Ramallah

After a sleepy morning, we three amigos hiked our way through the old city to Damascus Gate and picked up a sherut to the famous city. Once there, amoungst the vibrant madness, we drank tea in a seventh floor cafe, got stared at by men gossiping and smoking shisha from big colourful water pipes, wandered the streets, walked though the colourful but very dirty market and fed Siu his first felafel (7 bucks three felafels and three cokes). Ramallah is a colourful bustling place, but there isn't much there- tourist wise- to see, so a few hours was enough for us.

On the way home we had to go past some of the more interestingly gratified parts of "the wall". I am a little too chicken to take pictures of it near the checkpoint with soldiers around but the graffiti was witty. My favorite was "ctrl alt del". And every once in a while you see soccer balls stuck in the barbed wire on top.

The checkpoint was an eye opener compared to the other ones we had been through. The check point coming back form the Dead Sea was just a quick glance at the passengers in the car. Coming back from Bethlehem, we had to get out of the sherut. The soldier checked everyone's papers carefully and with gravitas, but it was all over in about three minutes. So I was shocked by this checkpoint.

Coming back from Ramallah reminded me of going to an abattoir. We got out of the sherut and followed the crowd though a parking lot to a big low building. Then through a wide set narrow, tall, iron barred passageways. Then to a crowded holding pen where we waited for about 15 minutes with a crowd of 40 or so in front of us. One nice young Palestinian student tried to help us get in the right line but it turns out we were to just crowd in with the Palestinians. The crowd moved forward slowly and haltingly to get pushed though a soldier-controlled turnstile - but only two or three at a time. Then to a metal detector and bag x-rays and to have my visa checked. The soldier at the checkpoint was way too immature for her job and to have such power over people. She treated us and everyone else with a nonchalant bitchyness and without any compassion for how humiliating the whole process was. She was an embarrassment to Israel. I felt great sympathy for the Palestinians. Even on a Saturday afternoon, the process was annoying and slow to just get to a city 30 km away. I can't imagine doing this every day during rush hour. Indeed, one lady from Ramallah in our Hebrew class told the class last week that she gets up at 5 am to make it to her job in J-tow on time at 8:30.

"Real Winter"

Here is one for all you getting your toques out and ready for the season.

Siu's first days

For months I have been telling Siu Jerusalem is perfectly safe and that is never rains.
Sure enough, the day he gets here, there is the first rain in a month( but only ten minutes) and there are bad things going down in the old city. But these things blow over most of the time, and the old city is back to its usual self.

So Siu is off today for a most worthy endeavor: intentionally getting lost in the old city just to see where it takes you.

He arrived Sunday night and presented us with an entire suitcase full of halloween candy, salt and vinegar pringles, ketchup pringles, popcorn seasoning, coffee, halloween decorations, my long lost birthday present (collected set of Hamish MacBeth DVDs), and all sorts of treasures from the home land courtesy of my mom and Siu himself.

Two bags of mini coffee crisps. TWO whole bags!

I woke up the next morning to James tiptoeing over to the suitcase of yummyness, trying
to score some twizzlers before I woke up.

Rush Rush Rush

Argh!

James and I spent all yesterday cleaning our coop.

In the next hour I have get to the mall to buy sheets and a pillow and make it back home because......

SIU IS ARRIVING!

Yea!

Baby Vivian,

Both James and I wish to congratulate you on achieving the great milestone of your first birthday. We trust this day will be less traumatic than your last one.

We were unsure what to get you for this momentous occasion. James suggested a copy of War and Peace, but I wasn't sure if you had read it already. I suggested some artwork for your "office", but James pointed out that there was little room between the spinning pig, rocking horse and the plastic cow on a bendy stick.

Suffice it to say, we have admitted defeat and are only sending you this short missive.

Vivian, may the next year bring you as many joys and achievements as your first. On your happy day may you overindulge on cake and later, during nap time, dream of fields of soothers.

Love,
Aunty Janet and Uncle James.

A Whole Year

Can you believe it? It has been a whole year since I arrived in Israel. This time last exactly one year ago, I was dragging 70 lbs of luggage though a narrow street in the old city trying to make it to the Austrian hospice. For the next few days, I had a terrible tummy ache and wondering if I had made a good decision.

So did I? Absolutely.

It's funny, now at the very middle of my time here and having said so much already, I find my self strangely at a loss for words. And you all know, that rarely happens. Perhaps I will have something more sage to say when I leave.

So I simply take my teacup of bad Golan wine and head out on to the little balcony off the kitchen that looks south over the twinkling lights of the city towards Bethlehem. A toast to Jerusalem. L'chaim!

Response to Bad Papers

In response to my earlier post on the peer review process Anonymous asked, "what would one do if say JACS let massive mistakes go through? Should one contact them?"

My response it too long to leave in the comments section. So here it is.

Authors are human, so papers are riddled with errors, some only type-os, some a little bigger, and some ginormous mistakes, and occasionally some ginormous lies. If you can go through your career yourself without publishing a paper with any sort of mistake, you should be awarded sainthood.

Well in my wee experience, you have several good options:

1) Give the paper the evil eye, bad mouth it to your friends, but do nothing else.

2) Contact the authors and request the information missing and point out their error. Ethical authors will happily provide the info, and if the authors deem their mistake egregious enough, they will publish their own correction/erratum.

3) If you think the authors handled your letter badly and/or the error is something really off the mark–especially if it grossly effects the conclusions drawn from the results, the procedure reported is unsafe, the authors plagiarized or did something else unethical– you can contact the editor of the journal yourself and let them be the heavy. But remember, this is like tattling to mom. It is only worth tattling for this important things. It is a lot more PC if you can resolve the issue with the authors directly if their mistake was an honest one.

4) Publish a Response/Reply to the original paper. Write a well cited and well written your-paper-is-full-of-crap note and submit it to the journal the original article was written in. It will get published with your name on it for everyone to see but the authors will also be given the chance to publish their response just after. These are always so juicy to read when they show up in the literature. Sometimes the Authors put their tail between their legs and admit their mistake. Other times you are surprised the notes don't have cat claw marks all over them. Writing such a published note should be considered a very public act of war and should only be done under serious provocation and with proportionate force (ha ha, just had to get an Israel reference in there). Do not expect the author to buy you a beer at the next conference or objectively review your next peer reviewed grant application. And if you let your claws show, everyone will read it.

(FYI, A few years ago, my name went on one of these notes with regards to an unsafe procedure in the literature that was getting a lot of citations. It took about a year, but the authors published erratum in the journals with the original papers so that hopefully no one has a jet of flame coming out their argon bubbler like we did.)

Good luck!

We need the Maytag Man

Elvis, our violently shaking washing machine who lives on a couple of cinder blocks beside the tub, flew off the handle last night. Or rather, the handle flew off. Right off into James' hand leaving a load of white t-shirts hostage inside.

But we will not let such an icon die. Who needs a handle when you can use a butter knife to open the door? My husband, the pantsless wonder, demonstrates the technique:


In other news, the oven died a few weeks ago when the glass on the front broke. Incidentally, right after I spent two hours cleaning it. Normally one can repair this, but our oven is circa 1960 and the thermostat didn't work anyway. On top of the that, a previous owner had removed the range and replaced it with a piece of vinyl covered plywood.


Only the classiest appliances for us!

Scooter Spectacular

Further proof that no day in Jerusalem is "normal". The other morning, James and I did our usual hike through the Valley of the Cross, and up the hill to the museum on the way to work. We popped out of the valley and into the park an this is what greeted us. In the trees, hundreds of scooters and the odd motorcycle collecting like fruit flies on a banana peel.

I am sure there was a reason, but this is Jerusalem, so I have no idea what the story was.

I can tell you this: there was not a Harley in sight. J-towner's are big on their rice rockets and their completely sooped up scooters.

Trimming off the excess

I don't know if any of you have seen my mom lately, but she looks great. In the last year, she has been steadily shrinking and last week she announced she has made her goal and is officially a "healthy weight" for this first time in my memory. Which shockingly, is below my own pita supplemented weight. I was despondent.

"Congratulations, Mom" I said, somewhat depressed. To which my mom just laughed gleefully and said, "Thanks, Janny" sarcastically.

This morning, I weighed myself for the first time since May and I have to say that getting back to being super-active Janet has payed off. I am officially back to Alberta status even after last weekend's gluttony of eating out four times. And although I don't have the bulging apricot sized biceps from kaykaking this summer, I do feel stronger and healthier than I did in the spring.

Now, pass the pita and hummus.

More City of David

I have been thinking more and more about my tour of the City of David, now that I my ego has been soothed in a couple glasses of wine and two good nights' sleep. Several things really struck me.

A few years ago, they found clay letter seals stamped with names of the owner. And some of the names are actually in the bible. Not really important people but political ministers etc. from the time of David, 3000 years ago. The guide actually brought out a bible and read places where these people are mentioned.

Also, there is said to be a huge layer of ash that they find in every dig that corresponds in time to the sacking of the fist temple and the burning of the city 2500 years ago as described by Jeremiah. Again the bible was whipped out by the guide for back-up.

The third thing was near the end of the tour. Around the first century, a dude named Flavius Josephus wrote several books (you can still buy them on Amazon) describing important events of his day including the mass suicide at Masada and the destruction of the second temple by the Romans. Apparently Josephus, who has been proven to have occasionally exaggerated, wrote something about the Romans tearing up a road to kill every last Jew. This odd statement was somewhat disregarded until only about five years ago when where was a wet winter in the city. The sewage overflowed and some serious digging and pipe laying was necessary. In the excavation, they found the original road that lead from the water pools up to the second temple. Some of the big paving stones were shifted and underneath, they found once hidden compartments with complete pottery. It is interpreted that during the destruction of the second temple, Jews hid in these holes under the road but were discovered by the Romans and were either killed or forced into slavery.

I will admit that I always question statements like this, especially when the bible is brought out for back-up. I always wonder if people are looking for proof of the bible and that colors how they interpret archeological findings. Goodness knows the city is full of shrines and churches probably nowhere close to the place and event they are said to celebrate. But the bible is not only about G-O-D; especially in the middle parts of the old testament, it is an important and sometimes very detailed historical record.

Had this been Athens, and the a historical document filled with religious rhetoric about Zeus, I would not have worried. My awe at the findings would have been immediate, because they have no real bearing on current life and politics. I don't have to worry about followers of Zeus waging a holy war, or a war because Zeus told them they could have the land.

After a good night's sleep of skepticism, I have decided I buy the names on the seals, the timing of the ash, and the story of the road. I am very moved by it all. Skepticism is often called for, but it is nice when sometimes your conclusion is belief.

Chutzpah at an all-time low

We are all friends and family here, right? Because right now, I feel like an idiot. You guys all know that I have skied the Feuz Bowl, repelled down buildings, tossed wrenches at bears, jumped off waterfalls and strapped myself into a jellybean of a boat and attacked big rapids. Right? My womanly chutzpah is at an OK level, is it not?

Today was the group outing (plus James). We went for a late breakfast and then had a tour of the City of David, which is outside the city walls but the actual site of the original "Jerusalem". Learned some cool things, and then the 15 of my research group plus about 15 others headed to the famous and still flowing water tunnel that diverted the spring to a big pool to ensure the city's water supply in ancient times.

Part of the tour is to wade through the cool running water of the twisty tunnel for forty minutes with flashlights as your only light source. Sounds great right? I was all gung-ho.

The tunnel was about two feet wide and about 7 feet tall at the start with a couple of stooping steps necessary. I headed into the tunnel just in front of James and behind him was a four hundred pound man whose girth spanned the entire width of the very narrow tunnel.

"I think someone in our group is might get stuck." James whispered in my ear as a joke. I was not impressed.

I could only really see six feet in front of me before the next turn and had the 20 odd members of our group in front of me. Behind me, the fat man was clapping loudly and yelling encouragements in the dark to the screaming girly members of his family behind him. I was stuck. No where to go. My heart started beating faster and faster and it was all I could do to keep from panicking. In essence, I freaked the heck right out. There was no way I was going to last forty seconds let alone forty minutes.

Luckily there was a spot to the let the fat man pass at his impossibly slow waddle and then I – in almost a blind panic – pushed past the screaming girls to get back to the entrance. I was almost in tears and breathing very heavily.

Forty minutes later, my research group emerged out the other side and realized, "Hey, where's Janet?" I was somewhat hoping that a rumour would spread that I was pregnant (pregnant people weren't allowed in) since that seemed less embarrassing than the truth. But James told them I was claustrophobic, and now my entire research group and my boss know I am an irrational wimp. I feel humiliated.

Peer Review

Yesterday, we got the reviewer's comments back on the paper Gabi and I spent much of August writing and revising.

You spend months or years working on the research and then writing an article. With a wee prayer you email it off to a journal and the Editor takes a quick peek to make sure it meets even minimal standards.
You suggest some experts in your field as possible peer reviewers to whom the editor may or may not choose. Your paper goes out to 2-4 people and they, (or their sacrificial grad student or postdoc) read it over to check if it is worthy over the next 2-6 weeks or so. The comments come back to the editor, they decide to publish without revision, with minor revisions, with major revisions or kick your paper into the dump.

The best part is seeing the reviewers' comments because they are anonymous to the paper authors. When people don't have to put their names to things, the best and the worst of people become evident. Reviewers can request more experiments, rewriting or sections, the inclusion of references (often their own in a lame attempt of boost their own citation record), and in principal try to uphold and enforce a high standard of academic integrity and rigor.

Reviewers can be awfully nice:
James' Science paper got 6 pages of comments outlining the paper's awesomeness which were posted on our fridge for months.

Or they can be nasty:
"Your paper would have been good if it was published in 1973." (True story)
"Your paper reads like soup: not clear and of little substance." (Not a true story)

Our reviewers' comments? In a nutshell:
Like your paper. Well written (Woo Hoo!). Publish it. Typo on page 9 line 33.

That was the easiest reviewers' comments I have ever seen.
I spent yesterday doing the paper work for resubmission and it is off again! This time we await the galley proofs which are a mock up of how the journal article is going to look in print. This will be our LAST CHANCE for finding errors.

Little Devil

Back in my undergrad, when things got really rough, people did what ever they could to bring a little levity to the situation. The ten 30-hour Physical chem lab reports were by far the worst experience of our education and a couple of my classmates out of extreme stress made a bet about who could get the word "buttocks" into a lab report, within context. Indeed it was achieved, and the story is now the stuff of legend.

The other day, I had a similar experience. Sometimes proofreading starts to grate on my nerves, especially when they didn't even spellcheck first. I was asked to read the two page English abstract of a labmate's master's thesis which was otherwise in Hebrew. The subject of the thesis: nanorods. After reading in the opening paragraph about how in nano "size matters" and further dull sciencey commentary on how to change the dimensions, I was struck by the pitchfork of a little devil sitting on my shoulder.

I was so tempted to edit in ambiguous nouns and adjectives that could make a sentence or two of his thesis abstract read like a real bodice-ripper. There was so much room for creativity! Increasing length of the rod, and ample girth of the rod, applied greasy ligands to the rod, the seed of the rod....it sure would make science a little more readable! Why say diameter when you can say girth?!

You will be relieved to know that I gave the little devil on my shoulder a quick flick away and I did no such cruel thing to an unsuspecting Hebrew speaker. I am as pure as snow.

Nobel Peace Prize

Next year I am nominating The Chicken for The Nobel Peace Prize for his Grilled Cheese Making which has thereby repeatedly fed the hungry and brought peace and marital harmony into a part of the Middle East.

Lah di dah di dah

Things have been a little stressful and at the same time boring in the house of Chez Janet and James lately. James is applying for "real" jobs and writing up these intricate research proposals, teaching statements, blah blah blah. To add to the stress, the hiring market is really poor right now, as so even though he is slaving in front of his computer, he knows he will be competing against hundreds of equally qualified applicants for every position. He feels it will be a miracle even if he gets one interview. He has spent hours and hours on his applications, which means that during all of these holidays, we have not gone on a single adventure. My job is to be a sounding board, to proof read and to provide an endless supply of hugs.

In the mean time, what have I been doing? For the most part, a whole lotta nothing. Work is slow because the TEM is closed for the week and the deuterium lamp burnt out on the spectrometer and no one is around to order a new one during the holidays.
Really, the most exciting thing was yesterday while trying to buy underwear, I got stuck in a parade that lasted for two hours. Thrilling, I know. I have been keeping abreast of the news online, writing blog posts when the muse speaks to me and quilting. Each one of those blocks takes and unholy amount of time, so it has been keeping me out of trouble and building a weird callus on one of my fingers. I feel a sense of achievement with having six done, but I don't even want to think about how much work is going to go into making a whole quilt worth, and then actually quilting it.

But because all of my real chemistry work is put on hold, and the boss is away, I get to do Secret Chemistry. What is Secret Chemistry, you ask? It is your whacked out ideas that you try when the boss isn't looking. You only tell him later if something cool happens. Or, if it all goes to poop, you let it fester quietly in your lab book. It truly is the most fun part of my career choice. Many a great projects have been born from secret chemistry, and many great idea flops have been avoided by secret chemistry. Think covert canulating. Mysterious magnetic stirring. Surreptitious syringing. I laugh in the face of failure! Bwah Ha Ha! I will kick some reaction butt. All with my super sexy super hero costume: lab coat and glasses!

Back to the bat cave! Er I mean, Fume Hood!

Rightous Gentiles Only

Check out this hilarious add I found in the anglophone J-town online classifieds.

FREE/SWAP:Frying Pan — Righteous Gentiles Only

My 25cm teflon-coated Tefal frying pan was accidentally rendered unfit for kosher food preparation.
Cost CAD$60.
Free for the asking to the first non-Jewish taker.
By the way, "I'm Jewish but It's OK, I don't keep kosher" doesn't cut it, sorry.


At first I just laughed, and then noticed the writer was a fellow Canuck and then it dawned on me that this ad illustrates three key ideas. Note:

1) TFAL frying pans are awesome, but sadly expensive.
2) Religious Jews do not hold non-Jews to the same standards as themselves.
3) Religious Jews hold all Jews, religious or not, to high standards.

This add is a perfect lead in to discussing something I learned of months ago: The Noahide rules. It turns out, Judaism is not really interested in converts at all. All the rules (mitzvot), are only for Jews, except 7 rules handed down from Noah that Jews believe apply for all peoples of the world. In fact, it is discouraged for non-Jews to follow the other 606 laws and rules.

They seven laws of Noah are: the Prohibition of Idolatry, Murder, Theft, Sluttiness and Blasphemy. Then the strange one: Don't eat any part of an animal while it is alive (Yuck! Like I was going to!). And my favorite of all: The requirement of just Laws.

I have to admit, this is really neat. They have it written into their religion acceptance that they live in a world with many peoples and a present a succinct list of rules they believe should be universal to all mankind.

What is really interesting is what is missing. This means that as a non Jew, I can take a lunch break from work on Saturday and eat all the bacon cheeseburgers that I want- provided the pig and the cow are dead.

What bothers me is a consequence of the third point. The ad illustrates a belief of given-at-birth specialness. I think the real idea (and not a bad one) is that members of the tribe are born into responsibility: responsibility to live within the rules of God and to show the world what it means to live humbly before Shaddai. However, as history has shown over and over and in many cultures, it is an easy line to cross between being born into responsibility and being born into entitlement. Sometimes I fear, like in all religions, some miss the big point. And it is perhaps this stepping over the line that leads to extreme Zionism in a religion that is clearly and explicitly tolerant of living within multicultural a world.

Sukkot

This week is Sukkot or Feast of the Tabernacles, which appears to take urban camping to a whole new levels. Everywhere, in every piece of spare yard, outside restaurants, on balconies, hanging off balconies and even on rooftops are these sukka huts.

This week, the observant will be eating all of their meals inside, and the truly hardcore will be sleeping in them with only the street cats to keep them warm. Even for the non-observant, this is a fun holiday especially for kids. Nir tells me his family builds one in his aunt's garage, all the cousins get together and have a pot luck, and someone brings a guitar...sounds like fun to me.

From what I gather, this is an ancient harvest feast that even Moses was already celebrating. I guess it is kinda like the Jewish Thanksgiving with, of course, all sorts of extra symbols, rules and observances. For instance, I keep seeing men walking around with these long plastic bags with green bits of plants in them. Not to sure what that is all about.

Last week, it was a mad house outside all of the hardware stores in town. For sale were all the necessary pieces for the do-it -your-selvers and kits for the lazy. Yossi says his goes up like Lego. All of the huts have these somewhat dodgy looking flat palm frond roofs, and surprise surprise, if it rains, you don't have to sleep in them.

Frankly, I am tempted to say to the whole city "You call this camping? I'll show you camping!" and take them out for a wee canoe with trip mosquitoes, rain, instant mashed potatoes and all.

In other news, there was a rumor in East J-town that the Jews were going to take over the temple mount, corroborated by the bazillion black hats going to the western wall for the holiday. There were some tossed rocks, some arrests and the temple mount closed until things calmed down, which further fed the rumor. And then there are bus loads of happy-clappy evangelical Christian tourists having a Sukkot big hippie style festival by the Dead Sea. Go figure, they are getting together, trying to fulfill a prophesy in the old testament. Bring on the second coming! And of course there are local nut jobs that think they are only here to get Jews to convert. Just another fun day in the Holy Land! I swear, this place is a lot more normal if you don't read the news.

Mystery Fruit #13: The Pomme-granate

This morning, I laid siege upon the kitchen armed only with oven cleaner, Ajax and my trusty blue cloth. I cleaned behind the fridge and in the fridge and on the fridge. I cleaned beneath the microwave, in the microwave and on top of the microwave. And worst of all, I cleaned in the oven, behind the oven and beneath the oven.
There was much grunting, creaking joints, horrible sounds of appliances dragged across tile and the odd curse thrown in for good measure.

While the battle ensued in the kitchen, The Chicken fought gallantly at the most crowded of fronts: the shook on the day before a holiday. Yes, yet another holiday, Succot, starts tonight. He came home with the spoils of war. He presented his fair, oven soot streaked wife with a whole basket of new mystery fruit.

These fruit are great. They have a wonderful strong fruity smell that is currently masking the stink of oven cleaner. I just want to go into the kitchen to sniff. The white flesh was pretty tasty too. James bravely ate the peel, but I scooped the flesh out with a spoon. "Not bad" we both exclaimed. But oh, the smell. Our kitchen smells like fruit heaven.

They have a weird spiky crown like a pomegranate but have a colour and flesh texture closer to that of of a pear or apple. Therefore, I name this definitely-a-repeat-buy mystery fruit "pomme- granate". (I know, subtle but important spelling difference, here.)