d caught him in a lie, so we wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore! Aha!

This was also obviously before I’d heard of irony.

Anyways, the movie is pretty great, but probably only if you already like Leonard Cohen. It blends concert footage (from, strangely enough, Australia), interviews, and biographical footage collected from throughout Cohen’s life. The performances are a bit of a mixed bag - while some were incredible, some came off more like karaoke. I was surprised that I didn’t like Nick Cave’s performance of “I’m Your Man”, since I love Nick Cave and that song. There was also way too much U2. I’ve got more to say about the film, but I think I’ll save it for other posts.