so i just finished this behemoth of a book called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell , it was definatly a love-hate relationship. all these reviews i had read of the book said it was a great story of magic in 19th century london, sort-of harry potter for grown ups with dry senses of humor. but for the first half (the first half being 400 pages) i just couldn’t get into the characters and there was no main story, just many little stories involving said characters, and lots of tangents. but then something just clicked in the book and then i couldn’t put it down. it took me three months to read the first 400, and 3 days to read the rest.

I love the feeling of finishing a book. after spending the time to getting to know the characters and their plight, you get towards the end of a book with emotional attatchment to both (if the writer is a good one). no matter how the book ends, having the time to analyze the book is absolutely necesary. to look over how you felt when reading it, to think about the issues that may have been brought up by the book, and in general, just time for reflection. nothing is more annoying than having this interupted, fortunatly it didn’t happen for this one since i put so much time into it.

this book ended up being a great read though…and now on to another.

ok, so i finally got my archives working (it was a pretty stupid problem, i don’t know how it popped up) but i spent about the past hour and a half perusing them. it’s fun to do so, it reminds you of how you used to think, or in most cases how you still do.

i pretty much flushed my chances of a political career down the toilet though.

or credibility of any kind.

or dignity.

ahhh sweet workness, allows me to find crap like this:

entirley out of context, but hilarious nonetheless.

so Micahel Jackson has been aquitted of all charges.

let me be one of the first people to ask:

did anyone care in the first place?

see what you think:

http://www.news14charlotte.com/content/local_news/?ArID=95207&SecID=2

so one of my new vices at work is reading fark.com, and i just read this article about a cop showing up to a hit and run call and then hitting the victim when he got there. this is one of those funny/not funny situations. i mean when you think about it, the cop didn’t mean to hit him of course, it just worked out that way. it’s going to blemish his record as an officer of the law. not to mention the guy he ran over, he’s probably seen better days. hopefully he was dead before the cop showed up.

on the other hand though, it’s hilarious. the irony just gushes out of this one and my first reaction was uncontrollable fits of laughter. i’m laughing thinking about it right now. man, i have to continually stop typing to recompose myself. i just can’t help but think how funny that situation is.

why is there such an appeal for the stupid? i feel myself constantly drawn towards it. and i can’t tell if it consists of superiority or just plain fascination. i suppose it’s a mix of the two, but i’d like to think i’m past any type of outward superiority complex (it mostly dwells just below the surface). but there is just a fascination and appreciation that stems from it. i love stupid things, they keep me on my toes, and constantly bring my understanding of the universe to new dead ends.

but i mean, what is stupid? pretty much what i say it is, it’s a wholly subjective term. if you look it up, it puts it on intellectual terms, but it is so much deeper than that. i don’t even know how to go about breaking it down, let alone if i’m ready to. Isuppose it just appeals to my sense of humor, the way my thought processes work, my perchance for the absurd and rediculous, all keeps me coming back for more. people will probably be offended by my thinking that their idea is stupid, but that’s their folly. if they believed enough in their idea, it wouldn’t really matter if other people thought it was stupid. i mean, look at this web page. there is no defence for this. it just is. i know that almost all of my ideas are stupid, but they end up working out fine in the end. my stupidity is a character trait, it’s ingrained, it makes me who i am. i don’t know if it was integrated or was always there though. not really any way to find out i suppose. but to no matter, my stupid self will get back to work now, to continue escapdes of massive buffoonery and stupidty, living the life of the double standard.

so i was reading that UW research had found that coumadin (a drug i am currently taking, and probably will for the rest of my life) has been shown to be more effected by genes than all the other crap they tried to feed me when they were telling me i had to take it.

first a little background. coumdadin (or warfarin) is a drug that interferes with your blood’s clotting by deadctivating one of the steps in the middle (i think there’s 14 steps to platlette formation) and keeps blood from thickening up on itself. this is a problem for someone like me who has DVT (diverticulitus) where my blood flow in my left calf has been restricted due to clots formed after a repair on my ACL.

so basically, blood can get down fine, but it has problems making it back, resulting in a swollen calf. it’s not a danger anymore now that i’m on all these drugs, but if the clot had broken off and reached my lungs, it probably would have been curtains for me.

so warfarin keeps my blood thin, to keep more clots from forming. hence injuries are pretty bad if they occur. roll your ankle, and it’s going to take three times as long to heal due to all the excess blood that helps in the swelling, along with physical therapy to help push it all out. cut your self and it bleeds for about 3 times as long.

pretty much everything you do effects how thin your blood is. it must be taken at the exact same time once a day. no radical alterations in diet. no dark leafy veggies or peanut butter. no alcohol. no advil, aleve, tylenol. basically anything and everything can effect your ProTime (prothombrin time, amount of time it takes to form prothombrin, an intermediate in your blood’s clotting cycle) which if too high will mean death.

fun fact: did you know that warfarin is also used as a rat poison? feed enough of it to any organisim and it’s blood will get so thin as to hemorrhage throughout the body.

anyways, back to the discovery. UW researchers found that it is genetically linked by analyizing people’s DNA and comparing it to the Human Genome, availible to any one at NCBI’s website.

a statistical algorithim to search any genome that has been sequenced is availible there called BLAST. it can line up single base pairs of DNA, translated sequences, or straight protein sequences. this allows researchers to compare findings in their research to anyone elses’. the research could be similar or completly different, but the information provided by the genomic libraries is so broad that alot of interpretation is needed. the stuff we can do now with this technology is amazing though. these kind of DNA comparisons would not have been feasible as much as 5 years ago. the internet has helped science by leaps and bounds, but it’s kinda obvious as to why. with everyone able to quickly compare notes with other people who are doing similar things, the research can progress that much quicker.

hopefully in the next couple of years i’ll have a coumadin gene implanted in my body that makes the perfect amount of blood thinners for my needs. what seemed impossible 10 years ago is now almost a reality. pretty cool, i say

ahhh, the sweet sitting of work. the early morning when nothing has come in and no one really has anything to do. well, for me anyways, all those other people have to plan, i’m more of a reactionary worker. when something pops up, i react, but otherwise i lie dormant, waiting for a signal to work.

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Mo’ Bio Corner:

speaking of signals, i read this paper today about miRNAs (micro RNAs) that have been recently discovered across a couple model organisims, as well as other well studied kinds. RNA is facinating stuff, made of similar components as DNA, but with a base difference. RNA doesn’t have thymine, instead it has uracil, similar hydrogen bonds, but different arrangment of molecules, supposedly to keep DNA and RNA from getting mixed up. Recent forays into RNA has lead to startling discoveries, and that RNA may be used for a lot more than just a template for proteins.

For recent genetic studies, a new type of tinkering was discovered about 15 years ago called RNAi (RNA interference). In this process, double stranded RNA that is anti-sense to a specific DNA sequence will bind to these DNA sequences thus rendering them unable to expressed. These RNA strands are pretty short, from a dozen to a couple dozen base pairs in length. Although it was discovered 15 years ago, it has really started to take off in the past 4 years or so.

So now they have these miRNA which are activley transcribed by DNA to prevent other genes from being expressed. Because RNAi was something induced in an organisim by analysis of its genetic code, finding mechanisims for this in multiple organisims points to a much more complex role of RNA in development and in biological systems in general. A good portion of DNA and RNA that is floating around in cells was thought to be “junk” genetic material, floating around until it is reclaimed to be used in repair or transcription of genes.

Its amazing that no matter how complex the human body seems, there is some new layer waiting to be discovered. There is so much to be discovered in this day and age, and the tools we are developing are allowing for the elucidation of so much more than couldn’t have been done 5 years ago. RNAi holds much promise as a alternative, or somethign to support gene therapy. Instead of removing or altering a harmful gene, you can just silence it with a small piece of RNA, which can easily be broken down in the body, but can still be extremely effective genetic regulation.
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that really felt good. I’m going to try and start doing more stuff like this, mostly because i find this stuff fascinating, and it helps me refresh and understand this stuff better by writing it down. people reading this might actually get something out of their vist here as well, instead of reading about my problems. I’m calling it the Mo’ Bio Corner because MoBio is short for molecular biology, and the obvious slang connotation. I’m so very clever.

so yesterday was a balls out kind of day, i was just feeling it. since i came into work at 7, i could leave at 3, and i thought it would be a great idea to go for a long ride to start to get ready for the seattle-to-portland, which is in july. as anyone who lives around here knows, it was glorious yesterday, as it is today as well, almost 90 degrees around here, it feels amazing.

so i went around burke-gilman to UW, where i popped onto lake washington boulevard, to the i-90 bridge, cutting through bellevue to 148th and making my way back to bothell via burke gilman again. all in all it was probably about 50 miles, in about 5 hours.

the major good part: i made it, closely followed by no puking throughout it either. there was cramping and tunnel vision though, so i’m definatly going to need to do some work. this is heartening to methough , if i want to ride 200 miles in two days. it lets me know that i need to get my ass in to long-distance shape, but since my body isn’t a complete wreck at all today, a month will be plenty of time to prepare.

i’m excited to say the least, i’ve never tried anything of this caliber before, and since i don’t think i’ll be able to run a marathon for a while without my left calf exploding (due to thin blood and clots and whatnot), this will be a good substitue.

the route map looks great as well, if i don’t spend most of it staring at the ground.

i feel this incessant need to write, the need to do something mentally stimulating, the need to discover something important, i think. something earth shaking, something fiendishly brilliant that i could never have thought of in a million years. something that gives my life new perspective about what i have, what i can have, and what i may very well have some day. thoughts, ideals, morals, all bending around each other inside of me to make up this complex of the rational and the irrational, so tightly bound together as to have no way of separation without destruction. the ability to express things in a way that is clearer than any other way thought possible before.

these are all things that sometimes strike me, but are lost, lost because i get swept away by other real life problems like life. a frame of reference can work so well as to keep everything else out. not on purpose, but it just works out that when you can only focus in a certain direction, you can’t see behind you.

i’m constantly plagued by the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and yet you always end up trying to fix it. for better or for worse it goes, but sometimes you just crave change. something new, and something exciting, no matter what the level. change can be as addictive as anything you do. anything you do can be considered an addiction if looked at right. i’m pretty addicted to food, sunlight, air and water. the line between necessity and desire are blurred to me, because all my needs are supplied to, leaving my desires to run free and consume my life. i wonder if that’s how most people are?

but everything seems to be a passing fancy, what seems like a good idea at one point, is a stupid one at another. why do people shower if they’re just going to get dirty again? is there this innate feeling of trying to establish order in people? since the human body is one of the biggest paradigms of order known, does that order leave an impression on us, striving to create more order? if you look at electronics, they are incredibly meticulous, and on a huge level of order where everything needs to be working properly to function. as humans became ordered over millions of years (near exponential on the geologic time scale) so is our created order exponentially growing.

the organic patterns in everything around you is amazing. different parts of America, playing different roles in the country, much like organs in a body. roads connecting hubs of commerce together, much like a circulation system. cars driving on these roads, much like blood cells, carrying goods and ideas. Huge cities like LA and New York, comparative to a brain mass with trillions of nerve endings. all of us smaller organisms working together to create a giant organism with the same divisions of labor, specialization, and compartmentalization that is consistent from animals to plants, to the smallest bacterium or virus.

all this order from chaos, and now full circle with order creating chaos.

it almost seems unreal sometimes.

rain, rain, glorious rain.

it’s been awhile sine it rained like this, and it’s pretty nice, i’m hoping that it hold up until i get off of work, because i’ll be playing soccer with my co-workers, and soccer in the rain is more fun i think, more all over the place.

unfortunatly i don’t think i’ll be able to get a job here though, as nice as it would be, 20 some people got laid off right before i came on, and another 20 some got laid off on tuesday. it’s unfortunate, because i know i would really like working here, but it’s just wrong place, wrong time. it seems like everyone bounces around in biotech anyways, so i’ll probably be working in plenty of places.

i can’t believe the way the mariners played last night, it was amazing. of course i went to the game on tuesday, which was one of the most dissappointing games i’ve ever seen, even while being drunk. but when i go to mariner games anyways , it’s more of a social event than actually going to see the game though. I don’t keep up with the mariners in any serious way (say, like ben does) so i’m mostly there to smuggle in my own booze, and enjoy a night of baseball at a nice field. i’ll admit its more fun when the game is close though, or the mariners are winning.

of course it was also amusing to see the staggeringly drunk people in the rows above us yell and get rowdy, and watch this old woman fume after a whole beer got dumped down her back, all the while theis guy is just repeating “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know i’m really drunk, but I’m sorry.” i know i’ve probably doen something like that, but was probably too drunk to remember, and seeing it second hand was pretty funny.

Green also won the hydroplane race, so all was good.