Update

For those who are interested:

- Moving into the new apartment went much smoother than I expected it to (and many thanks to those who helped!)
- We're about 90% unpacked, which is good (although that last 10% is always a bitch).
- The new apartment is smaller than the old one, but pretty much everything else about it is much, much better. It's in a complex with a multi-person custodial/managerial staff, all of whom seem to be sober when they're on duty. The attitude towards broken things seems to be to fix them rather than paint over them. The building itself is small enough that it probably isn't supporting a large population of cockroaches. We're in a real neighbourhood, with shops and people who walk and restaurants and *gasp* a subway stop. I could almost cry. The only thing I really don't like is that I'm now much too far from school to bike there. On the other hand, I'm biking distance from other things in the city, which is awesome. And because we're on the subway line, the commute to school by TTC is only about 10-15 minutes longer than it used to be.
- New address will go out to those whose business it is fairly soon. Phone number has not changed.
- Classes start on Monday. There is a >0 chance we'll have finished unpacking by then. Eek.
- After making us wait for the better part of a week, Primus has finally seen fit to provide us with phone and internet service, hence this post.

So It Turns Out...

Greg Laden? Awesome on race. Awesome on science education. Kind of a sexist asshat.

It's really a shame. Come on people, there are so many good reasons why this woman shouldn't be VP. Having been a beauty queen isn't one of them.

I'm actually quite disappointed, because I'm usually a fan of Laden's. But I know that he was called out on the beauty queen thing in his first post on Palin, and he hasn't either stopped doing it, or explained why he thinks it's okay.

Bizarre

So, I'm in the middle of packing to move apartments and yesterday I was going through the cabinet in the bathroom, packing stuff up or throwing it out, and I encountered a lipstick that I bought, probably in 2003. Now, most of my makeup has disappeared over the years, since every time I move it's been that much longer since I've worn any of it, so I throw more of it out, but I remembered really liking the colour of this lipstick, so I decided to put it on to see if I still liked it enough to hang on to it. And you know what? I totally suck at putting on lipstick.

I have no idea when that happened. I mean, I've never worn makeup regularly, but it used to be that the once or twice a year that I'd wear it for ballet performances, halloween, or Meow Mix was enough to keep me competent at applying it, and I actually kind of prided myself on staying decent at this skill I almost never used. Unfortunately, over the last few years I've stopped doing all those things and I think 2004 may have been the last time I put on any makeup at all. And now I totally suck at it. And it wasn't just that the final result was lopsided and funny-looking (although it was). I felt super awkward trying to put it on, like I just couldn't find the right angle for my wrist and forearm. I remember I used to feel that way when I first was learning to apply makeup, when I was 10 or 11. It was weird.

Despite the hatchet job I did on my lips, I decided the colour was nice enough that the lipstick was worth keeping. Maybe there will be a party in the next year or two worth wearing it for. And maybe I'll even relearn how to put it on.

I did, however, throw out a nail polish that had separated and a blush that was at least seven years old, which brings the makeup I own down to, um... one lipstick. I feel like this is an occasion that should be marked somehow. The official passing of the era of me pretending I'm someone who might wear makeup. If I didn't think my labmates would die of shock (and if I knew how to put it on) I'd wear the lipstick to work tomorrow.

Huh.

Food Meme

Food meme, from Mark Chu-Carroll. Because it's really the most interesting thing I have time to say right now. Too tired, bored, cranky, and half-packed to actually think.


1. Venison: No, haven't had any game meats
2. Nettle tea: No. Nettles hurt. For all that I understand the tea doesn't sting you, I'm prejudiced against nettles
3. Huevos rancheros: Don't think so
4. Steak tartare: Nope
5. Crocodile: Nope
6. Black pudding: No
7. Cheese fondue: Yes
8. Carp: Don't know. Probably not. I didn't really keep track of which fish I ate as a kid, it was sort of all the same to me.
9. Borscht: For all that I, like MarkCC, am an Ashkenazi Jew, I don't think I've ever had borscht
10. Baba ghanoush: Yep. I like it best when it's really just hummus with eggplant.
11. Calamari: Yeah, couple times. Not as good as Chinese barbequed squid, but edible.
12. Pho: Nope.
13. PB&J sandwich: Yes, of course, and repeatedly. But I'm not a big fan.
14. Aloo gobi: Potatoes and cauliflower. What's not to love?
15. Hot dog from a street cart: I think I've only ever had the vegetarian kind. I don't think I ever ate streetmeat before I became vegetarian.
16. Epoisses: Nope, never even heard of it. I gather it's cheese.
17. Black truffle: No, for all that truffles come highly recommended, I'm always suspicious of non-button mushrooms because I tend not to like them. Their texture icks me out.
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes: Nope
19. Steamed pork buns: Nope
20. Pistachio ice cream: Yeah. It's okay I guess, I've never been a big ice cream fan.
21. Heirloom tomatoes: Don't think so, but I'd love to.
22. Fresh wild berries: Yup.
23. Foie gras: No, ew.
24. Rice and beans: Of course
25. Brawn, or head cheese: No
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper: Not yet!
27. Dulce de leche: Yeah
28. Oysters: again, ew.
29. Baklava: Uh huh.
30. Bagna cauda: I don't know it by name, but looking at Wiki's description of the dish, I think I've had it or something very like it. It's certainly familiar.
31. Wasabi peas: Yes, unimpressed.
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl: Well, I've had clam chowder and I've certainly had sourdough, but not in that combination.
33. Salted lassi: Yes. Seriously overrated, at least by my dad.
34. Sauerkraut: Yum!
35. Root beer float: Yeah. Waaaayyy too much sugar.
36. Cognac with a fat cigar: No. Cigars are gross. And I don't think I've actually had cognac
37. Clotted cream tea: Once, in England, with the Bear. It was very rich, but also nummy.
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O: Once, I think. I avoid jello shots. I prefer my booze in liquid form.
39. Gumbo: As in the vegetable, okra, unfortunately yes. As in the specific kind of stew made from okra, no.
40. Oxtail: No
41. Curried goat: No. My meat-eating days and my curry-eating days didn't really overlap.
42. Whole insects: Ugh, no. Arthropods are gross and not meant to be eaten.
43. Phaal: Not under that name. Probably not.
44. Goat's milk: I don't think so. I've certainly had goat's cheese and possibly yogurt, but I don't think I've ever just drunk the milk.
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$130 or more: No.
46. Fugu: No. Like with curry, my willingness to be adventurous with food didn't develop until long after I stopped eating meat.
47. Chicken tikka masala: No. See above re: goat curry
48. Eel: No. See above re: fugu.
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut: Meh. Very mushy, sugary donut. Seriously don't see what the big deal is.
50. Sea urchin: No. See above re: fugu, eel.
51. Prickly pear: If this is the same as a cactus pear then yes. And yum!
52. Umeboshi: No, I'd never heard of them
53. Abalone: No. I haven't eaten a lot of shellfish.
54. Paneer: Yeah. It's bland.
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal: Ugh, no. McDonald's hamburgers are so disgusting.
56. Spaetzle: I'm not 100% sure but, again, the Wiki description looks very familiar, so probably.
57. Dirty gin martini: No, but I'd be willing to try.
58. Beer above 8% ABV: Yeah. These are popular in Montreal. One of the Unibroue ones like Maudite or Fin du Monde. Tasted like olives. Blech.
59. Poutine: If it's 3 am and you've got the drunken munchies it's awesome. Otherwise, ugh.
60. Carob chips: bleh. also meh. Something that's meant to take the place of chocolate shouldn't invoke those responses.
61. S'mores: Surprisingly, only the microwave kind. I haven't done a lot of campfires in my life.
62. Sweetbreads: No.
63. Kaolin:The only meaning I know for this is a kind of clay so, um, no.
64. Currywurst: Huh. Pork sausage with curry sauce. Nope.
65. Durian: Not yet, but I will...
66. Frogs' legs: Um... I think I may have tasted them off someone else's plate at some point. But maybe not.
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake: aka queue de castor? Yes. I spent two weeks making them, which was enough time for the oil on the floor to cause my rubber soles to dissolve. I still get nauseous at the smell of frying batter.
68. Haggis: I've been in the same room as it....
69. Fried plantain: Yum!
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette: That's fucking gross.
71. Gazpacho: Yeah, a few times. Kind of meh.
72. Caviar and blini: Um.. I've had each element, but not together.
73. Louche absinthe: No, but I probably wouldn't turn it down.
74. Gjetost, or brunost: No. Apparently it's a variety of cheese
75. Roadkill: No, but Dave has.
76. Baijiu: No.
77. Hostess Fruit Pie: Never heard of it. This must be an American thing.
78. Snail: Once, when I was little. I remember loving it.
79. Lapsang souchong: Some kind of tea, right? I don't think so.
80. Bellini: No, but again, wouldn't turn it down.
81. Tom yum: This can be hard to find vegetarian. I don't think so.
82. Eggs Benedict: Once, maybe. Or something like it. Eggs with a heavy, creamy sauce. No meat.
83. Pocky: Yeah. I'm a fan of chocolate-covered pretzel objects, so I liked it.
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant: No.
85. Kobe beef: Don't think so.
86. Hare: Nope.
87. Goulash: Since the person who did all the cooking when I was growing up was Hungarian, I'm inclined to say probably, but I don't remember it.
88. Flowers: A few times.
89. Horse: No.
90. Criollo chocolate: Don't know. I don't really pay attention to if/how fancy my chocolate is. I'm not as excited about chocolate as some people.
91. Spam: Ew, no. Fuckin gross, man.
92. Soft shell crab: No. See above re: insects.
93. Rose harissa: don't think so.
94. Catfish: Nope.
95. Mole poblano: Surprisingly, no. But I will.
96. Bagel and lox: I grew up half Jewish in Toronto. I don't think it would have been avoidable.
97. Lobster Thermidor: See above re: insects.
98. Polenta: Yes, repeatedly, but only willingly once.
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee: No. I stopped drinking coffee in my teens, when it started making me sick.
100. Snake: Nope.

The Rev also added a few extras.

1. Elk: No.
2. Ostrich: No.
3. Moose: No.
4. Whole hog BBQ: I've been at one, but I was already vegetarian, so I didn't partake.
5. Wine @ >$400/bottle.: God no. I have better things to do with 400$
6. Home made bacon/sausage: I'm assuming that buying strips of bacon at the grocery store and then cooking them at home doesn't count. I'll say no. Update: I've been reminded that the woman who took care of me when I was between 1 and 2 years old used to make home made sausage, and that I loved it. So I revise my answer to yes.
7. Chocolate and chilis: No, but I plan to try it soon,
8. Chittlins: Didn't we already do this one? No and ew.
9. Moonshine: No.
10. Quail eggs: Once. It was raw. I slurped and swallowed without really tasting, and was very proud of myself that I managed even that much.

And Mark added some more:

1. Monkfish liver: No
2. Live scallop: No.
3. Fried chicken giblets: No.
4. Duck cracklings: No.
5. Grappa: Um... I've spent enough time drinking booze on the Italy/Austria border that I'm inclined to think so, but I don't remember specifically.

And in the spirit of adding things, I've had:

1. kolrabi
2. cream off the top of non-homogenized milk
3. dosa

Codes are Cool

Mark Chu-Carroll of Good Math, Bad Math is doing an interesting and accessible (so far) series of posts about encryption. He started out explaining why encryption is relevant even to little folks like you and me, then he went on to explain how simple encryption like substitution ciphers work, and his latest is an explanation of rotating ciphers. It's fun stuff, go read it.

Latest Breakfast: Homemade Musli

I have a few requirements for breakfast. Breakfast must be reasonably low in sugar. If I have a high sugar breakfast I crash by 10 am. Breakfast must also contain at least some protein, for the same reason. Breakfast must not require any brain power, time, or effort to prepare.

For a while I was very into eggs for breakfast, often just having the whites to avoid excessive cholesterol, but cooking before I've had my tea is never a good idea, I wasn't too into having fried stuff every morning, and I wanted a change. So then we had smoothies for a while, but the ingredients were pretty pricey and it was keeping our weekly grocery cost just a little too high. So now we're trying something new. I'm making musli. It goes like this:

1 big bag (~1.5kg) quick oats
1 big bag raisins
1 container dried apricots, cut in eighths
1 medium bag currants
1 smallish bag slivered almonds
1 smallish bag chopped pecans
1 large amount shelled, unsalted sunflower seeds
1/2 cup oat bran
a medium amount of flax meal

Mix in a big bowl and store in a closeable hard plastic or glass container. Serve with vanilla soy milk or, you know, whatever makes you happy. The above recipe made enough to keep the two of us in breakfasts for two weeks.

Cuz He's Just That Kind of Guy

Focus on the Patriarchy asks their daddy to pee on Obama's birthday cake.

Not that they're petty or anything.

Open Letter to Every Driver in Scarborough

Pay attention, fuckheads.

Via my dad.

Hold Nothing Sacred

and lift your glass to P.Z. Myers. He stood up with grace, wit, and courage, to say "I am Spartacus," in the face of overwhelming insanity. I salute him.

You have 12 hours

Before Joss Whedon's Supervillian musical in three acts disappears from the freeform internets and you have to download it from iTunes or wait for the DVD. So go. Watch it now.

LINEs, SINEs, and the Design Inference

Transposons are wacky little genes, and really kind of cool. You can see Wikipedia's explanation of transposons here, but I'll give you the short version. What I'm describing here are what Wikipedia calls Class II transposons.

A transposon is a sequence of DNA that can move around in your genome. It comes in long and short versions, and copies of it are found interspersed throughout the genome. The long ones (Long INterspersed Elements, or LINEs) encode one protein, a transposase. What the transposase does is it cleaves the transposon from its current location and inserts it elsewhere in the genome. And that's ALL it does. SINEs (Short INterspersed Elements) do even less. What they do is be sequences that the LINEs' transposases recognize, and therefore transpose. And that's fucking IT.

Transposons are quite possibly the wackiest things I've encountered all week. They don't DO anything. By which I mean, they have no influence on an organism's life cycle. They just hang out in your genome, moving around and taking up space.

I like things like transposons because they really drive the point home that we're just something that happened. When you're studying stuff in the natural world, especially biology, it can be really easy to start anthropomorphizing and attributing purpose without even realizing you're doing it. So much of biology is so fucking complex and often really quite good at what it does, and it's in all the language that we use, talking about what a given enzyme is "for," or "why" a given trait evolved, sometimes you can slip into thinking that we actually mean those things. And then you see something like a transposon, and it's obvious that it's not "for" anything. It has no purpose, no raison d'être. It does nothing but be there. And once you realize that it becomes obvious once again that that's equally true of us.

And for all that the design inference died 150 years ago with Darwin's work, it's crap like this that really makes it implausible to me. I mean, this is exactly the kind of random, pointless genomic drivel that one might expect to show up in a system of random changes that can get passed along, but a god designer would have to be some fucked up kind of surrealist to create something like this. I mean seriously. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!? Why? It's strange and off-putting.

Well, okay. There is one thing that transposons do. Transposons can cause non-silent mutations. There are two main ways that they can do this, both at the insertion stage. The first way is, when they cut the DNA to insert themselves, they cut the different strands at different points, creating an overhang and a gap on each side. Then, while they're inserting, the gaps are filled in with sequences complementary to the overhangs (and therefore identical to the opposite overhangs), so when the process is complete you have two copies of the sequence, one on either side of the transposon. If this sequence was something your cell was using, well, now it has two of them.

The other way a transposon can have an effect is by inserting itself right into a gene (or promoter region of a gene, or whatever) that you were using, thereby breaking it. This is apparently the sort of mutation that caused hemophilia in the European royal families. A transposon inserted itself into the gene for a protein involved in blood clotting and bam! No more blood clots; sucks to be them.


But for all that that's an effect of transposons, it's only a real effect in the context of evolution. What would be the point of that in something that was designed?

Transposons are cool.

Don't Worry, He's Got it Covered.

Aren't we all glad that God is on the job? Ray Comfort, that banana-lovin' fiend, reassures us that, despite appearances to the contrary, God is properly punishing California for legalising same-sex marriage. In fact, God is so damn good, he preemptively punished California last year, to whit:

We are having the worst drought in our recorded history. Last year 1,155 homes were destroyed.

Via.

George Carlin is Not in Heaven

But only because there's no such thing, and you know he wouldn't thank us for pretending. His passing marks a sad day for intelligent people everywhere. He may not have been a Mary Ann or a Molly Ivins, but his voice added a refreshing and needed dose of sanity and perspective to the prevaling North American discourse and he will certainly be missed.

Via.

Done

The pigeon situation has been dealt with. In case you were wondering.

Dammit!

A pigeon has laid two eggs in the flowerpot I was going to put my strawberry plant in, and is sitting on them. It stared at me the whole time I took down the drying racks, which I have brought inside pending our decision about what to do about the family growing on our balcony.

On the one hand, it does seem unfair to kick a pigeon out of its home and kill its children-to-be when, as my sister said, I didn't have a sign up or anything. But on the other hand, pigeons are creepy and poo on your laundry and the balcony isn't really big enough for the both of us.

Grumble grumble.

Thoughts on Commuting by Bike in the Suburbs

1.  Distances in the suburbs are longer.
No matter how you slice it, 12.5 km (not including the vertical components, which are considerable) is a long way to go twice a day. When you expect everyone to get everywhere by car, or even bus, such distances are unremarkable, but on a bike it's a serious commitment

2.  Overall vertical vector matters.
However hilly the road may be, if there's an overall downhill trend going one way, and a corresponding overall uphill trend the other way, you'll notice. If you live in the Ferrel cell and your downhill-trending leg is eastward, so you have the wind at your back going downhill, and in your face coming uphill, you notice that too.

From this, I have developed what I think should be every cyclist's motto: Always live uphill from where you spend your days. The reason for this is that if your trip out in the morning is going to be downhill, it's fairly easy to choose to ride your bike. And then in the evening, when both you and your bike have to get home, you just have to suck it up and ride uphill. I have had the excellent sense to live uphill from my various school/work for the past seven years and it has served me well.

3.  Desolation is not a cyclist's friend.
Seriously. If your bike breaks down on the side of a major suburban road, ain't no one there to help you. Not that I needed help, or would have accepted had it been offered, a mis-shifted chain is a fairly easy fix, but if it had been something more major I would have been royally screwed.

4.  Other suburban cyclists are completely fucking insane.
In downtown Toronto you rarely see a car doing more than about 50 km/h; there's just too much traffic. I'd estimate roughly 30% of the downtown cyclists wear helmets. On the major street I ride along out here, although the speed limit is 60, people regularly do 70 - 90 km/h. On the way out in the morning I didn't see a lot of other cyclists, but coming home this evening I saw several, only one looked over 25 and he was also the only one other than me wearing a helmet. And a lot of these helmetless kids rode on the street.*

5.  Bikes are asshole magnets.
Apparently there's nothing like a sweaty woman on a bicycle, red-faced and grimacing, wearing incredibly unflattering gym clothes and an enormous backpack complete with waist strap to really bring out the catcalling urge in jackasses.

Okay, I don't honestly think that what I look like has anything to do with it. I think the driver/cyclist and pedestrian/cyclist dynamic just lends itself really well to that kind of jackassery. One of you is whizzing by the other at high relative speed, which adds to the anonymity, and a person on a bicycle is less maneuverable and less able to respond verbally or manually, and therefore less able to meaningfully object than a person on foot. I think a lot of this is also true of the driver/pedestrian dynamic but since we don't do a lot of walking out here in the Grey Wasteland, I haven't been catcalled in a long time. It's been nice.

6.  People in the suburbs drive while unconscious.
It's the only explanation I can think of for how someone turning right, or stopping at an intersection, or pulling out of a gas station, can completely fail to notice the bicycle that is about to be RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. Seriously. Downtown drivers have this problem to, but not nearly to the same extent. If you ride in the suburbs, invest in the loudest bell you can find; you'll need it.

And those are my observations on suburban cycling. I biked 25 km today and I'm tired. I also think I could use a shower.

---

*I ride on the sidewalk. Not only because, as mentioned, people drive way too fast, but also because, this being the suburbs, nobody actually walks anywhere.

Why I Love My Job

Conversation between me and one of the grad students in the lab today:

Me: Why are there fish from the grocery store in the freezer?
Grad Student: This is a fish lab.
m: uh huh...
gs: They're silversides.
m: and...
gs: But they're selling them as smelt, which is not even the same family! And they claim to have caught them in an area where you don't find silversides. So I figured I'd bring them back here, sequence their DNA, and find out what they really are.
m: you know you're the world's biggest geek, right?
gs: No, this is sweet. It's forensic ichthyology!

While We're At It

Continuing in the vein of posting links while not providing any of my own content (slated to continue until I have something interesting to say and school lets up enough for me to say it), I received a link today to a new buddy blog. Sinead, my old friend from Montreal, evolutionary biologist extraordinaire, and all-around good potato, has a food-focused blog called Kitchen Dancing.

I had forgotten what an amazing writer Sinead is, and how exquisitely quirky she can be. I hadn't forgotten what an amazing cook she is though, and I have spent much of the afternoon and evening salivating over the blog's archives. If she and I don't end up in the same city some time soon I may find myself trying to swim across the Atlantic.

Olbermann Tells Bush to "Shut the Hell Up"

But only because you can't say fuck on television.

Seriously, if Olbermann has a stroke I think he'll be able to sue Dubya over it; he's getting into some serious neck vein territory here and not without cause.

If you want to see Olbermann's angriest Special Comment yet, go click that link.

Links

Amanda at Pandagon does an excellent job explaining why virginity makes a lousy asset.

Also, via Crooks and Liars, I learned about Hasan Elahi, a man who, having had his civil rights violated by the FBI, decides to just give them all up. While I can understand the practical appeal of having a constant alibi, the fact that sources like Wired and C&L are treating this as a cool and innovative way of dealing with civil rights violations, instead of an understandable but tragic capitulation to an oppressive regime is seriously problematic.