"all over the interwebs"

This is badass. A new bacteria has been discovered that uses arsenic instead of phosphorous. Everybody uses phosphorous, 'cept this asshole...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/science/03arsenic.html?ref=science

man

man, blogs is hard, yall.

chat

Rebecca: so we're in agreeance?

me: i'm in america

where the fuck are you

Microbiology aint all that bad

I spent a month this summer in Monterey, California at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station to study marine microbiology. There are many courses like this offered around the world every summer, designed to flood new graduate students with major and relevant concepts in a short amount of time. As one might imagine this makes for an intensely difficult short amount of time, but it was well worth the pain. We averaged working 14 hours a day/6 days a week during the month, and were introduced to new ways of thinking about the potential of living systems such as how energy is transferred and exploited on the fundamental level of electron swapping. We also discussed the evolutionary idiosyncrasies of microorganisms (when compared to more easily grasped macroorganism evolution) that might arise by, for instance, horizontal gene transfer. Most microbes are asexual, or "clonal", which means that the only genetic diversity that could arise would be by rare mutational events during DNA replication which makes a copy of the DNA for the newly divided cell. Horizontal gene transfer is the idea that microbes can swap genes with each other, or take genes from one another as a way to increase genetic variability, which in turn allows for more viable genetic possibilities to have arisen once environmental pressures are exerted which select against them. In other words, horizontal gene transfer increases the likelihood that one lucky microbe will be diverse enough from the rest of the herd to outcompete them if their more common genotype is selected against by some new environmental stress.

ANYWAY, the course was very hard but so very fun, and the setting in which it took place was utterly amazing. Hopkins Marine Station is located directly on the rocky, seal-covered Pacific shore of southern Monterey Bay. Less than a mile from the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, our laboratory/classroom had 5 windows that overlooked this daydream-provoking view, one of which was inauspiciously located next to my assigned seat. Amazingly, though, I held strong and did not succumb to the sirens of daydreaming, and against all odds actually learned a great deal.

Proof!

And lastly, the people I met were unforgettable. There were 16 students, 4 TAs, 4 professors and a barrage of famous scientists--well, in my field at least--who came as guest speakers. The professors were microbially omniscient, the TAs brilliant and holy, and the students made for some damn good month long friendships.

Some friends last longer than a month

One more thing, as a way to unwind for the few 10-minute bursts of free time that were bestowed upon us by some godsend of a scheduling error or the like, we usually played knockout. If unfamiliar, knockout is probably the funnest thing you can do with a basketball and a group of people. Here is a photo.

Big Sur

Oh yea, and we made beer.

Peace!

hold your bloody god-damned horses

hey, sit down.
hold your bloody god-damned horses.

mexican jumping bean

look at her go, so fast she holds things

her knuckles are definitely not pink, or any shade of a well-circulated extremity for that matter

she does not wait or accommodate
well, sometimes she accommodates

but she loves and is good concerning most things.

Roger

I'm awful at blogging. But lately I've been getting the urge to write stories and what better place to manifest said urge than here! So here we go.....

Roger stood at the foggy glass door, 8 years old and immobilized by the choice between Grapico and Sunkist.

the end