The evilest machination of unenlightened university administration I've had to face is finally over. 3 major exams, deadlines for a 20 page lab report of a semester long project and a 14 page research proposal on chemoautotrophy in deepwater Crenarchaeota all packed in the past 4 days. They probably think everyone uses the crack vending machines in the admin building. Well, it's all now safely vaulted in the crypt of retrospection and all that's left is an essay comparing the human translations of the kshatriya and bushido warrior codes. Maybe I'll find a sub-clause on dealings with illicitly fueled administrators.
Anyway, on to shinier things, vacation approaches and looks to be as hallucinogenic as my life right now. An elaborate weekend of survival packing is in order and...why? why does my roommate listen to so much of Justin Timberlake's attacks on music? ...figuring out how to defy gravity and airport balances.
This class is inspirational. I've come up with a new sport: Swan wrestling - but here's the catch, you have to wait until the swan has just taken off (usually after running for about 100m) and picked up enough momentum with their 30kg body weight (heaviest flying bird out there). It's usually fatal, but it'll look rather funny though.
My weekend was consumed brutally by grad school applications and writing abstracts on the neurobiology of honey-bees, salmon, birds, and a veritable bestiary of nervous systems. Thanks to an absolute slaughterfest of an anime called Berserk, my thoughts on human life oscillated dangerously during this time.
Anyway, can't slow down, this is the last ditch for this semester and then back home for some Wintertime sugar highs. Looking forward to that. The future man! Speaking of which the spider in our bathroom at the beginning of the year is now about 6. They occasionally try to web me, but hey, I'm a vertebrate, and no chelicerate under 1 foot in diameter is going to elicit any violence. non-violence, yeah.
Made myself some honey enriched tea after finding a website claiming honey and cinnamon mixtures can cure pretty much anything. Funny how a random psycho's page on the internet can actually motivate me to do something I've been reading for years. Might as well, the short-days up here make the 8am seem like 5 so one can get all twilight-metaphysical with the tea. It's the force, man. The force.
Right now I'm sitting in a biodiversity class filled with first years. I wonder if they know I'll be TAing them during their biochemistry and cell biology lab course...take that! ha! I'm a freaking nice TA though, so they say when I point a loaded pipette at them, hehehehe - yeah, frigate birds! cleptoparasites, freaks.
German roads are unique. It seems like an opportunity for serious
injury or death or a run-in with the law itself around every
corner. A German reader sets you straight.
Live messenger, live writer, live spaces...we're getting wired more than Serial Experiments Lain. Forget not to hone the spirit in moments of solitude between restarts....
Check out BBC's viewpoint: 'Obscenity' of carbon trading for background.
The entire notion is sickening - dumping pollutants on third world "acceptors" (be it computer hardware loaded with toxic flame retardants and the like or straight waste) is largely a ploy to fool consumers and voters into thinking the problem is being dealt with at home. If you don't see the effects there probably aren't any, huh?
This sort of "economic delocalization" is an underhanded way with relocating 19th century social structures (such as a deeply impoverished working class) and practices (colonialism and generally treating the Earth as if its resources are limitless) out of the sight of the 'modern' world. They're still there, and most of them are living off them like parasites.
The McNasty, a culinary composition from the the bounty of the college cafeteria, designed to hurt...
Ingredients
Method
Cut off one end of the bread roll and hollow it out. Cram in one slice of the dubious cheese. Add 2-3 dashes of chili sauce. Add a tomato quarter. Add another 2 dashes of chili sauce. Cram in another slice of cheese. 2 dashes of chili sauce. Add ~1tbsp of cream cheese. Chili sauce. Tomato. Another slice of cheese. Chili sauce. Tomato. Chili sauce. Cheese. Tomato. Cheese. Chili sauce. And you're done!
Microwave at 600W for about one minute...
Principle
Pain and re-evaluation of life. The microwave process should allow the terminal cheese slice to ooze out something awful and make the tomato scalding hot - a most worthy surprise and an obstacle to the over-convenienced life-style the method represents. The chili sauce serves to clear the awareness and sensitize the systemic realization of the bigger picture (if you think I'm rambling just try it...). The cream cheese is a real expansion of potentiality in the middle, just as one's reflexes are beginning to settle. Other factors are subjective.
Dosage
One every 2 weeks. Weekly only if high metabolism is in effect. Risks involve arteriosclerosis and a bad case of enlightenment.
...informal measures are adopted such as seeking the mediation of influential clan leaders to encourage marriage between a rapist and his victim, the reports said.
'Laws' like this allow these regions to be infested with human trash. It's in their own interests to clean up.
THE 13 COUNTRIES BLACKLISTED
5 hours of selecting bacterial colonies last night with hundreds of sterilized toothpicks was an easy step to otherworldly conversation in the vacuum hood. In the next week I'll be taking the first steps to engineer a suicide plasmid through serial voodoo with some of the most evil enzymes I've met. I have commenced the preparation and assembled the sacrifices, now all that remains is to ensure the right cosmic alignments....
"Iraq For Sale" can be described as an anti-war film in the spirit of Errol Morris' "The Fog of War" or Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11". U.S. history and political manipulation are the themes, respectively, of Morris' and Moore's films, but Greenwald's thesis is that the George W. Bush administration's love of privatisation is slowly and irrevocably destroying the democratic ideals of transparency and accountability.
BRUSSELS, Nov 2 (IPS) - Médecins Sans Frontières and other groups campaigning for access to affordable medicines in developing countries are closely following a case filed by the Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis against Indian patent law.
A decision in this case can create an important precedent, with consequences that go far beyond India. "If the Novartis challenge against the Indian patent law is successful, patients worldwide who depend on India for affordable medicines risk becoming victims," Ellen 't Hoen, policy director with the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines told IPS.
Now this really sucks. Responsibility lies in all our hands thanks to the consumer market - stop buying it and the lack of demand might help ease the situation. As consumers, we have a lot of power - let's be responsible with it.
A jittery little marine gastropod that's been squirming its way into my heart thanks to the endless hours I've spent researching its cellular mechanisms of memory formation. Interesting, but over-bountiful. Just look at it...looking at ya...
If you ever need to do a report on it, you know who to ask :P
Ingredients?
Capture the kiwi fruits in the Tupperware. Keep sealed for about 2.5 months. After that, open once to scare room-mate. Wait another 2 weeks. Witness.
(I wouldn't recommend ingesting it unless you put the right microbes in)
A few stories I found striking, saddening, and an appeal to popular awareness.
In the last two years, more than a quarter of a million people have had their homes demolished along the banks of the Yamuna.
The city authorities plan to make Delhi completely slum-free in time for the arrival of thousands of foreign athletes and spectators for the next Commonwealth Games, due to be held here in 2010.
...
cafe tables bearing myriad fare. Strains of German, French, English, and Dutch are heard at every turn through the music and unrestrained conversation of the crowds, a conforting and much missed characteristic of the Mediterranean.
Now here's something interesting: rasfonin a compound produced by the cave fungus Trichurus terrophius - a step towards the magic bullet in combatting cancer cells while leaving normal cells intact. A promising compound, definitely worth keeping an eye on and another reason to protect even the more unlikely habitats out there.
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It's a just married rickshaw darting through and around the tense scene above - just married to what we'll never know. Probably another rickshaw. Very imbibable. Browsing through the streets was rather cool. Anti-commercialism aside, the store-browsing gets a very unusual 3/5 fairly happening rating mostly due to the untiring crowd flow couple with an array of street performers ranging from your happily strumming Rastafarian singers pouring out a healthy pinch of soul to impromptu string quartets refining the air. After picking up a evil six pack of dunkin' donuts (I'm such a sell out I know, but Bavarian cream!) we headed out for lunch in a nifty little Indian restaurant unsurprisingly called the Taj Mahal in which faces were stuffed to the extreme. The donuts were relegated to snack-in-lieu-of-dinner. As an additional bonus we happened upon an 'English Store' which imports all sorts of Avon sourced succour. Real tea was acquired.
Good stuff, high wire and everything with politically incorrect and sharp humour. Hope to see him again sometime. Well, there are the highlights of the day - today's dedicated to recouping and getting ready to slaughter more bacteria on Monday. Till next time!
The only way into the town of Juelich, a gas powered, independently owned rail service that Deutsche Bahn grudgingly accomodates on a grass covered ridge of its Dueren station. We ride the line to the Research Centre every morning, fairly decent service but with a touch of the arbitrary about it.
The Hexenturm (Witch Tower or something of that sort). Bombed out during the war, the main gate still stands. On the left, an art gallery has emerged and on the right a guesthouse. The inside is quite interesting, little niches with narrow windows decorate the walls, probably where the Dread Witches of Julicum hurled spells at the invading forces of the day.
Pancakes. Cooking is a little side project of this internship experience. No fast food junkie am I! The pancakes of course, hardly describe the breadth of the culinary experimentation happening. Muahaha.Greetings wonderful world of the outside! Yes, it has been a great while and today I get a chance to post (since all our Pseudomonas and DH5a E. coli strains refuse to grow so we can lyse them and take their DNA) despite the evil German layout kezboard in front of me.
Right now I´m interning in the Research Centre of Jülich, where I´ve become temporary staff of the Institute of Molecular Enzyme Technology - pretty funky eh? even got the security card to get by the grim looking gate guards and avoid questioning. I suppose when you´ve got genetically modified human pathogens in stock (let alone the insane equipment the Plasma Physics buildings are full of) one needs grim looks. That´s largely the reason why no pictures of the Centre shall ever appear on the web2.0, I apparently signed an agreement swearing me to secrecy concerning the wheelings and dealings of this place.
Something is fishy, we´re outside the city with forests all around and only 1 road in, what appears to be an uranium enrichment research facility is just a few hundred meters down right before we pass the military base on the way home. Creepy.
Currently the apartment I´m in is a small affair but livable with cross ventilation! The kitchenette allows much experimentation on the weekends since, so far, there´s been little to do thanks to the heat. I hate electric stoves. Anyway, the daily grind is quite a drain and I usually plonk utterly after the end of the day here. Could either be the fatigue or the effects of the chemicals.
I´ll see what I can do about photos, at least I might be able to show the world a few of this little outcrop of civilization.
Ciao for now...
World Map, UNHCRwww.ninemillion.org
A rapid drive down the road specially constructed and polished for the Queen's (insert fanfare) CHOGM visit and to another (possibly 'the') cornerstone of Maltese heritage, the temple complexes. Older than Stonehenge (ha!) and still astronomically useful tools of magic and mayhem.
Anyhow, through the Maltese spurge and Carob we wandered and eventually came to a most excellent swimming spot which has not seen the last of us, I mean, just look at it...
The day ended with a fuzzy feeling of happening and an evening game of pool to the locals of my area cheering on the football. Now, I must return to the Kenyan-Assam tea blend (it's really good, really).
Image courtesy of wikipedia
Nematocysts are inactivated by vinegar (or dilute acetic acid 5-10%). NOTE: If no vinegar is handy, then human urine will do in a pinch. If you have a choice in the matter, use a man's urine rather than a woman's urine. This is because females are more prone to occult urinary tract infections, thus introducing bacteria. Male urine is considered sterile, since men are much less likely to have a urinary tract infection.
Ah finally a brief stint of summer vacation. Only now does the sheer horror of the past semester get a chance to do a little jig in my mushy brain wearing stilletos and playing a bone tambourine with a rusty prosthetic limb. 
Click on the image to expand...
