[thesis swamp] work e-mail back under 1k unread

[kaberett]

So I have been ignoring... pretty much everything... that wasn't directly related to Thesis Shit (or The Paper)... in my work inbox... since about November, with the result that I'd got up to ~2.2k e-mails unread as of hand-in.

It is now back down to 990 (because I have been skimming, but also limiting myself to a target of 100 and a maximum of 200) for the past week, with several surveys filled out and... several... papers open to read in tabs and a lot of skim-reading of lively discussions on academic mailing lists.

So far, my favourite is the demonstration that going for a jog leaves you isotopically heavier:

It works for D/H. In a students practicum I dropped the remark, that through jogging you will get isotopically heavier. One of the students wanted to find out, and she poked her finger to donate a drop of blood and instead of going for lunch she went jogging. After she came back, she gave another drop of blood and low and behold the delta
values were significantly increased!

Don’t ask me for the numbers, I forgot them. But thats what I would think is a real commitment to science! Unfortunately that young lady chose another field of research, sigh, such is life.

Btw, its not primarily the sweating that enriches your blood, it happens in the lungs, where liquid “water” turns into water vapour. I would think that in our lungs the humidity is close to 100% (water vapour saturation, like in the leafs inter cellular spaces). How else could CO2 and O2 permeate so efficiently through the cell walls if their surfaces weren’t wet? I have no medical training so I am on thin ice. But it seems straight forward. ;–}}

Rolf Siegwolf

(Actually reading the backlog of papers, and indeed catching up on recordings of a workshop I managed to sleep through, is a job for next week...)

Comments

[rmc28]

I love "don't ask me for the numbers, I forget them" because that's me with stories like this :-)