Sunday Funday

Part 1: In which mundane chores become entertaining

I carefully engineered my schedule yesterday to accomplish two tasks in the same window of time. Task 1 was laundry. This task takes some time, as you probably know, but there are a few points along the way where the laundry kind of does itself- long as you’re not using one of those boards which are used primarily as musical instruments nowadays, which, rest assured, I was not.

The first self-sufficient stage is the washing, but I had to be attentive because I wanted to be very fancy and add some fabric softener to my laundry to restore some measure of decency to my life. Why exactly do I need fabric softener to restore decency? Because my sink leaked all over my towels, making them stink perhaps permanently of Wet Towel. Also because my little cat, Panther, has decided for reasons unknown to smite us by peeing on any bag which is left on the floor. So, fabric softener not for spring-like freshness but just hopefully not smelling like mold and pee. Classy.

The second self-sufficient stage is the drying. Thanks to the wonderful laundromat dryers, this step only takes three quarters, or 24 minutes. This period is when I brilliantly engineered the inclusion of step 2: returning my redbox disc (Lost Season 1, Disc 5- my towels stink, my bags have pee on them, and I’m four years behind pop culture; in other words, yes, I am a scientist) to the most proximally available post drop. Thing is, I usually drop my redboxes in the box at Southport and George, so I had no clue in the world where I might be able to post the envelope in the vicinity of the laundromat. The race was on: twenty four minutes to find a mailbox in unfamiliar territory three blocks (!!) from my apartment. Cue dramatic digital clock overlay.

If this day was a very brief episode of ’24,’ and the time when the quarter went in the dryer was zero, then there would have been a dramatic split screen at about ‘5:00.08.’ The split screen would have had in one corner three people wearing Bears jerseys sitting on canvas camp chairs with two dogs in front of a bar that only insiders know as “Katie’s Place.” In another corner, a face-on angle shot of the lovely Brigitte and I walking down the street. In the third, a chalkboard sign advertising $1 burgers w/ purchase of an alcoholic beverage. And in the final corner, a wide shot from the side angle of Brigitte and I . Also visible: the chalkboard from corner three under an awning for “Patsy’s Place” with a solitary, incredibly bored-looking female bartender inside the joint. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Two ‘Of course...’ statements:
... I was very interested in $1 burgers.
... since we only had 24 minutes to find a mailbox in unfamiliar lands three blocks from my apartment, there was (cue Bauer voice) NO TIME TO STOP FOR BURGERS! WE’VE GOT TO GO! NOW!

However, during the next three minutes, which would certainly be the commercial time of this particular episode, it was decided by Brigitte and I that we would get burgers after, and only after, finishing tasks 1 & 2.

Minute 10 would appropriately be the climax, the moment that Brigitte spotted a mailbox across the street. Then, at minute 12 enters the conflict, wherein we see a large somewhat unkempt man sitting at a bus stop with three grocery bags at his feet. We will have to somehow get past the fat man, defensive of his groceries as a duck nesting in a hotel planter is of her eggs, in order to get to the mailbox. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Minute 13 is spent waiting for the lights to change. At minute 14, a bus drives through the intersection, just before the light changes. Brigitte and I pay no heed, but this riles up the fat man. Of course, he was waiting at the bus stop for the bus, which just blasted past him at 35 mph. At minute 15, I commiserate with the fellow about his unfortunate situation, gaining his acceptance and, at minute 16, a clear passage to the mailbox. Success! And the rest of the episode is spent walking back and taking care of all the emotional loose ends from the first part of the show. Also, a little is spent playing Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. Again, yes, I am 4 years behind. However, it does rule.

After much folding and a couple more quarters to thoroughly dry the towels (verdict: fresh!), tasks 1 and 2 are completed. Burger time!

Part 2: In which a mundane dinner becomes bizarrely entertaining

Between taking care of task 2 and finishing task 1, three patrons had gone into Patsy’s to keep the bartender company. Patrons 1 and 2 sat at the end of the bar, two upper30somethingish men who never took their elbows off their bar so their arms would look really big. They drank Stella though, so net manliness: 0. Patron 3 sat alone on the main section of the bar. We’ll call him “Brian.” During the long wait for our burgers to arrive, Brian received a bowl of tomato soup and announced he was going to have some shots. He asked patrons 1 and 2 if they were interested. He proceeded at 5 p.m. on Sunday to order a round of jager bombs for patrons 1-3 and the bartender. Being a man of decency, he paused to toast before taking the shot. However, this is where I first sensed things going awry as two things happened. One, Brian asked patrons 1 and 2 what the shot should be to, and when they said ‘To you for buying the shot, buddy,’ he blew them off. You can’t ask someone else what to toast to then turn it down. The second misstep was his biggest, however, in that when he came up with a toast it was not “To Freedom” as the first shot always should be, but “To Sunday Funday.”

Shortly after our burgers arrived (bleu cheese, no onions, side of tots for Brigitte, jalapeno jack and bacon, side of tots; bacon omitted, tomato and onion omitted; bacon corrected, tomato and onion left off without making a fuss for me), a fourth patron of interest (another foursome had shown up but proved quite inconsequential), we’ll call him “Jeff” also arrived. Upon his arrival, another round of shots was in order. Round 2: five shots to I’m not sure what.

Following round 2, the wheels really came off of our very unassuming Sunday. First, Katie, proprietor of Katie’s Place, the place with the people sitting outside in corner 1 from part 1, could be seen through the open storefront of Patsy’s walking about her side of the street blowing a whistle. Not a long, hard whistle, but a few short, sharp shots. She walked out of the bar and whistled a few times, went back in, came back out, whistled some more, then walked down the street, tapping a closed green-and-white umbrella on the ground. When she returned she was still whistling, but with a yellow lab in tow. This was odd.

At approximately the same time, Jeff tried to convince Brian that, despite the steam rising off his bowl of tomato soup, it was in fact finally at an edible temperature. This was demonstrated first by wolfing down three spoonfuls in four seconds, much like how the Businessman eats cereal, and second by sticking the tip of his tongue directly into the middle of the soup. Being convinced and fond of his friend’s spit, Brian finally tried the soup. He promptly declared it too sugary and decided the remedy for sugary soup was more shots.

By this point Brian and Jeff were aware that we were paying some attention to them, as Jeff apologized to us after sucking up his friend’s soup. And so we were tapped to join them for round 3: four O-bombs and something brown for Jeff. Brian rudely toasted Brigitte and myself “To Sunday Funday” (again!) without Jeff, who was on his phone, and without the bartender, who was elsewhere, and then ridiculed me for finishing slowly when I was just trying to wait to get everyone involved.

After round 3, Jeff stepped outside of Patsy’s to talk on his phone. To be clear, across the street from Patsy’s in Katie’s Place. (Lest you think we have some kind of battling Places thing going on, Patsy’s is to Katie’s as Chicago is to Detroit- maybe not the most glorious but at least modern and at least it tries- so they clearly have different clientele.) There were still people in Bears jerseys outside of Katie’s, and Jeff got into some kind of exchange with them. This lead, not logically, but still somehow, into Jeff throwing one of his flip-flops across the very busy street after he was off his phone. One of these men, we’ll call him “John,” picked up the sandal which had somehow not hit a car on its flight over and brought it back across the street, walking right out in front of a cop car while doing so.

Before I introduce John, allow me to give him some inferred character.

Facts about Katie’s Place:

Numerous beer signs out front, but no signage indicating the name
May or may not have been mentioned in the book “There Are No Children Here:” the name is right but the location is wrong.
The human:dog ratio inside the bar may at times slip below 1.
It is inhabited by 6 types of people:

1. Katie, the somewhat older proprietor of her namesake establishment.
2. Grisly neighborhood social alcoholics with dogs.
3. Middle aged men who live above the bar.
4. Lawyers of the middle aged men who live above the bar.
5. Myself and my friends Chris and Rosie after we’ve been drinking for 8 hours and think stopping at the townie looking place with the Old Style and Kaliber signs will be fun.
6. Brigitte after meeting up with Chris, Rosie and I, but having not had anything to drink yet, who, when tasked with getting us pitchers for cheaper than $12, gets herself loaded on shots from the types 2-4 of people at the bar but does not manage to get free or discounted pitchers. (She then goes on to make friends with a table of people at the nearby greasy spoon because they haven’t seen Swingers but still like Vince Vaughan, a smart choice because she gets some of their chili spaghetti out of it. I cannot believe she ate someone else’s food. That is moderately uncharacteristic of her.)

John would be an awesome subtype the the third type of person who inhabits Katie’s: the British guy who lives above the bar subtype. For sake of honesty, he was not the type three who previously employed the services of type four.

After John returned Jeff’s sandal to him, Jeff treated him like a good dog by petting him on the head and saying “good boy.” John was too drunk and english to take insult at this, but it did confuse him. After making a small mockery of him Jeff invited John in to the bar for a drink, saying “We’ll show you a real good time in here.” What Jeff and Brian proceeded to show John was low-grade humiliation stemming entirely from the fact that John was drunk and British. For instance, John retold the story of running across the road to return Jeff’s shoe. Some might say, well, while that was kind of silly and running out in front of a car, let alone a cop, was downright reckless, that was a rather kind thing to do. I would agree. Jeff and Brian would not think this commendable, rather they would find it very entertaining for its dog-like ‘fetch’ attributes. Another for instance: John was clearly from England. I’ve made this point before. We all speak english, go us, but as everyone knows we don’t always call things by the same name. To some, this would be at most an interesting point of divergent cultures. To Jeff and Brian, they almost fell out of their seats laughing when John called the sandal a “slipper.” To be fair, however, he would not stop saying the word slipper, to the point that even I found it amusing, both for the repetition and also for the Higher Order comedy of being able to anticipate a) that he’d say it, b) that they’d laugh, and finally c) that he’d look bewildered by it.

This whole exchange then led to Brian reprimanding Jeff for being an idiot, and to show his disproval he took Jeff’s slippers and attempted to punt them across the street while standing in the bar. The bartender did not appreciate this very much. Eventually Brian bought John a drink and they talked about how drunk they all were, and they made fun of John for wearing a Cedric Benson jersey. At this point we acquired bill because this Sunday Funday was too much to handle.

We said our due thanks to Brian for getting us the O-bombs (Jeff was gone at this point to change out of what Brian deemed to be unacceptable attire), but not to be outdone by our departure or the John hijinx, however, Brian wanted to have a brief chat with us. He stood up and grabbed the one remaining shot on the bar (the bartender left her round 3 untaken). He touched each of us on the shoulder with his free hand and said “Ok, look at me both of you. Ok, now relax your eyes. Relax, all the way.” I was then momentarily engaged in a conversation with John, who said “Buckberry what’s that?” “Oh, it’s a band, Buckcherry.” (It was on my shirt) “Oh, well I’m a big fan of Oasis.” “Yeah, hey they haven’t done much lately have they.” “They have a new record actually.” We bantered back and forth a couple more lame lines, during which time Brian had time to ask Brigitte “Is this guy your boyfriend?” When I turned back to the group Brian raised his glass to make a toast.

I prepared to celebrate Sunday Funday once again as Brigitte and I watched empty-handed and relaxedly. “I hope someday I have what you two have.”

And then he took his shot while we had nothing to do but stand there veeeeeery uncomfortably.

At the Zoo

The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago has two large primate facilities. One is the Regenstein Center for African Apes, a formidable facility which houses, at a guess, 20 some gorillas and chimpanzi. (I find it an ironic connection that the ape habitat bears the same name as the giant concrete block facility on the University of Chicago campus which houses a lot of books and nearly as many miserable undergraduates similarly ‘trapped’ by their studies. Despite their very bookish and antisocial complaints to the contrary, the undergrads would actually have an easier time leaving their Regenstein, should they ever choose to. Most don’t. They truly are very miserable people, and make me appreciate having gone to a state school.)

The Center provides some of our closest relatives very ample room to live and interact, both indoors and out. Also, they used to have a really young gorilla- not dead, just older now- who at the time did many cute and interesting things, like ‘fishing for ants with a stick’ or ‘messing with his dad.’ They’re just like us!! There are always massive groups of people watching the apes through the glass, even though they don’t put on much of a show. Sometimes they eat lettuce though. Also, sometimes there are rabbits in their habitats, which is sometimes the most exciting thing going on.

The ugly stepsister of the ape habitat is the Helen V. Brach Primate House, which is in itself actually quite nice. However, it has the unfortunate luck to be positioned right next to the very, very cool ape habitat. It’s kind of the Ashlee Simpson Primate House to the Jessica Simpson Center for Apes, if Jessica wasn’t completely vapid and Ashlee was, well, at least attractive. Is that too much to ask?

(The Primate House was funded with generous support from the Helen V. Brach foundation. Yes, Brach as in the candy. Pretty interesting story about what happened to her…)

The primate house holds probably 30 or so primates of various species- probably these could be called ‘monkeys’ but I’m not sure about the technical ramifications of that term. Seems that it may not be p.c. any more. One monkey of note in this facility is a young male with only one arm. He wasn’t born that way. Rather, no one told this poor monkey that the guy in Arrested Development who George used to teach the kids a lesson never ACTUALLY lost his arm. As a result, to teach the lessons “That’s why you reuse reduce recycle,” “That’s why you clean up after yourself you filthy brat,” and “That’s why you don’t leave food wrappers around or you’ll get ants,” he actually went off and lost it. Sounds like something Jessica might do to me.

Anyhow, one warm summer day some time ago the beautiful Brigitte and I were at the zoo in the Primate House. Whilst we were partaking of a baby monkey-of-some-sort romping about on a branch, an uneducated but otherwise perfectly pleasant couple also partook nearby. Now, why in the world would I jump to the conclusion that these pleasant people were uneducated? Well, usually when dealing with masses of humanity that’s my underlying assumption. However, I like being at the zoo, and the little orange monkey was pretty entertaining, so, in conceptual hindsight I’ll give myself the benefit of the doubt and say that I wasn’t being a complete highbrow/arrogant jerkface. What substantiates the assessment then?

They stood beside us for a moment, entertained. Then the fellow said “Just think Dolly, but for one chromosome, that would be you.” Brigitte and I locked eyes and just about split apart laughing. We are scientists. We enjoy the biological-knowledge-based shortcomings of others. However, we contained ourselves because we’re not the “Oh hey everyone did you hear what this idiot just said, what an idiot!” know-it-all jerkfaces. We’re more the reserved, listen to this schmuck who thinks he knows something but he doesn’t jerkfaces.

So why, you ask, is this so preposterous? After all everyone knows humans and chimps are at least 98% the same genetically, but look how different we are, it must come from somewhere, and so why not from an extra chromosome? Well, for one, humans have 23 chromosomes- the molecularly massive frameworks that contain all of our DNA- so if we had a whole SPARE chromosome that right there would be about 4.5% difference. Additionally, chromosome number turns out not to mean much. Humans have 23 and chimps 22, the difference being that the human chromosome 2 exists as two smaller chromosomes in chimps (they’re numbered by size). To illustrate the point better, however, rhesus macaques, a species of monkey, have 21 chromosomes, mice 20, dogs 38, cows 30, chickens 33, fruit flies 6, and yeast 16. Given that this list is in approximate ascending order of divergence time from humans (that is, the last common ancestor that gave rise to humans and mice lived more recently than the last common ancestor of humans and chickens) (well, unless you’re Sarah Palin), you can see that there is no trend over time such as “gain skeleton, add one chromosome, collect $200.” That would clearly be meaningless because jawed fishes clearly wouldn’t have much to do with $200. So, I enter this as my depiction of why a solitary, discrete chromosome is not the reason I did not have orange hair and crawl a branch within 6 months out of the womb. Neither is the reason for me not doing that that I’m not Irish nor was I ever very good at climbing trees. It has to do a bit more with real genetics.

And so, this would allow Mr. Geneball an opportunity to expound on how exactly it is that humans and monkeys come to look and behave considerably differently. There are two factors at play here. One is the aforementioned 98% coding sequence identity. By the mathematical property of subtraction this then means we’re about 2% different. Not much. But when you consider that this is over the span of millions and millions of pieces of information stored in our DNA, this becomes a considerable difference- on the order of tens to hundreds of millions of differences in the code that biology uses to shape its cells, and that cells use to shape tissues, and tissues to organs, and organs to peoples, monkeys, or flies. So, this 2% difference can have a big effect much like a giant retailer like Wal-Mart can make a fat profit while selling things for just over their production value. (At least that’s what I get the impression they do- I read Nature not Fortune)

The second factor is a bit of a trick that lies in the details used above. I referred to our differences specifically as ‘coding sequence identity,’ because that number was determined comparing just the sections of DNA that we know code for a particular something- that is, comparing the genes. Turns out, only a fraction of the 3 billion DNA base genome we tote about in every cell are genes, that is, are used to make a protein, which will do most of the work of the cell. Some of the rest regulate the genes- they interact with various proteins to allow or prevent nearby genes to be made into proteins. Some help regulate getting the giant pieces of DNA into separate cells when a cell divides in two. And some, we don’t really have a damn clue what they do. And all of these sections of DNA vary as well, including not only single-bit changes but also larger scale rearrangements, duplications, and deletions. The net effect of this non-gene, or ‘non-coding,’ material is that the genome becomes a monstrously complicated network of switches and interactions, and alterations in these regions allow very specific differentiation into humans, monkeys, or flies. For instance, splitting human chromosome 2 in two parts, as happens in chimpanzee, likely puts these genes in entirely new non-coding contexts. This change, along with a multitude of others, ultimately adds up to enough subtle developmental differences to keep me on the outside of a thick glass wall, at least as long as I keep the thoughts in my head inside.

The details are as a whole a bit fuzzy still, but those are the concepts by which these things work. It’s a combination of a massive information source which makes a few slight changes cumulatively significant and a synergistic effect where not only gene products but also how they are regulated and what they regulate can produce quite different results with similar starting materials.

But for millions of changes and rearrangements, boy, things would be a lot different.

Impending Doom

On my way to work today the often funny but sometimes obnoxiously repetitive morning guy I listen to kept playing two things. I will explain the hilarity of each and delve into related topics in this blog.

[In science they tell me it's good to prime my audience with a brief description of what I will be telling them. Clearly this tactic is far to blunt to be considered literary 'foreshadowing', and since scientists are fairly boring people we call it an 'outline'. How very technical of us.]

The first clip was a radio ad by Metallica promoting their upcoming tour. Of particular note was the fact that the commercial was supposedly James and Larz conversationally discussing the upcoming tour, esp. how rocking the Chicago tour dates are going to be. Problem was, the commercial is stitched together worse than Pat Summerall's announcing in the old Madden games, where there was a distinct change of pitch and tone every time the announcer used fill-in-the-blank information. e.g. to the ear it always came off something like "That's a TEN yard run by NUMBER FIFTEEN." In the case of this ad, however, the fill-in-the-blank voice wasn't even that of Larz or James, it was Stock Excited Radio Voice. I cannot describe how bad this commercial really was. I hope you hear it, but at the same time, I hope you are spared.

The second was a clip of Matt Lauer saying "Some scientists believe the world may soon come to an end." I found it particularly entertaining that they used this very short edit of the clip, because of the extreme gravity of the situation without any specification of why in the hell the world might end. I can see plenty of further uses of this clip down the road. In fact I may very well use the sound bit as my own proclamation when my Official Masterwork, The Genome Troll (r), goes off the grid and threatens to ruin humanity.

Of note, however, is what I presume to be the true reason for the potential end times just around the corner. A lot of people (by which I mean actually very few but a majority of my immediate sphere of influence) are getting revved up about some Big Time Science that's about to start in Europe. Namely, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland is about to start blasting some protons. I will not even pretend that I know exactly what it's doing, but the jist of it is that it's going to send protons (one of the basic components of an atom) flying around a big ring at just below the speed of light, and then ultimately collide them to look for the even smaller particles called bosons that actually make up protons. According to people who think about really, really small things a lot, these wee particles may be what give everything mass, a.k.a. (roughly) weight. Some of the preceding few statements may be technically inaccurate, but you get the picture.

The reason Matt Lauer gets to talk about the end of the world, then, is that some overeducated whack jobs believe that the massive energy involved in the collisions at the LHC will create a black hole which will then destroy the world. Yippee! I'm personally not terribly concerned because if the world disappears in a black hole, well, that's pretty much it for everything. Sure I get reduced to nothing but so does all the money I owe in student loans and on my stupid college credit card. That'd be the end of my family and friends too, but I'd never have to see Rene Zellweger ever again either. Effectively being black holed becomes a wash. It would be nice to see how Lost ends though...

One scientific reason put forth to not be concerned is that apparently if a black hole is created in the process of bosonometry, well the black hole will just be really small anyway and we'll all be ok. Wait, wait, wait, wait wait one damn minute here. Now perhaps it is only an elementary understanding, but the impression I get about matter so incredibly dense that it sucks anything into it is that it wouldn't be particularly relevant how big this particular unit is. All of a sudden we have a threshold for how big really dense matter needs to be before it consumes the world? Not buying it. And anyway, this black hole would be created in the middle of a really really giant and heavy magento-ring apparatus, so wouldn't the thing just Tamagatchi itself over the threshold pretty quick anyhow? I mean, I'd hope not because I really want to see how Lost ends, but still. I'm not buying the "A Black Hole Too Small" explanation.

Anyhow, just wanted to pass on some of the wonderful things I've found lately that either explain or make light of the LHC.
Here and here are very useful resources for tracking research progress.
Wikipedia article
The first of a five-part PhD comics series on the LHC, a very nice description
The wonderful XKCD's take (if you haven't read this comic you probably should)

Arnie Baker sharpie

The summer of 2006 was a magical time. I began my current binge of city-league sport involvement with a team so woeful I nearly quit on them two weeks into the season. They were awful, like really bad, like so bad half of them didn’t have an idea what was going on. And, to compound the awful, I was playing softball because I enjoyed it and was pretty good at it, so was hoping for some wins. Oh well.

Additionally, my former relationship was falling apart, which was in itself not particularly magical, but, in retrospect, probably OK. Directly related to this, I became very good friends with a cat who would eventually become preposterously obese, so that’s a nice story.

And, most importantly (or germanely at least), the hearts of America were being touched by a thin man with the facial hair of a 14 year old. Amongst the softball team, we called this special character Skeevy Floyd, due in no small part to the aforementioned face pubes. And in no small part to his tendency to wear yellow and be a scrawny, generally smarmy looking dude with a monstrous underbite.

Floyd Landis made quite the ripples when he first enlivened America’s hopes for continued dominance in the Tour de’ France (aka, the Only Bike Race 98% of the World Will Ever Even Pretend to Care About) following the untimely passing of Lance Armstrong from athlete/here to obnoxious celebrity who’s kind of a jerk but raises money for a popular and probably deserving cause. Yeah, I’m passing judgement.

[Since the previous paragraph included a really long sentence-
obscenely long- I’ll insert an aesthetic break here]

America’s hopes were dashed after Floyd broke, bounced, crashed, fornicated, mictorated, evacuated, eviscerated, or whatever they call “rode a bike up a giant mountain like a bum” in the world of bike racing. However, Floyd made a smashing comeback very shortly thereafter and ultimately drove into Paris wearing a yellow jersey. Cause celebre’!!! And everyone ate baguettes.

Flash forward to a few weeks later, when it was revealed that Floyd’s urine test from the day of his ‘ride de vie’ came back with fatty amounts of testosterone in it, beyond, by report, his standard levels. Floyd, ever the Skeevy, claimed that it was from drinking too much whiskey the night before. Silly Floyd, everyone knows you can’t get whiskey in France! Ultimately he was stripped of the Yellowest Jersey of
Them All. My fellow softball players and I were not surprised by this, but we did stop short of winning the league as a celebration of his Divine Skeevyness- one must admit, in terms of skeevy, winning while cheating AND having face pubes is right at the top of the list.

Of course, Floyd would not go down easy. A defense was posted on his behalf by one Arnie Baker in early October 2006. The appeal was twofold: one, that the testing lab was not going blind and had it out for Floyd, and two, that his levels were not actually criminally high. A full presentation was posted by at Mr. Baker’s website. As fans of the Yellowest Jersey of Them All and especially fans of human drama, my
fellow labmates and I perused the appeal.

The following are the results of our endeavor. This marks the third and final sharpie letter I have sent to date.

October 12, 2006

Dear Mr. Baker

I just wanted to let you know that my friends and I (actually coworkers, but we all get along so we’re friends too) have just finished viewing your presentation in defense of Floyd’s positive testosterone test.

We are all scientists, and while the evidence you present seems indicative that Mr. Landis may not have been involved in any skeevy behavior, we are not sufficiently familiar with cycling federation rules to adjudicate this case.

Being scientists, however, we are of a position and authority to evaluate your presentation. We think it stinks. For instance, you over-bullet in some cases, such as:

- Knew it was Floyd
- From his pelvic cortisone (not exact quote)

In common English this second statement is not an independent declaration, rather it is a supportive statement to the preceding point. Additionally, your presentation features a number of “orphan” bullets. Much like in an outline format, a bulleted list should be a list. Only one item does not substatiate a subpoint.

This presentation would be fine if it were put together by a high schooler or common worker. However, as persons in the public eye and of some academic merit, the standard for presentations of this sort should be high. Yours, however, left much to be desired in terms of grammatical format and quality of presentation. In addition to the technical aspects, your demonstration failed to entertain and made my ehes hurt a little. Perhaps you could be more deliberate in your stylistic choices.

I do not, however, intend to demean your work. I’m sure you had the best of intentions and, as I said, your scientific commentary is fairly robust.

To indicate that I foster no ill will, I have enclosed a Dilbert comic from Tuesday, September 5. It makes an entertaining point about how silly it is to be a vegan. Of course I do not intend to offend if you ARE a vegan, rather take it as a bit of levity for the moment.

Best,

signature

Addressed to Arnie Baker, 1820 Washington Place San Diego, CA 92103-2723. Again, photocopies on hand with stamp and copy of the Dilbert comic. [Which reads: Panel 1. title bar “MIKE THE VEGAN” Mike: “I USE NO ANIMAL PRODUCTS WHATSOEVER!” Panel 2. Dilbert: “YOUR CLOTHES WERE CREATED ON SEWING MACHINES THAT USED ELECTRICITY FROM COAL AND OIL, AND THOSE COME FROM DEAD DINOSAURS.” Panel 3. Mike is seen walking through naked “I NEED TO START MAKING EXCEPTIONS.”]

Original documents can be found here. The specific statement cited in the letter is on page 39 of the “Whats fair is clear slide show 3.1” ~2/3 of the way down the page. It appears that this has grown considerably since we first saw it, fitting with all of the court of arbitration stuff that just finally got settled (verdict: still skeevy).

Have a good weekend everyone, and big ups to my brother and friend Nate who just gave women diamonds of particular significance.