Do you believe in reincarnation?

They might be cute, but there is something disturbing here...

Random links

Two things I've been wanting to add for a while:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/
Nice show from the BBC, same guy who does the nature podcast but with more people so he's much less obnoxious.


Piled Higher and Deeper, PhD comics. http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

Signs you're becoming a group leader continued

When you start saying things like "Yeah, she's been pushing that project along, and she can push a project hard." Overheard at a conversation of young groupleaders.

When you decide to buy a red (for red is the colour of winners) patagonia fleece vest.

Groupleader signs (work in progress)

Signs you are becoming a group leader (or turning to the dark side, as we prefer)

1. When someone’s name is mentioned in a conversation, you sit back, stroke your imaginary beard and muse something like ‘but what has he really done?’

2. When someone around you does something wrong, your hand twitches and you feel the urge to: a) pull their heart out and hold it beating in front of their face (Indiana Jones) b) choke them using only the power of your mind (Star Wars).

This is part of an ongoing phenotypic analysis, feel free to add your observations

Global warming? No thanks, we're Americans.

Just when you think they can't get any funnier, they come up with something new. Here's an ad from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

WMV (Windows)
Quicktime (Macintosh)

Another one available here.

Scientific progress

Mmm…another day of moving tiny drops of colourless liquids from one tube to another…

and what do you do?

I’m starting to think that a compulsory part of every PhD/new post-doc project should be one experiment which is involved with cancer or some other well known disease. Not because I think that we need more cancer researchers, just so that when I’m asked what I do at a party, it would be good for once (especially after a few beers) to be able to give a nice, easy to understand answer, like “I’m doing cancer research” or “I’m trying to cure sick children”. Not because I want to impress women or sound like I’m trying to save the world, I’m just bored of the strange looks I get when I try and explain that my job involves picking fruit fly virgins and letting them have sex… Although I’m also considering lying and telling people I’m an accountant or I sell drugs to kids.

Star Lords

Quite a fun series of mashups using parts of Lord of the Rings and parts of Starwars, with some disco fun thrown in.

Star Lords clips

what's the point?

Ok, so far there haven’t been many science related posts…. We’re trying to collect random things we find funny, partly because we like to share them, but mainly because we’re tired of having to email them to the rest of our lab/friends… (ok, so we’re taking a big leap by assuming people in our labs will remember to read this blog… but what the hell)

Evolution of Dance....

A nice piece of stand-up by Judson Laipply. Distils the dances of the last 40 years into 6 minutes.

Evolution of Dance

Pipette Monkeys

So welcome to the opening of Pipette Monkeys….
The blog is named in honour of our unofficial job title. Despite the glamorous image given to scientists in movies (err…there must be one where scientists are cool/get laid), we’re of the belief that 90% of what we do could be done by monkeys. The reasons that it isn’t: 1. Animal welfare laws are tougher than scientist welfare laws in most labs and 2. Health and Safety laws prevent the use of bananas (even as a motivational tool) in most molecular biology labs….

Stackenblocken...

As promised to Pipette Monkey#2, here's the link to Stackenblocken... a small sketch from the Conan O'Brian show which now seems to be part of our lab induction package....

Stackenblocken Clip