More Wedding Fun!

Hello loyal readers ...

I've been in my hidey hole the last few weeks in preparation for Wedding Parte Deux. The good news is that right before we left for the motherland I got some Cool New Data. The controls look like controls and the mutants I tested previously look like they did the first time around. Hurrah!!!!!!!!! I don't even have enough exclamation marks to tell you how pleased that made me.

I had been camping out in the neighbor's incubator while our TC room was being decontaminated. I scrubbed the hell out of those incubators. I have rekindled my love affair with bleach. Bleach is seriously the most wonderful chemical ever. Fingers crossed that when I get back it will be "clean". I'm not being paranoid, though. My cells were okay when I dosed them up with broad-spectrum antimycotic (supposed to also kill mycoplasma) until the scoundrels of my lab brought their nasty-ass cultures down the way.

I wish I could have my own incubator. And my own microscope. It would be a laser scanning confocal with also a regular epifluorescent image capture option (i.e., plain old high-res CCD camera). I think I would most like a Nikon. It would also have a heated stage - but nothing too fancy, just a simple heater - and a little plexiglass chamber that would fit over the stage and regulate CO2. Too bad no one gets you microscopes for your wedding. I would even settle for a sweet little binocular dissecting scope for at home. (Though a small but powerful little Zeiss with phase-contrast 1 and 2 condensers would be even better!)

Oh, right, anyway - wedding number two. All seems to be more or less taken care of. I'm so pleased with our DJ. He's a friend of a friend, sort of, but most importantly he is someone who I would totally be friends with if I just met him randomly. He also said, first off, "I have just one firm policy: there will be no Chicken Dance." I feel like if the DJ is cool I have very little to worry about. We also have the nice local gay caterers, which is a plus. After all, I would not want my nuptials to be too heteronormative ...

Cross your fingers for 78 degrees and sunny this Saturday please!

Casual Friday

Oh man. This is my new favorite thing ever.

I liked this letter

In response to the recent Sid Blumenthal peice on Salon today.

Cover your eyes during the scary parts

Many hope to "wait it out", crawl into a shell and let the next 18 months pass. This is dangerous. It is possible, and in fact quite easy, for the neoconservative agenda to continue even stronger after '08.
Consider the following formula:
- Ramp up the fear of terrorist attacks
- Continue to play up the Iranian nuclear threat
- Blame Iran for problems in Iraq and Afghanistan
- At the correct time, attack Iran
The trick is to be at war with Iran during the '08 elections. There are a few other minor details, but its not too difficult. Given the current political climate, this should guarantee neocon victory.

-- Million-Year Picnic

May You Live In Interesting Times

This morning on the WBUR pledge drive, Robin Young pointed out that we "are living in interesting and important times".

Gah! I don't want to live in interesting times! As any good Pratchettophile knows, interesting times are not conducive to leisurely pursuits of happiness and or a bounty of funds for humanitarian scientific research.

Give me back the 90's when our (seemingly) toughest issue was "Whither Blowjobs?".

With

friends like these, who needs Afghanistan?