Stacey Smith
I'm a graduate student studying the molecular and biochemical evolution of HIV within patients and within populations. I also study epigenetic control of ERVs.
sa smith
Posts by this author
July 2, 2008
Remember Christina Comer? The woman who was EXPELLED from the Texas Education Agency after forwarding this disgusting, hateful, explicit email to her coworkers?
Shes suing TEA.
No, not for a million dollars (like the DI wants-- theyd be happy as clams if public schools went extinct). Shes suing…
July 1, 2008
Does anyone watch TV anymore?
Anyone?
I mean, seriously, its like every other day Creationists are doing something infinitely more hysterical than anything Hollywood can think up.
Todays side-splitting sitcom is brought to you by William Dembski and a new character*-- a buxom young brunette named…
June 30, 2008
While those of us here in the US can have a grand 'ol time loling over wackaloon HIV-Deniers, not everyone on this planet shares that luxury.
There are places on this planet where woo is in control. The person with the political power to give or withhold life saving anti-retrovirals, doesnt…
June 29, 2008
I finally had some time to get the BLAGROLL together! You all will never be bored again-- LOTS of good stuff in there, so read up!
Please check to make sure Ive got you listed right, or if you missed the first call, go ahead and leave a comment!
Aaaand Im still working on the nifty rotating side-…
June 29, 2008
Despite the wackaloon letters PZ gets, Im being serious! It really is nice!
I encourage everyone to leave questions in the comments or send me emails if they want to know more about a topic, and I am just as happy to oblige a evilutionist as a Creationist. Especially when theyre nice about it!
So…
June 26, 2008
Its summertime.
And when you work in the lab, summertime means summer undergraduate students! Theyre like any lab member-- sometimes theyre good, sometimes theyre bad, sometimes they are somewhere in between-- but no matter what, its a great opportunity for them to try out Research World and for…
June 26, 2008
Per Ahlberg and his crew just found another fossil along the fish-->tetrapod line! WHOO!!!
Ventastega curonica and the origin of tetrapod morphology
All the major news sources have picked up on this story already, with all the crappy journalism we have come to expect from most contemporary '…
June 24, 2008
You know when professors say something thats really obvious, but they say it in such a way that suddenly the universe makes sense, and your head explodes?
I had one of those moments yesterday while listening to a professors presentation on a nifty herpes virus, cytomegalovirus (CMV is like EBV--…
June 23, 2008
My lab is pretty 'old school'. We do basic biochemical procedures-- cloning/subcloning, PCR/RT-PCR/RT-PCR/RTRT-PCR, pulse-chases, western blots. My flow cytometry is about as crazy as we get.
We also do those 'old school' procedures the 'old school' way. We dont use Qiagen kits to extract our…
June 23, 2008
Fuck.
**sigh**
For my 23rd brithday, the fellow I was dating at the time got us tickets to see Carlin. Wonderful memory... But I was kinda hoping Id get to see him again, sometime...
Fuck.
Well, for those of you concerned that Fundie cocksuckers wouldnt jump on this with "CARLINS NUT AN ATHIEST…
June 22, 2008
WHOO!! The current list of speakers and activities scheduled for OUs celebration of Darwins 200th birthday is up! Sweet! Check back every now and then, because more activities are going to be added as speakers are confirmed (there are rumors a certain someone has agreed to visit us here in…
June 21, 2008
One to two times a week, I get an email from a concerned reader about my refusal to use apostrophes.
DEAR ERV--
YOU WRITED GUD BUT YOU HAS NO APOSTRAPHES AND U NEED TEHM. NO APOSTRAPHES IS DISTRACTING. K? THNKXBAI.
So it pleases me greatly to see the death of another form of punctuation…
June 20, 2008
So, EA just released the 'Creature Creator' pre-SPORE game. You cant do much with your monsters at this point, but its a super easy program for making basically any creature you can think of (I have zero animator skillz, but I can do it. Point/click/drag-- My dad could handle this). Its been…
June 19, 2008
In the last segment of 'Intro to ERVs', I explained part of my blags tagline by talking about gag, the gene that codes for all the retroviral structural proteins. This post is going to be about the gene(s) that code for all of the enzymes a retrovirus needs: pol.
But remember how I said…
June 17, 2008
I have several fun Real Science(TM) posts in the works... But today I got the new SPORE Creature Creator*... So I guess you all figured out where my evening went... LOL!
I made a SPORE ARNIE!!!!
Im already in love with SPORE Arnie. Though SPORE follows the cliche unicellular< multicellular…
June 17, 2008
You all might remember a few months ago, a fellow named 'John Freshwater' was in the news. According to World Net Daily and Freshwaters own students, Freshwater was asked by school administrators to remove a personal Bible from his desk.
Students protested in defense of their teacher by putting…
June 16, 2008
I like these tag games when theyre nice and short :)
Q1. How would you define "atheism"?
Lack of belief in any form of deity. It doesnt mean you wont fall for a pyramid scheme. It doesnt mean you dont believe in ghosts or astrology or Tom Cruise.
It just means you dont believe in a deity.
Q2. Was…
June 16, 2008
I love blogging. Ive learned a ton, Ive had a helluva lot of fun, Ive made great connections with people all over the world-- Its been a very positive experience for me.
So I thought Id share a few tips/tricks Ive learned over the past couple of years for readers who are thinking about taking up…
June 14, 2008
Oklahoma. Were the home of Oral Robers University, Rhema, The Smalkowski Affair, GodTube, and a veritable cornucopia of Crazy Christian Crap. But that didnt stop the Tulsa Atheists from coming OUT in a big way! An ad on our local TV network!
Its simple, but its a start!
June 13, 2008
I dont read Uncommon Descent. I only read filtered, purified UD TARD at After the Bar Closes. Today, I was reminded once again why Intelligent Design Creationism has been a magnificent failure, via Bob O'H:
What's our strategy. The strategy is multipronged. Let me just give you one prong: WIN THE…
June 12, 2008
What do I wanna do?
Um, be a PI. Get to play in a lab forever. Contribute to my field. Be respected. Be loved by my students. hehehe My dream is to do research until I die, thus to have the opportunity to totally traumatize my grad students by letting them discover my cold, dead body slumped…
June 11, 2008
Why did no one tell me of this website? Im crying from the lolz...
June 11, 2008
Last Saturday evening I went to a friends house to let Arnie play in their backyard, and today Im scratching a dozen mosquito bites.
Arg.
But what does a virologist think when they get mosquito bites?
West Nile! WHOOOO!!!
And what does a girl who studies HIV-1 env think of when she thinks of West…
June 10, 2008
NOOOOO**!!!!!!!
GODDAMMIT!
Interview for her new movie, 'The Happening':
Interviewer: Your protagonist is a science teacher, and you also have a scientist at the end who talks about the limits of rational thought. How does that tie into the whole spiritual aspect?
Shyamalan: Right. Well, you know…
June 9, 2008
Its no secret that there is an ongoing (though thoroughly stupid) 'battle' between MDs and PhDs. "Ur too dumb to get into med shcool!" "Ur a friggen mechanic!" "I cure duhseesehs!" "U do not! We cure, U dispense!" Blah blah blah its funny sometimes, but it gets old too.
But now it just got funny…
June 8, 2008
I dont think science/medicine journalism will ever catch up with 'clergy/ministry/missionary' for the title of 'most useless profession', but man, some days theyre certainly giving the Godbots a run for their money.
I opened up Google News this morning and checked out my 'HIV' category, and found…
June 7, 2008
My grandparents generation fought in WWII.
My parents generation fought for civil rights.
My generation fights with nunchuks on YouTube:
Fear the power of my generation.
June 6, 2008
As you all heard from PZ, WHOOOO!!! Oklahoma governor Brad Henry vetoed Kerns 'Crazy Christian Bill of the Week' (I told you he is a nice guy).
As Vic Hutchison, head of Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education noted in his newsletter to OKers, Gov. Henry could have let this bill just die.…
June 6, 2008
Sorry for the slim pickings this week, folks, but Ive had a few adventures in the lab this week... I seem to have had lots of strange adventures since I grabbed onto the coattails of Bossman a few years ago...
I didnt just jump straight from college to grad school to the lab of an established PI.…
June 5, 2008
You all might have heard about the new Douglas Axe paper trumpeted by the Discovery Institute. Well, it came out today on PLOS One.
I dont have anything to say about it. Im not a 'protein' person, and Im certainly not a 'computer modeling of proteins' person. And Im admittedly biased against…