Humans = Mammals. Who knew?

This article, which was kindly linked by ScienceBlogs, offers some rather hilarious news reporting, as well as some general insults to people who call themselves scientists.

Apparently, in addition to global warming, inflation, and non-organic produce, the inhabitants of San Francisco should now be shaking in their faux-leather boots for fear of giant pythons. Their dial-a-scientist insightfully analyzes,
At 20 miles a month, a determined Burmese python from Florida could arrive in San Francisco as early as August 2020.

"It would be exceptional for one animal to be that unidirectional in its movement, but it's mathematically possible," Rodda said.

The snake's cross-country crawl would be made easier by the large population of beavers along the way, Rodda said.

"Beavers would be a very tasty treat for them," Rodda said. "No beaver would be safe from a python."

Beavers? Why beavers? Not housecats or mice, but BEAVERS.

It gets better.

Dial-a-scientist Dr. Rodda (I am currently investigating where he went to school) next points out that one should not attempt to rid their yard of the impending giant pythons.

"A large alligator will eat a small python," Rodda said. "But we are not recommending you import alligators into California. That would not be a good idea."

You would think that nothing could top Rodda's excellent analysis of the immenent python influx. But, yes, fair readers, he really accomplishes this feat towards the end of the article (hopefully you didn't stop reading due to fears of being swallowed alive) - As for other potential prey, human beings - like rodents, beavers and deer - are mammals, government scientists confirmed.

So in addition to spending government money analyzing how pythons will scale the Rockies and Sierras, we have reconfirmed that humans are indeed mammals, the prey of choice for giant pythons.

I don't know about you, but I'm packing my bags for Bermuda.

Edit: No info on where Doc Gordon picked up his degree, but Google does tell me that he sports an attractive beard: as seen in exhibit A.

Happiness in a plastic bag?

It's fairly safe to assume that most of us don't have tons of spare time or extra cash. So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my new favorite thing. Unlike Oprah's list, I actually tried this . . . Trader Joe's pizza dough. It's a dollar, and comes in a bag in the fresh aisle. One dollar, people. While you are all well aware of my love affair with my KitchenAid mixer, it takes a lot of time to make pizza dough. It takes much less time to plunk the bag onto the counter.

Marinara sauce, mozzerella, fresh basil, and oodles of goat cheese and twenty minutes later, my apartment smelled like an Italian diner.

Lindsay Lohan has nice cans

She finally did it. Is anyone really surprised? Granted, it's slightly classier than what anyone expected (I was hoping for Penthouse, personally), but hey, we'll take what we can get.

Here's to B-list stars taking off their clothes for attention.

It is assumed that in being a PhD student in the biomedical sciences, biology will find every way possible to creep into your daily life. But, one does like to look for every opportunity to bring the daily life into the biology.

When preparing microscope slides, it is common to seal the edge of the slide with clear nail polish. So, as I will be preparing a rather large number of slides next week, I made a trip to Ulta to peruse the Essie aisle. I don't use Wet 'N Wild on my nails, so I sure as hell won't use it in my lab.

I wasn't entirely innocent on the trip to Ulta, and returned home with something sort of lab-related - gloves, bleach, and handwashing tend to torch my hands, but I'm fairly pleased with this apricot oil so far.

Chemistry and Cupcakes . . .

Today involved me trying to create two recipes. Both are frivolous, but if successful, gorgeous.
A) Antigen retrieval of lymphocyte markers. To sum things up for you non science folk, one can take a portion of tissue and fix it in a waxy substance, then slice it (sort of how one slices deli meat) and attach said slices to a microscope slide. This allows the tissue to stay for long periods of time and not "go bad," so to speak. One may then, by following a protocol (which I am trying to write, having never done this before) to remove the waxy substance and stain for a variety of cell type-specific markers. Even though I am performing another test to determine my cell types, if this works I will have gloriously pretty (and fluorescent) photos of my cells lighting up, as opposed to just boring graphs that say yes, these are indeed [insert cell type here].

B) White cupcakes. I continue to find recipes, but many of them have just a few awful reviews, saying "too sweet," "too dry," so on and so forth. Being a PhD candidate doesn't exactly leave one with lots of spare time (and that time is usually spent watching Dexter), so I am not keen on the idea on trying 5 recipes. Are cupcakes really THAT fantastic? Not really. Are they good for you? Certainly not. But, much like my *hopefully* pretty glowing slides will be for my paper (in 17 years), they will be a lovely addition to my blah week.

After a frustrating day of tutoring and a worthless trip to the Neiman Marcus sale (they had nothing good marked down, and with their "luxury experience" dressing rooms of large size but questionable number, I waited in line for 35 minutes to try on a Diane Von Furstenburg dress that nearly brought me to tears in its unflattering-ness), I came home to make pizza. Seeing as how I was starving and there was a log of goat cheese and a pack of basil in my fridge, the idea of my apartment smelling like an Italian cafe was appealing. But no. No, I had to open the flour to discover weevils. Not ants, weevils.

Wikipedia tells me the following:

A weevil is any beetle from the Curculionoidea superfamily. They are usually small, less than 6 mm (¼ inch), and herbivorous. Due to the shape of their heads, weevils are commonly known as snout beetles. There are over 60,000 species in several families, mostly in the family Curculionidae (the true weevils). Some other beetles, although not closely related, bear the name "weevil", such as the biscuit weevil (Stegobium paniceum), which belongs to the family Anobiidae.

Weevils are often found in dry foods including nuts and seeds, cereal and grain products. In the domestic setting, they are most likely to be observed when opening a bag of flour although they will happily infest most types of grain including oats, barley and breakfast cereals. If ingested, E. coli infection and other various diseases can be contracted from weevils, depending on their diet.

So, according to my internet research, if I had made pizza with this flour (I was deeply considering just removing the top layer and chucking the weevils down with the fishes), I would have gotten E. coli. That sounded swell and all, but I decided In N Out was a better option (animal style, no pickles, and fries well done, naturally).

I blew my week's free cash on these stainless canisters from Sur La Table. Gmail tells me that they will arrive in 7-10 days, and will keep my flour and sugar weevil-free.

I've been on a tremendous cooking spree recently. I think that this was ignited by the gift of a KitchenAid mixer (from my mom) for Christmas, but it was also catalyzed by countless trips to Williams-Sonoma, where I thought, "I should do that." "Should" is apparantly remarkably distinct from "have to," which is relegated to the realms of my research lab, where I "should" be characterizing tumor samples from my mouse model.

So, after my inspirations, I brought back several things from my parents house - things that actually were mine, but I never had any desire to own (my mother likes to purchase items for a life in which I do not live*). These include a full set of Le Creuset cookware in Williams-Sonoma Blue (several dutch ovens, a stock pot, and a grill pan), and other kitchen toys. Then, I proceeded to go on a bender that sent me home with springform pans, truffle oil, approximately 48 spices, and a new whisk.

This may or may not become an expensive hobby. One might think that once you own everything you need, cooking anything you desire should be a breeze. But the problem is, it's always something. It's always something you don't have - dutch process cocoa that apparently you can only purchase from Amazon, or meringue powder that is not sold in normal stores, or the goddamn truffle oil that is $30 a bottle but makes for amazing mac and cheese. I think that applies to life in general - it's always something.

* My mother really does not understand the life of a PhD student in the biomedical sciences. She seems to think that cooking a pan of lasagne, large enough to feed 27, is how I should spend my evenings, and not optimizing a quantitative real-time PCR reaction to amplify a gene that is expressed in my tissue at an excrutiatingly small level. She also thinks that I dress nicely every day, including heels, and get a decent amount of sleep. What she doesn't know is that wearing my Fryes instead of my Rainbows warrants celebration, and that I am hesitant to wear the entirely too expensive J. Crew wardrobe all the time instead of Joe's and a UCLA sweatshirt because odds are, I will spill bleach on it.

So, it seems that I have started a new blog. This is not to say that the old one is shutting down - I think that I will reserve that one for recaps and rants, and use this one for my latest obsessions: sprucing up my very small townhouse within graduate student housing, cooking profusely, and anything else of interest.

Not that anyone will read it . . .