With what shall I smoke, dear lab, dear lab?

Ok. Fine. I really could care less who should see this, because I am at my wit's end and I'm going crazy in Dana Science Center. Again.

You see, it's Friday and i've been needlessly and obnoxiously harassed all week and I don't want to be here more than I've ever not wanted to be here before. And I want to smoke pot, but my stupid godforsaken smoking device is in someone's glove compartment and I certainly don't want to call said someone to request its return. So I need to figure out how to get my poor little self high. Boy does THAT sound desperate, but I'm not quite sure you understand. Or maybe you do. I just can't bear the fluorescent lights anymore. No, not when I could have my hand wrapped around a frosty gin and tonic, sitting on a porch in the pleasant night air. Nope.

I guess the next best thing to that would be to smoke some old disgusting pot using a single [2-ply] KimWipe as a rolling paper. Or is it? I'll look it up:

Nevermind. I just made a gravity bong out of a Poland Spring bottle (apprx. .38L in volume), some tinfoil (thermal conductance (U)), a sterile toothpick, and a bunsen burner lighter.

Back to work!

Death by Autoclave

A few days ago I was opening the door to our autoclave to take out some steamy glassware, and the machine made a horrible sound and shot huge puff of steam out of somewhere on its top. I yelped and jumped back, covering my face with the huge filthy "hot mitts," and then thought about how exactly dangerous an autoclave is. For confirmation of this fear, I looked it up:


http://www2.umdnj.edu/eohssweb/aiha/accidents/autoclave.htm

Clearly, my fears are not unfounded!

Also, they have huge 100 million dollar autoclaves for sterilizing starships! I harbor 100 million dollars worth of fear for these autoclaves-- the chances of getting trapped inside and steam-burned to death are simply to high.

http://www.bobscherer.com/images/Pages/Starship/Development%20and%20Construction/Starship%20Autoclave%20Lg.jpg

Prosthetic leg fetish groups

Well, fine. I'll admit it. I've always kind of liked the idea of knowing someone with a/having my own prosthetic limb. I realize that most people that actually have prosthetic limbs DON'T like it as much as I do, but I think that's more their problem than mine. I wondered if anyone else shares my love for smooth, titanium-crafted, super strong legs, so I looked it up.

I found THIS:

"Posted by Bill M. on 05-05-01, 02:49 PM (EST)

Actually, I am an amputee fetishist, but didn't know it until I came to this web site. I've had caretaking fantasies of dating a 4 limb amputee and putting her in a back pack to go places - hiking, movies, etc., with her head on my shoulder. I guess I liked that we would always have to be together and mothering fantasies of feeding her. Then it would sort of get incorporated into my other fetishes, like building robotic arms and legs for her, or making the limbs into a pony, or a tiger, a spider, or a bird. There's a lot of potential for all sorts of fetish fantasies when you can make any body part you want - animal, human, or robotic.
Apart from fantasy, if your amputee partner were adventurous enough, you really could get creative - there are SO many possibilities, even with a single limb amputee. Hmm, this is getting me exited!


There was a woman I know that could bend her head all the way back so that from the front, it looked like she was headless - I got dizzy the first time I saw her do that."

Nevermind. I don't like fake legs anymore...


Or...

Inteins!

I recently visited Dr. Paul Masters' lab at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, NY and he asked if I'd ever heard of "inteins." Now, I've heard some great [relatively] new terms science to date, including-- "interactome," "reactome," and "in silico," and I've made a bit of fun of each-- so, the term "intein" initially received the skeptical brow. However, after Dr. Masters told me that inteins are a self-"splicing" component of proteins that are not only capable of extricating themselves and leaving behind the rest of the protein (aptly termed the extein, go figure), but ALSO that they have a unique enzymatic function after they've spliced themselves away from the original protein. This unique function seems to usually be that of a "homing endonuclease" which then goes onto open up other genes and insert the DNA that encodes the intein part of the protein therein! This is, of course, after I looked it up:

This is a database of intein information, including known inteins sorted by species:

http://www.neb.com/neb/inteins.html

It's interesting to note that in a lot of the more "simple" organisms, inteins seem to be pretty important enzymes--like polymerases, helicases, ATPases, and cell division control proteins. Also interestingly, D. melanogaster and C. elegans don't seem to have any inteins. This may make sense, as many sources describe inteins as being very "primitive" parasitic elements.

Go to pubmed and look up inteins and see how absolutely crazy it is to think that we'll ever figure out how the cell *really* works!