Lightbulbs

Someday I want to start a company. To do that, I need an idea. A good one. And once in a long (LONG) time, a light bulb turns on and I find myself with what seems a good idea, but inevitably find myself a few years (or decades) too late, or find that it's really not such a good idea after all. A few days ago I thought I had a winner, but that particular light bulb isn't looking too bright at the moment. On first appearances it was great, but is now turning out to be the wrong shape, size, wattage, and color, and the need I was trying to meet could be better filled by a paper clip than a light bulb. [To twist the metaphor even more...] Thomas Edison said of his unsuccessful attempts to build a light bulb that he did not fail 1000 times, but found 1000 ways not to make a light bulb (well, maybe he didn't say that, but plenty of random blogs and forums on the internet have him quoted like that, so it must be true). So, this first idea is Un-Light Bulb #1. That leaves 999 to go.

First taste of fall

Fall is all but a novelty to me. In CA we have two seasons, and summer lasts about nine months. Today in Pittsburgh it was 54 degrees, rainy, and windy. I LOVE IT!

I took these pictures on the first day of fall, last week.

                                                        A lone red tree on the far bank

The Path

Not about fall, but amazing anyway. This is an old railway car used at US Steel to carry molten iron. Not it's on display.

Quotable

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.

- T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

(Sidenote)

I've opened up blog commenting to anyone, rather than just those with Blogger or gmail accounts. Don't forget to leave your name!

On love & neighbor (passing a bum)

That's chapter one of Stan Gaede's book, An Incomplete Guide to the Rest of Your Life. An excellent book by an excellent man. I recommend it. Living in Pittsburgh, I find myself with more opportunities to see and live what Stan wrote about. 

I was walking along Forbes Avenue this afternoon, an interesting place with a lot of shops, a lot of cars, and a lot of people. Mostly students, but all sorts of people. One man caught my attention. Forty or fifty years old, dirty, long scruffy hair and beard, a coat, no shirt, threadbare pants, bare feet.

That man was my neighbor. Never seen him before, maybe never see him again, but as I saw him this afternoon, he was my neighbor. And turns out Jesus had something to say about neighbors. Something that continuously transforms this broken world. Not a something born of evolution, nor of the culture around me. But something about love. And, despite my best efforts, I keep finding that love works. Love is not God, but God is love.

So what can I do for something like this man I saw today? Maybe a little, maybe a lot. I don't know all his needs (though I don't need to), though I can guess a few. Food. Warmth. Conversation. Eye contact. The freedom to live his humanity. Stan describes him this way:

"A man who cannot repay me. Who doesn't know me from Adam. But is of Adam. Who may indeed squander what I have given him, and thereby replicate the way I squander God's gifts to me almost every day. But who will, at least for a moment, see Jesus in action, whether he knows it or not. And so will I."

"Whatever you did for one of the least of these,...you did for me."

And today, today I failed to do something for Jesus. And I failed the man on the street. So I am grateful for forgiveness, and I look forward to next time.

G20, Day 2

It is, finally, over. Pittsburgh is returning to normal, as politicians and protestors return to their domains. WSF estimated 50,000 protestors, whose greatest accomplishments seemed to be broken windows and overturned trash cans. The power of the people.

Amid a variety of conclusions, the leaders agreed to coordinate economic growth policies. Obama called it groundwork. The French president, Sarkozy, called it a revolution. Vive la revolucion, hein? Anyway--I just hope the plan proves effective.

G20, T - 0

The G20 is under way!

- Greenpeace got the first headlines after hanging an 80' x 30' sign from a bridge near downtown
- I attended a speech by Australia PM Rudd a few hours ago
- I rode my bike within a mile from where the Big Twenty were having dinner
- Protests are under way, as are the rubber bullets and the pepper spray.
- Anarchists staged a well organized march against capitalism, while wearing black hoodies. Clever, that.
- Overhead looks like a scene from Star Wars for all the helicopters.
- God bless the G20. No, really, I mean God bless the G20. This is an unbelievably powerful group of people. We will always the poor, but we will also work towards good economics. Hopefully that happens in this, the third installment of the Group of Twenty.

The Wall Street Journal posted a good slideshow, if you want pictures.

G20, T - 1 day

Bill Gates was on campus yesterday. But that's not the highlight.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt is in Pittsburgh today, and that's not the highlight.

The G20 come to town tomorrow. That's the highlight. And already:
- Some streets are closed
- Fences and concrete barriers have been set up
- Helicopters hover overhead continuously
- Security is all over campus; I'm writing from the student center, and there are security/cops/guys with guns and serious expressions everywhere

Will keep you "posted"

Motivation

Another of the many, many, MANY reasons why biomedical engineering (BME) is worthwhile: the first-year cost of a liver transplantation in 1999 was $314,000, plus $21,900 per year after that (Lysaght and O'Loughlin, 2000). That's a lot of money! A LOT of money. Obamacare aside, BME solutions such as a tissue-engineered liver could make huge dents in those numbers, not to mention making treatment available for the many thousands of people who die every year waiting for a liver transplant.

Motivation should never, ever be lacking in BME. Of all the researchers I've met, I perhaps hold the greatest respect for those who are properly motivated.

How to instill trust

I found the following quote on the website of "Prospec Protein Specialists" while researching recombinant growth factors for bone tissue engineering applications.

"Growth factors are simply what their name implies, the responsible of cellular growth, If by differentiation or by cellular proliferation. Growth factors are type of proteins and they serve to regulate the body processes in the cellular level."


Come on, people, if you want to sell your product, at least hire a decent translator. Freetranslation.com does not qualify.

Pittsburgh and the G20

1. The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article on the G20 and Pittsburgh, which meet next week. It gives a good sense of where Pittsburgh is at, and where it's come from. I've only lived here six weeks, but slowly I understand this city better. It's exciting to have the G20 come here, but beyond that, there's a lot of interesting dialogue going on. This article gives a good overview. Take a look.

2. As my dad pointed out, the usual riots and protests associated with the G20 may seem rather tame in comparison to Pittsburghers' reactions to Steelers games.

3. On Thursday I will be seeing Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd speak at CMU.

4. One more thing: being in a field that regularly relies on animal testing, I can assure you that CMU/BME will be on lockdown next week. Thanks to animal testing, animal rights protesters can protest for years longest than they would otherwise live.

Some things I just don't understand--part 1

(A blog should not be a rant. Unfortunately, mine may appear that way today.)


I'm going to invest in hearing aids. My generation is destroying their hearing. A few days ago in the library, I was (supposedly) working on an article review for biomaterials class. A girl was sitting thirty feet behind me, and I could hear her music loud and clear--and it was playing through ear buds. That is way past the point of causing damage and I ask: why would you actively destroy something so amazing, so valuable, so important to everyday life, as your hearing? I've studied the ear in previous classes, and it is an absolutely astonishing system. It's worth protecting. So if you think it's "uncool" to plug your ears when something is too loud, you're wrong. Uncool is the shortsightedness of damaging yourself.

I don't know why that girl was doing that to herself. She's certainly not the only one. But I have the feeling she will regret it in the not-too-distant future. Knowing what I do about hearing loss, I probably had a responsibility to say something to her (though whether she could have heard me is another matter). In that sense I did wrong, because I didn't say anything--I just got annoyed at being distracted from studying. I'm sorry for that. But I do wish she and people like her would make better decisions.

Learn more here.

A incomplete view of "my" town.

Where they speak Pittsburghese.

Where football is worshipped, and locals riot where the Steelers win.

Where I live on the site of what used to be the most important steel mil in the world.

Every day is an adventure.

My country, 'tis of thee...

Where "Obama calls Kanye West a jackass."

...of thee I sing.

Sports

One thing I was looking forward to on moving to Pittsburgh was being in a city with a football team. I wanted to go to a Steelers game. On arriving in this crazy town, however, I learned that nearly all the seats are seasons tickets and most are renewed every year. In other words, I'll be watching on tv. Last week I watched the season opener at a local pub, and it was a great experience.

Steelers absolutely dominate sports talk around town. The Penguins, meanwhile, get more attention than the Pirates--and this while hockey isn't even in season. I've discovered that the most common reference to the latter is in the brunt of some joke. There are some benefits to this: the five dollars I'm spending to go to a Pirates game this weekend buys me a twenty dollar ticket, a t-shirt, a blanket, and ten dollars worth of concession/merchandise. The fans are paid to go to the games. No wonder Pittsburgh was voted "most livable city."

all sorts

one of the benefits of living in a city like Pittsburgh is the (variety of) people you encounter. there was the woman who shouted at me from across a four lane road asking for the time, then asked for a light. the not-so-sober Steelers fan in the pub who stood up during the fourth quarter and yelled at the whole establishment to "shut up and watch the game." the born-and-bred Pittsburgher I met during my morning riverside walk, who worked in the steel mills and knows that there are fish in the river "big enough to swallow a man." my aerial dancing neighbor with more body piercings than I care to know about. the varied bus drivers. the 50,000 people at CMU and Pitt who stand out from locals, and pronounce "Carnegie Mellon" Carnegie Mellon, rather than CarNEGie Mellon. the grocer who told me about his wife's pasta recipe. the landlady who talked a mile a minute and told me to get earmuffs before winter sets in.

all sorts. gotta love it.

Adventures in microwaves

1. I have a favorite coffee mug. It's from Westmont. It's pretty awesome.

And it has metal in the lining.

Somehow I had never actually put it in the microwave before. And I knew the color was copper. I just didn't think the material itself is copper.

2. Metal does not mix with microwaves. Basic physics.


1 + 2 =

and

Convenience

That's my fridge. And that's my car. And those are the groceries I just bought. That is amazing! The trunk is six feet from the fridge. I love it.

A good morning

6:30 alarm goes off
6:33 out the door
6:35 jaw drops

The pictures just don't do it justice. The mist on the river was mesmerizing.

 

Joy (part 1)

It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.

- Til We Have Faces

We want something which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

- The Weight of Glory

I get these quotes. I resonate with them. And I know--from experience, from thought, from people I trust--that I have the answer. And so I worship Him.

Custom bikes

So Urban Outfitters (I've never bought anything there) and Republic Bikes (nothing there either) teamed up to offer custom fixie bikes. I think that's a terrific idea. Of course, it caters all too closely to an overly-individualistic society, but alternately it's a a chance to be at least a little creative. I like it, anyway.

http://bikes.urbanoutfitters.com/

Motivation

At the biomedical engineering program at UCI, I was frustrated by how few students and faculty seemed to have a good motivation and reason for their studies and research. It was so disappointing to time and time again sit in a classroom and not be able to find a single compelling reason why the instructor was in BME. There were certainly exceptions among faculty and students alike...but it shouldn't be the exception. It should be why they are in the classroom in the first place. This is the field where people are trying to help burn victims, and the hundreds of thousands who are waiting for an organ donation, and anyone with any kind of physical disability, and those with combat injuries, and on and on and on. How can you be in this field and not even appear motivated? No act should be necessary: motivated people live out their motivation.

On Tuesday in biomaterials, we saw pictures a patient who was born without a skull. And today we saw pictures of soldiers from Iraq, a man who had been shot through the jaw, and a woman who had large portions of her hands and face blown off by a bomb while driving a humvee, and another who's thigh was gaping open, and another who's face could hardly be recognized as such. The professor was getting our attention: he showed us the pictures and told us to find solutions for these kinds of problems. Do the research, make it clinical, make it real. Millions of people around the world are waiting for solutions, longing to attain "normal" physiological function. And they won't have to wait as long if the universities and hospitals and companies working towards solutions are filled with people who understand the needs.

So thank you, Dr. H, for sharing with us students your motivation, and for living out an admirable career, and for training us to seek the same. I wish all my instructors could and would do that.

I recognize, too, that there are a lot of possible motivations. In writing this entry I certainly don't discount the researcher who is focused on discovery and basic science, rather than clinical developments.

One more thing: all of this, every last bit, is dependent upon God existing, and upon God being good. If He doesn't or if He isn't, no one on this planet is worth squat, and the above motivation goes right out the window. So praise be to the God who is good, defines what is good, shows us what is good, who healed the sick when He walked this earth, and who is the ultimate bioengineer.