J. Michael Andresen

I saw a review in European Neurology about a popular novelist who has written about Huntington's disease. Ian McEwan is a Booker Prize-winning author who wrote a book three years ago called Saturday that contains a character with Huntington's disease. This is from the review: Saturday is a novel about a single day in the life of neurosurgeon Henry Perowne. The setting is pessimistic, in post 9/11 London, with crowds massing to protest against impending war in Iraq. On his way to a squash game a minor car accident brings Perowne into a confrontation with a local thug, Baxter. Perowne notices Baxter’s gait: ‘His gait is distinctive, with a little jazzy twist and dip of his trunk, as though he is punting along a gentle stretch of river’, and his restlessness: ‘He is a fidgety, small-faced young man.’ Perowne is more and more certain about Baxter’s disease: 'It isn’t simply a tremor, it’s a fidgety restlessness implicating practically every muscle… As Baxter stares at the ...

One of my favorite blogs right now is Zen Habits . It's a well-written simplicity/productivity blog with lots of good advice about how to live a more peaceful life. Today's post provides some mental tips to avoid feeling envious of the wealth of people around you. It's a hard topic, because we humans have evolved to constantly compare ourselves with those in our social group and to constantly scheme to move up the social hierarchy whenver and wherever possible. Envy of others is useful for the species, but it can be quite destructive for an individual. The post had lots of advice but did not include my favorite mental manipulation to obviate envy. I left it as a comment at the end of the article: When you catch yourself comparing your situation to your neighbor, change it around to comparing yourself to the wealthiest person on earth . . . at the dawn of civilization, 10,000 years ago. Back then, disease was rampant, luxury goods nonexistent, and even the wealthiest indivi...

The Olympics are done! The US team disappointed a bit with their 36 gold medals, slightly fewer than their recent average of 38. The Chinese team certainly was impressive, ending with 51 gold medals, just over a sixth of the total. Good thing we had Michael Phelps on our side! The 36 medals translates into answer B (34-36 gold medals total) on question 7 in the prognostication quiz . It was the most popular answer, with 9 people guessing that the pressure from the Chinese team might mean fewer medals for the U.S. Matthew B., Sandy, Chris, Beth W., Eric, Pete, Heather, Jeff, and Jodene all chose B. Matthew's correct answer gives him a total score of 4 and puts him (again) alone with the best score atop the leader board. Sandy and Chris remain one behind the leader with a total score of 3. Jeff's answer pulls him even with his wife Liz, sadly reducing her gloating capability. Jodene's correct answer is her first and pulls her out of the gutter. That leaves the depressed and a...

My friends Kim and Greg went camping on Mount Diablo (in California) with their kids recently, recording the fun on their blog. Many years ago (well before kids, when I was living in Berkeley and doing my Ph.D.), I went camping on Mount Diablo with Kim and Greg. I packed all of my camping equipment onto a large hump on the back of my motorcycle and scooted over to Contra Costa County and up the mountain. We went on a nice hike and returned to the campsite for dinner and more conversation. I found a great spot for my tent, in a nice bed of dried pine needles. When I set up my tent, I decided to leave off the rain flap, since it was so warm and because there was no rain in the forecast. (And let me tell you that rain is exceedingly rare during the summer in Berkeley. That made it very nice and very safe for Ekrem and Leanne to plan an outdoor wedding, for example. I felt it would also be safe for me to leave off the rain flap.) Sleeping was very nice, after the long hike. Sadly, though...

I have had continuous gigs as a laboratory scientist since January of 1992 (spring term of my sophomore year). A whopping 97% of my professional life has taken place on the fifth floor. That encompasses five labs in five different buildings on three university campuses. This is an improvement, I guess, from my early days on the ground floor. My first job was washing dishes at a greasy spoon restaurant called the Kopper Kettle in Osseo, Minnesota the summer when I was 16 years old. (A web search assures me that the place still exists , twenty years on.) The next summer I worked at Sears at the Brookdale Mall in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota and was a soccer referee on the side. (My siblings played youth soccer, and I got involved as a ref.) The refereeing was hard work and not always fun, but I enjoyed selling paint. I think I enjoyed that more than I would have enjoyed another retail gig because most people who came into the paint department had a project in mind, and it was just a matter...

I stayed at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge for the six days I was in the Boston area. They had very generous small bottles of shampoo and conditioner. I sequestered mine each day so that housekeeping would provide me with more. I collect them and take them home because Katie thinks it is fun to collect hotel hospitality items in a large basket on the off chance that we have an overnight guest who is eager to try 37 varieties of body lotion after his or her shower. When I was packing my bag at the end of the week, though, I remembered that carry-on luggage is limited to 3 oz. of gels and liquids. I didn't have room for even one of the bottles. I wonder what the housekeeper thought when they got to my room and saw ten bottles of shampoo and conditioner lined up like toy soldiers on the bureau. Wanting to get credit for being a thoughtful husband, I told Katie that I had collected the incidentals for her, but that I had to abandon them due to the strict FAA guidelines. She didn...

Katie sent me a nice opinion piece from the New York Times on the self-psychoanalysis of John Edwards . She uses some fun words! I had to look up "solipsism" and "manqué". I was quite certain I knew the first word, but then realized I was thinking of "solecism" (which, to my credit, works fine in context, but still does not prevent me from feeling like a solipsistic linguist manqué). I'm so glad the populist politics of John Edwards are out of the mix in the power structure of the Democratic Party. More power to the free-trade (I hope) Democrats such as Obama and Clinton! (Both appear to be reliable free-traders, though it is unsettling to have to ignore everything they said during the primaries.)

I've been in Boston this week at a scientific conference. I've spent nearly all of my time at the conference, but was able to get away a couple of times to see friends. One night off I went out for pizza with Ekrem and Leanne (and their adorable kids). We went to Stone Hearth Pizza , whose head chef is the brother of Bob, one of my labmates in Minneapolis. (He wasn't at the restaurant the night we went, sadly.) Ekrem and Leanne are moving to their new house in a week, and I helped them out by consuming the remainder of a bottle of scotch that they keep at their house for me. I felt very proud of myself for accomplishing this noble task. Last night I went to see Andrea perform in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music , one of my favorite musicals. Beforehand, I had dinner with fraternity friends Jan, Jeannie, David, Emily, and Ian. Dinner conversation was wonderful in that MIT-nerdy way that I greatly miss sometimes. At the end of the meal, for example, my fortune coo...