Some music I've found

So I've been finding plenty of new music lately.
I'll share some of my findings in the form of a playlist.

Bibio - Lovers' Carvings.
Gang Gang Dance - House Jam
Born Ruffians - Hedonistic Me
Foals - Red Sock Pugie
The XX - Basic Space
Cymbals Eat Guitars - Indiana
Metronomy - On Dancefloors
The Rural Alberta Advantage - Don't Haunt This Place
The Spinto Band - Did I Tell You
Soul Coughing - Rolling
Neon Indian - Deadbeat Summer
Oh No! Oh My! - Walk in the Park
The Tallest Man on Earth - The Gardner
Yeasayer's New Single - Ambling Alp

Here's that video.

Also, all my application stuff is officially at the schools, now that my last recommender sent in the letters. Here is the list if anyone is interested:
Yale, Johns Hopkins, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, UCSF, Oregeon Health & Science U, Washington U in St. Louis, UT. Now I wait. I'm really ready to not be an undergrad anymore. However, there is one more semester. I'm not sure what the best way to spend that time is. A programming class might be a good way to go. We'll see. I know being a grad student is still a student but something about saying I'm in a Ph.D. program just seems like a sign that I'm committed and focused. Those are things I need to have going on with me. There are some habits I'll have to form when I'm a grad student. Can't watch so much Hulu anymore. I need to start reading more. I'll be in an apartment so I'll have to walk the Homes more often. I've gotten spoiled with my ability to just put him in the yard. I'm thinking my next school will finally be one that I wear shirts for. I've never done that. But all the schools I applied to are worthy of some spirit I think. The possibility of not getting into any school is a little unnerving. I suppose I'll try to find a lab tech job if things turn out that way. I really hope to not hold a bachelor's in Neuroscience and start working as a waiter or something. If I do get into a school, it'll be quite a change. I'll be moving to a place that I may not have ever been before. Bring Homesly will be a challenge. I'm going to need to find some place that allows dogs and has an administrative center out of my way so they never see him. It'll be difficult but I'll pull it off. I look forward to living in a city. Dallas is a city of course. But a strange one indeed. And I look forward to not having to drive as much. In fact I hope to be able to sell my car. Anyway, file this under the irrelevant musings section.

Enjoy the tunes.

Funfunfunfest was, well, fun. (Warning: this post will take you forever to read if you do it right.)

Let's see.....

Big thing was seeing Yeasayer
Unfortunately you can't see us in the video but Jenna and I were right up front. It had to be done.
They mostly played new stuff. It was delicious. The upcoming album is going to be great.
They did play Sunrise though. That made my fest.

Also, Ratatat.
And more Ratatat.


They were a lovely end to the first day. They played seventeen years. Golden. Loved it.

We also saw a lovely little band called Foot Patrol. They sang all about foot fetishes. Had some dancers and some amusing costumes.


Nick Thune was on Day 2. Very funny. This is not him from the fest but here is a sample of how ridiculous he is.


Chelsea Perreti...also very funny. She played an extremely awkward tape of a guy screaming during sex and calling her his mom.


Royal Bangs was what we were first greeted by.

Let's see what else

Saw......(actual fest vids when available)
Atlas Sound
This Will Destroy You
Les Savy Fav (yes the singer and one other person are crowd surfing on a ladder)
Melt Banana
Why? put on a great show
Crystal Antlers
All Leather
No Age
Fuck Buttons
Vega

We missed some folks because it rained bad on Sunday and after soaking for 7 hours, we just couldn't deal any longer. The good stuff was Saturday though truth me told. Seeing Yeasayer was bomb and I can't wait til they come to Dallas so I can see them in a non-fest setting.

Anyway, it was a good time. The rain kinda blew but whatcha gonna do?

I should definitely be studying for physics right now.
Physics makes us all its bitches.

CoMO and what not

So it's been a bit. A couple weekends ago I went to Columbia Missouri for Mizzou's Homecoming.
Here are some highlights:

-Thai Kitchen and the perma-stoned waitress that told us our food looked good but smelled even better as she set it in front of us. Also, the vegetable creatures that distracted me most of the meal.
-Having a slap fight with one Rachel Canania.
-Kabobs and beer under a tent cover.
-Grilling up some brats.
-Almost dying at El Rancho.
-Not going to 63 Diner.
-Jenna’s purse taking a few Jello shots.
-Being given a large glass of green label by a generous student council president.
-Dozer.
-Hanging out with girls watching Dawn of the Dead while they laid around like dudes.
-Sleeping in the maid’s quarters.
-Being completely stopped on the highway just about to enter Missouri as a final fuck you from Sucklahoma.

I am also going to Funfunfunfest this weekend. Very excited.

I have started officially submitting applications to graduate programs in neuroscience. It's nerve-racking pressing that submit button.

I am being included as an author on a couple posters to the Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference 2010. It is being held in Montreal so I may be there next April. Very nice.

Here is a song I've had stuck in my head the last couple days:


Not much else to say at the moment.
I have been schooling a lot. I am learning a good amount about memory which is nice. Here is a question:
Can you delete a memory you already have? Think of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind.
http://www.divshare.com/download/9169708-c63
This is a paper I did a presentation about. Basically they were able to get a rat to learn something simple. In this case it was "when you hear this tone, you're going to get shocked". Then they tested their memory. To do this, they played the tone and looked at how scared the rat was (how long the rat froze (rats have a deer-in-the-headlights kind of response to fear)). Then right at that moment that the rat was remembering the initial experience, they injected a drug. Then later when they tested the memory again, those rats that had been given the drug, did not show fear. One possibility is that the memory was actually erased. Another possibility is that the emotional arousal of it, the fear, was removed from the memory.
The idea that you can disrupt consolidation of a memory after learning is not new. Nor is the idea that you can disrupt reconsolidation of a memory after it is retrieved, but this paper is a clear example of it and has brought reconsolidation back into the spotlight.
A study that I have assisted in recently tracked the neural mapping of a location, by recording these things called place cells. Basically there are cells that fire when you are in a certain position in a room (for the rats it's on a maze). We then trained the rat to be afraid of a tone just like the above study did. When we played that tone while the rats were on the maze, we disrupted the place that the cells fired. Essentially we were able to get them to remap their environment on a neural level by playing a tone.

That's just some of the stuff I do/read.

I'm going to end it with a goofy song:



Have a good one. I'll let you know how funfunfunfest is.

P.S. My favorite pen died yesterday. This is upsetting.