Medical Terminology

I've been reading a book on Medical Terminology so that I can hit the ground running when I hop back into school. It is fascinating stuff. Reading it makes me think that I could probably make up a few words by just adding a few parts together. Also, some of the ways that the roots have been used are very interesting. For example, I was trying to think up a way to remember "-algia," which means "pain." After all, I thought, there are no English words in common use that use that suffix. Then I remembered "Nostalgia." I'm not really sure, but I'm guessing the "Nost-" comes from the Latin word for "Our," which is "Noster," which would mean that "Nostalgia" means "Our pain" which is kind of funny if you consider how it is commonly used.

PS. This isn't a dictionary definition, but I use Nostalgia as looking back fondly on memories of your long past childhood. Just in case you've never heard/used that particular word before.

Tween idols

You know what are hilarious? UTC Echo articles about Twilight. There are a lot of them. For example, one I read had this snappy headline: Cullen challenges Potter. There's a boring headline if ever I saw one. Here's a better one: Who is Hotter? Cullen or Potter? Anyways, the most recent article was titled "Men not immune to Twilight's bite." Pfffft. Ha ha ha ha ha. What a bunch of losers. Don't these undergraduate journalist wannabes have anything better to do with their lives? Anyways, the journalist pretty much wandered around asking guys whether they had read twilight and which one would they rather be: a vampire or a werewolf. Here were some answers:

Dr. Sligh: I would be a vampire simply because there is so much history to be learned. (Alexie is taking this guy's British Literature class next semester. Ha!)

J. Blake: Edward scares me and Jacob is a classy dude. I would want to be Jacob because he is ripped, seems cool and is pretty hardcore. (According to them, neither this guy nor Dr. Sligh have actually read Twilight.)

J. Petty: I would defiantly be a werewolf because I think I look like one already. (This guy was in my Latin class. He doesn't actually look all that wolfish.)

Anyway, newest poll: Which totally tween idol would you be? Edward, Jacob, Harry Potter, or Dr. Sligh?

The Blue Eye Blues

Today I'm writing a paper for my Genetics class. My Scientific Writing class is DONE! OH YEAH! So I don't need to labor over any more papers for that class but it now frees me up to do the five page paper (due tomorrow) for Genetics. Noooooo! I have to write about "My Favorite Gene." (Seriously.) I picked blue eyes. Who knows why. Here's an interesting fact for you: Although brown eyes are caused by a very long string of genes, blue eyes are all caused by the same mutation to the same gene in every person. That's pretty neat. It also makes it easy to write about. I pity the fool who selected a polygenic gene for his topic! Ha!

Oh yeah, one paragraph of the essay has to be why I picked the gene I did. Any suggestions that sound convincing?

Happy Hell Day

Hey, everyone. It's Hell Day again, that special time of year when our beloved Savior did some time in the Ultimate Clink. In honor of this momentous occasion, I wrote two papers that I've been procrastinating on for quite some time. And they are still not completely done. I descended into hell and on the third day rose again with my Grant Proposal and my Cochlear Implants paper all done. Anyways, Happy Easter.

Yesterday, my brother Luke asked why we called it Good Friday if it was the day Jesus died. It was very cute so I decided to immortalize his ignorance in a blog post. The reason I gave him was the Great news that Jesus rose just two days later! He is risen! He is risen indeed.

Deadlines

This semester I have had the most fluid deadlines I have ever had. It is probably because of the two snow days earlier this year, though. Both my Tuesday/Thursday classes have been moving their tests, quizzes, and homework deadlines around like a game of whack-a-mole. My Scientific Writing class also has extremely loose deadlines, although I think that is the teacher's nature instead of extenuating circumstances. Dr. Davies seems to be the most stable, since his tests are always when he announces them to be, although he only announces them a week in advance.

Over and Done

It is an extreme relief to be finished with my 20-page literature review. It was due Monday, but the teacher decided to delay the deadline to Wednesday because so many people weren't done. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I turned it in. After all, it was finished. What was I going to do to it in two more days? Anyways, I can now chill. It will be nice to not have to know so much about teratomas. Ah. A few minutes ago Mom asked me if I had any thing I had to be working on. Besides for a Latin test tomorrow, a Grant Proposal due next Friday, a paper on the Use of Physics in Real Life due next Thursday, a Genetics worksheet due Thursday and a Genetics test on Tuesday, I have almost nothing to do. Ah, sweet blissful rest.

Weekly Planner

Recently Mom put her foot down and said I absolutely must clean out my nook. I could see her point: It was beginning to obstruct my access to the bed. So I was sorting through stuff setting aside junk to be thrown away when I came across a Weekly Planner for 2008, never used. That went to the junk heap but I realized that all Mom's attempts to get me to organize myself have come to naught. This morning, I was given an assignment in which I spend two hours on a Saturday asking people why they are using the Riverpark and that I'm supposed to keep abreast of myself because all the students were assigned different dates and locations. Therefore the teacher won't be reminding us when we need to do it. I wrote it on my arm, but I get the feeling it won't last until March 20th. Therefore I will vicariously use my blog to remember a date.

Hear ye, future self, You signed up for the Riverpark Project on Saturday, March 20th, from 11:00 to 1:00 at Amnicola Marsh.

I think that when the teacher said Amnicola Marsh was "Shady" she meant "Having many trees and pavillions to keep off the sun."

Status Report

Big News: The modem at our house died. It was actually still alive, but we figured if we didn't get it into intensive care, it would kick the bucket any day now. Its characteristics were sluggishness and failure to operate. Therefore Dad took it in to be repaired.

Anyway, with the modem gone, we have no internet and no printer. (Our printer uses the internet to print. Wha?) Therefore I had to do all my homework that is due next week today. Typically, I do it on Saturday, kind of a last-day-of-the-week-time-to-get-the-ducks-in-a-row type sentiment, but with no modem, that becomes impossible. Anyways, I've done my Physics Homework, Physics Lab Homework, and Scientific Writing Powerpoint Presentation all in the past few hours, racing to fit it all in between classes, Parking committee, and RUF. But I finally got it all done. Phew. Good for Duncan.

Squeaking By

I have all the midterm grades that I'm going to get back. It is scary: all my grades are right on the knife's edge. My Physics Test was offset by my homework and quizzes so I have an A. My Physics Lab reports have been for the most part too short so I have approximately 91 there. My Genetics Homework assignments have been high B's and low A's. My Genetics Test was a 92, so I have an A in that class too. Both the papers I've written for English class were B+, but because of all the extra credit I've done I have an A-. Right now I'm walking along the face of a very scary black precipice that is called 3.999 GPA.

P.S. Latin is a breeze. Hooray! Oh, but Dr. Davies cancelled today again. What the heck.

Oughton...

...

My brain just exploded.

I've been searching for a translation of Triachasis Admiranda and this one name keeps cropping up: Chuck Oughton. First I found a series of lectures that mentioned Triachasis Admiranda. I thought I had lucked out. I even e-mailed the link to myself hoping to mine more information. Alas, it was only the teaser that was put online. Utah State, a series of graduate students sharing information with each other, History - Charles Oughton. Talking about his translation of Triachasis Admiranda. I was so jipped. Later, I was reading an article about two guys in Utah translating Triachasis Admiranda, one latin professor and one graduate student. When I got to the bottom and saw that the paper was published by a newspaper in Utah, I suddenly remembered the flyer that had tormented me with so little information. A-ha! This Oughton guy might be the key.

I googled him and you'd never believe what came up.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/368542/any-questions-on-rules

A how-to forum on how to play Killer Bunnies. This nice guy was explaining to everyone how to play Killer Bunnies (I mean... WHAT!?) and then finished by saying that anyone who got too upset was taking the game too seriously. It was trippy. Anyway, the guy on the forum is from Utah so I think he's the same guy. Other games he's rated include Bang, Powergrid, and Catan. He owns just about every extension of Killer Bunnies, Bang, and Catan I've never heard of. It is incredible.

So what is this super awesome Latin-translating history grad student who has all the answers to all the questions I have doing on some random geek gaming site which would be my guilty pleasure if I knew it existed!? AAAAH! Hey, let's see if we invite him to random fun he would let me have a gander at Triachasis Admiranda.

Not just any Tumors!!

Teratomas!!!

If you want a boring description, Teratomas are tumors that have tissues that are normally derivatives of any of the germ layers. Here's the cool description: They're tumors that have teeth and hair!!! AND EYES!! AND BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!! (in rare instances, of course.) Yeah, teratomas are bloody awesome. I know that most of you, i.e. all my readers who aren't Luke K, are thinking Eeeeew, why would Duncan want to do a report on something so inherently sick. (Of course, I'm not going to make statements for Luke and he can be perfectly disgusted if he wants to be.)

Mom is bent on changing my mind. I come home and she says "Duncan, when I was in dietary school I studied this really fascinating disorder called PHP (disclaimer: doesn't actually exist. I forgot whatever it was that Mom said.) that causes weight loss! Pretty exciting, right?" Yeah, well a teratoma is definitely cooler. Mom also suggested ulcers, but I vetoed that one because ulcers are the example used over and over in my textbook for the class. Anyway, ulcers are cool, sure, but teratomas are cooler. Alexie gave me some manly advice that she got from a friend: I'd rather write an F paper on something I find interesting than an A paper on something I find dull.

Of course, I totally intend to get an A in this paper.

Hmm... Any more posts on teratomas and I might have to get them their own label.

First Quarter

Well, the first battle is over. I'm a quarter of the way through the semester and I have achieved fairly good grades through a series of miracles. Here are some areas I still need to work on:

1. Turning reports in on time. (Phys Lab)
2. Making papers longer (Phys Lab + Science Writing)
3. More studying before tests (Physics, and probably Genetics too)

Now I'm going to delve into teratomas for my paper due next friday. Although teratomas are super awesome cool, some of the information on them is neither easy to read or easy to get a hold of. Oh yeah, the Armawhatzit chirgiwhatever was actually written by a second guy with the same name, Johannes Sceltetus. The Johannes Sceltetus who was the first doctor to document a teratoma wrote a paper called Trichiasis Admiranda, which means "The Amazing Hairy Monster." Unfortunately it is in Latin, there's no translation, and there are only ten copies in existence, most of which are kept in Paris. America has two: One is in Harvard and one is in the National Library of Medicine in Maryland, so it doesn't look like I'll be getting a gander at it any time soon.

Teratomas

In one week I'm supposed to have fifteen sources on a topic that I haven't picked yet. Recently I selected teratomas as my subject so today I began searching in earnest for sources. Oh yeah, these can't be any sources, they have to be "pioneering" sources. Each source has to show a different milestone for whatever my topic is. OK. Whatever, I shrugged. I typed in "first teratoma" in google search. There was nothing about the first teratoma. I have a bunch of new milestones: First cystic teratoma, first teratoma in males, first teratoma in muscle, teratoma riding his first bike (kidding, kidding), etc. No first teratoma.

After refining my searches a bazillion times, I discovered the name of the person to detail the first teratoma. The problem was that nobody had any idea how to spell it. Johannes Scholz, Johan Scultata, Johans Schultz, etc. It made searching for him very difficult. I also discovered the name of his book: Armamentarium chirurgicum. There are two problems: The book was originally in German, and there is no place online to find free information about it. The original source would be ideal but, since it is a book, it costs money and that is a pain. Also I'm still not 100% sure whether "Armamentarium chirurgicum" is the book that contains information on the first teratoma or whether J.S. wrote a book about some stuff and then published a lab report about a teratoma he found later. O me miserum!!

Ethics...?

On Friday, we are having an in-class writing assignment on "ethics." Dr. Jackson made it sound like we'd be selecting some sort of controversial topic and writing on it. Oh no... Anyway, she told us to read chapter 9, "Ethics and Scientific Communication" to prepare. I read it. It was all about Professional Ethics, as in honesty in reporting and not messing up your statistics on purpose to skew data one direction. That's a totally different type of ethics! So what kind of ethics are we supposed to be writing on, Social or Professional!? O me miserum...

So depressed

Today I got my first paper back in Scientific Writing. Where there should have been a grade, I got a little sentence that said "see me." What happened was that I did not have enough pages, therefore my paper was no good. Fortunately, the grading system works in that you only get your grades from the finished product. You turn it in to your teacher, she hands it back, you hand it back in at mid-term, then you get your actual grade. This is very depressing because my last two Physics Lab reports also had points taken off for being too short. The problem is that Physics Reports are always assigned Wednesday and are always due Friday. I literally wrote my most recent paper and my Physics Report yesterday in the one hour between Parking Appeals and the practice MCAT. This new paper isn't due until Monday so Saturday is going to be a day of Maximum Overhaul.

But this is a new revelation for me: I always thought my problem was that I was too wordy. Now the glove is on the other foot!

Mail Order

Tomorrow in Science Writing there will be a discussion about the first chapter of the book. Unfortunately for me the book has not arrived yet. It is somewhere between Amazon and my house. Mom suggested I go to the bookstore and stand there reading it, but I think there is probably a rule against that. Also, last time I was there, the entire section with the books was roped off and you could only get books by requesting them. And a third problem is that the one in the bookstore is not the book we'll be discussing tomorrow. Our teacher told us the first day of class that due to a miscommunication the book in the bookstore was the wrong book. Alas. All the variables seem stacked. I'm just going to hope that because I never shut up usually, the teacher will not call on me to answer questions.

Genetically Engineered Pikachus

For Scientific Writing, our homework assignment is to find an article about bioengineering. The article I've actually found is about genetically modified mosquitoes, because the article about Pikachus wasn't actually an article, it was just a blog post about a guy selling engineered pikachus on an auction site. Still, I thought it was cool, although most speculation says that they are just mice with yellow make-up and a bit of rouge. I found the article while typing "Genetically Engineered Pigs" into the google search engine. Oh the things you can find on the internet!

I think we are all in agreement that it would be a lot more awesome to have more pikachus in this world than mosquitoes. Although rats that can send out electric shocks might become very destructive pests...

Reasons Not To Like Snow

Ha ha. I love snow. But today I was thinking about a couple of things I don't like about snow:

1) It cancels everything. Bam. No Physics. No RUF. Nothing. It is so depressing. Now all I can do is work on my homework. That "Find a Scientific Magazine" assignment has turned out to be a boar. The section of the library my teacher advised us to search holds nothing but Scientific Journals with names like "The University of Nebraska's Coallition of Professors' Work on Abnormal Microbiology." Not only that, but the school library was closed by the snow. Groan.

2) There will invariably be someone who will loudly proclaim "What is everyone getting so worked up about! Back home in Michigan/New York/Canada the school wouldn't close for snow unless it was buried! And it certainly wouldn't close for this pathetic flurry!"
Although I tend to agree with them that flurries shouldn't stop the schools, I wish they would shut up.

3) When it snows, it is cold. I recently developed sores on my feet called "Chillblains." The name is far cooler than this ailment deserves. It makes your feet itch when you aren't touching them and scream bloody murder when you bump them against something or walk around campus. It also makes them swollen and purple. I hate the cold.

Back To School

Does anybody besides me have any problem with the first day of school being on a Wednesday? Being a rather compulsive person, I have this nagging buzz in my brain that says that this is not the way it should be. It has manifested in several ways including, but not limited to: Forgetting that today was Wednesday and thinking it was Monday, panicking and thinking that I've missed the first day of class, and wondering whether UTC Chemistry Labs policy is to skip the first Monday or to skip the first Week. This last one is a problem because I'm sure that if I don't show up to the Chemistry Labs on the right days, I'll be fired if I haven't already been fired and assuming that they hired me in the first place. (I'm not even sure that I have the job and I'm already worried about losing it.)

Not only that but I've only had two classes and I already have a load of homework: I have to find a scientific journal that uses academic language at a level that I can understand, create an index card outlining my writing strengths and weaknesses, and translate two pages of Latin. (I'll be done with all of this in about thirty minutes of actual work, but it never hurts to gripe!)

Portfolio Power!

Hoorah! The Portfolio for the English class has my stomach turning loops since you have to turn it in on Wednesday before 4:00 to him personally or you get a 0! It's like some sort of ninja trial: Find me before sunset and give me the sacred manilla envelope or you will not learn the secret art of English! Fortunately I have a hint: He will be in his office all day, though he may run out for a few minutes to get lunch.

I was writing the "cover letter" for the portfolio, which is pretty much two paragraphs about what you learned over the semester, and it felt like I was writing a blog post about English class. Although I used bigger words and fancier sentence structure and less "Hoorah!"s.