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Dalai Lama Speaks in Ann Arbor

The Dalai Lama has been making appearances and giving talks in the US, with his most recent talk at the University of Michigan (where I am) yesterday. Although I was unable to attend the actual talk, since the tickets were sold out within an hour of going on sale, his appearance was videotaped and uploaded (check out the movie here.) According to the press release from UM, the Dalai Lama's talk skirted most of the tough issues that Tibet is now facing, and focused more on environmentalism--a topic certainly near and dear to the inhabitants of Ann Arbor. Check it out.

'The Economist' Highlights UM Hearing Research!

As noted in the sidebar here, I'm at the University of Michigan, involved in hearing research. So, I was so thrilled when it was brought to my attention that research from our institute, on the topic of cochlear implants, was being mentioned in this month's 'Economist' magazine! The article is a good summary of the current state of cochlear implant research, and has some interesting diagrams. Download the PDF here. Slightly less noble, but kind of humorous, is that the research was also mentioned as a blurb in the most recent Playboy. Not that you read the articles or anything!

Scholarship deadline extended for AWG Chrysalis Scholarship

From the Association for Women Geoscientists' e-news: The deadline for applications for the 2009 AWG Chrysalis Scholarship has been extended to March 31st. The Chrysalis Scholarship provides degree-completion funding for women geoscience graduate students whose education has been interrupted for at least one year. The awards are intended to cover thesis/dissertation costs such as typing or drafting expenses, child-care, or anything necessary to assist a degree candidate during those critical, final days. More information and instructions on how to apply are available on the AWG website at…

New SciBling

Go say hi to the Angry Toxicologist, our new SciBling here at SB: I am a Ph.D. scientist in the public health sector with a good amount of toxicology and regulatory knowledge. I'm not going to be dishing about projects I am privy to, but I am much freer to make my opinions known anonymously, than I could do in a completely public forum. Although other topics will probably be brought up from time to time (friday is no day for science), this blog will be focused on public health and the science behind it and will be written for the non-scientist without dumbing anything down.

Miniature Earth, BreathingEarth

Here are two neat sites I've been meaning to link for a while. One is called The Miniature Earth, a flash vid of statistics revealing the cultural composition of humans if the world's population was proportionally reduced to 100 people. For example, of the 100, 61 would be Asian, 13 African, 12 European, 8 North American, 5 South American/Caribbean and 1 from Oceania. The other site, BreathingEarth, projects how much CO2 is being released as we speak, country by country, factoring birth rates and death rates into the model. The census data seems to be a bit dated, but it is an interesting…

Did You Get the Mailing?

A few of you commented recently that you'd received your free copy of Autism's False Prophets, but hadn't gotten an email from us yet. Excuse us! An email went out this morning, to everyone who signed up. If you were expecting one but didn't get it, check your junk-mail filter. It might have gotten trapped. One more email, with some thoughts and questions about the book to jump-start the discussion, will go out before the club begins, probably on Monday evening. If you'd like to sign up for the mailing list and haven't already, you can do so here. Thanks, everybody.

Calcium Hypochlorite (Bleach in packets?)

The camping series continues. Previously: octenol, the related octenone, and DEET. Today we move away from insects for the time being, turning our attention to water purification. Sodium hypochlorite, or NaOCl, is sold as an aqueous solution - laundry bleach. It is also a great disinfectant, and dilute bleach solutions are used by hospitals and IV drug users alike as a disinfectant. A little bleach will disinfect water, too, but laundry bleach decomposes fairly rapidly (over periods of time as short as months). A shelf-stable source of hypochlorite is Ca(OCl)2 powder, which can be found in…

DEET (Bugs bothering you? Just slather on some solvent!)

The ubiquitous active ingredient in insect repellent, DEET, is a great solvent. Anyone who's spent much time outdoors has discovered this empirically, as he's inevitably seen it fog polycarbonate glasses, dissolve a gear sack, or destroy $500 raingear. DEET-based insect repellents come in a variety of strengths, from 10-25% creams, to bottles of pure DEET. It's probably the only organic solvent that comes in a bottle designed for intentional skin application: For quite awhile, the presumed mechanism of action for DEET was blocking the receptor for things like octenol. Just last month in…

Trimethyloxonium salts (When it absolutely, positively, must be methylated)

When you take organic chemistry, you learn about methyl iodide for putting on a methyl group. Eventually, though, if you stick with chemistry, you need an alkylating agent for grown-ups. There's a lot of good ones, including dimethyl sulfate, methyl triflate (PDF), and the ever-so-toxic "magic methyl," methyl fluorosulfonate. Part of being a grown-up, though, is settling down with an alkylating agent, and aside from the odd dirty weekend with some of the more exotic compounds, it's trialkyloxonium salts for me: We used to have coffee together in the morning, but the methanol got to me...

Didymium (Yes, I just ran through a list of rare earth alloys)

The term "rare earth metal" is a misnomer that's just stuck around. They haven't been rare for years - take this ad material from about 50 years ago at Theodore Gray's excellent Periodic Table Table site. Didymium is a mixture of rare earth metals, which, when compounded with glass, imparts some color. Metals used to be pretty much our only way of imparting color. For quantum mechanical reasons, the enormous middle swath of the periodic table can impart some brilliant colors. Modern organic dye technology has advanced like crazy, but metals are alive and well. Your green and brown glass have…

Methoprene (Quit acting juvenile)

Friday's entry was on juvenile hormone, an epoxide-containing species (as in epoxy, see here and here). Today, I'll show you an example of how we've used it to battle bugs. Methoprene doesn't contain an epoxide (many of the juvenile hormones don't), but it's a good mimic for JH. In its presence, juvenile insects can grow larger, but they can't achieve sexual maturity. No more adults, no more sex for the bugs, no more bugs for you. Like many insecticides, it has its own set of safety concerns, but this is far from the worst thing out there.

Nutrigenomics to get a dose of actual science?

Nutrigenomics is a word typically associated with shady companies trying to use genetic tests to sell you expensive diets - but GenomeWeb News reports that the area may finally be receiving some legitimate scientific attention: The Salk Institute today said that it will use a $5.5 million grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to create a center to study nutritional genomics. The La Jolla, Calif.-based institute will use the funding to launch the Salk Center for Nutritional Genomics, which will study the effects of nutrition and genetic interactions on metabolism, the…

So this is news?

This is absolutely no surprise: a newspaper article reports that church-based scams are costing the country big bucks. Between 1984 and 1989, about $450 million was stolen in religion-related scams, the association says. In its latest count — from 1998 to 2001 — the toll had risen to $2 billion. Rip-offs have only become more common since. Small potatoes. They're only counting rip-offs like Ponzi schemes and other non-religious con games. I'm sure that what people willingly toss into collection plates adds up to a far larger act of wholesale robbery; a clerical collar is just a genteel…

You Won't Learn Anything From Reading This Post

...but I needed an excuse to congratulate The Scientific Activist for it's 100th post since the move to ScienceBlogs.com. So, happy one-hundreth-post-iversary (huh?) to me! It's a sign of just how much more prolific I've been on the new site that what took over four months on the original site only took about two and a half months here. Cool. I just hope the other 99 posts were a little more substantial.... Some other numbers: since the move there have been 275 comments posted from a total of 48,589 visitors. That's great! Let's keep it up.

Mary's Monday Metazoan: Melancholy movie

All the biologists out there know about the heath hen: it's probably the number one most common example of a recent extinction discussed in considerable detail, because it illustrates so well that extinction is a product of so many factors, from habitat loss to inbreeding to predation to competition to climate shifts to you name it. The last bird died in 1932. But now, something amazing has been unearthed: a 40-minute movie of the heath hens in their final reserve on Martha's Vineyard, made in 1918. There's a two-minute clip at the link. Watch the last dance of the heath hen and feel the…

Manatees Invade the Northeast

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, but three times is a trend. The manatee in the Hudson River was an accident -- the Christopher Columbus of manatees if you will. The manatee in Rhode Island is a coincidence. I blame it on the grad student from our lab who moved to Florida to study manatees. She probably told them all about how great it is to live in the Northeast United States, so they came up here to check it out. Let's hope she didn't tell all of them about it; I don't want any trendy manatees hanging out in my neighborhood.

Editor's Selections: Embodied Cognition, Brain Blunders, Music, and Exercise Your Brain

Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week. Embodied cognition never ceases to amaze and entertain. Mo Costandi of Neurophilosophy has the latest - Tough and tender: How touch affects sex categorization. Emily Anthes of the Wonderland blog describes an interesting paper investigating the record-keeping of Dr. Harvey Cushing. Mistakes Were Made (Inside Your Brain) From the Music Matters blog: Can Infants Recognize Melodies Heard in the Womb? The answer might surprise you. Finally, Alex Konkel of the ionpsych blog tells us about the relationship between body and brain.…

Jonathan Eisen at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Meeting

Jonathan Eisen's been blogging the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) meeting in Marco Island. Here's what he's written so far: Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Meeting - First Post AGBT Marco Usland Update - Long Live Sequencing Marco Island Evening One - The Strange and the Good More notes from Marco Island/ AGBT Coolest Thing at Marco Island - The Polonator Marco Island sequencing frenzy - are we getting lost in all the data? Marco Island - Saving Some of the Best for Last The second to last post is the best, in my opinion. But there's some interesting points about…

Lots of Pretty Wings in PLoS ONE

In a new article in PLoS ONE, a group of researchers led by Kevin Edwards present a collection of images of Hawaiian Drosophila wings. Here's one figure from the paper showing the evolutionary relationships of a bunch of different clades and some representative wing patterns: The authors point out that, with the availability of the Drosophila grimshawi genome sequence, biologists can now use molecular techniques to understand the genetic changes that give rise to the various pigmentation patterns. Edwards KA, Doescher LT, Kaneshiro KY, Yamamoto D. 2007. A database of wing diversity in the…

Internet Odds and Ends

Rick at My Biotech Life is organizing all the genetics feeds into a single Feedburner feed. The DNA Network is a collection of feeds from sites that blog on genetics. You can subscribe to the DNA Network Feed to get the web's best genetics content delivered to your newsreader. If you would like to join the network, leave a comment on Rick's blog. Via Neil Saunders I learned about Google's Image Labeler, in which you team up with another person to come up with labels for random pictures. I presume these labels will be used for smart searching in the future. Beware, this is an amazing time sink…

Drunk Doggy

Two unemployed stem cell researchers have performed a pilot study indicating that the chief researcher's dog likes beer (reported here). They noticed that erratic behavior tended to increase with beer consumption, but his tolerance did increase over the course of the experiment. The dog also preferred certain beers over others, although the researchers did not have sufficient funds to test the dog's preference for anything better than Presidente. And they didn't see if he enjoyed salt in his beer either. This research was partially funded by a New Jersey state research subsidy of $2.55 from…

Bankruptcy website passes Turing test according to court.

According to the court: (The) system touted its offering of legal advice and projected an aura of expertise concerning bankruptcy petitions; and, in that context, it offered personalized -- albeit automated -- counsel. ... We find that because this was the conduct of a non-attorney, it constituted the unauthorized practice of law. The computer program is now serving time in jail for not being able to pay the fines imposed by the courts. OK just kidding, the creator was fined and forbidden from allowing his computer program to offer bankruptcy advice. Read the more detailed blog post here

E.O. Wilson: TED Prize wish: Help build the Encyclopedia of Life

As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; yet we're still steadily destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), using the acronym HIPPO, and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere.

Royal Ontario Museum Unveils Huge Dinosaur

From Dinosaurs and the Bible: If you're living in or is near the Ontario area, go pay a visit to the Royal Ontario Museum to get a load of the unveiling of a huge dinosaur mount that was previously hidden in the museum storage and forgotten for 40 years until it was rediscovered last year by Dr. David Evans, one of the curators of the museum. A large Barosaurus skeleton nicknamed "Gordo" is going to be on display at the museum as part of the museum's renovated galleries of dinosaurs. [source] Go to Dinos and the Bible to get directions to the museum.

War on Christmas Training Manual

From Austin Cline. What are the Christmas Wars?: In his infamous tract "The International Jew," Henry Ford wrote "The whole record of the Jewish opposition to Christmas, Easter and other Christian festivals, and their opposition to certain patriotic songs, shows the venom and directness of [their] attack." The John Birch Society complained that the "Godless UN" was conspiring against Christmas. Today, conservatives claim that secularists and liberals are trying to replace Christmas. The enemy changes, but it's still the same conspiracy story. Foot soldiers in the war on Chrismas, you must…

Two Local Bits

Don't Forget: The Listening Project, December 13, at the Oak Street Cinema! The City of St Paul is a Free Speech Zone Some inside info on the upcoming Republican National Convention from our own blogospheric correspondent on the East Side... I have deep roots in the East Side of St. Paul. It is where I really started getting involved in politics through campaigns. I volunteer as treasurer for one of the legislators on the East Side, Tim Mahoney (DFL 67A.) So, I am happy to see that the cop in charge of security for the 2008 GOP convention is an East Sider.

Pope Attacks Atheism

The pope, Benedict XVI, released an encyclical on Friday stating that atheism was responsibile for great cruelties and violations of justice. In fact, for some of the worst such wrongs in all of history. He offered, as an alternative to athesims, well, actually, catholicism. I call "Bias!" Italy's Union of Atheists, Agnostics and Rationalists (UAAR) said by taking such stands the Pope would push more people away from the Church. "The existence of a billion non-believers in the world should be enough to make the Pope understand that man can live very well without God, but with reason," a…

OMG It's So Cute!

I like to report advanced technology that runs open source systems, like LInux. From Manufactum of Germany, we have a two pound PC, running Linux, of course, just over seven inches maximum dimension. It runs at 500 MHz, can handle a gig of RAM (default 512 MB) and an 80 gig hard drive. It is pre-loaded with Debian with KDE as your desktop. That part is totally configurable, of course. Imagine replacing all the computers in your lab with something the size of a Tom Clancy novel. That would leave piles of room for, say, a bigger fridge in which you can store samples. And beer.

A little shameless self-promotion and begging

Here’s a little shameless self-promotion, which we editors at Science-Based Medicine indulge in from time to time. This time around, I’d just like to mention that I’m the guest on the latest episode of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, where I was permitted to pontificate about children with cancer whose parents deny them chemotherapy. Check it out. Second, in less than four weeks, I will be giving a talk at Skepticon. The great thing about Skepticon is that it’s free, but that requires donations. So, as a speaker, I’m going to ask you all once again to give until it hurts.

Antivax ads in movie theaters

I just read this Action Alert and pursuant to it I sent this note to AMC theaters: Thank you for NOT running the anti vaccination add by the so called "Safeminds" organization. The mercury in flu shots is in a form that is not absorbed into human tissues, but is an important part of an anti-fungicide that keeps the flu vaccines safe. Meanwhile, a flu vaccine is an important preventative medical step everyone should take. The ads are based on unscientific and incorrect information. Thank you for pulling them from your theaters. There are a number of different things you could do.…

Minnesotans: Help Wadena recover

You may recall me mentioning a tornado last year in Wadena. "The town's been flattened. I'm on my way there for a high school reunion. It looks more like it's going to be a high school clean-up." If you are in the region, I just wanted you to know about a fund raiser to help get the people of Wadena back on their feet. Months after a devastating tornado struck Wadena, a benefit will be held this weekend to help the still-recovering Minnesota town. The Wadena Relief Benefit will be held Sunday from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Medina Entertainment Center in Medina. Details here.

Rachel Maddow Totally Loses It

Rush Limbaugh Loses it all the time. Glen Beck loses it all the time. In the left, Kieth Olbermann loses it about one a week. Chris Matthews is constantly on the verge of losing it. That guy from Court TV lost it too often and he lost his show. Now, Rachel Maddow loses it. And, as we expect, she does it better than the rest of them times 106 You have to wait until after the parrot mates with they guy's head. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy You are being shagged by a rare parrot!

Back When I Was a Kid, We Had Real Winters!

The other day I was speaking with my future brother in law about the fact that most people remember that there was more snow in the past than there is now. This is totally true for me because I moved from a part of the country with a lot of snow (NY and New England) to a part of the country with less snow (Minnesota). But for people who live in the same place they grew up how can this be possible? Is it really true? Well, no it is not true. Your brain is fooling you on this one. Don't believe me? Read about it here.

Go Green Expo: Minneapolis

The Go Green Expo is, according to its organizers, the nation's leading eco-focused, interactive and educational showcase. It will debut at the Minneapolis Convention Center this coming weekend, including talks, presentations, and exhibits from a variety of sources including "green businesses". The idea is to promote energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly products and services. The Expo will include interactive seminars featuring leaders in the green industry, local politics, and community organizations. I'm going to be officially blogging it, so if you are going send me an email…

Michiganonians, your help is needed!!!!

If you live in Michigan, read this: The state has withheld its October payment from the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station and MSU Extension. Armstrong, the dean of MSU's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, sees it as a sign that Gov. Jennifer Granholm might veto the programs' $64 million in funding altogether. "We called (the state) to ask questions, and we're just not getting any clear answers," he said. He has a word for what it would mean: "Devastation, devastation." Then do this: Contact your Michigan State Senator Contact your Michigan House Rep Do additional griping…

Religion Hunter Bites the Dust

Heather Rosa: Five days a week I'm a news junkie. On weekends I take a complete break. Come Monday morning, I'm again ready for the news, catching up on whatever happened over the weekend. The first thing that slapped me in the face Monday morning, even before the every-five-minute repeat of the weather, was this story: a local woman had died after traveling to Arizona to participate in somebody's idea of a sweat lodge ceremony. After keeling over from excessive heat (possibly literally biting the dust), she was taken to a hospital and later died. Authorities stated homicide charges were…

It Came from Outer Space

I'm pretty sure I knew a guy, way back in the 1970s, who thought that Pac Man .... the video game ... was an attempt by aliens from another galaxy to communicate with us. Well, with him, actually. Huh. The Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn has caught an interesting new view of the tiny moon Mimas. The probe measured temperature differences across the object's surface and produced a map that looks just like the 1980s Pac-Man video games icon. Scientists are unsure why Mimas should display such variations ... bbc 1980s indeed. That was Ms Pac Man. Entirely different galaxy.

Tea Party Activists Promise to Shoot Those who Disagree With Them

Tea Party activists have gathered on Capitol Hill today for a "Code Red" rally against health care reform. .... The gathering was organized by Tea Party Profiteer organizations ... ThinkProgress .... spotted a sign threatening violence if health care passes. The sign reads: "Warning: If Brown can't stop it, a Browning can," referring to Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and a Browning ... Check it out So what does this mean? If I know someone is in the Tea Party and I know they know I supported health care reform, should I kill them preemptively? Seriously. I live several hundred meters from Michele…

More lazy weekend video

I'm still buried working on next week's talk and my part of the center grant. Fortunately, Saturday Night Live provides some temporary entertainment until I can get out from under the pile. Once again Tina Fey nails it, especially the "maverick" part. While watching the debate last week, by the end I thought I was going to throw something at the TV screen if I heard Palin refer to herself and McCain as "mavericks" again. I know, I know, this is becoming a bit of a habit. Don't worry, though. I have something nearly finished for tomorrow, and I see a light at the end of the tunnel next week…

Fast approaching: The Skeptics' Circle

As hard as it is to believe, it's almost here: The 96th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, which will be appearing on Thursday, September 25. This time around, it's set to land at Endcycle. If you're a skeptical blogger, don't forget to get your best stuff ready by Wednesday. Now, I've heard from a few of you that there's no contact information for Jeremy at Endcycle on the blog. I've sent him a gentle reminder to post some contact information. In the meantime, if you can't wait, feel free to send me your entries and I'll forward them on.

Top 100 articles on Wikipedia: why are the counts so low?

From blog commenter Lemmus comes this list of the 100 most visited Wikipedia pages in 2009. The thing that I find hard to believe is that the number of hits on most of these articles is so low. For example, if I google "World War II," the Wikipedia entry comes up first. But according to the list linked to here, there were only 30,000 visits to the World War II Wikipedia page in all of 2009. I have similar problems with the other numbers. Could they really be so small as all that? Or am I thinking about this all wrong?

Scientists develop drug to "dampen" bad memories

Researchers from Harvard University and McGill University are conducting research on a drug that appears to be able to "dampen" the psychological and physiological stress associated with remembering traumatic events. The drug is called propranolol. It has been around for over two decades and the idea that it can be used to alter memory has been floating around for over a decade. This is by no means a way to "erase" bad memories but the research is interesting nonetheless. These latest research findings on how propranolol affects memories is published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research…

More on public health-Christine Gorman speaks

My recent posts have focused on different aspects of public health: from exploring the scientific advancements that have shaped global health to discussing a new way of acquiring antibiotic resistance in disease causing bacteria. To continue the public health theme I invite you to check out Christine Gorman's talk given at the Global Health Council conference in Washington DC. The seasoned health journalist with 20+ years experience at TIME Magazine talks about how the media is covering global health-what they've gotten right and what they're still missing. Also check out fellow science…

The Medium is the Medium?

Here's David Brooks in today's New York Times Right now, the literary world is better at encouraging this kind of identity. The Internet culture may produce better conversationalists, but the literary culture still produces better students. It's better at distinguishing the important from the unimportant, and making the important more prestigious. Perhaps that will change. Already, more "old-fashioned" outposts are opening up across the Web. It could be that the real debate will not be books versus the Internet but how to build an Internet counterculture that will better attract people to…

The can, the clink, the pen, the slammer, the big house, up the river

Tyler Cowen quotes Barbara Demick as writing, "North Koreans have multiple words for prison in much the same way that the Inuit do for snow." So do we, no? But in our case, they seem to come from 1930s B-movies I wonder if there are almost as many words for prison in Russia, Turkmenistan, and the other leaders on the list. Apparently North Korea is off the charts, so perhaps they have ten times as many words for prison/jail as we do. P.S. America includes a bunch of Inuits, so I guess we have multiple words for snow also!

Not so respectful insolence

And here's the last (and one of my favorite) categories of my blast from the past, some times over the last 14 months when Orac decided to take the "respectful" out of Respectful Insolence: A response to the "Herbinator" "Intelligent design" apologia: Pot. Kettle. Black. I tried not to discuss "intelligent design" again, but... Invitation accepted A brief Cablevision rant It looks like Orac attracted another one A little criticism directed Orac's way I'm glad I didn't order the pulled pork Shortsighted, not curious, and proud of it! Cybersquatter: J. B. Handley Cybersquatting for Jesus Orac…

Natural Hallucinogen

I've been subcloning today and my brain feels like mush. (All you non-biologists have no fear, subcloning = cutting and pasting DNA). Then I get an email from an old friend ... "look at this natural hallucinogen video" ... yeah whatever, you stare at the moving pattern and then turn away and ... yow! I've never seen anything like that before ... My guess is that having looked at this pattern long enough, our brains compensate by generating signals that counter the moving patterns. These reverse-swerving patterns then "taint" all incoming information. Any better explanation?

Big Dead Squid

A potential new record holder for the largest giant squid washed ashore in western Tasmania. The individual came in at 550 lbs (250 kg) and stretched 26 ft (8 m) from head to the end of its severed tentacles. The specimen was extremely damaged and might measure longer. In the standard metric of body size of sea giants, the school bus (SB), this would measure about 0.9 SB. "It's a whopper," Genefor Walker-Smith, curator at the Tasmanian Museum, told the Reuters news service. Interestingly, giant squid rarely, if ever, was ashore on the western Tasmanian beaches being more common on the…

World Ocean Day Link

Tomorrow is World Ocean Day, and to celebrate, The Nature Conservancy is featuring an article on a haven for sea turtle and shark breeding on Andros Island in the Bahamas. This area, discovered last summer, could help influence Bahamian officials to establish more marine protected areas around the Bahamas.  They have also pulled together some of previous marine features, including a photo essay, "A Day in the Life of the World's Oceans," and information on Hawaii's coral reefs.   Click here for more on World Ocean Day. Of course tomorrow you can expect something special from Peter and I…

The Coffee Mug Meme

David over at the World's Fair poses 1. Can you show us your coffee cup? 2. Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality? 3. Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary? 4. Can you try to get others to comment on it? Well judge for yourself...I will say that I purchased it at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute after my first research cruise and my first dive in a submersible (the one on the mug). Needlessly to say I am a bit sentimental and coffee tastes o' the so much sweeter out of it.