That's just great! Legs on yer face.

Megs:

HA I found this incredibly funny.

So I was poking around on Wikipedia to do some background reading for Medsci203 (freaking love this paper!), and I looked up Toll-like receptors. Toll-like receptors are a class of protein that help out in the innate immune system that bind to foreign molecules, to activate responses when it's needed.

Anyway, Toll-like receptors have a wishy washy name (imagine if someone was called Mary-like or Sophie-like, or Loubie-loo-like) because they are really similar to what's coded by the Toll gene, which is found in Drosophila (flies).

And the Toll gene was called the Toll gene, because when the scientists were mucking about with this gene, the larvae that were made with the whacked gene looked really weird.

And when the scientists found this out they were so excited they started shouting in German. Alright, they probably spoke German in the first place but they started shouting all the same - "Das ist ja toll!" - which means "That's just great!"

And that is why, as is implied on Wikipedia, the Toll gene is called the Toll gene. So really it's called the Great gene, because it's just great. And fly-babies look strange when it's mutated.

Here's the link!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_%28gene%29

Now I couldn't find any pictures with weird looking fly babies (which probably all look like rice anyway), so instead of that, here is a picture of a fly with legs on its face where its antennae should be (the one on the right).



Edit** - this picture is totally-like unrelated to Toll-like receptors, I just thought it was cool. :D

Hinga dinga dingum

Megs:

This is just another note before the holidays once again slip away into memory (again, where'd they go? Honestly.)

Here are some fun things that were achieved. You know most of this, but one day I won't because I'll get Alzhiemer's or schizophrenia, or something, so I'm putting this down:

-Signed on with Trademe and bought things; namely the book Touched With Fire that we studied poetry out of in English at high school, because I've missed reading what was in them, and also won a bid at 6pm today for Memoirs of a Geisha (the novel, not the movie) because reading it did something to my head that just enabled me to ramble on paper better and a bit more creatively. Exciting times, yes.

-Watched the entire series of Death Note from start to finish. Turns out I had watched most of the second season, I just thought I hadn't because nothing happens for a good fraction of it and partly also because I didn't remember listening through the intro-music very often; but that was only because I very much dislike the screamo at the beginning. But that aside, it's about as good as anime gets.

-(Probably) drove parents crazy by playing the same bars on piano over and over. I practised more on the thing than I did viola over these two weeks. Need to practise the latter.

-went to anatomy museum to look at dead things

-finally figured out algorithm for last pattern on Rubik's cube which was annoying me because I couldn't solve it, but yay for that now

-got new clothes despite needing to get rid of clothes

-did a crap job of studying

-then realised this weekend that am turning into a bit of a social recluse, but what can you do. Yay, bussing starts again tomorrow.

Would like:
New hobbies
More money to pay for new hobbies
A holiday

Go Shawty

It's yer Birthday!
Do you know, the first time I heard that song by 50c I thought he was saying "It's Shiver day". Yes, yes, I was 12, leave me alone.

Happy Birthday Wil!
I hope you have lots of cake and chips that you make your flatmates retrieve for you. :D

<3