This may have just completely blown my mind.

This video is long but totally worth it.

Who wants to go see this with me?

EDIT:

Who wants to make one of these with me?

BAD.

If you’re ever thinking you might want to try making mango custard, DON’T. Do not buy $6 worth of mangoes, do not buy coconut extract you will never use in another recipe, do not spend an hour of your life chopping and pureeing and stirring. Just drive to Sindhu’s in East Lansing and buy some from the nice people who actually know how to make it.  Because theirs will not taste like a giant sack of ass. Mine does. And so will yours if you follow the recipe from indianfoodforever.com.

I’m real sad.

Restless

For whatever reason I slept like hell last night.  And I look like hell this morning.  My face is all puffy and my eyes have a nice set of bags.  Even more distressing is the fact that I woke up this morning at my normal time, in my normal position on my side…clutching my deodorant.  I know I didn’t fall asleep with it.  It’s not within arm’s reach.  So apparently I got up at some point in the night, decided I needed to lovingly cradle my freaking deodorant, walked to the other side of the room, then got back in bed with my prize.  What is the matter with me?

S’true.

From Overheard in New York:

Little boy: Daddy, daddy! I wanna make a bear!
Buff dad: Nigga, I done told you a thousand times, thugs don’t make bears! [Tiny black boy bursts into tears.]

–Outside of Build a Bear Workshop, at 6th St & 5th Ave

I have been laughing at the weirdest stuff lately.  This really got me.

I think I need this

It might be because I have no motivation to do anything productive, but I have been sleeping in all the damn time.  I turn my alarm clock off and go back to sleep and then I’m good and late for work.  Help me, Clocky!

Nunchucks skills…bowhunting skills…computer hacking skills…

“Girls only want boyfriends that have great skills!”  Napoleon Dynamite is so right.

I went Moosejaw last week to get fitted for my new pack and the guy helping me was fairly attractive.  He was completely average-looking, polite and mildly friendly…mostly unremarkable.  Except that he knew a TON about backpacking equipment, which apparently turned him from “meh” to pretty damned interesting.  It’s funny to me that skills and knowledge can have such an impact on general attractiveness.  A few years ago Wendy and I went to Jersey Giant’s Subs to get lunch.   I was kind of eying the guy making our sandwiches.  I glanced and Wendy and saw that she was doing the same.  After we got our food we discussed the situation and agreed that he was wasn’t anything special to look at, he gave us no clues about his level of intelligence and he didn’t appear to be overly friendly.  What was the deal?  Basically his only outstanding feature was his skill with the meat slicer, and it was pretty hot.  Granted we both love sandwiches.   But still.

The point is, I wish I had a skill.  Eh, I know I have lots of skills, but I mean I wish I had a SKILL.  Something I’m really good at, significantly better than others around me.  Even if it’s something small and meaningless.  Even if others don’t know about it.  I just want something that is MINE.

I know this is probably as old as the internet itself…

…but it still makes me giggle.

http://www.peepresearch.org/surgery.html

Damn, I love science.

I have a new science crush. It may even rival my current science crush, my boss Marc Breedlove. Sorry, Marc, but can you compete with this?

This is Robert Sapolsky, and he is a BIG DEAL. He came from Stanford to give a talk this afternoon and it was the best talk of my life. He studies glucocorticoids and their long term effects on the hippocampus and memory. He’s looking at this from the molecular level all the way to the behavioral level and I LOVE THAT. Nothing makes me happier than thinking about both the small and big pictures. His science is kick-ass, but what he is really well known for is his ability to explain that kick-ass science to the general public. Even though what he was explaining was fairly technical, I felt like anyone off the street could have fully understood what he was saying.

I don’t think enough effort is put into accurately explaining current scientific discoveries to laypeople. Researchers get so into their tiny little niche and caught up in the politics of the scientific community. Passing what we learn to those outside the people who are already studying it feels like an afterthought to me, if it happens at all. Most of the information we are discovering gets watered down, misconstrued, and doled out to the masses via reporters who only have a cursory understanding of the concepts. And that is only for hot topics like cancer or Alzheimer’s or other stuff that is arbitrarily deemed “important.” I answered a phone call from a reporter from Cosmopolitan magazine who was doing “one last fact check” before a story was printed that mentioned some work done in our lab. She had the facts completely backwards, and the article was delayed for another month so they could rewrite the whole thing. Not that anyone should be reading Cosmo for scientific information, but still.

I don’t have a good solution for this, I’m just whining. But really, what is the point of all this work if not to inform the rest of the world? I would be a lot more excited about what I do if I thought your mom might one day hear about what I’m working on.

PS:  His beard was much larger in person.

Inquire within

I will literally pay someone upwards of $10 right now to come do my laundry.  Why am I dreading this so much?  I’ve been somewhat sloppy for the past week, so I spent this afternoon vacuuming, and cleaning the kitchen and bathroom.  Laundry was definitely more of a priority, but I just DID NOT want to do it.  I figured once I got into cleaning mode it wouldn’t be so rough.  Well, it’s 10pm now and it’s looking like no laundry will be done tonight.

Seriously.  $10.  Will accept other reasonable offers.