Luck o' the not-Irish

Dublin was fun. Shapiro and I met some Austrians and some Australians. Austrians were cooler. Fed some seals, hung out at a castle, poured pints, witnessed a couple of irishmen fighting. Just your typical weekend in Dublin. Check out Dani's pics below. I'm going up to Edinburgh this weekend, Austin and his fam will be there as well. Amsterdam on the 31st and Prague on the 6th. Finding a job to pay for all this in Atlanta on the 16th. When's the next time I'll be in such close proximity to these famed cities though? That thought eases the tension in my wallet.

I've had a couple unlucky weeks in the lab. Every Monday I harvest a new batch of oocytes from a Xenopus frog, and the quality of my recordings depends on the quality of the oocytes which depends on the quality of the frog. Last week, the frog must not have been feeling too well because all the oocytes were discolored and half of them died by thursday. As Rachel knows, there's nothing you can really do (besides singing them sweet lullabies) about oocyte quality and you gotta go with the flow. This week, the oocytes looked healthy from day one, no discoloration, resilient membranes, and I was expecting excellent recordings. Turns out, something went wrong in the cRNA injection procedure and they weren't able to convert the molecular info into sodium channels. No currents this week either. It's disheartening, but part of what happens in lab science. One of my colleagues has gone a couple months without any good data, so I don't feel so bad. Sometimes it's the littlest things that need to be changed, like making up new saline or cleaning the electrode holder. Four more weeks to make up for lost time though.

Austin asked me who my favorite director was a couple weeks ago and it's a question I've given much thought. Christopher 'Dark Knight' Nolan or Charlie ' Spotless Mind' Kaufman. Nolan started small with Memento, Insomnia, and Following, and each was spectacularly constructed. Now he's moved onto big-budget blockbusters Batman Begins, Dark Knight, and Inception, but hasn't lost any of the originality in storytelling ability or visual style. Kaufman has always had key actors pulling off sensational characters in Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind (Malkovich himself, Nic Cage, and Jim Carrey). All of which can be considered 'best movies I've ever experienced'. They've had greater emotional and psychological effects than anything Nolan has done. However, he only wrote the screenplay for these films, and Spike Jonze did the directing. Kaufman made his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York starring Philip Seymour Hofman. An enigmatic film that I know means something, but I'm not quite sure what. First, every movie listed above is excellent and they're both artists of the highest class. And to answer your question Austin, CNolan is my number one director and CKaufman my number one screenplay writer.

Watch this one first.