Slave to science

I've found myself in a somewhat unusual situation in that I am "racing" to get a paper published. We have some really interesting observations regarding calving of large icebergs and how the glacier, fjord, and earth respond to those calving events. Interesting enough that we're going to try to submit the paper to Nature (one of the two big science journals). The problem is that our observations are only slightly more unique than some other researchers, so if we don't hurry up and get this paper published then we may have missed our opportunity to get it accepted into Nature. If it doesn't get published in Nature we can always submit it elsewhere, but of course we want the fame and the money that comes with fame...

My colleagues are letting me write the paper, which could be really good for me. Its not very common for a graduate student to be a first author on a Nature paper - though it does happen. I stress the word "letting" because I haven't really contributed any more to the ideas in the paper than anybody else. I've done more of the work (writing is a lot of work), but otherwise its been a group effort. It's too bad that somebody's name has to be first.

Actually this whole process has been quite strange for me. There are probably five or six groups around the world working on the same problem, and there is a lot of discussion between groups, and so the ideas are really being developed by many people. But then, because of the pressure to publish (and to be the first to publish your results), people are being a little bit secretive about their observations. In my mind, that's not the way things should work. It says something about the problems with science funding and with scientists (we're just as greedy for fame as everybody else).

Anyway, getting a paper accepted in Nature seems to be a somewhat random process. Some papers that do get accepted wouldn't be accepted in lesser journals. And having a paper in Nature doesn't mean that you do better work than people that haven't published there, it just means that you were in the right place at the right time. Of course, being in the right place at the right time does require some skill.

Basically, this means that I haven't had much of a life for the past month. It also means that I'm almost finished with the first chapter of my thesis (I have to write three papers). I'm also hoping to write a paper for a conference proceedings for a conference that I'll attend in August. Maybe this means that I'll finish my Ph.D. faster than planned, sometime in 2009? And then?

Bagh Chal

I recently learned how to play "bagh chal", or the tiger-moving game. Its the national game of Nepal and a little bit like checkers, but so far its been a lot more fun. I especially like that the players have different objectives. Its quite easy to build your own board so give it a shot if you're into this sort of thing.

Start with a board that looks like this:


To play this game you need 4 tigers and 20 goats. (We used quarters and pennies.)

Put a tiger into each of the four corners. One person plays the tigers and will attempt to eat all of the goats; the goats will attempt to surround the tigers so that they can't move. At any point in the game a tiger can jump over a goat and eat it, but only if there is space on the other side of the goat... Think checkers. The goats try to surround the tigers until they are unable to move. If you're the goat player and you've lost five goats you should just give up. It's pretty much hopeless at that point.

The goat player goes first by placing a goat onto any intersection on the board. Then the other player moves one of the tigers along one of the lines to an adjacent intersection. This continues until all the goats have been played, at which point they are allowed to roam like the tigers. The tigers continue to play as before.

The only additional rule is that you are not allowed to make a move that results in the board looking identical to how it looked previously. This means that you can't just keep moving forward and backward.

I've read complaints that the game is too easy for the goats. I haven't played enough to find out if that's true, but it seems to me that there is an easy solution to that problem - play with one less goat.

Life cycles

This time of year I go through all of the photos that I took during the past year and print the best ones as 8x10's. I found a pretty good website for printing photos: www.iprintfromhome.com. I'd highly recommend them. They do a good job and are reasonably priced. They can print in luster, which in my opinion is much better than glossy or matte.

Anyway, in going through the photos I've realized that my life is becoming a record that loops over and over and over. Around this time of year Inari and I usually do a couple of overnight ski trips to remote backcountry huts. Even the destinations seems to be almost the same. In February or March we'll probably go winter camping, freeze our butts off, and then say that we're never doing that again. In May I'll leave for field work and Inari will plant the garden. We'll be busy working on the garden in June. Then comes July, which brings fishing, blueberry picking, the Gulkana Glacier field course, and hopefully a hiking or canoe trip. I go back to the field in August, then to a conference later in the fall, and then hang low until mid-winter.

There is something about the isolation and strong seasonality of life in Fairbanks that makes this sort of cycle almost inevitable. I haven't decided if I like it or not. I also realized the other day the I'm not as attracted to the Alaskan scenery as I once was, its like I've become desensitized. I kind of feel that its time to try someplace new, someplace with more connections to the rest of the world. Then again, I know that once/if I leave Alaska, I'm definitely going to miss it.