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January 15th, 2006
09:57 pm - from beth
i couldn't resist
1, 2, and 6 make me particularly happy.
- The word 'samba' means 'to rub elusivepaolo'.
- Native Americans never actually ate elusivepaolo; killing such a timid prey was thought to indicate laziness.
- If you drop elusivepaolo from more than three metres above ground level, he will always land feet-first.
- Forty percent of the world's almonds and twenty percent of the world's peanuts are used in the manufacture of elusivepaolo!
- You would have to dig through four thousand kilometres of elusivepaolo to reach the earth's core.
- Elusivepaolo once came third in a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest!
- Grapes explode if you put them inside elusivepaolo!
- According to the story, Pinocchio was made of elusivepaolo.
- In Eastern Africa you can buy beer brewed from elusivepaolo.
- Elusivepaolo is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature.
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November 4th, 2005
07:49 am - and i wanted indiana jones
 | You scored as James Bond, Agent 007. James Bond is MI6's best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license's to kill. He doesn't care about rules or regulations and somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner.
James Bond, Agent 007 | | 96% | Maximus | | 83% | Batman, the Dark Knight | | 83% | Captain Jack Sparrow | | 79% | Lara Croft | | 75% | Indiana Jones | | 71% | The Amazing Spider-Man | | 67% | William Wallace | | 63% | El Zorro | | 58% | Neo, the "One" | | 54% | The Terminator | | 42% | </td>
Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com |
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/happy.gif) my shoulders hurt
Current Music: none
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October 25th, 2005
09:47 pm - from Cat
(i'm totally digging that you're digging a DDR song, Cat... anyway -)
List ten songs that you are currently digging... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're no good but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artists, and the ten songs in your blog. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to.
1. The New Pornographers - Jackie, Dressed in Cobras
2. Sufjan Stevens - The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!
3. The Cure - Picture of You
4. Dungen - Panda
5. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Details of the War
6. Bright Eyes - Lua
7. Dogs Die in Hot Cars - Apples & Oranges
8. Manu Chao - Luna Y Sol
9. Elvis Costello - That Day is Done
10. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - In This Home On Ice
Tag: cerealgirl, simienwolf, danismyfriend, idolfan71, berkhunt
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/tired.gif) hating syphilis
Current Music: bright eyes - i'm wide awake it's morning
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October 19th, 2005
12:06 am - amy's birthday
surprise!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/suprised.gif) surprised
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September 30th, 2005
12:39 am - best show ever
Sons and Daughters and The Decemberists
hands down best show ever. wow. words cannot do justice. you had to have been there. it was both the little things like the absence of the token drunken idiot who felt the need to crash into everyone, and leaving the tabernacle not smelling like smoke or weed, and the big things like petra haden from that dog and the rentals! and colin who does not sound anything like a donkey contrary to the imbeciles at blender but is really frenetic and cool, and the giant whale jaws, and the banter between band members, and for singing all my favorite songs, and for their first encore song they covered mr. blue sky!!!!!!
yeah...
destroyer and the new pornographers next.
Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Music: The Decemberists - i was meant for the stage
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September 22nd, 2005
11:33 pm - future plans update
the more and more i think about it, the more and more i want to go to europe for a dphil.
here are my top picks in order of favorite to not so favorite:
1. andrew read, university of edinburgh.
research agenda: ecology and evolution of infectious disease, virulence, and transmission. more recently evolution of immune systems and responses.
model system: malaria
pros: amazing scientist, highly prolific, innovative in approach and method, relevant system and research, plus he's in edinburgh
cons: funding may be a problem, large lab and large number of applicants whom i may have to fight in order to win a spot in andrew's lab
2. jacob koella, imperial college london
research agenda: host-parasite interaction/co-evolution from the within-host and epidemiological perspectives.
model system: malaria parasite and mosquito host
pros: super interesting questions, again very smart, only person doing malaria-mosquito interactions, highly recommended as well
cons: so he moved from U of p. and m. curie in paris (he should've stayed!) to imperial college london (better school!) but he's at the sillwood
park campus in ascot, berkshire. where the hell is ascot, berkshire?
3. francois taddei, INSERM necker-enfants malades
research agenda: mutagenesis, molecular and evolutionary mechs controlling variability, error, survival, and adaptation
model system: e. coli
pros: again, very interesting very broad questions. part of a larger network of labs doing similar stuff, including miro radman who discovered SOS
repair. and if i worked with francois, i'd live in paris.
cons: though francois' work is arguably farther reaching, it's not as sexy as malaria and not as applicable. doesn't have the versatility of read
or koella who both address basic and applied scientific problems.
4. dieter ebert, university of fribourg
research agenda: host-parasite interaction, adaptive significance of virulence, adaptive significance of variation and sexual recombination
model system: daphnia
pros: again, i love the stuff he does. not as established as andrew but very daring in his approach, will be open to me exploring ideas on my own.
it will require lots of trips to the daphnia colony located in a rockpool in FINLAND.
cons: daphnia's not a very medically significant model. he's in fribourg, switzerland. which would be cool if you like the outdoors.
so yeah. jacob has gotten back to me and said that he'll be ready for applicants later in the year and that he'll let me know when that happens; also he asked me to say hi to bruce and rustom (booyah for connections). andrew hasn't replied to my email yet, bugger it. just emailed francois and dieter today, we'll see what they say.
according to rustom the chance of me getting in to any of these places is very high so hurray. duke can go fuck itself with it's 17 (17!!!) essays they want me to write for the md/phd application.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/working.gif) not bad, bit tired
Current Music: clap your hands say yeah
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August 22nd, 2005
09:51 pm - what i am listening to
because my sister asked, in case anyone else is interested,
my current 5 and why:
1. Bebo & Cigala - Inolvidable; Spain's greatest flamenco singer + Cuba's greatest afro-jazz pianist = Lagrimas Negras, one of the best albums i've heard this year.
2. Maximo Park - The Coast is Always Changing; I usually run out of steam for a song after a month but this Newcastle band just keeps growing on me. My favorite for this years Mercury Music Prize.
3. The Go! Team - Ladyflash; 5 MCs from all over the world stopped turning tables to pick up instruments and came up with a combination of funk, schoolyard rap, and 70s TV theme songs. Music made for the sole purpose of making you smile. Also up for the MMPrize, I'm torn.
4. British Sea Power - It Ended On an Oily Stage; Brilliant first single from an amazing album. They also dress up in World War I uniforms and surround themselves with taxidermised animals. In my opinion, Britain's most distinctive rock band.
5. The Decemberists - Eli, The Barrow Boy; I really didn't like this song on first listen, but after I got the lyrics it suddenly all clicked and I'm in love with this song. Blender said that their songs are drowning in their own wit and their lead singer sounds like a donkey. This from the same mag who said Sound of Silence was one of the 50 worst songs of all time. Go figure.
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Maximo Park - Postcard of a Painting
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August 21st, 2005
04:29 am - kim's birthday
today is kim's (the other lab tech) birthday so we all (and i mean ALL = 20+ people) went out to IBA for bowling, skeeball, dance dance revolution, and karaoke. it's 4:30 and i'm about to collapse but i just wanted to say that if you didn't already know, germans gravitate to karaoke like ducks to water. from now on, germans will be at the top of my party invite lists.
Current Mood: quite pleased
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August 14th, 2005
03:14 pm - meh
wisdom teeth are all out in one go. not too much swelling or pain, i just have this flap of scar tissue hanging from one of my gaping holes and it feels like food trapped between my teeth so i'm constantly annoyed.
life is going well. the lab folk and i stole bruce's favorite 1950s spectrophotometer and took it around atlanta taking pictures of it in famous spots - alon's cause we needed coffee, cnn, vortex cause bruce loves 5 points, we got lost looking for northside tavern, the varsity, and ikea because we needed meatballs and scandinavian furniture. we are holding 'old blue' for ransom until bruce gets us new lab gadgets. i am most excited for a new plate pourer/stacker, camera scope, and a supply of squid and diapers for the trained penguin colony which will be doing our pipetting from now on.
really psyched about a bunch of concerts i got tickets for:
sigur ros at the symphony hall! montreux jazzfest! bloc party! the decemberists with sons and daughters! coldplay eh ok but not too excited. still need to get tix for destroyer and the new pornographers. any takers?
life would be perfect if someone could write one more med school essay for me. or conversely, give me an acceptance letter to andrew read's lab.
http://readgroup.icapb.ed.ac.uk/gallery/party_pics/blue-juice-2.jpg.html
and funding would be nice too.
Current Mood: numb jaws
Current Music: The Decemberists - Los Angeles I'm Yours
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July 23rd, 2005
01:26 am - recycled from bethykins. merci beaucoup, cherie
the Wit
(60% dark, 34% spontaneous, 22% vulgar) | your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK
You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're
probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean you're
pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that 'the
Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor
and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I
guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the
perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor
takes the most effort to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my
opinion.
Also, you probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm
talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/.
PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais |  |
My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: | You scored higher than 68% on dark | | You scored higher than 14% on spontaneous | | You scored higher than 20% on vulgar |
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Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: the go! team - ladyflash
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July 14th, 2005
09:41 am - in need of internet help
so i did the windows update thing, and for some reason AIM no longer works! and i can't even access google or gmail! all the other websites work, and so does msn messenger and yahoo messenger, and the only thing new i did was update stupid windows! anyone know what i should do??
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/crazy.gif) desperate
Current Music: British Sea Power - Please Stand Up
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July 11th, 2005
12:14 am - a good evening
yep, it's confirmed. my lab is the best ever.
this is the third lab i've worked in and definitely miles better than my other ones.
krishna's lab was plain horrible, some of the people were nice but i've lost track of a lot of them and doubt that i will stay in close contact with any of them. bret was a great boss, though i would've liked a bit more guidance, my main complaint was that the cdc can be a breeding ground for mediocrity. and not having windows or anyone to talk to can drive someone mad.
i've heard a lot of weird things about the current boss, bruce, before joining him. mildly put, people have called "eccentric," or "a character," most put him on their "people i want to kill" list or refer to him as "the most pompous asshole i've ever met." i don't know if it's because of rustom and george's influence that he's so nice to me, but he is. and even better, i love the other people in the lab as well. there are about 9 other people with me, and a few other people on our floor hang out with us too. i'm extremely lucky to have found people who share my interests both inside and outside the lab. suddenly my concert-going partners have increased 200 fold and i'm burning cds for people left and right, and they're actually listening to them and getting back to me for more! this never happens!!!
i just got back from barbecue at bruce's with everyone and my already high opinion of them has gotten so much higher. the conversation was so fluid and animated and fun that it felt i had been there for years when in fact it has only been weeks.
the only downside of this is that leaving this lab after a year will be very difficult, i'm going to miss them too much.
though there'll always be conferences and i'd see them there. sigh. i can't wait till/if i get into an md/phd program and my life won't feel so transient.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/loved.gif) exuberant
Current Music: Maximo Park - The Coast is Always Changing
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June 30th, 2005
12:23 am
so amy is in town for a doctor's appointment and i met up with her and danny for dinner at the vortex followed by gelato at paolo's and lo and behold, the elusive paolo was there! the man himself! i am happy to report that he's actually quite a friendly and approachable guy, not the hyper mad willy-wonka-scary type he seems from the food network special which plays at his window every day.
and i'm not just saying that because he gave me a free cone.
Current Mood: happier than i should be
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May 3rd, 2005
02:10 am - updating i guess
so i defended my thesis. was really nervous the night before, didn't get any sleep, but all in all it turned out well. other than being accused of plagiarism of course, which is a whole opera in and of itself. goddammit only my second lab and already i've had to deal with two fucking mofos - what's wrong with me???!!! it's like i'm cursed.
or i might just be asking for it.
bruce levin did in fact hire me (just happened today) - i was walking down the hall to rustom's office to ask him for a rec when bruce pops out of his office right beside rustom's and says, "paolo, come work for me. i can only promise you this much until the bayer grant comes in but hopefully i'll be able to get you more. if not, we'll hold a bake sale."
how could i resist? besides the fact that i'm interested in his projects so much i would slave away for half that amount just to be able to work on his stuff, he was never looking for anymore help in the first place.
so i managed to get into my first choice for a lab, which would be perfect if not for the conflicting reports i keep on getting. according to my bio advisor, vickie, "bruce is the biggest jerk i've ever met" - the sentiment of which is shared by every undergrad i know who took a class with him. but then again, he's also best friends with george and rustom, the best professors i've had at emory. so the man can't be all that bad, can he? plus he's gonna hold a bake sale to pay my wages. that's gotta count for something.
i've decided to live with my aunt for next year. i'll be saving a ton of money on rent and food for which i could then waste on an ipod, external hard drive, a trip to south and central america with mai and joon, and maybe a new computer. oh, and decent knives and pots and pans for wherever i go to grad/med school. and plane tickets to interviews *fingers crossed*
alex and i got indian food for lunch today and george paid for it. i love it when that happens. and then instead of going to work i sat outside and read about the social ecology of plasmids. fun stuff.
have a film final take home essay thing and a final paper on film and industry both due on the 9th. i've stopped caring though so i'm not really worried. i'm dreading going back to the CDC though, that place really does suck the life out of you. in the CDC, no one can hear you scream.
and on that note, goodnight.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/relaxed.gif) hurray for money
Current Music: Mull Historical Society - Peculiar
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April 15th, 2005
08:08 pm - publication excitement wow
kristin, the grad student in my lab, is leaving today after spending three days in atlanta. she met with her advisors and gave a seminar on her work to date and it looks like she can graduate by this fall!!! and she's only been in school for 3 years. but she won't just yet because she still has howard hughes funding for 2 more years and she still has experiments she wants to run - she just finished her first project, comparative genomics of the treponemes, and it looks like she'll get it published in NATURE!!! she'll be sending it to science and PNAS (proceedings of the national academy of science) if nature doesn't accept it - which i seriously doubt. and if all goes well, i'll be co-author! really excited about that...
my own work though is looking good too. bret says it's definitely good enough for journal of microbio but george and kristin think that if i play my cards right i can get it in PNAS. not bad for my very first research paper. not bad at all.
the parental units arrive on monday.
i defend my thesis on wednesday.
let's see if bruce levin hires me on friday.
things would be perfect if i wasn't feeling so shitty. i hate getting sick.
Current Mood: accomplished
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April 11th, 2005
02:12 am - it is done.
40 pages of text
8 of tables and figures
15 of references
10 pages shorter than i had planned but concise is always better than wordy.
wow, this feels quite surreal now that i'm actually done. it's technically just the first draft but i've been sending parts out to my advisor and he's read and approved them - all except the future work section which i just finished today. just emailed it to both of my advisors (george the good one and bret the one who went on spring break and left me to rot, what kind of advisor goes on vacation the week before his advisees' thesis is due????!!!!) along with the unformatted tables and figures. excel sucks ass, it never fits into a page!!!! how does one print from excel???? blargh.
but the point is, it's over.
now to write 2 film papers and a final term paper for my grad class. which is due next week. fuck me in the ass why don't you.
so ready for this to be over.
Current Mood: meh
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April 3rd, 2005
03:55 pm - Thesis Writing
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I have 10 days to finish this bastard
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
The more and more I get into this the more and more I realize that I haven't read enough papers - have read 132 but am so far only using 81. i'm halfway finished and should have not more than 20 more pages to go but the stack of articles in front of me is intimidating. and i still need to translate one from russian, as if the french book wasn't hard enough. and i need to fix my figures and tables and crap. oh, and i have an immunology exam, a film paper, and more lab work on top of all this. what am i doing updating my journal?
but other than that life is not bad. went to a research job fair on friday. only got to interview with 2 dudes cause i had to leave to speak with a couple of prospective emory scholars. the two i spoke to were kinda cool though, one was working with infections in kidney transplant patients (cool cause it's a research specialist lead position and i'd be getting more money and i'd have patient contact besides lab work) while the other looks at the evolution of HIV transmission factors among HIV-/HIV+ heterosexual couples in Rwanda (super duper cool!!! stuff i would like to do when i get my own lab, but the position he wants to fill is only sr. lab assistant and i'd be pouring gels rather than doing my own experiments, plus i'd get less money). so i'm now debating whether i do need a high stress, high responsibility, high paying job for the one year before i go to grad/med school or if i should take the low stress, less paying job in a super cool lab to allow me to jaunt about the country and leave for vacations whenever i want during the one really inconsequential year before med/grad school.
this, of course, is contingent on both of them offering me a job in the first place.
dreaming is free.
and the decemberists are really cool.
Current Mood: frantic
Current Music: Here I Dreamt I was an Architect - The Decemberists
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March 6th, 2005
11:16 am - rock on research!
so as of right now, my thesis looks like the shit.
in a good way.
in an extremely good way even.
ever since the advent of modern sequencing, serology and molecular biology forty years ago, no one's been able to find an immunologic/genetic difference between syphilis and it's non-venereal cousins (except for small nucleotide polymorphisms which aren't very useful in typing). if i'm right, and god i hope i am, it looks like my gene contains the first large scale difference, explains why this difference has been overlooked for so long, and could even be responsible for how the two could be so identical in genotype and yet so vastly different in phenotype!!!!!11eleven!!!!1
hopefully this'll get published, i may even get my name in genbank for all of these sequences, cdc's only sequenced 4 strains and i already have an additional 5 with 4 more on the way!
my only problem now, besides sequencing more strains, is convincing the anthro department that yes, my thesis is anthropological enough. michelle had better not get in the way if she knows what's good for her.
Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Music: First Day - Futureheads
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February 27th, 2005
02:58 pm - "you courage will bring you honour"
so said the fortune cookie at least. so these past few days have been picking up. went to dim sum with marco which was fun because i haven't hung out with him in ages and what is more therapeutic than bite-sized packets of yummy chinese goodness? i was tempted to take home my very own steam cart lady but reason prevailed.
for now at least.
hopefully the fortune cookie will herald even better things in my lab future. turns out bret made a mistake when he told me he gave me the wrong primers, he was looking at a different primer set at the time and mine were really the right ones. heaven be praised! so i just lost a week of work and suffered 3 major heart attacks but that's fine considering i'm not as behind as i thought i was. and ever since i started using a different cloning kit i've been getting a lot better results. i should know by wednesday whether the nobel will be mine after all.
spoke to the international student advisor person the other day and it looks like i'll be able to go home for the summer after all. hurray! talking to marco about it i don't know if i'll be able to last here if i do decide to go into research and work here. it's so much lonelier here what with everyone so spread out, unlike at home where practically my entire clan lives in the same city. anyway, we shall see.
got the futureheads self-titled debut the other day and it's driving me insane. fantastic stuff. haven't been this excited over a band since franz ferdinand. get it now!
Current Mood: not bad, not bad at all
Current Music: The Futureheads - Hounds of Love
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February 19th, 2005
01:00 pm - wanna hear something funny?
so get this, the reverse primer my boss gave me to use is actually a forward primer! this would explain why my results never coincided with his data but i've persevered all this time because he told me that the discrepancy is just due to the "beauty of biology". this would also mean that everything i've done since june is pretty much junk.
so yeah, i have to finish my thesis in 6 weeks. from scratch. good god i feel like killing someone. or myself. i can't help but wonder if this is my fault? and that i should've double checked every single time? but how was i to know? i guess i could've asked him to teach me about primer design... but he's the one with the phd and the experience and ... i assumed too much. blah.
not happy at all.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/angry.gif) black as night
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elusivepaolo's journal
