A microscopy symposium on a cold day

Waiting on a railway platform at the station in Perth early on yesterday's frosty morning I saw modest modern enclosed structures with a door: waiting rooms that provide shelter. I explored my nearest and found inside an electric heater with a button one could push to turn it on for a while. I suspect that the heater's power was dwarfed by its circumstances: I noticed little effect even directly underneath it. Still, I gave them marks for effort. Better still might have been an enclosure from which one could read an announcements board.

I had mentioned speaking at a symposium last week: that went fine. Yesterday I was off to another, this time on microscopy. Those talks often have pretty photographs and videos: indeed, this time anaglyphic glasses were distributed to the audience for a three-dimensional experience of images such as of the microstructure of clays. I realized that the red-green probably works even for the colorblind.

Not having much general background in biology I always learn plenty. Tidbits from yesterday included the news that chickens don't have lymph nodes and their spleens are rather different from ours. Additionally, host-specificity varies greatly across Salmonella enterica: for example, typhoid is caused by Salmonella Typhi which infects humans only. In some cases the diagrams quite amuse me: for example, among my notes I appear to have written, Cthulhu holding credit cards then their eyes flew off. I conjecture that the payment cards' magnetic strips were channels through which to permeate mitochondrial membranes.

Things are different except when not

Some things I don't know much about: I don't pay much attention then become confused. An example would be noticing that Pussy Riot and the Pussycat Dolls distinctly name different bands, indeed considerably different.

Sometimes I know about only one of the things. For example, Martin McGuinness is a terrorist turned politician. Paddy McGuinness wasn't much in my mind until I noticed that when he is referenced people really appear not to be talking about Martin. Clearly I ought not just fit people to the closest name for which I already have a referent. I do that most easily if the number of syllables is the same. Also I suppose that the vowels are similar in that case.

Being aware that I make such careless mistakes I try to watch out for them. This too fails. I noticed that I had lumped Ade Edmondson and Adrian Edmondson together so I thought I had better check each of their Wikipedia pages. It turns out that the latter redirects to the former. With hindsight that's no surprise but at least I try to do better.