A couple things

Craig Venter is an evil supergenius. See here. His comments on "A new philosophical age" and "Not everybody is going to be happy" are particularly creepy. Also the fact that he is knowingly and gleefully playing God, and seems to think this is purely a good thing. I particularly like his comments on our potential to make bacteria which pull carbon dioxide out of the air, since I have never, ever, ever heard of or seen an organism that could do that, and I'm sure that you haven't either. Also because there wouldn't be any problem with, for instance, pulling too much carbon dioxide out of the air, or deciding which byproducts these hypothetical organisms would turn the carbon dioxide into. I mean, honestly.

It has been said that I do not think like an evil supergenius. I am not sure I am ashamed of this. But I am sure I am going to be a mad scientist for Halloween. Possibly with a glowing rat. I think that would be fun. I would have something more traditional, like a ray gun or whatever, but I am after all a geneticist. A geneticist who has finished her GREs, though, which is exciting. Just in time to stress about my presentation to PCBio, where I will probably get yelled at by Steve for not making enough progress *wince*. But I can blame the fact that in the 100 clones I have screened, only 1 was good and only 1 other looks promising. AND I can say I'm trying new techniques to get clones, which will hopefully have better results. (I have 25 more clones ready to look at whenever Karen has time, and more on the way, but Karen is busy with paperness so I am on hold, working on getting bacterial constructs made for the next couple weeks.) That's not a lack of effort. That's a lack of luck?

Speaking of, I (hopefully!) get to hear James Watson speak tonight! I hope I have questions to ask him. I have also decided that Watson > Yoga and Heroes. Which I feel is the proper choice.
I should get his new book from the seminary coop. I liked Double Helix, it was really funny. (If you are a scientist, you should READ IT NOW. If you know many scientists, you should also READ IT NOW. It's wonderfully tongue-in-cheek making fun of paradigmatic scientists, and if you are one or know many, well, you'll see yourself and/or a lot of people you know reflected in the characters.)

In any case, maybe I'll post later tonight about the speech. And maybe I'll work on my problem set instead. We'll see, won't we?