Microbiology Lab

Well exciting news. I made two cultures of E. Coli & Serratia marcescens on a petri dish implementing the quadrant streak method A and the radiant streak culture technique. Supposedly the way that you "smear" the bacteria onto the nutrient rich agur can affect the results making them more or less readable. So, why you ask did I choose the quadrant streak method A and the radiant streak method? (oh, you didn't ask?, well never mind I'll tell you anyway) I chose these particular culture techniques for their inherint artistic quality. After all, if you are going to grow bacteria it may as well be in an attractive pattern. After careful study of the four choices we were given, I was able to narrow it down to three (I discarded streak method b as being too disorganized to the eye), finally after realizing that the T method, while aesthetically pleasing in its neat organization, didn't really "speak" to me I was able to pass over it as well. Thus I was left with the two techniques listed above. Method A looks a bit like a work of modern art with groupings of 4-5 lines circling the plate in an ever closing space while the radiant technique is sort of the sun rise look, with the streaks flowing from a horizontal line upward to the top of the dish. Quite uplifing. I won't know until after the incubation time if I've managed to grow some nice colonies of the bacteria. I'll keep you posted though.

Fundraising ideas...anyone????

We are desperately in need of some new mats and equipment for the Signal School of PE gymnastics team. The parents would like us to put together a fund raiser to help with this. Car washes are not an option and the group isn't big enough to do a cookie/candy sale type of thing. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

Human need for order

This is an excerpt from an email I received from my friend AM. I thought she had some great points.

"...I think, psychologically speaking, that as humans there is nothing more damaging than to feel helpless and out of control. Americans feel helpless in the face of this disaster, and that's why people are giving their time, money, and anything else to help relief efforts. Finding a way to help is one antidote to feeling out of control. Another antidote to helplessness is to blame someone, to find a scapegoat for the problems because blame gives us a sense of control. It happens all the time - "If he hadn't taken his bad mood out on me I wouldn't have run up the credit card by shopping to comfort myself." [I've never done that, by the way] Or like the New Orleans chief of police said when one of his officers committed suicide, "I thought he just needed a break so I gave him the day off. If I had kept him with me maybe he wouldn't have done it..." and he broke into sobs. By the way, have you ever seen so many grown men cry on national television? I've seen more men cry the past week than I probably ever will the rest of my life. Crying is a natural response to a horrible, horrible tragedy. So is a call for justice, for accountability. If we can assign responsibility, blame someone for the chaos, then we have a measure of control - to bring our world back into balance and to hopefully keep it from happening again. In fact (as the quote from the police chief indicates), we'd rather blame ourselves than feel a sense of chaos - it's that important to us to feel in control. And it's a way to get justice, really. Justice helps makes things right again. When something bad happens, there needs to be payment to bring balance and order. That's why Christ came to earth - to satisfy divine justice. The need for justice is stamped on our souls because we're made in the image of God.

But sometimes it doesn't matter as much to have the right scapegoat just as long as we have one. For instance, there were plenty of intelligence failures leading up to 9/11 but no one focused on that because we already had Bin Laden for a scapegoat (and rightly so) and didn't need another one. 9/11 might have been prevented, too, but that doesn't play a very big role in our perception of those events. We could do something to eliminate the cause of that tragedy and so we bombed Afghanistan. In the case of this disaster, we can't put Katrina on trial or hold her accountable, so someone else has to pay the price to make us feel a sense of control. We can't control the weather, so we grab for whatever control we can find. Also, it's emotionally unsatisfying to blame the storm (because it would forever be unresolved), so we blame the response to it. But even though we think we see these as two distinct things, the storm cost us something emotionally and we're pinning the bill for it on the response. As the dust is starting to settle, it looks like most of the fingers are pointed at Michael Brown (director of FEMA), and now that the public has figured out who they want to hold accountable, they're starting to feel better. If Michael Brown goes or pays the price in some way, then this exact thing won't happen ever again, we think. Justice is served and the situation is resolved. We can fix it, we're in control, and the world's in balance again. We can keep this from happening somehow if we try hard enough. For a few days we had the awful suspicion that we're not actually in control, but that fear has been laid to rest. Someone will pay, and everything will be okay again.

So anyway, as far as the response goes, I think that there are plenty of reasons it was slow and inadequate - the shock factor (shock is paralyzing), red tape, and unpreparedness. There were too many weak links in the system to count, and they've been exposed. We realistically can do something to be better prepared in the future, and that's a comforting thought. But when it comes down to it, all this is really Katrina's fault in the first place. No one person or organization or host of people can carry the weight of Katrina's responsibility and the problem with having a scapegoat for this is that it will never feel fully resolved. It's impossible to blame a person for the weather. Nevertheless, we will try hard to make someone pay, and it really will make us feel better in the long run."

quote for the day

This was in an email from a friend:

quoting old Archibald Alexander of Princeton (back when it taught the Gospel:)

“For your more rapid growth in grace, some of you will be cast into the furnace of affliction. Sickness, bereavement, bad conduct of children and relatives, loss of property or of reputation, may come upon you unexpectedly and press heavily on you. In these trying circumstances, exercise patience and fortitude. Be more solicitous to have the affliction sanctified than removed. Glorify God while in the fire of adversity. That faith which is most tried is commonly most pure and precious. Learn from Christ how you ought to suffer. Let perfect submission to the will of God be aimed at. Never indulge a murmuring or discontented spirit. Repose with confidence on the promises. Commit all your cares to God. Make known your requests to Him by prayer and supplication. Let go your too eager grasp of the world. Become familiar with death and the grave. Wait patiently until your change comes; but desire not to live a day longer than may be for the glory of God.”

Responsibility

I never thought to blame the federal government or more specifically the Bush administration for the horrible chain of events that took place in New Orleans following the hurricane and flooding of that city. That is, until I read the local newspaper, watched the television, and checked out several web sources on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday...following the flooding. Then I was puzzled. Weren't a few steps of blame missing? Didn't the city of New Orleans have an emergency plan for just such a disaster? After all, Katrina was not exactly a surprise. Not only did the entire country have the opportunity to view the swirling cloud on every iwitnessweather channel as it approached the gulf states (I would have taken up running again to get away from the coast, that was a big cloud!) but after last year's close call weren't the powers that be claiming that it wasn't a matter of "if" New Orleans were to be hit but "when"?
Finally I have read an article that puts some perspective on the issue. It is an editorial by Mr. Bob Williams in WSJ.com from 9/7

quote of the day

The following is the final paragraph of my microbiology textbook's section detailing the history of microbiology and the series of experiments and scients who disprooved the theory of spontaneous generation.
"Pasteur's work provided evidence that microorganisms cannot originate from mystical forces present in nonliving materials. Rather, any appearance of "spontaneous" life in nonliving solutions can be attributed to microorganisms that were already present in the air or in the fluids themselves. Scientists now believe that a form of spontaneous generation probably did occur on the primitive Earth when life first began, but they agree that this does not happen under today's environmental conditions."

Jokes on paper

It is definitly a mistake to make jokes on email to people you don't know very well, epecially if they possess the grey matter in much larger quantities or much smaller quantities than you do yourself. Too much opportunity for mistrued interpretations. The problem? There is no way to impart tone or a smile or a sence of the ironic in print. Certain web pages let you choose from an assortment of emotion faces, or whatever they are called. (my avoidance of web ligo has left me bereft of the proper word for these idiotic yellow faces that punctuate sentences followed by LOL or some other such flipant abbreviation. But back to the point). I know this. I know that I have stuck the proverbial foot in the mouth on numerous occasions in my attempts to be funny over email (in fact, I seem to do it in real life on occasion as well) yet, I am ever the flighty person who looks in the mirror only to walk away and forget what she looks like. Forgetting my lessons learned, making them lessons unlearned, I try once again to impart my great humor and wittiness to the unsuspecting victims, only to find that I never hear from them again or if I do it is to let me know of their less than amused perpective towards my insouciant comments. Sigh.....another one bites the dust.