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kunhuo42
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Name: aaron
Country: United States
State: Maryland
Metro: Baltimore
Gender: Male
Interests: engineering, anthropology.... in other words, your typical nerd...
running, hiking, and backpacking; baking (and occasionally cooking, i suppose).
Expertise: i'm not so presumptuous to say that i'm an expert in much of anything at all
Occupation: grad student
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
10/13/2005
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| today is a cold, rainy day. it is, in fact, a cookie day. what's a cookie day, you ask? well, cold, rainy days like today remind me of being a little kid helping my mom bake cookies. in particular, i recall one particular day when it was cold and wet -- definitely not a day for playing outside. but inside, it was warm and smelled delicious; my mom was baking cookies. i don't remember why she was baking; it was probably for some purpose because she needed cookies to give away. i don't even remember if it was for christmas, although it most likely was; my mom always does baking for the holidays, although it is usually her famous pumpkin bread (which i've started making as well). at any rate, it was a day that was perfect for baking. i remember sitting at the kitchen table in front of a big, empty cookie sheet, slowly spooning little balls of batter onto the tray in neat rows, while outside the rain beat steadily on the windows. as one tray went into the oven, the next came out, was carefully emptied of its burden, and was again prepped for its journey back into the oven. i remember the rows of cookies lined up on the cooling racks, getting nice and crispy before they were carefully stacked into giant, gleaming glass jars. and the smells; oh, the smells! it just makes me smile to remember that day. so whenever the mood and the weather are just right, i declare that day to be a cookie day, pad down to the kitchen, and whip up a batch of cookies.
today's cookies? date-walnut-oatmeal chewy cookies. yum!
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| yesterday i got the h1n1 vaccine. i was expecting a long line; after all, isn't this a vaccine that is still in high demand? but apparently, i got there at the tail end of the hospital employee vaccinations, so there was no line at all. i walked right up, filled out the form, and got my shot without having to wait. now, i know the hospital takes care of its own; after all, it's important for all employees (especially those with patient contact) to be vaccinated to prevent the spread of diseases. but it makes me stop and think about how much my place of employment unintentionally affects my station in life. what i mean is, if i wasn't working in a hospital i wouldn't get the seasonal flu vaccine each year (or the h1n1 vaccine this year, while my bf, a school teacher, still has not received his) for free. i wouldn't have access to a reasonable health insurance plan that lets me see any doctor at one of the top rated hospitals in the country. i wouldn't have an id badge informing the local police that in the event of a declared emergency, i can still get through to the hospital. it's a lot of power for a lowly graduate student, if you think about it. i'm not a medical doctor, or a physical therapist, or a nurse; i'm not trained to even wrap a bandage on someone. and yet here i sit with a badge guaranteeing my passage -- in fact, almost making it mandatory that i go -- to the hospital in a state of emergency. i've often wondered what would happen if we were called down to the hospital; would all of us non-medical students be forced to go down and sit in our labs and do research during the emergency? it's a funny mental image (although i'm sure our profs would like that!).
at any rate, today our hospital is offering free rapid hiv screening in one of the main corridors of the hospital to commemorate world aids day. i believe it's open to the public, not restricted to employees. i think it's a wonderful opportunity, although i'm not sure how many people are likely to walk up to a table in public and ask to get screened -- the stigma is still quite high. but the fact that something is being done is a step in the right direction, and it makes me realize how lucky i am sometimes to work at a hospital.
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| a while back, i mentioned to chris that i made a test batch of some pumpkin truffles just to try out the recipe... and i promised that i would take pictures when i made the actual ones for thanksgiving. well, today was the appointed day... so i took some pics when my hands weren't covered either in pumpkin ganache or dark chocolate. the result? a bag full of yummy truffles!
first i made the pumpkin ganache: fresh pumpkin puree (sugar pie pumpkin, if you were wondering), cream, white chocolate, and spices:
that went into the freezer to set. in the meanwhile, i pulled out my trusty makeshift double boiler (a.k.a. a metal bowl suspended in a pot) and melted together some chocolate chips, butter, and more cream (ok, so this is NOT a healthy recipe! i'm sorry!).
i cut up the pumpkin ganache and shaped it into balls... here they are waiting to get their first coat of chocolate.
they ended up getting 3 coats just to make sure the pumpkin was completely encased; after each coat they went back into the freezer to set the chocolate.
above: 1 coat down, 2 to go...
finally, i individually wrapped them in wax paper to make a nice little pumpkin truffle treat!
i still haven't decided if i completely like the pumpkin ganache recipe, because when i keep the truffles refrigerated the centers tend to liquify. this can be a good thing, unless you bite into it expecting a solid center and get a bunch of pumpkin squirting out! nonetheless, they are quite delicious!
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| on the news this morning, my bf heard a report that despite the shortage of h1n1 (a.k.a. swine flu) vaccine at many hospitals, wall street corporations were given a private allotment of the vaccine. that is, while middle-age men who are at low risk for some of the more serious side effects of h1n1 are being vaccinated, hospitals are not able to vaccinate those at most risk including children, pregnant mothers, and even hospital employees (and here i can speak from experience; at the hospital where i work there is a multi-tier system as to who has priority for h1n1 vaccines, and i doubt that anyone beyond the first tier of high risk individuals has been vaccinated). what bothers me isn't that these people do not comprise a high risk group. nor is what bothers me that the people who nearly drove this country into a depression to rival the 1930s were given something that many others have not been able to get. what really bothers me isn't even that so many more at-need individuals are still unable to get the vaccine. what upsets me the most about hearing this is that it simply points to an even deeper problem that is rooted in the very basis of society: the fact that money and greed are such strong driving forces in this world.
i commented to my bf this morning that maybe the world wold be better off if everyone went back to using the barter system. sure, it would be a pain. it would be difficult to find someone who valued my work as a graduate student enough to trade me fruits and vegetables in exchange for a few pretty graphs of data or a nice model simulation. but the nice thing about the barter system is that it is entirely self-limiting in its extent. it would be impossible for society to become so extremely polarized to the extent it is now, where we have some of the richest people in the world in our nation and still have thousands of people starving in the streets. let me give a concrete example of why bartering is a self-limiting means of accruing wealth. let's take the commodity of food. everyone needs food to survive, so food would be valued highly as a bartering commodity. however, nobody could amass so much food that they could never in their entire lifetime hope to even put a small dent into their food wealth. why? because food goes bad. so in fact, food could not be stockpiled; food would by its very nature need to be either consumed or traded quickly. thus, it would not be possible for any one person to amass a commodity such that they gained total power over others. greed would be self-limiting. and payment would certainly be more in line with the services rendered; nobody would be able to pay themselves millions of dollars (or pounds of fish) to head businesses whose primary duty was to accumulate millions of dollars (fish) for its executives.
ok, so maybe i'm oversimplifying things a bit, but the point is that our society is based off greed, when it really should be based off altruism. a society thrives when its members work together for the same good; a society fails when its members seek only personal gains. consider, for example, why parents vaccinate their children against diseases that have never seen the light of day in this country for decades. the reason why such diseases no longer are around much is because people dutifully take their children in to be vaccinated so these diseases do not have the opportunity to appear. are the diseases gone for good? no! people forget that, however, and think "well, my child doesn't need to be vaccinated because the risk of vaccine outweighs the chances of getting the disease." but in fact, the only reason why a parent could even think that is because everyone else is vaccinating their children. rather than support the community, people think they have the opportunity to become selfish, and this in turn sets the society up for a great fall. we cannot simply live out darwin's theory of evolution on an individual basis; it does no good for us to compete against each other for resources. that is why we are social creatures; that is why societies exist. a society's purpose is not to perpetuate the existence of a single individual; it's purpose is to perpetuate the existence of the group. that is why some go to war and fight for others who ever get close to battle; they are willing to sacrifice their lives such that the society remains intact. altruism serves the group before the individual.
the problem today is that the "group" has become too large; it is so abstract, so globally-expansive that it is impossible for us to comprehend that in our minds. when our tribe is a few hundred members, it is easy to understand the importance of altruism and the downfalls of individual greed. but when our tribe is the millions of people on this planet, it is easy to put ourselves first and others second. we figure that our individual actions do not matter, so why be altruistic? why not serve ourselves first? what's in it for me? but in fact, if we all thought that way, if we competed with each other rather than helped each other, our society would collapse. there would be no sense of "us;" it would turn into a free-for-all, each-for-themself melee in which we would compete ourselves to the brink of extinction. in the end, it boils down to this: do we care about the world, and all who live in it? is our purpose in this life to bring some benefit to society, whether it be by making some great discovery that affects millions or by bringing a smile to the face of a loved one? or are we so wrapped up in ourselves that we care only about our own individual welfare? if it is the latter, be warned; a society does not care for those who do not care for it.
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| pardon the long absence... i've been buried in work in the lab. actually, let me correct that statement.... i've been buried in someone else's work in the lab. not even my own work! it's quite frustrating really, to know that you have to go in to work to finish up someone else's project rather than your own, and that the only reason you're stuck doing it is because they don't know how to do anything to get it done. sigh....
anyway, this week i've sort of managed to escape from all that, by attending a big conference in chicago. it is cold in chicago. that's about the only impression i have of this big city so far; i haven't had much of a chance to explore anywhere, aside from wandering around millenium park yesterday morning, despite the rainy weather. so since it's my first visit to the city, i am soliciting suggestions -- what do i HAVE to do/see in this city before i leave? also, any suggestions for good places to eat, particularly near the mccormick convention center? let me know!
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