A strange form of feminism

I've had too much tea, am in a writing mood, and am sick of people saying that feminists are "just" women who are bitter because they don't have a (good) boyfriend, are not "real" women, etc. I realized that I've never talked about this explicitly before, but I'm going to attempt to explain what my definition of a "feminist" is, why I would refer to myself as one, and why I think it's necessary. And then I will ramble off target and be confused at what some people are saying because, what? People. Seriously. What. 

Right, here we go.

Well that was...enlightening

Considering that half of the plasmids in lab contains the promoter of a member of herpes virus family (cytomegalovirus, in case anyone's wondering) and that all non-undergrad members have to do regular animal husbandry, breeding, and colony maintenance, it's a wonder that I haven't posted anything more risque up to this point.

Well, time to amend that, I suppose.

Okay, parents have decided to treat me this birthday with a cruise. I can take a week off maximum and the port will have to be from LA or SD. Ideas? (We're thinking Mexico.)

Have gleefully discovered that shimejis are still visible on screen even when you put your powerpoint slides to presentation mode. Am currently entertaining visions of presenting my data with little Sherlock scaling up the side of the screen (though I don't think anyone in my lab would recognize the BBC reincarnation of Holmes & Watson) during the informal lab meetings.

10:55am
Attacked by protein sample.

...well I'm not buying that brand of flip-cap tubes ever again.

Fandot

Gave a impromptu lecture to personal banker at the banking center on campus today, on the topic of genetic mutation. He displayed gratifying interest. Or at least he said that it was cool as opposed to giving me the glazed look that so many undergrads demonstrated when I tried to explain nearly the same thing to them a few years ago.

Sometimes I feel like being in biology is like being in an obscure fandom. There're a decent number of people who's heard it in passing but only a small number of dedicated fans and you know it'll never be "cool" enough or "mainstream" enough to catch on, even if you think it's the greatest thing in the world. And then in the rare occasions when you manage to share your love with someone without scaring them away in the process, and then that person shows interest (or fakes interest due to personal agenda), it makes your day.

Careless handling is not a cause for rejection

Found ancient vial of dead pupa and two tennis balls behind desk. V. curious as no one before me in our lab and no lab who has occupied the same space prior to our lab has ever worked with flies.

The title of this post is taken from the wrapper of a part of an equipment. No one's quite sure of what it means.

This used to be a longer post started yesterday that I accidentally "deleted" (it's not actually deleting that I did) and now can't retrieve so I'll just summarize it this far and add that one of my classmate's graduating this June! Or at least he's defending. He's from a comp-bio lab so it's not that surprising that he's the first from my class to graduate (not having to wait four months for mice for each experiment will speed some things up). However what this means for the rest of us is this:

The countdown towards graduation for the entering class of 2008 has officially started.

Whiplash

Have started using this bar of fancy triple-milled soap this week and have just discovered that the soap has fused itself to my bathtub. Application of water has failed to dissolve bond. Current strategy: dry for a minimum of 12 hours before applying knife.

Sometimes, life is forcing bacteria to express a mouse gene and finding an isoform where no one in the world has found it before.

Other times, life is...soap fused to the bathtub.

(Or, in my friend's case: finding the causes of cerebellar hypoplasia and getting spaghetti sauce smeared all over you by your excitable but uncoordinated toddler.)

And here I thought we're past the age of George Eliot

I'm cross-posting this a bunch of places because feminism happens to be one of those things that I feel strongly about, and here's another reason why I think it's necessary:

One of my favourite children’s authors is J.K. Rowling. Her Harry Potter series are some of the most successful children’s books ever written, so much so that as many adults as children have read them. But, as a woman writer, Rowling struggled to get these books published. Initially, despite the fact that her main character is a boy, publishers rejected her manuscript because they were worried boys wouldn’t read a book written by a woman. This biased perception continued even once she secured a contract, and she was ultimately made to conceal her sex by use of the two initials J.K. -from Jump!

Which brings me to the A Mighty Girl site. This is essentially their mission statement:

After years of seeking out empowering and inspirational books for our four young nieces, we decided to create A Mighty Girl as a resource site to help others equally interested in supporting and celebrating girls.

Girls do not have to be relegated to the role of sidekick or damsel in distress; they can be the leaders, the heroes, the champions that save the day, find the cure, and go on the adventure. It is our hope that these high-quality children’s products will help a new generation of girls to grow and pursue whatever dreams they choose -- to truly be Mighty Girls! 

Okay so "Mighty Girl" is kind of a tacky name, but I really like what they're doing and an easy way to show them support is just to mention them in your blog / twitter / tumblr /whatever or "Like" them on Facebook, so I'm doing that and hope that those of you who are still following this will take a moment to do so as well.
 

Ah the Monday morning Facebook check

Seriously, I think I spend 90% of my time waiting for things to reach the right temperature. But anyway, here are two quotes that I will share from my classmate:

"I've never been this excited to run a PCR before except I know the result has a 99% chance of being negative because science is a bastardy bastard coated in bastard icing and filled with bastard filling."

To which her friend replied that that was why success tastes so sweet....  

And  then there's the part where she commented that the results will cause either extreme elation or extreme depression that will "resolve itself into apathetic acceptance by tomorrow". 

With that feeling in mind, I invite all my non-PhD friends to take a look at the PhD movie site (and trailer). Online streaming is available now and I highly recommend it because it's got both heart and humor and explains the life of a graduate student better than I ever could. (Also I like the soundtrack.)

And as I and many of my classmates can tell you, part of the appeal for those of us who are in the middle of our dissertation process (I have another presentation this Wednesday) is that so many of the jokes in both the comic and movie are sad but true, and this is an on-going reminder that other people have gone through what we've gone through and that we're not alone. It's less of a "misery loves company" thing at this point and more of a feeling of solidarity. Solidarity is nice. 

New bottle of soy sauce has a pull-to-open seal with a ring attached for pulling. The ring detached when I pulled it.

Hypothesis 1): I am bad at pulling these sort of rings in the intended direction.

Hypothesis 2): These ring-things are flawed in design.

(Eventually the bottle was opened by abusing a small-medium-ish screw driver by inserting the flat tip against the raised area of the seal and exerting force down then up. Couldn't help but feel opening a bottle should require less effort than this.)

Maybe I'll learn tailoring someday

My long sleeve tees are developing holes in them. Given that I've had some of them since high school, this is probably not surprising. I could just order more long-sleeve tees online, except I like nice dress shirts and would like to get more of them but that would mean the horrors of Physically Shopping.

Heaters are good for drying shoes

So many facets of my life seems to boil down to "don't know what I'm doing, but keep going anyway" and then somehow, things magically get better. (Well, to be fair, occasionally pivoting helps provided I don't accidentally elbow someone in the face.)

Tried to get rid of the last of the wine by making wine cake. Sadly the batter tastes much better than the actual cake. (Get rid of the leavening agents and  use it as mix for gelato instead, y/y?) 

Have discovered that when I turn on the heater (what's with the weather, by the way?) the carbon monoxide light will flash. Not red or green, but white. The alarm doesn't actually sound however. Hunted up the instruction manual left from that day and discovered that the only copy left for me was, incidentally and inexplicably, in Spanish. And contains no information on what does the light mean if it's not red or green though now I know the words for "digital display".

In the meantime, have a song about Nicola Tesla. 

Dear property manager (not landlady, note) came in at some time today and installed a carbon monoxide alarm. Given that our building already has a series of fire alarms that gets set off accidentally about every week and that I need to disable the fire alarm in order to bake anything over 375F, hopes of peace and quiet is probably futile at this point.

Absolutely hysterical:

(From here. )

Have discovered green tea with peach and ginger. This has been a very good morning.

Also to add, randomly, that my current phone doesn't have a timer (have checked a while ago, yeah). It has an alarm clock that I suppose you can use as a timer but it's just not the same. 

Random post

You know what I miss? A watch that comes with a built in timer.

Undergrad asked me if sodium hydroxide makes an acid or a base.

I asked her to repeat the question because I thought I'd heard wrong.

Nope, I didn't hear wrong.

There are so many things wrong with being asked this question by a bio-major who has been working in a lab regularly I don't even-

For knowledge! ...Or something....

Time-point experiments are truly awful things that we do to ourselves in the name of science, but they're even more ghastly, I've discovered, when the scientist happens to live an hour's bus ride away from her lab.

It's far too early in the week for me to feel this tired.

Though to be fair, it could've been much worse -- if it weren't from Anita I might've had to crash overnight in the student's lounge in the library basement. (Better option, still, than the couches in the lobby area, given how our lobby area's all glass and there are all these lights that I'm pretty sure can't be turned off.)

...if this experiment doesn't work I'm going to be so incredibly frustrated. 

...okay?

So for some reason it's April Fool's day and the English (or at least the American?) version of Google is perfectly normal...but the Chinese (or at least the Xiang-Gang / Hongkong) version is...um...

...underwater. (As Neil Gaiman directed, click on the "I feel lucky" button, repeat 3x.)

(April Fool's definitely not a Chinese holiday.)
(Google why are you so adorable?)

But while speaking of stuff that Mr. Gaiman's posted, I wanted to share this Dalek relaxation tape.

Yep, you saw that right, A Dalex relaxation tape. 

...thought I must confess that they have one of the least soothing intonations I've ever heard. (Don't tell me you didn't spent the entire clip waiting for the word "exterminate". I know I did.)