Nope, no break for me. Worked straight through Thanksgiving. I was going to make a post about how impressed I was with myself, being able to work 7 days a week without even wanting a break for a year, and after this (half a )week, suddenly I find myself in dire need of a break. That I am probably not going to get. Yikes ( Read more... )

Just curious about how others feel about this 50 hours of mandatory community service for middle and high schoolers and 150 hours for college students with an incentive of $4K off tuition. Objectively, yeah, maybe this is a good idea. Kids need to get off their asses and I'm sure the community would benefit. I don't like the feds 'mandating' ( Read more... )

Got into a very public argument with a PI about that paper about reprogramming pancreatic exocrine cells into insulin-secreting B-islets. That paper is VERY popular, but I think it's all bullshit. Until they show me a karyotype of the induced cells, I think they just induced cell fusion between islet progenitors and the exocrines they infected. She ( Read more... )

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So there's been a spate of robberies at gunpoint during classtime (around class buildings, too, and in the East Rock neighborhood) which mobilized YPD into action, finally. So they caught one guy, but they aren't sure if he's the one responsible for everything. I bet he's not. Y'know, before I came here, I watched this hilarious video on YouTube. ( Read more... )

Apparently all is not well in Duke's Biochemistry department, specifically concerning one Dr. Homme Hellinga. I'll be keeping my mouth shut, but seriously. Craziness. Anyone have any experience with this guy and care to share the joy ( Read more... )

To my last comments. I mean, this place can be a LOT of fun. And the people here are REALLY nice - that is the entire reason why I was even convinced to go to grad school (remember, I didn't even want to go in the first place), let alone coming here even after hearing stories about this place. I think you have to have a certain temperament to be ( Read more... )

The day after my last post, a grad student was shot on her first day on campus here. And she was shot in a good neighborhood at a relatively early hour.

Yikes.

So you remember my blue iPod mini, the one item that I said was MOST important to me out of all my material possessions (and immaterial too, since I don't have any)? Kept it on my desk in its cradle as usual. Came back from work yesterday night and realized my desk looked funny but didn't think anything of it. Around midnight I realized that the ( Read more... )