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Saturday, June 25, 2011

God hates some babies more than others.

Lab yeast make evolutionary leap to multicellularity - - - New Scientist


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Lab yeast make evolutionary leap to multicellularity - - - New Scientist

IN JUST a few weeks single-celled yeast have evolved into a multicellular organism, complete with division of labour between cells. This suggests that the evolutionary leap to multicellularity may be a surprisingly small hurdle.



Multicellularity has evolved at least 20 times since life began, but the last time was about 200 million years ago, leaving few clues to the precise sequence of events. To understand the process better, William Ratcliff and colleagues at the University of Minnesota in St Paul set out to evolve multicellularity in a common unicellular lab organism, brewer's yeast.



Their approach was simple: they grew the yeast in a liquid and once each day gently centrifuged each culture, inoculating the next batch with the yeast that settled out on the bottom of each tube. Just as large sand particles settle faster than tiny silt, groups of cells settle faster than single ones, so the team effectively selected for yeast that clumped together.



Sure enough, within 60 days - about 350 generations - every one of their 10 culture lines had evolved a clumped, "snowflake" form. Crucially, the snowflakes formed not from unrelated cells banding together but from cells that remained connected to one another after division, so that all the cells in a snowflake were genetically identical relatives. This relatedness provides the conditions necessary for individual cells to cooperate for the good of the whole snowflake.

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B Herr

Let's play "Who's Being Vulgar?".

Text the word "cuntshit".
My automatic word suggestion is "vibrator".
Who is creating this code?
Let's make a poll of what y'all get typin' in that there word.
I expect a response by tomorrow from my entire audience of 3

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Monday, June 13, 2011

Go Canucks Go!

I'm sorry Sam. At least we got some Mac&Cheese and Garlic Homies.


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Saturday, June 11, 2011

Why I will no longer work for a corporate medical entity.

"  To summarize our meeting yesterday:

We discussed the dysfunction and resulting poor performance of the "Company" team, and your contribution to the dysfunction.  We also discussed several strategies to improve and some specific areas that need improvement which include but not limited to responding appropriately to requests from your "immediate supervisor",  interacting appropriately with all of your teammates, being a team player by supporting your team-mates, supporting the team’s goals and initiatives, not working against the team’s efforts to improve, embracing team and "Our Companys" decisions once they are made, improving service to the hospital, patients and community, face to face sign-outs, as well as improving the metrics which"Our Company" measures to assess the performance of the program.

You were to take this weekend to consider whether or not you are a good fit for the team, and will change behavior to move our team forward to improve our value, safety, quality and service to our patients, hospital, and wider community.

You have agreed to either confirm your commitment to the team’s success in all of its goals, or provide me with your 60 day termination notice by 12 noon on Monday 4/18/2011.

If you confirm your commitment to the team, but you behavior does not meet expectations, you will be terminated for cause.


Pathetic Corporate Toady, MD
Division Director             "


Dear P Corporate Toady and your eminences,

Thank you for clarifying my role within the company's structure and how I contribute to the dysfunction.  
I have had a few days to consider your kind and supportive words and I think I need to learn to embrace my dysfunction and accept it as part of who I am.  I realize that this will be disappointing to my supervisor, his supervisor, his regional director, the vicepresident for dysfunctional affairs, and the entire human resources squadron.

I know I am letting the whole team and Company down but I cannot continue to be a co-dependent conspirator for the cause. 

May your future endeavors bring it...


Friday, June 3, 2011

Awesome Cephalopod

B Herr

Book Alert!

I saw this excerpt from David Mamet's new book; The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture,

"For, at least, one could say of Hitler and his assassins, that they enjoyed their anti-Semitism. But the Left proceeds, from day to day, in a sort of sad, wistful fury at all the things of life not recognized in its cosmogony."

I feel compelled to read it.



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