sa smith

Its time once again for my yearly forced vacation. So I have some time to read/respond to some great emails from readers! Dear ERV-- I am just a random reader of your blog and several other science blogs. I'm sorry to bother you with this, but your contact me page was written in lolcat so I figured…

I didnt know what to say about Venter & Crew making a bacterial genome from scratch. No such luck from the BASTION of child rape, homophobia, misogyny, and flat out stupidity human morality and ethics, the Catholic Church: Church warns cell scientists not to play God Catholic Church officials…

Okay, Ive been trying to figure out what I can add to the OMFGTHEYMADEABACTERIAFROMSCRATCH hysteria. I cant come up with much more than 'WARBLEGARBLE!!!!!!!', but luckily, many others in the blagosphere didnt totally lose their heads and have some great posts up (leave links to your favorites in…

You laugh, you lose: Learn to better communicate your research to non-scientists at the Workshop on Communicating Science & Engineering with Chris Mooney When: May 24, 2010-9am-1pm. Lunch will be provided. Where: MIT- Room/Bldg TBA Why: These days, amid ongoing media controversies over climate…

Hey do you guys remember Michael Behe? Massive douche, wrote books about how EVILUTION IS IMPOSSI-BLEH! Gave school boards/teachers an excuse to teach Creationism in public school classrooms and pretend they were teaching science? He was like, the cock-of-the-walk when 'Darwins Black Box' came…

1. Mute your computer 2. Watch this video. I didnt take this video, but this was our weather in OKC yesterday. Make sure you catch the 2 minute mark: Oklahoma Hot Tub: When baseball sized hail pelts your swimming pool. LOL!

A while back I wrote about how the lead researcher at the Whittemore Peterson Institute, Judy Mikovits, is speaking at Autismone, a huge anti-vax rally in Chicago later this month. I thought Judy was just a crank. Dime a dozen, whatevs. Turns out things are worse than that. Much much worse than…

This post is really frustrating to write. Its frustrating because this paper could (should) be FANTASTICALLY COOL, but it was just really frustrating to read: Mosaic HIV-1 vaccines expand the breadth and depth of cellular immune responses in rhesus monkeys You all know there is a TON of genetic…

Earlier this week, Peter Palese visited our Uni (he made it through Oklahomas version of hazing: a night of tornadoes, LOL!). I gotta say, man, that guy might be one of the biggest names in influenza/virology research. He might have a few hundred publications. He might be a member of the National…

My first tech job out of college, I worked with a lovely group of Chinese ladies. They gave me a Chinese nick-name meaning: dog nose. Im working under the assumption that this wasnt an Anti-Semitic thing (lol!), but a comment on my really sensitive sense of smell. I would walk into the lab, smell…

Being an out, proud, vocal atheist, one thing I seem to have trouble communicating to people is just how very little I care about their own personal beliefs. I dont care if you love Jesus any more than I care if you love Big Macs or tap dancing or MAC lipstick. Its your life, whatever. My problem…

WARNING: Get a box of Kleenex before you read this post! I am NOT joking. A few weeks ago I wrote a post on how scientists are using a genetically modified herpes simplex-1 virus to attack metastatic melanoma (an oncolytic, ie kills tumor cells, virus). The results of their clinical trials blew…

Oh yeah-- Today is the National Day of Prayer (WHOOO NICK! WHOOOOO!!!). Lets celebrate! This catchy tune from 2004 is still 100% relevant-- from abortion to child rape... good times...

Antivaxers want green vaccines? How about vaccines produced in plants? Solar powered, green leafy plants-- Cant get much more green than that! The basic idea is that we modify plants to make viral/bacterial proteins, and then we eat the plants, and YAY! Vaccine! How could this possibly work?…

Laboratory #3-- Huh. This letter was written by the lead author of the Netherlands study on XMRV in CFS on April 22. Here it is (looks at calendar), May 5th, and I have yet to see this 'response' published online anywhere but here. Its so weird that the Whittemore Peterson Institute didnt post it…

Hey, you guys remember a while back, when Casey 'Tits' Luskin about peed his pants because 'ERVS AR BE FUNKSHUNAL!!' Except, this is really another case of Creationists not knowing the difference between an ERV, solo LTRs, and random wayward ERV genes. And those solo LTRs that could theoretically…

There was something bothering me about Stephen Hawkings position on aliens. Some memory that wasnt resurfacing properly. As I was clicking though Netflix last night, I remembered. Dear Stephen Hawking-- You dont need to worry about aliens invading our planet to escape their own polluted world. The…

I almost didnt watch FRONTLINEs 'Vaccine War' last night. I made it to ~5 minutes in, but then they showed a clip of this dumb woman (Jennifer Margulis? Ya I read her papers in Journal of Immunology all the time. Oh wait, shes not an immunologist? Shes just some random nutbar? Ya, lets…

Abbies deep, dark secret: Dr. Who makes me cry. Every episode. Every episode I end up bawling for some reason or another. So I always watch it by myself, and I make sure to have some 'Family Guy' or 'Mighty Boosh' ready to cheer me up afterwords. One of the worst is episode 158, "The End of The…

Well shit. I went to sleep last night, happy as a clam cause my young girl dreams of destroying the planet and everything on it were finally about to come true thanks to BOOBS... And then I wake up this morning. And now Im sure we are going to have to deal with The Accommodationists bitching about…

April 23, 2010 12:33 PM - alysonmiers-- If it involves boobs, it will become extremely popular on the Internet. If that isn't already a formally recognized and numbered rule, it should be. April 23, 2010 12:43 PM - KOPD-- Rule 34D? My labmates and I (and every other cool person on this planet)…

Hey you remember last year, OU had all these super cool presentations by scientists and evilution-themed activities for Darwins 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of 'Origin'? Remember how OK politicians and religious radicals had a conniption fit over it? Well, the professor who spearheaded…

So last night Im playing on the internet, minding my own business, and I stumble upon this video of Bill Gates giving a gushing plug for Pamela Ronalds book, Tomorrows Table! **HIGH-FIVE!!**

I dunno if you guys know how good we have it today with vaccines. Let me try this analogy-- Lets say you want to bake some bread. You have a basic recipe, so you know you need flour, yeast, water, and you make some really basic bread. Except the bread that comes out of the oven is a loaf of…

LABORATORY #1-- Dr. Myra McClure recently did an interview with ABC Australia on XMRV an what its doing in humans. You probably dont know who she is-- shes just a normal scientist, like the thousands of others going in to work every day that youve never heard of. *shrug* Apparently we are…

I dont like the US Senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn (lol, like I 'like' the other one, LOL!). Generic humanoid that cares more about being a robot than contributing anything useful and good to this planet. But when someone is right, they are right, end of story. Tom Coburn was right in this…

Vaccines rock. So many diseases my mom and dad, my grandparents had to deal with, had to fear-- I never have to even think about. Viruses I read about in books, like a 5-year-old reads about dinosaurs. And I really, really appreciate this fact. Nowhere is this appreciation more vivid than with the…

One of the reasons I started writing ERV was to help demystify viruses for the general public. To Average Joes/Janes, viruses are scary-ass little buggars-- alien creatures that make you sick, kill you overnight in horrible scary ways, and you never see them coming. I hope long-time readers of ERV…

You all might remember this story from a few years ago: Contagious Obesity? Identifying The Human Adenoviruses That May Make Us Fat This is one of the papers that article was based on: Human adenovirus-36 is associated with increased body weight and paradoxical reduction of serum lipids Long story…

How to make something totally awesome and geeky even MOAR AWESOME AND GEEKY? Stylize 'Dr. Horribles Sing Along Blog' into an old-school Nintendo game: AAAAAAAH I HOPE HE DOES ALL THREE ACTS!!! H/T to Phage Integrase!