 

Sep. 6th, 2008

commotiocordis: (QPicard)
Went to the downtown library after genetics today. OMG. This thing is tiny. 10 computers or so in a room with maybe one bookshelf's worth of books/magazines/DVDs/CDs in the entire place (along the walls all spread out so you could see all the covers). Stark contrast to the main city library that is a monster. But that one's more space, less books as well--I mean, significantly more books than this one had, but probably about as many as our Headquarters library at home, though the building took up twice the square footage (according to its website, the monster one is 82,000 sq ft and includes "a 185-seat auditorium, a glass-enclosed recreational reading room, a story hour room, outdoor story garden, a 134-seat public meeting room, five other meeting rooms of various sizes and capacities, a 'Between Friends' gift shop and MudHouse cafe"). And had a coffee shop built in (both this tiny one that I hit today and the main one that I got my card at back when I first got here two weeks ago). There were these really cute little alcove things, though, that would be really nice to hang out in and study or read (as I did) or whatever. (It's also got a Flickr photo stream here; no pictures of the alcove like I'd hoped, but the weird/pretty light things are on the ceilings of the alcoves. I also don't think it looks like this anymore, as some of the stuff--the white backed couch/benches by the magazines?--I don't remember seeing today.)

So yes. Not good for browsing, but I can request stuff from any of the libraries to be sent there, and the school shuttle will take me there M-F for free, so it works.

Post-library (picked up a copy I'd requested of the soundtrack for the Xena musical, LOL), I tried to take a nap (not a whole lot of success), got up, met up with [livejournal.com profile] bleakone and ate dinner (nothing good but salad, as per far-too-often), and then headed to the school library's open house. Which was a really good idea--you had to go around and get your "passport" stamped at all the different places in the library, and then come back for pizza and putting your name in for a drawing. So I now know the library. And pretty much all the librarians in there are awesome--beyond the "friendly, local, lesbian librarians" and the Battlestar Galactica fan, all the others that we talked to were really nice and totally excited about us being there--the turnout was impressive, from my hearing of the library/faculty types complimenting each other, but I still got to take home most of a box of pizza. And an iPod shuffle and $15 iTunes gift card, because odd twist of luck meant my name was one of the ones that got pulled at the end. Had about an hour in between finishing the library facility scavenger hunt and the drawing, so I planned on going to work out (as the only treadmill-equipped exercise place is right across the path from the library), but it was closed again today, idk why. Which really pisses me off, as it was closed yesterday for the football game, today for whatever reason, and will be tomorrow because it always is on Saturdays. So we just hung out in the lobby until the drawing, playing around on the interwebs.

Following said winnage (and dropping off swag in the room), we went over to the game center in the basement of the student union place and played chess whilst waiting to partake in the free bowling night. And then, since there was a two game limit, when we finally got called up to bowl, put our names in the game three times each, LOL. We only got through the one game, but it was essentially like playing three, so that was cool. More LOLZ in how I managed to get a 94 on one of my people and barely break 70 on one of the others. Decent, the first one, for how I bowl prolly once a year. Since it looks like they're doing this free thing every Friday, I'm going to try to get better, because I enjoy the bowling stuffs.

It's probably 11 by the time we get back, so I hang around until 12 when Psych reruns and hit the gym in the basement. Working out + stretching + putting my numbers in my online fitness thing + loitering around before I sucked up the courage to actually come over and sit down, and around 2am I end up joining a Rock Band marathon, which lasts until 3:15. I'm still good at that, btw--it really surprised me when I was rocking out on it in New York at the cousins' house, this bizarre natural (I won't say "talent", but) decency at the game.

And now it's 4. And nothing's on TV. But I'm ravenous after bowling + stairmaster + Rock Band, so there is now significantly less of that pizza left over. Which needs microwaved again, as it's gotten cold through my typing, but I don't particularly want to open the door and run the microwave and such and risk waking up Chelsea. But, erm, lukewarm pizza? No.
commotiocordis: (carmen)
If anybody feels like doing me a favor, I've got to write a paper on a disease for genetics. Problem is, most of my good choices (I wanted Huntington's, as that one's freaked me the hell out ever since I first heard of it when I was. . . prolly in elementary school) have been taken as I made the mistake of wanting to do some prelim research first to figure out what would be a good candidate to write on and thus letting half the class sign up before me. It's basically a summary of recent genetic research for your chosen disease "or recently discovered human gene" and only 2-4 pages, so not hard at all.

I kind of want to write about homosexuality, because that's a really interesting one to look at the genetic research for. But I'm not crazy about the implied label of disease, you know, especially down here where half the students would probably agree with said label? Opinions?

Anyway, any suggestions of fun ones that aren't on the below list? Anything you've got or know someone who's got that there is -- and this is the biggie -- enough genetic research on to allow me to write a decent paper?

The list of taken diseases. It's annoying and caps-locked and with several typos because I copy/pasted it from the teacher's list, and he apparently can't figure out how to turn caps-lock off--the entire syllabus is the same way. )
commotiocordis: Green on black, an animated depiction of a normal heart rhythm on an ECG monitor. (Default)
You know, I saw a Facebook group that really made me think. Still banning all men who have sex with men from donating blood is pretty darn discriminatory. Sure, there's the window of undetectability of the virus, but the window's the same in people who engage in heterosexual content.

Statistics:
MSM (men who have sex with men) account for 45% of all HIV cases as of the end of 2003. [CDC/Kaiser Report]

Blacks made up about 47% of the total HIV-positive population and more than half of new HIV cases. [The Body, from Kaiser]

Sure, there's some overlap there, naturally, but wouldn't it logically follow that perhaps banning all MSM isn't what we should be doing, especially when there's another demographic with an even higher prevelence rate? It's just another confirmation of what I've been saying--discrimination against homosexuals is the last accepted form of it. Can't ban all persons of African descent, we'd descend into race riots and screams of racism, but feel free to ban an entire group--gays can hide their sexuality, unlike skin color, so they're less likely to speak out when being oppressed. I'm not saying switch one for the other or anything like that, as the justification is there--they're banning those who admit to engaging in a specific activity, not those with a skin color they can't control, but statistically it appears to be no longer prudent. I'd like to see some figures as to the amount of blood that the Red Cross is losing out on due to the MSM ban to really crunch the numbers to weigh the exposure chance that they're allowing now with the current ban vs the slightly increased exposure chance + increased donations.

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