New Blog Name

Working with Jeff's suggestion...




Ummm, yeah, I think I'm going to you know, keep this on the table and also look for other options

Blogiversary

Today is the one year anniversary since I posted my first post on this blog.
This will be the 153rd post in a year, which comes out to about 3 a week on average.

One of the (several) reasons I started this blog was to provide friends and family in the US that I am seldom in touch with an easy way to get glimpse into what's going on over here. Ironically, however, almost none of my family and friends (in the US) that I told about this blog are among the regular visitors I get here. I try not to take it personally.
I guess not surprisingly, by far most of my hits are from Germany.

In the next year I hope to post more of my photography, haven't really been doing that. And at the same time hopefully find more time for posts of actual substance and a bit of writing rather than one-liners.

At this landmark I've decided to change the name of the blog. Wendelicious just sounds stupid to me now for whatever reason (The name comes from my middle name, Wendell). I just haven't decided on what to change it to yet.

Score

Look at this lovely pair I picked up for FREE from a couple moving to California.

Some horribly unfortunate Americans forced to pay just over half what Europeans pay for gas

just so they can drive their Chevrolet "Avalanche" (No, that's really the name) that was shipped from Colorado all over Maui.

"After seeing the total, I won't be smiling," Sweeney said as he watched the numbers on the Chevron pump spin faster than a slot machine.

The pump finally stopped at $97.20, which put 24.5 gallons in his Chevrolet Avalanche.

He was elated about living on Maui and being reunited with his black, super-size pickup truck, which just arrived from Colorado, but he wasn't so thrilled about paying nearly $4 for a gallon of regular.

...

"Outrageous. Completely outrageous," said Janet Carone, of Wailuku.

The thing is, it actually evens out cost-wise, because while Europeans pay twice as much for gas, their cars also get twice as many miles per gallon.

Rant

It appears sometimes stealing is OK. Like when you are in Germany.
I think there may be a cultural difference here.

In the basement of my apartment is a room where everybody keeps their washer. Which is weird on its own because there are like 6 to 8 new washers down there, and never is more than one running at once - but everybody gets an individual key to turn on their washer's electricity. I guess so nobody is tempted to steal another's electricity and use their washer. I share mine with Nate, a concept seemingly lost on the rest of the residents. We could have in fact two washers shared between the whole building and never have to wait. anyway.
The basement is locked. Only tenants of this building can get in. I started keeping my laundry detergent down there - no reason to bring it up and down. But one day I felt like somebody was using my detergent - it seemed to be going away too fast. So when I got a new bag of detergent I put my little glass cup in it in a way I would remember to see if it changed.
Last weekend I came down to do some laundry and all my detergent was gone. And my little cup was left on top of the washer. Somebody just stole my detergent. Because they could. Somebody who lives in my building and has a washer. Somebody who is probably paying 400euros+ in rent plus has a 300euro+ washer. And they are going to steal detergent from their neighbor. detergent. Because they could.

I'm starting to realize there must me some cultural differences here when it comes to such things. I mean maybe I'm naive, but it seems like there's more of an attitude of "If you leave something in position in which it could be stolen, it's fair game, and you can't complain."

A couple years ago I left my bag in a restaurant/bar. When I came back for it, it was gone. The bartender said matter-of-factly "you should have come back earlier". As if there was a statute of limitations on how long something can sit there before it's fair game. Then when I went to the police to report it (my laptop, passport, and ipod where in there), the officer told my dryly "This isn't technically a crime, we cannot report it as such. Since you were not with your bag when it was stolen, you left your bag there, and somebody else found it." Did I mention my passport was in there? It's not like it wasn't clear who's it was. but I guess this is part of the cultural difference.

A friend of mine had a party in the back of our complex. Again, it's locked - you have to have a key to get in, or be buzzed in. So we're all friends there and, long story short, somebody at the party steals my bike light I had been using as a flashlight. Just walked home with it. one of the guests. Even an email to the invitees produced no knowledge. But I guess I shouldn't have just set it down on the table and walked away.

My new bike was stolen a few years ago, locked at night behind a friend's house. But that seemed like more of a professional job - they cut the lock and may have even watched me ride it back there. So not really relevant here. But I just want some pity for all I've had stolen.

But I'm even going to call out a labmate here. One day comes in with a digital camera 'found' at a train station or airport or something. I think the reasoning went something like if he left it there somebody else would steal it. It had a whole lot of nice pictures somebody took on their trip around the world.

But worst of all is my friend Alex's roommate. This guy is at a club and finds a coat check button. So what does he do? Promptly heads straight to the coat check - and gets the guy's coat, wallet, and cell phone. Trashes the wallet, and then goes home with a new cell phone and coat. This a college student. Then he brags to his roommates about this pathetic shit. but everybody seems to find it moderately amusing except me. I mean, what an ASS. Losing 50 euros in a wallet is one thing. All the documents and the cell phone stuff - ugh. And ready for the kicker? This asshole was needing a new cell phone and had just won one on ebay. So now that he 'found' a new one, he decides he's going to renege on the won ebay bid and screw over the seller. class act! Moral of the story as explained to me: You shouldn't leave your wallet and cell phone at a coat check.

I've never lived in a 'city' in the US. In Austin I was really in a nice neighborhood and Ann Arbor and Charlottesville don't count at cities. Maybe this is just me learning that people aren't nice and it only seems like it's Germany because I've only lived before in little happy college towns and neighborhoods. But it's really getting on my nerves.

update: I got the story above wrong. It was not a wallet, but a keychain that was found with the coat and cell phone and trashed.

Airbushes and Photoshop

It's clear to anybody now that over the last 10 years the use of the airbrush in magazine cover portraits is getting out of hand. Early on the most absurd seemed to be limited to "Men's" magazines like Maxim and whatever. And while it's ridiculous, and in fact just not sexy, somehow it wasn't too bothersome, it's not like anybody expects anything more from these kind of eye-candy driven magazines.
But nowadays it's just creeping up everywhere. Look through any advertisement flyer. Probably even one for "Sears" women's section. Everybody is airbrushed to hell. Women and Men. But it's like everybody is getting used to it so they keep pushing and pushing it. Like we are actually accepting that people look like that. Soon they will be able to completely do away with models and just have purely computer generated images.

But the point of this post was for you to check out this website, advertising for "retouching".
Click on 'portfolio', then click on the pictures, then mouse over the large photos of celebrities for before-after. And then be prepared to gag. WTF? Not only are complexions turned to alien-smooth ivory, but thighs are thinned, chins are pulled in, eyes modified, asses given more curves or cut down.
And then you wonder if there is one human image in today's entertainment or advertising for ANYTHING that hasn't been dramatically modified. It's to the point where I don't think anybody could argue this can't be healthy for society.

Illustrated nicely in this video:


From this old post on Shakesville.
Where there are actually a number of posts on the "impossibly beautiful" theme.

Spiders on Drugs

Ohrwurm

Just Jack - I talk too much




hat tip: Maria

Not a friendly site when in an old east-German basement hospital room

That is one mean looking thing on the wall. Somehow since it's written in German it makes it more scary.
Snapped it with my cell phone.

(translation: Potential Equilization Panel - For the connection of electro-medical equipment)

Not boding well for my future sports entertainment

There are really three things I think I miss most about not living in the USA: Stores open late and on Sundays; having a car; and watching American sports, particularly college basketball and football. Fortunately the last has been alleviated quite a bit by a TV channel I get called NASN - North American Sports Network. Each year their programming has been getting better, and I've even been able to watch my favorite teams play basketball several times this year. But when they have a poll like this on their site it worries me.

Over FOUR times as many people are looking forward to the Stanley Cup playoffs than March Madness?!?! wtf? March Madness, which refers to the college basketball conference tournaments and then the national, 65-team tournament over 3 weekends to decide the national champion, is in my opinion the most exciting time in American sports. Okay, fine, I can see some people excited about hockey playoffs, but FOUR times as many? And more NASN viewers would rather watch spring training than march madness.
spring.
training.
If they start showing preseason baseball games over college basketball tournament championships I don't know what I'll do.

Fight continues against Waldschlößchenbrücke

In the continuing saga....."Construction" started a few months ago - the area is turning into dirt and machines. But the fight continues - now mostly in the form of proposing a tunnel as an alternative. A petition was sent around the city to consider a tunnel alternative to the bridge (The bridge plans include a tunnel anyway up to the river, where it will turn into a bridge). I was unable to sign because I'm not an EU-national, but they've got 20,000+ signatures....

Regenbogen statt Brücken!
-what luck with this photo

Here's the website leading the fight.

New Year's Eve in Dresden

Finally putting up a few pics. We gathered at my place and then headed down to the river for the madness. On this night there are no laws against setting off any fireworks anywhere in the city....and people did.

(click to enlarge)

the aftermath of exploded firecrackers on Alaunstrasse

By FAR, the two best times I've had on NYE have been the two years I spent it in Dresden.

Sächsische Kartoffelsuppe

I've come to realize that one of my favorite foods I've found in Germany is potato soup. I love me some good potato soup. So it's surprising I haven't tried until now to just make it myself.
A quick google search for "Sächsiche Kartoffelsuppe Rezept" (Saxony Potato Soup Recipe) provides a lot of recipes. Learning to make it "Saxony-style" will give me another nice "souvenir" when and if I ever leave here.

I made a giant pot recently.
Of course it starts with lotsa potatoes and veggies

Here it is pre-stab-mixer - one of the greatest little appliances I've got that makes quick work of 5 liters of veggies like nobody's business

I even made a time-lapse movie of myself making the giant pot of Kartoffelsuppe in my kitchen - but unfortunately my camera's broken and somehow decided to do this vignette thing which actually covered up where most of the action was in cutting up all the different veggies.
anyway:

And of course for echte Sächsische Kartoffelsuppe brauchen wir ein paar Sächsische Wiener Würstchen dazu:

Disturbing, concerning, yet not surprising.


and then on top of it things like this.

Favorite song of the moment

Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel




reminds me a bit of driving from Texas to Virginia through NC or TN.

props to Eric for the heads up.

This is awesome

Create your own album cover.

Here are the first three I got:

Instructions here
(and just crop it to a square)
(via punkassblog)


Update:

And here's one where I cheated on the photo - one I found surfing the web. I couldn't resist. But I think the album and title came out more than perfect!

You want some of this?



Then bring it. down to the little elementary school in Striesen on Wednesday nights. They have a small kinda basketball court they let us use. If one of the little old teachers stops you just tell her you're playing with the MPI people and hopefully you can get in.
But seriously.

I think things are healing well. The glue seems to have worked. Everybody feels the need to tell me that "chicks dig scars", which worries me a bit that this will be permanent.

And I've received a lot of Harry Potter jokes, the first from the nurse in the ER.

And the results are in.....

Sächsisch Beer vs. Czech Beer at the MPI beer hour. I think the picture speaks for itself.

One week and counting.....

One week from tonight will be the last evening smokers will be allowed to freely smoke in every bar and restaurant in Saxony. I can. not. wait. It's kind of interesting. In one day, Saxony will go from being about 20+ years behind the US in smoking laws to maybe 10 years ahead of some states/cities. As far as I know, about 20 years ago all restaurants in the US did away with "smoking" sections. I can barely even remember there being such a thing. I don't know how long ago it was they introduced smoking sections. But right now here in Dresden, for about 95% of restaurants, there are no smoking vs. non-smoking sections. It's all just smoke-em-if- ya-got-em, so to speak. You can be sitting down to a fancy dinner filled with delicate flavors and the couple next to you can light up and chain smoke the rest of the evening, so that everything just smells/tastes like smoke.
On the other hand, in many cities in the US, there's still no restrictions on smoking in bars. I guess because of that it wasn't completely shocking coming to Dresden, since I was at least used to the smoke in bars. But as of next Friday, in Saxony bars and restaurants will have to be primarily non-smoking. All of them I assume. Although apparently they will be allowed to have a smoking "section", as long as it can be separated from the rest of the bar by a closed door.
It would seem like it will never work, people will never accept it. But if it's worked in Ireland, Italy, Paris, NYC......I guess it can work anywhere.
Again I wonder what will become of my neighborhood bar Hebeda's. I think I might go this Friday to take some final photos of the smoky mood, and then go again next Friday to celebrate the lack of smoke.

New Scanner (Milk and Sugar, baby)

I realized the other day that when I take photos with my SLR (an old film kind of SLR), it's costing me a fortune to make them digital just to share with people or put on my blog or whatever. For a 36 roll of slide film, it only costs about 2.50 euro to develop, but then my photoplace charges about 12.50 to scan them onto a CD at 2400 dpi. So when I take 2 rolls of film in it costs me 3o euros, and there's no prints or paper involved. For some reason it took me this long to realize if I were to just have them develop them and scan them myself it would be 1/6th the cost. So it seemed obvious to go buy a scanner that can scan negatives/slides and soon it would pay for itself. But then again I want to get a digitial SLR soon and would I then not have a use for the scanner anymore?? I decided it was worth buying a good scanner, then I could also use it for other things or even archiving old slides/film.

So I got this guy (Canon 8800F)

and here's my first scan, of an awesome graphic I had found out on the town. (click to enlarge)

Making a Gingerbread House in Germany

As usual this is about a month late, but had to post some pictures to show that while in Germany I actually helped make a gingerbread house during Christmas-time. There was a cookie competition at work as part of the Christmas party and our lab decided we would make a gingerbread house as our entry....

The walls go up. Not looking like a standard house

Jenn was the master-coordinator of the project, and supervised the American postdocs



A sidewalk and street, and pedestrians go down...

Final touches included a speed bump and smokers outside in the cold. (Gummibärchen, of course)

And BAM! The MPI-CBG in the snow. Complete with funky awning, trees, speed bumps, smokers, benches, pond, and even some little guys playing kicker up on the roof.

First place! And this contest was no joke, as evidenced by the mean looking cookie on the certificate. Notice Till lurking in the background. He was cherry-picking the candy when eyes were turned.

Soon everybody got into the act. It didn't last very long. But tasted pretty good.

Cuts!

Collided heads in basketball tonight and somehow it opened up a one and a half inch cut on my forehead. No stitches, though, they put it back together with hot glue.



I had it coming, though, the last 2 collisions I had sent the other guy to the ER.

Speeding up Microtubule Growth

Molecular biochemists doctor Gary Brouhard and doctor Jeff Stear (of The Stools) have teamed up to present their last couple years of work, published this week in Cell. CELL is perhaps the most prestigious journal in the world for publishing in the biosciences, and here they have pulled off the cover. Gary and Jeff have shown us how microtubule growth is mechanistically regulated on a molecular level, which until now has been the subject of debate, by the protein XMAP215.







Cover design by Gary Brouhard

The authors at their finest

In the authors' own words:

"Microtubules are long, slender filaments with which cellular structures such as the cytoskeleton, the mitotic spindle, and the axoneme are built. These structures are not static. Rather, they are broken down and rebuilt when a cell moves, changes shape, or progresses through the cell cycle. This remodeling is achieved by the disassembly and reassembly of microtubules and occurs primarily through the removal and addition of tubulin dimers at microtubule ends. "

(Here is a movie illustrating microtubules growing in live cells.)

More specifically:

"To distinguish among the different possible ways that XMAP215 might promote microtubule growth, we developed an assay to visualize single XMAP215 molecules during microtubule polymerization. We demonstrate that XMAP215 does not, in fact, act as a tubulin shuttle. Rather, XMAP215 acts as a processive polymerizing enzyme or polymerase: XMAP215 forms a 1:1 complex with tubulin and resides for long periods at microtubule plus ends where it catalyzes repeated rounds of addition of tubulin into the microtubule polymer."

Nice work, dudes.

New Year's Eve in Dresden...

As soon as I get my photos developed from New Year's Eve I want to post some up here.
But briefly I'll put this great video that Sarah took. This captures the attitude of the evening in Dresden. chaos and fire.



This was outside my flat as we were preparing to walk down to the river for the festivities and Sanni thought it a good idea to try a large rocket in the tram tracks.
Garrett with the commentary. Unfortunately there was a guy where it exploded and he wasn't too happy about it.
it's fun to pause it on the frame of the first explosion.

Summing up Tex-Mex in Germany in one picture.



This is a screenshot from a German website selling American foods. This was the only entry under the category "Tex-Mex". The heading says "Tex-Mex - for the exceptional spiciness"

Quote of the year

"Don't tase me, bro."

Adding to blogroll:

Jon Swift.
I like to keep my blogroll there short, so maybe people will actually check out those blogs.
here is a new addition. This one really is consistently a good read, as are the handful there under "Places I frequent". Check it out.

How we do it in Dresden.

You just have to read for yourself.

One liter. No word on if he is a Dynamo fan.

Favorite songs of the moment

The National - Fake Empire

Thanks to Eric


John Mayer - I don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)

Thanks to Maria

Guns guns guns

It seems like every day now there is news of another multiple victim shooting in the US.
Everybody's seen the stats: in the US there's an average of nearly 100 gun-related deaths per day.
If only we had looser gun control laws, and there were more people around with guns, these shootings would happen less because these clearly stable people would be afraid of dying at the hand of another...no, wait, well,the _shooters_ would be, er dead, uh, maybe after they shot everybody?? and only few more dead from all the stray bullets in the shootout.
Anyway, point is: guns don't kill people. Bad people kill people.
And the security guard at latest church shooting tells us that she prayed to God to guide her bullet and kill the man she killed as she was shooting. As long as God is getting involved, why not pray that your bullet disables the man without killing him, or that his bullets bounce off everybody when he shoots.

Dec 9

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gMs56zV1AnRE1wJ71B1sEPAmcLxw
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004066596_gunman12.html
http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=7474851&nav=23iiKxbV

Dec 10
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-tremors11dec11,1,3089749.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california
http://blog.mlive.com/annarbornews/2007/12/shooting_victim_identified_as.html
http://www.azcentral.com/community/chandler/articles/1211cr-driveby1212.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/343124_shooting12.html?source=mypi

Dec 11
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i6or47BFuliL5go-d8cv3e-fMZbwD8TFNP7G0
http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=7484095&nav=menu188_2

GAG.

I opened up my microwave to heat something up and found this inside:


And I nearly puked. This had been in there so long I couldn't tell what it once was or even remember what it might have been. It's not like me to heat up something and then forget about it. And then to subsequently not use my microwave for a few weeks. But there it was.
This bowl is still sitting out on my back porch - I'm kind of afraid to touch and and am hoping the birds and wind and rain will take it all away. I gave the whole microwave a good scrub down for good measure but it still makes me a little queasy to put things in there after that was festering there.
It's funny, cause I do remember thinking once I short one bowl, but couldn't figure out where it may have gone to.

Thanksgiving.

Probably the best holiday. period. Thankfully even over here in Germany we manage to assemble a number of expats to get together and do it right. This year it was 7 Americans, an Irishman, a Japanese woman, and 2 German women. The gathering was held in Nate's place, 2 floors above mine, and my place was used as a staging area to cook the second turkey and the pies. Amazingly, it seemed like we split up the traditional foods cooking duties and everybody ended up with something they were good at. We had the traditional stuff: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, some sweet potatoes, broccoli casserole, pumpkin pie. There was however no green bean casserole. I'm going to chalk this up to an inability to find condensed cream of mushroom soup here. Somebody tried it last year with something else, and it just didn't have the right consistency. I even made a pumpkin pie from scratch. Which I guess just means I put a pumpkin in the oven for a while and then scooped it out and pureed it instead of the canned stuff. Anyway, everything turned out great, and with 2 turkeys for 11 people there was plenty of turkey left over to go around for sandwiches.

Chaos in the kitchen

Tancredo...Before it's too late.




I wasn't sure I got the message until the explosion at the end. powerful stuff. powerful stuff.



I mean, if you're upset about those Mexicans coming to take our jobs, then you will be really upset about those Muslims and their exploding backpacks.

The saddest thing of all this is that somebody must have calculated that this ad would attract more people to this guy than repulse. ahhh, the American midwest......

Halloween

Well, it' s a month past, but I figured I'd post a few pics from Halloween. Every year since I've been in Dresden we've put on a Halloween party. And it's always been a success. Halloween is sort just recently creeping into Germany in a purely commercial way, so it's not really a big thing in general. Especially the idea of a Halloween costume party. I always try to convince people to think outside the box with their Halloween costumes here because the ideas that of course are in the heads of Germans and Europeans is the traditional Halloween costume: spooky and scary, like Frankenstein, ghosts, vampires, etc. On the other hand, most people who do put together a costume really get into it - which makes the party so much more fun.
Here are some pics.
And if you see your picture here, then you're probably one of the people in Dresden that have found my blog but haven't told me, so if you want it to be removed you'll have to come clean ;)

The crew that organized the whole thing

Forbidden tree and snake





A giant squirrel drops her nuts.

lab members letting loose. too loose. yikes.


This is Gary and Jeff. pretty good.

Dresden vs. Genital Herpes

Today as I glanced at the standings and games for Dresden's top soccer club, "Dynamo Dresden", I noticed they are scheduled to play Hamburger Sport Verein II, or, as shown in the standings on the left, HSV II

Following Dresden soccer is actually quite sad, they are in the 3rd German league and hoping to stay there. I can't get into soccer unless I have a team with a reason to root for, and Dresden is just not good enough. They don't even get on TV. When I got here they were 2nd league, which was reasonable. But now. eh. I can follow the game live online. Hopefully they will pull it out against Herpes Simplex Virus II.