punkscience goes to the beach

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Its bank holiday so me and punkwiff are off to Sennen. The surf's shit but I'm taking my kite as the wind will be good. I will finish putting all the RENs and climate change denialists in their respective places when I get back.

Word to all your mummas.

just another day at the office for Laird

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Fucking hell.

a little philosophy

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Duct tape is like 'The Force'. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

-Anon

more XKCD

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Snigger.

Johann Hari is awesome

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His article on child-marriage and Islam got rather predictably flamed to shit. His response is mature and balanced and I have utter respect for him.

Jesus is a junglist

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Shit, I laughed!

Ciderpunk!

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This is just so awesome I might actually spiff in my pants.

Now I know what 'casus belli' means

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And I found out from Spinwatch's take-up of the story about Dick Cheney planning to have a bunch of Navy Seals dressed as Iranians attack a US warship in the Persian Gulf to provide an excuse to attack Iran.

Dick Cheney is a monster and needs to be locked away.

high-grade tunage

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These guys are playing at Recydrate. They're gonna rule.

this is ultra-rad

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late night entertainment

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No, not porn. This.

A few corkers:

• Hanlon's razor — A corollary of Finagle's law, normally taking the form "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.". As with Finagle, possibly not strictly eponymous. Alternately, "Do not invoke conspiracy as explanation when ignorance and incompetence will suffice, as conspiracy implies intelligence."
• Hofstadter's law — "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." It was created by Douglas Hofstadter in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
• Littlewood's law — States that individuals can expect miracles to happen to them, at the rate of about one per month. Coined by Professor J E Littlewood, (1885–1977)
• Poe's Law — Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to tell the difference between religious Fundamentalism and a parody thereof.
• Sturgeon's revelation — "90 percent of everything is crap."

"Free Trade" is an oxymoron

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Yeah, anyone who's read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine knows what a bunch of inhuman monsters the WTO and World Bank are. Johann would like to remind us of this.

the festival experience

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It was dark and wet; soaked in the fermented juice of a million apples. I spent hours with my eyes closed and inhaled the charred fumes of exotic spices. There was a roaring fire around which dark shapes cavorted bizarrely. I feared them and retired to the bosom of the psy-trance bunker. Later they played dubstep, which suited my state of inebriation well. The following day I had the most amazing veggie burger that has ever slid past my tonsils. The mud got deeper and the tea stronger. Nell appeared and we danced and laughed like wild gypsies, drunk on the beauty of life. I had a wee in front of one of the most beautiful panorama's I have ever seen. The mud got even deeper.

Iran calls moratorium on stoning

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This is pretty good news for the eight or so people currently lined up for this most hideous of deaths.

drugs are good

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Word. A wonderful piece of writing.

Pure Energy Systems Wiki

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If you're as fascinated by renewable generation as I am then you should love this Wiki. I found my way there through their algal biofuels page, which is awesome!

the CBI is sociopathic

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They rather predictably want the government to ignore the unions' demands for flexible working hours for parents and are forecasting doom, gloom and general plagues of frogs if the government gives in. Wankers.

This is a typically one-sided argument from the corporate whores, completely ignoring the benefits to society of parents being able to spend more quality time with their children. Of course the CBI will claim that they don't deal in 'intangibles' such as 'theoretical' benefits. However, evidence exists to demonstrate the benefits of such policy. For example, the Scandinavian countries who already implement such policies have far higher education standards and lower juvenile crime rates. Social studies of parent-child contact also reveal the potential for this policy to provide much benefit to our society.

This seems obvious to me but the corporate whores of the CBI don't seem to realise this or they don't want it made known because its another nail in the coffin of their demands for global corporate slavery. So they are either stupid and have no place commenting on policy or they are deceitful and sociopathic. I wonder which . . . ?

another step closer to sustainable biofuels

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science puts an end to racism

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Nice work.

Demonstrating once and for all that racism is purely a product of prejudice, arrogance, bigotry and selfishness.

sodding HPLC . . . .

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Punkscience just destroyed another £400 HPLC column.

Bugger.

I'm trying to quantify metallothioneins in my beasties according to a method adapted from these two papers. And its not working.

I can't seem to get a peak from the derivatised metallothionein, no matter what I do. The derivatising agent, 6-IAF, should bind happily to thiols such as those on the MT. I've tried pre-incubating the MT with cadmium to ensure the thiols are saturated, there's EDTA in the labelling mixture too which should pull those metals off and allow the label to bind. I've also tried adding a reducing agent, TCEP, so that the thiols aren't oxidised and unable to bind the metals/label. Still no peak.

I've varied the gradient, I've extended it to silly lengths just in case the MT peak was being masked by one of the other peaks that come out. Still nothing.

I'm using the gradient version of the HPLC protocol with acetonitrile/methanol and water and when I go to clean the columns after a busy day's cocking around and getting no peaks I ramp the organic eluent up to 100% to clean all the crap off the column. The first time I tried this with one of my bitch columns a load of cloudy white stuff came off as I ramped the organic phase back down again. Oh dear. That would be the stationary phase being stripped off the silica particles then. Exit first column.

I then tried using my uber-bad analytical column I bought a couple of years ago for my crab-urine work. This should have improved separation and resolution of any peaks. It didn't. No.

Instead, after taking great care not to ramp the solvents up and down too quickly and to rinse the column with milliQ I ran the wrong gradient program one day and got another nasty little white cloud in my waste bottle, just like before. I almost cried that time.

Then yesterday, using my last column- a random C8 one I 'acquired' nefariously- I switched from the stupid, shitty MT analysis to another piece of work I was planning, which also used an acetonitrile-water gradient and managed to fuck that column too, first time I tried to wash it.

Bastard fuckbollock goat cock. Now I am out of good RP columns and still have no data.