Category: Progress Updates

Updates on the Current Project

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Where Patience is Seldom a Virtue, Virtue is Often a Patient

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No major updates yet, other than that I am still playing the waiting game, which is much better than being out of it altogether.  In the meantime, one might as well dance while trying to make it past the literary gatekeepers.  That means choreography!

It should be a welcome break from staring at a computer screen and will help avoid diminishing returns on my critical thinking.

 

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The BRAIN Initiative: Because We Don’t Already Have Enough Acronyms

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It’s always a good idea to know where, how, and for what purpose one’s tax dollars are being spent. The BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) is no exception. At its core, it is an attempt to understand how the brain works and is somewhat analogous to the Human Genome Project. The expectation is that this endeavor will lead to ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders, brain injuries, and a host of other maladies.

In the first year of funding since the project was announced last April, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are to invest approximately $50 million, $40 million, and $20 million, respectively, to facilitate these aims. From the private sector, the Allen Institute for Brain Science ($60 million annually), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute ($30 million annually), the Kavli Foundation ($4 million annually for ten years), and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies ($28 million) have also joined this effort.

BRAIN Initiative

It would seem that even frugality has its price these days, and nobody wants to come off looking cheap. Hopefully they get it right and don’t contradict one another; otherwise it might set neuroscience back quite a ways, at least in that most unforgiving of eyes, the public.

In some respects, I almost feel like a kid with a new toy to show off, though on a much smaller scale. There is, of course, quite a bit of work left to do… I would not want that toy to suddenly get a case of stage fright and malfunction.

Aside from patiently waiting for my query letters to be lifted from their slush piles – my gemstones cast in the mud – there is always the fun task of editing, always.  Some other updates to the site include an RSS feed to some notable psychology articles (i.e. potential deconstruction fodder), social media links, and a follow button.

For those interested, a more comprehensive description of the BRAIN Initiative can be found at the following pages:

National Institutes of Health

DARPA

National Science Foundation

White House Fact Sheet

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To Catch a Literary Agent

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With this last round of major editing coming to a conclusion, I now feel fully equipped to play the waiting game (a.k.a. hunting for a literary agent). Agent… it’s one of the few words that just seems to inspire an aura of confidence. Agents carry about them an ineffable mystique; they can instill fear among world leaders or assert their power as catalysts for destruction. Here are some examples:

Literary Agent
Secret Agent
Double Agent
Agent Orange

They are men, women, and things of action! Catching one of these elusive creatures, the literary agent, will necessarily require a tremendous amount of effort, craft, and stealth (i.e. my posting may go on hiatus until I wrestle one into signing a contract, figuratively speaking).

Also, have you ever noticed how any word instantly becomes hip, cool, and fierce sounding if it precedes or comes after the word agent? For instance:

Agent 50%

What exactly is being implied here? Would this agent only do half the job that you paid to have done in full? Maybe, but I’d be willing to bet that half of the job would be top notch with a moniker like that. Other examples include:

Butterfly Agent
Agent Cupcake

I rest my case.