This is why the Internet exists. (via Shira and Ari)

It's silly, yes, but it's also an interesting exercise in compare-and-contrast. Mostly what the video does is make me want to find every cross-cultural example of young men showing off to music, in groups. It seems to be something so very nearly universal among humans, to find out what the limits of our bodies are, to show our friends those findings, and to hoot in appreciation. It always makes me so happy to see it.

My inner 12-year-old boy decrees that the Word Of The Day today is: coxsackievirus. I swear the biologist that came up with that must've been giggling.

A useful point to anyone with as much common sense as me, or less: When working in a bio lab, don't follow the thought "Well, THAT looks odd" with "I wonder what it smells like?"

I'm smart enough not to do this in a chem lab, where sniffing mystery items can give me cancer. But I'm not smart enough to do this in a bio lab, where sniffing mystery things is not going to give me cancer, but is going to make me want to yarf.

However, the intellectual result, aside from the wanting to yarf, was useful enough to make me understand why old school chemists still hate fume hoods. The eyes alone can be somewhat limiting, particularly when combined with a lack of experience. Sure I have a nice microscope, but that just got me a nice picture of the nasties, without much more understanding of what I was seeing (hey, I'm an engineer, I never got much chance to look at contaminated cells before.) What were those clumps? They'd gotten larger since yesterday, so I knew it was cellular, but that doesn't narrow it down much. The nose is filled with some very useful chemical receptors and a lifetime of experience. One sniff screamed "poo", and reminded me of the obvious: there's people in that same lab culturing e.coli. Duh. The experience would have been just as instructive if the contamination had been yeast, though that wouldn't have prevented me from trying the trick again. I *like* the smell of rising bread.

Life with Punk:

We got a cat in early December. As you can see, we are total suckers, and at this point exist merely to provide cozy laying-down spots and snacks.

It's an indication of just how much she is our furbaby, that my first inclination when I thought of writing about her is that, wait, when she grows up I don't want her to read this and get embarrassed, and I don't want the other cats at school to make fun of her.

I wasn't thinking this in a fully conscious way, and then realized: duh. I mean, we'll be home-cat-schooling her anyhow. :p

But she was one of the things that helped to temporarily kill blogging for me. I didn't want this to be All Cat All The Time, even just temporarily. Daily cat pics can be had elsewhere. I'm mostly getting all the geekiness out in one big lump.

When we first brought her home, we just got whatever cat food seemed appropriate, and figured we'd go with that for the time being until we'd actually done some research. She seems happy--nay, obsessed--with her meals, and the food we got happens to conform to the vet-recommended standards. But it's meat, and after being a vegetarian for over 12 years it feels a little odd to have a big wodge of beef and chicken goo in the fridge. The one ethical decision we *had* made in the pet food aisle the night before we got her was no fish; there's no reason to decimate an already-ailing part of the ecosystem for our new friend, cute as she is.

Our friends Ari and Shira have three cats that are all vegan, though, and are the sort of handy friends who can provide instant reference books upon request. So right now I'm reading and figuring out how to at least reduce the amount of meat in her diet. She does seem to love the stuff, as is her instinct, and to regard any non-meaty things I offer her with frank disdain, no matter how much she cries for them as I make dinner. We're still working towards that.

Little dude had a rough time for the first probably-2-ish years of her life; she showed up at the SPCA with 3 kinds of worms and a mostly-dead litter of kittens (I heard in one place that one survived, and that none did elsewhere). But she'd made a friend with someone who'd pulled for her to get expensive treatments and not be put down--someone who wrote "Best kitty ever!" on all her initial checkup forms.

The Ithaca SPCA is really beautifully set up. The cats live in groups of 2-4 in little glassed-in cubicles, that have blankets and chairs and baskets and toys. It gives you a good chance to interact with the cats on their own terms, to get some sense of what they'd be like in a house. Punky was so, so mellow; I messed with the cats I liked a little to make sure they didn't swat the second you touched a paw, and she rolled over to get me to stop bothering her, but was otherwise unfazed.

Part of that was because she was still recovering. She's plenty goofy now, and knows exactly what those pointy things sticking out of her paw are good for (particularly 10 minutes before my alarm goes off in the morning, because she can't stand the excitement of it almost being Time For Deliciousness).

For the most part, though, she's very fun to have around. We made a good choice in family member. She's pretty clearly One Of Us already.