A Sapolsky Lecture

From Amazon.com

Yesterday I met a goal I'd set for myself when I began my postdoc at Stanford over two years ago:  attend a lecture by Robert Sapolsky, writer of A Primate's Memoir and Why Zebra's Don't Get Ulcer's.  He's a professor here at Stanford, so I figured it would be easy to find a seminar or lecture given by Dr. Sapolsky.  But, in my two years here, I'd only ever seen one email or posting about one of his talks.  Unfortunately, it was in Monterey, a two hour drive I wasn't willing to make that day.

Two weeks ago when I was hanging flyers for my department's seminar series, I happened to see a listing of the Neuroimmunology lectures being held this quarter.  Yesterday's lecture was on it, and I eagerly marked my calendar.

Despite having a cold, he gave a great old-school chalk talk (or white-board talk, if you will).  He just talked and talked and occasionally pointed to things he'd written ahead of time on the board.  And, he had my attention the whole time.  He didn't try to change things up every fifteen minutes or worry with fancy pictures of his subject.  He let his words tell his story.

The message I took home:

We evolved to handle five-minute bursts of stress, not months-long bouts with stress.  When you're confronted by a lion, chemicals called glucocorticoids allow you to run for your life, shutting down unnecessary bodily functions and pumping energy into muscles for escape, but when these chemicals are responding to stresses over long periods of time, they reek havoc on your brain's immune system.

So, relax, enjoy life, and give those glucocorticoids a rest.

Sort of related to that line of thought, I attended the January sewing class last night where I made one of these cute blankets for my future niece/nephew:

From Cotton Ginny's

I made a golden bear blanket, just like the one the little girl is holding but bright yellow instead of blue.  I figure a golden bear will work for either a girl or a boy, and it's a nice reference to Alex's alma mater.

I still need to embroider the eyes and nose (I spent much of class trying with disastrous results, but I plan to give it another go with better thread), so no pictures yet.  It was an easy pattern, so I hope to make a blue or gray elephant for my co-worker's future baby boy sometime in the near future.

Now, relax, smile, and enjoy the rest of your day!