Life, as I stumble down its winding path..

nurse: THE PATIENT NEEDS OXYGEN

me: (moves a plant next to the patient) :D!

Roddenberry, Shatner, Nimoy, Nichols and all the rest of the original Star Trek cast and crew had no small role in making the moon landing as important as it was.  A few years before they set that lunar module down, this little TV show came along and fanned the dream into wildfire with an image of what humanity in space could actually look like—not only peaceful on our own world, endlessly curious, and prosperous enough to pursue it, but an active force for good in the greater universe.  Carrying not what’s most toxic about us, but what’s best about us out to the stars.

Everybody who has worked at NASA or any other space agency for the past 50 years is waiting for the day when that unmanned probe doing a flyby on a comet can be controlled from the bridge of a space-faring vessel.  When we’re not just looking at that comet through a color-coded sonar map, but we can look out a porthole and see it tumbling by with our own eyes.  When as a species we can finally outgrow hate and fear and violence, and turn our faces with joy toward all the beauties and wonders that lie waiting to be discovered.

It should come as no surprise that some biology nerds are also Star Wars nerds.

Pic of the Day: Holiday Deer

This holiday deer is a beautiful Christmas gift from our microbiology department. It was drawn with live bacteria: S. marcescens, S. aureus and S. epidermidis.

the author of this paper misspelled “protist” but now i’m just sitting here imagining a eukaryotic protest

The American Society for Microbiology just held its first-ever art contest, challenging microbiologists to mix art and science.