Nerdy Science Blog

Just read this from December 2007 Reader’s Digest.

Too much information is not always a good thing. I was at a drugstore trying to decide between two types of rubbing alcohol. Both appeared to be the same, so I called my husband, a chemical engineer. “What’s the difference between isopropyl rubbing alcohol and ethyl rubbing alcohol?” I asked.

“Easy,” he said. “One carbon atom.”

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Secret to eternity? CENTRIFUGE!

(link)

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It’s good to have dates from different fields so that you can know a lot of things which you’re not suppose to know.

I googled this “Reasons to Date a Microbiologist“.

- We do everything 10x 40x 100x bigger and better
- Size doesn’t matter
- We know the meaning of complement
- We always wear protection and use sterile technique
- We can run our own pregnancy and STD tests
- We do it on a stage
- We don’t wear anything under our lab coats
- We know the importance of direct contact during conjugation
- We wash our hands before and after everything
- We love Coronavirus with a lime

(link [pic])

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When I was at China Airport, I saw this box of chocolate, “China Panda Chocolate”. This triggered my imagination, whether it’s made of the panda itself, or its poop.

Vanessa Hull, 25, a Ph.D. candidate, is in the snowy, remote mountains of the Sichuan Province of China — which also is the heart of panda habitat. She’s hoping to capture, collar and track up to four wild pandas using advanced global positioning systems.

Coincidently, I saw this piece of news.

By the way, that box of chocolate ain’t cheap. It costs at least RMB 100. Its taste is bad too.

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“24″ has been one of my favourite TV series. I found it funny that Jack always has the same look, and same moves. From the series, he’s not so young (definitely not his 20s). He’s having a grown up daughter and I’m quite sure Jack is at least in the 40s in the show. So what did he do during his 30s, such as 1994? AOL, modem, public phone, pager were used to break down the terrorist acts （not to mention his hair). Watch this show:

Now we know why Jack is still able running around for 24 hours non-stop, simply because he’s well-trained back in 1994. I know this is not science related, but this is just funny. This reminds me years ago we were hoping for a floppy disk which has at least 100mb to be released. Now there are no more floppy disk driver in the new laptops and computers, it’s the thumbdrive/pendrive/handydrive that rules.

Imagine if we don’t have Petri dishes, we might still be culturing our bacteria one a piece of pork. Guess what, Japanese actually have a theme song for “24″, and it’s so 80s. This theme song should integrate into the 1994’s video. From the old time to now, Jack Bauer is the only guy who can stop terrorism in USA.

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Discovered this group, “You know you’ve worked too long in a lab when”. Here are some ‘whens’ listed in the group recent news.

1. You wonder what absolute alcohol tastes like with orange juice

8. You’ve wondered why you can’t drink distilled water in the lab - It should be clean?

14. People wearing shorts under a lab coat disturb you slightly as they look as though they might be naked underneath

16. Safety equipment is optional unless it makes you look cool

24. As has been pointed out to me on several occasions - You can no longer spell normal words but have no trouble with spelling things like immunohistochemistry or deoxyribonucleic acid.

32. You have an irresistible urge to rip your shirt off superman stylie cos it has press stud fasteners just like your lab coat…..Most often occurring as you walk through a door just like exiting the lab….

41.Your nose invariably itches when you’re doing mucky stuff with your hands so you develop the habit of scratching it on your upper arm. Unfortunately you sometimes carry this habit over to real life, where it looks like you’re sniffing your armpits

Join This Group

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I am doing yeast (S. cerevisiae) transformation, one of the magic ingredients is salmon sperm DNA, which work as DNA carrier. We had good laugh over this name.

“Sperm? Haha! What is the sperm doing in the experiment?”

“Human one can arr? Ask him (our cute lab technician) to donate to you lah~!”

“Yewww~~~”

No doubt, my lab mates also get excited by the name of the ingredient.
Read more »

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I participated in the LOLCreashun contest. These were some LolCat photos I created with LolCat Builder (don’t get angry, just for fun).

You can still participate in the contest before November 18, at 11:59:59 Eastern Time, all you need to do is editting the photos John Scalzi took in creation museum. Personally I like this LOLCreashun:

(link)

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Facebook has been crawling into our lab for some times, everybody seem to like it.

10 reasons why we play facebook in lab:

• Playful version of friendster, more fun.
• Game like pirates simply by applying brainless click. it’s the BEST thing to kill time when 5-10 minutes centrifugation seem century long…
• Very easy and simple, need no brain, not as distracting compare to other online game
• Not much of time need on any of the game, good alternative to have 5 minutes break from brick-thick journals.
• Play slayers when feel like slaying somebody who accidentally throw your tube.
• Lab environment was a little bit uneasy when four interns first came in. Conversation becoming natural when we invite each other join facebook.
• Lab-mate A’s warbook was attacked by a moron out of no where, and was warned not to attack back. We were pissed off, and decided to sabotage the moron. Lab was united at that moment.

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When I saw this “Fresh homemade cookies” from PHD Comics, I saw me inside that comic. Not the lecturer, but the student.

I met a lot of lecturers trying every methods to get people attending lectures, these were what they have done:

1. Refuse to record lecture audio, or they might just act like they forget to switch on the recorder. (Lame, due to the protests of the students, they can’t do that.)
2. Refuse to upload any lecture slides online, only give out printouts in the lecture. (This is useful, but due to some environmentalists, they can’t print anymore.)
3. Discuss exam questions during the lecture with least attendance. (Works, but just once in a semester.)
4. Being sarcastic in the audio recorded. (Lame!)
5. Making some mistakes in the lecture notes, and then during the lecture say, “Ahah! I made mistakes. Arghh! Too bad. For those who didn’t attend lectures can’t see where the mistakes are.”
6. Teaching with “this”, “and”, “here”, “there” and “that”. (Example: “From here to there, and this and that, that’s how it works.”)
7. Prohibit you taking the paper for the subject if your attendance rate is low. (Heck, there are so many students enrolled, it’s a tedious job just to take the attendance.)

The following solutions are proudly presented by me to all the lecturers who desperate for higher attendance rate:

1. Waive the tuition fees if attendance rate is more than 90%.
2. Have all the lectures in the afternoon. (No friggin’ 8am lectures.)
3. Bonus are given in finals to those who always attended.

Let’s face it, it’s a realistic world.

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