They'll destroy you, but it ain't nothing, it ain't nothing to me

Today in the lab:

Grad Student: Do you ever watch that show River Monsters?

Me: I've heard of it, but have never seen an episode, even though it seems like it'd be interesting.

Grad Student: Well, I saw this episode the other night where they were after some introduced fish in Papua New Guinea that bites peoples' testicles off.

Me: What? Like skinny dippers? I don't think they could bite that hard through any clothing.

Grad Student: The natives go down and bathe or swim in the river or whatever, and these fish come along and bite off their sacks. It happened at least twice, and one of the guys died. He bled out after it happened.

Me: It wouldn't take long to bleed out if that really did happen.

Undergraduate: Is there a lot of blood flow to that part of the body?

Me: There can be, if my morning wood is any indication.

With the white unicorn across her shoulder

I gave a final exam to my summer students last Friday. I finished the semester with a little segment about Conservation Biology, including a bunch of stuff about human impacts on biodiversity. In that lecture, I talked about the effects of habitat fragmentation.

The day before the final I got this email from one of my students:

I'm also still confused on the Edge Effect... can you explain that for me again? Is the Edge effect in correlation with fragmentation?

I wrote back to her:

Edge effects are definitely correlated with fragmentation. There are some species that do well at the edge of a forest (e.g., deer, elk, etc.), and others that need to be deep in the forest because they can't survive close to the edge (e.g., most of your mythical creatures like unicorns, centaurs, sasquatch, etc.). So, the more fragmented the habitat becomes, the closer those organisms that would be in the middle of the forest are to the edge, so they wouldn't survive as well.

I am nothing if not a professional.

Shakin' like a dog shittin' razor blades

This morning I baked a cake. For those of you keeping track, that's three cakes in the past ten days. In other words, not enough cake. (Is there ever enough cake?) As I poured the cake batter into the pan, I wanted to find out if any of my kids wanted to eat the rest of it that wouldn't come out of the bowl.

Me: Alright, who wants to lick the . . .

Tortellini: Me!

Mr M: I do. I do. I get the bowl. I get the bowl.

Me: Neither of you let me finish my sentence. As I was saying, who wants to lick the dog's butt? You both do. Ha ha!

Someday back when we were young I guess something just went wrong

Last night while teaching:

Student 1: Have you heard the sound of your voice? I have it recorded. Do you want to listen to it?

Me: Yes, I've heard the sound of my voice. I don't like it, so no, I don't want to listen.

Student 1: You don't like the way your voice sounds?

Me: No, because it sounds different to me than it does to you. When I hear it played back it sounds a lot lower than the way I hear it. I think it sounds like I'm dumber than I am.

Student 2: It just sounds like you smoked a lot of weed when you were younger. That's all.


Lovely. Student 2 confirmed that my voice makes me sound dumb. He might as well have said, "Your voice just sounds like you killed a LOT of brain cells in your youth."

Can I take points off for brutal honesty?

For the record, I've never smoked weed. My stupid voice comes naturally.

These snakes is slitherin' with dollar signs in they eyes

My office is just around the corner from a classroom. Herpetology is currently being taught there now. The other day my friend and I were talking in my office, and the herpetology TA was out in the hall making noise while she was doing something.

Me: What is she doing out there?

Friend: It looks like she's playing around with a bunch of snakes in the hallway.

Me (doing my best Samuel L. Jackson impersonation): I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHER FUCKING SNAKES IN THIS MOTHER FUCKING HALLWAY!!!

Unbeknownst to me, class was in session.

And they were taking a test.

Yes, they all heard.

I've got science for any occasion, postulating theorems formulating equations

In one of my classes this week I was explaining the scientific method to my students.

"The first step is observation, which is basically just that you notice something and start thinking about the reason why that's what you see. Then you develop a hypothesis that might explain your observations, and make predictions based on that hypothesis. Next you design an experiment to test the hypothesis, you analyze the results of the experiment, and draw conclusions based on those results. You can determine if the results support the hypothesis, and if they don't, you come up with an alternative hypothesis and test that."

Then I gave them an example of something that I'd been talking about in my other classes this week: sexual selection in guppies.

"Male guppies have colored spots all over their bodies, which turns out to be a way that females choose which males to mate with. People have done experiments to show that, but it all started with someone making the observation that males are brightly colored and females aren't. Then they came up with a hypothesis about it being related to female mate choice, and designed a set of experiments to test that. Think about it. You could basically set up a tank with a female and two different males, one brightly colored one and one dull one, and sit and watch to see which one the female mated with. It'd be like watching fish porn. But that's probably not the kind of stuff you want to go look up on YouTube."

I probably should have left the last two sentences unspoken.

The parasites are excited when you're dead, eyes bulging, entering your head

In lab, I was talking about Phylum Nematoda. I mentioned to my students that while some of them are free living, many nematodes are parasites. I also told them that if they wanted to see some really disturbing pictures they should do a Google image search for Ascaris.

One of my more impatient students whipped out his iphone and did so right away. Then he showed the pictures to his lab partners. As expected, they were grossed out. What I didn't expect was that the guy would save this picture (click if you're feeling really brave - if you're not, it's some roundworms coming out of a kid's butt) as his phone's wallpaper.

Him: That was so gross. I couldn't believe how many worms were coming out of that man's butt.

Me: You mean that little boy.

Him: ?

Me: That wasn't a full grown man.

Him: Are you sure? I thought it was a man.

Me: Dude. You of all people ought to be able to recognize a young boy's anus when you see one.





(I'll leave it up to you to decide if this is true or if it's an April Fool's joke.)

Doesn't matter much to me as long as he's dead

Last night while standing next to one of my students at the earthworm kill station:

Her: Is the earthworm the biggest thing we have to kill this semester?

Me(lying through my teeth): No.

Her: It's not? What else is there?

Me: You have to kill your own fetal pig.

Her (clearly not getting it): Seriously?

Me: Yeah.

Other Students: *Giggling*

Me (deciding to take it way too far): We also dissect a human baby, and you're going to have to kill that yourself too.

Her: Don't say that. My sister just had a baby.

Me: Well then you're in luck! Because of the budget cuts, you're going to have to supply your own, but it looks like you won't have to look very hard. You can just use your sister's.

Her: You're terrible.

Me: Ok, fine. The earthworm is the only thing you have to kill yourself this semester.

Call it education it was somewhere in between

Thursday night. Last lab of the day. Most of the students are gone, but the diligent ones are making sure they've seen everything. As they're nearing the end of it, one group starts talking about going out for drinks afterward since apparently nobody has classes on Friday anymore.

Student 1: [Minnow] do you want to come out with us tonight?

Me: No.

Student 1: Why?

Me: For one, you're my students. But even if you weren't, I need to get up early tomorrow so I'm going to go home and go to bed.

Student 2 (who earlier had been talking about how he'd been dumped by his girlfriend of five years: Are there going to be women where you're going tonight?

Student 3: Why are you asking that? You of all people should know that women are nothing but trouble anyway.

Student 2: That's true.

Student 4: I know. We really are trouble. I don't even know what you guys see in us.

Student 1: I know what we see in you.

Student 4: There is that.

Student 2: No, I don't need that. I can take care of that myself.

Me: Alrighty then. How about we change to a new subject?

Student 5 (pointing to her lab manual): Yes, let's change the subject. So, getting back to lab stuff, I was wondering if you could help me answer this question.

[The Question: Most ferns are monoecious, having antheridia and archegonia on the same gametophyte. How might a plant like this avoid self fertilization?]

Me: I thought we were going to change the subject.

You know that dying is fine but maybe I wouldn't like death if death were good

This week the students are dissecting starfish. I explained to them that the easiest way to do things was to forget the scalpel and just use scissors. Later, one of them drew this on the board:



Awesome! Poor Patrick Star doesn't even know what's coming.

In a later lab, a student was digging around in the bucket trying to get the last starfish out. Instead, he dropped the tongs into a bucketful of preservative and starfish juice. He didn't want to fish the tongs out because he said it was too gross. I told the rest of the class that it was close to Halloween anyway, so the rest of them were going to have to bob for starfish. Oddly enough, that didn't get the party started.

Adam took the apple I was not involved, I'm not responsible for how lost we are

If you needed confirmation that my mind is, in fact, always in the gutter, I'll go ahead and confirm that now. Take this drawing for example. I draw and label it every semester when we get to the lab that deals with flowering plants. It illustrates the different tissue layers of a fruit.



But this is what I always think of when I'm drawing it. I just don't label it this way.



Maybe I just need an art class.


[Note: Some of my students feel the same way. It was their suggestion that I draw a better stem (the one pictured here) to avoid such comparisons.]

I woke up this morning with a bad hangover, And my penis was missing again

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the most phallic plant root model ever created:



Photo taken by [Ginger] and texted to me with the subject line: Penis or root tip?

You're the firestarter, twisted firestarter

A friend came over to watch the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics last night. He picked up some Thai food on the way over. (We thought it might be more appropriate to get Chinese take out, but couldn't think of a good Chinese restaurant near my house.) My friend is vegan, so I told him just to get veggie or tofu dishes and if Togers didn't like it he could heat something else up. Of course, I didn't tell Togers he was eating tofu because I didn't want to give him any reason not to try it. He liked it. I told him that automatically made him a hippy. It's a slippery slope.

When I told Togers why we got tofu, and asked him if he knew what it meant to be vegan, he said he didn't. So, I explained it to him: Being vegan means you're not allowed to eat anything that doesn't have chopped up babies in it.


Later, during the parade of athletes, my friend and I had this brief exchange:

Friend: Holy crap! How many athletes did Brazil send?
Me: Looks like there's a Brazillion* of them.


As the parade continued, we began to speculate about the lighting of the torch.

Friend: How do you think they'll light it this time?
Me: Well, they're going to try to top the archer shooting a flaming arrow to light it. My guess is that they'll set a Tibetan monk on fire and throw him into the cauldron.

Togers laughed hard. A little too hard. I might be raising a homicidal maniac. I have no idea where he gets it.






*That joke never gets old.

My life is totally boring without you around

Togers is staying with me for the next week or two. It's nice having him around, although, I don't feel like a very good dad when I'm leaving him home all day while I'm at work. His mom called me yesterday to see what he was up to. I said, "I don't know, I'm at work, but there's a 30% chance he's reading, a 30% chance he's watching TV, a 30% chance he's playing Halo, and a 10% chance he's sleeping."

I try to make up for it when I'm home. Like last night when I took him to the grocery store with me. Tell me that's not fun and exciting for a twelve year old. Wait, it's not? Fine, how about taking him to see The Dark Knight at an IMAX theater? Is that better?

As we were waiting in line, my friend and I told Togers that he was going to have to start earning his keep while he stays with me. His job? When we go out in public, we'll point out an attractive woman, then he has to go stand by them, let his lower lip quiver and say, "H-h-have you seen my d-d-d-d-dad?"

Granted, twelve might be a little old for that to work, but Mr M isn't down here right now, so I have to work with what I've got.

Am I still tough enough?

Last week, on the first day of class, I went over my syllabus with the students, including the number of points available, and the standard grade cut-offs.

A = 90-100%
B = 80-89%
C = 70-79%
D = 60-69%
F = 0-59%

After lecture, a student approached me and asked, "So, what's required of me to get an A?"

I replied, "A percentage between 90 and 100."

Now, had he asked me the question that was really on his mind: What's the minimum amount of work I can put into this course and still end up with an A? I probably would've given him a different answer.

C-c-c-c-c-cocaine

Student 1: Can we just play games tonight instead of doing the lab?
Me: What kind of games do you have in mind?
Student 1: Heads-up seven-up.
Me: Wow. It's been a while since I was in Kindergarten. I don't think I remember the rules to that one.
Student 2: How about we play [something I didn't hear correctly]
Me: I'm sorry. What did you say we play?
Student 2: Hooky.
Me: Oh. I think it might be time for me to get my hearing checked.
Student 2: Why? What did you think I said?
Me: I thought you said cocaine. It's good that you didn't. I wouldn't even know how to play that game.
Undergraduate Assistant: Well, we'll need a mirror, and a razor blade, and we're all going to do lines until somebody's heart explodes.


So there you go. That's how you play cocaine. First person to have their heart explode loses.

Hey piggy piggy

Several more instances where I probably wasn't as professional as I could have been while teaching my students. Today's lab was the fetal pig dissection.


Me (talking to the entire class): Now, when you cut down through the pelvic girdle on the male, you need to be careful because it's really easy to cut through this part and sever the penis. Every guy in here just cringed when I said that, and if you didn't, you should have.

---------------------------------------------

Female Student: Can you show me where this pig's uterus is?

Me: Sure, but you haven't cut deep enough. Here, let me see that scalpel. You have to cut through the pelvic girdle like this. Oops. I think I just cut into the vagina.

Female Student: You're never going to be able to keep a girlfriend if you're doing that all the time.

Me: Unless she's into that sort of thing.

---------------------------------------------

Female Student: So we're having trouble finding our pig's boy parts.

Me: That's because you've completely mangled them. Here, let me see if I can salvage any of that.

Me (Later): Well, here's the testicle, but it's no longer attached so I'm going to go ahead and put it over here. Same goes for the other one.

Female Student: Gross.

Me: Hey, at least now you got to say that you spent the day ripping some balls off.

Female Student: Yeah, I can just see it: "Hey Honey, guess what I did today . . ."

---------------------------------------------

My Assistant: Easy there. You're really going to town on that thing, but remember, you don't want to ruin any of the stuff you're going to be looking at next time.

Me: She's just so excited to finally be cutting into something substantial.

Female Student: This is cool, but I really want to cut open a human.

Me: Don't look at me. I think you'll find it works best to stick to the members of society that aren't easily missed.

My Assistant (to her): Usually prostitutes and homeless people work best for that.

My Assistant (to me): You know what I'm talking about.

Me: You weren't supposed to tell anybody about my Jack the Ripper side.

---------------------------------------------

Male Student: So where is the vagina on this thing?

Me: It's right here, although you're probably having a hard time seeing it because of all the juice down in there.

Male Student: Are you saying my pig has a juicy vagina?

Me: . . .

I'm not a real doctor but I am a real worm I am an actual worm

This week my students got to dissect for the first time this semester. Everything they've learned up to this point is about plants, so even though they break stuff apart to look at it, it's not the same as slicing a scalpel blade through some animal tissue. That, my friends, is a good time. The students finally get excited to be in lab when we get to this point of the semester, and that makes teaching them easier. However, that doesn't mean I don't say things that are probably too inappropriate. Here's an excerpt from teaching this week:

You guys are also going to be dissecting an earthworm. We don't have preserved specimens, so you're going to have to kill your own. When you're ready to do that, grab one out of that styrofoam container, place it in the dish of ethanol, and leave it for a few minutes. If you're squeamish and don't want to do it yourself, find someone in your lab group who doesn't mind and have them do it. If none of you want to, I'll do it for you. I don't mind killing things. After you place it in the ethanol it takes a few minutes for it to die, and you may want to turn your back so you don't have to watch it squirm. Also, make sure you leave it in there long enough that it actually dies, which will be a few minutes longer than it takes for it to stop squirming. If you take it out sooner, cut it open, and then it starts squirming again, you're going to feel really bad. I suggest that you put it in there, and then go do something else for a few minutes. If you stay and watch it die, and seem to be enjoying it too much, I may have to have someone follow you when you leave here just to make sure that you're not going down to the park to strangle homeless people.

No one sees the two sides of Monsieur Valentine

When I was teaching my labs this morning I said, "This organism is a sexually transmitted parasite. And what better way to say 'Happy Valentine's Day' than talking about STDs?"

Later, my friend IM'ed me and said, "Your lab has Valentine's STDs and mine are cutting up hearts. What a perfect commentary on the holiday."

Agreed.

Now that I'm startin' to learn I feel I'm growin' old

Yesterday I had to proctor another exam. I always joke that the only good thing about proctoring is that I get to look at all the pretty girls in the class, except, I'm not really joking.

We all showed up a few minutes early, and while we were waiting until we were able to pass out the exams, the professor came up to talk to me.

Him: Some of the students have approached me to see if I could do something about the way you look at them during the exam. They said it makes them feel uncomfortable.
Me: No they didn't.
Him: I couldn't even get all the way through that with a straight face.
Me: And you know what else? Even if they did say that, tough.

Any time we proctor, students are bound to run into questions they need additional clarification on. It's just part of the stress of the situation, and they want to make sure they're not going to be losing any unnecessary points. They'll usually ask for clarification without really thinking about what they're asking. For example, yesterday I was asked, "By constant, does he mean stable?", and "What does he mean by 'first step'?"

Usually I just restate the question for them, but I'm often tempted to be real sarcastic and say things like "Oh, by first step he really wants to know what happens at the end of the process." So, you can imagine the things that were running through my head when several students sought clarification on a question that asked about which group contained the largest animals.

"Does he mean largest in body size, or does he mean the most species?"

I told them he was talking about body size, but relayed the message on to the professor. He kind of rolled his eyes and said, "If I say I bought a large car does that mean I bought ten cars? Or, if I say you have a large bank account, does that mean you have ten bank accounts each with $1?"

Immediately after that, a blonde girl raised her hand and asked me the same question. I wanted to answer her by saying, "Well, if I say I have a large penis, what do I mean by that?"

Of course, sometimes they'll come across questions that are just poorly worded, and because of that are confusing. I make it a point to notify the instructor about those just in case he wants to make a general announcement so we don't have to answer the same question 100 times. When I came across one yesterday I showed it to him and told him I thought it was a poorly worded question.

Him: Hey, out of 60 questions there's bound to be 20 or 30 that are bad. Cut me some slack, it was four in the morning when I wrote it. Don't tell them that. Four in the morning and I was hammered*.

Once the exam was finished, we had to go grade the essay portion. The professor said that he was going to supply pizza for us while we graded (a standard practice for these things). On the way there, one of the TAs said that she hadn't eaten all day so she was starving.

Her: I was told we were having pizza, so I didn't eat earlier.
Me: Well, you could be like me and eat earlier and still eat pizza.
Her: No. That exceeds my caloric intake for the day, and I need to watch that. I have squish where there didn't used to be squish.

When we got there we talked about how he wanted us to grade the questions, what he was looking for in an answer, how many points each one was worth, etc.

Professor: I'll go over the answer key, then I'll leave . . .
Other TA (interrupting): And never come back?
Professor: . . . and get pizza. But that depends on whether I see an IPA.
Me: I would have said it depends on if I see a hot girl, but you say a beer. I can see where our priorities are different.
Professor: I wanted to keep it professional.
Me: Yeah, getting drunk on the job is real professional.

Surprisingly, the students did fairly well this time around, so I don't have any headache inducing answers to pass on. You'll have to wait until next time for that. I'm sure there will be plenty then.









*Just to be clear, I should probably point out that all these things are said in jest. He wasn't really drunk when he wrote the exam.