I Wear the Same Shoes as a Middle-Aged Chinese Woman

I consider myself a moderately fashionable person. I try to look nice for work. But in the lab, it's hard, given the risk of spilling noxious chemicals on oneself and the occasional trips to the mouse room. Mouse dander can be a bit unbecoming of a gentleman. So there are some elements of the wardrobe whose style is sacrificed for the sake of functionality. Case in point: my sneakers I wear to lab everyday. Reebok Classic Nylons. Tan/white color. Most comfortable shoes I've ever worn.

Comfort is a major consideration because biologists are on their feet for a sizable chunk of each day, what with running down the hall to the tissue culture room, over to the next building to talk with your collaborator, or down to the vending machine to score some sweet, sweet pop-tarts for your late afternoon fix. Good traction also comes in handy for those times when the freezer breaks and melts all over the floor in the hallway and you're scrambling to transfer its contents early on a Saturday morning when no one else is around. Both elements the Reebok Classic Nylon has in spades.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was riding up in the elevator one morning and looked down to discover that a middle aged, slightly disagreeable Chinese woman shared my sensible taste in footwear. Not that Chinese women aren't fashionable. A Chinese girl in my lab is quite the trendsetter actually. It's just that, as a 24-year-old male, I find myself falling into a social class whose characteristic sartorial spectrum usually doesn't overlap with women who grew up four or five decades ago in a different hemisphere. I'll admit that the white/tan combination isn't the most common in footwear haute couture, but that was all they had at the Reebok Outlet in Jeffersonville, Ohio, and my coupon was about to expire. I had a blue and white pair before these. Those were way cooler. They're really comfortable. Shut up.

Delicious Data

It's said that if you can read, you can cook. I like to say that if you can cook, you can be a molecular biologist. There's really a lot of similarity between the two: add a certain amount of one ingredient plus a certain amount of another, incubate at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time and boom, you're done. Except, in the lab, we deal in microliters rather than tablespoons, and the results tend to be more carcinogenic than delicious. So it's advisable not to eat your lab results, although they can be just as satisfying as a home cooked meal. Easier on the waistline too.

Of course, the problem with this characterization is that, through the transitive property, if you can read, you can be a molecular biologist. Now I feel bad about myself.

It's Funny Cause It's True

I guess this cartoon is from 1995, but I just saw it reprinted in a recent issue of Genome Technology. Kudos to Dr. Alex Dent; he really hit the nail on the head with this one. I won't say what category my PI falls into.

Sci-lebrities: Lance Armstrong

I thought I'd break my month-long silence by talking about LIVESTRONG Day. Lance and Co. designated May 13 as a national day of promotion for their organization, and one of the stops on his cross country tour was good ol' Cbus. Personally, I'm a huge Lance fan and naturally showed up about an hour early to get a good place on the lawn. As you can tell by the pictures I snapped, it paid off. His movie star sunglasses shone so brightly it made me wish I had a pair of my own. Say what you will about his personal life or those pesky doping allegations; he's out there everyday promoting his grassroots movement to make cancer research a political and social priority, and he's doing a damn good job. This July he's coming back to OSU for the Livestrong Summit, as are hundreds of activists and power players in order to discuss how to take action regarding the lack of funding and general spurning of the scientific community that society has experienced during the last eight years. McCain has RSVPed, and invitations are out to Obama and Clinton. Here's to hoping the next president makes change a priority. More pics below: