This Is Beautiful: Down Time

 Tis the time of the semester when it finally winds down and I can relax a little. Oof. I am in need of a rest desperately after the past few weeks, and I am looking forward to the summer when things are a little slower, and I'm not just working constantly or in rehearsals. I love being busy, but I sometimes just need a break.

“Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters” by Matt Ridley

I was handed this book by a mentor of mine who recommended I check it out as a way to talk about the social impacts of genetic research. The book is out of date, published in 1999, but I think the concept is still interesting. The book consists of 23 chapters, one for each chromosome in the human genome, and each chapter highlights how genes have impacted humans and their life. The stories don’t cover the whole genome, and they don’t cover all of genetics, but it’s a collection of snapshots of genetics.

I only have a few qualms with it, and of course it has to do with the sex chromosomes. When talking about the X chromosome, he talks about how genetic determinants of autism have been found there. And then uses that to hypothesize that this is why more boys have autism than girls, which isn’t true. Autism just looks different in girls, and the focus on autistic boys means that many girls with autism are not diagnosed until later in life. I might give this one to him, not much was known about autism in the 90s, so probably an honest mistake.

What I am less likely to give him though is what he proceeds to say about the X chromosome. The X chromosome is one of the sex chromosomes, which any transphobe will love to prattle on about how two Xs make a women and the XY combo makes a man. Those of us who are trans and recognize that intersex is a thing know better. There are plenty of people outside of the XX/XY binary and some that are XX but anatomically male or vice versa. Anyways, towards the end of the chapter Ridley starts making some absurd statements about how his daughter’s excitement about a doll couldn’t have anything to do with how she was raised, and similarly for how his son loves toy trucks. He then attempts to drive this home by talking about someone who unfortunately had to be castrated shortly after birth (infection I believe) and was put on hormonal treatment and whose parents were instructed to raise them as a girl. When they found out about this later in life, they immediately went back to living as a man. This is not the slam dunk story the author thinks it is, this is one person who was forced into a gender they did not want and did not get a say in it. Not a single trans person was asked, and if they were, the author might have found out that gender confirming surgery (when voluntary) has extremely low regret rates. And that those same surgeries are forcibly done on intersex infants (similar to this individual) to try and “correct” their sex. It’s gross and could have easily been avoided. No gender is not entirely socialized, but neither is it entirely biological and to claim that is transphobic but also obviously wrong.

My more minor qualm also has to do with the eugenics chapter. Overall it’s well written, but there’s this interesting line about how countries with strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church were more immune to eugenic legislation. And then it never gets expanded on! I have no idea which countries these are since Italy is never mentioned, or what relevance this is to the discussion about how Great Britain resisted eugenic laws. Which just, how did that get past the editors?

The author also has this quip where he constantly goes back and corrects himself. He will make a statement, describe it, and then in the next paragraph he’ll correct himself and say that what he just explained is wrong. Which is an interesting way to come at science, and leaves me wondering if anyone actually finds that valuable. Personally, I would rather you just explain the darn thing to me. Instead of being confusing or writing around a concept, just explain it, get it as accurate as you can, and move on. It feels a lot like he’s showing off or trying to preemptively address any criticisms or something. It just throws me off.

Beyond all this though, I do need to praise the book for how it talks about race and genetics. Ridley makes it clear that some genetic sequences are more frequent among different groups, but never talks about anything as being exclusive to one group or that differences among groups are purely genetic. And this is big for a book from the 90s! Heritability is also discussed and how it is not just genetic effects but also how the environment changes things, and there is a whole chapter dedicated to genetic determinism and how that is not a thing. Which, if I was to recommend this book, this would be the big reason. The field has struggled with how to tackle these topics and here Ridley drops all of the literary fluff and presents it simply and does it really well.

I am also just curious how the chapter on prions has changed over time. That chapter is dedicated to genetic mysteries that we still don’t know the answers to, but that means that it probably got out of date almost immediately. I used to know more about prions, back when I was taking intro genetics courses, but now I am very out of the loop.

Anyways so this was a good read, and I might have overlooked it otherwise for again being rather old. But the parts that were done well definitely have given me food for thought!

This Is Beautiful: International Asexuality Day

 This past Saturday was International Asexuality Day (IAD)! As usual it was a bunch of last minute planning, but I had a blast joining a 24 hour livestream with a bunch of international asexuals talking about what our countries look like when it comes to aces and ace rights. I had a really good time, and I'm glad that this year I was able to have a smaller commitment particularly. So happy IAD!

Why PhDs are Hard

 Honestly this weekend has been tough, I've been trying to get my spirits up for the fun things I have going on but it sucks. PhDs are so hard.

Part of it is the uncertainty. You don't know when you'll graduate, or if you're even on the right path, and you just have to keep chugging with that. Hopefully the stuff you do gets you closer, but also it might not be doing that, maybe it's a detour. And you just have to take your chances there.

Then there's how much time you put into it. Which means that you can also really easily destroy things that you put a lot of time into. And that just hurts so much more than destroying something that was already there. (It also hurts if someone else mucks it up, but then at least you aren't beating yourself up.) There's experiments you can put months into, only for one thing to be off and it doesn't work. Somehow this has happened to me multiple times and I'm getting so sick of it.

So it's just rough. And I don't know what it is about recently, but I feel like I've just been sitting in how hard it is. Hoping next week will be better.

This Is Beautiful: Flow Arts Performance

 So the flow arts group that I'm a part of at school had it's big show this past weekend. It's a good time, I really like what we do and how we work with the Chinese yo-yo group on campus. I also like that we have a scripted play that goes during the show so I get to act a little. The day of though is always such a struggle, we are there all day and if the group itself isn't stressed then the people working there are. It's just hard because I'm exhausted from the week and then I'm on my feet all day and just need some alone time hardcore. Plus it's hard to be excited during the show when I'm just trying to get through it.

Despite all of that complaining, I really loved this year's performance. I think the script was the most elaborate and tightest yet. I think the part I choreographed was pulled off amazingly well. Looking back, I'm happy and I think everything worked really well! I just am constantly questioning how much longer I can do this and if there's anything I can do to emphasize those aspects of it rather than the hard stuff...

“A Wizard of Mars” by Diane Duane

This is the ninth book in the “Young Wizards” series and it’s actually one that I’ve written about before. (You can read posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth books. My previous post onthis book is also available.) I’m also going to try and write this before going back to that other post to see if my perspective has shifted at all. (Alright I went back and read it and it's not a very good post, I was trying to introduce everyone to the series more than anything else. But I also wasn't a huge fan of the book back then either.)

The book opens with Mamvish, a very powerful alien arriving on Earth and going with the squad of Earth wizards to Mars. Kit is ecstatic, because they found something they’re calling a superegg on Mars and it could have clues for what happened to the Martians. Ronan, Darryl, Nita, and Carmela are all there as well. Nita is juggling her dad keeping an eye on Dairine (who is looking for Roshaun) along with all this, and Carmela brings news that Kit’s older sister Helena is coming home early from college too. Kit comes back on his own and accidentally activates the superegg, which then sends out signals to other areas of Mars. He pings Darryl and Ronan and they all head to Mars. There they are confronted with these projections of pop culture depictions of Mars. Kit decides to face the last one alone, and he heads off as Nita catches up with them. Nita meanwhile was exploring an old cave with Carmela and S’ree, allowing Carmela to pick up what some of the writing means. She heads off on her own to find the boys. Kit at the final site though is met with a gorgeous alien princess who appears to recognize him. He learns to play along with the vision, but it is ended prematurely by the presence of Nita.

Back on Earth, Kit gets grounded for going off on his own. However his consciousness is being invaded by the alien he was playing in the vision, and he heads back to Mars independently. Mamvish returns and grabs Nita to go to Mars and figure out what’s going on. They find Kit taken over by this other character, in theory an old version of him, and Nita battles the princess he was talking to. Mamvish manages to send this whole people that Kit woke up back in time so that they wouldn’t interfere with Earth. The book ends with Nita calling Kit her “boyfriend” and him being pleased about this.

Alright well there’s a lot going on in this book. I think I understood it more this second time around, but there’s just so much to keep track of. This race that gets woken up is fighting with a second city also on Mars but they also came from a different planet originally. So it’s a lot to remember when reading about them. I think the other sub-plots suffer as a result, there isn’t as much about Dairine or Kit’s family as I would have liked. And while I love seeing characters like S’ree she was mostly a cameo here.

I do think a strength of this is how it incorporates pop culture images of Mars. The whole idea is that the things happening on Mars have found a way to infiltrate the presence of it, the people on Mars are constantly fighting and therefore a lot of depictions of Mars involve war. It would be nice though to hear about how that gets filtered through the lens of the people on Earth as well, like how early depictions were more fanciful and there was an increase in optimism in sci fi in the 50s and things like that. The series is usually pretty good about not focusing on Earth, but this one felt more so, probably because it is so close to home.

The time travel thing with sending the aliens back in time is also amusing to me. There’s a whole conversation at the end of the book that’s just like “it’s complicated, but we’re fine, so don’t worry about it.” Which I kinda appreciated, at least the author isn’t getting too bogged down in the details (after a book that was very detail heavy) and just accepting that things are fine. Less is definitely more!

There’s one more book in the series, and I hope that Nita and Kit’s relationship gets fleshed out more since that definitely ended on a cliffhanger. And hopefully there’s more to the series after that as well!

This Is Beautiful: New Season of Shakespeare in the Arb!

 Auditions happened last week! And I got cast! It's the first time I haven't been super worried about getting cast, even though I did get a smaller role. But what makes this the beautiful thing that made my week is that I had a really hard week last week. And even though I was feeling shitty and had a headache and just didn't feel like talking to people, I still had a good time. It's nice to be back at acting and to know that it'll be another summer of hanging out outside again!