Attenzione! Molti segreti. 12 Feb 2020|12:00pm This little black box is friends-only. Except for the science and epicurean stuff. Because, you know, we all have secrets. Comment here to be added, if you're that interested... 32 monkeys sitting in a tree

Bitchy rant; move along 03 Jul 2008|01:46am mood | aggravated music | migraine To Ms. Michelle Malkin; (this woman) who made the incredible suggestion that Rachel Ray's black-and-white paisley scarf (worn during a Dunkin Donuts commercial which was pulled from broadcasting) was reminiscent of "the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad," and further wrote in her column: It's refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists. Too many of them bend over backward in the direction of anti-American political correctness.... Well, you stupid slack-jawed bitch whelp of a cuntwhore, I hope an irate schizophrenic jihad extremist plows a Cessna into your bathroom while you're sitting on the toilet. Sincerely, Jenarael PS. If I had to decide between pushing you or Ann Coulter off a boat into shark-infested waters, I'd probably push you. And beat off the rest of the sharks with Coulter's boney louse-infested lysozyme sack. Jesus Effin Christmas, am I in a bad mood tonight. Also, when the hell did America become a country where 55% of adults DON'T believe in teaching evolution in schools? Maybe those same people think the earth is flat and the lunar landing was a hoax. 14 monkeys sitting in a tree

I'm getting old 18 Mar 2008|07:32am mood | Johnny Walker Blue Label I've had this journal since I was eighteen. I'm twenty-five now. And you wonderful people are still around. I am also in Las Vegas, courtesy M (his surprise birthday gift to me), and I am terribly hung-over. More to come later. I need to find a couch and take a nap. It's 7:30 in the morning. 16 monkeys sitting in a tree

Brief Christmas-Eve Note 24 Dec 2007|08:51pm mood | warm music | Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely Happy holidays to everyone from M and myself, and all our best to you.

I got you, baby 24 Nov 2007|12:15am mood | babies music | Sir Mix-a-Lot - Baby Got Back [while looking at infant costumes online tonight, we came across something strange] M: Oh my god; that's so cute. me: No it's not! It's horrible! M: Huh? me: The poor baby can't move! It's all bundled up... M: We'll just break its legs. me: [shakes head] Runners-up for strange baby costumage here, here, and especially here. 20 monkeys sitting in a tree

Books and the future of this planet 02 Oct 2007|05:12pm Dear shipping companies, Rather than exploiting the shrinking Arctic ice as a means to send your dirty, polluting ships and their made-in-a-sweat-shop goods across the globe just a little bit faster, perhaps you should consider the species (like polar bears) that will be extinct by the time your children are in college and will only be able to learn about polar bears from textbooks and Discovery Channel reruns. Sincerely, if not at all cordially, A very disgruntled scientist Also, satiricpacifist posted an awesome entry about the 106 least-read books (as determined by LibraryThing), and I thought I'd post the same list here, since it got me thinking about what books I'm able to share and discuss with my friends and colleagues. Books I marked with asterisks are ones I've read; those with several asterisks are those I've read many times, not just once or twice. How many of these have found their way into your hands? I'd love to know (and also any recommendations for the books I haven't yet read on this list). Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell ***Anna Karenina *Crime and Punishment ***Catch-22 *One Hundred Years of Solitude *Wuthering Heights ***The Silmarillion *Life of Pi : a novel *The Name of the Rose *Don Quixote* *Moby Dick *Ulysses *Madame Bovary *The Odyssey *Pride and Prejudice *Jane Eyre *A Tale of Two Cities ***The Brothers Karamazov Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies *War and Peace ***Vanity Fair The Time Traveler's Wife *The Iliad *Emma The Blind Assassin The Kite Runner *Mrs. Dalloway ***Great Expectations American Gods A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius ***Atlas Shrugged *Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books *Memoirs of a Geisha Middlesex Quicksilver *Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West *The Canterbury Tales The Historian : a novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ***Love in the Time of Cholera ***Brave New World ***The Fountainhead Foucault's Pendulum *Middlemarch *Frankenstein *The Count of Monte Cristo ***Dracula *A Clockwork Orange Anansi Boys *The Once and Future King *The Grapes of Wrath *The Poisonwood Bible : a novel ***1984 The Angels & Demons The Inferno The Satanic Verses *Sense and Sensibility *The Picture of Dorian Gray *Mansfield Park *One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest To the Lighthouse Tess of the D'Urbervilles *Oliver Twist *Gulliver's Travels ***Les Misérables The Corrections The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time *Dune *The Prince *The Sound and the Fury *Angela's Ashes : a memoir The God of Small Things A People's History of the United States : 1492-present Cryptonomicon Neverwhere A Confederacy of Dunces A Short History of Nearly Everything Dubliners *The Unbearable Lightness of Being *Beloved *Slaughterhouse-five ***The Scarlet Letter *Eats, Shoots & Leaves *The Mists of Avalon Oryx and Crake : a novel Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Cloud Atlas The Confusion *Lolita Persuasion Northanger Abbey ***The Catcher in the Rye On the Road ***The Hunchback of Notre Dame Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values *The Aeneid *Watership Down Gravity's Rainbow ***The Hobbit In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences White Teeth ***Treasure Island *David Copperfield ***The Three Musketeers ...Anybody else ever get the feeling that we are so totally screwed? 37 monkeys sitting in a tree

One Fish Two Fish Gefilte Fish 26 Sep 2007|10:04am Thanks to beekerzwhirled, I really really want to try this: Most of my guilt as a teenager didn't stem from things I'd done wrong so much as guilt over things I'd accidentally and unwittingly do. Hell was always right around the corner. Closer than the gas station, in fact. So now I'm left, in my adulthood, with a strong desire to do all the naughty things I missed out on as a kid. This said, I'm twenty-four and have yet to get a speeding ticket or a failing grade in a class. I'm really bad at being bad, apparently. Hell, now that I'm an adult, is being stranded in a Sephora boutique without your credit card and nothing is on sale. Or eating a third of that coffee cake before you realize it's got 2 grams of trans fat per serving. Or, lately, learning that your research organism is a koinobiont instead of an idiobiont, but since you're the only person in the world to keep this organism in a lab colony, nobody is around to discuss it with you. M still doesn't know that I used to go to Shabbat services on campus with several Jewish friends just because the guys were hot as hell. And are part of a religion that doesn't have a hell. I get hot seeing ethnic-looking guys in caps knitted by their overbearing mothers (and by men who have a working knowledge of calculus and are good with a pipette). We all have vices. Hi. My name is jenarael, and I am a liberal recovering from Roman Catholic, European-born-and-raised, conservative parents. 46 monkeys sitting in a tree

Electrifying 19 Sep 2007|11:08am mood | musing music | the Zapatista anthem, obviously I would just like to say, on the record (QUOTE ME HERE PEOPLE), that our university's president is a pompous, out-of-touch jerk who treats the student body like a group of whiny brats who make money for the university. We are an intellectual institution, not an economic one. Or at least, we should be in a normal very ideal world. I'd never vote for you if I had any say, Bernie Machen. Now for other news. The little town I go to school in has made big news -- not for the awesome medical school or particle accelerator or talented college of fine arts, but because a student was tasered (tased? I don't know what the verb is when someone uses a taser on you) by University police officers for refusing to quiet down and relinquish the podium during a speech by Sen. John Kerry. Photo courtesy A. Stanfill/Alligator staff (Original story here, slide show of events here) Specifically, four police officers dragged the student offstage and utilized a taser; they arrested him and charged him with a third-degree felony (resisting arrest with violence) outside of the campus auditorium while Kerry finished his speech inside. The student, Andrew Meyer, had been in the process of asking Kerry questions when his time ran out, and the police officers turned off his microphone. Meyer continued to shout into the microphone, demanding that Kerry answer his questions before he would sit down. Commence SWAT maneuver. Viewpoints and offered tidbits of information which have been discussed ad nauseam in my lab in the two days since the event (and which do not necessarily reflect any of my own) include: 1) The student was not violent, and was in fact leaving the stage and podium when officers grabbed him and used the taser 2) Tasers are not, by law, to be used as submission tools; they were ogirinally meant as tools to protect officers from violent criminals and offenders 3) Despite not breaking any rules, this kid has a history (as a journalism major and writer of our school paper) of inciting controversy and making people angry. Kind of like a liberal Ann Coulter. Without, you know, a soul of pure evil like hers. 4) Sen. Kerry is an important political figure and, as such, will be subjected to higher levels of personal protection than less-important speakers. It was expected that any conceived threat be met with a miniature cattle-prod. How do I feel about this? I'm not sure. I know that the idea of free speech being met with a taser because someone didn't relinquish the microphone in a timely manner makes me angry, and concerned about the importance of airing our opinions in a university system. I also don't particularly like the idea of a student doing this as a joke, especially when University of Florida students organized a protest the following day in an attempt to uphold Meyer's rights, and the idea of student safety. Also, I wonder if Kerry should have done something else (like, ah, get upset or disturbed that an unarmed 150-pound skinny kid with glasses had an electric weapon used on him for trying to get a question answered), rather than just continue with this event? Is it more diplomatic to continue, or to stop and make sure the student is all right? I know that if I were onstage, the kid screaming "Oh my god!" while pinned down by officers would kind of end my spiel and anything I might have to say. But seriously, I don't have enough information to say something decisive about this whole event except "wow". Although... I do kind of wish that presidential candidates would get a cattle prod to their asses when they take too long at the podium during the presidential debates. Now that would inspire more people to watch. 27 monkeys sitting in a tree

Hello everyone! 28 Aug 2007|05:17pm mood | Quasimodesque music | PCR blips I haven't died or fallen off the face of the earth, really. But I did have seven chapters of my now ALMOST COMPLETELY FINISHED THESIS to finish. And the only way to finish it in time was to swear off the internet. I played a lot of solitaire (I know, I know) in between data crunching and writing. But I was a good girl, and didn't try to install WoW on my super-powered lab machine, or auction off signed posters of exotic insects. I didn't even check my email, except for university business. So now. Time to wrap up, format, reformat, convert to a .pdf file (I have not yet figured this out, I'm ashamed to say), submit my opus primus to The Higher Powers of the University, weep a little bit... ...and then back to our regularly scheduled extraordinary anthropologist journal posts. Feel free to bring me food and news of the outside world, too. News of your lives, if you'd like. And possibly some anti-itch cream for my shackles. I've missed you guys. 43 monkeys sitting in a tree

Zoo-ropa and Mad Fax 10 May 2007|12:49pm music | U2 - Dirty Day My PI bought me a printer because I rather needed a new one in my office, and it's a haul to the next building over to print stuff in my lab. Unfortunately, I think (despite switching from Mac to PC repeatedly in the course of a day, writing my own statistical analysis programs for my research, and even programming a DVD player) that I have fallen below the learning curve for new technology. Granted, rather than simply bring me a compact inkjet printer, or something comparable, I am now the proud owner of a printer/copier/fax/photo-editor/satellite launcher. The object (I've had it 24 hours and have yet to touch or use it) takes up roughly a quarter of my rather large desk space. It auto-cleans. Auto-aligns. Auto-updates. I think it automatically makes me coffee by reading my mind. It will eat your soul while you work. But, you know, my new office pet is the least of the news in my life. ( Update on the extraordinary anthropologist ) -The Extra(o) A. 55 monkeys sitting in a tree

She's so high (above me) -- Women in Space 27 Dec 2006|10:47am mood | XX chromosomes music | Aerosmith - Janey's got a gun (and a space helmet, too) Here's a good one for the history books: Did you know that John Glenn strongly opposed the concept of female astronauts, and women in NASA's space program, back in the sixties? I mean, to the point where he testified in front of the House of Reps' Committee on Science "...that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order" ??? I don't care if he was on the cover of TIME magazine (twice). He pretty much screwed the Mercury 13 program. He prevented two of our brightest female scientists from taking part in the budding space program. He was an elitist -- and sexist -- bastard of the worst kind: one who excludes others just because he can, and because he views women as a threat. Glenn's attitude angers me particularly this morning because I realized (after a patronizing good-morning from a senior male scientist I work with: if I passed any man at random while walking down the street, chances are very good that I am better-educated than he would be. I can shoot a weapon better. I most likely can drive better, fly a plane better, survive in the wilderness better. It is likely that I speak more languages than he could, have visited more countries, have seen (and held) more dead and dying people than he ever will. And yet, because I look like a woman and not a man, I am judged as less and have to work harder than a less-educated, less-talented prick to be seen as half as worthy. I grew up admiring male scientists because I wanted to be like them; I didn't expect to grow up and realize that some of my role models didn't believe I could be as good simply because I was (am) female. Why did it take twenty years for us to allow Sally Ride ('83) to do what the Russians knew Valentina Tereshkova ('63) could? Can you believe that the first female shuttle commander only got to lead a mission in 1999? Other societies had women run entire governments three thousand years ago, let alone a piece of high-powered machinery. It's not like we pilot spacecraft with our genitals and think with our gonads. Give me a break, gentlemen. You are lucky to know women like us. Remember that. 176 monkeys sitting in a tree

My achy breaky part 31 Oct 2006|08:28pm Scanning electron microscope: $500,000 Room for SEM: $45,000 Repair costs for Eric breaking the microscope: $4,000 (potentially up to $10,000) The look on Dr. Heinz' face when I had to hand him the repair estimate: priceless. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else there's my government-issue credit card. 41 monkeys sitting in a tree

In defense of non-vegetarians: it's all dead. 20 Oct 2006|02:04pm mood | ravenous. music | Duran Duran - Hungry like the wolf (courtesy my PI) This got me thinking today about the food we eat. I am the only graduate student working in my lab right now; my cohorts are an elderly scientist who eats nothing but meat ("the redder the better" he claims), and a vegetarian postdoc who makes their own hemp clothing. Currently, I fall somewhere in the middle of this extremist spectrum. I'd like to point out that militant vegetarianism is, in a word, ridiculous. You are all as ridiculous as a group of people who eat nothing but meat and tout herbivore lifestyles as "cruel". ( Eat me. ) 35 monkeys sitting in a tree

Vroom. 18 Oct 2006|03:02pm mood | VROOOOM music | Vroom To whoever can buy me a 2007 Lamborghini Murciélago LP640: I will marry you, cook for you, love your mother, and bear your children. If you make it black leather interior, I will also consider doing your laundry. Age, gender, political standing and marital status unimportant. I'll leave Brad Pitt for you and your car. 57 monkeys sitting in a tree

Thoughts on my way home from a battered women's shelter 12 Oct 2006|11:24am mood | blue music | Nancy Sinatra - Bang bang (my baby shot me down) Am I the only person who believes we should get rid of capital punishment but begin caning our criminals and sending them to labor camps? Something between the Singaporean judicial system and Russia circa 1942. We spend far too much money making the lives of prisoners comfortable. You don't see too many repeat offenders after they get the skin torn off their backs in Singapore, and there's a reason for that: negative behavioral feedback. It works, I'm telling you, as a scientist. Also: more innocent people than you'd like to think are executed. I'm not big into people having the right to kill other people -- it's far too right-wing self-righteous for my taste. Of course, I'll make an exception for wife beaters and child abusers. They deserve a death fitting such scum. Like tetanus, contracted from having rusty nails hammered into their testicles. Unanaesthetized. Don't think me cruel; I'm really quite a rational woman. 61 monkeys sitting in a tree

I'm not emused. 05 Oct 2006|03:06am mood | stuffed like a turkey music | Lenny Kravitz - Fly Away "I actually thought about blowing up his pickup truck, but you know what stopped me? The fact that I didn't know how to make a fuse, so that I could run away before the explosion actually happened. Oh, and I was worried about the police finding out." My sister paused mid-toe-painting, the bottle of O.P.I. polish clutched in a crimson-tipped talon as she watched me unwrap my FedEx package. "But damn, I hate him. I mean, hate the way he breathes. Eats. We were sitting in Arby's the other day (he made me eat inside an Arby's!) and I was watching him eat, and he kept doing this disgusting thing where he sucked the sauce off of his jalapeño poppers, and I thought to myself it's like watching an iguana eat. And I wanted to kill him. Or myself." I glanced at the knife I had been using to cut open my FedEx box. Listening to my baby sister discuss her relationship was better than a soap opera. Like my mother, Ashley has the socialite (SoC) gene, but with a dash of crazy mixed in. When I was younger I contemplated swapping her Xanax with buffed-out aspirin just to see if the placebo effect would kick in, thereby proving that she was faking her neuroses. She was having dinner with me that night because, of all the traumatic events to scar her twenty-year-old existence, she had fallen and scraped her forehead and was "unsuitable to be seen in public." "Whatcha making for dinner? Because I could really go for some jalapeño poppers right now. You have to drive through the Arby's though, or go in for me," she chirped. She's been talking about wiring an explosive to her boyfriend's truck and now she's hungry? A note: my sister does not enter fast-food establishments because she's afraid of being seen by the bourgeois; she screeches into the drive-through with dark sunglasses on without fail. This is something she inherited from our mother. I, on the other hand, don't eat at fast-food establishments because trans fatty acids turn our neural myelin sheaths into lard. When hungry enough, I have been known to eat stale day-old rice and beans out of an aluminum tin with my bare hands while sitting on rocks in the jungle. Flies in my food and all. Obviously I'm recessive for the SoC gene (I don't even wear socks, typically). "Well, what's inside this box is dinner. I'm making emu." "Isn't emu the supermodel who's married to David Bowie?" "Ashley? That's Iman." "Oh. Right." ( IRON CHEF: Emu battle. ) 54 monkeys sitting in a tree

Ripples. 23 Jul 2006|11:01pm mood | sunburnt and sleepy music | The Decemberists - This sporting life I celebrated my first day of feeling like a human being and not a walking influenza factory by being coerced into soaking up sun and fresh air and bugs at Lake Wauberg. ( Snapshots of oars ) 14 monkeys sitting in a tree

Give me a leg up, why don't you? 10 Jul 2006|03:11am mood | bemused and... artistic music | Nancy Sinatra - These Boots Were Made For Walking It was the closest thing to a celebrity dinner I'd attended since vowing to never again sit through my mother's heinous soirées a couple years ago -- perhaps fifty people milling about an overpriced house in the Haille Plantation (which always, always reminds me of the days when the South owned slaves) district of town. Add a live four-piece band, an open bar, and a bathroom with enough mirrored soap trays to snort half of Colombia on, and you have the makings of The Miami Scene (1978) in Gainesville (2006). So of course, I had to raid my mother's vintage de la Renta stash and bribe M with fresh gnocchi clean up my date for this event. ( We were lucky to escape with our lives. ) 39 monkeys sitting in a tree

Walking the evolutionary line 26 Jun 2006|03:20am mood | Really, quite happy music | Air - La femme d'argent Conversations with my mother, #436 Almost every phone call I've had with this woman leaves me with a memory of being accused of dying, horribly. To wit: "I couldn't reach you for five days. Five days! You could have been dead in a ditch somewhere." "There are no good ditches in Gainesville, Mother. Trust me." Ironically, this is true. I should know; I'm in forensics. "Where were you? I called your roommate. I called your best friend. (Jesus, Mom.)I was ready to call the police." "Mexico. I got married in a beachside bar in Cancun." No; I didn't get married, but we're looking for maximum mother shock value (MMSV) here. On the other end of the line, I could almost hear her pen stop in its circling of items in the Bombay Company's catalogue of throw pillows and votive candles. I contemplated the crack in the kitchen tile as I timed how long it would take for my freshly-made rose-petal-and-ginger fudge to cool (and for her to have an aneurysm). "DON'TLIETOMEYOUNGLADYWHERE--" "Gotta go, Mother; I want to get a Brazilian before the painters arrive to fix the living room." Click. She just doesn't understand me. Next time I'll say that I lost my cell phone. ( Idle thoughts of science stolen from a weekend in the sun ) 70 monkeys sitting in a tree

Flashes of inspiration 21 Jun 2006|10:48am mood | AsB2T-T plasmid music | Bartok - String Quartet no.1 op.17, B minor Four cups of strong Greek coffee plus three-hundred-odd specimens to ID and photograph plus two finals to cram for plus a dozen whiny students turns me into something akin to To pretend like there's an upside to all this business, at least I'm (apparently) sporting a natural high from all the research I've had to do lately for transgenic organisms, because according to a scientist at USC, "getting" things (like, the lightbulb-goes-on metaphor?) is the neurochemical equivalent to a drug fix. Check it out: 'Thirst for knowledge' may be opium craving Contact: USC Media Relations 213-740-2215 University of Southern California Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix. The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue of American Scientist. "While you're trying to understand a difficult theorem, it's not fun," said Biederman, professor of neuroscience in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "But once you get it, you just feel fabulous." The brain's craving for a fix motivates humans to maximize the rate at which they absorb knowledge, he said. "I think we're exquisitely tuned to this as if we're junkies, second by second." Biederman hypothesized that knowledge addiction has strong evolutionary value because mate selection correlates closely with perceived intelligence. Read more... This is eminent proof that we women who finds nerds sexy are going to win the evolutionary arms race (and are, in turn, the sexiest of all women). I'm on the lookout for the actual paper; if anyone wants to read it I'll provide. Back to our regularly scheduled panic. 41 monkeys sitting in a tree

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