Thursday, January 25, 2007

How can llamas help defeat biological weapons?

Made you look, didn't I? This headline is lifted wholesale from HowStuffWork's article of the same name. It was so intriguing, I just had to post it.

Favorite quote:

...llamas are our friends. They're soft, good-natured and amusing to view...
and the meat of the article:
Llamas ... produce an antibody that is incredibly sturdy. It has no light protein chains, only heavy ones, making it not only hardy but also simple, with a tiny binding site.... Scientists can create these single-domain antibodies (sdAbs) quickly.... Because the binding site is so small, they're far easier and less expensive to engineer than other kinds of antibodies.... Using these tough, simple antibodies, scientists could develop a library of sensors to detect every bio-weapon imaginable -- and then very quickly develop antibodies that bind to new threats as they come up.
Isn't that fascinating? You should read the whole article. It's neat.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Trashcans - part 2

Today in my cube there are a total of 8 trashcans - which means they continue to spawn.

This is just weird.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Practical cooking

A while back, I started a recipe blog at http://www.impatientcook.com. I enjoyed it, but really - after a couple of months I lost time & inclination to deal with it. One blog is all I'm up to at the moment, and as I've gotten more comfortable with this one, I've deprecated the other (ah, the joy of techno-corporate-speak!).

I am still putting recipes online, though; it works nicely with my habit of finding something good and then using it as a jumping-off point because a) I don't have thyme, and neither does the grocery store b) it would be better if I. . . . I'm an archivist at heart, so I like to save the originals, but I usually like my results, so I'll cook from those. The web is a much better venue for this sort of meandering thought-process than paper.

And so . . . see the recipe for Six Onion Soup I made last night. It was awesome. You should try it. (at least, if you like onions. If you don't like onions you should stay far, far away). Cheers!

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Does 2007 really exist?

On New Year's Eve my guy & I went out to dinner with friends. We gorged ourselves on Italian food, wandered into the currently-being-renovated gorgeous lobby of a downtown hotel (reminds me of one of my favorites in Santa Fe - all tall columns and off-white plaster & big fireplace & red & gold upholstered chairs), commandeered blue and silver balloons in hand, then headed home to drink champagne & devour raspberry tart and pumpkin pie.

"2007 doesn't really seem real," said one of my friends. "I mean, it seems like a year in a movie."

"A futuristic movie," I agreed. My guy & I celebrated the millenium together (though not as a couple - another story). How can seven years have passed? Seven years is the magic number in fairy tales; did I spend the past few years sleeping under a hedge?

"2007 seems like it can't really happen," said my friend. "We should all be driving around in pods. Wait, when are all our birthdays?" We discussed. In 2007 we all turn thirty, and we're all dreaming up grand-hurrah trips to take: Asia, Montana, any place we haven't been and that will be harder to get to "after we have kids" (huh).

Thirty. My guy, feeling like he missed out on his late twenties, is not really ok with that. Neither is P. Irene and I nod - thirty. Sounds ok. What is wrong with this, that the women don't mind getting older but the guys do? I read in the New York Times a year or so ago that thirty is the new twenty (yeah right - but it's funny-sounding so I like it).

New Year's is like hide-and-seek: ready or not, here it comes.


The difficult thing about reporting conversations in blogs is that I never remember who said what, or exactly how. . . .