PR Police Fucking Blows

I'm probably making a longer post about this at some time, but although enraging, this is unsurprising behavior by cops towards the students from the state universty's main campus. They even shot students that were telling others to get into the college residence with tear gas. And by shot I don't mean into the air like they are supposed to. I mean to they aimed those things at the students and caused bleeding.
And again, unsurprisingly, the media coverage of the incident is full of air quotes around police brutality and the insinuation that the students deserved getting beaten by batons and thrown tear gas for swearing at the police.

Stupid is as stupid does

I skipped going to the lab on Saturday because I was too hungover. So I went to bed early, got ready to take the 1st bus, walked 10 min to get to the bus stop and 30 min to get from the closest bus stop to the lab.
I wished for another shower as soon as I got to the lab. I don't remember being this sweaty in Ithaca ever - this is something I only associated with PR, not the north-fucking-east. I put on some music and started working. Everything was going fine until I chose the wrong centrifuge tubes. I lost my goddamn samples for being stupid and not running the centrifuge with empty tubes first. GRR. Wasted Sunday due to my stupidity. I would have been comparatively ahead if I just skipped coming to the lab yesterday.

Cuando respiro en tu boca

I'm too hungover to go to lab today. Thankfully my culture pellets are stored @ -20C. I'm doing my Sunday chores today and going to lab tomorrow- so lets start the Sunday cleaning and dancing music!

Me alzo y salto entre tus dedos sabré caer
ojalá que sea cierto que odio tus dedos
me estiro y espero que algo enrosque tu
espalda en flor ojalá que sea cierto que
odio tu espalda cuando respiro en tu boca
y penetra tu ojo en mi ojo cuando respiro
en tu boca me escondes como sangre a la herida

me pongo de pie y perdono al daño que
a mi oído destrozó que sea cierto que
odio el silencio cuando respiro en tu boca
y penetra tu ojo en mi ojo me precipito
hacia el cielo cuando respiro en tu boca
cuando respiro en tu boca de par en par
tu flor tensión y caída cuando respiro en tu boca

Sensing your Clitoris

Let's talk about sensing. You have touch receptors over all your skin. The number of touch receptors in the skin depends on the body part. For example, your fingertips have more of those receptors than your arm. The motor cortex in your brain processes this sensory information from all your body parts. Unsurprisingly, those body parts with more touch receptors are processed in a larger area of the motor cortex.

This can be represented in a sort of body map, called homunculus, in which the size of the body parts is proportional to it's representation in the cortex, and is placed onto the region of the cortex that represents it.




However, although a bunch of body parts have been localized in this "body map" in our cortex, it was still unknown where the clitoral stimuli is processed. Swiss scientists worked to fill that gap of knowledge and studied 15 healthy women to map the somatosensory representation of the clitoris (Michels et al., 2009). The Neurocritic gave a great discussion of this paper. Go visit and take a look at the brain image and where the clitoral stimulus is processed.
Curious about their methods?

Prior to the imaging session, two self-attaching surface disc electrodes (1 × 1 cm) were placed bilaterally next to the clitoris of the subjects so that we were able to stimulate the fibers of the dorsal clitoral nerve. Before the start of the experiment, electrical test stimulation was performed to ensure that subjects could feel the stimulation directly at the clitoris. In addition, the strength of electrical stimulation was adjusted to a subject-specific level, i.e. that stimulation was neither felt [as] painful nor elicited – in case of clitoris stimulation – any sexual arousal.

(It makes me want to make a pin-the-tail type game with a fMRI image of the brain and some body part cartoons.)