Friday Nor'easter of Fun

I had a relaxing and slow day off. The heat has still been harsh, but the incoming Nor'easter/Hurricane Earl should bring in some cooler weather. I am pretty far inland and north of Boston so the local forecast is for rain and sustained winds but nothing too crazy.

Let's Keep it Light
The end of the week brought a balls out awesome jobs report where only 50k or so jobs were lost. With employment growth like this we should arrive safely at full employment in 65 years or so as long as nobody has a baby. Not too shabby!

Two best items for this Friday:
-The Automatic Earth pens today's missive and notes:

Here's thinking we won't understand this one, as a society, until we're sitting among its smouldering ruins. Sure, it's the fault of the leaders, the politicians, the economists. But who put them where they are? It's you, it's us, we are as addicted as they are to the perpetual growth paradigm. They talk nonsense, and we hear what we like to hear and swallow it hook line and tinkerbell. It's in our amoeba brains, and we can't fight it, since we are the amoeba brain. "I don't care if you make sense, as long as you make me feel good." Don't blame yourself, blame the amoeba inside of you. You know better.

My sentiments exactly.

-Mish delivers the knockout blow to the notion that the world is on fire with success with the following:

One year ago the official unemployment rate was 9.7%. Today it is 9.6%.

One year ago U-6 unemployment was 16.8%. Today U-6 is 16.7%

For all the trillions of dollars in stimulus and additional trillions of dollars in bank bailouts and trillions of dollars of expansion of the Fed's balance sheet, this is all we have to show for it.

Lowers the BOOM! How's that Keynesian spending working for ya?

Friday Nor'easter of Fun
It is Friday night and in the immortal words of Danny Zuko:
You know how it is, rockin' and rollin' and what not.

First a "Legally Blonde" clip and now "Grease"? Has Economic Disconnect lost his mind!?

Microbial Diversity
I had written a little last night about microbial diversity. Seems a few people are actually interested in this stuff! For some color I can recommend:
High Bacterial Diversity in Permanently Cold Marine Sediments
Discusses some techniques for estimating bacterial diversity in a sample. The good thing about microbiology is that the papers are not hard to follow. Skip to discussion section for the summary.

I had mentioned how hard it is to actually grow these kinds of bugs in the lab. At my last job we worked around that by first isolating the DNA from soil by a process of harvesting. This is a basic methodology but I had worked out a better one with better yields and much larger DNA recovery size (greater than 300 kilobases):
Methods for microbial DNA extraction from soil for PCR amplification

Now how you get around not being able to grow the bugs is you clone their DNA into special vectors that are able to highly express DNA based on powerful promoters like T7, or some neat viral promoters. If you are lucky what happens is the basic bacteria you use in the lab will be able to express the genes and make products that have a testable activity. Say you are looking for anti-bacterial activity, you can plate out a bunch of these bacteria that with unknown DNA in them and test if they have any ability to kill other bacteria. Another way is to grow cultures of the bacteria, isolate the things they made by chemical means, and test them using a disc diffusion assay. If you are lucky you get a "hit" that looks like this:

The sample shows antibacterial activity by killing of a zone of the plated bacteria. Cool huh?

But Economic Disconnect, how does the bacteria make anti-bacterial products and not kill itself first? Great question! Usually a product that has this kind of function will be found on a large pathway of genes (Maybe up to 25 genes) that are needed to form the molecule. On that pathway will be a resistance gene that confers to the bacteria the ability to stay alive in it's own product. Otherwise they would just kill themselves too. Nature is amazing yes? Sorry, this ran a little long but I thought it may be interesting. Or not.

Random Items
As if I have not already lost you, here are some things I saw today out on the web:
-The Bubble Nebula is wild looking!:


-The Witches of Dathomir and especially The Nightsisters

-At the US Open? Really?

-It was not bad enough this guy probably broke 3 ribs with this stunt, but he also ruined any chance he may have had of scoring one of the chicks drinking on the dock. Epic FAIL!

Clippage
A few things worth a look.

Reader Watchtower pointed the way to maybe the creepiest clip for a game I have ever seen. If you want to be disturbed by dark imagery, I can recommend "Fallout: Las Vegas":

That was chilling.

My friend Tom of the North pointed me to Sunsha Jung playing the U2 classic "With or Without You" and now I am really a loser that my Dad quit teaching me guitar because I just could not get it:

DANG! BFD Sunsha! Just show off why don't you, already then, nice.

One of my favorite boxing memories was when George Foreman knocked out Michael Moorer in the 10th round (skip to 1:00 minute mark) to become the oldest heavyweight champion ever!:

I remember announcer Jim Lampley screaming "It Happened! It Happened!" and it was a great time.

Rock Blogging
Tunes to give a listen to. To all of you, from all of me.

Reader C-T, who has a crush on the lead singer of Everclear I imagine, requested "Santa Monica":

I know that one!

It the best when I hear a song I have never heard before and it rocks! All the way by request from Michigan, try out a bad ass Lucinda Williams and "Joy":

Live music is the way to go.

I just saw the movie this song was featured in today for the 100th time! Try out "Win" by Mark Safan:

I love YouTube! Great tune.

Cowboys fan Gawains must be a little nervous with the regular season at hand and the Dallas crew looking shaky. Fear not, I think they are going to do very well after a slow start. It is how you end after all! As a lift up I offer Fleetwood Mac and "The Chain":

Nice pick!

BTW, I will have a full NFL Week 1 preview post next weekend! Almost time!

Ok, you may have guessed that I love 1980's metal and hair band rock. My second favorite era? 1950's classic rock! I know, I make no sense. Do not try and figure me out, it cannot be done!

I want you to turn this one WAY UP and try and tell me after you were not moving and getting happy:

Not much better than Dion and The Belmonts and "Run Away Sue"!

Two left on deck. Which way will it go?

For a blend of 80's and 50's try out a newer version of Buddy Holly's "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" by Marshall Crenshaw:

And I beat the 1 year rule! Looking at the comments on that post I see Watchtower has been with me a LONG time! Also this was before friend LT G even joined the armed forces! It is fun to look at old posts! Thanks Watchtower for staying with me!

Last Call! You have to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fair!

Ok, I cannot find by search the last time I played this so I have to hope is was more than a year ago. I wanted to close the show with this one anyway!

Go nuts and get loose with Faith No More and "Epic":

The 2:00 minute mark to the 2:40 mark is very special and piano at the end is fine indeed!

Have a good night.