Good timing

Christmas Eve is an excellent time for another edition of the Carnival of the Godless!

In my own strange Christmas Eve tradition, I'm spending this late afternoon sorting flies and setting up Drosophila cultures — I'm not even done with grading and I have to get to work on next semester's labs.

More like this

I just read an interesting article in the LA Times "10 Myths and Truths About Atheism". Rather cogent for the Times but then I noticed it was by Sam Harris.

I hope you're not using ether. Christmas morning is no time for a fly-pushing hangover (although the visions of sugarplums can be fun).

When I was a postdoc in a fly lab we used to have to take turns on weekends changing the feeding trays in the fly room, which had like a dozen population cages in it. No way you can open and close the netting on the front of the cages without some flies getting out. Believe me, I've snorted my share of flies.

Back when I was teaching a college genetics lab (and had no possibility to set up CO2 tanks) I didn't use ether, but rather some stuff called FlyNap (sold IIRC by Carolina Biological Supply) which was supposed to be less toxic to both humans and flies. I'd guess that's what PZ uses as well.

By Steve LaBonne (not verified) on 25 Dec 2006 #permalink