Oh, Friday Harbor… What a magical place…
Layne has attended a biology conference in Friday Harbor for the past few years, and every year he has come back with tales of what a beautiful island it is, and how much I would love it. And so, this year, when his conference happened to fall just a few days after Emerald City Comic Con, we made plans to attend both events, back to back!!
After puttering around in Seattle for two days, we caught the ferry from Anacortes out to Friday Harbor. On the ferry trip alone, I saw dolphins, innumerable gulls and cormorants, and a smattering of eagles. And that was just the beginnings of the variety of wildlife I’d see on that trip!
But, first, there was science to be had. The first night, I went with Layne to listen to the keynote speaker talk about her research into human blastocysts. It was very interesting, and I managed to follow along pretty well with just my layman’s knowledge of developmental biology, but I quickly realized that things were going to get over my head in fairly short order.
Take the “Guess the Invertebrate”, for example. All of the squirmy, worm-like things in the tank looked pretty much the same to me. Some were bigger. Some had more legs. There was one big green one that looked vaguely cthuluoid. But I couldn’t have put a name to any one of them if my life had depended on it. Everyone else seemed to get into it, though!!
PedroSteckecilo Says:
I imagine that every Academic Discipline must have its own drinking game. The one for artists at U of C seemed to be “crash the exhibit opening,” which amounts to free wine and cheese for all! Historians at U of C were too boring to have a drinking game… or do much of anything as a collective group, though I imagine it’d be something like “name that inaccuracy,” in Historical Films.
monkey_weaz Says:
You don’t have to be a historian at the U of C to play that game. I play that game, everytime I go to a “historical” movie. Except there’s no drinking or “naming” involved (out loud anyway). I usually just sit there and grind my teeth while wishing that any of the people involved in the movie who use the credo “never let facts get in the way of a good story”, would spontaneously explode.
PedroSteckecilo Says:
Depends on how good the story is, usually they don’t “let the facts get in the way of a good story” usually they just “don’t let the facts get in the way,” the story itself is often mediocre. I find that compensating with good period detail (ala the series Rome) can excuse some historical inaccuracies. Sometimes however you get a giant pile of inaccuracy like King Aurthur, which makes things even worse by pretending to be accurate.
Alex Says:
Here at Caltech, the CS majors play what we call the recursive drinking game…every time you take a drink you take two drinks, and you start by taking a drink!
PedroSteckecilo Says:
Mathematical drinking is dangerous…
tommtkl Says:
hanging out with some German business majors their favorite drinking game was something based off of Prime numbers or multiples of four. You had to name the next prime number or take a drink. You could also change the direction of the game by naming the next multiple of four in the sequence.
rainycity1 Says:
So glad you got out to the islands this year. It’s been fun watching you enjoy our area through your web comic.
SuperJen Says:
When I was doing my graduate work in Detroit (also biology) members of my lab would go to a pub to watch the Wings and drink. We would then decide we needed to sober up before going home… so we would go back to the lab and get some work done! I guess that Drosophila don’t care if you are drunk or not…