Overheard in Woods Hole–on New York

Tonight’s Friday evening lecture by MIT’s Robert Langer will be my last event here for this visit. Langer is really one of this country’s great bio-engineers. That’s a growth area for George Mason and it will be interesting to see what’s going on at the top of the field.

I’ve noticed that the “chatter” (administratively important emails from my university) has picked up in the last 24 hours. That either means the semester is getting ever closer, or my colleagues are beginning to actively anticipate my return. Probably both.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of the Overheard in New York blog that I read every once in a while, I leave you with this conversation from the local convenience store in the village:

20-something shop clerk (female) to 20-something customer (male) on life in New York City:

“it’s so ironically invasive”

What does that mean?

Jim

Rainy and cool in Woods Hole


It’s rainy and cool outside here in Woods Hole this morning. In homage to Andrew Sullivan’s blog feature “the view out your window“, I’m posting the view out my window this morning. This was taken with my macbook’s built in i-sight camera which I’m finally learning how to use to take photos.

Yesterday Lynn Margulis gave a spectacular talk about the evolution of eukariotic cells. You can read a bit about her theory here. She also was in town for a book signing and reading from her fiction book, “Luminous Fish”, at the local book store.

I had dinner yesterday evening with Dr. Sonia Gasparini, who is here this summer as a Grass Faculty Fellow. She is working on Layer V entorhinal cortex cells–their dendrites are very different from the pyramids of CA3 and CA1 hippocampus. Of course the whole story of “grid cells” has made entorhinal cortex a very interesting area of the brain.

Jim

Fall Semester 2007

Summer is now winding down at Krasnow, and the usual “early-onset” George Mason University semester is only a few weeks away. With the end of summer, and the promise of cooler and less humid weather in the Washington DC area, the faculty and students begin to return from their summer travels and the lights in the Institute will begin to burn late late into the night again as experiments are run, brains are scanned and manuscripts are prepared for publication.

This new academic year marks the formal beginning of the Institute’s George Mason role as a full academic unit. This in addition to continuing as an institute for advanced study. It will be interesting and challenging to see how both of those missions blend. Most important will be the need to keep focusing on advanced science–science the challenges the paradigm.

Jim

Westport Mass.

If you want to know where the best steamers are…go to Westport. Just off I 195 west of New Bedford. It’s a portion of the South Coast of Massachusetts that I haven’t ever explored before today. My host took us to a great place called The Back Eddy–really wonderful, both for sushi and bluefish, but also just plain boiled lobster.

Music in Woods Hole

This small vignette is so typical of thirty years of memories in this place. I had been working on a book project this afternoon and needed a break. I walked out the grated fire-escape from my ancient building (Homestead) and walked into the Village. I heard a bit of music coming from a restaurant called Phusion just proximal to the Woods Hole draw bridge. It must have been the end of the Sunday brunch festivities. Looking in the door, I notices that it was just the acoustic band and the wait staff. The bartender suddenly called out and said, “let JJ sing.” JJ is one of cook staff at Phusion. He demured. But the entire staff and the band started clapping and cheering for him to come out and sing.

So he did. And as he banged out the best Bob Marley reggae that I’ve heard in years, the entire staff (no customers) started dancing and singing along–owner included. It was so good that it sent shivers down my back.

Why does such a small scientific village have such incredible music talent?

Why does live music have the power over the human mind that is so clearly evident?

Jim

Rememberances of things past

This time in Woods Hole, I find myself as usual running into old friends and memories of the past. At the open house following the dedication of the newly renamed (and refitted) Rowe Laboratory, I went up to find my old lab where I studied sea urchin PKC activation with Giorgio Ascoli back in 1994. It’s beautiful now–absolutely state-of-the-art, but it was beautiful then too, in a run-down historical sort of way that gave real authenticity to the bench top science.

This afternoon, I purchased Lynn Margulis’ new book Luminous Fish. It’s a collection of linked short stories about science and love. Lynn was a visitor to the Krasnow Institute in its nascent days. Her work on evolution is seminal. So it will be delightful to read her fiction.

Earlier in the day, I went swimming at MBL’s Stoney Beach. The cool sea was a welcome respite from the ubiquitous humidity of Woods Hole in August. Stony is an odd beach for Cape Cod: few tourists and lots of scientist-types. Sort of fashion backwards. I fit right in. The tide was in, so just a few yards off shore, it was already over my head. One could imagine, if only for a moment, a stray Great White eying the human legs frog-kicking just off the beach. Much more exciting than a pool!

This evening, I am taking the boat over to Vineyard Haven to an old restaurant favorite of mine, Le Grenier. Open 24/7/365, this is one of the great hidden culinary gems of Martha’s Vineyard. The Chef, Jean Dupon, has been there forever. Thousands of wine corks line the walls of a the bistro, on the second floor of a building. The specialty of the house is a steak au poivre which is lit on fire at your table with cognac. The entire room is made of wood, and with the flambe dish being very popular, it feels like the entire place might go up at any moment. Very exciting. Like swimming at Stony Beach. I’ll catch the 9:30PM boat back to Woods Hole.

Jim

Recognizing talent and creativity

A close friend and colleague emailed the other day and asked “How is creative “drive” or creativity defined so that you can look for it?”

This is a somewhat distinct question from the related Krasnow scientific question of recognizing/studying fluid intelligence (or “g” as it is called).

It’s also very closely related to what my job is about, since as an institute director, probably the most important requirement is to recruit and retain the “talent”.

The glib answer of course is that I recognize it when I see it, even if I might not be able to define it. But I think that’s not a particularly satisfying answer. Instead, I would put forward the notion of someone who has both depth and breadth of knowledge (in whatever field) yet remains essentially curious about the nature of the world around them. I believe that it’s the curiosity part that drives the creativity part. If your curious about the world, then that implies a drive to learn more about the world (in spite of knowledge), which in turn drives the creative quest to devise new ways to learn more.

In science of course this happens within the structure of Popperian hypothesis testing (usually).

Jim

Arrival in Woods Hole (2007)

I arrived in Woods Hole this evening. It is hot and muggy but there is a nice wind off the water.

My sister and her husband took me out to lunch at the Harvard Club. It was fabulous. Drew Faust, the new Harvard President was there presiding over a large lunch party. Across from our table, I heard mention of Torsten Wiesel, Nobel laureate and vision neuroscientist and it reminded me of how very much Harvard neuroscience has contributed to the field over the years.

Tomorrow is the MBL corporation meeting. My report on the Journal (Biological Bulletin) is part of the drill. Our impact factor is at a ten year high–proof that a historically significant journal can also play a role in 21st century science. In the evening, there will be the dedication of the new Rowe Laboratories—the former Whitman Building, where Krasnow’s Professor Ascoli and I cut our teeth studying sea urchin fertilization.

Jim

The New York Times gets into the Mind Business

Benedict Carey has an excellent piece in today’s NY Times on the mind. Money quote:

More fundamentally, the new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known. Goals, whether to eat, mate or devour an iced latte, are like neural software programs that can only be run one at a time, and the unconscious is perfectly capable of running the program it chooses.

The give and take between these unconscious choices and our rational, conscious aims can help explain some of the more mystifying realities of behavior, like how we can be generous one moment and petty the next, or act rudely at a dinner party when convinced we are emanating charm.