I've been tagged with a Book Meme ...

... I thought I had dodged this meme over at VWXYNot? but then DuWayne Brayton sic'd the meme on me anyways. So, here goes:

The Rules: List fifteen books that had the most profound impact on you - ones you can think of in fifteen minutes or less.

1. The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander - Ok, so this is really a five book series, but I loved them as a child. These books were my Harry Potter growing up. These books, along with the series I'll mention in number two, were responsible for instilling in me an eagerness to read and a fondness for collecting books.

2. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle - The first three books of this series were also books I read, multiple times, growing up. By the time the fourth book was published I was already moving up to larger fare (see book #3) so it didn't factor as heavily in instilling in me a desire to read everything I came across.

3. Shogun by James Clavell - Believe it or not, I first read this book back in fifth grade at the age of ten. This book was responsible for giving me the "history bug". I've always been a fan of other cultures and this historical fiction book helped cultivate that. I have yet to get to Japan, but my agency does work over there, so I am hoping that one day I will get there.

4. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe - Read this book in high school for a report I need to do on "frontiersmen". Most of the kids did reports on Lewis and Clark and the like, I decided to steal a line from Star Trek and do my report on space, the final frontier. Got an "A" of course, both for originality and also for writing a damn fine paper. I think I still have that paper around somewhere. It's also the first (and last) time I ever used a typewriter! It planted one of the first early seeds of interest in Astronomy for me, and it's now my #1 hobby.

5. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke - I've got to admit, it took me awhile to get into this novel, but once I did, I was hooked. It got me interested in space and science, which always looked like glamorous places to visit or do. I still dream that one day I can get up into space and do some experiments.

6. The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton - I like a number of Michael Crichton's books, but this one and Eater's of the Dead are my favorites. This first turned me on to microbiology as a career possibility, and I actually keep it on my shelf at work along with my other microbiology-related texts and books.

7. The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett - I read this book when I was doing my first M.S. degree in Clinical Laboratory Sciences. I think this book played a role in legitimizing my decision to pursue a Ph.D. in Microbiology (actually I was sorta thinking Virology at the time, but that changed soon enough).

8. The Great Divorce by CS Lewis - This book showed me, in a very dark time in my life, that we make our own hell, and then we lock ourselves into it.

9. Dare We Hope "That All Might Be Saved"?: With a Short Discourse on Hell by Hans Urs Von Balthasar - This book helped form my Catholic faith as it is now, and while I was never in danger of becoming a raving fundie this book showed me the dangers of the "We are good and heaven-bound, they are bad and hell-bound." line of thinking and why it needs to be combated vigorously. It is this mentality which lies at the root of a lot of our problems today (IMO).

10. Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader's Perspective by George Gopen - This book has changed the way I approach writing manuscripts. I take great joy in getting back reviews (and acceptance letters!) which say that the manuscript was extremely easy to read. This book is part of the reason why.

11. Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean - While the list is in great part, in chronological order, I'm now trying to recollect some additional works to add to the list. This book historical fiction book spurred my early interest (7th or 8th grade) on WWII history. I can't say I'm a huge history buff today, as other things have occupied my time, but if I'm going to grab a history book, I'll go for the WWII stuff first. This book is part of the reason why.

12. Barney Beagle Plays Baseball by Jean Bethell - The first book I ever remember reading. It probably helped set me down the road to literacy.

Others which make the list, but I'm not going to describe in detail:

13. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
14. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
15. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Whew! Done! I tag ... anyone who wants to do this meme.

Dirt! The Movie - Additional Info

It appears that the website for Dirt! The Movie has been retooled. I know at least one person asked about screenings of the movie, and I'm happy to announce that they do have some screenings at a few locations lined up through the first week of August. Check them out here. Basically it's restricted to Los Angeles, CA and Woodshole, MA. Then again, the DVD arrives in September 2009, so you won't have to wait too long to buy it, or get it from Netflix.

Universal Health Coverage - Part Deux

And this article out of FoxNEWS is what I don't care for in Obama's health care plan.

America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 would create a public health insurance alternative and require coverage for most Americans and from most employers

Bold emphasis mine. I'm already on record with being agreeable to requiring people to have health insurance. What I'm not ok with is the need for the United States government getting into the business of health insurance. Medicare and Medicaid are already total messes (I'm purposely avoiding profanity in describing them, but it's apt, and you get my point when I say they're totally FUBAR'd). Why the need to come up with competition to the already existing insurance companies? It makes no sense. To pull a quote from the article:

"The government takeover of the practice of medicine will destroy the private health insurance companies, and will result in rationing, long lines, and loss of access to physicians in the patient hour of need ..."

... and ...

The Mayo Clinic, a non-profit organization and internationally renowned medical practice group, took issue with patient care quality that will result if the president's bill becomes law:

"Although there are some positive provisions in the current House Tri-Committee bill -- including insurance for all and payment reform demonstration projects -- the proposed legislation misses the opportunity to help create higher-quality, more affordable health care for patients."

So, mandate everyone have health insurance? Sure thing. Create more bureaucracy to undercut legitimate businesses? Heck no.

So, am I off base? Am I missing something?

Universal Health Coverage

This article on MSNBC has, I think, a very good article explaining the basis for the proposed health care plan. If these ideas are what is being discussed through the House and Senate, I can get on board with it. Here are some reasons why:

Just as drivers must purchase auto insurance, the medical system of the future would put responsibility for health coverage first and foremost on every adult.

This analogy seems pretty reasonable to me. Auto insurance doesn't just protect me from other drivers, it protects other drivers from me. I can safely go out on the road knowing that I won't be driven into bankruptcy because some uninsured yahoo crashes into me. Yes, there is still a risk, but it is decreased greatly. Likewise, if everyone buys into health care coverage, not only will it help them, but it helps me. Here is how:

Nearly one-third of the uninsured in the United States in 2007 were between the ages of 19 and 29, and 42 percent were between 30 and 54, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A fair number of young, healthy workers choose not to purchase insurance, believing they do not need it.

Advocates of universal coverage want to lure that group into the insurance pool because they tend to use fewer medical services and help keep premiums down. If only the sick buy coverage, premiums will be high. And visits to emergency rooms by uninsured patients increase premiums for the insured — by $1,000 per person per year, according to some estimates.

The last figure mentioned, the $1,000 increase in premiums for the uninsured visiting ER's. That's a pretty powerful figure. I hear horror stories, all the time, from my friends who remain in the medical profession, about people who go to the ER for all sorts of non-ER related issues ... because they don't have health care. That sort of wastefulness needs to stop. Perhaps this can help.

Another reason to think this is workable is that there is precedent:

The concept is modeled after a requirement instituted in Massachusetts three years ago as part of that state's broad health-care overhaul. And like the Massachusetts law, the individual mandate proposed by congressional Democrats would be paired with a much more controversial new requirement that nearly every employer contribute to the total cost of care.

This has worked before, in Massachusetts, a law that was put into effect during the governorship of Republican Mitt Romney. Say what you want about the man, but I think he's demonstrated that he has been a shrewd business man, and I've got to think that he thought this would make good financial sense otherwise he would have opposed it. Currently, only about 3% of the citizens of Massachusetts are uninsured. I'm not sure how closely the new plan matches up with what was presented in Massachusetts, but hopefully Congress is smart enough to take a working model and use that as their template.

Why are we debating this?

Congress wants to keep producing the F-22. To purchase 7 more planes will cost the taxpayer 1.8 billion dollars. That's a hefty chunk of change. The question is, is the plane obsolete in this day of modern warfare where the battlefield isn't so much a field as it is an urban setting?

Seems to me that if we're going to produce any warplanes, perhaps we should revive the A-10 Thunderbolt which has played an integral role in both Iraq and Afghanistan. For some reason, I don't think we'll be going to war with Russia or China in the near future, and we really should focus on our more immediate needs. For comparison, the A-10 costs ~$11 million per plane, the F-22 costs $135 million per plane. So we save (even majorly perhaps) by providing planes which have an immediate practical use ... and then we bank the savings to pay down the debt. And we keep jobs because we're still manufacturing warplanes.

Of course, I may be oversimplifying things, and initial startup costs will be expensive ... oh whatever, just cancel all the damn projects. And if China invades ... Wolverines!

If Franken ...

... is going to keep doing things like this, I have no beef with him.

Franken wrote in an opinion published Monday in the Star Tribune that his proposed pilot program will train "a statistically significant number of dogs" to measure the benefits to veterans living with devastating injuries sustained on the battlefield.

The dogs' companionship, Franken said, provides invaluable health benefits -- both physical and emotional -- to veterans suffering from debilitating injuries and psychological disorders. The service dogs will help "reduce the suicide rate among veterans, decrease the number of hospitalizations, and lower the cost of medications and human care," he said.

Manuscript Tracker

It's such a groovy thing. So two of the three reviewers have already finished their reviews of my latest submitted manuscript. Turnaround time of less than 20 days. So now we're waiting on reviewer #3. This is a pretty cool process, the only problem is ... I'm now probably going to drive myself mad watching that third reviewer to see when it is turned in!

Carl Sagan

The Lab Lemming ponders on whether Carl Sagan was really "all that". He fails to see it, and so do I. I grew up watching NOVA, Nature, and Wild Kingdom, not so with Cosmos. I opined as follows:

I'm not sure there will ever be one single individual who will be universally cited for inspiring a generation to seriously consider scientific pursuits.

Interestingly enough, today the US is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. One would think that projects such as this, and not single individuals, would be more suited as inspirational devices.

The problem is, when will we have our next "scientific revolution"? The economy and political state of the world, clearly seem to be hampering such endeavors at the present time.

So, do we need an "individual" or is the "project" more important? To me it seems that projects can capture the countries/worlds imagination more aptly than any single individual can.

The Eagle Has Landed!

Today is the 40th Anniversary of one of the greatest achievements in all of human history. On this day 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon. Caption: Picture of Buzz Aldrin standing next to the US flag planted on the moon.

To celebrate this outstanding scientific achievement, here is some link goodness celebrating it:

1. Apollo 11 Fast Facts (FoxNews)

2. Phil Plait writes what Apollo 11 meant to him (Bad Astronomy Blog)

3. A 10 year old played a role in getting Apollo 11 home (CNN)

4. Remembering Apollo 11 - The Big Picture (Boston Globe)

5. NASA's 30th Anniversary Page for Apollo 11 (NASA)

6. NASA's 40th Anniversary Page for Apollo 11 (NASA)

7. Wired Science Article on next 40 years for NASA (Wired Science)

8. A list of the Apollo 11 Science Experiments (LPI)

9. A PDF to the Apollo 11 Preliminary Science Report (NASA)

And no linkage list is complete without a link to a Top Ten List:
10. Ten Things You Didn't Know About Apollo 11 (Popular Science)

Enjoy!

Public outreach ...

... so there is a huge hubbub occurring amongst quite a number of science blogs across the internets lately. As part of their focus on the state of science in the United States of America, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, the bloggers on The Intersection, speak to the issue of better outreach to the public by the scientific community. The question is, what form should that outreach take?

Obviously this is not an either/or type of question ... there are any number of things that can be done, and some of them should obviously be done in concert with others. As a government scientist, I am always being asked to present my ideas in a manner which would be accessible to a non-scientist. They're called "interpretative summaries". Over at DrugMonkey, neurolover mentioned that PLoS Biology has a similar concept which is called "author summary", and is defined thusly:

Distinct from the scientific abstract, the author summary is included in the article to make findings accessible to an audience of both scientists and non-scientists. Ideally aimed to a level of understanding of an undergraduate student, the significance of the work should be presented simply, objectively, and without exaggeration.

I see no reason why NIH could not make this a mandatory component of scientifically published manuscripts. Then, these "author summaries" are made available on PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and the like. So when people look for scientific information and are led to PubMed, instead of an abstract filled with technical jargon, they get an easy to read summary.

Granted, it is not a "cure all" for the problems we have, but it is a supremely simple thing to implement and IMO, every little bit helps.

So ...

... I changed my template again. Hope the colors aren't glaringly annoying.

No doubt the boy named Sue ...

... wound up in jail.

Writing in Social Science Quarterly, Shippensburg University professor David Kalist says giving newborn males oddball, girly or strange first names may just help land them in jail.

Sue wasn't exactly on the list, but if you're named Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell, or Walter, you have the deck stacked against you.

Of course, I always thought Luke was on the right/light side of the Force ...

Currently ...

Reading

Listening To

So that's who to blame!

For everyone who hated, with a white-hot, searing passion ... the movie Titanic, it seems that our loathing should be directed at the TV show Growing Pains. The last two slides explains it all.

Alaska attacked!

Brower said it wouldn't necessarily surprise him if the substance turns out to be some sort of naturally occurring phenomenon, but the borough is waiting until it gets the analysis back from the samples before officials say anything more than they're not sure what it is.

"From the air it looks brownish with some sheen, but when you get close and put it up on the ice and in the bucket, it's kind of blackish stuff ... (and) has hairy strands on it."

Hairy strands? Oh no, it's the Morgellon Monster!

UPDATE (07/20/09): It appears to be simple marine algae. Bummer.

"We got the results back from the lab today," Ed Meggert of the state Department of Environmental Conservation told the Anchorage Daily News late last week. "It was marine algae."

Say what?!?!?

NASA plans on dumping the ISS into the Pacific Ocean in 2016.

Well, there's another portion of our tax dollars completely wasted. I'm not sure the cost ($100 billion dollars when everything is counted up) will be recouped in the next six years or so. Surely the ISS needs to remain in orbit well beyond 2016.

Medium Rare? Perhaps Not For Much Longer

MRSA in our food supply? The article cites a study done by Tara Smith, who blogs on Aetiology.

Then in 2008, a new source and strain of MRSA emerged in the United States. Researcher Tara Smith, PhD, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Iowa, studied two large Midwestern hog farms and found the strain, ST398, in 45 percent of farmers and 49 percent of pigs. The startling discovery — and the close connection between animal health and our own that it implied — caused widespread publicity and much official hand-wringing. To date, though, the government has yet to put a comprehensive MRSA inspection process in place, let alone fix our problematic meat-production system.

This is pretty disturbing news, and cooking food properly is only half the battle. Handling of raw meat is the time when individuals will be most exposed, and it requires that proper sanitation methods be utilized to clean up food prep areas after the meat has been prepped.

If you ask me, when I'm done with a cutting board, I'd soak all the utensils which came in contact with the meat, and the cutting board itself in a 10% bleach solution for at least 10 to 15 minutes. Only then would I thoroughly clean them with soap and water. As for cooking meat, the FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service) has a handy chart listing their minimal recommended temperatures. Oh, and always wash your thermometer between temp takings!

Dirt! The Movie

So as I mentioned in my last blog post one of the filmmakers of Dirt! The Movie, Gene Rosow, attended the annual SWCS meeting to preview the movie for us. It was recently shown to the Sundance Film Festival and is still being worked on, but we got to see a mostly finished product (If I recall correctly, I think they're extending it a bit for release to the public).

I'm sure the use of the word "dirt*" annoyed a fair number of the soil scientists in the room, however in defense, the movie is inspired by the book Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by the journalist William Bryant Logan.

So with popcorn in one hand, and a beer in the other, we settled into the Hyatt's Grand Ballroom to watch the movie. As I said earlier, the trailer was a bit off-putting, giving us an anthropomorphic earth, talking to us about all the good times and then the bad times that he and humans have shared, and getting really angry when humans started doing things like strip mining ... going all postal with volcano eruptions and the like. I hope they don't keep using that trailer. If I recall correctly, they do use the anthropomorphic ploy in the movie, but it's less over the top, and only occurs in the very beginning. NOTE: I did have to skip out to use the restroom once during the film, and if the volcano stuff was used during that period, I missed it ... but I don't think it was. The movie is narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, though it's not a heavily narrated film.

The film is, instead, largely full of interviews with various experts and people who are otherwise involved in awareness and conservation. Some of the interviews include:

Bill Logan - Author of the book which inspired the movie.
Andy Lipkis - Founder of TreePeople
Dr. Vandana Shiva - Physicist, Environmental Activist
Wangari Maathai - Nobel Laureate and Founder, Green Belt Movement
Miguel Altieri - Professor of Agroecology, UC Berkeley
Peter Girguis - Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

This is a very short list of the people interviewed for the movie, the rest you can see by clicking on the link above. The interviews are all well done, and except for one gratuitous f-bomb (it's not necessary at all and that part of the interview is sort of pointless) by one of the interviewee's it is a movie which can be seen by the entire family. For demonstrative purposes when explaining microbial processes, the authors rely on cartoons shorts which are rather cute if simplistic. At this point I should note, if you're looking for a scientific treatise here, you're not going to get it. For example, while the word "soil" is used a handful of times, people (even the scientists) do play along by calling it "dirt". Things are presented in broad terms and concepts, but I think they're presented in such a way as to be easy to comprehend, which will most definitely appeal to a much wider audience.

In addition to the science, the film also spends time highlighting conservation efforts such as TreePeople, The Edible Schoolyard, The Greenhouse Project at Rikers Island, and Sustainable South Bronx, all grassroot efforts to increase awareness of our most important natural resource, soil. As Secretary Vilsack said in his speech given earlier that day, there is a great need to bring understanding to the public, especially those in urban areas, that our food does not come from the grocery store. He spoke to the plight of "food deserts", and how not only does it highlight a need for better nutrition, which in turn will result in better health (lower obesity rates as one example) but hopefully greater public awareness and enhanced conservation efforts. I think this movie, though it does not (as far as I can remember) mention food deserts directly, can help in this effort.

Overall, the movie was very well done. As a documentary I think it does an excellent job in raising awareness and understanding of an area where they is very little knowledge by the public. If this movie can reach a wide audience I think it will do a lot of good, and overall I think it was received quite favorably by those who attended the showing. Personally, I will be purchasing a copy, and if it does not contain the f-bomb, I will be sending it to my sister who show to her science classes. I certainly hope the filmmakers have success with this movie, and hopefully this will open doors for further awareness projects along these lines.

As a documentary, I give this film 4.75 out of 5 stars. The only detraction really is the single gratuitous curse-word, which will hurt the ability of teachers to show this movie to their science classes. If that can be removed, I think this becomes an extremely valuable tool in the hand of conservationists.


*I've made the mistake of calling it "dirt" a couple of times (still trying to get the medical microbiology out of my veins) only to be rejoined with glares and looks of major disapproval.

Dirt! The Preview

So I'm here at the Soil and Water Conservation Society annual meeting. Listened to the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, give the opening lecture. The meeting organizers then mentioned that tonight there will be a screening of the new documentary Dirt! The Movie, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. They showed a two minute clip, probably to generate interest. I'm a bit conflicted (I know it's based on a book, also named Dirt!, but couldn't they name it Soil! The Movie ???) but I'm going to watch it. It clocks in at about 80 minutes in its current version. The final version will not be released until next year, from what I gathered.

At any rate, I may blog about it later.

Lego Star Wars

This game totally rocks.

Total play time: 20 hours
% of game completed: 30%

Definitely worth the $20 price tag.

It's shaping up to be ...

... another disappointing year to be a Mets fan.

Boo hoo

Not to be outdone in the histrionics category, P.Z. Myers gets his nose bent out of sorts because he didn't get a copy of Chris Mooney's new book as quickly as some others had. Oh noes!

I received Chris Mooney's last two books as review copies, before the simple folk could get theirs, and I also gave them positive (and sincere!) reviews. I'd noticed that he's got a new book out, but strangely, I hadn't been sent a copy this time. I was wondering what was up with that ...

Oh, I don't know ... maybe Chris thought it was time you actually paid for your damn copy? Of course the complaining resulted in his being sent a copy, so all is well in Myers world now, we suppose. At least until he reads all the chapters, because then he may "... have to be brutal." in his review. Oh good Lord, what will we do then?

Summer Camp!

Here we have free-thinker Richard Dawkins, who is so supportive of free-thought that he wants to indoctrinate children to think exactly as he does. Of course, he also argues that teaching children religion amounts to child abuse. Atheism is, of course, just fine and dandy, and it's the sort of indoctrination which is, I presume according to him, not child abuse. There is nothing hypocritical here folks, not at all. Move along.

Of course, Dawkins jumped the shark years ago with his horribly researched book* The God Delusion, which was summarily destroyed by Alister E. McGrath.

*Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. - Terry Eagleton

What the?

So my collaborator on a recent co-first-authored paper informed me that they received their reviews back today. Sweet Jimminy! It took exactly 30 days for the submission and return of the reviews. Here in agriculture-review-land, I had to wait over 100 days for the reviews of my submission to be returned to me (which I now need to address). My current submission has been in for 8 days. Wonder if I'll hear anything back in the next 22?

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Finished up statistics training this week. I swear, it's like the summer of lost productivity. Between meetings and training, I'm surprised anything is getting done! At any rate, we went through this statistics training. Blergh. When the instructor started getting into SAS, my mind turned to goop. Sure, I can do most of my stuff on Excel, but I'm afraid that when I write up in my M&M that I used Excel, I'll get laughed out of review. So, SAS it is (besides, it's provided to us for free). At any rate, if anyone knows of a good SAS book, drop me the tip in the comments, I'd be most appreciative.

So I'm putting together ...

... my opinions on the whole "science and religion" hullabaloo which has made the rounds across many blogs lately, most notably (by me at least) on the blogs of Chris Mooney and Jerry Coyne. I've tried to follow the main players as much as I could. This of course means I've completely ignored the hanger-ons, the ones who can be likened to those annoying kids who would shout "Yeah dude, take that!" after someone else did all the hard work (be it providing a beat down, insult, what have you). I always wondered what it took to become a well known science blogger, and after reading some of the tripe across the net lately, I've decided that it doesn't take much. Probably just kissing enough of the right posteriors. Anyways, look for the entry to be finished in the next few days. I'm trying to equally offend both sides of the issue, so I want to get enough sources* together to ensure I do it justice.

*I'm going to do some serious Richard Dawkins scholarship here. I'm looking up as many websites as I can.

I'll pass ...

... on visiting "The Ledge" at Sears Tower. I live thousands of miles away, with both feet firmly planted on the ground, and it still makes me uncomfortable.

Yeah, uh, ummm ...

... I may skip the Transformers movie. The review is totally friggin hilarious. One of the commenters sums it up best when they say: Wow. I wish I could not see this movie more than once.

Hear, hear!

Don't waste tax payer dollars to kill Iran democracy movement!

Obama can help this budding seed of hope for civil liberties even more emphatically by altogether cutting the budget "to promote democracy in Iran," evidently channeled through the U.S. Agency for International Development. Ken Dilanian of USA Today reports, "the Obama administration is moving forward with plans to fund groups that support Iranian dissidents."

This financial aid is not only a waste of taxpayer money under these severe economic circumstances, but is in fact the surest way to kill that inborn and grassroots movement.

It mostly will be abused by expatriate and entirely discredited opposition groups ranging from the monarchist supporters of Reza Pahlavi to the members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization, and it will in turn strengthen the hand of the regime to denounce the Green Movement as funded by Americans.

I am never surprised at how our government wastes our tax dollars.

So my ASM General Meeting ...

... talks arrived in the mail today. If you attended the meeting and wanted to re-hear the oral presentations you could order them from Sound Images @ http://www.e-attend.com. I ordered them, and they arrived.

What a total cluster. Not only do I need to install a program to view the files, I need to open up ports in my firewall to give SI Mosaic access to the internet, and I need to install "Microsoft Silverlight". What the hell is up with that? Why these couldn't just be in a damn MP3/MP4/AVI/QT format is beyond me. Oh yah, probably because of "piracy". I'm sure most ASM microbiologists are going to throw these lectures up on PirateBay. Give me a freakin break. I need to jump through a million hoops just to listen to a couple of damn lectures, how pathetic is that?

Using Twitter to crush a revolution

According to Mark Shea, Iranian security forces are using Twitter to hunt down bloggers via location/timezone searches. He makes the following recommendation for those wishing to support those in Iran who wish to see democracy come to their country:

If you use Twitter, set your location to Tehran & your time zone to GMT +3.30. Iranian security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut down Iranians' access to the internet. Cut & paste & pass it on.

Hopefully this will work/help.

h/t Mark Shea

Confocal Microscopy

My lab has a confocal microscope. Actually, we have a pretty damn good microscope. It's a Nikon Eclipse C1 Plus. We're in the process of ramping up experiments for the confocal. Our hope is that we'll be able to see microbial (both bacterial and fungal) interactions -- primarily physical associations for now -- in soil aggregates which may explain how soil aggregates form, and hopefully shed some light on how these organisms obtain nutrients (from both each other and from the nutrients in the soil).

Using a confocal microscope however is not like using your light microscope. There are a number of additional factors which must be taken into account when setting up your experiments.

A couple of issues to consider:
1. Does my sample autofluoresce? Plants are notoriously bad autofluorescers (I don't think that's even a word), especially in the 488 excitation range. You want to keep this in mind when using fluors such as Alexa-488, FITC, and GFP. Soil, and even animal tissues, also suffer from autofluorescence. Sometimes this can be helpful, but often times it can be problematic.

2. What are you going to do with your samples? Are they dead or alive? If they are alive, you may want to do your experiments on a spinning disk confocal microscope (if one is available) which are less damaging to live cells. Also, are you going to try to determine colocalization? If so, you really need to know what objective lens you are going to use for your imaging.

Why? Well, when fluors are excited, they emit light. When you are using more than one color fluor, these fluors are emitting light at different wavelengths. When they pass through the objective lens, if it is not corrected for those different wavelengths, some of the light will hit the confocal microscopes pinhole (iris) out of focus. This is known as chromatic aberration. So, for example, if you look at the image to the right, you see that when the blue wavelength comes into focus (when it comes to a point), if that is where your pinhole is, then your red and green light are out of focus. What this is means then is that when you're doing your Z-stack (3rd dimension), this will result in a "shift" of your image between your in focus light and your out of focus wavelengths. There are a couple of ways to correct for this shift if it occurs. You can compress your Z-stack (but you lose your 3rd dimension, and are stuck with only XY ... and the Z is part of the whole point of confocal microscopy in the first place), you can scan your fluors consecutively and then computationally merge the images (hard to do with live, moving cells, and is problematic for other purposes), or you can make sure you have the appropriate set of lenses.

Types of lenses:
1. Plan - these lenses are corrected to provide a flat field of view. Your objective lens should be plan lenses.

2. Achromats* - corrects chromatic aberrations for blue and red wavelengths. This means you can colocalize with blue and red fluors.

3. Fluorites* - Also corrects chromatic aberrations for blue and red wavelengths.

4. Apochromats* - corrects chromatic aberrations for blue, green, and red wavelengths. Newer apochromats can correct for up to 6 wavelengths, but they're extremely expensive.

So, if you're doing a colocalization experiment with a blue, green, and red fluor, you're obviously going to want to your scope to have an objective lens which is a plan apochromat. Not all of them need to be plan apochromats (seems overkill on the 20X if you're not collecting your data at 20X), but the one you collect your data with (be it 40X, 63X, or 100X depending upon your sample) should be.

*These lenses correct for chromatic aberration, and to some degree spherical aberration as well.

Resources
Microscopy Society of America
Nikon - Microscopy U
Olympus Microscopy Resource Center

Reference
Ying Li, Warren A. Dick, and Olli H. Tuovinen. 2003. Evaluation of fluorochromes for imaging bacteria in soil. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 35: 737-744 (PDF, 8 pages)

Holy Cannoli!

Saw this "10 Things NOT TO DO in New York City" interactive and had to take a peek. Being a New York native I was interested in seeing what things I should never have done when in the city.

I can agree with eight. The two I disagree on:

1. There is absolutely nothing wrong with dirty-water dogs. Hell, the dirtier the water, the better the dog!

2. Nothing wrong with shopping at Macy's either, especially during the Christmas season. Their windows are the best of the bunch, and the entire top floor becomes Santa's Workshop.

As a matter of fact, if you must travel to NYC, do it during the Christmas season. Yes, it'll be a friggin zoo, but there are a few reasons to do so (a handful of them below).

1. The stink is less. I guess the cold air keeps that wet garbage smell away from the nostrils.

2. The entire city is lit up like a Christmas tree. The shops all have their windows decorated, Macy's has their Santa's Workshop up and going too.

3. Nothing like visiting FAO Schwarz during the holidays!

4. Rockefeller Center, Tree and Ice Rink.

5. The stink is less.

Oh, and Rocco's rocks!

One leaves, another one arrives ...

... so sent my manuscript out for review today.

Shortly afterwards, a request for the review of a manuscript arrives. Unfortunately, they were not asking me to review my own paper. Heh.

All told, this manuscript took me about 10 weeks from start to finish. If not for the bureaucratic red-tape, it would have taken closer to 7. Not sure if that's a good turn-around time from sitting down to write to getting it to the editors desk. All I know is that my next one needs to go out much quicker than that. But first, time to answer the reviewer comments from my last manuscript, which returned to me almost 4 months after it was sent out. There is no reason a review should take almost twice as long as it takes me to write the whole thing!

Citizen Doctors

It's sad when a teenager has to diagnose her own disease.

In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue -- slides her pathologist had said were completely normal -- and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn's disease.

However, the fact that she had the proper tools available, and training, to make the discovery, gives me hope that our country will remain a leader in the sciences.

Celebrity Drama ...

... I'm sure everyone saw this coming. But come on ...

Kate said that the pressures of fame were not a cause of their marital problems. “I believe that it’s a chapter that probably would have played out had the world been watching or not.”

Perhaps, but perhaps not. When your dirty laundry is aired in public, it is much harder to reconcile. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone does stupid things, some even do things that they clearly should not have done. Part of the benefit of living a private life is that you are eventually (hopefully) able to put such things behind you. When you seek fame and fortune, your past tends to follow you wherever you go. That cannot make it easy to move beyond things.

On another note ... who the hell is Perez Hilton, and why do we give a crap about him? Another example of the famous for being famous crowd. And what a hypocrite to boot. He slams Carrie Prejean for her stumble on his gay rights question at the Miss America Beauty Pageant, and then he calls Will.I.Am a faggot? For real. What a tool.

Opportunities Lost

AKA: Why we need to protect the environment.

... this past weekend I was invited out to dinner. While there I was engaged in a very interesting discussion with some other people about the environment and alternative fuel sources. One person suggested that we dam up all the local rivers and use them for hydroelectric power. I commented that this would disrupt local ecosystems, which in turn would have a detrimental effect on a number of species in those locales, possibly resulting in extinction of more than a few of them. Some of which we may not even know exist.

The reply? If they can't manage to get around the dams, to hell with them.

This report is support for my own position. Once we start damaging ecosystems, we run the risk of losing species. When we do so, we may actually be reducing our own ability to identify and develop extremely useful treatments for our own medical benefit. That is supported by the data reported on in this manuscript.

In addition, there is a massive largely, currently untapped, repository of bacterial species, currently unclassified ... most not even known to exist ... which may carry defenses which we could develop for antimicrobial therapies. Metagenomics will eventually be able to identify such antimicrobials, but if we wipe out those environments before we ever get to test them ... it is an opportunity lost.

References
Mangoni, M., Maisetta, G., Di Luca, M., Gaddi, L., Esin, S., Florio, W., Brancatisano, F., Barra, D., Campa, M., & Batoni, G. (2007). Comparative Analysis of the Bactericidal Activities of Amphibian Peptide Analogues against Multidrug-Resistant Nosocomial Bacterial Strains Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 52 (1), 85-91 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.00796-07

Okuyama-Nishida et al. Prevention of Death in Bacterium-Infected Mice by a Synthetic Antimicrobial Peptide, L5, through Activation of Host Immunity. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 2009; 53 (6): 2510 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.00863-08

I agree with Bork ...

... no habeas corpus to the Guantanamo detainees.

On another front, the court has decided three cases against the Bush administration on Guantanamo, the most recent one giving habeas corpus rights to supposed enemy combatants. What do you make of that whole line of cases?

It strikes me as preposterous to begin to extend rights to enemy combatants that we never extended to captured Germans, Italians and Japanese in World War II. It's also dangerous once we begin to judicialize the conduct of a war. It can only make our forces less effective. But something has changed in the attitude. I think it was the invasion of Grenada, when a commanding officer refused to let the press come to the front lines, and a reporter said "in World War II we were allowed in the front lines," and the commander said "in World War II you were on our side."

I know that the way wars are waged has changed since WW II, but an enemy combatant is still an enemy combatant. Millions of people a year struggle and strive to earn the benefits of living in this country, one of them being habeas corpus. Why this is now extended to people who wish to destroy our country, is beyond me. It's not about "being fair", because there are ways to be fair without extending enemies and non-citizens habeas corpus.

So I was away ...

... doing some technical training for the past week. Now, I am back, and will resume blogging on Monday. Hopefully.

When the irresistable force meets the immoveable object ...

So this conversation that has been going on over at The Intersection, and which I blogged on yesterday about this abhorrent Japanese game, got me thinking (imagine that). One of the commenters on the original thread, and which I reposted in the comment section of my own entry said:

The other issue with a game like this is that it appears that every rapist goes through an escalation process, mimicked in the game by the forced fondling prior to the rape. It seems to me fairly obvious that this game would serve as that escalation process. No “normal” man wants to rape. Therefore, anyone who buys this game already has rape fantasies that could escalate.

Which got me to thinking about the whole virtual child pornography issue because it seems that the two cover similar ground. I couldn't remember what the legal rulings were on it, so I googled and it turns out SCOTUS considered it protected "free speech". However, I came across an article (PDF, 6 pages) that discussed the issue and it seems that it is equally (if not more so) applicable in the issue we're discussing today.

The abstract for Neil Levy's paper reads as follows:

The United States Supreme Court has recently ruled that virtual child pornography is protected free speech, partly on the grounds that virtual pornography does not harm actual children. I review the evidence for the contention that virtual pornography might harm children, and find that it is, at best, inconclusive. Saying that virtual child pornography does not harm actual children is not to say that it is completely harmless, however. Child pornography, actual or virtual, necessarily eroticizes inequality; in a sexist society it therefore contributes to the subordination of women.

Bold emphasis mine. If you change the words "child pornography" with "rape" it reads: Rape, actual or virtual, necessarily eroticizes inequality; in a sexist society it therefore contributes to the subordination of women. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but could one reasonable argue then that protection of "free speech" in the cases of these software may come at the price of harming the equality of women? What would happen in such a case? Would free speech win out?

Onto some of the points made by the paper:

Though it is obvious that no child is harmed by the manufacture of virtual child pornography, supporters of the act typically maintain that it remains harmful to children, and ought to be prohibited for this reason. They advance several arguments, designed to show
that real children are harmed by virtual pornography:

(1) Child pornography causes child abuse;

(2) Virtual child pornography will be used to seduce actual children;

(3) Allowing virtual child pornography makes laws banning real child pornography unenforceable;

(4) Child pornography, actual or virtual, on the Internet allows isolated pedophiles and potential pedophiles to contact each other and reinforce each other’s desires. It thus increases the probability of offenses.

He then goes on to address each point. I think #4 is pertinent since these software games often include "inviting friends" to engage in the acts to win you further points in the game. To this effect Neil Levy states:

(4) I turn lastly to the argument that permitting child pornography on the Internet allows isolated pedophiles and potential pedophiles to contact one another, and thereby mutually reinforce each others’ pedophilic tendencies. This is a variant on the first argument, that child pornography causes child abuse, but it is worth treating separately, on the grounds that it gives the argument a new, Internet-focused, twist. Perhaps merely viewing pictures or films of (apparent) children engaged in sexual activity does not cause child abuse, but talking to other people who are engaged in, or who are considering, child abuse, can make this deviant activity seem quite normal. As Roger Darlington, chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation, notes,

On the net you gain access to a community that legitimises your views. If you are operating in the real world, then meeting other paedophiles will require some organisation and will be difficult, but online you’ll find hundreds of thousands of people who share your views worldwide.

This is but one aspect of a wider problem: the radicalization of people who meet and talk only to the likeminded, through the medium of the Internet. Carl Sunstein, whose book Republic.com is largely devoted to it and related problems, calls this the phenomenon of group polarization. Dicussion only with the likeminded encourages extremism and contempt for the opinions of others. Because the Internet enables and encourages such discussion, even for those with minority tastes who would otherwise be isolated from one another, it becomes a breeding ground for hate groups, political radicals – and pedophiles.

This of course leads to an interesting turn of the discussion in the paper:

If group polarization is a serious problem, it is a problem which arises largely out of speech; out of the discussions among the likeminded, and not significantly out of the viewing of images. If group polarization is a significant risk among those who have pedophilic desires, this gives us a reason to limit what they may say to each other, even to prevent them seeking one another out. This makes the problem more, not less, troubling, since it brings the right to freedom of speech into direct conflict with the right we all have to forestall clear and present dangers.

Which essentially is the point of this post. Which one would win? Would the burden be too much to prove that rape software presents a clear and present danger? Neil Levy essentially closes with the following:

Now, we have seen that the evidence that virtual child [pornography] harms actual children is weak. But we have good reason to believe that the eroticization of inequality harms women. Obtaining equal status for all women requires, inter alia, a new sexuality: a sexuality in which inequality is not a condition of sexual pleasure for men or women. It requires that sexual relations be conducted between equals. But since child pornography is necessarily an eroticization of inequality, allowing it undermines efforts to forge this new sexuality. Perhaps, then, it is because of harm to actual women, and not children, that virtual child pornography is objectionable.

One could reasonably, I presume, argue that virtual rape software likewise eroticizes inequality, and as such, actually harms women. Neil Levy does not discuss whether this harm is sufficient for banning virtual child pornography (or in this case, virtual rape software), but I think it warrants serious consideration.

Reference
Neil Levy (2002). Virtual child pornography: The eroticization of inequality Ethics and Information Technology, 4, 319-323

Another downside to the economic slump ...

... hospitals cutting back on nosocomial (hospital acquired) infection control.

But infection-control professionals say their ranks are being thinned and they are losing the resources they need to fight infections as part of cutbacks linked to the economic downturn.

In a survey released today, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control says that 41% of nearly 2,000 respondents reported cuts in their budgets, including money for technology, staff, education, products and equipment. Of those, nearly 40% had layoffs or reduced hours, and a third experienced hiring freezes. Nurses who staff many of the departments say they are being asked to take on extra duties that distract them from infection control.

I've always maintained that if you MUST stay in a hospital, stay for as short a period of time as you can. I think nowadays this is even more prudent advice to follow. Because honestly? The hospitals don't seem to care.

Another concern that surfaced in the survey: only one in five respondents said their hospitals are using data-mining programs –- electronic surveillance systems that identify clusters of infections in real time so hospital staffers can intervene quickly.

Hospitals are not about making sick people well, it's about making money. Of course they do that by making most sick people well, but don't think for a minute that you're more than just a number ... with a dollar sign appended to the front of that number ... to them. If you die, the insurance still pays out. Sure killing people isn't good for business, but a measure of people are expected to die in hospitals, so unless something really egregious* happens, your death via nosocomial infection won't matter much.

*I'd be willing to bet that it'd take dozens or more people dying from the same nosocomial outbreak to garner significant attention to cause the hospital to worry about its reputation, and subsequently it's ability to turn a hefty profit.

Has anyone asked Biden to spell ...

... potato yet? Biden suffers from verbal diarrhea again.

Currently ...

Reading
Listening To

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

If this is this where society is heading ... I want no part of it. To be further discouraged, Amazon only banned the game* AFTER people expressed outrage.

"We determined that we did not want to be selling this particular item," a spokeswoman said.

Baloney Amazon, you only pulled it once you realized this was going to cause a huge media backlash if you didn't.

The sad thing is that this game has been out since 2006, and we're only hearing about it now. There is an extremely seedy element to society, one that we're not often privy to. Women and children kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery? It happens more than we'd like to think. Abhorrent software such as the crud linked above? Obviously it exists, lurking just underneath the scum of the stagnant pool we call our society.

Isn't it time we had enough of such stuff, stood up, and demanded an end to it?

h/t: Sheril at the Intersection.

*I'm not even going to provide details here, go check out the link ... I don't want any traffic at my site for any idiots who are even considering this game.

Death by a thousand cuts ...

... and it's going to be long, very painful, and extremely unfair. All predicated on a lie too if it comes to pass.

Obama’s new openness to the idea stands in contrast to what he said six months ago as a presidential candidate, when he harshly criticized his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, for proposing that employer-provided benefits should be taxed.

Scolding McCain in their debate on Oct. 15, Obama said, “This is your plan, John. For the first time in history, you will be taxing people's health-care benefits.”

Once again, why don't we consider spending less instead of spending more and figuring out how we're going to pay for it? Isn't that what got us into this mess in the first place?

Another Wii update ...

So I broke out Samba de Amigo last night. The game is a hoot. I'd give it a 9 out of 10 (the lost point because the remote doesn't get your hand positions correct -- typically when they're pointed in the same direction -- in some of the poses). If you want a party game, this is the one. It's also a two player game, and if you don't like the Wiimote + nunchuck combination for play, you can play with two Wiimotes together (so you'll need 4 Wiimotes if you're playing a two player game).

Oh, I also went to see Land of the Lost yesterday. I thought it was a waste of $6.50 (matinee). I guess it was my own damn vault* though.


*If you've seen the movie, you'll get that.

Eh?

The Grey's Anatomy Video Game for the Wii.

No, I did not buy it. I didn't even pick the case up. Indeed, I saw it and immediately said to myself: WTF? but that was about the extent of it. Well, that and blogging about it. If anyone actually buys this game ... they're a total homer.

On the other hand, I did totally buy Samba de Amigo along with the maraca attachment. I'm so going to get a kick out of watching my family play this game.

Yep, I'll get back to science blogging at some point.

What does it tell you ...

... when the average age of USA Senators is near the age of retirement? Is it that we really want wise individuals* in these positions, that the work really isn't all that demanding, that the jobs are so cushy that they don't want to let go of them when it comes time, or something else?


*Looking at some of the escapades of these guys -- past and present -- it makes you think hard about the idea of them being "wise".

Wii update

Since MXX asked ...

Now that I have gotten over the initial disappointment of the whole Adobe/Hulu/Nintendo/Opera fiasco (they all still suck by the way), I'll focus on some of the more cool features of the Wii.

I love making Mii's. They're simple, but funny, and you can post them on the internet (there's a channel for that, and I forget what it's called at the moment) and people can vote for them if they like them. They also hold contests, giving "Mii Artisans" a theme and allowing them to submit Mii's that they developed based on the theme. I think it's cool.

We've tried two of our games: AMF Bowling Pinbusters! which totally sucked and Acme Arsenal which was tough to handle but interesting. AMF Bowling was way worse than the Wii Sports bowling. You can't use your Mii's, the characters repeat the same lines and actions after every turn and it gets annoying real fast. The Wii Sports bowling is much more fun. Fortunately we got AMF Bowling for under $10 (technically free because it was a "buy 2 get 1 free" promotion and that was our 3rd game).

Hooking it up to the internet was good because if you like old arcade games, the Wii has a virtual console which will allow you to buy a lot of old arcade games. Most run for $5 to $10. I got Golden Axe for $8 and it plays just like I remember it. I also got PacMan for $5. They have the Donkey Kong series, the Mario series, and about 80 additional games. It'd probably be cheaper to see if Midway or Atari comes out with a "Greatest Hits" collection, but eh ... I wanted instant gratification. They even have some old Commodore 64 games available for purchase/download ... so I'm so waiting for M.U.L.E. now.

Do the Republicans need something to rally around?

If so, why are they looking past the deficit?

The White House estimates that the government will rack up an unprecedented $1.8 trillion budget deficit this year. That would be more than four times last year’s all-time high.

Adobe sucks ...

... and to an extent, so does Nintendo. So, as I mentioned earlier, one of the draws for me was that the Wii could go online, which would allow me to check out sites like Hulu and possibly Netflix. Well, I knew that Netflix was currently off the table, but now I find out that the Wii cannot check out Hulu either because the Wii Internet Channel (powered by Opera) only runs on Adobe Flash v.7 and Hulu runs off Adobe Flash v.9. That means that while I can go to the Hulu site, all I get is a "Update Your Flash" message.

That sucks.

So, Adobe you suck for not opening up the source code for v.9 to let Opera make the necessary changes to their browser, and Nintendo you suck for not pressuring Adobe further into speeding up the entire process. Oh, and Hulu sucks for not coming up with a solution (like YouTube has) to allow the maximum number of viewers possible. And lastly Opera sucks for not demanding that their customer, Nintendo, get with the times.

The United States of China

Soon, no company will be American owned. Today, the Hummer division of GM was sold to a Chinese company. Does Hummer still make military vehicles? If so, does that mean that China will be making American military hardware? If so, that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever ... but this is the situation we find ourselves in, for better or worse.

I'm thinking worse.

I am addicted ...

... so I bought a Wii. And now all I can think about is the games I can get for it. Heck, I'm excited about the potential of being able to blog from it. How sad is that? Other than "pretty sad" that is.

So I hooked it up last night, and decided that I need a new widescreen LCD television to complement the Wii. Then I played Wii Sport which is a fun game ... you'll certainly break a sweat. It's easy to see why some people get hurt (or damage expensive living room items) playing the Wii. Then on to Wii Play. The only benefit to this game is the controller that comes along with it, and if I had known the game was lame, I would have ponied up the money for the controller and saved the other $10 to buy a used game which will have a longer lifespan in my game playing repertoire. The shooting gallery is fun, as is billiards, but everything else is sort of lame.

Oh, and I have to get Golden Axe on the Wii Virtual Console. I loved that game growing up!

Shoes

I like Red Wing Shoes. They're great, and durable. I've owned one pair of steel-toed Worx shows for about 7 years. They're getting up there now, and they're not as comfortable as they used to be, so I've been in the market for a new pair of shoes. However, after eight years of competitive Cross Country and Track and Field in high school and college, where I literally logged thousands of miles a year during that period, my feet and knees are shot. Not arthritic yet, but I would not be surprised if they eventually got there. So I prefer a shoe on which I can stand for long periods of time, but which leave my legs fresh. The Red Wings fit the bill, but they can be pricey. However, I have found that you get what you pay for.

Well, I stumbled upon a pair of Ecco's which were on sale, were stylish and which have turned out to be comfortable. They're pictured below.They're the Ecco Street Fusion Hydromax (#48804) and they're great. Got them on sale (just shy of a Benjamin), but they're living up to the praise people heap on this company. So perhaps I've found myself a new shoe.

Am I the only shoe snob out there (I also refuse to wear anything but Asics or New Balance when I actually do take to the track)?

h/t: Physioprof (over at Drugmonkey)

You too can go to Mars ...

I want to be an astronaut. I think it would cool. Slightly dangerous, but cool nonetheless. I doubt, given my "advanced age" (ok, I just feel old) I will ever get into space, which bums me out.

So, I'll do the next best thing ... I'll send my name to Mars. If you click on the link, you can too.

h/t: Science Cheerleader

I wonder why ...

... this is.

Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: "President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House."

The study examined 1,261 stories by The Post, The New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, NEWSWEEK magazine and the NewsHouron PBS. Favorable articles (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent), while the rest were "neutral" or "mixed." Obama's treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent) presidencies.

Is it because the media has shifted further towards the Left (as compared to the days of Clinton -- and possibly in reaction to Bush)? Is it possible that people don't want to be critical and have the race card played against them? Or is it something else?

Ok, one last post for today ...

... this is a truly awesome story.

By the 1980s, nearly one in three turtles that nested on Matura Beach were killed. When the government asked for volunteers to help protect the endangered creatures, Baptiste and several others answered the call. In 1990, they started Nature Seekers, one of Trinidad's first environmental groups.

What effect did they have?

Gradually, her message of conservation turned the tide of public opinion, and after nearly two decades under Baptiste's leadership, Nature Seekers has largely won its battle. Today, the leatherbacks' survival rate on Matura Beach is virtually 100 percent.

Over 5000 leatherbacks nest on Matura Beach a year now.

Here is their website: Nature Seekers.

Busy ...

... have two manuscript reviews I really need to finish today. Also need to finish the revisions on my own manuscript I hope to send out the beginning of next week. All the while I'm waiting for the peer-review to return on my last submission (110 days and counting ... WTF!). Busy times ahead, but I really will try to get my ASM overview (can I really call it a blog diary at this point?) done next week as well. At least it'll start me off with my May blogging on the right foot. Until then ... everyone enjoy their weekend.

The Wii and Netflix

I love Netflix, the Wii looks interesting. I already have Netflix and I'm probably going to get a Wii this weekend. Yay! My dream has always been to have a computer in my living room, hooked up to a nice big large screen LCD "monitor" and use it as a total home entertainment system. Part of the appeal of that would have been because I could then use the NetFlix "Watch Now" feature without having to sit in the office and gaze at the 17" monitor that my home computer is attached to (plus the current NetFlix software and need to use IE sucks).

The Wii has some very nice, rudimentary features (including WiFi capability that allows internet access) and I thought it would be great if I could access NetFlix and watch movies. If that were possible, I'd probably give up, at least for the near term, my desire to get a multimedia computer for the living room and focus on acquiring the LCD television.

Currently the Wii has no such feature, but that may change. So if anyone from Nintendo reads this blog ... allow the Wii to stream movies directly from Netflix, sooner rather than later. Please!

North Korea is on crack

North Korea's 150 Day Battle. I'm not exactly sure who they're fighting, but they seem to be really excited about it (or at least trying to muster some excitement ... though one can only imagine how much verve one can wrestle up on an embargo-related empty stomach). I like the poster that's quoted in the story (at the very end).

"Let's run like a storm, riding on a flying horse," one street poster said. "Let's all become winners in the 150-day battle."

Eh? What the hell does that mean? North Korea has pegasi? Or is it pegasuses?

I didn't get tagged with the meme, but damn it ...

... I'm going to do it anyways.

My vote is for Nirvana’s cover of Lead Belly’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (aka: In the Pines).

Currently ...

Listening ToBleed It Out
Yeah here we go for the hundredth time
Hand grenade pins in every line
Throw 'em up and let something shine
Going out of my f--king mind

Filthy mouth, no excuse
Find a new place to hang this noose
String me up from atop these roofs
Knot it tight so I won't get loose

Truth is you can stop and stare
Run myself out and no one cares
Dug a trench out, laid down there
With a shovel up out of reach somewhere

Yeah someone pour it in
Make it a dirt dance floor again
Say your prayers and stomp it out
When they bring that chorus in

I bleed it out, digging deeper just to throw it away
I bleed it out, digging deeper just to throw it away
I bleed it out, digging deeper just to throw it away
Just to throw it away, just to throw it away

I bleed it out, go, stop the show
Choppy words in a sloppy flow
Shotgun, I pull, lock and load
Cock it back and then watch it go

Mama help me I've been cursed
Death is rolling in every verse
Candy paint on his brand new Hearse
Can't contain him he knows he works

F--k this hurts, I won't lie
Doesn't matter how hard I try
Half the words don't mean a thing
And I know that I won't be satisfied

So why try ignoring him?
Make it a dirt dance floor again
Say your prayers and stomp it out
When they bring that chorus in

I bleed it out, digging deeper just to throw it away
I bleed it out, digging deeper just to throw it away
I bleed it out, digging deeper just to throw it away
Just to throw it away, just to throw it away

I bleed it out
I've opened up these scars
I'll make you face this
I pulled myself so far
I'll make you face this now

*cry*

I have to do another GenBank submission using Sequin. I hate Sequin.

Hate.

It. Burns. My. Brain.

Those Kooky Ruskies

Russian scientist thinks alien ship saved the planet Earth.

Dr. Yuri Labvin, president of the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists that an alien spacecraft sacrificed itself to prevent a gigantic meteor from slamming into the planet above Siberia on June 30, 1908.

The result was was the Tunguska event ...

His evidence?

Labvin thinks quartz slabs with strange markings found at the site are remnants of an alien control panel, which fell to the ground after the UFO slammed into the giant rock.

"We don't have any technologies that can print such kind of drawings on crystals," Labvin told the Macedonian International News Agency.

Okay. Anything else?

"We also found ferrum silicate that can not be produced anywhere, except in space."

Someone can correct me if I am wrong but ... don't meteors come from outer space?

As an aside ...

... watched Kung Fu Panda this weekend. It's hilarious!

Yah, I know ...

... I didn't exactly blog "real time" about the ASM General Meeting. Honestly, from all the walking I did, I was dog tired every single day I was in Philly. By the time dinner was over and I brought my butt back to the hotel, I was zonked and out until the next morning.

With that said, I will talk about the highlights of the entire meeting (as I determined them to be) over the next couple of days. If you are really interested in the meeting, you can buy all the symposia (audio with slides) from Sound Images here. It's $299 for the entire conference.

For now, I have a review I need to do, as well as some patent work.

Memorial Day Tribute

Prayer of a Soldier in France
by: Joyce Kilmer

My shoulders ache beneath my pack
(Lie easier, Cross, upon His back).

I march with feet that burn and smart
(Tread, Holy Feet, upon my heart).

Men shout at me who may not speak
(They scourged Thy back and smote Thy cheek).

I may not lift a hand to clear
My eyes of salty drops that sear.

(Then shall my fickle soul forget
Thy agony of Bloody Sweat?)

My rifle hand is stiff and numb
(From Thy pierced palm red rivers come).

Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me
Than all the hosts of land and sea.

So let me render back again
This millionth of Thy gift. Amen.

A Soldier of France to His Mother: Letters from the Trenches on the Western Front.
by: Eugène Emmanuel Lemercier
translated by: Theodore Stanton

"March 21

Dear Grandmother,
As the hour of trial approaches I seize the occasion to send thee my whole love it is all that I can do The situation is going to demand sacrifices in the presence of which we must forget all that binds us elsewhere But let us pray that the certitude of the Beautiful and the Good does not abandon us in the midst of our sufferings."

ASM General Meeting Blog Diary - Day Two

ASM "officially" opened on Sunday at 5 pm with the opening lecture. There were three presentations, all of which were stellar and revolved around the celebration of Charles Darwin. Unfortunately I didn't bring my notebook with me for the opening lecture, so I have very little notes other than the ones I put into my cellphone. of course all three lecturers have a multitude of publications so finding and reading their work won't be much of an issue.

The first talk was given by Nancy Moran of the University of Arizona. Her talk revolved around microbial obligate symbiosis with their insect hosts. She presented some fascinating research conducted in her lab (visit the link above for a glimpse). Next up was W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University. His talk was entitled "Microbe Hunting in the 21st Century". Aside from the technical hiccup which meant that the last quarter of the right side of each slide was off the screen, his talk was also fascinating. He spoke about the various techniques his lab has employed for detecting a variety of existing and emerging pathogens. What I found particularly interesting was his mentioning of seasonal effects of schizophrenia and how it ties in with influenza season. Essentially there appears to be a correlation between the immune response and influenza infection in the womb.

The ASM Lecturer for 2009 was A.H. Knoll of Harvard who gave a bio-geo-paleontology lecture examining microbial life throughout the lifespan of the Earth. Simply put, there is evidence of microbial life for roughly 3.5 billion years. Of course, as a fan of astrobiology, this was very intriguing, and he hinted at performing such work. I'm jealous!

Overall, it was a wonderful opening session, the best I've attended.

Food-wise, it was also a great day. Went over to the Reading Terminal Market and visited Carmen's. Had my first cheese steak and it lived up to expectations. Got it with provolone cheese and roasted hot peppers. Good stuff! Prior to the session I took a short tour of Philly and went to the Academy of Sciences Museum. They have some great dinosaur exhibits (I got pictures on my cell phone so they're not the best quality) and the price to get in wasn't bad ($10). Not a bad day at all!

ASM General Meeting Blog Diary - Day One

Before I talk about the Workshop that I attended today, let me say one thing. Oh, and I hope that people who were responsible for setting the workshops up read this. Whoever had the brilliant idea of housing the workshops at Temple, and then thought it was a good idea to not have shuttles on Saturday to and from the workshops ... is an idiot. This was by far, one of the dumbest things that they could have done. Temple University IS NOT, IS NOT, IS NOT in a good part of town. Telling people they needed to take public transportation, or a taxi, to and from these workshops was a supremely dumb idea. Add to this the fact that a majority of the people who attended these workshops were not Philly natives, and you had a lot of lost people wandering those streets. That was inviting disaster, and if no one got mugged, it was a miracle.

Me? I walked from my hotel to the workshop. It was a two mile walk and I didn't have to go to far to remember that I hate large cities. One block from my hotel, passed the first individual passed out on the sidewalk, three blocks from my hotel, passed a puddle of slowly drying vomit. And the smell ... it was humid so the stink hung in the air. It smelled like your typical large city, like wet trash, and not just any trash ... if you;ve ever worked in a restaurant, and went near the dumpster ... that sort of smell. Bleh. When people talk about the sights and sounds of big cities, I don't know where they're looking at, or smelling.

Having grown up in NYC (Brooklyn and Queens), I know the rules of engagement. At all times, act like you know where you're going. If you're lost, act like you know where you're going. Do not act like a tourist, do not make eye contact with people on the street, do not respond to cars which pass by ... go directly from Point A to Point B. So when I approach Temple and I see cabbies dropping clearly lost people out on Broad Street, I thought "What a freaking mess." and tried to point out to people where they needed to go.

There was breakfast prior to the workshops in the morning, in the student center, but no signs pointing the way. Oy! Basic fare for breakfast, fruit, juice, danishes ... nothing to get excited over.

Then off to the workshop. I was in WS-04: DNA Sequence-Based Identification of Bacteria: Generation, Analysis of Data, and Interpretation of Results. Dag Harmsen of the University of Münster was the organizer. It was a good overview of sequencing, and phylogeny, and if you're new to sequencing, it's worth a looksee if they offer it next year. Most of it I already knew, but it was good to get some review and since we're encouraged to review and place such stuff on our IPP (Individual Performance Plan) and I was going to be at ASM anyways, I figured what the hey. It was geared primarily towards the clinical lab, though they did talk about phylogenetic analysis, and discussed matters purely from a direct sequencing approach (assuming pure samples, which means no talk of cloning and chimeras). Nothing really exciting or out of the ordinary, except for the one dude asking about dominant and recessive genes (eh?), and the dude from NCBI getting his knickers in a twist when it was mentioned that in a lot of cases, GenBank is a mess. He tried to cover NCBI's ass by talking about their new RefSeq project ... yah dude, but for a lot of 16S stuff, Genbank still sucks. Anyways.

Oh, the other annoying thing was that even though they said there would be WIFI available, there wasn't. Highly annoying, and when it was pointed out to the staff, they acted like they didn't know anything at all. Also highly annoying. That was however, the only hiccup in the entire day. Boxed lunch, and then finished out the workshop and walked back to the hotel. Hopefully no one died getting back to their own hotels.

After that, freshened up and set about the town. Took in more of Chinatown, and ate dinner at Ly Michaels which was a nice modern Asian cuisine restaurant. It was a bit pricier than the place I ate the night before ($12.95 for the main course, as opposed to the $6.95 Pho) but still reasonable and excellent. Had the summer rolls with hoisin sauce and the curry chicken. Both excellent! A good way to end the day.

Tomorrow, more sight seeing and dining. Going to make it to the Reading Terminal Market for a cheesesteak!