This is usually the point in such an introduction where I would launch into the details of some recent experimentation or theorisation, but the fact is I haven't done any of that for a while. My supervisor decided last week that I probably came make the deadline for a special journal volume of papers from the Japan conference I went to back in May, so I've just been writing and refining. Yes, the boring parts of research; writing and editing until all the words merge together and you can no longer tell if you've created a masterpiece or a jumbled mess of scientific phrases strung together.
I have been doing a steady bunch of writing though:
The 50th Anniversary of the Uni's Circumpolar Institute (for which I got to interview my friend Jess, who worked at the exhibition)
Conclusions of the latest Arctic Report Card (it's grim!)
What triggered the rise in oxygen that allowed animals to evolve (I was happy it was picked up on the Canadian University Press newswire, but face-palmed when I read their lede talking about it as the origin of life rather than just animals)
Uni's synthetic biology team project (pretty impressive, considering it's only an undergrad competition)
100 year history of The Gateway (piece for the Alumni Assoc. about the 100th anniversary of the student newspaper)
Yes, and now it's time to start applying for journalism programs! I want to write the perfect letter of intent and pick my best articles for the applications, but my motivation and energy have plummeted again after a brief respite of enthusiasm. I've decided to blame the medication - they make me drowsy when I take them and give me the worst dizzying headaches when I don't. I will have to ask my Doc for a change when I next go. At least if I blame the pills I will get a placebo boost when I change them that hopefully gets me through the paper-writing.
I have been having more fun with the CFI crew though - this Saturday we went to a pro-gay rally (or I suppose pro- LGBTQ if we're being correct !). There's this particularly nasty group called the Westboro Baptist Church who have a gob-smacking campaign of hate called 'God Hates Fags' (reading just one of their rants will make your head spin). They have a picket schedule of events they plan to protest at, and on their calendar was The Laramie Project in Edmonton. It's a play about the hate killing in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998. So, naturally, folks organised a counter-protest: 'God Loves Fags', which the CFI went along to support.More than that, though, in the end. The director of CFI Calgary happens to be Nate Phelps, estranged son of the head of the Westboro Baptist Church Fred Phelps. He left the Phelps family home when he turned 18 and never looked back. It's astounding to think of someone growing up in that atmosphere, I wonder how on Earth he even got the idea that what his father preached was wrong and that he had to leave. Some minds are so strong. I was lucky - my parents were never religious and never forced anything upon us, either way, so growing up to be an atheist and skeptic is not so hard to imagine for myself. But I met other people too at the rally like Nate Phelps - a guy who broke out from a fourth-generation Mormon family and a lesbian girl who's badge proudly proclaims her as the 'pink sheep of the family'.
Anyway, the Westboro Baptist Church didn't show up in the end (apparently they have a habit of missing their engagements, and have been turned away at the Canadian border before. As one person mused: "I wonder how many pro- rallys they have inspired?"), but we had a party anyway. Nate and several others gave speeches, including one local supply teacher who was fired from his job at a Catholic school for legally changing his gender. This is apparently against Catholic teachings and would confuse the students. We stood out in the cold enjoying each other's body warmth until our fingers longed for cups of warm liquid, and a few of us retired to a local coffee shop to chat about physics and economics until the night's end.
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