"Who let the dogs out?"

I came across this interesting blog post by Juan Carlos Lopez, the editor of Nature Medicine. 

Check out the front and back cover of the latest Nature issue, in a PDF format. 

If you don't see it as soon as you open it, zoom out to 50% and flip the page 90 degrees counter-clockwise. Do you see it? Sorry, y'all, those who do not have access to Acrobat Professional, and therefore, cannot flip pages. But despair not, I have just the solution for you - Do as I did:

1)  Stand facing the computer monitor, lining up with an imaginary line 3 inches from its right side.

2) Raise your left leg sideways till it's parallel to the floor. 

3) Bend sideways at the waist (to the right) till your "held-straight" upper body is parallel to the floor. This pose should fit you like a "T". hahaha

4) Try to keep your eyes open through the pain of cramping muscles.

Now do you see it?

The Story of the Red Icing

The story began at the last Icing Age, many eons ago. When vacating the premises, residents of an apartment in Brookline left behind a tube of Red Icing. Last week, the second Icing Age began, with the discovery of the discarded tube by our roommate Bettina. Subsequent carbon dating, and name analysis revealed that one of our ancient ancestors by the name of Betty Crocker had created this concoction. During the course of the week, Bettina decided to bake a cake for her labmates and it was suggested by a worldly soul (ahem ahem) that she use the historically important icing because, "after all, it's only sugar and some chemicals, how can it possible go bad". Other roommates opposed the stand taken by this worldly soul (ahem ahem), and eventually the idea of using the icing was discarded by the wayside. *sniff sniff*

This week was Bettina's farewell dinner, and this worldly soul (ahem ahem) decided to surprise her with a cake and sunflowers. The cake was a Trader Joe's Rasberry and Lemon cake. Trying to prove a point re: the use of icing, he used the icing to print "Auf Wiedersehen Bettina" (Goodbye, Bettina) on the top of the cake's plastic case. This way it would not put off those-among-us-who-shall-not-be-named who objected to this historic piece of Icing Age memorablia. It looked like this:

Puzzle for the Day: Unscramble "Auf Wiedersehen Bettina" from this jumble

And this breakdown pic dispalys the worldly soul (ahem ahem) 's ingenuity:

How does this story end? No one ate the icing, including worldly soul (ahem ahem)

This narrative is brought to you by the Society for the Study of the Icing Age - An Era of Sugar and Bright Colours

Genes, the ones you wear, inside...

.... i'm hoping some of my work can be a "cog" in the big picture wheel when we "gear" up to upgrade to "Personalized Medicine" from your run-of-the-mill average Joe medicine. And I have to hand it to the Prez Bush for pushing and passing  the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008  Well, it's a small step and i'm hoping to ride the wave when this storm comes ashore :)

We need more laws like this, all over the world, as the capacity for abuse is vast!

My Chrome is shinier than yours...

I am now testing out this Chrome thingy to see what the fuss is all about. Significantly faster browser load time, page load time, flash load times, even when I run it on my office computer through theVPN on my ancient home computer (as I'm doing now). Given that I am a fanatical user of the Windows Task Manager (i just like ending processes!), the browser task manager felt like a cool trick. As was the pull out tab to a new window idea. I didn't take long to move to Mozilla from IE, when Firefox was noticably better. Only Time will shine the light on this Chrome :)