dear science

[elanid]

I feel like we need to take a break for a little bit - say, about a month.  Does that sound okay to you?  I'm still thrilled with our relationship, understand, it's just that I need a little breathing space, and also some time to stop thinking "but there are no p-values!" about everything else I read.  And also to recover from the pain that is

Comments

[diatryma]

Wantest thou input beyond heeheehee?

[elanid]

Eh, can't hurt. ^^

[diatryma]

The initial 'a' bothers me. I am not sure about the last line; like Lara, I am debounced by it. "the chilis' capsaicin" perhaps?

I think I've driven my ddw group a bit mad by 'polishing' things by rewriting them. It's not that the way they write is bad, it's just easily fixed.

[diatryma]

no, not easily fixed; easily made better.

[elanid]

I do that too! But I don't think that changing two words counts as an actual rewrite. Can't say 'the chilis' capsaicin,' though, that doesn't make any sense.

[diatryma]

I knew it was iffy to begin with; shouldn't comment on poetry when I don't know the experimental methods.

[elanid]

...that comment just made me laugh a lot. Poetry! Experimental methods! We are sad madwomen, aren't we?

Basically, capsaicin is the chemical that makes the chilis spicy, but there's a really tiny amount (in the, err, mg/g dry mass kind of range, if I'm remembering right) of it in any given chili, even the killer spicetastic ones. I'm just not sure there's a good way to fix that. :/

[diatryma]

I knew about capsaicin, but I had assumed that you were growing the fungus (stupid fungus) on plates containing capsaicin, like growing bacteria on an Ab+ plate. I didn't know there was so little (okay, mg/g seems huge to me right now, but I work with PCBs and my internal sense of scale is broken anyway) per pepper, though.

I sometimes think I should grow some crazyspicy peppers to see how hot I could get them (I am not allowed to create transgenic habaneros) but then I remember that I do not like spicy.

[elanid]

I hate fungus forever right now, so I totally agree on the stupid fungus thing. But - yeah, it's kind of like that, it's just that there isn't very much capsaicin in the media, and some of the plates don't have any. (I think that it's mg/g, but it could actually be ug/g; I don't want to have to fight with excel to check.) Anyway, even mg/g isn't big enough that it'd seem reasonable to say 'chilis' capsaicin.'

My professor's research team assesses the pungency of chilis in their native population - by taste. He described this procedure to us one day in class to winces and sympathetic looks all around, needless to say.

[diatryma]

of fungus that grows in
the plates with capsaicin.

Hm. Repeats the words of 'growth plate' too soon. I cannot help you. I am sorry.

I hate fungus as a nerd: I know it is cool, I know it is cooler than I know, I approve of the existence of fungus... but it contaminates everything and killed my nodules and is always around and we hates it precious we do.

I don't think that taste is appropriate. Too subjective.

Early in my research career, the woman I was shadowing said, "We have lots of protein-- huge amounts of protein. We're measuring it in micrograms."

(oh dear. We are now following an email pattern. At least Livejournal has a character limit.)

[elanid]

I like fungus in terms of it being cool, but I hate fungus in the sense that...it is really hard to do science on. OH BLAST I FORGOT TO INCLUDE SOME IMPORTANT STUFF IN MY LAB REPORT. Damn damn damn damn. Well, nothing for it now, I suppose.

Taste is to tell whether they're spicy or not. Apparently there is really no other sensible way - and more to the point, maybe, given the general capsaicin level of pungent chilis, there is definitely no way you could mistake one for the other.

Micrograms of protein! That is actually quite a lot. This is not an email I SWEAR. (it is far too short)