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Tuesday, October 07, 2008

You know you're working too much....

...when you start talking to your PCR transcripts.
on the other hand, at least they don't argue or pick on you for being silly. (:
that's what i have drew for.

Friday, October 03, 2008

sometimes i wonder...

i just want to play the devil's advocate here for a second (please please please forgive my word choice... but i can't think of another phrase):
...why is it that, as christians, when confronted by some strange or seemingly unbelievable phenomenon, we are often so quick to claim that something must obviously "be of the devil"?
a good example- not that i really think i believe in them, but ddp040 posted a blog about her chance experience with running into an "animal communicator" and invited feedback on the encounter. one individual responded that she felt that maybe these things were real, but that their gifts/talents/whatever you want to call them were not from or of God. why? like i said, i sort of think maybe it's just a bunch of bologna (heehee, i spelled it right) but let's think about this for a second. if a person were truly capable of communicating with animals, why couldn't it be "of God"? just because we don't understand it doesn't necessarily mean it's evil, right? an ass did talk to Paul, after all (okay, okay, granted, that was really an angel, but you know where i am gong with this). somehow i have a sneaking suspicion that there are a lot of unusual "talents" out there that we just can't understand or maybe even comprehend (why do twins separated at birth and raised completely differently sometimes grow up to have similar personalities, preferences, and ideologies?). The church wanted to (and maybe did?) excommunicate Galileo and Copernicus (GASP* there are other heavenly bodies out there?! the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, and the earth isn't the center of the universe?!). how does a person who can "communicate" with animals disprove the existance or complexity or amazingness of God?! i know i'm harping on this one example, but there are so so so many others out there.
now, let me clarify, however- while i do tbelieve that having an open mind is a great thing, i don't mean to say that one should have his mind so open that it falls out. take everything with a grain of salt. as a scientist, i live by the mantra, "question everything". and i really do believe that my faith is stronger, rather than weaker, because of that. but why be so quick to write everything uncommon or unusual or even extraordinary and unbelievable off the being the devil's work? there is nothing amazing or uncommon or even unbeliveable about the devil. he is the most common, ordinary, and believable thing here on earth.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

TEST DAY!

i have a molecular exam today AND i find out how i did on my biochem exam last tuesday. wish me luck!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

it is saturday! so guess where i am today!
why, i'm at the lab, of course!
i was supposed to be doing this yesterday, but my cells were not being particularly cooperative and weren't confluent until 9 am this morning. of course.
so- that leaves me here at the lab all day today, isolating mRNA, running RT-PCR, and amplifying my "gene-of-interest". oh well. i guess the upside is that i can turn the radio up as loudly as i like with no fear of disturbing someone! (: (it's hard to hear the radio over the roar of the biosafety hood if the radio isn't turned pretty loud). right now i am amplifying the two genes that i am looking for. after that i will make an agarose gel and run the resulting DNA through it to "see" if what i amplified was really what i thought was amplifying.... and the really ironic part? if i did manage to get the two DNA genes i wanted, next week i will turn it back into RNA. go figure.
and i get to spend the remainder of the weekend studying biochemistry. i have an exam tuesday. in addition to various and sundry formulas (Coulomb's Law, anyone?) and other things of biochemical relevance, we will be expected to draw all 20 amino acids in their various ionization states. woohoo. i will admit, though, that this biochem professor has been the absolute best biochem professor i have ever taken. i can truly say that i really understand everything we've been taught, and that's saying a lot since i have taken 2 undergraduate biologies (sp?), 2 undergrad biology labs, 2 undergrad chemistries, a chem lab, organic chemistry, a one-semester biochemistry, virology, and a molecular biology, in all of which i should have learned titration curves and what not... so i guess it's a relief to finally have it really, truly click. we'll see if that phenomenon continues to hold true.
guess i'll sign off. i really should be using this time to work out the volume of a single e-coli cell and then compare that volume to that of just its bi-layer membrane.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

for everyone who asked or wondered, or wondered without asking (: ..... yes, all of my family and i made it through gustav unscathed. i actually packed up and went to elton, louisiana, with drew for a week, which is in southwest louisiana. elton was not hit as hard as baton rouge (where i actually live), which recieved the most direct (and hardest) hit from a hurricane in all of it's recorded history. in fact, in elton we shot skeet the morning that the hurricane was making landfall. all that wind makes the clays do some pretty interesting acrobatics. thankfully, my house sustained no damage, nor did my aunt's home (across the street) or my parents' (in clinton). however, we were, sadly, the exception rather than the rule. my aunt and i were without power until the friday evening after gustav hit (actually a fairly short time compared with most of BR and the surrounding areas), most because two trees crashed through two of our neighbors' homes. many people where i ride my bike in the mornings are still running their homes on generators.
drew's house is currently uninhabitable. he lived in a trailer on the LSU research farm. it was knocked clean off of its blocks, which in turn ripped all of the power lines, gas lines, and water lines from their connections. the farm lost almost all of its trees, including an orchard of over 50 one hundred year old pecan trees (well, maybe 25% of them remain). many of the barns sustained some sort of damage and some even sustanined significant damage.
The LSU campus looked like a war zone.

Terrebonne parish, in southeast/south-central louisiana, on the coast, had not one power transmission tower left standing after the hurricane. many there still remain without power.
but mostly we survived. it's what we Louisianians (and Texans, and Floridians, and Mississippians, and Alabamians) do.
Calcasieu and Cameron parishes in the farthest southwest corner of the state lost almost all of their cattle to drowning in the storm surge of hurricane Ike. many farmers lost their livelihoods. drew's parent's lost approximately 1/5 of their rice harvest- after an already record-poor harvest for their family.
but again- we survived and will keep on surviving.
thank you for wondering and asking.