Spellcheck no substitute for brain

Ok people, your pub quiz fact for today is that a fly's digestive system has three parts, imaginatively named the foregut, midgut and hindgut. Now I realise that Word's spellcheck can do some funny things when confronted with scientific terminology, but you'd have thought this wouldhave been picked up in the peer review:

From "Some Aspects of Epidemiology of Filth Flies"

The only known existing literature in different parts of Nigeria is that of Dipeolu and Ojo (Adeyeba and Okpala 2000, Dipeolu and Ojo 1975), who isolated several genera of bacteria, some of which are pathogenic to man in Nigeria. These were isolated from the dissected midgets, and appendages of M. domestica vicina and M. domestica caught from refuse dumps in various public places in Ibadan.

Of course if it turns out that Adeyeba and Okpala did in fact isolate pathogenic bacteria by cutting up very small people then I shall apologise unreservedly.

P.S. No more cockroaches spotted yet

A little too much entomology

Unlike every other Monday, when obviously I leap cheerily out of bed and skip to work whistling a jaunty tune, I have not had a good morning. I had to be in early to do something complicated with some machines, the details of which I won't bore you with (mostly because I don't quite understand it myself) and as Thameslink trains have only a 30% chance of getting you in at the time they say they will, this necessitated getting up at 5:30.


Switching on the kitchen light so early in the morning caused something to dart out from under the microwave and across the worktop. I must admit that my initial reaction was to shriek thinking it was a mouse, then think "Oh it's ok, it's only a German cockroach". It took a few seconds for my sleepy brain to realise that this was also a bad thing. I spent the next ten minutes chasing it up walls, behind the fridge and, generally, being outwitted by something with a brain the size of a pinhead, before dispatching him with extreme prejudice. I then had to give the worktops a quick clean on the offchance that Jeff would wake up and start licking them or something (admittedly unlikely, but better safe than sorry). This made me later than I would have been if I'd got up at the normal time when the cockroach would presumably have been hidden, allowing me to leave the house quickly in a state of blissful ignorance. I didn't have time to walk to the station and had to catch the bus - that roach owes me two quid.


So in all probability we have a cockroach infestation, which probably isn't something to confess to a few weeks before I'm considering having a birthday party. I will be monitoring the situation over the coming weeks (read getting up horrifically early and hitting my own fingers with frying pans).


Your pub quiz fact of the day is that cockroaches belong to the order Blattodea, so called because of the noise they make when you step on them. German cockroaches look like this:

Guide to easing yourself back into work mode gently

1. The Saturday before you go back try to wake up at commuting o'clock. Fail.
2. Repeat on the Sunday before you go back. Fail. (In my case, turn off the alarm and overshoot by six hours)
3. Somehow manage to get out of bed on Monday. Walk into wall. Discover it's snowing. Discover the price of a season ticket has gone up. Reward yourself for surviving this far with a cup of coffee. Discover the coffee shack next to Harpenden station makes lousy coffee.
4. Waste half an hour deleting emails from beautiful Nataliana who wishes to do me acquaintance.
5. Check gmail.
6. Check facebook.
7. Mess about on Badscience for a bit. Convince yourself this counts as work.
8. Check facebook again.
9. Realise you have two days to get your fieldwork proposal into an acceptable form to submit for ethical approval.
10. Panic. Then go on blogger to try and ignore it.

Happy New Year all.

Clinical shiny beats green and spiky

Some time ago I asked you to vote for which type of forceps looked least threatening, and nine people did. That's right folks, nine people read my blog and I don't even have any porn on here! I haven't felt this popular since my Mum picked me up from school with the dog!

But back to the forceps, it looks like the round-tipped metal ones have beaten the friendly green plastic six to three, which is good as the plastics are a complete bugger to grip. Thanks everyone who voted.

All change

You know that awkward situation when you say your long goodbyes to someone you won't be seeing for a while, then see them at the bus stop ten minutes later and have to make stilted conversation until you say your long goodbyes again? That's the way I feel at the moment. I've just discovered that the LSHTM's trachoma survey won't be going out to The Gambia until April, so Jeff has had to mothball his plans for a return to batchelor life in January (the pizza menus are back in the drawer, the strippers have been hastily cancelled). Whilst the delay means I will be spending winter in Britain after all, and I had thought I could get away without buying a new pair of winter boots, it does at least give me longer to perfect my fly-rearing techniques (memo to self: animals need water) and to master all the gear.

Of course this does also mean that you'll have to put up with my wittering a little longer. While I still have your attention though, could the person I promised to lend "My name is light" by Elsa Osorio to please step forward? I've found the book now but can't remember who you were. I hope I can get away with blaming this on Aspall, and would like to assure you that your friendship means a lot to me and I greatly appreciate you as an individual. Whoever you are.

Happy Christmas/Yule/Winterval!

Here's something to put you off your turkey:

Ophthalmomyiasis in Hawaii.
Author(s): Kajioka, Eric H N; Nagao, Cherie F K;
Karas, Stefan; Hardman, John M; Navin, James J Source: Hawaii Med J
Volume: 63 Issue: 3 Pages: 78-9
Published: 2004 Mar

Abstract:
Ophthalmomyiasis is the infestation of the eye by fly larvae. Commonlycaused by Oestrus ovis, a female sheep botfly will accidentally deposit her larvae into a human eye, resulting in disease. Prompt recognition and treatment of this condition will improve patient care and reduce potential complications. We report a case of ophthalmomyiasis in a young man from Molokai who was infested while unloading a Christmas tree.

PubMed ID: 15124740

Happy Christmas everyone!

Bitter Oranges

This has nothing to do with my PhD, but I'm posting it here because it gets the highest readership of any of my blogs*. On my way home on Monday I noticed a group of people outside the Orange Tree Pub, waving banners and shouting. I do like a bit of shouting so I went to see what was going on. It turned out that the British Nazi National Party were having their Christmas party in there. I grabbed a placard and am proud to have played some small part in forcing some of them to spend their Christmas celebrations standing outside the pub in the freezing drizzle, attempting to intimidate us whilst icy water dripped on their shaven heads.

The BNP is, sadly, a legal political party so there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to hold their Christmas party in a pub. However, I doubt that I'm alone in not wanting to drink in the same pub as a bunch of racist wankers, who think that rape is no worse than force-feeding someone chocolate cake and that mixed race people should...actually, I don't have the strength to go on. I shall be writing to the manager of the Orange Tree to explain that I feel this way, and also to Youngs, the chain that owns the pub, and would encourage as many people as possible to do the same. A word of warning though, the manager of the Orange Tree is clearly a BNP sympathiser as they've met there before, so if you do write to the pub it'd be safer not to put a return address – just because we know their addresses doesn't mean they need to know ours.

If you have a receipt to show that you have drunk in a Youngs pub recently, include it with your letter to add weight to your assertion that you won't be drinking there in future. This shouldn't be too difficult for anyone who, like me, is a habitual drunkard** with a confetti of old receipts in her bag, but probably wouldn't be possible for someone like Imogen who I think alphabetises her handbag contents.

The addresses are as follows. There's also a Facebook group.

The Orange Tree:

Roger & Tracey Stearn
Orange Tree
45 Kew Road
Richmond
Surrey
TW9 2NQ

http://www.orangetreerichmond.co.uk

Young's brewery:

Young & Co.’s Brewery, P.L.C.
Riverside House
26 Osiers Road
Wandsworth
London SW18 1NH

http://www.youngs.co.uk

Normal service will resume next week peeps. I know you're missing those flies.

*Six, and my Mum who my Dad prints it out for.

**You can delete this bit before printing Dad.