It's Monday Morning…

A few Monday morning notes, in no particular order:

• I know paper reviews are simply reviewing your paper, not your work or yourself. That's what I do when I review other peoples papers after all. I know and appreciate that negative reviews are really helpful and we'll have a much better paper in the end. I know all this but I still take the criticism and the rejections personally.
  
  Most researchers I know are perennial — even pathological — optimists. You have to be, in order to deal with constant failure, uncertain funding and all the other stresses of research. I'm not an optimist at heart so I'm not emotionally cut out for this job.



• My life would be measurably less stressful if it didn't currently include learning the standard kanji and several hundred obscure Japanese grammar points.



• The election of the next DPJ leader, and thus Japanese prime minister is this afternoon. Get MTC's excellent take on the race here, and a voting analysis by sigma1 here.
  
  I'll write a few words about it once it's over, but I belong firmly in the "who wins doesn't really matter" camp, so I haven't found the energy or time to really cover this in any detail. MTC and the others do a much better job anyhow.



• We'll be off to Sweden in another few weeks to see relatives. Central Sweden at the end of September promises to be cold, wet and dark. Right now I can't wait. And with any luck the worst of the summer here will be over by the time we come back.
  
  Really, we're almost ten million people here in Osaka ­— we could each pick up one piece of the city and move the whole thing to the north coast of Hokkaido. We'd have the same great city as now, but with cooler summers, no typhoons, skiing in the winter and the best seafood in the country!