Devotional Blog:

Topic: Who is God to you?, ⁹⁄₁₈-¹⁹⁄₂₀₁₁, Ezekiel 34:25-31 and Psalm 34: 8-14

So I grew up your ‘typical’ Christian kid or perhaps ‘typical’ isn’t the right word since I was raised more on the pentecostal/evangelical side and many other Christian sects think we’re pretty nuts…fair enough. I grew up in with a Christian bent toward pentecostal/evangelical due to where my parents chose to go to church. We started out in Calvary Christian, fairly conservative along with Cornerstone Christian churches then moved into the Vineyard ‘movement’ which was akin to house churches (they were usually small) and they popped up in random places whereever there was space…a strip mall vacant store, a school gym, another churches rec room, someones . To me the Vineyard churches felt very odd…sort of like the ‘hippy movement’ for Christianity. But this was my perception as a young child…

On a side note: It was in a Vineyard Sunday school where I learned about communion and received a piece a bread which is supposed to symbolize the body of Christ/Jesus…at which point I turned to my friend and squeezed the bread to ‘make it talk’ telling my friend ‘jesus loves you’…my sunday school teacher was not amused…

We attended such churches til I was 11 and moved to Hawaii. In Hawaii we attended a First Assembly church which was really small and has since expanded enormously to have satellite chapels all over the Pacific Rim and a congregation that I’ve seen attend at most 1,500 people–yowza! When we first started going I think 50 people on average…maybe 75-80 would attend. The church went from being a First Assembly Church to breaking off into it’s own entity now called King’s Cathedral headed by Pastor James Marocco, a man with several degrees including a Ph.D. from reputable universities such as USC. The man knows his history and theology.

Why do I say all this? Because this is what I grew up in. I didn’t question my faith growing up, it just was what it was. People lifting their hands and dancing in church? Ok…sure. People getting prayed for and ‘falling out in the spirit’…ok no worries. People receiving prophecy from pastors or prophets…this was all on par with my upbringing and it wasn’t ‘alien’ to me, though I’m sure all of this in one place might freak out a non-Christian or Christian with more sedate upbring in the faith. Our church in Hawaii wasn’t like this to begin with, they went through a series of ‘revivals’ and before y’all have nightmares of some backwoods area of a southern state…it wasn’t like that–I think.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

So if you read any number of reviews on this book, say in Goodreads for Amazon it seems readers have a ‘love/hate’ relationship with this book. The vast majority–of those at least writing reviews loved it. I myself grew hot and cold during the course of reading it. It deals with such an interesting subject and important awful time in history and it felt to me like it was written to go straight to movie–tragic and ‘feel good’ all at the same time, great movie fodder. But does that necessarily make good fiction? And low and behold where is this book now? In movies! I’ll be interested to see how they interpret the book in the movie. I have a rule of reading books before I see them in the movies as much as I can…and I’m not one of those people where the movie has to have every last exhaustive detail from the book for it to be ‘good’. I’m always interested in adaptations. And I think Kathryn Stockett makes a good point in her quote:

“Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.”

To say the least, its a little discussed area of history…how ‘the maid’ feels. I found myself more excited about her blurb at the end about her physical experiences growing up in the 60’s in Mississippi and I found myself more compelled and wishing she’d written about that rather than this book. But to be fair I have always been more partial to non-fiction unless it’s a literary ‘classic’ ala Wuthering Heights or the Secret Garden. Is this book a ‘classic’? Um…no. It’s not bad…but it’s kind of a let down. I wish she’d developed some characters more and played down others. But I recognize the difficulty she must’ve faced writing characters she could not relate too.

I loved the relationship the author built between Aibileen and the little girl Mae Mobeley, my favorite part of the book and an important one as no child is ever born racist, it’s taught–many times harshly. And my favorite parts of the book had Mae in them. When she starts school her teacher Miss. Taylor shames her to no end because she drew a black child as something that makes her happy. Aibileen had been teaching her that there is ‘no color’, we are all the same and can love each other as such. While Mae is playing with her little brother she makes her little brother be the ‘black child’ and tells him no matter what she does he has to sit there and take it or he’ll go to ‘jail’ and then she proceeds to throw dolls at him, pour crayons on him then tells him lets play back of the bus like Rosa Parks etc…Mae’s father watches this and asks her who taught her this and she lies and says it was her teacher, when in fact it was Aibileen that’d been telling her stories…’secret’ stories.

Surprisingly the ending was not what I was expecting which is good, but I’m not sure I liked it either…I dunno, it was both sad and hopeful I suppose.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: Breaking patterns of trauma, 9/15/11, Isaiah 57: 12-14

This entry in the book was ‘interesting’ and amounted to saying ‘get over yourself’ at the end or you are going to seriously $#@! up your kids. The simplicity in which she treats this topic bothered me a little. Now, I agree I just ‘summed’ up the topic above in one sentence but her approach and link to the verse was unclear to me until the end and I still was like…does this make sense in light of her ‘verse of the day’….so I dissected it.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: Rights and Responsibility, 9/14/11, Colossians 4:2-6

So this was a discussion of role models and if by becoming  role model you give up your ‘rights’ to do certain things…ala movie or music stars having fits, getting into drugs or whatnot. Granted getting into drugs isn’t a ‘right’ for anyone let alone the famous but apparently it’s all the worse because those who are famous become role models whether they like it or not. It reminds me of the quote from Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility”; which surprisingly enough was not originally coined by Spiderman comics but rather Thomas Francis Gilroy in 1892, it has also been attributed to Voltaire (Voltaire. Jean, Adrien. Beuchot, Quentin and Miger, Pierre, Auguste. “Œuvres de Voltaire, Volume 48”. Lefèvre, 1832). Whether history or marvel comic the statement rings true.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: A reason you are ‘here’… 9/11/11: 1 Timothy 2:1-7

I thought it uncanny and eerie that I should read about this today…it being the 10th Anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy. Last week in my perpetual hunt for books I came across several accounts of ⁹⁄₁₁, no doubt because the anniversary was coming up so they were encouraging people to read the first person accounts and stories surrounding that day. There are a lot of first person accounts from survivors and from those who watched and tried to help. BBC wrote an article asking the question “Is there a novel that defines the ⁹⁄₁₁ decade?” and sums up the novels and stories that have come out of ⁹⁄₁₁ since it happened. I ended up downloading to my Kindle “102 Minutes” by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn which has had incredibly high ratings about the collapse of the world trade centers towers and “Who they Were” by Robert Schaler, which discusses those who ‘jumped’ from the towers during that day and others which forensics teams struggled to identify; which has received mixed reviews. It is widely supported that “Tower Stories: An Oral History of ⁹⁄₁₁” is also one of the best books about what happened as well.

Simple perusing of the news pops up hundreds of accounts from survivors all of whom struggle with memories from that day, people, friends, family they lost and why they survived…why them. Artie Van Why wasn’t actually in the towers but in a building next to them, him and co-worker ran out to see what happened then ran toward the towers to help amidst falling debris and people. He says that he always thought that when you fall from high enough you are dead before you hit the ground…but he realized that these people were very much alive holding their arms out as if to cushion the impact as they fell. When the towers collapsed they all ran…he made it, his co-worker did not. [his story here].

Survivors of any terrible experience grapple with survivors guilt…the perpetual question of why me? Why did I survive. I am sure soldiers go through this trauma as well after coming from a fight where they saw fellow soldiers fall and die. The documentary Restrepo deals with this in their portrayal of a group of Marines who were sent to the most dangerous part of Afghanistan, The Korengal Valley, for deployment…not all came back.

Survivors of the holocaust oftentimes will tackle the emotions and convictions that come with being the only survivor in their family and having witnessed such atrocities enacted on them and their friends. I wrote about this in an earlier blog after having visited the Holocaust museum in D.C.

Though we all might not ascribe to the same belief I am sure many of us wonder about our purpose for being here, why we survive things while others do not, how watching someone die makes you realize how infinitesimal your life can seem and how easily it can be snuffed out. There are those of us that ascribe survival and such as “God’s providence”…we have a purpose in life and we will not be taken, not die, til that purpose is completed. This is the general thinking. But as soon as that purpose has been accomplished–poof…time for snuffing and many accept that, although the prospect of death is still hard to grapple with. Not so much because it’s ‘death’…I think many people are more terrified of ‘how’ they might die than actual death itself.

In the end, for those left behind or those that survived, the question remains…were you saved/spared for a reason? Do you have a purpose to accomplish greater than yourself though you may not know it?

Disclaimer: The devotion section of this blog is merely my attempt to seek out understanding of what I believe, why I believe and the practical application thereof. I am by no means a ‘perfect’ ‘holy’ ‘religious’ person as commonly evidenced by my previous blogs–but then again, no one–absolutely no one is. But I do have an unabashed faith in God and identify as a Christian. Everyone seeks ‘enlightenment’ their own way depending on their experiences in life and their faith or lack thereof. Agree, disagree–my views are just that…my views and contemplations. Sometimes it helps to write them down.

I’ve never been good at devotions. I grew up in a Christian , first church I went to was Calvary Christian in Costa Mesa, California…I want to say I also went to school there? It was a really long time ago…met my first best friend in school there in pre-school/kindergarten. I recently reconnected with her on facebook after 26 years of silence between us when my family moved.

My younger sister was always amazing at devotions, wrote in her journal diligently always talking to God (praying). That was never ‘me’. I loved books but devotional books were also SO dry, or way to ‘candy-coated’ religious fluff for me to stomach. In my pre-teens I attempted to read the entire Bible in a year–lasted 3 weeks-ish. I was a rather odd pre-teen…I had a rather morbid fascination and read about the Holocaust more than my devotions or the Bible.

So my mom bought me a book “Devotions for Women on The Go” by Stephen Arterburn and Pam Farrel and I’ve started going through it. Now granted I’ve only read like 8 of them and to be honest its a little ‘sunshine out the @$$’ for me, but I will persevere because despite that it is succeeding somewhat in making me think about my own life.

The book is dated, one page of ‘devotion’ per day and I started Sept. 3, 2011, my goal is to get through a year of this and see what happens…if anything, and to generally muse about my faith in comparison to ‘whats out there’ and how others of my belief system and other belief systems see the topics/values covered. This first entry will be long as I play catch up over the last several days. So this’ll end up a walk through my own faith as well I suppose…who knows, lets see shall we?

As the title suggests I walked into the office this morning to two computers…both shut off. Now no one touches my desk especially when I have analysis running and we had a huge storm last night with lightening and wind and although Bangkok is a ‘1st’ world entity of itself some days the fact of the matter is, I live in a 3rd world country that is 98% agriculture. The result?

So I can’t claim complete originality of this idea, I was inspired by a facebook post from a colleague of mine Dr. Jennifer Biddle who consequently is my personal nomination (see below). In the resource strapped world of research in general and in fields that bounce routinely between NIH and NSF funding, like my field: Infectious Disease Ecology (is it ecology? is it medical? is it ecology? is it medical?) innovation is key! But lets not snub the other fields of science where innovation is key! I simply address this field because it’s my field. Any nominations are welcome! Also for those working in the developing world where money can be even scarcer it pays to ‘figure shit out–old school’.

Remember the days when grandpa would walk to school, uphill in the snow both ways and amused himself for hours with nothing but a stick and a string? Where we learned how to ‘make life happen’ with nothing but a few coins in our pockets…things have gotten expensive nowadays! Then the 1980’s came a long and who should present himself but MacGyver…my fiance currently owns every episode of MacGyver created. Then man who could set off bombs with bubble gum, attack and defeat countless terrorists and other assorted bad guys with baking soda and a swiss army knife. The man was scientific ‘magic’ if you will.

So in honor of the world of money strapped scientific research I’d like to open nominations for who you believe to be the MacGyver of your field and why with links to their professional profiles if you so desire. Let’s laud the achievements of our innovative colleagues and strive for their ingenuity borne out of sheer force of will and desperation–“do I buy food or that sequencing kit…” Yes I am guilty of placing a sequencing kit above food at times…but I drew the line at mouth pipeting and just bought some damn pipets!

I decided to repost this from ProMed because I thought it was interesting…who comes up with these disease names!? When I saw it in my inbox of course I had visions of cult activities involving longan fruit in the jungles of Vietnam…yes I have an active imagination.

Witch’s broom gets its name from a deformity in a woody plant, typically a tree, where the natural structure of the plant is changed. A dense mass of shoots grows from a single point, with the resulting structure resembling a broom or a bird’s nest. [Source]

A quick shout out to ProMed which is a great resource for hearing about disease outbreaks of known or unknown etiology around the world…check it out!

But really, Longan fruit is quite prevalent in Thailand as well and it is quite delicious. So, fantastical imagination aside, see below, feel free to read the culti-c disease activities plaguing Longan in Vietnam!

So in the world of molecular evolution one of the cu-de-gras-de-analysis programs would have to be BEAST. A power-packed bayesian analysis software that makes phylogenetic trees, calculates the time to the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) and substitution rates, geographic partitioning, can handle copious amounts of data and pretty much squeezes blood from a turnip…walks on water…heals your mother, in short, it’s cool.

Sound awesome? It is. For a more technical in depth discussion and introduction to BEAST software I suggest reading the Wiki and attacking the tutorials with full force as well as reading some awesome books on phylogenetic inference such as The Phylogenetic Handbook. If you are super impatient and channeling your inner terrible twos about phylogenetic analysis then read Phylogenetic Trees Made Easy. It has a nice introduction and literal button for button how tos on different software packages including Bayesian ones. When you’ve finished your tantrum, enter the adult world and read Felsenstein or the phylogenetic handbook mentioned above. Now that you’ve been introduced to phylogenetic inference and genetic analysis with forays into evolution over time…jump into BEAST. Although the BEAST wiki and manual are still navigate-able without that background but you’ll be scratching your head a bit and heading to google for answers.