How to destroy a soul

Take a job that drains you.
Spend as much time as possible with said job.
(Working on drains is ok)

Live for the future.

Get sucked into the meaningless pursuit of beauty.

Not realise the universe is a wundaful place. Not wonder about it.

Avoid eye contact with stars. Avoid uninterrupted vistas.

Stay indoors. Sit down. Look ahead. Don’t move.

Follow big software company’s advice on how to write.

Ignore the truth.

Live the life unquestioned.

Take things too seriously.

Forget you’re an animal with animal needs. (But Ren! I have needs!)

Consume more than is necessary.

Block ears to music. (No comment passed on soul-destroying music)

Not see the humour in statements like “if you read this you are an idiot”.

Destroyed souls may be repaired by applying salve.

Them's the breaks

I broke a stick. It cost $200,000. It’s pretty funny when you think about it. Looking back now, it’s fair to say that breaking that stick was the bravest, and yet most craven thing I’ve ever been accused of doing. Bernie said I did it. All I did was beef bibimbab. That stick was sharp at both ends, if you know what I mean. It was also sharp all along its shaft.

Wisdom? Humour? Cynicism? Whatever it be, I like it

Quoted in this article

Carlos Romulo, former president of the UN General Assembly: "If there is a problem between a weak nation and another weak nation and the UN takes action, the problem disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a weak nation and the UN takes action, the weak nation disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a strong nation and the UN takes action, the UN disappears."

Mouse Primary Cortical Neurons

These are costained for total cellular actin (red) and neuronal microtubules (green). The actin stain helps me estimate the area of growth cones and the microtubule stain helps me identify neurons. These neurons are ~30 microns in size.

My Mind Was Seeded

The other day i found myself inwardly hearing (but also a little singing i suppose (not at the same time, mind you)) "the Mississippi Delta is shining like a national guitar" and "as if I never noticed the way she brushed her hair and farted". I was enjoying Paul Simon's (with the help of Africa's musical heritage) warm, fluid and bouncy tune and I wondered how it came to sparkle through my synapses. It didn't take me long to realise.

I suppose the most common mode of musical infection is aural. You hear a snippet on the radio or while you're on hold to some godforsaken customer information line and later in the hour, you find yourself humming it. Involuntarily, too. But reading it can be just as effective. Upon very little reflection, I think cw's transmission was more effective because it alluded not to a song title, which one encounters relatively often, but to an emotive line in the song. Titles are often (but not always) texts within the song, but they are more readily hermetically sealed off as separate categories, independent on the actual sound of the song. Other lines within a song depend on the surrounding words and music and invoke them strongly. "National guitar" triggered the whole musical roundabout in my head, plunging me immediately into its lyrical waters and away I sped, naked on the back of a dolphin towards Graceland.

Something worth reading

Give peace a chance, eh?

I Fell Down But They Laughed

Why does this sentence not ring true? After all, people laugh all the time. People fall down quite often too. It's the 'but' that's out of place. It really should be 'and'.

Why is this reaction so common? It seems to be a core part of our being, which probably evolved three million years ago when we were roaming the savannahs of Africa, looking for Marbig expanding folders. It's a gut feeling, an instinctive response. It's funny to see others lose their dignity. That's a shame, but we might as well make the most of it and "drink to good times".

You've Now Heard of a Western Blot

Biologists are interested in proteins, because they do so much. In fact, if there's anything to be done on a molecular level, it's mostly proteins that do it. To most people, protein is something you get in meat; something athletes are interested in; the basis of some diets. It's clearly a category of things, but they are all roughly equivalent. In biology, this couldn't be further from the truth. There are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of different proteins, depending on your definition. People dedicate their whole lives to studying a single protein. Genes are much more famous though. They are passed from one generation to the next and everyone knows about the double helix. Genes are the grist to evolution's mill.

Well, a protein is to a gene as a running program is to the program's code. Most analogies fall down somewhere, and this one falls down all over the place. The point is that a protein is directly reliant on a gene for its existence, but once its out there, it can do all sorts of wonderful things. For every gene there is a protein, and often more than one. Genes tend to sit in cellular nuclei, while their protein minions do their bidding all over the place. Genes are largely stable, while proteins come in and out of existence all the time, depending on the needs of a cell.

Western Blotting is a really common technique in biology. The aim is to find out whether certain proteins are expressed and to what degree, and also whether certain treatments change their expression. For such a central component of a life scientist's toolkit, the visual results are abjectly boring. They are ubiquitous though, and if you pick up a journal article from a science journal (which is extremely unlikely for the average person) you may encounter one. The input to a Western Blot is any kind of biological sample containing protein, and the output is these bands. A Southern Blot detects DNA, and was named after Mr Southern (true story). The theme was extended with Northern Blots (RNA), Western Blots and the very rare Eastern blot, which i'm told detects lipids. These substances account for the contents of every single organism, save for precious carbohydrates and other organic compounds like cholesterol, and minerals.

I could write for a long time about Western Blotting, but that would be bad. The main thing you need to know is that the dark bands represent proteins, and these dark bands can be there, or not be there, they can be thick or thin, high or low. All these things tell you about the nature of your protein sample. To the trained eye, much information can be gleaned from a blot. As with all techniques in science, interpretation is everything, and there are many assumptions and variables involved.

Forwardly flippant

Can you smell my whole... life?

you've got to hand it to ween for coming up with some super bizarre lyrics.
tastes good on the bun
sail brown bay to chocolate town

one style i like is a lyric that sounds like one thing, but is actually something else
eg "jets flew in formation", but i normally hear as "gets you information"
eg "i called upon a force of space and time" sounds a lot like "i called your mom, a force of space and time"
beck also does that. i once had the thought about mutations that there are several lines that are repeated, but with slight variations (mutations!) in different songs
eg the wild lives are so mild

When the chips are down, eat them

Why has poker taken the world by storm? Humanity's predilection for gambling is not new. In fact it was Alexander the Great who coined the term "to coin a term". He had been having difficulty getting some of his elephants to navigate some treacherous mountain passes, and deciding to make things interesting, bet his second in command, Barry, that he could make the elephants move faster without touching them. Barry naturally scoffed and suggested that the winner of the wager would receive free tuition for their eldest child for three months, or one term. Alexander proceeded to release a mouse under the feet of an elephant, at which point it trumpeted, picked up speed and trampled two dozen of his finest men. Barry accepted defeat with good grace, and handed Alexander a special bronze coin, noting "My liege, your term with this coin." Alexander was suddenly struck by a severe anal discharge and proceeded to empty his bowels all over the coin, which he had dropped a moment earlier, owing to the fact that he had perpetually sweaty palms.