Salamanders Lost!

So today I was GOING to go out to catch salamanders, but I was unable to do so. The night life in my room had a different agenda, and that was to be up all night. I may be in another room, but when the door gets hit, you get startled awake. This happened all throughout the night.... So in total I may have gotten 2 hours of sleep all night, most of that was after 5am this morning. I had to leave by 6 to do the salamander research, so it was a very much no go for me today. needless to say I am upset about this. At 4:45 I had to send a message to my leader informing him of my lack of sleep, "Sleep has alluded me this night due to the night life (roommates) that has taken place here. Sadly I must say I will be of no use today." He's a nice guy and he understands, but I'm sure they could've used some more help out there.

My thinking is that because it is nearing the end of finals people are beginning to release all the tension, so they express it all during the night... whilst I sleep. The only thing to keep me from utter sorrow is this simple video.

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One More to Go.

So I now have done 3 of 4 of my finals. Strangely though, I feel good so far. After the A on the astronomy final I feel like things may be going well this first quarter.

Yesterday was chemistry, which I feel went rather well. Chemistry was hard, don't get me wrong. I finally sat down and studied for that painful experience. There were a few instances when I was stuck on a problem then randomly, "THIS CHAIR IS FUN!!!!!" AND IT REALLY WAS! That stupid thought crossed my mind a few times though. I felt a little bad with my TA sitting in front of me, watching me as I randomly started to spin around in my chair. It was the weirdest thing. I had never sat on a chair that was on a swivel arm from between two chairs before. On top of that, the chair twisted on the arm! I was like," TWO DEGREES OF SPIN, OMFG, WTF!!" Back to the test though. I'll admit there were some things on there that caught me for a bit, though I think I got them for the most part. We'll see how it ends up, I figured out that I needed around 180/210 to get like 85% in the class, so with curve that should end up being an A.

Today was Anthro, which I just got back from. Fun. There were a few questions that made me laugh at either the simplicity, or that they were on the practice, verbatim. The last one especially. People kept on sending emails out asking how to do it when it was a simple Hardy-Weinberg question. Not sure why people thought that was so hard... simple 1=p^2+2pq+q^2, where p is frequency of dominant allele and q is frequency of recessive allele. Remember to always mind your p's and q's. Quite possibly my favorite question on there though was about someone running for senator of Delaware in 1998 stating her ignorance of evolutionary theory. "If evolution were true, then why aren't monkeys evolving into humans?" That was her quote. It still shocks me how people holding offices of power in this country can be so ignorant, and proudly so, of high school science. Sadly, it's this ignorance that has made me less fond of a few people I know. Like they're smart, but they hold this veil to shield themselves from any evidence that contradicts their world view. Oh well. Perhaps sometime I convince them, but until then, I'm going to continue enjoying the truth.

Well, only have one more to go. Calculus. They vain of many people's existence. It's on Friday so I have time to prepare and study, I mostly just need to refrain from making stupid mistakes. Last test, the only questions I missed were due to me just over looking one little aspect of the question. As soon as I got the test back I did each question I missed in under 5 min. On one I forget to multiply an integral by y, and the other I did half of it right with the other half needing to be done in the same exact way.... How do you over look that? Clearly I was looking for that in the problem, but I didn't see it happening twice? RAGE!! Everything else, oh just dandy. Had to go and screw up those two with itsy bitsy over sights. Must not happen again.

Finally, I would like to inform people that I try not to do anymore stories on Drew. He has asked me not to because he finds it annoying. Some may say this is censorship, but I feel it's more about his rights and respecting him. But the previous ones will remain up because they have comedic value.

BAD JUJU!!!

So yesterday Drew was acting a bit more hyper than usual, to say the least. Earlier he tied his lanyard around his head to blind fold himself. From here he decided to play a round of "Bad Adventures", only instead of going anywhere he started to hunt down Jay whilst calling him "Brownie". This lasted for a good half hour. Unfortunately the video will not load here, so some fixing will have to take place, but it is available on facebook.

The second occurrence happened later in the day. Our roommate Sean decided to get everyone xmas gifts. Well... he nailed it for Drew when he pulled out a Nerf Gun. To this surprise Drew screeches out, "I've never been allowed to have a nerf gun before!" BAD JUJU! When he gets this, my first reaction is, "I'm gonna go to the bathroom (to hide)." While I'm brushing my teeth I have this horrible thought that Drew is going to come storming through the bathroom to shoot me. Every time someone comes through the door I nearly drop what I'm doing out of fear. When I make it back up to my room, I slowly open the door to have the gun pointed at me with Jay on the floor. This first video is of the next few minutes.

After that Drew decided to go all out and wrapped himself up in his sheets and towels to look like he was wearing a hijab. He then proceeds to create a "wand" by taping two pencils together. Now Drew is a wizard and Jay has the gun. So they decide to stage a battle in our room, needless to say Jay lost in the epic fight that could have claimed many lives... no, not really. I didn't edit this at all, as the first few seconds would have been taken out.A bit over half way through the video, you may hear me whimpering a bit after Drew hits the door frame. The reason for this is that while he didn't hit me, I felt the stick skim over my ear and shoulder. It was at this point when my life flashes before me during a surge of adrenaline.

This whole experience has produced some rather fun quotes. My favorite of which was when the gun had 1 empty space in it. As drew points it towards me the script went a bit as such:
"There is one blank in this gun, so the question is: Are you feeling lucky? Here let me help you (points gun down and fires a blank). Oh well there it was. Still feeling lucky?"
The answer: No I don't.
Another addition to our list of quotes was simply, "Kill shot".

Just About the End of it.

So it has come, the end of my first quarter in college. Oh how time does fly. I have already had one final but it was not much, just astronomy lab. But this week is all about the big 3; Anthropology, Chemistry, and Math


Unfortunately, due to my background as an IB student, I feel that the finals aren't really going to challenge me that much, so I feel I can get away with procrastinating. Like when I try to study I can't focus on it because I look at the material and think to myself, "I know this shit. So why am I trying to read what I already know?" I'm sure this kind of thinking will get me in the end, but it's been almost trained into me thanks to IB (for those who don't know what IB is, I'll do a post about it some other time). My friend Charlie already got the punishment today after his math test, which he did study for. Here I am thinking that I've got it all figured out for my classes so I put off the studying. This is one part of my psychology I really don't like, among many other things. Here I sit on my laptop while in the other room two roommates are studying for chemistry, which is tomorrow, and I feel like I know the material. After all my last test I got one of the highest grades in the class. I should feel good about that, no? At the same time I didn't really study for that test either, I thought it was all fairly straight forward. So I agonize over not studying, but when I do try to study I can't focus. It's almost like a double edged sword and I'm about to swing it in one way or another.


I have learned about myself here in college though, and how to make it so I can study. No it's not use drugs. It's an aspect of myself I rather enjoy actually. When I move around I get into the material more. This might be one of the reasons I enjoy doing math. I do math homework on a white board to allow myself more freedom in motion. I begin to exaggerate strokes, making it more active and by doing so I activate my brain. Now I can't do that in class, so sometimes I'll talk to myself (a bad habit of mine some may claim), but it really does help me think about the problem at hand. I'm glad I'm realizing this about myself now at the start of college, otherwise I may be in for a world of hurt when it comes to the harder classes. 


If this post seems to change directions frequently, well... too bad.

AWESOME STORY: THE FIRST

So every week I plan on giving some story about some interesting scientific thing. Already have the first few weeks planned out, unless something big occurs in that time, which it just so happened to this week.

For those yet to have heard, a recent discovery of a bacterium in California's Mono Lake (no relationship to the disease) able to use arsenic in replacement of phosphorous, has been making a large fuss in the scientific world. Why so amazing some may ask? Well the answer is simple enough. Arsenic is poisonous to cells, any cell. Life uses 6 elements for most everything, CHNOPS, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and sulfur. The problem with arsenic is that is has properties very similar to that of phosphorous, and due to these similarities the cell confuses the two and may replace arsenic for phosphorous. When this occurs, cell respiration gets blocked there by depriving the cell of ATP. This replacement of one of the big 6 demonstrates a long held belief that life can occur with a different chemical make-up, big news for astrobiologists.

In these new bacterium, GFAJ-1 a member of the Halomonadaceae family, arsenic is actually able to be incorporated into the cell without killing it. When grown in a arsenic heavy environment, the phosphorous content dropped to 1/13 of it's original dry weight. However they really don't like doing. For one, when this happens the cells become bloated with large vacuoles. Reason is unsure, but it may be because some arsenate-containing molecules become unstable in water so the cell creates isolated spots with little to no water. Secondly, the bacteria grow 40% slower.


The thing that get's every one in a tizzy is that the arsenate ion (AsO₄^3-) replaces the phosphate ion (PO₄^3-) in many well known molecules. These molecules include DNA, RNA, serine, tyrosine, threonine, ATP (or maybe ATA now?), and some amino acids.

But anyways, yes this gives credence to the idea that life can occur else where in the universe using different chemical make-ups. Maybe next we can find an organism that replaces carbon with silicon.

Find the paper here -> Effects of arsenic cell metabolism and cell proliferation
Or perhaps a wikipedia search is more your style, in which case search for GFAJ-1
You could be more of a blog reader though (especially if you're reading my crap)  so read my friend Charlie's blog My Ecological Niche, I also suggest Pharyngula for more information.

UPDATE:
As it turns out this story is actually way over hyped. While the possibility of such a thing is amazing, the experiment itself was actually performed with such bad techniques that no good analysis can be given about the results of this. As I am not a professional (yet), I shall rely upon a professional to give the critical analysis of the paper. Is it REALLY incorporating arsenic? This is a very long post, so if you don't want to read it, don't worry not many people will. It is laid out with much scientific jargon.

Harmonious Persimmons

You know how everyone tells you to not eat the food in college dining halls. Well today I tried a new fruit, if you didn't guess it yet well take a moment to think it over...persimmon. Yes I tried a persimmon today, it was weird. I'm glad I did, but I'm not sure I like them. Perhaps it could be that it was in a college dining hall, but I'm in an ag school they should know how to do this shit I would hope. And another thing, every time I hear persimmon I think parsimony (good evolution word), leading to parsimonious, which then makes me think harmonious. So persimmons are harmonious, why would I not want to eat it?

Describing a persimmon is really rather easy, so I suppose that's one nice thing about it. They look like orange tomatoes. Seriously that's all it takes to describe how they look like. So I grab this tomato looking thing and just stare at it. I'm not sure I want to eat this for two reasons. 1. It looks like a tomato, I don't particularly like tomatoes. 2. I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to eat it. If people were to see me they would think I were from the 1600's as I had this very puzzling look as I flipped it around and played a bit with the leaves. Just as I was about to give up on eating this tumorous looking mass of pure orange, I see someone walking by with a bite taken out of his persimmon, so as the saying goes; monkey see, monkey do. I felt rather pathetic as build up the courage to plunge my teeth into it. When I do I get a sudden surprise, THIS SKIN IS THICK, WHAT THE HELL? I thought this skin would kind of pop like a tomato skin, but NOOO it has to be all tough and shit. WELL TOO BAD, THATS WHAT INCISORS ARE FOR!! So now that I am firmly committed on tearing this fruit apart, I discover the texture of it's flesh. In this case it was quite soft, I would have to describe it as sort of like stemmed sweet potato or something close to that, just mushy. Then I get the taste... I did not expect it to taste like pumpkin pie filling... I was very confused. Here I think tomato, a true berry, and then I get squash, and not just any squash but pumpkin, and I get whisked away to memories of Thanksgiving and Halloween, COMBINED AT LAST.   Perhaps this is just what orange tastes like when not in citrus, I don't know.

After a bit or two, I'm chewing slowly so as to understand the flavor more and to decide if I'm going to finish it or not, then a girl sits by me and I begin to converse with her about how odd I find this fruit. It feels like its the Frankenstein's monster of fruits. Tomato with Pumpkin, who would've concocted such a random union? While talking to this girl, whom I'm sad to say did not give me her name, I remember there is a darker spot on the fruit I am about to get to. This is when I stop and stare at it for a few more minutes. I don't know whether this is just what happens when it's bruised or if this is how it looks when rotting. Becoming truly scared for my life over this stupid thing  I decide not to take me chances with this frankenmato, So overall I'm still not sure if I like them or not, but I do worry that one of those bruised spots will be the cause for the zombie apocalypse upon all of us! BEWARE THE FRANKENMATO!!

Update: I have found out the name of the girl I talked to during this experience. Her name is Diane.

It's Drew Time

So those of you who know me personally also likely know my roommate Drew, an over controlling pessimistic social unknown. Oh also short fused. Two of these I had very little idea about until I moved in with him, but I make by. So early on in our rooming discover he lacks the idea of personal space. This isn't just a small thing like looking over my shoulder or taking my stuff, I'm fine with that. No it's when I'm talking to someone over skype or some online chat service and he steals my keyboard while I'm typing. At this point he will begin conversing with the person upon the other end... He has these same people available to him on his own computer, which is on, but no just takes over for about 10 min. Stealing  in this entails pushing me down to the desk and hovering over me, if I attempt to push him off, I get a nice strong hit to the head. During a conversation, he frequently interrupts to tell you that you are wrong and then proceeds to say what you were saying, so I don't really get a word in edge wise at this point.

Speaking of communication, he seems to know every little thing about pronunciation. Even if your pronunciation is a little off TIME TO CORRECT, and you can never do it right... It feels like I'm in Stalin's Soviet Union, and the KGB sleeps in the same room as I do. He even seems to have Stalin's ruthlessness. One night I try to go to sleep and so he straps my to my bed with belts and then decides no its not enough, what more could there by to add.... AHA THE BAMBOO STICK, just a note this bamboo stick has a sharpened end that gets point towards my neck literally 2 inches away. Hmmm nope still not good enough. AHA MUSIC STAND!!. Yes he has a music stand points the top, again right at my neck. Now I'm sure many are thinking, why didn't you just try to get out, well again if I attempt to he shoves me back down and slaps me. I'm generally a nice person about these things, I'll let people screw around with me it's ok, but there is a point where it becomes too much.

At around 3AM, because now he's finished tying shit to me, I'm able to push out the bamboo stick. It is at this point I feel like James Bond or Indiana Jones getting out at the last moment from a tight bondage. Drew hears this in the other room, and he barges in like Glenn Beck hearing Obama making a speech (bad analogy?, too bad I don't care). It is at this point I take the stick I had just freed from the binds and point it straight at him signalling, "You come near me I swear I will beat you to within an inch of your life HAHA how fun does that sound?"  That night I am proud to say I got 2 hours of sleep and still made it to my 7:30 chem lecture. OH I almost forgot the reason for this whole journey down the road of hades. His reason for it all was to stop me from moving in my sleep... let that sink in... because I move in my sleep, he felt it necessary to make that if I move I get stabbed in the throat by two different objects at the same time, one to puncture, and the other to make sure the hole gets infected by splinters, and I don't smoke so the hole would be all for not.

While on the subject of sleeping and Drew, remember how I described him as overly controlling? Well how would you feel if someone told you that you whispered one word while sleeping? I would imagine most people would just brush it off or have a good laugh about it. Why? Because there's nothing that can be done about it, YOU'RE ASLEEP! But Drew, oooh no, everything has to be perfect. When he got told he whispered a word while asleep he snapped. It was one of those moments when you say something and then instantly realize that it will come back very soon. Watching him that few moments after words would have been funny though, I liken it to what would've happened when Obama heard that Pelosi knew about the water boarding. Sit back down, then eyes dart open and a wave of anger flushes over. After a minute of him pondering it over he slams open our door and I just see his music stand flying through the air as is it were a bird just learning to fly to then immediately plow into Jay's and Sean's door and fall to the ground in a graceless heap. Drew then proceeds to stomp out of the room and beat me and whip me with his keys. The whole time Jay is sitting next to me watching the whole thing like a frightened squirrel, and I'm now feeling like I said something wrong to Xena (the freaking princess warrior). Drew continues on his little tantrum by throwing his stand around a bit more, which has probably now seen some parts of the room I don't know about, and then yells at us asking about what he said. When told he ends it with another slap to the head.

Why only beat up on me?? Jay was right there as well? But no, the purpose behind hitting me is to teach me to stop talking in my sleep because apparently that uncontrollable aspect of oneself is transferable. Who knew?

And now for something completely related.


As if all that weren't messed up enough, Drew finds it fun to catalog what occurs while I'm sleeping, yes this means he watches me sleep. As told above I have tendencies to move and talk in my sleep. There is a running story line about my dreams, because I can't ever remember them Drew tells me about them. So far the few noted things I have said are as follows "Jump. Jump.", "Just do it.", "Muffins.", "That's it, that's good.", and finally to make it more confusing "Capybara." Drew has a very sick idea of how these can be put together. So the story originally was that I was convincing a capybara I named "Muffins" to commit suicide by jumping.  A friend of mine suggested a much better interpretation. I am, according to her, training my capybara, Muffins, to jump . So I am now training in animal endurance. Which makes more sense considering last night, this one I woke up in the middle of. I think I was saying something about building a maze for mice, I'm sure Drew recorded it so I'll ask him when he wakes up. Stay tuned for updates.

Along with the talking, I move. Apparently I do sit-ups in my sleep, have to be serious about training of course (it explains some mornings when I have sore abs though). It isn't just that though, oh no. Have to make sure everything is nice and limber ready for anything, so I also push against the wall while sleeping. All these observations have been made by Drew and are apart of his current study entitled The Actions of The Sleeping Mind and Their Effects on One's Quality of Sleep. Any data taken from this post will be referred to the SSA (Scientific Standards Advising) and swift punishment will be awarded to the one making said observations as they are in violation of scientific procedures, as well as common courtesy. See that lady, she's the one that will punish them. She may seem old and frail, but that just means she has experience at such things. Don't do anything to make her mad or your life will become such a living Hell that the only thing you will wish for is death by killer bees. Ponder that for a moment before making your decision.

UPDATE TIME: So yes I did talk about a maze, but that's not how I woke up last night. I woke up when I shouted "LET'S DO IT AGAIN!" This occurred at 5am when Drew had just gotten in to bed. It was a rather strange feeling to randomly awaken while speaking. As soon as I finished talking I wasn't sure what I was saying, but I knew I had said something. Also when discussing the maze (I was still asleep at this time) I was talking to or about Charlie, a very good friend of mine I met here at Davis. See his blog about his new ecological niche in life.