http://www.madprime.org/articles/tag/life en-us 40 <p>Yesterday there was a bad smell that kept cropping up in the lab. We thought it might have been the floor drain that is connected to the sewage system; it has a U pipe that should block gas exchange when filled with water but sometimes that evaporates off. So A poured a liter of water into it, but the smell appeared again.</p> <p>Eventually we discovered it was coming from the 37C incubator where B and C were culturing bacteria as part of a series of experiments I have unflatteringly dubbed "poop-omics". "Well what do you expect if you culture up a bunch of random ass bacteria!" I said.</p> <p>In this case the <a href="http://xkcd.com/37/">Monroe Interpretation</a> regarding the position of "ass" hyphenation would be the correct one.</p> Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:58:00 -0500 urn:uuid:e770917c-ed97-4b07-aed9-c46df7496209 Madeleine Ball http://www.madprime.org/articles/2009/02/13/random-ass-bacteria science life