The VA bill for nondiscrimination in state employment passed the state senate with a (bipartisan) vote of vote of 23-17.
The question becomes now whether it will pass the house,and then, whether our dear gov'ner (remember this guy? will actually sign the thing, or just veto it.

is maybe to get a drink.

So I did my MS on the adhesive mechanism of cribellar spider capture threads, and in a nutshell, the slightlyu more derived ones use hygroscopic forces because they can attract tiny amounts of water out of the air; even at 20% humidity (which feels fairly dry). The reall basal ones have to rely on just van der Walls forces (like gecko toes!), so they need more silk. Plus I think that development of hygroscopic thread is one step to the really modern glycoprotein glue adhesive you find on araenamorph webs (like your average garden spider with the big orb web).

And these guys are working out a way to use that form to create a synthetic thread that can be used to harvest water vapor from the air. How cool is that?

Why spider webs glisten with dew

An article on how MD's can be some of the worst vet clients ever.

And I can add one more anecdote to the list. I have a neighbor who's an ER doctor. SHe had a rabbit, who developed an itchy, alopecic area (lost fur). She asked me what it might be, and I suggested that it might be a fungal infection (like ringworm). I offerend to do a skin scraping and look under the microscope, and sure enough; fungal hyphae in the hair. So I tell her she ought to take him in to get treated, especially since he can give it to the family.
What does she do?

She treats him at home, herself, with a human combination antifungal/antibiotic/steroid cream. I tell her this is a bad idea; for one thing, putting cream on a rabbit is equivilant to feeding it to them. For another, some antibiotics are lethal to rabbits, because their gut flora is sensitive, and they die of you screw it up. The rabbit died :(.

I wish more folk would take this to heart; cats aren't dogs, aren't rabbits aren't humans. And species differences are a big deal when you're practicing medicine. This is wht we don't just have generalized 'dr school', where you can treat anything once you graduate (well...we almost do, but it's called vet school, and you spend a lot of time on species differences).

And I'm off; 8 necropsies yesterday, 17 this week so far, and I'm on surgical biopsies next week *fun!*

Dunno what chance this has of actually passing...
VA is contemplating a bill prohibiting discrimination due to sexual orientation and gender identity in public employment. It's a step, anyway. In theory.
You can go and enter public comments here

I commented favorably of course, but I can't honestly claim to be super optimistic about it's chances these days; it's not even in committee yet, and even if it gets past the house and senate McDonnell will probably veto it once it crosses his desk.


And....( cut for medical tmi )
There's a reason why it's been 3 years since I last visited them.

I really like this comic. If it wins, we get more of it.
Please go vote? Is awesome. And there are other awesome comics there too (winners of previous competitions), if you click on the 'read' link. I highly recommend "Bayou".

I accidentally stumbled across an article about "My New Pink Button" . Which appears to be labia dye for women. In case, you know, your lips down there aren't pink enough anymore. Or you want them to match the lipstick on the other ones, or something.

Seriously, wtf people? I may be biased already, 'cause I only use makeup for actual face painting, when I want to look completely different and less human...but I'm thinking that at the point where someone will be aware of the color of my labia (or myself, of someone else's) about the last thing going through my head is whether they're the right shade of pink. There are other priorities at that stage, ya know? Or there should be, anyway.

Please tell me this isn't a for-reals product?

*checks calendar to see if it's suddenly April 1st*

Nope, still January.

*sigh*

I just registered to take (re-take) the vet path portion of the ACVP Anatomic Pathology Board Exam.
Largely for my own amusement, here is the reading list for that section of the exam:
( The reading list...argh, I think they added a journal or two since last year )

Bonus points if anyone can to identify the second song in the video. I like it, but I've never heard it before. I feel like I should be able to identify the singer, but I can't.

So I've been seeing multiple reports on anthrax in the US and the UK over the last little while, in folk who use, make or are around African drums (US and UK). Presumably, the skins are occasionally off animals that dies of anthrax, and the spores are therefore still in the hide, and get released during the process of making them into drums, or by drumming on them. Also a handful of cases in the UK, in heroin users, from what seems to be contaminated needles.

Kind of scary; you know, we've had folks making drums for a long time, why a bunch of anthrax-contaminated ones, all of a sudden? I think there -have- been more livestock cases (it's endemic in some areas of Africa, and also in the southwestern US), so it seems that hides are being scavenged and sold (not that surprising; sometimes meat is, too, in areas where folk are desperate enough, and that has pretty bad consequences, as well). And...contaminated heroin? That sounds more like something deliberate.

Anyway, look out for hides from Africa, and if you need another reason to not do heroin; Anthrax sucks.

I know, it's meme-ish, but these are the first lines of each months first entry in 2009:

January: My advisor just stopped by, and told me to register to take the ACVP board exam this year.

Februrary: Happy Imbolc! What are y'all doing?

March: We finally got real, actual snow; enough to sled in, and it's perfect packing snow.

April: I'm seperating and washing lymphocytes most of the day today.

May: Kalika. I got her when she was about 5 weeks old (too young, I know, but I didn't know that at the time and they were giving away the puppies; her mom had 18).

June: Cherokerain went back to the same client today; she was to keep going there until they could find someone else to take over.

July: ursuscelticus and I played with the camera in it's SCUBA case, while he was here. It's remarkably difficult to actually *see* the camera screen (or look through the viewfinder) under water, but we got some fun pictures anyway.

August: This was not last night, I'm pretty sure. I had the dream a few nights ago and something triggered the memory. It's not as detailed as the previous ones, but the sensation is just as vivid; I have some of the animal I'm posting in my mouth, and the scent and taste is powerful and foul.

September: Dream: I'm wandering around a big house, with ursuscelticus and I'm so glad he's there with me, we'd be having a phone date, but he's *here* in person (or wherever we are, I don't so much recognize the house). But there's nowhere we can go to get some time together; we go from room to room, but there's no space available.

October: Happy Birthday Sweetness. To mathochist *kisses*

November: The sign says 'organic foods,' and yes, that cooler is full of cool whip. Is this better living through (organic) chemistry?

December: I love raw oysters, but...Seems that ones harvested from the San Antonio bay recently have contained noroviruses (that's the one that's known for nasty, fast moving and easily transmissible GI disturbances; Not. Fun.).

So that's my year in not precisely random review. huh.

I occasionally fill out surveys for Polling Point, and usually they're asking my opinion on politics, economic issues, or commercial products/companies. They give 'points' for these, eventually I'll have enough to get a gift certificate to a restaurant or something. At any rate, they aren't terribly long, and who doesn't like giving their opinion? Usually, it's pretty easy to see why some organisation or company might be interested in the answers.

But I just took the weirdest survey ever.
It claimed to be about eating, and started out kind of fun; asking me to name a random vegetable (I picked avocado), and then what types/ethnicities of food I like (almost everything except pizza), whether I watch cooking shows (no), what weird things I'd ever try (anything not brains, endangered, or a product of excessive cruelty -eg, veal, though I had to give foi gras a pass, cause I *did* once, before I knew how it was made), and if I recognized any of a bunch of names of folks who presumably are culinary celebrities of some sort (I didn't, possibly on account of not watching cooking shows).
Next there were photos of really tasty-looking food, that I ID'd from a multiple choice menu: random stuff like paella, pad thai, gumbo, falafel, borscht, chicken fried steak, and sauerkraut. Made me hungry!


Then they asked if I knew anyone LGBT, what their relations to me is, and how they identify. Um...what?

What on earth are they trying to find out with this survey? If queers eat thai food? If friends of queers eat thai food? If people who don't know any queers can identify a bowl of sauerkraut? Why does someone want to know?

The mind boggles.

I heard about these guys on NPR this morning, and then ursuscelticus sent me the video (thanks!), which was so awesome that I had to share it.



They're amazing critters. I love the flowing, boneless way they move, it's like water given shape and life. And a completely alien intellegence; just beautiful.

as the next disease eradicated from circulation.
This is a disease of cattle, not humans, and it never was endemic in this country so most folk probably have not have even heard of it.

Rinderpest has a high mortality, and sperads quickly through a suscptanble population; it causes diarrhea and upper respiratory discharge, and can kill 90% of infected cattle in a few days. Early in my residency, I learned to distinguish it's lesions microscopically from BVD (bovine viral diarrhea), because who wants to *miss* something like that? They can look really similar (though rinderpest is usually more severe). Both are viruses that primarily attack the GI tract. And it sounds like I'll likely never see it, except on a teaching slide.

Rinderpest is a morbilivirus (related to human measles and canine distemper), and early work on developing a vaccine for cattle laid the foundation for the human measles vaccine (probably the canine distemper vaccine, too), and also the discovery of maternal immunity. It was once a huge problem all over Europe and Africa.

And in this months Nature News (vol 462, p 709), there's an article detailing how the newer, more stable (as in not requiring refrigeration) vaccine is finally eliminating it from the last pockets Pakistan, Sudan, and the Somali area. They'll have to *stop* vaccinating for several years, though, to be sure, and monitor for the disease for another 18 months, because the vaccine makes animals test positive for the disease. Sometime next year, we'll know for sure.
And of course, they'll decide who keeps samples of the virus for research.

Today is the birthday of Ada Lovelace, the mother of programming, who wrote what would have been the first working progrgam (to calculate Bernoulli numbers), had the Analytical Engine been built. It was Ada who recognised that numbers could be used to represent *other* things, like letters and musical notes, where Charles Babbage originally was thinking only of a calculating machine (and I say 'only', but even that was so far ahead of what was genearally understood at the time that his main difficulty was that most peoeple thought it impossible).

Do you ever wish you could go back in time, just to tell someone "You know, you're *right*. It does work!"?

Possibly not coincidentally, NPR ran a segment on the Difference Engine (the slightly less complex version of the Analytical Engine), which was just recently built (neither was ever more than designs in Ada or Babbages lifetimes). There's an *awesome* video of the thing working. It's real-life steampunk, enough to give me shivers.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121206408
Enjoy!

This, from _scientists_:


Gel electrophoresis cookies! I may just have to make them; they look far more rewarding (and so much tastier) than any of my PCR has been :/

Plus, how cool would it be to get gel electrophorsis cookies for xmas? I could put them in packages for folk that would appreciate it.

Seems that ones harvested from the San Antonio bay recently have contained noroviruses (that's the one that's known for nasty, fast moving and easily transmissible GI disturbances; Not. Fun.).

ProMed says:
"The FDA, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) and the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas,
are investigating about a dozen reports of norovirus-related
illnesses from South Carolina and North Carolina consumers who ate
oysters recently harvested from the San Antonio Bay. Consumers who
purchased oysters on or after 16 Nov 2009 that have a label showing
they came from San Antonio Bay are advised to dispose of the oysters
and not eat them. At restaurants, consumers can ask about the source
of oysters offered as menu items. Restaurant operators and retailers
should not serve or offer for sale oysters subject to this advisory.
Restaurant operators and retailers who are unsure of the source of
oysters on hand should check with their suppliers to determine where
the oysters were harvested. No other seafood is affected by this
advisory. The Texas Department of State Health Services has ordered a
recall of all oysters harvested from the San Antonio Bay between 16
and 25 Nov 2009."

I've sometimes celebrated my birthday with a trip to a raw bar (December has an 'r' in it, they should be relatively safe, right?) maybe not this time.

Who wants to come play games tomorrow (Sunday) evening. We'll start at 5, and go as long as there's folks playing...which based on last time was what, 8 or 9?
My Bear will be here; he brought Ice House pieces...and I'd love to play zendo. It's my new favorite game.

So...who's in?