J. Michael Andresen

Over the weekend, Katie and I installed a Closet Organizer from IKEA. The steps: 1. Katie planned the scheme to provide better use of the closet space. 2. Katie and Michael traveled to IKEA to find furniture to fit the plan. 3. Michael and his brother, Jeremiah, returned to IKEA with a truck and a trailer to pick up the furniture. 4. Michael and Jeremiah assembled the behemoth organizer this past Sunday. Many insults were hurled back and forth during installation regarding who had a better claim on the appellation of Master Closet Assembler, a lofty title that implies a deft and gentle touch combined with a dizzying spatial intellect. It does not imply any reading ability, however, as the IKEA assembly directions are designed with the functionally illiterate in mind: Jeremiah summed up the last line: "When you are sad and depressed, call IKEA and they will cheer you up!" Sometimes (as in the first line above) two men are pictured. But IKEA is very liberal, and in one section ...

I was working at my lab bench last night and thought it was interesting how many alcohols I use regularly. The alcohols are all small (4 carbons or less), but each plays its own unique role. The 50% methanol and 5% methanol are used for fixing protein gels. The 1-butanol is used to even out the top of (and remove bubbles from) hand-poured acrylamide gels. It gets added in small amounts directly to the top of the gel. I have taped a small transfer pipet to the side to facilitate this. The isopropanol is used to precipitate DNA. A 40% solution of isopropanol added to a mix of salt and DNA will bring the DNA out of solution (but leave the salt in solution, thus purifying DNA away from the salt). The 70% ethanol is used to wash the precipitated DNA in order to remove the isopropanol. This is done because ethanol evaporates faster than isopropanol, allowing a quicker purification of the DNA. The 70% ethanol is also used to disinfect external surfaces of possible bacterial contamination. The...

One of my father's affectionate nicknames for my siblings and me was "no-necked monsters." I was reading in bed the other night, when Katie walked by me and burst out laughing. Katie got me an appropriately named husband pillow for my comfort while reading in bed (though to this day, I don't understand why it needed to be pink ). When I read in bed, I start sitting up straight, but eventually I slide down. During the sliding process, though, my shirt stays put, turning me once again into a no-necked monster.

I am a bit of a Scrabble nut , so it pleases me to know that the Obamas play Scrabble. This story was broken two years ago, in a list of things you didn't know about Barack Obama: 8. He loves playing Scrabble. Apparently Barack's family is quite intense into the Scrabble, according to Michelle Obama : Robin Roberts: Is there any kind of Obama family vacation traditions or-- Michelle Obama: There can be mean games of Scrabble. He and his sister Maya, oh, they are deadly. In fact, sometimes we all just walk away and let them, you know, compete into the night. Sounds like a holiday vacation at an Andresen residence, with Katie occasionally walking away from the madness! I happened across a recent political cartoon with Scrabble in it: The artist did enough research, at least, to know that the Scrabble board is 15 by 15 and starts in the center square (the E in economy ). But would it be so hard to spend the $10 and get a real Scrabble set? It would then become clear that a sta...

The Miss America pageant was held on Saturday. The winner was Miss Indiana , Katie Stam (above). Her talent was singing, and she did a rendition of Via Dolorosa , a song that was completely foreign to me. Here is a singer called Sandi Patty singing the tune. That means that the answer to Question 2 of the 2009 Prognostication Quiz is A (Vocal). A whopping 20 people predicted this: Stephanie, Jan, Pete C., Tina, Ted, Jeremiah, Kevin, Peter M., Heather, Katie, Liz, Ellen, Matthew, Ben, Sarah, Ana, Jeff B., Missy, Beth, and Ekrem. They all get one point. Six of these 20 also got the correct answer on the first question and are now 2-for-2! Congratulations to overall leaders Stephanie, Tina, Ted, Jeremiah, Peter M., and Heather! It makes sense that most people would pick A (Vocal) the most often, as it had the highest probability of winning out, with 18 contestants choosing that as their talent. That assumes that all of the entrants have about an equal probability of winning, though. S...

I was reading the headlines earlier this week and came across this story : Here are 20 jobs we found that let you work less and earn more. These jobs require less than 40 hours of labor in a work week, but exceed the median annual income level in pay: 1. Aircraft pilots, copilots and flight engineers Hours/week: 23.5 Hours/year: 1,215 Annual earnings: $119,658 2. Biological scientist Hours/week: 38.4 Hours/year: 1,992 Annual earnings: $65,329 This was funny because the top two jobs listed are the ones chosen by my father (1) and myself (2). Something is not quite right about the statistics, though. I think academic biologists work an average of 50 hours a week, and that goes up for those trying to get tenure. I suppose some people treat tenure like a sinecure once they achieve it, but that's rare in my experience. And who knows what those slacker biologists in the biotech industry are up to. As for pilots, they count their hours in a funny way. When my Dad was working for Northwest...

This week I have been making a figure for a paper (due next week) and wanted to get ideas how to sketch the endoplasmic reticulum in a dendrite. I therefore did a Google Images search for "ER dendrite." Because "dendrite" is such a science word, I didn't figure I would get many non-scientific images. I was correct, and a very helpful image appeared on the first line of the first page. That helped in my construction of this draft of my figure. (The ER is contiguous with the upper right-hand corner, sitting in the larger dendrite): I wanted to be complete, though, so I searched through the next several pages, most of which were just pictures of dendrites without any endoplasmic reticulum. Then to my horror, on page five of the search results, I found this mixed in with all the images of neurons: Why, oh, why? It turns out the indicated page is an archived week's worth of posts from October of 2005 on a blog called BoingBoing . One post is titled "Dean on...