Digital __ Analog __ [Please check one]

“K, if it is anywhere in the world, it has to be on this block; I just know it,” V says.
“Really? On Curtis? I don’t remember it being on Curtis,” I interject.
“Curtis?” Blank look from V. Don’t names mean anything to these people?
“Yeah this is Curtis and 15th.” It says right there, in bold block letters. Don’t these people SEE?
An indifferent, “Oh” in response.

Apparently, they do see, and very well at that, cos sure enough, we spot the tiny little car as we near the end of the block and V’s ultimatum. It sits there, right in front of our eyes, oblivious to the three hours we’ve spent scouting the streets of downtown Denver, mentally calculating insurance costs and verbally whining to cops in the bone-chilling Colorado winter.

“How did you know.....?” I ask despite myself and brace myself for a response that wouldn’t necessarily mean much to me.
And I get it: “The trees...That’s the only street that has those trees...”
My turn to do the indifferent “Oh”.

Two years later: Different scenario, similar situation:

"I think we should take 18th street dow---", I stop midway cos A is already four feet down 18th.
“What were you saying?” – A.
“Never mind, how did you know we had to take this street? You didn’t even stop to look.”
“That big building over there. Plus, this is the only road that curves this way.”
“Hmmmmm, isn’t it easier to jus look at the sign? 18th street -- can’t go wrong there.”
A disbelieving furrow of the brow. “You mean that tiny little unlit board is more visible than that huge skyscraper two blocks away?”
“Well....” I hadn’t thought of it like that....

I’d always been this way. Hadn’t realized it was weird. I know exactly which ticketing counter at the train station moves the fastest, I can rattle off the bus schedule to the letter, I don’t just assume that the trolley comes every five minutes and I know the intersecting streets for all the Starbucks in the city. In other words, I am happiest when I have all of the information. Without it, I’m lost. It’s like a data piece that I can attach to an item and remember it by. Somewhat like the bands on my agarose gel – numbers 1 through 10, each unique in its own size and shape, nonetheless, I can’t label it ‘thin and narrow’, it’s got to be #7.

I had always thought of it as a strength. It is, to a point. What I didn’t realize was that it was a strength inherently developed to make up for a flaw — an utter lack of observational skills.

I prefer remembering numbers to colors, letters to shapes and symbols to sizes.

V and A (and probably half the section of the population) prefer the world of blues and reds and circles and squares.

We are taught colors and shapes in kindergarten alongside numbers and letters. I think the brain picks a side and stays there – from building blocks at age 2 to street signs at 20.

Now that I think about it, the ceiling fan I drew in pre-school may not have been exactly attractive but it always had the right number of screws. My cousin’s was a lot prettier, but it had no screws. How would the blade hold on? Crazy glue?

I never remember what the cleaning lady looks like, but when I see her in her uniform, I know her name is Cynthia and can call out to her and say hi. I couldn’t always pick out Ewan McGregor from a line-up but I know he was in Moulin Rouge and Trainspotting. Place them in the right context and I am Ms. Know-it-all. Skew their location in time and space, and I couldn’t place them if you put a gun to my head.

I belong to that section of the population that needs a mapquest map to know where they are going and a TO-DO list to see what they are doing. We need the “real” thing – we need the post-it sticky and the yellow pages -- things that we can see and touch, cos we can’t just “feel” and “know”. We need logic, we need proof, we need to make ‘sense’ a 100%, cos the left side upstairs demands it.

We are the ones that don’t always need a calculator, don’t go ga-ga over the blackberry, don’t use the cell phone’s voice activated dialing and don’t configure Microsoft Outlook on our computers. The left side of the brain does it for us, and it isn’t always perfect, but at least we know whom to blame when it goes wrong.

The ‘right’ (no relation to the overbearing wing on Capitol Hill) doesn’t need tangibles and numbers and names. Their brain does all the work as well, but it is so efficient at it, that they don’t see the stages; they only receive the fully processed information --- they have the luxury of calling it ‘intuition’.

Amid the digital cameras and analog watches, I think there is an important distinction we are missing – digital vs. analog human beings – those that remember and those that observe, those that read numbers and those that read shapes, those that need to dig out that piece of information from a corner of the brain and those that “just know”, those that are guided by logic and those that rely on intuition.

In either case it takes two kinds of people to populate the earth -- those that see, and those that follow those that see, so, on the rare occasion that intuition goes awry, they can pull out their Rand McNally and lead the way......We cannot work together cos “15th and Curtis” does not make sense to them and “those trees” don’t make sense to us, but we can sure help each other out, albeit in very different ways...

I walk a lonely road...

I spent most of Saturday curled up on the recliner and huddled under the comforter, the television casting the only beams of light in the dreary apartment on this bleak and sunless autumn day. Finally, at 8 in the evening, I walked the couple miles to Borders, hunched under the umbrella, leather coat pulled full-circle, scarf wrapped tightly around my neck and Greenday’s Blvd. of Broken dreams playing on my iPod...

After a pretty satisfying week of cheerful “how are you”s and engaging conversations with co-workers and salesmen alike, listening to the boss wax eloquent about far-off, fantastical Ireland at a really happy happy-hour, a giggly three hours spent at the monthly “girls’ night” talking about all and sundry, watching fascinating monologues on teen punk rock hopefuls at the free night of theater, exploring the restaurant scene with fellow food-lovers at the cheese-steak capital, this solitary walk on a cold and rainy October night was the only one that made complete sense to me....

I passed couples huddling together for warmth, families engaged in animated chatter, roommates getting back from grocery shopping with over-stuffed bags and singles walking toward a purposeful destination that probably promised love or comfort or both... And I wondered if despite families that love us so dearly from across the miles, friends that stick by us through thick and thin and life-partners that would die for us, if there is ever a moment when we are not completely alone in this world....

Some may tolerate the many idiosyncrasies that make me, a few may like some of them, and a couple may even admire a few, but at any given point in time does anyone ever understand?

Do they ever completely comprehend what makes me stick with Science despite my consistent battle of the micropipette with the pen, my relentless, albeit, unsuccessful attempt to strive to be as good as the men, my insurmountable fear of flying roaches, my urge to constantly reflect to the world the darker side of my character, my teeth-gritting, fist-clenching impatience at delayed greens and slow drivers, my absolute intolerance of the baselessness and impracticality of religion, my need to love passionately and hate intensely, my inexplicable fascination with the English language and my painstaking insistence on rolling the Rs and softening the Ts, my undying love for the heretically incorrigible outlaws of the world, my annoyance with people that don’t hit the 'door-close' button on the elevator and stand blocking it so noone else can, my total helplessness at orienting myself be it in a building or amid the mountains, my absolute refusal to spend five bucks on a much-needed cab made more complicated by the ease with which I would shell out the same for a Starbucks coffee, my Friends-Maher-Federer antidote for every little or big problem in life and finally, my need to walk two miles in the pouring rain and sit in a people-filled Borders café to write a piece on solitude....

I do walk a lonely road....

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a...

Does it take a natural disaster to resolve an ethnic one?

While inhabiting a conveniently distant part of the subcontinent, I am sure many an Indian has exclaimed, “What will it take to get India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue? Shaking up the earth around it?” Until a couple days ago, that question would have been a very valid one and the answer a resounding no.

I was watching with a mixed feeling of sadness and bewilderment the events that unfolded in the aftermath of the quake in Pakistan (at least as much as American news will allow between the more earth-shattering issues of Rove and Delay and Harriet Miers).

Turns out, it takes more than just a shaking of the earth. It takes a shaking of the earth, the US being bogged down with terrorists and hurricanes, the UN relief effort coming up short, and then some.

Musharraf denied Indian offer of aid on account that the pilots had to be Pakistani. Did he actually think that amid the dead and dying, amid bodies lodged between tectonic plates, amid the rampant putrefying smell of decomposition, Indians were going to infiltrate the border and claim Pakistani controlled Kashmir? More importantly, did he actually find time to stop and think about it?

The first line of defense, as always, was seen by survivors at the scene of the disaster: as if to reinforce the needlessness of political and social boundaries, Indian soldiers were said to have gone across to help Pakis with their bunkers. Reminiscent of old war-time movies that portray soldiers compassionately helping a fellow human being across the line of fire, it was a refreshing change to learn that humanitarian instincts hadn’t completely died. That reassurance was short-lived, of course, cos this report was immediately disputed by Pakistan – their bunkers were robust, they claimed. Robust enough to take on a quake of magnitude 7.6. But that is not the point here. Arguing about self-sufficiency and providence in the face of one of the worst natural disasters in history seemed like a joke. Human beings are quite helpless against Nature’s whims and fancies, as the tsunami and Katrina well proved. The least we can do is put our efforts together.

It took a painstaking ten days for the two governments to come to that realization and agree to open up the line of control. What baffled me was the touting of this as a breakthrough effort by leaders of the two countries. Shouldn’t that have been the absolute first thing done in the aftermath of the disaster? Does a line drawn by politics and ethnicity figure way higher than saving lives that could have been saved?

Alongside the history of the partition and the struggle for independence, I think we should be taught something more fundamental – a list of the priorities of life in ascending order, namely, if someone is dying by your side and you can help, don’t dig out your history text book to see if your government is at war with his.

Yesterday’s South Park spoof on Katrina said it best – even while a catastrophe is unfolding, we are standing in the sidelines and trying to connect things so far removed from it, so as to make an interesting story. Over 40,000 people died in the quake – to me, that is story enough, one that defies boundaries and borders that make perfect sense on other days.

Someone came up with a punch line that there is no LoC at this shared moment of tragedy. Clearly, he meant 10,000 moments after it.

I am not urging the unthinkable and saying unite the two countries. Just wait and rebuild your barbed wires and close down your telecom lines when life is back to normal (normal being relative, of course, since life is never normal in Kashmir).

What is normal is that humanitarian instincts come before ethnic, political and religious ones...that’s how Nature intended (and maybe even God cos somewhere between fasting and going on a pilgrimage, I think he mentioned helping a human being in need).

[If this sounds like one of those essays on righteousness and moral values, it’s NOT. I don’t believe in a list of virtues indelibly carved on stone (with due respect to The Rock), but I do believe that sometimes a human being should think about the immediate present instead of being blurred by a rigid set of rules that someone pinned up in a moment of leisure. It’s my anguish at the recurrent fault of human nature that allows priorities to be so wastefully misconstrued and practicality to be pushed far in the back of the mind, behind religion and politics and needlessly drawn lines (I mean, other than tectonic ones, of course, which seem the most needless of them all)].

Introducing Studs and Duds...

Yeah, I decided to put together the three things I do best – make judgements on people, watch the idiot box and overcrowd the blogosphere :D. So, here's introducing the Katrician picks for Studs'N'Duds (stolen NFL lingo). It shall be updated weekly on everything from the NFL to Real Time and everything in between....
And 'course, there’s noone better to hear it from :D
*SCROLL BELOW for enlightenment*

Rantings of a peeved Phila-delphian...

Four months in this city and I must say I am beginning to like it a lot, warts and all [I mean that literally, cos Philly’s potholes have a huge role to play – harbingers of flashes of excitement and squealing rats, they are ;)]
But since it’s not like me to not have any grievances, here goes....

Please rewind, we seem to have missed our Fall!

Somewhere between enjoying the summer and preparing for the winter we seem to have lost out on playing peek-a-boo with the sun. After two falls with, well, NO fall (the sun is not particularly adept at hiding when you’re 5000 feet above sea level and hence that much closer to it), I was lookin forward to my first northeastern, serene, romantic, autumn in three years. What with falling yellow leaves and wind that carries you for miles on end, sun-soaked pockets on the leeward side of trees alternating with the breeze-ridden windward side...not to mention, being blissfully glove-&-fleece-&-sunscreen-free.... I need it and I am not moving on to cold and formidable winter without having it!!!! Put me to sleep when September ends (with due respect to Greenday, and then some)

[I do feel like a monster cribbing about a lost fall when 20,000 people are lost in the quakes in Pakistan, but I can only echo my oft-repeated plea to Nature --- Go ahead and blow up the entire world. And then somewhere in Tatooine, new life forms will emerge. Just make sure I come back as R2-D2 :)]

Why is Andy Reed killing McNabb?

Last Sunday, he had to came hobbling onto field, when they were down something like 30-10 with no hope of winning against the cowboys. If he has to hand off the ball to Westbrook, surely Detmer can do that much? Hell, I think I can do a running play – locating a 200 pound-plus guy even on a field of 200 pound-plus guys shouldn’t be that big a deal!

I must give it to American footballers though: it’s the game and the team that matter at any given time during the game. Now, off field, it could be an ugly falling out or a sports hernia, it doesn’t affect the game. For instance, they had Ackers literally carried out to kick the winning field goal a couple weeks back, with two minutes to go in the final quarter. And that was by no means a one-off occasion: all of their games this season the Eagles have come roaring back in the second half, with minutes to go...GO Eagles...

I am really digging the American sport and I'm almost beginning to excuse their use of the podiatric prefix needlessly; after all, jus calling it “ball” might have some lewd insinuations :D That’s what half time and JJ are for...

The Phillies suck

I don’t even know why they are a team. Why can’t the phillies EVER get to the playoffs? It’s a wonder they were even hanging on to their wildcard hope for that long, considering how they started off. And if not for Utley and that rookie Howard’s homies, they wouldn’t even have figured anywhere. Their hitters suck (Rollins excepted), their bullpen is beyond repair and their fielding is miserable. The only reason I was lookin out for them was cos my old boss wanted me to swear allegiance to his favorite team when I landed in the land of brotherly love...Turns out, I was wasting my time...

Is it curfew time already?

My biological clock is being discriminated against. It’s hard enough to get used to the idea that the sun will no longer come out everyday and kill your melatonin. It’s worse when the only other known sleep-repressor isn’t readily available. There are about 7 Starbucks within a two-mile radius of my apartment; all of them open at 7, and all of them close at 7. I’m mentally unavailable at the first 7, physically unavailable at the second. [I personally do think any human being that wakes at 7 needs to go to another planet (where you can’t tell time), and if they can manage that, there must be some supernatural force involved that doesn’t need the help of coffee?] A person that has trouble getting out of bed at half past eight does – as far late as midnight. And coming from a town a tenth the size of Philly with ten times the number of coffee shops doesn’t help...The numbers don’t add up. Or maybe I’m just bad at math. Or maybe I am just short of caffeine....

We want more ways than one...

Yeah, whatever happened to the pro-choice mantra of the liberal elite? I don’t care too much for gay or straight, but I need to be able to go both ways on the street! More often than not, I am heading in the diametrically opposite direction from where I am supposed to head; but with the concept of one-ways, I am not only in the wrong direction, I’m also on the wrong street. To make up for one ways, the PA Transportation Dept has come up with the ingenious concept of the massive multi-way, namely, a series of concentric circles around the Art Museum, which ensures that wherever you start, you end up at the exact same point every five minutes. Much as I like the unique architecture of the museum, I’d really rather do the touring inside...with all the circling, I’m not sure I’ll ever get around to doing it...

The Complete Idiot’s guide to thinking like a Scientist

['Complete' here refers to the Idiot. This is by no means a comprehensive guide to mastering the impossible task of thinking like a Scientist.]

Everyone in the department is excited about the new zebra fish facility. As am I. To them, it represents the ultimate system to observe physiological changes in real time. To me, it is the most beautiful floor-to-ceiling aquarium. So, we do agree on the basic premise – it’s fun to have some fish around :)

Now that I have convinced you that I am not qualified to give this lesson, let me go ahead and defend it – well, who better than the idiot to write the idiot’s guide?

Don’t get me wrong – few things fascinate me more than the intricacies and nuances of the ingeniously designed biological system. I have spent many an hour of my twenty-something life explaining to people this theme of simple complexity that Nature has recurringly and successfully employed, right from CAM pathways in plants to glycogen metabolism in human beings. But I have always fallen short of getting my message across, mostly because halfway down the road, I am gushing profusely and effusing wonderment and my voice is coming out all squeaky and unintelligible.

Yeah, if it is possible, I am too fascinated. Too fascinated to even begin to explain in any semblance of order or conceivable pattern this amazing phenomenon. Too fascinated to believe that what I read about Nature’s unique engineering in the textbook can be successfully transposed to the laboratory bench. Too fascinated to think I can change any of it, much less, make it better.

Nature has designed the simplest most complicated system that can do all the wonderful things it so effortlessly does. If we toggle with it, we are either altering its simplicity so it no longer works or its complexity so it can no longer do everything it does.

Years ago, during my first real encounter with bench science, when I was trying to convince myself as much as the world that the little blue blob on the gel was really the protein it was claiming to be, my then scientific guru told me that a frightening fascination with text book science was causing my obvious reluctance to go out there and see for myself if it works on the bench -- paraphrasing -- You like to sit at a desk and philosophize about Nature and her myriad ways. You don’t want to get out there and do it where it matters, where it changes the world.

Sure, I countered, but there is a big assumption there: that it changes the world. On some level, I guess I am a scientist: I am almost always able to interject an assumption behind a perfectly valid statement that successfully weakens it – or even better - negates it ;) That’s what scientists do and that’s why they spend so much time doing what they do.

All said, I don’t want to deny my friend’s assessment. While I sincerely believe (yeah, yeah somewhere deep in the bottom of my heart) that my rantings on religion and politics are going to ring some bell somewhere and enlighten someone and advance another, I quite honestly don’t think that my playing with the micropipette is going to make any real difference to the world or its beings.

And yet I enjoy my fantasies of wayward, far-off things. I think “romancing with Science” is the term I am looking for. I walk into the ES cell culture room and wonder if a Jurassic Park grade experiment can be performed with the mice we have and the frozen woolly mammoth can be brought back to life. Surely, somewhere in the ice-caps of Serbia, some DNA should be buried untouched... And I have spent a good amount of my undergrad years exchanging letters (back when Rowland hill’s system was still the predominant one to exchange ideas in India) on Charles Darwin’s theories with a fellow evolution enthusiast wondering if the chicken came before the egg and if so, how.

I look at protein crystallography and drug discovery with a jaundiced eye. Paper publishing science, is my term for it, and yet, that is the science that might find a cure for AIDS some day. I pick up a paper from a 1970 copy of the journal, Nature and look longingly at creative science done in an age devoid of microarrays and biocomputing, little realizing that these toys are aiding and expediting research that would otherwise take eons.

“We haven’t yet understood the most basic systems of Nature. Why are we already beginning to alter it?” is my oft-repeated question. Because, understanding why the fish lost their gills and developed lungs is not going to change the world, but finding a way to inject DNA encoding insulin is, says a little voice in the back of my head. I ignore it and open Stryer’s Biochemistry to marvel at the magic that is the sodium-potassium pump in the dopaminergic neuron.

Yeah, in the case of Changing world vs. Nature, I am quite unequivocally on the side of the latter.

It’s funny that while I look at most things in life through the left side of my brain, I look at the logical, practical realm of science through the right.

As a researcher I know I should be spending more time thinking about the future of Science, but I’d much rather wonder about the past; my contemplation of the future is restricted to pondering the fate of the Bush presidency or India’s economic standing a decade from now.

And then a few days ago, the funniest thing happened. My co-worker came up to me and said that my mouse had arrived. “Really? The one with the CRE transgene?” I wondered out aloud. She just smiled and pointed to a taped white box in the corner. 'Apple mighty mouse for iBook G-4' the box proclaimed.

Voila! I had done it. After a decade in the field, I had finally begun to think like a scientist. And I hear it’s an irreversible process…