WhatEVAH!
mikethemadbiologist | July 1, 2010(from here)
Now, by 'zombie bank', you probably think I'm referring to banks that have more liabilities than assets, and are basically waiting for the plug to be pulled. Nope. At this point, the only rational explanation for many banks' behavior is that they have actually been taken over by zombies.
Consider the following:
1) Banks have been acting as if they are brain dead. Maybe they are brain dead.
(from here)
2) Banks are behaving voraciously towards their customers, showing very poor impulse control. Sounds like zombies to me.
3) Banks are set in their ways, and reacting very…
mikethemadbiologist | June 23, 2010When I first saw the title of this PloSOne article, "Unauthorized Horizontal Spread in the Laboratory Environment: The Tactics of Lula, a Temperate Lambdoid Bacteriophage of Escherichia coli", I thought, "Hunh?!? You can actually publish articles about laboratory contamination?", but it's actually a very interesting article. In short, the article describes the discovery of a bacteriophage ('phage')--a bacterial virus--that is very well suited for survival and spread in microbiology laboratories.
To be successful, Lula faces several problems:
1) It has to successfully hide from researchers…
mikethemadbiologist | June 5, 2010I need some help from 'swanologists.' So do Boston's ducklings. In the middle of Boston's Public Garden, there is a large pond (although for some reason it's called a lagoon, even though it's not a lagoon). Every year, two swans, Romeo and Juliet, are brought to the Lagoon and released to build a nest (it turns out that both swans are female. LESBIAN SWANS!! AAAIEEE!!!).
Last weekend, I happened to be in the Public Garden all three days (long weekend), and every day I saw a swan (no idea if it was Romeo, Juliet, or both) that was chasing after ducklings.
By chasing, I mean that it would…
mikethemadbiologist | April 19, 2010On this Patriot's Day, we must never forget that the Heroic Struggle Against Our Demonic Turkey Overlords has not abated. Now they are assaulting the basic workings of our government:
click to embiggen
(from here)
Preventing the Boston Transportation Department from the appointed rounds! (and Intelligent Designer knows, we need the revenue).
Have they no decency?
mikethemadbiologist | March 17, 2010And Evacuation Day, which truly is a silly holiday, is a wonderful way to allow everybody to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day without violating all that church and state stuff. One unique Massachusetts tradition is that, on this day, some tightwad state representative rails against how much Evacuation Day and Bunker Hill Day cost the state. Yes, Evacuation Day isn't a particularly momentous occasion in terms of U.S. history, but the Battle of Bunker Hill is kinda important--we should remember it. If the colonists had lost the battle, our history would be very different.
Besides, nobody's…
mikethemadbiologist | March 13, 2010Admittedly, that would be a great name for a band, but, by way of Yves Smith, I came across this hysterical video of zebra finches (it gets really good past the one minute mark):
mikethemadbiologist | March 10, 2010One of Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown's campaign gimmicks was to drive everywhere in a pickup truck, thereby 'proving' that he's a regular guy (never mind that he's very wealthy). One wonders what would have happened to Scott's image had the Coakley campaign stumbled across this little sartorial tidbit (by way of Rumproast; italics mine):
Arianna told me that he showed up for his first real date with her mother, Gail Huff, a TV newscaster to whom he has been married for more than 23 years, in pink leather shorts. It's family lore.
The pinkish color drained from his face when I…
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2010Crime in the urban hellhole known as Boston:
01/11/10 - At approximately 5:29 a.m., officers responded to a radio call for a removal from the French Library, located at 53 Marlborough St.
On arrival, police spoke to the executive director of the library (the witness), who stated that a male suspect on the premises was refusing to leave.
The witness said that a man had entered the library at around 4 p.m. and asked to speak to a member of the French Consulate. The witness said she provided the man with the phone number of the French Consulate and told him that there was no connection between…
mikethemadbiologist | January 11, 2010
This is why I love Boston:
Duty calls for an East Boston resident.
Someone is getting called for jury duty...but it's no human.
A family is trying to figure out how their pet cat was summonsed for jury duty.
And, if you're wondering, the owners do have to appear in court to show that their cat is ineligible....
mikethemadbiologist | December 22, 2009Onward, Anti-Christmasian Soldiers!
(from here)
"Hello, this is Liberal Controlled Media, coming to you with a breaking report on the War on Christmas."
[Camera angle narrows in on anchorman]
"Today, Anti-Christmasian forces launched a decisive assault on the remaining pro-Christmas Arctic stronghold. Our LCM teams are on the story, and will bring you round-the-clock coverage of this breaking story. First, we go to LCM Foreign Correspondent Sarah Townsend. Sarah?"
"Thanks, Jim."
[image of firing artillery piece, crash of the gun, ejection of shell casing]
"Jim, I'm here at Fire Base…
mikethemadbiologist | December 12, 2009No, seriously. They do:
THWAK! I swing with my right fist, trying to connect with my opponent's face. In a smooth motion, he deflects my punch with his forearm, which is protected with a black and metallic-plastic arm gauntlet. I swing with my left fist, and am again knocked away effortlessly. I can see my reflection in his sunglasses, framed in white. He smiles and smoothes out his red and white spandex shirt -- adorned with a letter "C," a flame shooting out of the top -- and then crouches into a fighting stance.
"Oh, no," I think. "I'm about to get my ass kicked by a Lycra-wearing…
mikethemadbiologist | November 17, 2009I've finished reading Richard Nisbett's
Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count, which is a wonderful counterargument to Charles Murray's (and others') genetic conservatism (my phrase, not Nisbett's): intelligence, typically ascertain using IQ, is highly heritable, so there's little point in spending excessively (whatever that means) on educating most people, since it won't make a difference.
Nisbett demolishes this argument in detail (I've also touched on some of these issues in the context of obesity), so I won't rehash the book here, except to note that when one…
mikethemadbiologist | November 11, 2009Robert S. Khuzami, the Securities and Exchanges Commission enforcement director:
"If you find yourself chewing the memory card in your cellphone to destroy any record of your misconduct, something has gone terribly wrong with your character."
Indeed.
mikethemadbiologist | September 10, 2009...what he said. I was going to write about how Rep. Joe Wilson, who during last night's presidential address shouted "You lie!", shouldn't be criticized for being rude or uncivil. After all, if Obama had advocated sending left-handed people to gas chambers, I hope someone would have the courage to shout him down. But then I read Thers' "I Think You're an Asshole, And I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Act Like an Asshole, But You're Still an Asshole, Asshole" and realized he already said what needed to be said:
...I honestly do not think anyone from the Bush administration should be…
mikethemadbiologist | September 5, 2009He was in 1952, anyway. By way of Oliver Willis, from Glenn Hauman:
(click to embiggen)
It goes without saying that Superman is an illegal immigrant, which, no doubt, is why he's spewing all this liberal crap.
mikethemadbiologist | August 13, 2009I know it's weird, but I like a good obituary. The really good ones approach high lit status. Molly Ringwald has a nice obit about John Hughes; it's worth the read.
mikethemadbiologist | July 18, 2009I think this public awareness campaign should have been called, "Dude, it's not that big":
If there were only a campaign for the assholes who hog the entire subway car pole....
mikethemadbiologist | June 23, 2009If so, my respect for her just went up a notch. I'm not a huge fan of MA Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz (although she is far better than Wilkerson), in part, because of her unwillingness to protect arts funding in MA. But, in response to the idea that financial literacy should be added to the school curriculum, she recently said something very Boston (italics mine):
Committee member Sen. Sonia Chang-DÃaz, D-Jamaica Plain, a former public school teacher who supports the bill, had reservations about trying to stuff more material into a realistic math curriculum. "It was an enormous struggle for me to…
mikethemadbiologist | April 20, 2009I was just asked by a roving reporter, "What brings you to Boston today to watch the marathon?" (which doesn't really make sense if you think about it--the question answers itself). My response:
My home. Which is right around the corner.
And then he ended the interview. Jerk.
mikethemadbiologist | April 5, 2009A couple of nights ago, I bought some toothpaste. At the risk of veering off into "in my day, we used sandpaper. And we liked it!" territory, there's a ridiculous variety of toothpaste.
If you just consider Crest, there's Cavity Prevention, Multicare Whitening, Multicare Whitening, and Half-Caff Decaff Mocha with a Twist of Lemon. OK, the last one isn't real, but it seems silly.
Why? Because when I look at the active ingredients, all of these different toothpastes have stannous flouride as the only active ingredient--and usually at the same amount (w/v%). So how are all of these…