Evolution 2010 recap

This was my second year going to Evolution 2010, the join meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), and the American Society of Naturalists (ASN). Last year I went as part of the Undergraduate Diversity program (which funded my way!) and had a blast.

This year was just as good. My talk was on the first day of the conference, which was awesome. I only had to spend that morning fretting, and I got to enjoy the rest of the conference stress-free (unlike most of my labmates). My presentation went alright – Prof said I did a good job, but I think I could have been a little smoother. I was surprised that I still had a good number of people in attendance, even though I was speaking at the same exact time as the end of the USA World Cup match. Yes, annoying vuvuzela sounds filled the conference hall.

As for the talks themselves, I went to a lot of interesting ones. Well, the first day started off a little shaky, but the conference improved once I started going to research talks. One of the bad things about the conference was that there were just so many talks – 12 concurrent sessions to choose from! You never know what talk is going to be good, so I know I missed some great ones just by choosing poorly.

The downside of going as a post-bach (I’m in undergrad/grad student limbo!) is that most of the stuff is still way over my head. Almost all of the talks are given by professors, post-docs, or nearly finished graduate students, so no matter how much of a nerdy brainiac I am, I was still way out of my league. So, sorry, no talk re-caps for you. Though Wired did cover one talk that I thought was super cool (and actually understood!), so check it out: Lizard Camouflage Confuses Males About Gender. Pssssssshhhh, Wired covered that but not my copulatory plug talk?

Some amusing things about the conference:

  • I met Jerry Coyne! I was nervous to approach him since he was one of the most famous people there – not just for his blog (which I love) or his book (which my dad loved), but for kind of being the leading authority on speciation. He was super nice to talk to, so my nerves were unfounded. We talked for a good amount of time, mostly ranting about religious accommodationism and evolution. It surprised my lab, though. Or as my professor said, “Even I’d be nervous to talk to him.”
  • There was a Christian Homeschooling Conference going on at the same time in the convention center. There was much loling by the evolutionary biologists. I think at least four different talks I saw made a joke about this is one way.
  • Speaking of jokes, at least two presentations had penis jokes in them. We are so mature.
  • So many nerdy t-shirts! One day I wore the same exact nerdy shirt as someone else, and we kept running into each other and giving each other shirt-props. Also, one day I was wearing my “You say Tomato, I say Lycopersicon esculentum” shirt and I actually ran into someone who studies tomatoes, who informed me that that was not the current accepted binomial nomenclature for tomatoes. Which I knew, but I just found it amusing that this was one of the few places where that could happen.
  • All of the receptions had free “unlimited” (it said limit 2, but no one checked) beer and wine. However, you had to pay 3 dollars for water or pop. I think the conference understood it’s grad student audience very well.

Some amusing things about goofing off in Portland:

  • I went to my first sushi-go-round. I had never heard of these things (mainly because I’m not a huge fan of sushi). Basically they put different small servings of sushi on a conveyor belt, and you snatch the ones you want to eat as they go by. It was pretty good, and that says a lot coming from me!
  • Voodoo Donuts is fucking amazing. It’s a good thing I’m not living in Portland, or I would surely gain 300 pounds. Seriously, I’m going to have to make a trip from Seattle just to get another Old Dirty Bastard. Chocolate, peanut butter, and oreos on a donut? For less than two dollars? Hell yes. All the donuts I tried were delicious, not to mention that all had hilariously inappropriate name. We took our professor there the second night and tried to convince him to get the Cock and Balls. Thankfully he was amused and didn’t fire us all (yet). Also, I was severely tempted to get a The Magic is In The Hole shirt or panties, but I was too cheap.
  • Right next to Voodoo Donuts was a creepy little hentai movie theater. I had to explain what hentai was to my labmates and professor.

Me: It’s anime porn.
Labmate: …Why would you watch that instead of the real thing?
Me: Because you’re not constrained by the bounds of reality.

And then the discussion went to tentacles. I mean, how could you not when discussing hentai? I’m just said I didn’t think to trick my lab into actually going into the theater before they knew what it was.

  • Omg Powell’s bookstore. It was so huge that I seriously got lost. They had a whole aisle devoted to evolution/genetics and a whole column to atheism. I was so overwhelmed I ended up not buying anything!
  • I met a couple of my blog readers, which is always fun. Hi guys! Oh, and Jaki was awesome enough to give me a graphic adaptation of the Origin of Species, which is awesome and made my lab jealous.

I’m sure I’m forgetting some craziness, but that’s all I can remember right now. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully I can go back to Evolution and Portland in the future.

Portland recap

Trip summary: I can’t wait to move to the Pacific Northwest.

I flew out to Portland on Wednesday the 23rd with Anna and Nick (two grad students in my lab) and Ben (grad student in another Biology lab). Our first day there wasn’t too exciting since we were all functioning on a couple hours of sleep and dealing with a three hour time zone change. We pretty much did nothing but sleep and eat for that first day.

Though we did notice how green Portland was. I’d say environmentally friendly, but at times they didn’t seem too friendly about it. Some of the anti-littering signs seems border line threatening. There was part of the highway where we saw angry sign after angry sign, and being from Indiana, we all were expecting them to end in some angry Christian “You’re Going to Hell” sign – but it ended in a “Don’t Litter” sign. We did get a kick at how the fine for littering on the high way was orders of magnitude higher than the fine for not wearing a seat belt. But as biologists, we oddly approved of caring about the environment more than reckless humans. Oh, and I was very amused by the toilets that you could flush in two different ways depending on your…contribution. And apparently the toilets at the convention center used collected rain water to flush – neat!

We discovered we were within driving distance of Mount St. Helens, and being a bunch of geeky biologists, of course we decided to go the next day.Lucky shot of Mount St. Helens with a mini rainbow!

It was amazing seeing the difference between the area affected by the blast zone and the untouched area. Even after thirty years much of the blast zone looked completely destroyed, void of any growth more than some grasses or shrubs. Parts of the trail were full of eerie dead tree stumps, made all the more ominous with the still-active volcano looming in the background.But you know what was super eerie? The hill-sized chunks of mountain that were scattered across the landscape. Can you imagine hill-sized chunks of mountain being exploded out at you? I guess you wouldn’t have too long to contemplate it.I learned a very cool fact while there, though. About 11% of the mountain has been recovered since the eruption in 1980. You can see it in my photo – it’s the little bump in the middle of the crater, the lava dome. This was super cool to me. I mean, I know geological structures form over time, but the idea of a mountain growing before our eyes was just so bizarrely cool.

We quickly started coming up with out disaster movie scenario. Nick would play the part of “Dude, there’s nothing wrong” comic relief. We imagined his demise would come while obliviously looking at some bird through his binoculars while the rest of us ran away from the ash and lava. I’d be the next to go due to me being the least in shape (Seriously, do not do a 5 mile 1,000 ft increase in elevation hike when you’re out of shape and have a sinus infection, ugh). The final scene would be Ben sacrificing himself to help Anna over some ledge, since that’s just how nice he is. And then Anna would have gone to the Evolution conference and nonchalantly informed our professor that two thirds of the lab had perished, with our advisor lamenting the fact that our research papers weren’t finished yet.

Yeah, we’re a little weird.

On the way out we stopped at this little restaurant on the side of the road called 19 Mile House, mainly because they claimed to have the best cobbler ever, and we wanted to test their claims. Their fries were insanely good, and their had a delightfully quirky owner:

Ben: So, what cobbler do you recommend?
Owner: Oh, they’re all horrible.
Ben: Well, which is less horrible?
Owner: The marionberry. It has cocaine in it.
Ben: *laughs* Oh yeah?
Owner: Yeah, the other ones only have methamphetamines.
Me: And then tomorrow morning [our Professor] reads a story in the newspaper about four Purdue students stranded on Mount St. Helens high and naked…

Needless to say, the cobbler was delicious. I went with apple blueberry, mmmmm.

The next day we went to Cannon Beach, which some of you may recognize from The Goonies:
Haystack Rock.

It was overcast, but still beautiful. All the little shops in the town were cute, too. We at at this place that had the most delicious clam chowder – if I ever go back, I’m definitely stopping there again (On Hemlock St next to the library, can’t remember the name). We left early in the afternoon, and of course it proceeded to clear up and become a beautiful blue-sky day after that. Ah well. On the way back to Portland we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, mainly because we all thought free cheese was a good idea. We ended up getting ice cream which was delicious (do you see a theme yet? We’re all bad food influences on each other).

Then we all remembered we were actually in Portland to go to an academic conference, not bum around, so we all started frantically practicing our talks for the conference.

Florida Trip part 3

The next day we went to Epcot, which was a horrible but necessary decision. It was a Thursday, and we knew it would be super busy if we went on any other day of our trip. On the other hand, we were exhausted from the drive and Magic Kingdom. That set the mood for a miserable beginning of the day. Vanessa had lost her driver’s license at MK, so she spent the first hour and a half wandering around Disney trying to find the lost and found office since they would never let her off hold on the phone.

I totally geeked out when I saw this. I was too lazy to get on the ground again for DNA, though.

Ben, Jeff, and I tried to waste time while she was gone, but we didn’t want to go on any of the rides she liked without her. But in the end, it didn’t matter because pretty much every ride was down, including the giant globe-y thingy. So much for embracing technology of the future and all that jazz. I was especially sad Honey I Shrunk the Audience had just been closed, because I had liked that one a lot when I was little.

Eventually Vanessa came back, and we decided the only thing that would make us happy was food. On the way to eat, we ran into Mulan and got photos with her, which made us feel a little better. Ben, Jeff, and I ate at Morocco (which ironically was hosting Aladdin and Jasmine…really, Disney? Really?), and Vanessa ate in America. I really wanted to make fun of her for doing so, but she was already ticked off from losing her license that I resisted doing my worst.

A Norwegian troll, much nicer than the Internet version.

Then the day got infinitely better because we played the Kimpossible spy game, which was the best thing ever. Seriously, the next time I go to Epcot, I’m doing nothing but play that game all day. Basically they give you a cell phone and send you to one of the countries at Epcot, and then you have to find certain things in that country and activate them with your phone. So if you’re standing by the koi pond, then a little waterfall will become activated. Honestly it’s probably just a ploy to lead you into the stores, but it was pretty much an awesome treasure hunt with animated things you could control. I enjoyed it the most – the other three just enjoyed watching me run around like a fool and dance to the spy music.
I also love it because it led me to A PILE OF POKEMON DOLLS SQUEEEEE! I bought an Eevee and Snorlax.

Happiness was momentarily dashed when I overheard a ten year old boy say how he wants to find homos and punch them in the face. And then he and his class (field trip, I guess) cut us in line for ice cream. Little bastards. But then I got my humongous ice cream cone, and I felt better again.
OM NOM NOM NOM

Then rides started working again, so Epcot didn’t suck as much. Ellen’s Energy Adventure was pretty great (Ellen + Bill Nye + Science = Win), and so was Test Track. We also finally got to go on the big globe thingy. Again, it cracked me up that the “future” and “progress” was defined by technology we had in the 90s. Oh, and apparently this is how all female scientists dress:
Groovy.

I also got to ride on a segway! I was seriously geeking out about this. I have absolutely no sense of balance, so it was tricky at first for me. Then I started to get the hang of it, so the lady training me was going to let go of the handles.

Lady: Now, look straight ahead, just like you’re riding a bike *lets go*
Me: *starts frantically going backwards* I never learned how to ride a bike!

Lady: *grabs on* Okay, let’s scrap that idea.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

For dinner we ate in England, mainly because it was the cheapest place we could find. Apparently Brits eat nothing but fish and chips, and drink nothing but Bass and Harp.

This photo has nothing to do with England, I just thought it was funny.

I was amused that there was a group of about 25 British people eating around us. I still don’t understand why you would eat at your own country at Epcot, especially when it’s going to be the greasy American version of your traditional food. The fish and chips were pretty nasty. Though I was amused at listening to all the children with their cute British accents. Did you know crying can have an accent? This was probably the first time ever a crying, tantrum-throwing child didn’t annoy me, because his screams totally sounded British and adorable!
Revenge for eating the fish and chips.

We half heartedly watched the fireworks before limping back to the car. I don’t know how parents with small children do it. I felt like dying after two days, and that was with setting my own pace!
D’awww, it looks like we all like each other or something!

Florida Trip part 2

We started at Magic Kingdom and went directly to Space Mountain, so I could conquer my fear of the ride. Of course I got stuck being in the very first car – but it was a lot of fun. I guess things aren’t exactly as scary as you remember them being from 12 years ago.Overall, I had a blast at Magic Kingdom. We went on pretty much every ride, and I don’t think we ever had to wait more than 15 minutes. Hooray for strategically using their Speed Pass system!

I almost couldn’t get through the bars because of my boobs.

I was also impressed by the amount of food they gave you for lunch. I was expecting to be ripped off by high prices, but they were all reasonable and I could never finish what they gave me. Though I did have a facepalm moment when a middle aged American woman asked the cashier what a taco was and needed a detailed explanation. She was seriously shocked by this exotic cuisine she had never heard of. What the fuck, America.All that’s missing is a scarlet A.

The one downside to Disney was that it was a ton harder to get a photo with any of the characters. There were way less characters than when I went at age 10, and there were always huge lines to get a photo with them. Last time you could just walk up to any character to get a photo. We ended up settling on a photo with Woody (Speaking of which, I can’t believe Toy Story came out when I was EIGHT. And now there’s Toy Story 3? Ugh, I field old.)Actually, I take that back: the other downside to Disney is all the annoying children. No, not children in general – Disney is more for them than for me, and they’re allowed to have fun and be loud and all that good stuff. I mean the kids who are running around completely unsupervised, or are throwing tantrums even though they have light-up color-changing Mickey Mouse balloons. No. Once you get that, you are not allowed to throw a tantrum for the next year.

I AM SO MUCH MORE MATURE THAN THESE KIDS.

And if you’re young enough that you can’t stay by your parent’s side, then mom or dad should be holding your hand. If not, I am probably going to step on you. Seriously, I have no idea how many little kids I trampled at Disney. I’m 5’11” and have big boobs. There’s a cone shaped blind spot around my feet, and if you’re under four feet tall and running at me because of the triple scoop ice cream you just ate (albeit most of it is on your face), you’re going to get kneed in the head.

Trying to get a weapon to keep away the hordes of children.

*ahem*

I’ve also come up with a great idea for a more terrifying replacement to the Haunted Mansion. It wouldn’t cost Disney a lot of money, since all they would have to do is combine parts of already existing rides:

  1. Take the acid-trip…I mean, honey-trip part of the Winnie the Pooh ride (formerly Toad’s Wild Ride).
  2. Take the scary Deliverance-like scenes from the Splash Mountain ride.
  3. Let the robots from It’s a Small World go without maintenance until they’re slightly falling apart and have ragged movements.
  4. Slow the It’s a Small World music down, lower it an octave, and then make it slightly off key.

Fucking terrifying. (And yes, I went on It’s a Small World, mainly because Ben had never been on it. And yes, the ride decided to stop while we were in the final room. If the US ever needs new interrogation techniques, there you go.)Other random observations about the Magic Kingdom:

  • Alien Encounters was turned into some stupid Lilo and Stitch thing! What the hell. That was my favorite ride from last time, and it was legitimately scary. Now it’s just Stitch spitting on you. Lame.
  • Apparently they’re now selling Hooker Minnie Mouse:
  • The designated smoking area was called Miner’s Cove. This made me giggle.
  • We accidentally got on this horrible ride/theater thing about progress, mainly because Jeff thought it was something else. The only comical thing was when they got to the scene about a family living in the “future,” it looked like the late 90’s. I mean, their video game had graphics worse than an N64. This small amusement was not worth them singing “It’s a great big beautiful tomorrow” over and over and over…
  • My friends were all going to pitch in to get me a Fairy Princess Makeover. Thank goodness the line was always full of little girls, and they didn’t want to take the opportunity away from them to see me in gaudy sparkly makeup. Especially because this is pretty much how I feel about the Disney Princesses.
Sweet Jesus this could have been me. Except I would have totally picked Belle or Mulan.

We ended up eating at the Winnie the Pooh buffet area. The food, at the time, was the most delicious thing I ever ate. This is almost entirely due to the fact that I was exhausted and starving, especially since we had to wait an hour to get in. In retrospect, it was the same quality as Old Country Buffet and cost $35. The perks were 1) The ability to go back for seconds, thirds, and fourths (hey, we’re college students) and 2) Photos with Tigger, who’s badass. We were all so full we started making jokes about how we were going to have foodbabies later (yes, that’s a poop joke). I was extra classy and joked that maybe I should go have a food abortion (vomit) since I felt so full. Our waiter happened to walk by right at that moment and give me a strange look. Note to self: refrain from poop and abortion jokes in Disney World. Hey, at least I didn’t say it in front of Winnie the Pooh!

By the end of the day, I had come up with a new ride for Disney: Sleeping Beauty. All they would need are a bunch of beds for adults, and a separate play room for children. I think that ride would have the longest wait in the park.

I also bought the most adorable Fat Mickey:
Vanessa: (after buying a Fat Buzz Lightyear) I wonder if they have a Fat Woody.
Me: *laughs like a five year old for about a half hour*
Vanessa: …It was a serious question :(

Florida Trip part 1

Sorry for being a little absent lately. I went on vacation to Florida from the 25th to the 1st, which means I needed a week of doing absolutely nothing to recuperate (ah, vacations). But now that I’m properly rested, I get to babble about my trip for a bit!

Vanessa (my friend/roommate), Ben (my friend/her boyfriend), and Jeff (my friend/ex boyfriend from high school…long story), and I left West Lafayette at 5am for our long drive to Florida. Ben was our first driver since he was the only person who got enough sleep to be functional. So not only were we all trapped in my car for 16 hours, but we were sleep deprived – extra delirium!

The drive was okay until we got to Kentucky – which, of course, was when I had just taken over driving. Cool fact: It’s generally not going to be fun when you see a giant plume of smoke on the road ahead of you. Apparently two semis had collided and effectively shut down I-65 going both directions. We ended up sitting still for an hour and a half since there was only one tiny part of the road where you could do a U-turn.

Jeff: Well now that we’re stuck in traffic, this is a great time for me to tell you about Jesus.
Me: Nooo! Tuck and roll!

It took us another hour to go through the detour because that’s where everyone else was going. Then Jeff started playing the dueling banjos song (I have no idea why he had this on his iPod), which officially drove me insane at approximately 10:30am. Kentucky, the only reason why you’re not on my shit list is because I happen to currently like a boy from you. But be careful, you’re on watch.
Creepy ice cream truck.

Apparently everyone else in the car had gone insane as well. Vanessa suggested we get matching Darwin Fish tramp stamps. Then in Georgia we got stuck behind this car driving really slowly in the left lane (raaaaaaaaaaage) that had a “Jesus is Lord” bumper sticker. We drove behind them for a good period of time without them realizing they needed to get the fuck over.

Jeff: Only prayer will solve this.
Us: *fake pray*
SUV: *wedges between us and Jesus car and rides its ass*
Jesus Car: *changes lanes*
Jeff: Divine intervention!

Eventually we made it to Florida, died of exhaustion, and then woke up early to go to Disney World.

It wasn’t very sunny when we got there. Stupid Kentucky.

Sunburn woo

Hey everyone! I’m back from my week long vacation in Florida, and it was awesome! I’ll recap all the fun later – don’t have time right now since we’re reviewing my paper in lab meeting today. But I do have a moment the blog about the one un-fun thing that happened:

A massive sunburn.

Honestly, I’m not surprised. My skin behaves in a highly predictable way: I will stay pasty white until I get one horrible sunburn, but that will turn into tan and I’ll never burn for the rest of the summer. And being half Irish, that “horrible sunburn” step isn’t hard to accomplish. Even with multiple applications of SPF 30, this is the result of me going to the beach:Wish my Greek genes would have helped a bit more in the melanin department. As one of my twitter followers suggested, I think I need to go to SPF Solar Flare.

While at the time not being able to move or sit (sorry, you don’t get photos of how burnt my butt was) wasn’t very amusing, it’s kind of entertaining in retrospect. For one thing, I have to give my swimsuit props for being so stable. I mean, look at those burn lines! It’s like my suit didn’t budge at all.

But the real fun started when I went to the pool two days later on Memorial Day. We were staying at my parents’ place, which is effectively a retirement community. So even though this was one of the “family” pools and there were young people and kids there, there was a high concentration of 50+ people. By then my sunburn only hurt a little, but it still looked awful.

And when the ladies saw my sunburn, they went into Worrying Mom Mode.

During my first hour there I was approached by about ten different women who lamented about how horrible my sunburn looked. But more amusing than how quickly they started acting like my mom or grandma was the various advice they gave:

Lady 1: Go to the emergency room!
Lady 2: Dr. Oz said to sit in a bathtub of cold water and dissolve two aspirins in it!
Lady 3: Sit in a bathtub of cold water and vinegar! You’ll smell like a salad, but it works!
Lady 4: You know what you do? Rub some plain yogurt all over it!

Me (to friend): I think I need to fill a bathtub with cold water, aspirin, vinegar, and yogurt, and just sit in it.
Friend: You know what I heard cures sunburns? Showering with two burly men.
Me: Wow, really? I’ll have to try that too!

I don’t know if any of these remedies actually work, but if they do, I’d like an explanation why before I go rubbing strange things all over myself. A scientific explanation, not just “well it worked for me!” Until then, I’ll continue popping aspirin and rubbing medicated lotion all over myself.

Have you heard any weird sunburn related woo? Or have you ever gotten weird advice from strangers? How did you handle it?

I’m going to Disney World!

It sounds very stereotypical, doesn’t it? “You’ve just graduated college – what are you going to do now?!” But it’s true. Tomorrow I’m driving down to Florida with three of my close friends, and staying for a little less than a week. We’re going to Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and a beach or two (still to be determined). the fangirl in me is still a little cranky that the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park won’t be open yet…oh well, I’ll have an excuse to come back later.

I’m pretty excited. The first and only time I went to Disney World was in 5th grade, when I would have been about 10 years old. Personally, I think that’s the most awkward age to go. I was too old to appreciate all the characters walking around – I knew they were just random people in suits, and that weirded me out a bit. Though I did get a photo with Scrooge McDuck, because DuckTales was awesome.
Yeah 90’s jean overalls, wooo!

But I was also too young to really enjoy most of the rides. I didn’t get into roller coasters until I was peer pressured to go on some when I was about 17, mainly because Disney managed to scare the crap out of me for a while. My mom said we needed to go on at least one real roller coaster, and got us in line for Space Mountain despite my protestation. To this day this amazes me, since my mom hates roller coasters and wouldn’t even get on the spinning teacups with me and my dad.

To make matters worse, my family ended up being in the first car. It’s single file seating, so my dad was first (much to his chagrin), then me, then my mom. Now, my dad is 6’6″. The whole time it looked like he was going to get decapitated by one of the rafters, so I was screaming bloody murder. But then about halfway through the ride I just stopped. The little logical side of my brain (yes, it was there at age 10) thought, “This ride is going to last for another minute. No one can stop the ride because you’re screaming. Might as well just not bother.”

Of course, my parents thought I had passed out.
Dad: Are you okay?!
Me: *whimpers* No.

And since I’m convinced parents are kind of sadistic at times, they think this is the funniest story ever.

Anyway, I’m super excited for my trip. I’m going to ride everything this time now that I actually like roller coasters. I never went on famous stuff like Splash Mountain, and I will conquer Space Mountain! I’m also excited to just sit around on a beach for a while. I finally found a new swim suit that fits me, so I don’t have to stress about that anymore. My solution was buying a top that was much bigger than the bottom. Thank you, boobies!

The one downside for you guys is that I’m going to have limited to no internet for a week. Gasp! I’m going to try to make some posts today, but I need your help for inspiration. Either ask me random questions here in the comments, or ask me questions anonymously at formspring.me. I already have some good questions backlogged there, and I will get to them! You can also follow me on twitter, because I’m sure I’ll be tweeting hilarious things and photos from my Florida adventure via phone.

Now, off I go to pack! Weeeeee!

Watch me on BBC, Canada AM, WGN, and CNN!

Boobquake is almost upon us, which means the media is super interested in covering the end of the world. I just thought I’d let you know what shows I’ll be appearing on in the next twenty four hours, since they’re… uh, kind of huge. And if you need more motivation to watch, yes, I’ll be showing cleavage – at least as much as is appropriate for TV.

4/25:
11:10 pm WGN Radio Chicago – The Nick Digilio Show – Audio here!

4/26:
In the morning in your part of the world – BBC World Service – The World Today

7:00 am Canada AM – Video here!

9:00 am WGN Morning News

5 – 7 pm CNN – The Situation Room (I swear to FSM I’m not making these things up)

I’m also being interviewed by The Young Turks tomorrow night at 9 pm, but I’m not sure when it’ll be online.

For those at the epicenter of boobquake (West Lafayette, IN), we’re going to have a meeting on campus mainly so news outlets have something to videotape (information here). I know that Fox59 Indianapolis, WRTV6 Indianapolis, CBC TV, and WLFI Channel 18 will be there, and who knows who else. I also know that BBC Persia will be covering boobquake, with footage of the gathering in Washington DC and interviews with me, but I don’t know when it’ll be on. Keep an eye out for all of these things!

My honors thesis is done, woo!

My honors thesis was completed, signed, and turned in with a couple of hours to spare! Yaaaaaaaaay! Fifteen pages, nine of which were figures/tables/citations (wah wah, liberal arts people). Unfortunately I can’t tell you guys about it yet, but I will once it’s accepted to a scientific journal. All I can say is that it’s about copulatory plugs. Yeah, you’re just dying to know now, right?

Now all I have to do is grade some papers and finish a take home exam, and I’m good for the end of the semester. In fact, this week will suddenly change from The Week From Hell to The Week of Constant Drunken Happiness:

Tuesday: Labmate’s thesis defense – assuming that goes well, night at the pub in celebration!
Wednesday: Final meeting of the Non-theists! Pizza party, and hopefully not too much tearful nostalgia
Thursday: Free block party featuring concert by Asobi Seksu (omg yay!), then probably going clubbing afterwards
Friday: Party at my place
Saturday: Final Breakfast Club of the year (getting up early in costumes and going to bars… …it’s a Purdue thing)

Fuck yeah, college.