from the desk of stinkpot

This week, Mommy bought Benig an Easter Bunny costume.  He tried it on as soon she brought it home.  He could hardly contain his excitement to be the holiday bearer of cheer and presents again.  He looks like he’s ready for the big day next week.

christina and i took an old flexible flyer out to a staten island park during last night’s blizzard:

Christina and I threw our last study break as GRTs (RAs) last month.  We hoped to end on a high note with a memorable food theme.  In the end, we went with a long-promised and ill-conceived idea: gross foods of the world.  (Actually, due to a combination of our cultural expertise and the Philippines’ seemingly […]

it’s been a long past week,  as i’ve been gearing up for handing in my thesis in T-14 days. part of the headache has been due to catching a bug in some old code and having to rerun 3 years of work over the weekend. i told our computer cluster sysadmin my sob story,  who […]

at the seder we attended this evening, our host asked the bespeckled, pony-tailed graduate student sitting across from me to chime in with whatever he knew about the story of exodus. his perfect response: i was born a muslim and shortly thereafter became a communist.  i can’t contribute to this story.

a hilarious exchange took place today with one of the folks processing my gut microbiome samples: lab member: uh, lawrence, i’m not quite sure how to tell you this … we’re having some issues filtering particulate matter out of your samples. have you been eating a lot of seeds lately? me: well, i’ve been eating […]

just grabbed my first meal of street food in bangkok. i made sure to take ice in my glass and pour myself some water from the table jug of green tea. your move gut microbes.

I’ve recently started my last (hopefully) thesis project on my way to my PhD. The project will be a study of the human gut microbiome; to analyze it, I’ll be embarking on an investigation of several months worth of human feces.  (And, if that high-level description grosses you out — be very afraid of the […]

heard larry wall, creator and benevolent dictator for life of the perl programming language, speak today. glad i went.  the first 15 minutes or so was a bizarre stream-of-consciousness race through about 100 1-word slides.  it was both profound and absurd, both celebration and diatribe.  equally fun was seeing MIT in its finest geek culture […]

Now that spring has sprung itself upon us, I’m hoping it’s safe to start posting pictures of what winters in Boston are like: