Random Conversation with a Friend

Setting: After drinking two beers and eating three slices of pizza for lunch, I bought a Snickers ice cream bar.

Friend: Can I have a bite of that?
Me: Yeah. You should have gotten one too.
Friend: Naw, then I'd get all fat and shit.
Me: Well, I just ate one.
Friend: I'm pretty sure it's impossible for you to gain weight, no matter what you eat.
Me: That's kind of true. The only thing that happens is I grow a bigger ass.
Friend: Let's go get you another one of those ice cream bars, then!

Fuck you, Ebay snipers!

I had a bid on a Sigma 24mm f1.8 wide-angle lens on Ebay. No one bid on it until I did, 1 hour before the auction was supposed to end. I was the highest bidder, until someone sniped me at. the. last. minute. Seriously. Auction closed at 9:17, and that's when their bid was posted.

Goddamn you, bidding robots.

At least the flash I bought for $150 ($280 new) off Ebay will be arriving on Friday. That mollifies things a bit.

Struggling with Incompetence

I'm still waiting to do things I should/could have been doing a week ago. The stupid UCSD Core Bio Services still hasn't delivered the DNA polymerase I ordered a freaking week ago.

The point of the core is that they're supposed to keep quantities of frequently used reagents and things on hand, so that we can order something and expect it to arrive the next day, or sometimes even the same day. The problem here is that they're super disorganized. The UCSD Storehouse (where we get things like paper towels, etc.) has their shit together. When you go to their site, they tell you how many of each item they have on hand, how many are spoken for, etc.

It would be extremely helpful if the Core Bio Services would do the same. I ordered this polymerase from them because I was expecting to get it the next day, and not to be sitting here a week later still waiting for it. If I had known they were out of it, I would have ordered it from EMD Biosciences myself, because it would have been here by now.

Sigh. I hate incompetence. I have my shit together, why can't everybody else?

Everyday example of the people I have to work with

Apparently over the weekend a post doc in my lab celebrated his birthday. The rotation student (read: first year graduate student who hasn't found a lab to permanently work in yet) who is working with him found this out, and this morning she came in with a mother-freaking balloon hat. Seriously, are we still like, 8? And the kicker is, he asked her where she learned to make them, and she said she took a class for it back in Hong Kong. Whoa.

This is the same person who referred to her cat as "my son." And she was drop-dead serious about it too.

But to top it off, being a scientist as she is, she put the damn balloon hat on the windowsill. You know, where it would sit in the light all day long and get hot until it burst. Which it just did, almost scaring the shit out of me. Genius. Or, as they say in the Guinness ads, "Brilliant!"

Dammit I'm grumpy today. I can't do half my work because the core facility doesn't have the enzyme I ordered last Wednesday and they neglected to tell us this until today, when we called and specifically asked. Awesome. I love it when people suck at doing their job.

Harrisburg Photo Blog

I didn't have enough time to wander around Harrisburg as I thought I would. Although, really, I don't know the city well enough to wander around it. I haven't spent more than three weeks at home since I left for undergrad at the age of 18. And even when I'm home, I rarely have the desire to go into the city. Maybe I've just turned into a city snob, but there's not much there for me. No music scene to speak of. A handful of interesting museums, but that's about it. I did spend a few summers during high school working at my parents' office downtown, so that's really the only corner of the city I know well. And, fittingly, that's the only area of the city that I took photos of on my trip home.


Display window of my parents' office downtown. This is why I have sweet musician's earplugs for shows.


Roxy's Cafe. I used to get food from here almost everyday that I worked for my parents back in high school.


The State Museum of Pennsylvania. It's actually a lot more interesting inside than it appears outside - I only wish I had had the time to go in and explore.


Marquee for a gay nightclub. See, we're not completely backwards!


Lame cities have lame graffiti.


I love alleyway details.


Where do you suppose these doors go?

Rest of my photos are here.

But as much as I hate on Harrisburg, there's something to be said for bars that have last call at 1:58AM and actually let you chill out for awhile after they've stopped serving alcohol. Also, Palumbo's pizza being open until god knows when (I think we left around 3AM). And I love the open space surrounding the city. It honestly makes me nauseous to fly back into San Diego. You come over the mountains, and all of a sudden, there are people and houses everywhere. I start getting a massive sense of claustrophobia (compounded by the fact that I've been sitting in a plane for hours) and anxiety. But then we fly over my house and Balboa Park and I start to feel a little bit better. Then it's over the Casbah and I remember why I put up with all the overcrowding.

Book review: The Orchid Thief - Susan Orlean

I don't know shit about orchids. I had a friend in undergrad who loved plants and knew things about them, but that's as close as I come. Plants just don't like me. They have a tendency to die on me, and to aggravate my allergies out of spite.

What I do know is that I saw the movie Adaptation several years ago and I liked it. So when I saw this book, in Costco of all places, I decided to pick it up. See, the book was the "inspiration" for the movie, even though the movie doesn't really follow the story in the book at all. What it does follow is the sense of passion that the author tries to portray in her book.

For this book is the story of obsession. It's the story of people (real people, not fictional) who will spend thousands of dollars on one plant, who will breed plants and then wait 7 years to find out if they were successful. People who go to all ends of the earth and risk unimaginable hardships just to find plants that no one has seen before. People who will risk alligator and snake attacks to get into the Everglades just to see these plants in rare bloom.

Orlean's writing is compelling - she managed to pull me in to a topic that I have never had any real interest in. She manages to create sympathy for characters when other people may just look at them as being crazy. But more than that, she is able to tie this passion for orchids to other passions, so that the average reader, while maybe not caring about orchids at all, is able to understand through the eyes of their own obsessions.

Definitely a good read, and very informative about the subject. Even if you walk away from the book still not caring about orchids, as I did, you will come away with an understanding, and maybe some empathy, for the people who do.

An argument from earlier this week, which I resoundingly won

A certain friend and I routinely get into an argument about beds. However, in this exchange that occured earlier this week, I think I may have settled the matter once and for all.

Friend: "I know you like your bed, but it's way too short. See, my bed is long enough for my feet to stay on it. It's an adult bed."

Me: "...Isn't that a futon?"

Friend: "... ... ... yes."

Playing the mad scientist

Today, I found out that I successfully mutated some DNA.

Not to do anything cool. Basically I have some cDNA for a gene that was sent to me by someone else, and it contained three mutations that make it different from the wild-type (normal) gene. This is a problem because it messes up the protein sequence that is made from this gene, which can screw up the protein's function. And considering I'm studying that protein's normal function in a cell, mutations are not cool.

So I had the task of mutating those three nucleic acids back to what they should be. It's not really as hard as it sounds, because a kit exists for it. What you do is order some short stretches of DNA which contain your desired mutation and that will sit down on the DNA sequence that you already have. You mix those with your DNA, along with an enzyme that synthesizes DNA from an existing copy and some free nucleotides, which are what the enzyme puts together to make the bigger pieces of DNA. Then you let the enzyme work its magic for a number of hours (this involves multiple temperature changes, but fortunately we have machines for that).

Once you have this replicated DNA, you get it into bacteria by opening pores in their cell membranes (by heat or electricity). Since the DNA forms a complete circle and contains all the elements necessary for more replication, the bacteria who uptake this DNA will produce more of it every time they divide. It's also possible to have multiple copies of your DNA in each bacterial cell. So then you grow the bacteria in food (we call it media) containing some sort of antibiotic, because the DNA you inserted into them also contains a resistance gene for that antibiotic. So only the bacteria containing your DNA will grow in the presence of this drug. Finally, you grow up a bunch of the surviving bacteria, extract lots of DNA from them, and send it to be sequenced. And hopefully you find that the resulting DNA contains your desired mutations.

All of that almost makes up for the fact that my right wrist strangely hurts today, in a sort of carpal tunnel kind of way. Repetitive motion injury from too much pipeting (aka moving around small volumes of liquid)? Ugh.

Missed Opportunity

Goddammit, the sun actually comes out today, breaking the usual June gloom, and I don't have my camera with me. Damn damn damn damn damn.

Ah well. At least I had a 4.5 hour incubation and got to go swimming. I'm also in the process of going through all my concert photos in order to pull out the best ones for my portfolio and trying to come up with ideas for a new photography website design. I wish I knew more about graphic design, etc. That would come in handy right about now.

On a totally random note, why is it that the lobby of the building I work in smells like sulfur (i.e. rotten eggs) every once in awhile? What exactly was this building built on?

Back to the Dark Ages

I just bought about $120 worth (after shipping costs) of chemicals and other various necessities to develop black and white film in my home.

Why, you may ask, when I have a digital SLR camera, do I feel the need to return to the darkroom of yore? Isn't film a dead medium?

Bullshit, I say. For one, I like the feel of tangible film over digital ghost files. There's something to be said about laboring for your work, doing things by hand, actually spooling the film onto the developing reel and then pulling it out, all wet and slick and so concrete.

Secondly, I just feel that black and white film gives much more depth to an image than simply converting a digital image from color to black and white or vice versa. The image was meant to be shot in black and white, and I feel like that adds a certain weight to it. It's not switching to black and white because your image was underexposed, or because there are too many distracting colors in it. You actually looked at a scene in color and had to convert it to black and white in your head before making the shot. It's a totally different way of viewing a shot. It's ignoring color and looking at light. And I love it. I haven't shot black and white film in over a year, and I'm itching to get back into it.

And yes, there's a darkroom on campus that's fairly cheap to join if you're a student ($76/quarter), and it is open 24 hours. The downside is that I no longer live close to campus and the latest I can stay without being stuck here overnight is 9PM, which is when the last shuttle to Hillcrest leaves. And driving in is expensive, not to mention bad for the environment. Plus parking's a bitch. So it's not really so much of an option, although if I want to eventually make prints from my negatives I'm going to have to join, or buy an enlarger for myself. But that's a whole 'nother level to this hobby. For now, I'm planning on scanning the negatives into my computer and dealing with them digitally from there on.

Another cool thing about black and white film - I can get ISO 3200 film and maybe try using that to shoot some concerts. It gives fantastic grain and works really well in low light, so it'll be cool to see how it works out. And that's even better than my digital camera, which can only be pushed to ISO 1600.

Something else that I forgot to mention previously - I have my dad's old Canon AE-1 fully manual camera, which uses a type of lens that is pretty much obsolete (FD versus EF lens mount). You can't use these lenses on any camera made after 1987. But you can definitely still find them, as glass that is well taken care of can last pretty much forever. What does this mean? EBAY!!! I just bid $10.50 on an FD lens whose homologous EF lens costs over $300. Hells yeah.

Next up after this adventure - learning how to develop color film. That should be interesting...

A Much-Needed Separation of Church and State

Whereas Church=music and State=personal life.

I have a music blog at It's Too Sunny Out Here. It used to be a mostly music blog peppered with personal observations and photos. But I've decided to divorce the two, making It's Too Sunny Out Here strictly music, and this site a dump for all the other stuff.

Other stuff include travel photos, or any photos that don't have much to do with music, political rants, personal thoughts, and science posts.

We'll see how it goes managing two blogs. It could get complicated...

My Cousin Emily's Wedding, 5/25/2007

This was my reason for flying all the way across the country this past weekend. And I almost didn't make it.

I've decided that the Dallas airport is just a bad idea for me. I think I've only ever flown through it twice. The first time was coming back from Christmas at home last December. After sitting on the airplane for 2 hours, waiting for the thunderstorms to abate so that we could get into the air, we were told to get off the aircraft and back into the terminal, and to keep away from the windows when we got there. Long story short, a tornado ended up hitting the north fence of the airport while I was there. Fortunately it missed the runway (not to mention the terminal), so I finally got back to San Diego that day, only about 5 hours late.

This time it was thunderstorms again, but apparently, for legal reasons, the Dallas airport doesn't make people sit on airplanes waiting to take off anymore. Instead they just start canceling flights. On Memorial Day weekend. Yikes. But by some twist of fate, my connecting flight to the Harrisburg airport was delayed more than my flight from San Diego, so I was able to make it to Harrisburg, only 3 hours after I was supposed to.

The next day, we drove from Harrisburg to Allentown, where the wedding was held. We stayed at the Bear Creek Lodge, which is where the reception was held (conveniently!), and which is apparently a ski resort in the winter. Pretty neat to see the cleared ski runs in the summer. At any rate, it was a really nice place. They had Otis Spunkmeyer cookies at the reception desk, and my family managed to consume a number of them. The decor was also really nice, which mostly monochromatic, brightly colored walls with some tasteful decorations.





I would have liked to explore the area, especially the bare ski slopes, but we didn't have much time before the wedding. So we all got purdy and drove through downtown MacCungie to get to the church on time.

The ceremony was beautiful, as they always are, but I'm not the type that gets really choked up at weddings. Although it was sweet when the groom broke into tears while saying his vows, and the bride wiped them away for him. The pastor made a joke about how he sees more tearful grooms than brides these days during his sermon. He also tried to explain the "wives, submit to your husbands" Scripture in a feminist-friendly format, which kind of went over. I still don't really like that passage, but then, Catholicism has jaded my view of most of the Bible. Ah well. At any rate, both the bride and groom seemed phenomenally happy to be getting married, and I have no doubt that their marriage will last.







After the ceremony, it was back to the hotel room for a quick change of shoes (as a tall-ish girl I never really felt the need to master wearing heels for extended periods of time), then down to the reception. My siblings and I had brought backup alcohol on the off-chance that there wouldn't be an open bar, but we needn't have worried. The spirits were flowing, even before the room for the reception was opened. After having a couple of drinks and snacking on some hors d'oeuvres, we were allowed into the dining room and found our table. Joining all 6 of the Kardos family members at our table were my Uncle Lee and Aunt Cathy. Since Uncle Lee is well-known as a troublemaker (although a harmless one) in our family, we decided that our table was the "rowdy" one, and continued drinking in order to uphold that idea. Pretty much all of my family members, parents and myself included, got nicely toasted. (Note: all the photos after this point were taken with my point-and-shoot camera. No way was I risking the SLR in the state I ended up in.)

Here's my brother Neil, pretty early on in the evening:



And here's myself and my little sister Steph, also fairly early on:



Proof that my parents were drinking as well (even though my mother's father was there...):





And then there was the dancing. Although here I must note that I discovered my mom is a music snob. My father asked her to dance at one point, during a slow song that apparently wasn't to her liking, because she replied, "Not to this crap." It's good to know where I get it from:







We did the YMCA:



And the Electric Slide:



While my dad videotaped everything:



Then we decided to indulge in some other vices (that's a cigar behind my ear):







I even managed to take some upside-down photos that actually turned out okay, once rotated (first pic is older sister Rachel, her boyfriend Ed, then me):





By the end of the night, even my Aunt Linda (mother of the bride) was letting loose:



And the bride and groom were still on their feet, having a great time:



And that's when my camera's memory card got full.

A few minutes before the bar shut down (at midnight), a bunch of us went up and ordered multiple drinks, so we had a bit of an afterparty on the patio outside the dining room. Then my cousin Eric told us his dad was having the official afterparty in his suite - which was conveniently connected to our room by an interior door. Sweet! We ended the night up there, where we were surprisingly the youngest people in the room. I caught up with very drunk cousin Trevor, who was the one who introduced me to Mystery Science Theater 3000 way back when, and is thus directly responsible for giving me a lot of cred with guy friends, even to this day. Things get a little fuzzy at this point, and I think I went to bed shortly thereafter. The next morning we had brunch at Aunt Linda's house, where I ate a lot of bacon and drank a lot of apple juice to recover from my hangover. Then it was back home to Harrisburg to rest up in anticipation of a night out on the town there with my siblings and some of their friends.

To be continued...

BMS Retreat 2007 @ Lake Arrowhead (aka "We had some massive nights")

Wow. Had an absolutely epic time at the UCSD Biomedical Sciences graduate program retreat the past two days. Drinking with faculty and other students, hearing lots of great stories, and actually having some input into the program's development, not to mention hearing how everyone else's research is going...there's a lot to be said for that. Had several long (drunken) conversations with faculty members, including my boss. That one included him mentioning that in two years I "should have a really good story," aka have my thesis mostly finished. That was a freaking relief to hear, especially amid all the talk of moving and whatnot. Two years is what I'm now aiming for. Now I just have to start producing some data...

Another conversation with a different faculty member ended with him saying, "Shouldn't you be getting a text message right about now to rescue you?" Ah, it's great to know that the chair of the program is up on modern technology and all it's usefulness.

At any rate, I feel completely re-energized and ready to dive back into work. Maybe that had something to do with the karaoke last night? Who knows. At any rate, the retreat actually turned out to be the great bonding experience that it's supposed to be, and I'm glad.

Hanging out with some friends tonight, but tomorrow night I'll be photographing the San Diego House Party event with The Muslims and Grand Ole Party. Come on out and say hi!

Digesting the Republican Presidential Debate in South Carolina

Another political post, I know. But I just finished reading the transcript of the Republican Presidential Debate that took place last night in South Carolina, and I wanted to share my opinion on the candidates that I definitely won't be voting for. It's all part of the "know thy enemies" way of doing things here. Although at least two of the candidates don't seem so much to be enemies. Who are they? Well, the obvious ones: Rudy Guiliani and John McCain.

Guiliani gets points for his pro-choice stance, even when he was called out on it in the debate:

MR. GOLER: You have said that you personally hate abortion but support a woman's right to choose. Governor Huckabee says that's like saying, "I hate slavery, but people can go ahead and practice it." Tell me why he's wrong.

MR. GIULIANI: Well, there is no circumstances under which I could possibly imagine anyone choosing slavery or supporting slavery. There are people, millions and millions of Americans, who are as of good conscience as we are, who make a different choice about abortion. And I think in a country where you want to keep government out of people's lives, or government out of people's lives from the point of view of coercion, you have to respect that. There are things that you can oppose, things you can be against; and then you can come to the conclusion, in the kind of democracy we have, the kind of society that we have, and the kind of society we have where we want to keep government out of people's personal lives, that you can respect other people's view on this. And I think everyone on this stage, including most Democrats, could probably very, very usefully spend a lot of time figuring out how we can reduce abortion.

It's going to take a while for the courts to figure out what to do about this.

And while we're looking at that, we should do what I did in New York, which is to try to reduce abortions as much as you can, try to increase adoptions.

That's actually remarkably similar to my own views on abortion.

McCain, of course, gets props for actually having a military background, and for having the strength to stand up for his own position on things, no matter how unpopular it may be. The man has a certain sense of dignity that's not always seen in politicians, which I think was made obvious in this exchange:

The questions in this round will be premised on a fictional, but we think plausible scenario involving terrorism and the response to it. Here is the premise: Three shopping centers near major U.S. cities have been hit by suicide bombers. Hundreds are dead, thousands injured. A fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured off the Florida coast and taken to Guantanamo Bay, where they are being questioned. U.S. intelligence believes that another larger attack is planned and could come at any time.

First question to you, Senator McCain. How aggressively would you interrogate those being held at Guantanamo Bay for information about where the next attack might be?

SEN. MCCAIN: If I knew for sure that they had that kind of information, I, as the president of the United States, would take that responsibility. That is a million-to-one scenario. But only I would take that responsibility.

The use of torture -- we could never gain as much we would gain from that torture as we lose in world opinion. We do not torture people.

When I was in Vietnam, one of the things that sustained us, as we went -- underwent torture ourselves, is the knowledge that if we had our positions reversed and we were the captors, we would not impose that kind of treatment on them.

It's not about the terrorists, it's about us. It's about what kind of country we are. And a fact: The more physical pain you inflict on someone, the more they're going to tell you what they think you want to know.

It's about us as a nation. We have procedures for interrogation in the Army Field Manual. Those, I think, would be adequate in 999,999 of cases, and I think that if we agree to torture people, we will do ourselves great harm in the world.

Yeah. There's not really much I can elaborate on there.Interestingly enough, Representative Ron Paul got on my good side while I was reading over his answers, mostly in regards to the war in Iraq and our response to September 11th. I think he's one of the only candidates who has a global view regarding our actions. This is a sort of long exchange about noninterventionist policies, in whicch he managed to really piss off Guiliani:

MR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as -- almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your party? Is your party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination?

REP. PAUL: Well, I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy.

Senator Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy -- no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.

Just think of the tremendous improvement -- relationships with Vietnam. We lost 60,000 men. We came home in defeat. Now we go over there and invest in Vietnam. So there's a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution.

And my argument is that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly. When we do, the wars don't end.

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

I entirely agree - by fighting these people, we are inciting hatred of our country, and thus, more terrorist attacks. We're trying to stick our noses into business without even trying to understand it, and then we don't understand when it explodes in our faces. And here's something even more poignant that no one in the current administration ever touches upon:

REP. PAUL: ...We gave the president authority to go into Afghanistan, and here we have Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. They have nuclear weapons, and we're giving them money.

And we forgot about him, and now we're over in -- in Iraq in a war that's bogging us down, and we have forgotten against -- about dealing with the people that attacked us.

Kudos, Rep. Ron Paul, for having the balls and intelligence to make that statement. Although I have my doubts as to whether you are actually Republican, let alone conservative. Way to shake things up within your party.

And for the candidate that most disgusted me? That would be Represenatative Tom Tancredo, with this statement:

Congressman Tancredo, the ambassador from the European Union says the United States and Europe bear a special responsibility for global warming because the greenhouse gases causing the problem have been put there since the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. We put most of the stuff up there. Do you agree? And what should we do to deal with the problem, sir?

REP. TANCREDO: Okay. First of all, the whole issue of global warming, for every single scientist that tells you it's happening and that it's our fault -- and they'll stack up to here in this reports -- I can stack up another group of reports that say just the opposite.

I don't believe that -- well, I'll tell you this, I don't know whether or not we are responsible, we the human race, are responsible for global warming.

It certainly could be happening, it certainly could be a natural phenomenon. If it's the latter, of course there isn't much we can do about that. If it's the former, there is something that we can do about it, and I'm all for it, and that is of course to reduce our dependence on petroleum products. If we do that, we automatically reduce the carbon emissions that people claim are causing global warming. And I'm all for doing that, because -- I'll tell you why. It's a national security issue. It just isn't an issue of fight over the science of global warming; it's a national security issue for us to move away from the use of petroleum products when they're coming from countries that want to kill us.

And although my dear friend Ron here -- I dearly love and really respect, but I'll tell you, I just have to disagree with you, Ron, about the issue of whether or not that -- whether Israel existed or didn't, whether or not we were in the Iraq war or not, they would be trying to kill us because it's a dictate of their religion, at least a part of it, and we have to defend ourselves.

First of all, get some new fucking science advisors. Any report that says that global warming is not happening comes from some pandering group that is probably being paid money to say so. Get your facts straight and your political bias out of science. We don't like your kind here.

Second of all, lose the narrow-minded view of Islam. It is not a religion that supports terrorism. It is the religious extremists who support terrorism - the crazies. Not the religion itself. And history has always shown that the crazies feed on hatred and downtrodden people. The crazies have no power if there aren't downtrodden people to support them. So let's stop stepping all over these people, okay?

End rant. Obama 2008! Although that's another blog entry for another day...

Homepage Change

For the last 5 years or so, cnn.com has been the homepage of my web browser. Even when I made the switch from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox (and you should too), cnn.com made the cut.

But I finally got fed up with their "news" about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, etc. If I wanted to read that shit, I would have set my homepage to something like people.com. Stories about celebrities are not news, people. It's gossip. Unless the celebrity in question acheives world peace or settles third-world debt, I don't want it staring me in the face every time I open up the interweb.

And the bumbling attempts at witty headlines that tell you nothing about the actual story? Bitch, please. Information is what I seek, not punny headlines.

It's now set at washingtonpost.com, where, thankfully, I have to scroll down to even get a glimpse about entertainment. And even then, it's not a Paris or Lindsay post, it's an article about the ending of the show Gilmore Girls, which, apparantly, is critically acclaimed. Huh.

Rev. Jerry Falwell Dead at 73

Television Evangelist Falwell Dies at 73

Is this a sign from God that the religious right has gone too far?

Seriously, folks. This is the man who made the religious right what it is today. Without him, the South would still be staunchly Democratic, and religion wouldn't have a place in politics.

I don't want to hate on a guy who used to build elementary schools and homes for unwed mothers and alcoholics, especially after his death. But in his later years, it seemed as though he forgot what it actually meant to be Christian.

I was actually having a similar discussion with a friend last night. We were watching Jonestown and commenting on how far charismatic people can push their agendas, especially under the guise of religion. It saddens me to think of how many weak-minded, or just weak, people there are out there that latch on to these ridiculous claims and causes. I was raised Catholic, a religion that, at least in my parish, seemed almost cult-like in its insistence that you just follow their rules/catechism and never question your leaders. That's the short answer to why I no longer follow that religion. The longer answer is all tied up in the personal agendas inherently involved in any type of organized religion, and that if there really is a God or some higher power, then what does it matter what specific religion you follow, as long as you're a sincerely good human being.

At any rate, being raised Catholic, I know how a Christian is supposed to act. Love thy neighbor, give to those who have less than you, and save judgement of others for God. Which honestly, sounds more like a Democratic point of view than the current Republican agenda. But somehow Christianity has gotten all turned around in politics to mean: hate thy neighbor unless he's exactly like you, take as much as you can from whomever you can, and judge everyone for all their potential faults. I just don't get it. And I don't get how people don't realize it. Somehow Republicans are perceived as more moral people than Democrats. But my opinion is that they just hide their faults a little bit better.

I'm afraid I just did the unthinkable and posted a religious/political topic on my blog. But what can I say? When the words decide to flow, who am I to stop them or try to change their course?

Thanks for a very happy birthday!

Thanks to everyone that came out last night to help me celebrate my birthday. I had an awesome time at dinner, and an even better time at the Whistlestop. I'm glad that people from all my groups of friends came out and were able to intermingle well. I'm glad that Bartender's Bible was playing, because they sounded great, even to my not-so-sober ears.

And btw, the strawberry-banana pancakes at The Mission are about the best breakfast food ever.

Off to the Belly Up tonight to photograph Dynamite Walls' EP release party. If you see me there, come say hi and have a drink with this just-turned-25-year-old!

Non-Concert Photography

Sorry kiddos. It's been a crazy past three days in the lab. Crazy good, for the most part, but I've been running around and doing so much science that I haven't yet finished processing my photos from the Bright Eyes show. But never fear, I believe there are some good ones in there. It just takes time to go through 150+ photos, even after throwing out the ones that are totally out of focus.

So to appease you all while I work on those (and trust me, tonight I am working on those photos and my laundry, nothing else), I've posted some non-concert photos that I've taken in the past. Here's some from the Hillcrest Farmer's Market in January:







And here are some that I actually shot with my 35mm film SLR camera awhile back:







That last one is an example of what happens when a glass Pasteur pipet breaks while you're trying to attach it to some vacuum hosing. Ouch. My original thought was to ask for a bandaid, but when we realized how deep the cut was (it actually scratched a tendon), I got sent to the doctor's and ended up with three stitches. After reassuring the doctor that, even though I had been working in the virus hood, there was no adenovirus in my cut, he told me, "Well, I guess you'll never be a hand model." Indeed. I still don't have the grip strength in that finger that I used to. Which is a shame, as it was always the hand I used to open twist-off bottle caps.

In other random news, I've been listening to The Clientele a lot lately. Their new album (released May 8th), is fantastic. I love their lush sound that harkens back to the 60's and Simon and Garfunkel. They're playing the Casbah May 22nd with Beach House and the Electric Soft Parade. Do not miss that show - that's one hell of a lineup.

The beginning of my birthweek

It's looked mostly like this. Photo taken circa spring 2005, but it's what my nightstand looks like every damn time I've got a cold. I've mostly managed to kick this one, due to a day off from work yesterday and about 15 hours of sleep.

Anyway, my birthday's on Friday, and I need to be a full 100% by then so that I can go out and wreck my immune system again. But in the meantime, here's the plans for the week:

• Tuesday: Bright Eyes @ Soma, possible drop-in at the Whistlestop afterwards for some Super Nintendo action (if I'm feeling up for it).
• Wednesday: Hopefully Ben Kweller @ USD Sports Center, if my hookup can come through with tickets in time...
• Thursday: ?
• Friday: The big day. Dinner (probably at Apertivo) followed by a free Bartender's Bible show at the Whistlestop. Have I mentioned that I love the Whistlestop? Not to mention that it's super close to my house.
• Saturday: Potential Stone Brewery tour, followed by shooting photos at the Dynamite Walls EP release party at the Belly Up.
• Sunday: Recovery day?
  

World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week

Forgot to mention this earlier in the week, as I only remembered while wondering why I needed my access card to get through one of the buildings on campus yesterday.

Apparantly this week is World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week. I am a scientist, and yes, I work with mice. There are many reasons for doing so. They are mammals, and thus their physiology resembles human physiology more closely than say, a fly or a zebrafish (both important models for other scientific studies). Also, they are genetically closer to humans than those other model organisms. And they are small, so they are more cost-effective to use for research than other mammals, such as rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, monkeys, etc.

Yes, I have to sacrifice mice on occasion for my developmental biology research. But everything is carried out according to strict regulations in order to ensure that the animals are treated as humanely as possible.

If you don't agree with animal research, that's fine with me. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. All I stipulate is that if you are one of those people that think all laboratory animals should be released from captivity (and I realize this is an extreme position), you better not ever be taking any drugs that are approved by the FDA. All those medications are tested extensively on animals before they start human clinical trials. And why? So that they know loads of information about side effects, toxicity, dosage, etc. So that when they start giving drugs to people they don't end up killing those people.

That's all I ask. Don't be a hypocrite. If you're going to have extreme views, at least be well-informed and committed to those views.

For an interesting look at a PETA campaign, click here and download the "Rat's Life" book. It's never too early to start lying to your children. Because rats are clean (nevermind that whole "spreading the Black Plague through Europe" thing) and scientists are evil. Duh.

Return of the Random Cookie Thief

With four shows coming up in just as many nights, and a slew of photos to edit and a website to revamp, not to mention my real job (science!), I shouldn't be wasting time writing this. But whatever, it's my lunch break.

When I was in Australia on a volunteer program in the summer of 2004 (immediately after graduating from Penn State), our group was working at Hanson Bay Sanctuary. It's located on Kangaroo Island, which is an 8 minute tiny plane flight from Adelaide. It's at the opposite end of the island from Kingscote, which is the closest thing to a town on the island. Basically, there was nothing south of us except Antarctica. The stars at night were amazing...the Milky Way was a bright band running across the entire sky. But all this is just backdrop.

Being as how we were an hour's drive from the town, and thus the grocery store, someone went into the town once a week to get supplies. This included all the food we had for the entire week. Which, of course, included cookies. And not just any cookies, but the best cookies ever - Tim Tams! A delicacy only found in Australia and, inexplicably, Fiji (probably other places as well, but none that I've been). Somehow, we all noticed that cookies were disappearing at night at an alarming rate. I'm not talking one or two cookies, but five or six. We had no clue as to who was the perpetrator, but one night my friend Tom left a note on the cookies that went something like this: "Dear Random Cookie Thief, Please stop stealing all the cookies. If you don't, I will break your knees. Sincerely, Random Knee Breaker Guy." Juvenile, perhaps. But funny.

Fast forward to San Diego, present time. Every two weeks we biomedical sciences graduate students have "lunch talks," which consist of research presentations by students. And free pizza. Some weeks there is an overabundance of pizza left over, so I take some back to lab with me and store it in the common fridge on our floor. You have to understand that, as a poor graduate student, this pizza is my lunch and sometimes dinner for two days.

So I don't really take it lightly when, after bringing back four pieces of pizza (two days' worth of lunch!), I go to heat some up the next day and there's ONE piece left. WTF, mate? I could understand it when I brought it back in the pizza box and stored it in the fridge as is. I mean, usually it's customary to leave a note on things when they're communal, but I can see how someone might have made that mistake. So I took to wrapping up the pizza in saran wrap, to make it look more like someone's lunch. And still someone was eating it. Double WTF, mate?

Maybe as one of four children I have a heightened sense of propriety. I don't like people messing with my stuff without asking. I'm not selfish though - if you ask, you'll usually get whatever you're asking for. But have the decency to ask! Don't just eat random people's food in the fridge! And I hate passive aggressive actions, so I didn't want to put a sign on the fridge regarding the eating of other people's food. I wish I knew who was doing it so I could confront them. But I don't have the time to stalk the kitchen. So I ended up moving my remaining pizza this week to the crisper and putting a note on it saying "Natalie's pizza - Please don't eat unless you have my permission!" I hate to think that that's necessary, in a work situation where I am probably one of the youngest people using that kitchen. But sadly, sometimes grown-ups need to be treated like children. Sigh.

Random Restoration of Faith In (Certain) People

It's really nice when someone you've completely written off comes through for you. It's kind of weird too, but definitely nice. A refresher in human kindness and sincerity. Something you don't get often out here in the land of real tans and fake people. So I just wanted to take this opportunity to say so, without going into personal details.

Virginia Tech tragedy

I remember when I heard about the shootings at Columbine High School. I was in high school myself at the time. I remember everyone being shell-shocked and talking about how our school, with its large dichotomy between rich kids and poor kids and its share of "weird" loners, might be next on "the list." I don't remember where the idea of this list came from though. All I know is that it caused this raised suspicion of anyone who wore a trenchcoat (several of my friends, who have never harbored murderous thoughts, for all I know) or tended to hang out by him/herself. And we had plenty of those kids in my school. But most of all, it caused a lot of us students to realize that we weren't safe in school. We weren't safe anywhere anymore. Anything could happen to anyone at any time.

The tragedy that happened yesterday at Virginia Tech brought all those paranoid feelings rushing back to me. Or maybe they're not so paranoid. After all, it makes as much sense to die in a random school shooting as it does to get run over by a drunk driver while crossing the street. You think, "Shouldn't someone have noticed that this guy was acting a little off? Shouldn't someone have done something about it?" Well, the answer to that is yes, if you notice you should try to do something about it. But the problem lies within the noticing. Sometimes you just can't.

When I was in college, a friend of a friend came to visit her for a weekend. He hung out with our group of friends, seemed to have a good time (although I do remember him being a little quiet), and then went home. A week later he committed suicide.

I didn't even know him, but this affected me deeply. I kept thinking, "Maybe if we had shown him a better time, maybe if we had paid more attention to him..." But I slowly came to realize that there was nothing I could have done. He was a deeply troubled individual who felt that this life no longer held anything for him. People who knew him much better than I didn't realize anything was wrong. He didn't reach out to anyone. It just happened.

It's terrible and sad that in the Virginia Tech case, the shooter felt the need to take out his rage on the innocent people around him. There hasn't been that much of a response out here in San Diego, and I feel kind of insulated from the events. But I grew up in Pennsylvania and knew people who went to Virginia Tech for undergrad. My little sister has friends who go there now. Fortunately, they're all physically fine. But how does one get over this? How does one deal with the fact that our nation seems to have it's unfair share of disgruntled youths that feel it necessary to release their anger on others? Other nations have even greater socio-economical gaps than we do, but you don't hear of school shootings there, do you?

Maybe part of the answer is better gun control. I saw several news programs this morning urging people not to use this issue as a platform for gun control. Why not, I ask? If this shooter had not had access to a gun, would he have been able to wreak so much havoc? I doubt it. And all the arguments for owning a gun (self-protection, to defend against people like this shooter, etc.) don't hold water here. But I don't doubt that Charleton Heston and the NRA will soon be staging a rally in Blacksburg, just like they did in Columbine too soon after the tragedy there. They'll argue that if someone did have a gun on them, less people would have been killed because the shooter would have been stopped earlier. They'll argue that every classroom should have at least one gun in it. Bullocks. If the world had less guns in it, more people would be alive today.