Vivian on 29/4/2013 at 14:22
Dude, my boss/colleague calls himself an evolutionary palaeobiomechanist. People love making up new fields.
Specter on 29/4/2013 at 14:29
Quote Posted by faetal
I hope you managed to stay awake for all of that :)
I did indeed! Thanks for the extra explanation!
faetal on 29/4/2013 at 15:36
Quote Posted by Vivian
Dude, my boss/colleague calls himself an evolutionary palaeobiomechanist. People love making up new fields.
I used to go with a modular term for my field when people asked - I called it "Proteomic immutoxicology", which I felt was as succinct as I could be. Now I just say I'm a biochemist.
faetal on 29/4/2013 at 15:47
Just to expand:
Quote Posted by Vivian
Ex Vivo (after life) = experiments on intact, dead organisms or parts of organisms (limbs, organs, etc)
I think it's more precisely "out of life". So anything removed from a living organism and studied by itself. Here's wikipedia's take: (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_vivo)
My stuff is
ex vivo because we get breast skin from a patient the same day as it is excised and keep it in tissue culture medium while we perform our experiments on it, with the overall assumption that what happens during is as close to the living system as you'll get without the tissue still being attached. I'd say that includes your disembodied limbs for sure. Since it's mechanical studies, I'm guessing that you don't need the cells to be living, other than to obviously assure that they haven't degraded to the point that the limb has altered mechanical properties.
Quote:
I've called that Ex Vivo in the past, but you seem to use that phrase differently, faetal.
I use the phrase the way my supervisor uses it. I dread to think how many of their bad habits I've picked up that I've yet to find out about :)
Vivian on 29/4/2013 at 16:12
I'm thinking of renaming the playing-with-a-dead-limb field necromechanics
demagogue on 29/4/2013 at 16:56
Interestingly I've been writing my most recent article with a postgrad medical student on toxicology, the topic being toxic remains following conflicts, why they're bad for the environment and public health, and the obligations for cleanup and compensation. And I was just noticing the ways we look at the issue differently.
She saw this complex physical web of conflicting pathways, vectors, environmental conditions, and potential responses in the body that may or may not actually be happening, only there's a case in some lab work and we need bigger sample sizes for epidemiological studies to make a connection, in the meantime there's some uncertainty so we can't say too much except what this mass of studies suggests, which is definitely something but a bit of a wash -- but then a kind of superficial view of how conflicts actually work and how it got there (like "It's war. People shoot tanks and then tank husks, bullets, and bomb fragments are left lying around."). Whereas I probably saw it the other way around, with this complex social web of conflicting roles, duties, incentives, expectations, etc, across different social groups -- soldiers on the ground, battlefield conditions, the command structure, SOPs and legal restraints and who makes/enforces those?, how occupation & reconstruction is managed on paper & in fact, including any cleanup duties or dealing with the civilian population. There's a lot more to it than "It's war and people shoot things", but then there's this "risk" we have to deal with, which the law has to say something about, but it's not a status you can just legislate obviously. You have to ground it in some scientifically valid process...
So it was good we could get both narratives together, but honestly they're a bit of a misfit and it was sometimes a challenge to "talk to each other". I mean, what do you do when the science is a messy web of more or less certain statements, while the obligations need you to check just the right boxes to pin them on people, keeping in mind the boxes you have to check in the science camp are usually different than the boxes you have to check in the legal camp. Actually I was better than most lawyers since I did my LLM work on use of scientific evidence in international law. So I was ready for it & rolled with it. But other people above me supervising the paper didn't have the same sensitivity to it, and pressured me a bit & were more ready to sensationalize the science somewhat. Ideally you want a toxicologist that's sensitive to the social context and a lawyer that's sensitive to what science can and can't say, but it's a challenge. I mean, what you figure out is it's not just about different knowledge-sets... There's some worldview that comes with each camp, and some mutual naivete about what's involved on the other side of the fence.
Well it's been a very interesting & educational experience for me anyway. I should probably write a book on the connections & tensions between science & law; it's interesting enough.
Edit: Some of you may be interested in seeing the article. We published it recently, and you can get it here -- (
http://hrn.or.jp/eng/activity/area/iraq/press-release10-years-after-the-war-innocent-new-lives-are-still-dying-and-suffering-in-iraq-human-r/)
If you see sensationalized language, it was probably added by someone else, since I'm wired to be more academic & technical in my style, and personally I think it makes a better impression in the end.
gunsmoke on 29/4/2013 at 17:08
I am a Pantry Chef. I fucking love my job, and have a passion for preparing food for others. I, myself, don't eat shit, which is ironic. Alas, you'll find me @ Trattoria Roma (
http://www.trattoria-roma.com/) http://www.trattoria-roma.com/ workin' the cold side.
It's fine dining, and everything is fresh, from scratch (except for the gluten-free pasta of which we sell a whopping 1 order a week), seasonal, locally grown, and oftentimes organic or 'green'. I create all of our desserts (tiramisu, lemon torta, brownies, pots de creme, creme brulee, biscotti)and our seasonal salads, bake and heat to serve the garlic bread to order, handle the soups (fresh and new each day on a 14 day rotation in varying orders), do a ton of prep for both sides of the kitchen, I jump in and help wash dishes sometimes, whatever needs done to get AAA food out in a reasonable amount of time.
I'll pop some pics of some of the items I bang out this weekend. There is more variety in what dishes go out those 2 nights, so I'll probably see my entire menu get ordered.
SubJeff on 29/4/2013 at 17:09
More like Panty Chef am I rite?
demagogue on 29/4/2013 at 17:15
I just had lunch & I'm already hungry again.
All of that sounds great.
catbarf on 29/4/2013 at 17:15
I love cooking for myself and friends but I'm not sure I could enjoy it under the pressure of time constraints and needing to get it right for the patron. I'm kind of curious Gunsmoke, if you don't mind, I know you said in another thread that you spent some time in the Marines, how'd you end up working as a restaurant chef?
