Personality Issues

I suppose that when a person is hired into a regular job their personality which comes across in an interview would be considered, for example how they would fit into a team and so on?
What if you were deciding on a person who would take charge of a piece of equipment (with no benefit to them except maybe the experience :|) and you have two candidates one who is very technically sound but severely lacks people skills and is known to cut corners when doing procedures. And another who is technically weaker (due to lack of experience) but can work well with other people and follows procedures correctly. Bearing in mind that the person would have to teach other new people coming into the lab and deal with technical issues that crop up. I am inclined to pick the less later person as his technical weak points could be improved with more experience and training but personality issues are not so easily overcome.

In another scenario where a person wishes to use a piece of sensitive equipment without supervision; They do a demonstration to the person in charge without any flaws in their technical skills, however they display impatience and not caring too much about following certain checks which ensure the machine continues to work properly. During the demonstration all the proper procedures are followed but here and there certain impatience is displays which makes the person in charge wonder if they would skip things if left alone. Would it be prejudicial or wrong to not allow that person to use it without supervision based on these "feelings"? In this case the persons work may be affected as they now have to wait for the person in charge to also be available.

Red pen dilemma

Recently started TA'ing and now am marking homework and lab reports and wondering what colour to use:
Red - commonly used, easy to see BUT is it presumptuous? do students feel "criticized" when the their work has been "bled all over"?
Blue / Black - non-harsh, BUT completely blends in with the students writing making it difficult to identify comments/marks
Pencil - As with blue/black with the additional, marks can be easily altered - possibility of future issue? Seems unsure?
Puple/Green (other colours) - easy to see as with red, BUT does this seem non-serious?

This is just a random post, I'm actually not thinking so much about it - usually will pick whichever colour that is nearest with the exception of blue/black/pencil as my main concern is for my marking to be easily seen by myself and the student.

Ask don't demand

Understand that when you want something done as a favor you need to work ask politely if they can help not demand that your task be done. Also when this favor is not at all part of their core work, understand that they will have other tasks, meetings, things to do and you need to work around their schedule not demand that they work according to yours regardless of what they have to do. And finally if they say they have an appointment at a certain time calling them endlessly is not going to get them out of it - just get on their nerves.
Thank you.

There is getting what you want and then there is this ...

There are some people who wait for the lift - lets say to go down; the lift arrives, arrow indicating up, and there are people in it as well. Person notices the arrow, hesitates for awhile, but gets in anyway. Buttons for floors on the way up are lit up. Person presses the button for one of the floors below repeatedly. Gives up for a moment, waits till the next time the lift stops (there are still people on the way up), tries to make the lift go down again, getting annoyed now. Gives people dirty looks when they finally get off at the topmost floor like it was somehow their fault the lift didn't change its course!

The people who influence us

To a large extent we are shaped by our environment. Specifically people. In our early lives its our parents. Much more than character, and opinions are influenced. Parents also encourage or discourage certain behavior or inclinations that we have according to what they feel is right as well. Often people find on hind sight that even our career choices have been influenced to a large extent by our parents, either by encouraging us to study along a certain field that they like or feel is suitable for us, or by our own actions of rebellion against these encouragements. Encouragement/discouragement also enters into the child's development through other elders and teachers whose opinions we are taught to value.
As we grow older, these authority figures become less of an influence as we tend to form our own opinions and not take what is told as face value. But our opinions are still not entirely our own. It is still linked to the people we hang around. Living away from your parents mean you grow closer ties with friends as a support system and their opinions begin to matter. Having conversations with friends and colleagues lead you to broaden your perspective and you tend to assimilate some of the general opinions. Those who are more stubborn or strong willed tend to hold on to their preformed notions while those more weaker willed will tend to sway with a group opinion.
These are common people who influence everyone. But take a specific example of grad students and you find that a lot of them are influenced by their supervisors. More than in a common work environment where there is a chain of control, and people come and go, get promoted, work in different groups and so on; a grad student has a close relationship with their primary supervisor for 4 - 5 years in general and as this is generally their starting point of their professional life a lot of cues are picked up from the supervisor. From very basic things like presentation/writing styles to more character issues like how forceful, perfection oriented, organized etc. In some cases where there is a chance to evaluate and choose supervisors/students its likely that people of similar character choose to work together, however even when thrown together randomly, by the time of graduation a lot of the supervisors characteristics are mirrored in the students. I cannot say if my initial assumption that this is not so common in workplaces is true or not though.

Genetics Abortion Ethics

Congenital conditions can be scary - some develop only after adulthood (or methods of detection were only developed in later years), at this juncture you might have children and passed on these illnesses to them. If on the other hand you find out about them before you have children what are the options you have. Based on the condition you could have a 0 - 100% chance depending on whether it is recessive/dominant and your partner's genetics. Assuming of course that you want to have children (otherwise the discussion becomes moot), what are the choices you have. If the chances are especially high of passing on the condition there is always adopting children. Assuming then that you want to have biological children there seems to be two choices.
First there is preimplantation genetic diagnosis which requires the use of IVF. This means the testing is done before implantation but at the embryo stage (I believe after the third division). Of course this means taking the IVF route which is a costly procedure and becomes a longer route if the couple has no other problems concieving. Only certain diseases can be tested for and it assumes that one cell is representive off all - leading to more false positives/negatives. Not all countries provide this due to ethical concerns
Prenatal diagnosis is the other option which can be non-invasive for certain conditions or more invasive procedures like aminocentesis. Invasive procedures carry their own risks to the fetus.
Both these procedures come close to eugenic like selections - hence the reason for most ethical arguments against them. Although as a parent who is likely to pass on congential conditions to their children perhaps it would not seem this way as they are not using these procedures to select sex or traits.
The tricky part is if there is a positive result to these tests. In the preimplantation diagnosis it would be an easier proces to discard the embryo (as not all embryos generated for IVF are used anyway regardless of screening). In the other case it comes down to whether the parent wished to carry the child to term or abort the pregnancy. Some conditions would cause death or severe disability almost from the time of birth hence it seems ok to abort the pregnancy. Fetal corrective procedures are rare so this seems the choice that comes with prenatal screening. There is also the case of less sever cases where the child maybe able to live a semi normal - normal life with assistance - so are you taking away this right. The parents physical/mental/ financial ability to cope with such children I think needs to be taken into consideration. Of course if abortion is illegal in a certain country these tests can lead to no useful results except perhaps better prepareredness before the birth of the child. What about the extreame case of diseases which are late developing - i.e. person can lead a normal life until their 50s or 60s where the congenital condition starts giving problems. Does a parent abort or carry the child to term. The person might never develop problems (or they might), they might die earlier of unrelated incidents, a cure maybe developed in their lifetime. Is there some good to try to stop the continuation of passing on these genes which seemingly have a negative impact on the human being's health. Or is this a mild form of eugenics too.

Second Conference Trip

Just got back from it and this time round it was a lot of fun. The boss was not with us so we had time to do some sightseeing as well. The conference itself was in Austin - which was well a pretty boring city. There was some night life as such, but we were mostly tired and not too sure about the security to venture out too much. Luckily this time around there was so much to eat; mostly mexican, but some chinese and western food that was pretty good too - with loads of vegetarian options. The presentation went well, I guess there were fewer people this time and not so much stuff presented that I found very interesting, but gained some knowledge anyway.
But truth be told I guess the exciting part of the trip was LA. We managed to take in Hollywood, Santa Monica and Venice, Disneyland, and Universal Studios, plus a bit of the city region in 4 - 5 days!!. Stayed at hostels so saved quite a bit there. Surprisingly enough I enjoyed the whole hostel experience though I was a bit sceptical at first. Most people are quite friendly, there was an international crowd and most importantly it was clean. It was really nice to see a lot of the touristy sights and get that experience. Most of it was done on our own with our little guide book and public transport - figuring out all that also had its fun. Didn't loose our way and surprisingly the transport system there is pretty good for all we heard of it. The highlight I suppose was Universal and Disney - neither of us had been on rides and such much before and these were pretty exciting - though I guess tame compared to six flags or something. Some of the lines were very long especially at disneyland but most of it was worth the wait.
All in all a good trip :)