Countdown to BIL, and a busy week.

Initially, I wanted this journal to be a repository of Big Thoughts and Good Ideas, each flowing naturally from the next on a stream of Graceful Prose.

As it stands, I am happy just to be updating. BIL is coming up, and most of my Graceful Prose is being funneled into my Saturday address. BIL has already gotten some press from Boing Boing and Wired, and the registration list is longer every day. We should probably reserve our room.

I hope that the Basal Ganglia modeling project will produce some good short-form topics to ponder about here. However, there are currently more questions than answers, and with a schedule the way mine looks right now, I have to pencil in time for reflective thought. Maybe on the drive to Monterey.

When I Grow Up:

Today was career day at the Viterbi school.

Engineers are, by and large, a deeply casual people. Which is why it was so amusing to see everyone turn out in their best suits to meet with hiring corporations.

Everyone was represented - aerospace, telecommunications, homeland security, department of water and power.



Here is my friend Nanda in his suit!

One of the perks of USC is the diverse student population. I am in classes with very smart people from all over the world. It's an interesting experience, to be one of the only ones in my cohort representing LA.

I've met several people from India - and they all make me want to travel there. Every Indian expat I've met is focused, ambitious and friendly.

BIL is coming soon, and also - keep Saturday, March 29 clear if you're in LA.... more later.

Opening Remarks:

The problem of building a good footing for the study of cybernetics is difficult. I think the unusual procedure I have seen work best is for a man to know one field very thoroughly and then to learn a second field as far removed as possible - such as biology and mathematics.

After that, learning a third is easy.

-Warren S. McCulloch

More politics, some brains.

Every single one of these images is an indictment.

Support our troops by bringing them home - don't force them to do this any more.

Vote for the candidate who will end the war.

Ok, enough politics out of me for the moment. It's not an anti-war blog, I'm just an anti-war person.

More about brains!

As of this week, I've become involved in a new research project. Based on new information about Parkinson's disease and exercise, we will attempt to refine existing models of Basal Ganglia structure. I will be working with Dr. Arbib, who is one of my favorite professors at USC. I will also be working with a Post-Doc from Duke university, who has done some fascinating work in information theory and the decoding of neural signals. I'd link to her but she doesn't have a home page, and we have only just met. Somehow it seems impolite to point the entire internet at a person who will be a colleague, but with whom I haven't yet interacted face to face.

I'm excited to be involved in a research group again. I enjoy the MS curriculum very much, but it's nice to be applying what I've learned.

What I do enjoy about the Neuroengineering track is that it's highly interdisciplinary. I've been allowed (encouraged?) to graze at the buffet of knowledge, take classes from many different departments, and to plot my own course. It's making me very happy and busy.

I'm also spending a lot of time filling in the gaps. I took my undergraduate degrees in Biology and Chemistry. Now I am confronted with a lot of electronics, signals, mechanics, some computer science, and the mathematics that describe them. I enjoy math and fancy myself capable. However, applying these skills to electronics I never really learned is proving to be non-trivial. What it's required me to do is build my own shadow curriculum, and stay very organized and focused, which is good. MIT OpenCourseWare has been indespensible for this.

The goal is to be caught up entirely before BIL, and before I begin the Neuroanatomy course through the Keck School of Medicine.

Traumatic Brain Injury, PTSD, and people born in 1983.

Today I passed a guy near a freeway onramp. His sign read,

US Marines 1st and 3rd
Home From Iraq - Seizures
I want to work
Will give 110%

The guy looked all of 24, maybe.

The New England Journal of Medicine has published a study, Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in US Soldiers Returning From Iraq, which reports an increased incidence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in soldiers who have suffered from traumatic brain injury. This is especially saddening when one considers that traumatic brain injury has been labeled by the DOD itself as the "signature injury" of the Iraq and Afghani wars.

I hope that under future administrations these veterans receive the care they require. Many of them are being discharged and denied treatment.

I'm very fortunate - everyone in my family who ever served came back in one piece. But reading this story drives home the reality of PTSD - that it can be as devastating as the loss of a limb, even to people who are icons of bravery (above and beyond the standard issue iconic bravery that comes with being a Marine).