We here at the circus are big fans of parasites. Really really big fans. I mean I have been considering infecting myself with a tapeworm for years - lose weight and fight allergies! But in case that’s a little too extreme for you, why not just buy this delicious gummy tapeworm. It might not help with the belly or the sneezing, but it will surely taste better. Not to mention it will also breakdown and actually exit your body after consumption. (Thanks Debby). 

Back in the day, back in the very embarrassing and incriminating day, my dear friend Kathleen and I would (half) jokingly enact interpretive dances of our molecular biology curriculum. It was akin to adapting song lyrics to your test material but much funnier and - this would be why we kept reverting to it - much easier to do successfully on less mental steam.

So imagine my delight in discovering that some genius out in Vienna has put together an honest to god “Dance your PhD” competition and had the wherewithal to post all the submissions online over at Science‘s website. Needless to say the dances are an exercise both in body forms as well as the varied and obscure forms that science’s underbelly of investigation can take ( PhD titles included the mouthfuls “mRNA stability regulation as a drug target” and “A spectroscopic study of the Blazhko effect in the pulsating star RR Lyrae"). Marry the two together and you have something both absurd, and touchingly beautiful.

My favorite however was the winner of the “Professor” category. Giulio Superti-Furga (in the middle of the trio pictured above on the left hand side) won for his trio’s riveting dance of his PhD “Transcription Factors Involved in Development and Growth Control.”

Now I had a vague idea of what this PhD topic meant. But that vague notion was dashed to pieces upon watching the dance. Now I’m convinced it’s all related to leap frog, factory workers doing a riff of the macarena dance and The Beatles Rubber Soul album. Oh well. It made for great viewing.

Especially when I found out that the lithe man dancing his heart away in the middle was none other than the CEO and Scientific Director of the Research Center in Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.  Check out how serious he looks in his profile picture. Just looking at him I feel like he’s staring me down all the way to my own very transcription factors and hijacking their use for growth control. Now check out how all together un-serious he is in his dance. See? See why scientists are great people???

(Thanks Isla!)

It’s a breed of watermelon. That has the moon and stars charted on its inky purple skin in bright yellow.

In fact, the resemblance is so strong that the watermelon is indeed called the Moon & Stars (Van Doren) Watermelon. And you can buy 250 of its seeds at the Seed Savers Exchange for only $9. Add sun and water and you’ve got yourself a great deal.

For growing instructions you can read this 2005 article over at the SF Chronicle by Lynette Evans.

Suffice to say the seeds are large but the fruit is sweet.

Also on offer. The Tigger melon for the large feline biologist/winnie the pooh fan who has everything. It’s got white cantaloupe-esque flesh encased in some orange and red tiger stripes.

Anyone who knows me well knows that my handwriting is illegible, at best.

Me, I think my abstract squiggles can sometimes be pretty, like Chinese calligraphy - but who I am to judge. In other moments of deep thought I think of my writing as a miniature sped up version of the evolution of the logographic writing system, like Japanese Kanji (or think hieroglyphics, Egyptian or Mayan).

It’s not all that surprising really. What started out as my personally efficient way of taking down notes where the ‘e’ became an ‘a’ and the word ‘and’ condensed into ‘a’-squiggle-line has become a constant source of teasing for me. Anna maintains that my signature could just as easily spell her name. In my world the difference between ‘e’ and ‘a’ is a subtle stroke. These are all habits that I fear will only be reinforced as I spend more and more time typing rather than writing. In a few more years I’ll be able to tap out a Sonata on a piano better than I can write a letter.

So where am I going with all of this? Well, people, you better get used to bad handwriting. Cause it looks like the future generations are getting left out.

Here’s what Canada.com has to say about a recent study by academics from five American universities into handwriting:

Teachers reported spending an average 70 minutes a week on cursive. This amounts to roughly 14 minutes per day - far shorter than the 45 daily minutes recommended in the 1960s and ‘70s, and slightly less than the 15 minutes mandated in the ‘80s.

But this is bad, because the same study found that how nicely a kid writes determines their grades. Teachers tended to think that kids with better handwriting had better ideas, and therefore got better grades. This might seem unfair and biased until you realize that if no one can decrypt what you’re writing saying in handwriting, they certainly can’t judge it let alone mark it.

Personally I loved our handwriting lessons in school. Those fantastic notebooks with the dotted lines that let you figure out exactly how high your lower case letters should be. It was practically an art lesson with some literacy thrown in: heaven. 

I can’t explain. It’s just one of my favorite favorite ads. It maketh me laugh. 

I love a good snorkel, hell I practically learned to swim in the blissful waters of Hawaii with a mask and snorkel dangling from my face. I am still a reasonably good free diver, even better than in my pudgy teen years (all that floaty fat). But I’ve always wanted just to dive dive dive dive.

The terrible thing is that I can’t. In addition to my oh-so-fun allergies (documented here, here and here), I also have asthma. My triggers are dust, mold, and pets of all shapes, sizes and furriness. And asthma and SCUBA diving just don’t mix.

The reasons are sensible: asthmatic lungs are twitchy. The cold, dry air (like the air that comes from an O2 tank) is a known irritant. As is exercise and panic. You don’t want a person freakin’ out and having their airways close 100 ft below the surface. Not good.

Historically, diving surgeons and instructors have just flat out banned asthmatics from getting certified to dive.  In Australia, still the most stringent country on lung function standards, you have to pass a spirometry test to prove you don’t have asthma before they’ll let you dive. No cheeky lying on your medical history (which, come on, most people with controlled asthma probably do).

But times and attitudes are changing: check out this very informative article from the Divers’ Alert Network on the topic. In the UK, the country with the most liberal standards, asthmatics are allowed to dive so long as they don’t have cold or exercise-induced wheezes and they haven’t used a bronchodilator (rescue inhaler) in the last 48 hours. Sounds fair. I am not sure if I would make that cut off (I don’t wheeze while skiing in frigid conditions, but I do sometimes while walking briskly in very cold climes...). What’s more, the rough statistics they do have show no real increased risk for asthmatic divers. Score.

In any case, I would probably have to pass some sort of lung function test - usually measured by a peak flow meter. And LUCKY ME, I actually have one. So of course I ran upstairs to check how I scored. For a 5’10”, 25 year old (the closest match, though I am slightly shorter and older), I should have a peak flow of 490. On my first huff, I scored a 450. On the second a 460.

That was yesterday. I just tried it again and scored a measly 415 - the same as a 5’5” 60 year-old). But I figure with a little slight of hand and I’ll be underwater in no time.

Of course I could just lie.

For the past little while, I have been researching some stuff about death. Despite the intrinsic morbid factor, I find it to be pretty darned interesting, verging on fun (actually, I always love the research phase...so many pdfs so little time). I squealed with delight leaning back and telling Anne about the latest horrifying thing I learn.  I think she found it fun at first; her excitement is beginning to wane.

So for her, and for you, a treat:

The CDC’s death map tool. Here you can chart nationally or by state, the hot spots for certain causes of death. Like poisoning. Alaskans, it seems, are seriously poison-prone. They also score above the 90th percentile on suicide death rates, death by fire and drowning. They are, however, less likely to die by falling. Sounds like my kind of country.